toast

Yeah, such a difficult set of problems to solve. Weight, cost, reusability, durability, thermal properties, and manufacturing ease have to be considered. I'm hoping that they are still exploring options because there are so many potential avenues for improvement, and not because their attempts so far have been unpromising.

We don't need someone with superpowers. We just need a man of focus, commitment, and sheer will. Luigi, help us!

Thanks, the video really sells it for me. I'd been struggling with just how to judge how bad this all is, as I was assuming that the poor translation to english was partly responsible. No, I guess that wasn't a huge factor.

I am just disappointed that the clothing seems only to be made to be worn by women. I think there may be a market for flashy codpieces constructed of aerospace materials.

The restaurant posing as dates story that you linked to was interesting. It seems like the kind of thing would work until the townspeople burned the place down.

The ending to your story made me really anxious. If I'd managed to get anything typed in from a magazine, I'd save right away. No playin around until that

I like the tabs for the nested loops in the code shown onscreen. As a kid, I'd program in basic (on a Sinclair or a Commodore) but never indent the nested loops. This looks much more modern and legible than anything I was doing at the time. I don't even remember sample code having tabbed code like this at the time.

Khandalf the White, with hobbit

Brahman, but also sometimes Brahma

That about sums it up

Let me explain the allegory and how it relates to the problem.

We can directly observe some things, like the shift in frequency of light or the output of accounting software. We can make inferences from these observations, like our models of the universe or our belief that the software indicates that money has been stolen. We can also step into discussions about what our inferences imply, like the existence of something that would explain what our models tell us or the existence of a thief.

In the allegory, the necessity of a thief is contingent upon our inferences about missing money. In physics, the necessity of dark energy is contingent upon the validity of our models and the assumptions drawn from them.

The claim that dark energy has to exist is just too strong of a claim, as it rests only upon inference. Even when you make, as you do, the weakest possible version of the claim, which is to say that dark energy is whatever makes sense of our inferences, it is still too strong a claim, unless you include "our inferences have been incorrect" as a possible outcome to the question of "what is dark energy?"

If researchers wish to question some of our inferences and doubt some of our assumptions, it's a good thing. Claiming that dark energy must exist whenever researchers question it is not helpful.

EDIT changed matter -> energy

Hey, I was just trying to say that David Hume and likely a few others would have reservations about accepting your argument.

Perhaps an allegory would be useful.

Suppose I go about town telling everyone that there is a thief about. "A thief?", everyone exclaims, "where, who?" And I tell them that I have not actually seen the thief, but I have taken to calling him Drake Emory, and I have evidence. Some of my money is missing, and that can't happen without a cause. I call that cause Drake Emory. Seeing the wisdom of my words, the townsfolk agree that while Drake Emory is a strange name to call a thief, still he must exist because the money is gone. So, convinced of his existence, everyone searches high and low for Drake Emory. Some posit that Drake is a man who sneaks into houses at night. Others are certain that he is just a rat who chews bank notes to make his nest. There are many, many discussions about him. Only one thing is certain: Drake Emory must exist. How could he not? Something made that money disappear. Unfortunately, what the towns people don't know, and I never even realize myself, is that no money ever went missing. In truth, I only came to that conclusion because I really don't fully understand the accounting software that I've been using.

What is this, the cosmological argument, dark energy edition?