And the definitions in stem fields are often very subtly different, and also different from lay language definitions (like theory in science means something very different than common use)
I come from a semi-rural midwestern area, and my first experience with a subway system (or really, any public transit that ran more than once every 3 hours) was in Boston.
Granted, we flew in, so other than renting a car or ridesharing, we didn’t have a choice, but other than needing to plan for the walk rather than the drive, and one very scary bridge we had to cross many times due to where the hotel was (I struggle walking on surfaces I can see through, regardless how far the drop), there was absolutely no need for a car, and indeed it would have been much worse (I dislike all driving and city driving is absolutely horrible - used to live in Houston - plus finding and paying for parking blah blah blah. No.). It was glorious to wait 5 minutes for the next train, then do whatever while getting there.
If my area even had a decent bus, I’d use it, but we don’t. In the 10 years I’ve lived in this town I’ve seen a bus a handful of times, and frankly that’s not often enough to consider relying on unless you have no choice. I do have a bike but I need an e-bike because everything is fairly distant and steeply downhill from my house (seriously, I can go further uphill, but there’s nothing there worth going for, unless you enjoy cemeteries and farm fields) and I’m not even close to in shape enough to bike it. I did get a stationary bike with the goal of getting in shape enough to bike around town, but that’s not going well at all 😅. But I could see a bike in a city. I’d even be fine with mopeds in city limits (not really that different from e-bikes, just ICE instead of battery) as long as there’s no cars. Waste of space and dangerous in cities. Plus all those heavy boxes moving single humans is horrible for air quality which primarily impacts those walking… so it’s dangerous even if you are the absolute best driver in the world.
Clearly so, as you taught me a new definition - vulgarization - the act or process of making something, or of something becoming, better known and understood by ordinary people.
I appreciate that. Thanks! :) in that definition (and the more traditionally used one) I’m a vulgar mf!
Unless you want to know about like magnetic tornadoes on the sun or how sponges are colonies of cells often using glass/silicate compounds in various shapes as a common skeleton (wouldn’t want to bathe with those!! But each species has their own unique structure!), I haven’t much off the top of my head without a good conversation to spark some back-of-the brain latent info that’s stored and conversationally relevant. I’m a steel trap for niche science stuff, and it often takes a good conversation to bring it out. How else do you know what info is worth sharing?
If you ever run into this in the future, you can often stand outside an open door with the lights on if it’s dark and make loud fast clicking noises (to give them a sense of outside through echolocation, plus a light outside the door to draw their attention since they have perfectly good eyesight) and they will just fly out on their own. They are smart, and don’t want to be inside buildings.
I get 0-5 bats a year in my house, not really sure how they get in, other than through some crack somewhere (cheap, poorly historically maintained, 140 yo house is bound to have some, and my neighbors house is basically made for bats to live in the siding so not surprising they try mine too) but I’ve figured out that’s typically a highly effective strategy to get them back out. Very easy, minimal stress for anyone involved. I don’t have anyone to help me, so it’s something one can do solo without wasting all the bat’s energy.
When you catch yourself going into a negative loop, stop yourself and think of or write down the absolute worst possible scenario (and really, how bad is this, likely minor, negative thing in the grand scheme of things?), the most likely scenario which happens most of the time, and the best possible scenario (how good could it be, similar to the bad outcomes?). What separates those possible outcomes? Chance? Effort on your part? Other people?
If it’s effort on your part, it gives you actionable steps you can take and that’s great for anxiety, everything else being out of your control should actually help as well, though, especially when you intentionally step back and look for the most likely event.
I always have this sense when I’m driving home from an overnight elsewhere that my house will have burned down or my animals will be dead or something. I know it’s absurd, but more than that, even if that was the case, there’s nothing I could actually do about it, and I know one of my neighbors would call the fire department and text me if my house caught fire. So when I have that intrusive thought I stop myself and take a step back - logically it’s very unlikely it will burn down when I’m not home because I spend 99% of my time at home - if it is going to burn, it is likely going to burn when I’m here, and I literally never worry about that. So why do I worry about the rare occurrence?
It doesn’t help immediately, because you didn’t logic yourself into that worry, but eventually you can train yourself to be a bit more realistic which, while it may not fix the intrusive thoughts, does help a ton with breaking the rumination cycle.
Yeah, the coolest thing about the sun, imo, is that while a particle of light only takes a few minutes to reach earth, it can take millions of years to escape the tumultuous interior of the sun to radiate in the first place. That activity is what prevents the sun from collapsing under its own gravity.
We can’t change our earthly perspective, no, but we do have numerous satellites that do have the ability to see certain angles we can’t currently on earth. We can’t see the backside of it (from our current perspective, it rotates and we orbit so we do see all of it), really, because we’d never get good signal from our craft, but we can get some decent side angles.
We just don’t necessarily have the tools to see what we want to know with those specifically, but we put out great new tools on a regular basis, so it’s very possible they will make new tools just for that purpose.
As for the other question about not being able to detect it - not really. The stuff we have focused on the sun mostly works with hot material, but the universe itself is very cold, and we can detect things from every wavelength we are aware of, it’s just a matter of what’s usually focused on the sun specifically to catch these things.
(Disclaimer for anyone who might read this: do not ever look at the sun through a telescope without a certified solar filter, you will burn out your eye. Guaranteed.) If you have a telescope, on a sunny day you can watch the sun indirectly by facing the eyepiece toward paper or a wall. It works like a projector. It’s black and white just because it’s bright out when you project it, but you can watch sunspots and stuff. :) and now is a great time to do it a we are approaching the solar maximum, when the most interesting things tend to happen.
They aren’t uncommon persey, it’s just another form of solar prominance, or material lifted above the surface by magnetic field liness. However, the tornado-like appearance rather than a full arc of material that connects to the surface in 2 places is rather uncommon, and it’s even possible that it’s an artifact of the way the sun is photographed (the lenses filter based on temperature, essentially, and material further from the surface may cool to the point it doesn’t get picked up with any of the filters, making it effectively invisible), or the angle at which the photos are taken in relation to the prominence (if we are looking at it head on, we wouldn’t see the second anchor point).
How they form is an ongoing mystery with many models, like all solar prominences, and it probably isn’t disconnected on one end like a cyclone would be, but visually it resembles a tornado, and the material does seem to rotate around the magnetic field lines, much the same way a tornado rotates in air. We see the same rotation in more typical coronal loops, which are what cause coronal mass ejections when it releases. They are absolutely massive when they do form, 10+ stacked earths in size, and can last days, weeks, months.
It’s one of my go-to water-testing facts because almost everyone likes the sun, is at least vaguely familiar with tornadoes, and can envision a “10 earth tall tornado of plasma on the sun”. Which is a damned cool image to envision - the reality is also spectacular but a bit less so.
The one linked below is actually from March this year, which is neat! I didn’t even know it happened again! This one was 14 earths high and exploded at the end of its cycle! How cool! I hope they got some really good data on how it works! I’ll have to do some looking :)
You misunderstand my understanding that most people don’t care, for being deterred from doing it.
No no. It’s a compulsion. I don’t have a choice but to share things, even at my own social detriment. I mean obviously I could subvert who I am fundamentally for the comfort of society, but that’s a lot of work I’m not willing to do when sharing is more fun, and more rewarding when it does hit. That’s why I got the science communication degree. To facilitate sharing whatever I know with whomever I meet in a way they can relate to. I take that skill very seriously. I was good at it before I got the degree.
I know some people stop sharing when beaten down by society, but I’m not one. When things get awkward I say “my bad I’m a science communicator by trait and training and have trouble not sharing cool stuff as a result” to diffuse the social pressure to conform. It works well enough.
It makes building real relationships more challenging than I assume your average individual has, but the connections that are made under those conditions tend to be really good ones so tradeoff I guess.
Unfortunately this all happened in my early 20s, I went to college after, but there’s still a big gap that can’t be explained by school alone (and it’s a gap because I had military service prior to that which I always list)
I got stuck on the tempy-go-round (only able to find contracts due to gaps, and too many contracts to land a permanent job - several employers asked why I prefer contracts… I don’t, it’s all I could get… but that answer is it’s own can of worms…). I finally found a permanent job and realized I spent so much time on contracts that I can’t do the same thing day in day out for more than a year without driving myself bonkers. Ultimate catch-22.
So I’m going back to contracts. However, not entry level desperation contracts, ones actually using my degree. Covid remote work was an absolute silver lining for my field - used to be impossible to find positions, now they are there and pay super well (6 mths to make what I make in a year now), but mostly contract.
I just say “it’s personal, and I won’t be discussing it.” If they don’t want to hire me because of it, I don’t want to work there anyway.
It’s absolutely none of their business what I was doing, especially that I went into a deep depression after my mom died and my live-in ex cheated on me while I was caring for her, and then spent a couple years selling her non-sentimental possessions to live off. And I’m not willing to make up some bullshit to hide it either, it happened and I’m not ashamed of it, but I’m not sharing it with interviewers. Meh meh.