Well, I used to have an area of expertise… Then we adopted a kid.

Kids are hard. Kids who had years of neglect and trauma… can be a lot harder. I love him very much, but he takes up so much of my time and energy, I just don’t have any time for my own stuff any more.

Also, my field (IT) has gotten weird as computers have gotten weird. Nobody uses computers any more, they use “devices”. And these devices all suck. They’re hard (or impossible) to actually back up, you can’t deploy software to them in an organized way, they’re a security nightmare, and the interface just isn’t as easy to use as a freaking mouse and keyboard.

And if you want to talk about actual computers, those suck more every year too. Oh the hardware is improving by the day, but the software hasn’t been cooperative in years. Always online operating systems, fake settings menus to keep the user away from the real settings menus… Actually, nevermind, I don’t even want to talk about OSs, they make me too angry.

And then there’s all the software packages that would rather be services than what they actually are, a product. Poor Adobe, just not filthy rich enough yet…

Anyway, it gets harder to do IT as computers get shittier, and I am falling behind, because I hate it.

I think you hit the nail on the head with reality bites!

I had nearly given up looking for good mobile games when I remembered that emulators exist. Nintendo DS games map pretty well to a smart phone, there are some games that use entirely touch controls. I’m using the MelonDS emulator and I’ve mostly been playing advanced wars: days of ruin and puzzle quest 2. Puzzle quest is pretty excellent and chill by the way.

This is hilarious, a win-win in my book. I get to laugh at the ridiculous claim about radio waves frying people’s brains or whatever, and at the same time, every day of stalling hurts an exploitive POS telecom company.

I’m rooting for the loonies! Protect our kids! You show those lizard people!

Yeah, there’s no way we’re picking up alien radio broadcasts, not over the most produced by a star.

On the other hand, if a civilization were creating a Dyson sphere, or other large constructions, we’d be able to see those unusual elements in the light spectrum coming off the star. So it is conspicuous that we haven’t seen anything like that.

I’m sure that’s the case. You can travel to other stars without ftl, it’s just a lot slower and probably one way. It’s really pretty limiting for society, for instance, without ftl an interstellar “civilization” is basically out of the question, you can’t govern another star system without at the very least faster communication.

We don’t know what the Great Filter is, but it must be pretty destructive for a civ. I just want to point out the fact that the Great Filter is probably still ahead of us and that we shouldn’t take our existence for granted.

If there is a great filter…

I mean, as you said, we’re pretty early to the scene. Why can’t we be the first in this galaxy? Perhaps planets like earth aren’t rare over the lifetime of a galaxy, but they are rare in these early years of a galaxy. In other words, earth just developed quickly, so now we’re here before any other earth-like planets have had a chance to develop intelligent life.

It’s simple. We’re the first intelligent life in the galaxy. There is nobody else yet in our galaxy.

Also, probably nobody capable of traveling the stars wants to settle a planet. Once you figure out how to make huge spaceships (which you’ll need to travel interstellar space) you’ve essentially learned how to make cities in space. Our solar system would support a lot of people if we just used the resources available for space habitats, and by “lot” I mean in the quadrillions. And it turns out that all you need to support that population is a star to provide energy, and some planets to source materials from.

So with that in mind, why bother finding another habitable planet?

No, it really isn’t.

Well, half of those were people who ran against Biden, so that makes sense.

I remember being impressed with Klobuchar, and incredibly impressed with Buttigieg (though sadly he’d lose a lot of the religious vote, sigh). I wish I liked Booker more… But yeah there are some acceptable options there, that’s a relief.

So yeah, lightning primary?

Just changing the voting system by itself won’t get rid of the two party system

Not immediately, but it is a necessary condition. A third party really can’t exist without ranked choice voting. If allows for a third party candidate to run without pissing everybody off.

But we’re already past the primary period… Are we suggesting having a quick partner anyway? Who should we put in his place? I haven’t heard a single suggestion for who else to elect. Are we saying Harris should step in? Who should she run with?

Whoa! Juno is still transmitting?! I thought that spacecraft had a really limited lifespan, due to the radiation ring around Jupiter. Pretty awesome that it’s still working!

Well if there’s not enough sun, wind could be a better option. I don’t know much about the climate in slovenia, so either could make more sense.

As for these new kinds of batteries, I don’t have the hard numbers on hand, but I know the current installed capacity is really small. So as a product, they’re still really new.

Grid scale storage has come a long way. There are saltwater batteries and flow batteries in use now, those technologies are here, they’re just still being iterated on and improved. And as the renewables get increasingly affordable, the demand for storage will rise with it. Now we’re still mostly deploying expensive lithium batteries, but as more of that gets installed, the demand for cheaper storage will skyrocket. And production generally follows demand.

No joke

Yeah, that’s a surprisingly clear red flag…

But hey, maybe she’ll be successful, the GoP is pretty into crazy these days.

So what’s the battery chemistry? Also, do they actually have an aircraft design, or is this just battery news?

That’s true, it does assume interstellar travel is physically possible, but at this point there are forms of interstellar travel that we know are possible.

Solar sails for instance, we know those work, we’ve tried it. Now if you wanted to travel to another star system with a solar sail, it’s just a matter of scaling that proven technology way up. We’re not ready to do that today, and we won’t be ready in the next 20 years, but to think that we wouldn’t be ready in 500 years, I find that idea far fetched.

But a much better technology would be fusion propulsion. With fusion drives you could get your cruising speed up to a meaningful fraction of the speed of light (perhaps 5-10%). At that rate you can make it to the closest stars in less than 100 years. And that technology is not at all far fetched. We truly are approaching working fusion power plants, it’s extremely likely that we can eventually develop fusion propulsion, or at the very least, fusion powered electrical propulsion (ion drive).

As for if it will ever be economically possible, I’m not at all worried about that. The fact is, there are a lot of resources and opportunities right here in our solar system, just waiting for people to utilize them. So people definitely will start mining and manufacturing in space eventually. And as we start to operate more in space, we will naturally continue to iterate and improve our methods of getting around. In short, over time it’s going to get cheaper and cheaper to make space ships and we’re going to get better and better at doing it. The economic factors are likely to fall into place eventually.

And finally, will interstellar travel ever be possible socially? Hey, your guess is as good as mine. I don’t think we have any way to answer that…

That’s definitely the right question! And honestly we don’t know, but it’s evident that we are first.

Given the age of the universe, statistically it should have already happened by now.

I’m not sure that’s true… I’m pretty sure that our sun is old for a main sequence yellow star in our galaxy. When you compare how long it takes for a star to get to the point ours is now, compared to the age of our galaxy, I believe it suggests that sol is part of a first wave of stars of its type. So if life really requires a star like this one to start up, then intelligent life starting just now could be right on time.

Now why is our start perfect for life? Again, we don’t know, but evidently it is. Sadly we only have this one data point, this is the only star where we know there’s life. So assuming that something about our type of star is perfect is about as sensible as assuming that life could start around any star.

So declaring “we’re the first” requires some assumptions, but they aren’t crazy assumptions, and a lack of evidence of other older civilizations makes those assumptions stronger.

And to your point, the universe is much older than this it star, so I suspect intelligent life has developed many times before us, at least in older galaxies. But sadly I don’t expect us to ever meet life from another galaxy. While I think stars within a galaxy are close enough for travel between them, galaxies are very, very far apart. I don’t think life has much chance of traveling to other galaxies, at least not without some method of ftl travel (which I am also not optimistic about).