The Lounge

Dad had a toy on his '59 car dashboard, it was engine-vacuum operated. The nearest found today is called push puppet buy it had some bladder in the base instead of a spring; suction by a tiny hose to engine intake collapsed it, likely made in Germany. Are those still being made that you know of ? Just nostalgic... Similar :

Hello. Has there been any ruling, trend, disposition to swap the order of given name and family name recently ? Like since 1-2 years ago ? Is that for spoken or written, official documents ?

Will we make it to mars by the year 2010, as president Bush has suggested?

You know how something you think, hear, read, notice, smell or taste can conjure up a picture in your mind? it happens all the time and it's nearly always a fleeting, trivial image that you forget right away. But once in a while, something triggers a really powerful response. You get a clear, bright, significant picture that's worth storing in long-term memory. That you either want to look at, again and again, like a photo album, or else that pops up, uninvited, in association with new input. Some of these graphic images are horrific, but you can't turn them off. Some, on the other hand, are pleasant, useful or amusing. Like Doctor Who's wibbly wobbly timey wimey th…

I thought so at the beginning, when so many businesses had to shut down; travel and tourism all but ceased; borders were closed and people stayed at home to work, study and be entertained. And yet, when I did go out once a week to buy necessities, everything looked the same: same goods, including imported ones, on the shelves; same advertising on TV, only with extra emphasis on home delivery. But it seems, something has changed. "Nobody wants to work anymore." Especially in service jobs. But maybe not so much in offices, either. What's going on? Why have people suddenly discovered the exploitation everybody's known about - and lampooned in movies, …

I bought a cable with a preposition 65 notice for lead and lead compounds. This notice isn't found for many other cables but I realize it can be excluded from packaging in areas where not required. Is it that most cords/cables still contain lead but don't have notices, or most today don't have lead?

Got a new terms email from amazon, and I read the terms but came across this: RISK OF LOSS All purchases of physical items from Amazon are made pursuant to a shipment contract. This means that the risk of loss and title for such items pass to you upon our delivery to the carrier. Given that the law, on both sides of the pond it seems, say that the contract and responsibilty lies with Amazon and their delivery partners until delivered, does it look like they are imposing terms that contravene applicable US and UK/EU consumer protection laws?

Physicsts known to the general public are rare. Newton, Einstein and Hawking would be known to everyone and then after that, at a lower level, you got Feynman, who would probably not be known to everyone, but a lot of people with some interest in intellectual topics would know his name. I'm sure there are a lot of physicists with great achievements whom no one in the general public has heard of. You'd probably be hard pressed to find a person who's heard of Ed Witten and I'm sure there are great physicists yet more anonymous. Now, supposing Feynman had never written any popular science, how well known do you think he would be? He appeared in a lot of televi…

You'd think you'd heard the last word on ignorance gone beyond the pale (for beings claiming to be rational primates.) https://www.audubon.org/news/are-birds-actually-government-issued-drones-so-says-new-conspiracy-theory-making No rabbitholes barred! What's next?

I am in need of a gravitational modeling tool, one that allows the entry of position and velocity, also 3 dimensional... I had written one using directx, but no longer have ready access to those tools as I am on the water most of the time, so a phone app is most suitable. Any suggestions?

So my post that is researched and has sources and logical arguments gets downvoted? What's up with that?

I was thinking about how cool it would be to have super human abilities like super strength or teleportation or flying etc. and it made me think well if I had it then what then? I have that now and I can do these cool things but after that short period of time of being excited of stuff you can do then it's going to become something you consider a norm about yourself. I guess you can apply the same for a utopia/a perfect world, people would just get bored of the norm and want more and more Idk, just random thought I had Thoughts?

I am writing this eating a piece of Munster cheese. There are basically a few cheese making organisms - penicillium camemberti, penicillium roqueforti, penicillium glaucum as well as geotrichium candidum and brevibacterium linens. Why so few? Out of so many species of fungi and bacteria, aren't there any others that could be used to make cheeses with a distinct taste?

In Australia, we have a questions and answers type of program, on our National broadcaster, the ABC [Australian Broadcasting Commision] The show is called simply "Q+A". The questions are asked from an audience to a select panel, generally consisting of notable people, on both sides of the political spectrum, and if I may add, stupidity/intelligence. I thought they might add something for discussion for the forum. I will first give a brief outline on the subject and notables on the panels of the four shows I have picked, covering the subject matter in the thread title.. First short Q+A is on the subject of climate change, and has on the panel, Brian Cox, p…

Hello you all! The present-day tárogató is a not-so-common woodwind with simple reed and conical bore like a saxophone, but with smaller tone holes, fingerings similar to an Oehler clarinet, body made of wood up to now, usually in C, played with clarinet mouthpiece and reed. Estimated 200 copies exist worldwide, mostly in Hungary and Romania. A record of a nicely played one, together with a hammered dulcimer: The tenor tárogató is truly rare - maybe one or two dozens worldwide. The ones I've seen use tenor saxophone reed, mouthpiece and neck, which make them sound more like a sax. Records: (begins at 12 min)and there too

the greys have been killing and feeding on humans for a long time then cloning them so no one knows there gone and no one finds out there secret they kill human in a number of ways mindreading this feels like time stops people cant take the shock from it dream control people cant handle the shock that there dreams are controlled when i first relized it it felt like head was a computer be booted up aether this is an element in space this attacks the neck and chest area i would find myself chewing on my shirt when they used this on me heart palpitations they used this over at least 30 hours not all at once but all together the nose touch this when the…

Could the government(s) in the world have used the lockdown-covid to be able to better channel, structure and observe the people through technologies, on the same principle as the freeze atoms (cryo-ME, laser,...)? The census and classification of the different types of people profiles could have been done thanks to technologies such as GSM and Internet since a physical interaction between people had become impossible. Better learning of people and their way of thinking could have been digitized. The gelation of atoms is used to be able to immobilize the electronic activity, in order to be able to visualize their structure. Indeed, the increase in human act…

So new Brightline rail is being constructed from Miami up to Orlando and from there over towards the west coast. Still a bit out but trying to figure out how I should go about comparing ticket prices with alternatives and if there's anything else to consider besides straight roundtrip prices.

Imagine civilization gets a positive feedback mechanism for wasting resources, like cryptocurrencies: “one gets $100 banknote if burning $99 worth resources”, leading to exponential growth of waste at individual gains. We can observe exponential growth of their energy consumption, worsening shortages of electronics, simultaneously these cult-like societies are growing in power/influence, can buy politicians (e.g. El Salvador) … further taking control of chip manufacturers and power plants, in a few years growing to 50%, 90%, 99% of world energy production? Can such positive feedback be always balanced at a reasonable level, instead of approaching 100% of resourc…

For some reason ww1 either does not happen or is limited to being Third Balkan War Do you think the world would be more technologically advanced than today? Some things to consider 1. Much less death. UK lost 700,000 young men in ww1, France, Germany, Austria and Russia over 1 mln. Many of them could have become scientists, inventors or engineers. All countries would also have much less debt. 2. Russia is in much better shape without ww1, the civil war, the Holodomor and the Gulags. It probably becomes a developed country in early 1940s and has a population of 300-400 mln in 2021 3. no ww1 = no ww2. Enough said 4.In China the communists never tak…

I am thinking that theoretical theorists analyse scientific journals and theorize an explanation for the experimental results and make predictions also. I looked on arXiv and saw that people already uploaded theories related to the recent muon g2 experiment and said that dark matter had something to do with it. So is this what theoretical physicists can do in their spare time or for their job, look at scientific journals/experimental results and try mathematically explain it? Also what is the learning process like? For example if someone who did specialized in condenesed matter physics wanted to work on high energy physics, what would be their way to do that? edit: s…

Do you ever feel like people who are non white trying to fit in a western country feel like they have to put on a fake act of trying to be "white". I'm a non white person and I couldn't imagine myself working in an office or being in a meeting where professional white people are discussing things or even worse having an opinion expressed in front of them. But lucky the internet exists and seems to bring us all together to get a taste of what people can be like. Some of my feelings towards this is instilled in me through my father who always talks about how this is a "white mans" world and we have to live like them in order to survive in this modern world.

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