Also they had to reduce the episode runtimes to make room for more ads. I recall an interview where one of the writers said this made it really hard to have a b-story to accompany the main plot.

Zaslav’s new Streaming & Studios outfit will consist of Warner Bros Television, Warner Bros Motion Picture Group, DC Studios, HBO and HBO Max, as well as their film and television libraries. Global Networks, meanwhile, will include premier entertainment, sports and news television brands around the world including CNN, TNT Sports in the U.S., and Discovery, top free-to-air channels across Europe, and digital products such as the profitable Discovery+ streaming service and Bleacher Report.

So basically it sounds like they’re going to remove CNN, Discovery shows, and live sports from HBO Max. They’re effectively undoing the merger that they did just a few years ago, which is great because it was clearly a terrible idea. Add in the fact that they’re also reverting the name of “Max” to “HBO Max” and it’s a complete surrender of this shitty merger.

Now the only thing left is to get rid of Zaslav, the originator of all these bad ideas.

Article link for the curious

Case in point: Mark Robinson

Actually we haven’t observed a difference between the speed of neutrinos and light, which sets an upper limit on their mass based on the precision of those measurements. The evidence of mass is much weirder, in the observation of neutrino flavor oscillation.

Neutrinos come in 3 flavors: electron, tau, and muon. We’ve observed that the flavor oscillates as a function of time, or equivalently as a function of distance from the neutrino source. The data is quite precise, and is perfectly explained by there being 3 neutrino mass states that are distinct from the flavor state. So a neutrino with a well defined flavor will have a superposition of the 3 mass states, with each flavor corresponding to a different admixture of mass states.

The flavor oscillations allow us to measure the difference in the mass values, but not the absolute masses. Technically it’s possible that the “lightest” neutrino is massless, and the other 2 mass states are nonzero. Without an absolute value for the masses we can’t rule this out.

“Almost massless”. Neutrino masses are so small that they haven’t been measured (yet).

It doesn’t get more American than solving healthcare with gun violence.

Cryptocurrencies aren’t used for anything other than financial speculation

Typical anti-blockchain crypto bashing.

Cryptocurrencies have plenty of uses besides speculation. For example, buying drugs and a plethora of scams.

You need a particular kind of nuclear reactor to create the enriched uranium

*plutonium. Enriched uranium comes from taking natural uranium and enriching the content of a specific isotope (235U), typically with centrifuges, gaseous diffusion and/or magnetic separation in a synchrotron. The enriched uranium can be used in a weapon, or it can be used as fuel for a nuclear reactor to make 239Pu from 238U.

I believe apple has the led hardwire in MacBooks webcams.

“Masked man with a gun ordering the teller to put the money in the bag faces criticism for risking a bank robbery.”

My employer has a “buy American” policy that kicks in for purchases over a certain dollar amount. To get an exemption, you need to identify 2 domestic options and state why they aren’t sufficient.

Recently I needed to replace a module in an existing system that happens to be made by a non-US company. There is literally no valid alternative - only this one company makes the modules that are compatible with each other.

So I had to identify 2 American made products that were vaguely similar and state why they didn’t meet our specifications. Though “Vaguely similar” is a stretch - it was equivalent to explaining to someone why you can’t buy AA batteries to replace a car battery.

There’s a follow up meta study from 2020.:

In conclusion, based on the totality of currently available scientific evidence, the present review does not support the presumption that fluoride should be assessed as a human developmental neurotoxicant at the current exposure levels in Europe.

Hey, he had a degree in “meats” from Texas A&M. That’s basically an alternative prerequisite for nuclear stockpile maintenance.

Supposedly when he was picked for energy secretary he thought the position would be “symbolic coal baron”. He eventually found out about the nukes part, and to his credit he apparently realized the significance.

I certainly can’t think of a more relevant background than “gas executive who goes on Fox News a lot” for leading the organization responsible for the nations nuclear arsenal.

The article is real, btw

She also had a knack for capturing their speaking pattern in her transcribed replies.

Same here, which is why my Bluesky feed is much better. Everyone wants to be where everyone else is (that isn’t X), and it seems like that’s Bluesky.

I’m gonna echo what others have said here. The mastodon signup process is too complex, and searching for instructions just leads to “what is the fediverse and/or activitypub” explainers.

I created a mastodon account a few years ago and it was my first introduction to the fediverse. It was frustrating and I only persevered because I REALLY wanted to replace twitter.

Once I got it set up, I realized that no one who I followed on twitter was there. My feed is currently like 2 people, plus a bunch of dead accounts from people who dipped their toe in but didn’t stay.

Joining Bluesky was simple, and there were already a bunch of accounts I wanted to follow. The recent influx has increased that, and it feels a lot like old school twitter without the nazis.

People originally joined twitter (and stuck with it for so long) because that’s where everyone else is. Mastadon is too clunky join and use, so people aren’t.

“It’s a well established fact that being president changes a man. Therefore the Trump who committed the crime is a different person from the Trump who was convicted. The conviction cannot stand.”