reporterpenguin

Saw this excellent visual metaphor on my way to vote

Yes. Whatever the following question is. The answer is yes.

Max does seem to find it unfair that the rules apply to him

I’m glad a bit of common sense prevailed for a change. Yes it should be a penalty by the letter of the law but given the circumstances around it with his car and him slowing down to compensate for opening the DRS, no penalty is the right call for me.

Or will they just ignore the order?

The game of tariff tennis with China continues, 125% now from the US. But also a pause on the rest of the tariffs, which can only be good?

Except for the UK. Make that one equal...

The finder is pretty helpful once it's well aligned, it has a much wider field of view which makes it much easier to find what you're looking for and get it lined up. Venus is super bright at the moment in the west, it's even visible before the sun has fully set. At sunset look above and slightly to the left of where the sun sets and you should see it. Jupiter is just to the left of the Moon at the moment and is also very bright, quite a lot brighter than Mars is. And on the subject of Mars, I've always found it quite underwhelming to look at with a telescope. It appears about ⅓ the size of Jupiter despite being closer, and is generally a pretty uniform blob. Depending on how it's titled relative to Earth you might just be able to see a hint of the ice caps, but it's still pretty uninteresting to see tbh. Good luck!

Technically I'm an astrophysicist/astronomer by trade, so I can offer a few points. A telescope has two purposes: gather as much light as possible to give a brighter image, and magnify. This telescope has a fairly small aperture of 80mm, so it's not going to be gathering much light so it's not going to be very bright. It does, however, have a reasonable focal length which is what gives the magnification. Together this means your telescope is going to be best looking at bright objects that need to be magnified, so planets and the moon. Venus and Jupiter will be your best targets at the moment. Venus is fairly featureless to look at due to its highly reflective cloudy atmosphere, but you should be able to quite clearly see its crescent shape. Jupiter is quite an interesting one to look at, particularly the moons. The four Galilean moons should be visible, and over the course of even a few hours you can see how they move around the planet. You might be able to see some faint banding of the clouds, but that might be slightly beyond the capabilities of the scope. Similarly, the Great Red Spot may also be just about visible when the timing is right. The moon should be pretty spectacular, especially at the moment while it's a fairly thin crescent which means a lot of shadows from the craters which really show the texture well when properly focused. The small scope on the side is called a finder scope, once you have something centred in the main scope there should be a couple of small adjustment screws on the side of the finder. Centre the crosshairs on where the main scope is centred and the low magnification of the finder makes it much easier to point it accurately at things. In terms of stars, even with the biggest scientific telescopes they're still just pinpoints of light. There are some cool binary stars though, especially Albireo in the constellation Cygnus. It's two stars at very different temperatures, and you should be able to see one looking golden and the other blue. The Orion Nebula in the sword of Orion may also be interesting to look at with a scope like yours. Some of the brighter globular clusters might be worth a look at, for example the Hercules globular cluster. The open cluster of the Pleiades might look nice as well. But with the fairly small aperture of your telescope, it's only the brightest objects that will be worth viewing. Any questions let me know!

A respectful hard disagree on most of that. The benefits of space exploration are significant to life on earth. From SpaceX Starlink has already had an enormous impact in disaster relief, and the availability of high speed internet to remote communities is a fantastic way to provide a route out of poverty. Reuse has also been a game changer in terms of lower launch costs, opening up access to space for everything from commercial communication and climate science satellites. Deadlines in aerospace are virtually never met, so I don't think that's a particularly fair stick to beat them with. Just look at Boeing's commercial crew capsule and the delays and costs of that to see how far behind deadlines a traditional giant company can be. Their contract was worth significantly more than that awarded to SpaceX and is yet to complete an operational mission, whereas SpaceX are already on their 10th operational mission. Things almost all of us will benefit from today include GPS, weather forecasting, communications (remote TV news broadcasts, direct TV, internet), all possible because of investment in space technology. Then there's the indirect benefits, from tech miniaturisation to non-stick pans, and a host of other things. Nuking Mars likely won't happen, it's just a theoretical way to make it more habitable. Yes going to Mars will cost a lot of money, and of course that money could be spent on Earth, but in the grand scheme of things it won't be a significant amount of the worlds GDP. There always have been and always will be problems on Earth that need money, should we not have spent money exploring the world? Should we not fund scientific research? We can do both, and we should do both IMO. I think @jgtuk is right, it's not fair to conflate Musk with the incredible work of thousands of hard working and talented engineers.

On the subject of how energy prices are calculated here and why it is in need of drastic reform, I'd highly recommend giving this excellent explainer video a watch

Me to! Though I dropped the module before being able to fail it 😂 He’s staunchly left wing and even then (~10 years ago) he apparently had very little to do with her due to her politics.

I think the most likely way MAGA outlives Trump is by becoming a family dynasty, with Don Jr presumably being his preferred immediate successor. Whoever he appoints, which is surely what he’ll do, will get a strong backing from the base. But the cult (checks spelling carefully) of him seems so tied to him and his family the most plausible way for it to continue is for it to continue in the family.

It’s also quite a mixed message, he’s said it as a criticism but we all know of his fondness and admiration for dictators.

Puts into perspective how much we’ve underachieved that they have that many more