Interesting Links for 19-05-2021

[andrewducker]

The Limits Of Humanity - The Final Border We Will Never Cross

(tags:space video thefuture viaSwampers )

Another media acquisition? This one would involve Amazon, MGM, and ~$9B

(tags:Amazon movies business )

St James Quarter: Edinburgh's new skyline revealed as the last cranes come down after five years

(tags:Edinburgh construction photos )

If you're in Scotland and think you should have had your vaccination invitation then this is the form to fill in

(tags:vaccination Scotland viaLizzieCassMaran )

Working in Television is just horrific

(tags:tv work working_hours OhForFucksSake )

Why are all my weather apps different?

(tags:weather apps thefuture forecast viaClare )

Comments

[alithea]

Oh thanks for that link for jabs - Angus seems to be a bit behind so I filled it in and they literally texted me straight back saying their records show my appointment should have been issued. So if my letter doesn't arrive tomorrow, I shall phone for an appointment then rather than waiting til the end of the month as the last council announcement I saw recommended

[andrewducker]

Excellent!

[movingfinger]

I was surprised by the ranking of weather apps in that article; locally to me, Dark Sky is accurate, especially with the bands of storms that roll through. I learned about it from a sailing person who consulted it often about "is this a short squall or did something change and it's going to be severe" kinds of questions. Probably the data quality isn't uniform across countries or regions.

(I also wonder whether data quality overall has changed since 2016, which was the year the study used. Weather is competitive business right now because of global warming drought and storm issues affecting agriculture so a lot of work is going into forecasting software.)

[doubtingmichael]

Hmm, there are a few red warning lights in that first video, cute though the animation is. Any time someone compares the observable edge of the universe to going into a black hole, that's dodgy. (I am remembering a proper cosmologist said this, though I forget who and where.) These are basically completely different phenomena, and you might as well say "whenever a galaxy leaves the observable universe, it's as if someone pulled a black curtain in front of it".

Secondly, saying "only three stars are born a year in our galaxy" is carefully crafted language to make the number seem small. Big stars last millions of years, smaller ones billions of years. A star-forming region keeps making stars for (I think) tens of thousands of years. So three a year isn't a bad rate - for all I accept the point that star-forming is nearing its end, albeit with a very long tail.

It looks as if this is a general sciency YouTube channel. I think an astronomy-focused one would have been more nuanced on the subject.

[andrewducker]

If you bump into one that deals with it better thenI'd love to see it!

[doubtingmichael]

Well, if I'm going to be an astronomy snob, that's a fair question...

I generally think Phil Plait is good, and he has a "Crash Course Astronomy" series on YouTube that includes this. [Goes off to watch videos for a while.] He covers the subject in a two-part cosmology talk, parts 42 and 43:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B7Ix2VQEGo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzLM6ltw3l0
And then he comes back to the subject, and leaves it behind in the distance, in part 45:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDF-N3A60DE

I think part of what I didn't like about the original was the way it expressed it as a "human limitation". I kind of worry about humanity, but not because of that. Frankly, I doubt we'll ever leave the solar system (which they do acknowledge). And that means I think of space expansion as essentially nothing to do with us. That's just a perspective.