Home » Open thread 5/1/2025

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Open thread 5/1/2025 — 32 Comments

  1. Immanuel, liebchen, can you point to the place on this doll where Mr. Hume immpressed upon you?

  2. Methinks it’s time to go out ‘n key—sorry, firebomb—a few more Teslas….
    (Warning: caveat emptor…)

    https://tinyurl.com/mr6bwhzp
    H/T Blazingcatfur blog
    https://blazingcatfur.ca/2025/05/01/wtf-3944/

    Some background…

    “Keir and Kemi face a Reform avalanche? What to watch out in the local elections with 23 councils, six mayoralties and one Commons seat up for grabs”—
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14664311/Have-YOU-got-vote-todays-local-elections-23-councils-six-mayoralties-one-Commons-seat-grabs-Tories-Labour-face-surge-support-Reform-UK.html

  3. in john gardner’s bond tales, blofeld had a daughter, if they were on to such a scheme would they do anything different,

    there was a false flag ala Lincoln project that was tried a few days ago, the ottley affair, to try to derail the Reform/antiglobalist front,

  4. wouldn’t the universe expand in all directions instead of this bubble pattern?

    wouldn’t whatever happened in those galaxies have happened a very long tima ago

  5. I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of smallish Youtube channels that are now using text-to-voice narration with AI generated voices using apps like Canva and others. I can often tell it’s AI generated when certain oddball pronunciations happen in the narration. Youtube itself is struggling with all the AI generated content that’s been cropping up. Voice narration is one thing, but AI generated images and music can often be difficult for Youtube to algorithmically detect and flag. I believe Youtube themselves require that content creators indicate when content is AI generated in the video description so viewers can make informed decisions about it. But of course not many content creators do this and a lot of AI slop is still ending up high in their ranking indexes.

  6. That’s a good video. The Webb is totally throwing cosmology into chaos, which is a really good thing. It looks like we’ve been stuck in a model for over a hundred years since Hubble that may be totally wrong. I’m beginning to suspect the Big Bang didn’t happen. Still, any new model has to account for the observed “expansion” via redshifts and also the cosmic background radiation sitting at 2.3 K.

    I wish I was 20 years younger. I’m anxious to see what someone comes up with to explain all this new data. But, I’m afraid I may be gone by the time that happens.

  7. These charlatans that are questioning the “standard model” of the universe and its origins are simply science deniers.
    Time to bring into the fray Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, John Kerry to set things right.
    The science of cosmology is settled.

  8. its a fascinating hypothesis, how much factual basis one finds,

  9. It looks like we’ve been stuck in a model for over a hundred years since Hubble that may be totally wrong.

    The video is recent, but seems dated. Things have settled quite a bit in the last year. The thing the sticks in my mind is that the black holes found in the center of most (all?) galaxies seem to comprise a larger percentage of the mass in the very old galaxies. There have also been a lot of stars found in a dim cloud around galaxies that were not seen before because of thresholding in the data processing pipelines. In any case, I think the revolution has been overhyped.

  10. More about the jet lost overboard on the Harry S. Truman. Around the 5 minute mark there is some, I assume, stock footage of an aircraft carrier making an evasive maneuver. Wow. It’s a wonder everything doesn’t slide overboard!

    Houthis Get “Soft Kill” on U.S. Navy Jet
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siL417q1BgM

  11. If you think it’s outdated, please give a link to something explaining in what way. It is my understanding that the basic contention – that there is something off in our theories of the early universe and especially galaxy formation – remains the case. And that the Hubble constant discrepancy (tension) remains.

  12. Current cosmology is in deep trouble, pun intended. Its dark matter and dark energy theories remind me of the epicycles inserted to try to get the Ptolemaic earth centric model of the solar system to fit data. The current situation is truly outlandish with these theories claiming that the matter that we can observe only represents about 5% of the matter in the universe. Despite decades of searching for particles of these forms of matter, none has been observed. It will be interesting to see what epicycles the cosmologists insert to try to explain these observations.

  13. So just saw a post from one of the lefty friends who was excited to join the local May Day protest. In a fit of cluelessness, he stated he was joining the protest as the “White House is looking more and more like the Kremlin.”

    Sigh….how can one even try to talk sense into someone who doesn’t even understand what May 1 means in the communist world?

  14. Well things are moving pretty fast in cosmology, which is weird in itself. The video isn’t dated in the sense that it has been superseded by new info. The galaxy at the focus – Zhulong – is newly discovered, but its specialness is spiral structure so early in the universe. But spiral structure way too early isn’t new. That’s among the first things Webb saw in its deep runs. So, other than focusing on Zhulong, the video could have been made two years ago.

    The latest and greatest info on the topic is here, which I linked to a few weeks ago.

    https://www.space.com/the-universe/oxygen-discovered-in-most-distant-galaxy-ever-seen-it-is-like-finding-an-adolescent-where-you-would-only-expect-babies

    As I said at the time, galaxies in the very early universe that are “too mature” has always referred to size and shape. Now they believe they have seen heavy elements in one of these galaxies. Scientists are pretty confident in the process whereby heavier elements get produced, and it’s a process that would take hundreds of millions of years.

  15. And that the Hubble constant discrepancy (tension) remains.

    That remains, but is a conflict between two methods of measurement whose error bars no longer overlap, work is ongoing. IIRC, there was a recent paper using the cosmic ladder that narrowed the error bar for that estimate, which makes things worse 🙂 For the rest, I just read articles here and there as they come out, it is too early for a summing up. I don’t subscribe to the “end of science as we know it” description, what I see are modifications to the edges of the big picture. It is fun, it is exciting, but it is not a collapse of current cosmology.

  16. Mike Plaiss brings up a good point in that it takes 2nd or 3rd generation stars to produce the heavier elements. So how do such supposedly young galaxies have such older stars? Something is off in the timeline.

    I have to disagree with Chuck…I think current models of cosmology are in trouble,but agree it is exciting.

  17. For those who missed it, today is World Password Day.

    World Password Day is observed annually on the first Thursday of May to promote strong password practices and online security.

  18. Powerline is in its third straight day of stock market gaslighting. Some commenters are pushing back, but there’s a lot of people who just believe what they read from a source they like and won’t check for themselves–would hate to be misled by their lying eyes I suppose.

    DJIA

    NASDAQ

    S&P 500

    Still all down from February. A drop in the market is not the end of the world. Certainly not worth trying to cherry-pick away and pretend it’s all better when it isn’t.

  19. Depends what your point of reference is ‘a day a month or even a year’ yes i still have the friends theme as an earwing after 30 years

    The narrative seems to have failed

  20. Potent quote from video:
    ____________________________

    If the universe isn’t expanding at a consistent rate everywhere, then it raises a deeply troubling possibility:

    What if the universe doesn’t even have a single fixed age?

    What if the age of the universe actually varies depending on where you look?

    This completely challenges our current cosmological models. It suggests that the way we’ve been measuring the age and evolution of the universe might be fundamentally flawed.

    And that could mean: everything we thought we knew about the universe’s beginning needs to be rethought.
    ____________________________

    Sounds like Einstein’s “General Theory of Relativity.”

    In GR, time and space aren’t fixed — they depend on where and how you’re observing.
    If expansion isn’t uniform, then even “cosmic time” may not be universal.

  21. @huxley:Sounds like Einstein’s “General Theory of Relativity.” In GR, time and space aren’t fixed…

    I asked around and cosmologists seem to have all heard of that one and it’s been incorporated into current theories for some time now. The nuances do not make their way into science journalism necessarily. I didn’t get better than a B- in it…

  22. @Niketas Choniates: I asked around and cosmologists seem to have all heard of that one.

    Dang! I thought I had had an original thought.

    I’ll just have to try harder.

  23. @huxley: I’ll just have to try harder.

    Getting up earlier helps too.

  24. @Niketas Choniates: Getting up earlier helps too.

    I’ve never had a friendly interaction with you. Thanks for the reminder.

  25. Miguel, wrote: “… yes i still have the friends theme as an earwing after 30 years…”

    Count yourself sophisticated. I still have this:

    Sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
    a tale of a fateful trip,
    that started from this tropic port,
    aboard this tiny ship.

    The mate was a mighty sailin’ man,
    the skipper brave and sure.
    Five passengers set sail that day for a three hour tour,
    a three hour tour.

    The weather started getting rough,
    the tiny ship was tossed.
    If not for the courage of the fearless crew,
    the Minnow would be lost, the Minnow would be lost.

    The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle,
    with Gilligan, the Skipper too, a millionaire and his wife,
    a movie star, the professor and Mary Ann.
    Here on Gilligan’s Isle, here on Gilligan’s Isle.

    So join us here each week my friends.
    You’re sure to get a smile.
    From seven stranded castaways,
    here on Gilligan’s Isle.

    (Typed, without hesitation, from memory.)

  26. Re: Gilligan’s Island

    AppleBetty:

    You’re my kinda fan!

    Here’s a wonderful mashup of “Gilligan’s Island” and “Stairway to Heaven” which totally works (unless NC says it doesn’t):

    –Little Roger & The Goosebumps, “Stairway to Gilligan’s Island”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-Ka2Ok1xtE

  27. @huxley:I’ve never had a friendly interaction with you. Thanks for the reminder.

    In a text-only medium, it’s easy to miss jocularity, especially if one has a preconceived expectation of what is meant.

    I thought it was funny you said that something in cosmology sounded like general relativity, considering it’s been their fundamental theoretical basis for nearly a century now. I thought you were being funny suggesting it. Maybe I got that wrong. In a text-based medium, it’s easy to miss cues. Perhaps you and I could try to be more charitable with one another. I can certainly try harder, and probably should; it’s not a quid-pro-quo, it’s about doing what I need to do.

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