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23 hours ago, TheLastWolf said:

Ricciardo leaving McLaren

But Piastri still not confirmed. Meanwhile, Audi has announced that they will  enter Formula 1 in 2026.

1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

I have watched several of her astrophysics videos.

My main observation here is this video is four years old (2018) and since then the costs of Lithium-Ion batteries have dropped substantially. Additionally, once the bugs are worked out, Lithium Sulfur batteries are several times more efficient than Lithium Ion, and I believe less expensive. (The tech here is advancing extremely fast). 

Where does it say it's from 2018? I don't think that's correct. Some charts show data more recent than that. And even with progress in technology, there won't be enough storage capacity to stabilise the entire grid any soon.

29 minutes ago, baxus said:

I first started rowing at '97 or something like that and they obviously changed since then.  

They did, but that change happened in 2003, as I just found out on their web site. Same model since.

3 hours ago, baxus said:

Concept 2 is kind of considered best in class or at least it was when I was rowing. I don't think I've ever seen a rowing erg from any other manufacturer in all my years spent in and around rowing clubs. And it's not as if I rowed at Oxford or Cambridge or some of the big US universities that are flush with cash, so I guess they were reasonably priced as well.

Obviously, their models have changed over time so you should have a look into that as well.

They haven't really changed. I bought mine in 2016 and they still sell that identical machine. The mechanical part has probably been the same for decades, with the only thing changing being the computer. But even that is still the same as in 2016.

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Hamilton has been pretty withering about F1 teams refusing to sign Jamie Chadwick despite 2 (soon to be 3) W Series titles. It sounds like he and Mercedes are looking into helping the progression out of W Series, whether that's encouraging an F1 team to step up or doing something in F2 to provide a progression route.

The fact that Williams seems to be mulling over Logan Sargeant and apparently isn't even considering Chadwick despite having two (soon to be three) titles and him having jack shit, is ridiculous. At least de Vries has an F2 championship and a Formula E title that makes him a somewhat more logical choice than Sargeant.

Well, winning W Series three times is all good and well, but that's the equivalent to a regional / national Formula 3 series. FIA F3 cars are already quite a step up, let's not even talk of Formula 2. Giving Chadwick an F1 cockpit would do her a disservice. And plainly, if she really wants to graduate to F1, then the years after her first W Series win have been wasted. Meanwhile, she isn't really a youngster anymore, being only half a year younger than Max Verstappen. I don't know about any kind of hype about her in the UK, but if truth be told, it doesn't look like she is F1 material.

15 hours ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Brazilian press link (Portuguese)  reports that tomorrow's France GP will be the last. Guess they have to open space for more petrostates dictatorships.

The contracts of the French, Belgian and Monaco GP all expire. Monaco will probably be renewed, though they might not get special treatment anymore. There's to be a third GP in the US and the Qatar GP is back. That leaves the calendar maxed out. Any new race would require F1 to drop an existing one and the French and Belgian GP would be likely candidates. 

8 hours ago, baxus said:

Jogging every single morning might not be as beneficial as you would think, especially if you don't vary your runs a bit. Doing the same workout over and over will rather quickly become less effective than it was at first. I would suggest setting yourself a goal, like a 5k run for start and finding a training programme for it online or maybe even joining a running club/group if there's one nearby.

There are better exercises for your core than sit ups and you can mix and change those as well.

Don't get too focused on running, think about other modes of training. If you're 56kg at 170cm height and still feeling "fat and flabby at the belly" you could be "skinny fat" in which case you'd be better with some sort of weight training to increase your muscle mass. Also, you mention summer break and your height and weight numbers suggest you're still in school (correct me if my assumption is wrong) so timing could be great for weight training, though I'd advise against improvising that yourself or looking things up online. You should get someone to look out for your technique and correct you when needed. I will repeat, look into different things, check what best fits your schedule, what you have available nearby, what friends you could to things with etc. Last but not least, find out what's most fun for you. More fun it is, more likely you'll be to stick with it.

It takes time for workout to give results, and you need to ramp up the intensity levels, not just throw yourself at it and try to tough it out while your body keeps giving you signals to take it easy.

IIRC, Toth is a school teacher. So he probably works a lot at home. If he doesn't have a dedicated office space, the ergonomics is probably poor, i.e. not the ideal posture when sitting in front of the computer, etc. That could be the reason for some of his complaints.

On 5/16/2022 at 6:02 PM, maarsen said:

No it doesn't  seem to be. There is a YouTube channel by Becky Smethurst. Look for Dr. Becky. She is an astrophysicist who will be getting time on the JWST at some point for her research. She went through the list of the top 20 targets.

The hype about KIC 8462852 "Tabby's Star" has ebbed a bit. It can be observed from the ground and has been, but no spectacular dimmings have been observed since the end of the Kepler mission. There has been a number of small ones, but those can be explained by dust.

The question is, why is Scholz dragging his feet over Ukraine? Is that him or the party? He certainly isn't being held back by his coalition partners.

Well, the SPD are still doing better in the polls than they used to before Scholz. And one shouldn't forget that he doesn't lead the party, so technically he can't be held responsible for what happens at state level. But yeah, his first six months in office haven't been particularly great. Cabinet ministers from the SPD don't particularly shine either. 

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Guessing it's a high end one? I just looked at a few stores and most are under $900. 

Don't forget that prices in Europe include VAT, usually about 20 %.

32 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Do people really care about the president in Germany? It is not like people voted for him or anything.

Not much. But it could be seen as a snub against the country. 

So what exactly has Nehammer been doing in Moscow?

Meanwhile, the German president Steinmeier has been told not to visit Kyiv. That's the second snub from the Ukrainians after the ambassador refused to come to a concert at Bellevue Palace. 

18 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

And that's it for the vax mandate.

Big fuck you to Kubicki, Wagenknecht, and to all the other fascists and colaborateurs in parliament. 

If you need Wagenknecht, something has gone wrong quite badly. The whole thing just hasn't been handled well. If you are in government, you are supposed to have a majority. Trying to make a law against parts of his own coalition wasn't a particularly smart move by Scholz. Maybe a deal with the Christian Democrats could have been found, but he would have had to give them something in return.

On 3/30/2022 at 12:15 PM, kiko said:

I hear there is renewed talk about reunification of the left (again...). While I agree that this would be a good thing on principle, there is definitely a purge of the more crazy parts of Die Linke needed. Probably better to let their more sane members switch over to SPD and dry out their personal bases, I'm not sure the SPD would survive a reunification at the polls.

I'm quite happy to leave those, who want to discuss about identity politics (as opposed to actually doing it) in their own party - or they can join the AfD.

Looks like Die Linke is toast in the west. And even in the east they're low double digits, except in Thuringia. It was obviously a mistake by the SPD not to take in former SED members back in the 1990s. But that's spilled milk. Merging the parties now? Not a smart move for the SPD.

RIP Duke Leto.

So Scholz has announced an extra 100 billions for defence and to raise the regular defence budget to those 2% of the GDP. I wonder how much support he has in his own party for this. The Putin shills are quiet for now but how long will that last?

15 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is Schröder the leader of a pro-Russian party?

Gerhard Schröder was German chancellor before Merkel (1998-2005). He was the leader of the Social Democrats, the party of the current chancellor, Olaf Scholz. He is also on the board of Gazprom, and a big buddy of Vladimir Putin.

So Nord Stream 2 has been stopped for now. 

Schröder should follow Gerard Depardieu's example and become a Russian citizen.

There's also the case of the (now former) chief of the German Navy who had to resign over some rather remarkable statements made on a trip to India. The gist of it is "screw Ukraine, we need Russia as an ally against China." The government denies that this is their position but the Ukrainians are not convinced.

So, Scholz has been elected, Merkel is out. No surprises there.

12 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Well, Habeck will be vice-chancellor, if the reports are to be believed. So that'd heavily point towards a shift inside the party, too. Yes, Baerbock has good connections within the party, but the botched campaign had cost her quite a bit of political capital. And yes, botched campaign is the dominant (and imo correct) reading.

Well the Greens declared Baerbock candidate for Chancellor. That got her a lot of attention, but also put her under close scrutiny, which she couldn't stand up to. She simply wasn't up to the task. (Neither will she be as foreign minister.) On the other hand, 15% is the best result ever for the Greens, they just raised much higher expectations in their support base.

44 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

So is Lauterbach get the health ministry or have the "Pandemic is over" fuckwads won?

We don't know yet. They haven't announced a cabinet list yet. They'll probably wait till the parties have approved the coalition deal.

1 hour ago, Toth said:

Well, and we are only marginally better off, but on top of that have no functioning government. Söder accuses Scholz of not doing enough as the next chancellor while Scholz fires back that he is not yet chancellor and it's the CDU/CSU's job to do something (even though the SPD is still coalition partner), meanwhile Merkel carefully asks the presidents of the federal states to come together... maybe next week. It's ship without captain.

I think that's a rather feeble excuse. The federal government's term has expired but it's still fully functional. And all the executive power lies with the state governments anyway. Merkel never did more than chair the meetings.

If I recall correctly, FTL travel is a series of "jumps", which require some preparation. You assess your current position, then do some complicated math, perform the jump, which will (hopefully) get you close to the expected position. Then you repeat the whole thing. The distance you can cover with a single jump is limited by the precision of the math. Doing a very long jump runs the risk of ending up inside a star.

On the second foundation with its telepathic capabilities: If they could steer the Galaxy along the Seldon plan, shouldn't they have been able to take over and save the empire? The whole thing doesn't make much sense to me.