Ben Brockert

The degree to which the US’s export economy is focused on the past and accelerating global warming, and China’s is focused on the future and not, is striking.
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2026-03-30 11:17:01 UTC

Used to spend a lot of time doing project/program management, and as such also trying to learn about it. I haven't gone looking for it recently but was linked to https://thesearesystems.substack.com/p/task-estimation-conquering-hofstadters and thought it was a good read, it's frustratingly rare to find writing based on real data.
The short of it is that experienced people are good at estimating the median of how long tasks will take, but it's a log-normal distribution and the mean is 1.65x the median.
And if you want 95% confidence, that's 5x!

2026-03-29 13:48:37 UTC

https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/musk-on-mars
Maciej compiled a timeline of Elon claims on Mars. Though a chart of year vs. year would be handy.
I was at SpaceVision 2005, I think it's the only time I've been in a room with Elon. Even back then he was quite a get by @nprofile…lhgp for a student space conference.
(Little annoyed that Maciej has abandoned his excellent blog Idle Words for a paid substack. He owns pinboard/delicious, he could do his own payment system.)

2026-03-25 21:10:13 UTC

I’ve detected hipsters.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/291/860/188/952/892/original/b6709e61586e12c6.png

2026-02-11 18:17:08 UTC

Fucking cowards.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5733236-gallup-stops-presidential-approval-ratings-polls/amp/

2026-01-24 10:09:35 UTC

Some quite good anticrepscular rays the other evening in Almería. When the sun is low in the sky, sunbeams converge toward a point opposite the sun, making it look like there’s another sun just under the horizon. The recipe seems to be humidity and broken clouds in the direction of the sun.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/949/514/521/010/792/original/f1d5522587ead5ed.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/949/515/127/329/730/original/6c203a26c1741cda.png
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2026-01-18 21:43:14 UTC

For dinner I had “Black Truffle & Butter” pringles with guacamole. That’s ‘fusion food’, right? French-American and Mexican?
(The chips just taste like mild cheesiness, I can see why they are discontinued and on sale.)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/918/278/190/393/823/original/4c7b45dc4d41809e.png

2026-01-17 12:36:31 UTC

I also recently found on duck search that if you are using it in your browser search/URL bar and you put “!w” in the search it will just send you directly to the top Wikipedia result for your search. Which is what I’m looking for a lot of the time.
There’s also !e for eBay, !r for reddit, and thousands more. https://duckduckgo.com/bangs
#nevent1q…wy7r

2026-01-16 12:26:28 UTC

I bet there's already shit like this raising seed rounds.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/904/765/422/844/596/original/8cf2fe3679cc3f7c.png

2026-01-15 17:24:35 UTC

Great video by a relatively new channel on an old dam disaster in Italy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVtfIEik8Aw
I thought he was angling to be a new Tom Scott from his previous video, but he manages to add a lot more emotional depth to a video that could just be "here's an odd thing that exists".

2026-01-14 08:00:10 UTC

Not ideal sightseeing weather this morning on the train in Spain (mostly on the plains). Fortunately (?) it is one of the longest train rides in the country so I’m sure it will improve later. (Now I probably have to check where this ranks amongst single train normal passenger itineraries.)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/892/383/885/021/326/original/1d0e071c0b10b8c2.png

2026-01-07 19:45:56 UTC

I had the belief that aluminum is basically solid electricity, and was prompted to check it today.
Primary (smelting, not recycling) aluminum production is 15 MWh/Mg https://international-aluminium.org/statistics/primary-aluminium-smelting-energy-intensity/
Good industrial electricity price is 0.1 USD/kWh: https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
Bulk aluminum is around 2600 USD/Mg: https://www.intratec.us/solutions/primary-commodity-prices/commodity/aluminum-prices
If you multiply the power by the energy price that's 1500 USD/Mg, so indeed more than half of the price of aluminum is just the electricity to make it. (1500/2600≈60%)

2025-11-17 18:45:13 UTC

Really minor thing in the scale of things lately, but I feel bad for this rock. Was a great big rock sitting on top of another rock on top of a hill, and kind of looks like a head. Would have been a landmark for people walking around in what is now Australia for 50,000 years.
Somebody built a house beside it, and then presumably somebody else decided that they didn't want a rock next to their house, so they demolished the rock instead of the house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CG83UcN9K0
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/566/508/311/123/265/original/ad04e7774f78a05a.png
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2025-11-12 15:50:58 UTC

Here's a dumb question: are aurora lasers? You're pumping energy into a medium and it's outputting one particular wavelength of green light from a specifc electron transition in atomic oxygen. Which is basically a description of a laser without the mirrors on the end. But the column is kilometers tall, does it lead to any coherence?
I've seen people claim it's in sheets because of "magnetic field lines", but those don't actually exist. It's like saying they align to latitude lines.

2025-11-08 20:53:31 UTC

Neat little site, you draw a shape in the box and it will find Unicode characters that are similar.
Doesn't work 100%, but if you're typing something and you think "if only I could illustrate this sentence with a ◺triangle◿", you can.
Oh you need a log? Turns out it's the alchemical symbol for borax. 🝄
https://shapecatcher.com

2025-10-30 23:50:12 UTC

Interesting video of the explosive demolition of a coal power plant in Louisiana. One drone shot looking toward the sun shows the acoustic pressure waves, including a big low-frequency one when the smokestack hits the ground.
https://youtu.be/xo-qRIi5E28?t=39
It's common to see them from high explosives, often mistakenly called "shockwaves", but that's the first time I've seen one from a big purely mechanical impact. Also has a much longer wavelength than the ones from the explosives.

2025-06-12 17:41:16 UTC

This is the 100 year anniversary of humans having an idea of what the heck the sun and all the stars actually are. If you had asked a leading astronomer in 1925 what the sun was, they would say that it's basically the same as Earth, but very hot.
In Cecilia Payne's doctoral thesis she was the first to say, from spectral data, that the sun was overwhelmingly made of hydrogen and helium.
It was later described as "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecilia_Payne-Gaposchkin

2025-05-20 16:46:40 UTC

This is fantastic. A podcaster I’ve listened to for years about the airline industry (Dots, Lines, and Destinations) put up billboards criticizing Avelo for facilitating illegal deportations with their jets.
The airline threatened to sue, and the billboard company caved instantly, but Seth is countersuing in Nevada court. I hope it’s resolved quickly and the billboards go back up.
https://thebulkheadseat.com/billboards-calling-out-avelo-airlines-ice-deportation-flights-lead-to-lawsuit/
His thread on it is at https://bsky.app/profile/wandrme.paxex.aero/post/3lm5xib2kt22t
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/541/169/946/163/009/original/45a12bb53ff75ca1.png

2025-05-16 10:19:48 UTC

“NYU is deeply sorry that the audience was subjected to these remarks” is an insane thing for a university to say. Just shut down the university if you can only allow speech that is condoned by the government.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/15/nyu-withholds-diploma-israel-gaza-speech

2025-05-13 12:36:41 UTC

One of the strangest aspects of taking the train in Serbia is that there’s usually a guy in the station wandering around with a war hammer.
Probably the deputy station agent, and probably ceremonial role play as a “wheeltapper”, but I guess good to know that if the station is attacked by a knight in shining armor that we’ll have at least one line of defense.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_hammer
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeltapper
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/500/544/936/227/120/original/7626c29b88df817a.png

2025-04-26 09:00:48 UTC

An old failed Venus lander will re-enter from earth orbit next month, and it could land anywhere between 52 degrees north and south. Which covers basically all population in the southern hemisphere and a large majority in the north, leaving out the Baltics, Nordics, and Alaska.
It weighs a thousand pounds and is expected to reach the ground intact. Previous debris from the launch landed in New Zealand.
https://sattrackcam.blogspot.com/2025/04/kosmos-842-descent-craft-reentry.html
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/403/440/620/933/921/original/321d3b000b277176.jpg

2025-04-02 18:23:34 UTC

Slightly dizzying short simulation from ESA of Near Earth Objects. 273 were found in March, pushing the total count over 38,000. Two passed within two lunar distances last month.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/269/761/447/765/012/original/8705079afae9e75c.mp4

2025-02-05 16:12:10 UTC

Sweden has an anomalously effective education system on the topic of human/dinosaur timelines.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/952/146/973/083/910/original/47819f5ce534f300.png

2025-01-29 19:49:19 UTC

Eggs in the free market of the US, with an administration that said they’d reduce prices, are over $6/dozen in many states.
In Spain, with their burdensome regulations from the country and the EU that require space to nest, perching, litter to allow pecking, and unrestricted access to food and water, the price of a dozen eggs I saw today is $2.15.

2025-01-25 20:40:01 UTC

Really neat site that mixes a terrain map with time and can show what wheres are in sunlight at a given time.
https://shademap.app/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/890/922/432/882/752/original/e55e3e3eb499799b.png

2025-01-17 00:12:43 UTC

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Multiple flights seem to have diverted to avoid the debris, some are coming back to the US. I hope all those unlucky passengers are able to get compensation, but it never really compensates you for messed up plans.
Screencap from just now on adsb.fi
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/840/799/879/641/101/original/14d79e42ad1a3beb.png

2025-01-17 00:06:04 UTC

SpaceX launched a Starship which exploded, leaving a long trail of multicolored burning debris visible in the sky from much of the Caribbean.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/63IgbYFcBvI
(video is stolen from unknown source, I just picked one of the dozens of copies on YouTube.)

2025-01-16 07:53:58 UTC

Went and watched the Blue Origin launch from the beach, was glad to see it go! The flickery start had me concerned, but it kept going. Louder but dimmer than an F9.
It casts a conical beam of light out the bottom unlike any kerosene rocket. Glowing ceramic nozzle coating, or just some excited chemical state only inside the nozzle? You can see it in this video screencap, it’s not an artifact, and it had a spotlight effect after flying through the cloud deck.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/836/944/317/358/673/original/f1244869b8226380.png

2025-01-13 19:27:41 UTC

Scientist A: it seems like all these strange fluorine compounds that we invented never break down and might be bad for people.
Scientist B: saturating the environment in plastic particles doesn't seem great.
Scientist C: eat the teflon filler, you fat little piggy, then flush it down the toilet.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4928218/

2024-12-22 12:23:45 UTC

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@nprofile…gaap Using a tarp to signal to a slow-flying plane that you need quinine is really evocative of a different age.

2024-12-16 22:16:09 UTC

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@nprofile…6zjl Nowadays on reddit at least it's mostly Starlink, though the Pleiades is very popular for people who see a slightly darker sky for the first time.

2024-06-11 21:12:43 UTC

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@npub1uw8…88kr I don’t think I’ve ever seen homemade cheese that looked that good!

2023-09-03 16:56:26 UTC

A word I learned after moving to Mojave: endorheic. A huge area of land from Oregon to Mexico, including the Shuttle landing strip on a dry lake at Edwards, the Black Rock Desert, the Great Salt Lake, Lake Tahoe, Death Valley, and nearly all of Nevada is a set of endorheic basins. Any rain that falls there and rivers that flow through there never make it to the sea. Other than evaporation, it is a huge dead end for the surface water cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Basin
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/002/265/210/185/087/original/c1e2974c7864e91a.png