Since this one was smaller, I assume it was the orphaned baby balloon looking for its mother.

Calling it now.

Yeah... The work you linked to and some poking around I did* all seem to suggest that nitrogen isotopes persists for ~<100,000 years in terrestrial environments before undergoing diagenetic alteration, likely because of the preservation potential of collagen (live and learn). Of course this makes me wonder, what…

The article mentions that stable carbon isotopic analysis was done on the teeth to reconstruct the Paranthropus, “which demonstrates a heavy reliance on C4 foods”. But nothing about stable nitrogen to indicate if they were the ones eating all that hippo meat. Maybe there are issues with extracting enough N from teeth…

“You Really Don’t Want to Know How Giraffes Flirt”

“No no no. It’s not a fetish. It’s perfectly natural behavior.”

Agreed. The quality of the intellectual discourse has declined considerably around here. Edwin Powell is spinning in his grave no doubt.

Scientists reveal a new map that shows all the matter in the universe.

And it’s a picture of your mom!

The rapid pace of cancelations wouldn’t be quite as irritating if it meant that better quality series were the ones getting second seasons, but I’m not sure that’s the case. That said, at least a lot of horrible shows are getting canceled after their first seasons too, so it’s not like we traded season two of 1899*…

I guess my first question is, what threat do rubble pile asteroids actually pose to Earth? If these objects are loose and highly porous agglomerations of space debris held together by very weak gravity, then wouldn’t they start to come apart as they approach the planet and feel the affect of Earth’s gravity? I imagine…

Arg.... You got me.

I’ve seen a lot of terrible abstracts written by humans. The fact that ChatGPT can generate convincing abstracts doesn’t surprise me since humans are equally capable of producing unconvincing ones. And I’m sure I could come up with a convincing abstract to a fake study on my own as well, without ChatGPT.

I subscribe to the theory that the Voyager-A is going to be the ship that makes first contact with the Vau Nakat and sets the whole sequence of events in motion. The glimpses we saw of that moment in a previous episode made it look like a ~Prometheus style ship. So, I suspect that the show wants to hold that reveal…

I do wonder what the demographic breakdown is of Prodigy’s viewership. What percentage of the audience are 8 - 18 year olds and what percentage are people who had strong opinions about the Clinton impeachment as it happened?

I don’t disagree. I enjoyed it, but I was hoping for something deeper. My expectations were probably too high, which makes it a hit hard to assess the film on its own merits, but I definitely wanted more out of it. 

Yeah. I am also surprised that 3,000 Years of Longing didn’t make the cut but that might be becuase it had huge shoes to fill following Fury Road, which was an impossibly tall task that ultimately left the film feeling a little underwhelming. It was still good, but I can see the argument that it was not great. That…

I’ve seen some of these, though not all, and most I intend to watch.

I think he’s got it backwards... Isn’t it, “I will continue to release weather balloons with the intent of blocking out the sun unless you give me one trillion dollars!”

I mean, they burst out of a dude’s body and All Those Who Wander had a pretty clear Newt allegory. But as you said, to each their own.

Yes. And that’s fine. I don’t begrudge anyone for having that preference. But (and at the risk of getting off topic), I do occasionally wonder how black and white depictions of good and evil have shaped audiences over the generations. The world is grey and villains aren’t always easily identified by their moustache…