#40 trillion

[cursed-40k-thoughts]

I think all of those posts, comics and "quotes with 40k characters" stuff portraying Malcador as the voice of reason amongst the cast are funny, but I mean, is he really?

the guy was the enabler to end all enablers

He was absolutely an enabler and an apologist, but he had more of a grasp of common sense than the Emperor, and knew how to (at least a little) argue with him when something needed doing. Granted, “more common sense than Nasty Neoth” is a low bar, but Malcador cleared it. Sometimes. Now and then. As a treat.

[mantisgodsdomain]

Anyways, to those who have been wondering what we've been doing during our impromptu Tumblr Vacation or whatever we're calling it, we've been trying to find a playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 that is made by someone who doesn't annoy the shit out of us, and also tormenting Karlach Cliffgate (as you do)

[cordialsilence]

One of the benefits of having purchased a long charger is that I don’t have to hang off my bed folded at a 90 degree angle when my phone’s battery is low but on the flip side it’s almost 3am and I lay here comfortable and unfolded with my phone on low power mode at 17% and charging I can’t help feeling like it enables my screen addiction a bit

[witchkingofanmar]

Monday again tomorrow cool

[classicintp]

Goddammit I miss that cat.

[gampix]

My take on the bill the handyman au by @handymanbill

I decided to give this old fart like 40 mental illnesses LMAO-- Decided to make him humanninstead of a stupid triangle, despite how funny that is-- but he's pretty much just a normal human asidr from the fact he's still technically immortal.

He's in his depression era - a trillion sum years worth of trauma suddenly back and haunting him now, so he's pretty compact with bad vibes. He's still a little shit and has a good time with Wendy, Soos, and Melody, but seeing Ford every day is really doin' something to him.

I just wanted him to suffer a little bit. Can u blame me?

[memorycycle]

stop saying to yourself your getting old just because your in your 30s or 40s or 50s. theres still 1000 trillion billion years left in the universe like girl u havent even turned into a floating sphere yet

[freshstitches]

I finally published the project for my dice roll scarf that went viral last month. If you love dice games, you'll enjoy knitting this pattern.

The color work in this project is determined by an algorithm, a set of rules that determine the final outcome. There isn't an exact set of instructions for this project. Instead, the knitter uses four 10-sided dice or a random number generator to pick the length of the colorwork in each row. 

The result is a staggered stripe sequence along the edge of the shawl. There are trillions of unique outcomes, so no two projects turn out exactly alike. The pattern uses about 500 yards of yarn in total, but the amount of each color that you'll need is randomly determined. Before publishing, I wanted to find out the minimum and maximum amount of each color required to make the project and the probability of each outcome.

The knowledge needed to calculate the yardage was a bit beyond my skill level, but my friend Mary W. Martin helped me gather this info. I used an online probability calculator to find out the probability of each unique stitch count. The results are slightly different depending on whether you use four 10-sided dice (blue) or pick a random number (yellow), but 99% of all possible results fall within a very small range. 

It was an interesting little tangent, but not hugely important to the actual knitting pattern. I can, however, confidently say there is a >99.9% chance that you'll need a 2nd skein of the main color. If you want to know more about the math, you should check out my project notes on Ravelry. 

The thick and thin striped colorwork is created with a super simple "long stitch" technique. The pattern looks great in fluffy mohair or contrasting colors of basic wool and the instructions include some basic tips for substituting yarns or changing the gauge.

Finished Size: 18 x 68” (46 x 172 cm) rectangular wrap.

Yarn: Approx. 315 yards (288 m) of MC and approx. 264 yards (241 m) of CC. Yardage may vary, see notes on yardage below and yardage chart in photos.

• Main Color (2 skeins) - JMR Studio Worsted Weight Mohair, 245 yards (225 m) per 4 oz; 78% Mohair, 13% Wool, 9% Nylon.

• Contrast Color (1 skein each, both yarns held together) - JMR Studio Fingering Weight Mohair, 320 yards (293 m) per 100g; 63% Silk, 23% Kid Mohair, 11% Nylon, 3% Polyester Held with Lavender Lune Yarn Co. Suri Alpaca, 328 yards (300 m) per 50g; 74% Suri Alpaca, 26% Silk.

Yardage: The amount of each color used for this pattern fluctuates based on the random numbers used to determine the stitch pattern. MC uses approx. 233 to 315 yards (213 to 288m) and CC uses approx. 182 to 264 yards (166 to 241m). 99% of possible results fall within a much smaller range. The Yardage Chart shows the distribution of all potential yardage outcomes.

Needles: Size 8 (5 mm) straight needles, or size needed to obtain gauge. NOTE: Straight needles work best with long stitches. Circular needles with a thin cord allow the long stitches to tighten and stretch, making them harder to manipulate.

Gauge: 12 sts x 14 rows = 4 x 4” (10 x 10 cm) square in pattern.

Other Materials: 10 sided die or random number generator, stitch marker, scale, tapestry needle.

Generating numbers: In my sample, I used four ten-sided dice (D10) to choose a number between 4 and 40 sts. If you don't have dice, you can use an online app like RANDOM.org to generate your numbers. If you follow this link, you'll get a list of 63 integers between 4 and 40. NOTE: Each time you visit the link or refresh the page, the list changes. You can also just choose numbers as you knit.

Pattern is available on my website and on Ravelry.

[robertreich]

The Truth About Trumponomics

Trump and Republicans want to wreck your bank account. Here are 5 things you need to know about Trumponomics.

1.Trump wants tax cuts for the rich, at your expense.

Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and big corporations added about $1.7 trillion to the national debt, with few benefits trickling down to the middle class — in fact, it raised taxes for more than 10 million American families.

Now Trump and Republicans want to make the tax cuts for the rich permanent, blowing up the debt even further. And then they’ll use that debt to justify this:

2. Trump would cut Social Security and Medicare — programs you’ve been paying into!

In every year of his presidency, Trump submitted a budget that tried to cut Social Security and Medicare. And he knows that’s the only way he can even begin to pay for extending his tax cuts for the rich.

3. Trump and his allies are pro-junk fee.

When the Biden administration issued a rule capping credit card late fees at $8, Sen. Tim Scott, a Trump surrogate, tried to overturn it in the Senate. And then a Trump-appointed judge issued a temporary injunction that blocked the rule from taking effect. Eliminating that rule would cost American families an estimated $10 billion a year.

And when the Biden administration required airlines to issue automatic refunds for canceled flights, Trump’s allies in Congress fought to block that too.

When Trump was in office, his administration fought against efforts to rein in airline junk fees.

Corporations nickel and diming us like this makes inflation worse. If Trump gets back in the White House, buckle up for more junk fees.

4. Trump would send health care costs soaring.

Republicans have committed to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, which would strip Medicare of the ability to negotiate drug prices, and let Big Pharma send the price of insulin and other life-saving medicines back through the roof.

And Trump is still fixated on repealing Obamacare, with no plan to replace it.

TRUMP: Obamacare is a disaster. We’re gonna do something about it.

That would strip coverage from tens of millions of Americans, drive up premiums, and let insurers charge more or deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions.

5, If you’ve got student debt, you’re out of luck with Trump.

In contrast to President Biden, who’s canceled more than $160 billion of student debt so far, Trump is against student debt relief. In his first term, he tried to eliminate the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness program for people like teachers and nurses, and he’s called the idea of debt relief “unfair.”

What’s unfair, is how student debt hurts not just the roughly 40 million Americans burdened by it, but the entire economy, since Americans with debt have less money to spend, are less likely to start a business, less likely to buy a home, and more likely to rely on government assistance.

The MAGA agenda would make nearly every aspect of your life more expensive, while making the richest Americans even richer.

Teddy Roosevelt’s economic plan was called the Square Deal. Franklin Roosevelt’s was the New Deal.

What Trump is offering is simply a Raw Deal.

[mariacallous]

Two weeks ago, Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in the Big Bend region of Florida. From there it carved a path through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee, leaving historic wreckage in its path as it flooded the region in 40 trillion gallons of water. The catastrophic damage in mountainous western North Carolina, especially, has garnered some of the most attention. Storms like this aren’t supposed to happen in places like that. Well, at least, they weren’t.

The all-hands-on-deck scramble to survey the extent of the damage, save lives and livelihoods, and restore power, water, and roads understandably still hasn’t been fast enough for those most affected. And just as understandably, the shock and the trauma of the storm have given way to conspiracy theories as a way to make sense of it all. Among those that have circulated either by word of mouth or through social media are the false theories that the government is razing property for lithium mining, that FEMA is bulldozing structures to cover up dead bodies, or that Democratic officials and the federal and state level are purposely ignoring the most Republican areas of the country.

There was also grumbling, especially in the early aftermath of the storm, that the media refused to cover what was happening in western North Carolina, or that the government had no money to help Americans suffering from the storm because it had spent it all on munitions for Ukraine and Israel. Another far-right theory for why the government supposedly hasn’t been devoting resources to disaster relief—which, to be clear, it has—is because it’s spending its budget on housing migrants.

The grandaddy of all the conspiracy theories going around, though, would have to be one most eagerly promoted by Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. According to Greene, an undefined “they”—who, if we’re being generous, is meant to be the Democrats, the deep state, or the “establishment”—“can control the weather.” In other words, “they” are actively working to crush communities with historic storms.

Despite backlash from basically every possible corner, she continues, still, to push this idea that the government can enhance and steer hurricanes on a path that does the most destruction to red America, ostensibly to create a mess in swing states that can’t be restored in time for voting. I’ve covered Congress for a while, so I don’t say this lightly: I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a member say something this disassociated with reality. But there are people who will believe it.

Officials at the federal, state, and local levels trying to manage recovery efforts, Democrat and Republican, are at their wits’ end with the overwhelming amount of misinformation that’s impeding their recovery work. They have emphasized that, actually, they’re impressed with the assistance the federal government has offered so far. Unfortunately, that sobriety—from officials actually on the ground—doesn’t extend to certain commanding heights of the Republican Party.

Donald Trump—as of now—hasn’t gone so far as to claim that Democrats control the hurricanes. But he’s given fuel to plenty of other outrageous and dangerous theories. Last week ahead of a visit to North Carolina, he posted on social media that he was getting “reports” about “the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of the State, going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas.” At a rally in Michigan this week, Trump said that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants, many of whom should not be in our country,” and that “they stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.” He said there had been “no helicopters” to relieve people, and that Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp had been unable to get in touch with President Joe Biden.

All of this is blatantly false. It’s also pretty horrifying with another dangerous hurricane moving through the Gulf of Mexico, poised to wreak even more havoc on the region.

Worse yet is that one of the central pillars of social media is owned by an credulous doofus who’s positioned himself as sometimes consigliere, sometimes rally clown, to the Trump campaign. Elon Musk has used his platform seemingly to spread any rumor that’s come his way. Late last week, he posted a note that said that “FEMA is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!”

This has been a recurring theme of his, that FEMA is, effectively, working to worsen the situation. Fortunately, he was able to get in touch with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg eventually, which calmed him down. That would have been a good first step, of course, before posting rumors about how the federal government opposes helping people.

The unfortunate question here, as we barrel toward Election Day, is: Does this pattern sound at all familiar?

Much of the country is in widespread discontent. Along comes Trump to either offer his own stories or inflame those floating around on the fringes, to give people someone to blame. Local and state administrators of both parties insist there’s nothing to these stories, but Trump and his sycophants push them anyway.

In other words, no: The pattern and spread of misinformation that’s emerged following Hurricane Helene does not give me confidence that the aftermath of the 2024 election, in the event of a narrow Kamala Harris victory, will go more smoothly than that of 2020. It almost feels like a dry run ahead of the election to test that the systems of deceit are still operable. They sure seem to be—only this time, Elon Musk owns the social media platform that dictates the pace of “news.”

What’s most disconcerting about the idea that the government can control and direct hurricanes to maximize wreckage, or that FEMA is actively working to block Republican areas from rebuilding, is the assumption of malevolence at the root of it. Most of the fact checks of Greene’s theory focus on how it’s obviously not scientifically possible for “them” to do what she describes. What’s equally important to stress—and it’s a shame it needs stressing—is that “they” wouldn’t want to do that. Joe Biden and the Democratic Party do not want hurricanes to kill, displace, and destroy the lives of American citizens. FEMA does not want Republicans to have trouble getting water. If you’re willing to believe these things, though, you’re more than willing to believe that an election can be stolen—again.

[mysticstronomy]

HOW ARE BLACK HOLES CREATED, AND HOW DO THEY GROW??

Blog#461

Wednesday, December 11th, 2024

Welcome back,

In 2017, astronomers started finding monster black holes in the very early universe. Containing roughly a billion times the mass of our Sun, these black holes were surrounded by disks of infalling matter shining so intensely that we can detect them across immense stretches of space and time.

These gravitational giants existed when the universe was only 700 million years old, or 5 percent its current age. At that point in cosmic history, the universe was still a toddler. Gravity was just beginning to rein in clouds of gas and dark matter to form structures that would later evolve into mature spiral and elliptical galaxies. Stars were beginning to pop into being, but they do today.

According to the traditional picture of black hole formation and growth, the universe at this time simply had not existed long enough for black holes to bulk up to a billion solar masses.

So, based on our general understanding of how black holes form and grow, these black holes should not exist.

And yet they do — posing a major challenge that astrophysicists have yet to unravel.

Quasars are brightly shining beacons of light and energy generated by the accretion of material onto supermassive black holes. In the 1990s, astronomers using a combination of ground- and space-based telescopes started to find extremely distant quasars powered by black holes of a billion or more solar masses.

By the mid-2010s, it was no longer a big deal to find quasars dating back to 1 billion or 2 billion years after the Big Bang. But theorists had a difficult time explaining how such massive black holes could have arisen so soon in the universe’s history.

For quasars and other objects that existed many billions of years ago, it’s meaningless to express their distances in terms of light-years. The universe has expanded so much between then and now that astronomers instead refer to an object’s redshift, which is a measurement of how much cosmic expansion has stretched the object’s light toward redder (longer) wavelengths.

For years, astronomers such as the University of Arizona’s Xiaohui Fan have been identifying quasars at redshifts as high as 6, when the universe was about 900 million years old. They’ve even found a few around redshift 7, which corresponds to an era when the universe was about 735 million years old. But in late 2017, an international team led by Eduardo Bañados of the Carnegie Institution for Science announced a quasar at a record-shattering redshift of 7.54. This quasar, designated J1342+0928 (J1342 for short), based on its sky coordinates in Boötes, was radiating 40 trillion Suns’ worth of energy at a time when the universe was only 690 million years old.

The team found J1342 by mining data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite, the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope Deep Sky Survey Large Area Survey, and the DECam Legacy Survey. They used the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescope in Chile to measure the quasar’s redshift, while observations with the 8-meter Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii enabled the team to estimate the black hole’s mass: around 800 million Suns.

Originally published on https://www.astronomy.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, December 14th, 2024)

"HOW BIG CAN 'SUPER MASSIVE BLACK HOLES' GET??"

[drops-of-universe]

all those galaxies with trillions of planets inside and i ended up on the one with a 40 hour work week

[inbabylontheywept]

Following back on the recent fusionposting to run a very technically unqualified intuition I have by you

When talking about baseload power generation, the conversation inevitably turns to nuclear, with a common narrative that certain countries are irrationally afraid of nuclear for not copying the successful policies of their neighbours (usually it's about Germany or Austria needing to emulate France)

What I've wanted to run by you is this viewpoint I've had for a while - that the economics of nuclear power are different from other sources, and that that may better explain the choices of policymakers:

The procurement of nuclear power seems much closer to military procurement in my eyes, with costs stemming from the management of standards, supply chains being inflexible and project/nation-dependent, and the costs of maintaining regional expertise overshadowing the costs that build physical capital.

Can you confirm/disconfirm any of these impressions?

I'm only slightly more qualified than you, unfortunately. I haven't work in the nuclear power sector. I have coworkers that have, and their stories do seem to check out with your descriptions.

Like, in a military style contract, parts might cost 4 times as much as a civilian part, because the military tests the parts much, much more stringently. You don't test the screws at home depot to make sure they match the metal composition, or that their sheer strength matches X, or on and on. You have a baseline level of trust that comes from market forces. But military supplies don't have market forces to work with - there isn't exactly a market for, say, F-35s. So they have to try and catch this manually instead of via crowdsourcing, and the results are painful.

That's military procurement, and I work with that enough to know why it exists. Even if it hurts.

Now, that sound very similar to nuclear power, which also analyzes everything to the T because the cost of failure is so ridiculously high. The coworker I mentioned before that worked for reactor said her first year learn-the-ropes project was doing a report on the safety consequences of swapping the lights from fluorescent to LED in the main office buildings. It was a 200+ page thing going over how the new lights would affect the backup power duration stats, hazards of the new lights vs the old ones (LEDs are less tolereant of undervoltage than fluorescents), things like that. I would imagine that in that case, they probably spent at least 4 or 5 times as much analyzing the impact of the lighting than they actually spent on the lighting.

This drives efficiency oriented people kind of crazy, but the whole point of these systems is not to be efficient. It is to be extremely resistant to failure. Ludicrously, insanely, painfully resistant. Because in the military case, a bad batch of bolts normally worth $40 could make a $35 million plane crash, and in the nuclear case, a meltdown could literally cause trillions of dollars of damage. The Fukushima meltdown is estimated to have caused $200 billion worth of damage, and it was not even close to a worst case scenario.

Anyway, I'm rambling a little, but your intuition seems good to me. I love nuclear power, but people suggesting that we "slash all the red tape around it" scare the shit out of me. They have no idea what they're fucking with, and if we're all very, very lucky, they never will.

[buckrecs]

Hiii! I love ur page and I was wondering if u could rec some fics with a pregnant reader? Thank you sm hon 🫶

Pregnant Reader

masterlist | req masterlist

These Hands Are For You by @majestyeverlasting

The raking of leaves, muffins, and baby kicks on a fall afternoon. A very warm and fuzzy domestic piece filled with lots of love.

Always Back to You by @majestyeverlasting

After coming home a little roughed up, Bucky seeks forgiveness for not being candid about a mission in D.C. But all you truly care about is the fact that he's okay and made his way back to you.

Two Becomes Three by @sleepypanda27

“I’m pregnant”

Chocolate Chip Cookies by @sleepypanda27

Bucky wakes up in the middle of the night only to find that you’re not in the bed, because you're craving chocolate chip cookies.

Scent of Home by @pherelesytsia

Bucky attended one of Tony parties and returns to his small family.

small bump by @bucky-bucket-barnes

Bucky has fought literal armies, survived multiple murder attempts, and still nothing worries him like his pregnant wife.

Paint + Ladders by @mvtthewmurdvck

Bucky comes home to find you not where you're supposed to be, and instead in the nursery, doing exactly what you shouldn't be.

two little lines by @duuhrayliegh

the reader is pregnant, this is how she tells bucky and the rest of the avengers.

Here To Help by @itsjustmelainey

Your super baby is so heavy that you’re uncomfortable, fortunately Bucky might have found the solution to help you.

Any day now by @randomperson351

Bucky didn't think he could have the life he does, and he's grateful each and every day.

happy secret by @bentobarnes

bucky is having lunch with Nakajima after 2 years of not talking with him. Yori wants him to go on a date with Leah (the bartender) but encounters a pleasant surprise.

Breath With Me by @planetofawe

You and Bucky decide on a home birth however you’ve got to do it all alone as your midwife is stuck in some traffic!

Oh Baby! by @fairydxll

You tell Bucky the big news.

Support You by @marvelmushroom

Bucky finds a way to take some of the weight off of you during pregnancy. Literally.

Daisy by @chrisevansredbelt

bucky gets you pregnant. complications ensue?

Names by @softlyspector

Bucky and Y/N are expecting a baby, and soon, but they still haven’t decided on a name.

One In A Trillion by @softlyspector

Bucky is sterile. Or, so they had been told, that was basically what he was. There was a one in a trillion chance of them ever conceiving, completely impossible.

Expectations by @softlyspector

Bucky is overprotective of the reader, who is pregnant with his baby. 

one plus one equals… by @lokiskitten

after waking up from a nap, Bucky requires a hug. He then gets the chance to learn that you are pregnant.

actually… you can help by @classylo

you were miserably pregnant and knew of only one way to get the baby out of you.

“Alexa, Play Go There With You” by @touchstarvedirl

Bucky’s been having a hard time being okay with your work schedule now that you’re pregnant. An arguments ensues and after you only have one thing on your mind, so Alexa helps you set the mood.

Daddy’s Home by @starshipsofstarlord

whilst with Wanda, you go into labour. Bucky is on his way home from a mission with Steve and Vision, you’re just worried that he won’t make it on time.

we’re gonna need a bigger house by @sunmoonandeddie

You find the courage to tell Bucky about your latest ultrasound.

Come Back to You by @buckyalpine

What happens when a time travel mission ends up with a version of Bucky from the 40′s standing on the time travel platform. 

Imagine by @buckyalpine

Imagine Bucky finding his adorably, heavily pregnant girl perched onto kitchen counter rummaging for snacks like a little gremlin in the middle of the night.

Be(tter) in Reality With Me by @t-lostinworlds

Bucky needed to remind you how he would never ever betray you, especially when the him in your dreams was showing you otherwise.

All I Ever Wanted by @majestyeverlasting

You and Bucky visit a park in Brooklyn that stirs up some nostalgic memories. But what he doesn’t know is that, later that night, he’ll learn that he’s going to be a father.

Relax by @itsapeterthing

while the avengers help you and bucky move, you attempt to help carry something only to have your overprotective husband get in the way

The Three Times They Think She’s Pregnant by @skyeisawitch

Hopelessly Pregnant by @kiritella

Light Carries On Endlessly by @marvelingatthewonder

Bucky goes back under after cacw and you’re pregnant. 8-ish months later you give birth to a beautiful baby girl.

[mindblowingscience]

In an exciting breakthrough for astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial life, a team of international scientists has announced the discovery of Gliese 12 b, a temperate, Earth-sized exoplanet just 40 light-years away — a relatively neighbourly 378 trillion kilometres from earth. Researchers from across the world, including key support from researchers at McGill University and Western University worked collaboratively on the hunt for Gliese 12 b within InfraRed Doppler Subaru Strategic Program (IRD-SSP) which searches for habitable zone planets around red dwarfs.

Continue Reading.