It's still baffling to see the US lose so much face in so short a time.
There is definitely truth that Europe has relied on US defense for too long, but what the US got in return is hard to put into words and economic terms.
We bought your tech, culture, defense and so much other stuff.
There are wonderful parallels with Wilhelm II of Germany. It just takes one idiot at the top with no understanding of his own failings to undermine decades of careful diplomacy and policy.
In a functioning democracy, this should not be possible. There should be check and balances.
Reading a bit about Wilhelm II: so many parallels indeed. "Dreamt of a great colonial power", had to deal with some form of democracy, making incoherent replies, ... And more.
No it should definitely be possible in a functioning democracy (and is because it happened in one). It would not be possible with an educated electorate. But that's different from what you said
> It would not be possible with an educated electorate.
A free and impartial press is vital for democracy to work (how else do you know who to vote for). However the current state of American news media leaves a lot to be desired..... Abandonment of the broadcast media 'fairness doctrine' for one thing.
The problem with this situation in USA is not quite only because of media. Why did Congress instantly caved under the threat and even imposed a self censorship on itself to prevent any minority dissent (the case of "let's make whole year 2025 a single legal day, to prevent opposition vote" a year ago). It's because they are afraid to not be elected under threat of MAGA. And why is that? Because the election system is very not democratic in the USA. First past the post is already very bad system. No alternative parties, no open election lists, a huge legal lobbying/bribing allowed preventing electing independents. Etc. So the top commenter is right - democracy or even a semblance of one would have mitigated this disaster a lot, by protecting "checks and balanced" from being dismantled by a dictator.
Doesn't it require some form of educated electorate to sustain a functioning democracy? Otherwise it is really "by the people" if they are merely avatars?
> In a functioning democracy, this should not be possible.
I think it's less about democracy vs not, and more about empires/hegemonies vs whatever the antonyms are. They seem to just fold over themselves at one point or another, like it's unavoidable.
At one point we (humanity) should figure out how the small and many can try to rein in the solo bullies in the world, but guess we're not quite there yet.
You need a lot of support to stay in power, even in a democracy. Impeachment procedures for instance exist for that reason. No one rules alone, it's never one, nor even a small bunch of idiots.
> There is definitely truth that Europe has relied on US defense for too long,
That wasn't the problem for the USA, on the contrary.
«The U.S. is lobbying against SAFE because it mandates contractors from the EU/EFTA/Ukraine. One reason why Tusk is speaking candidly about how shaky the U.S. is as an ally: Washington says it wants Europe to arm itself and take its security into its own hands, but then it demands Europe rely on American hardware. You can't have it both ways.
The U.S. said: "Take over Ukraine's war needs." So Europe did so. Now PURL purchases are being slowed down or are on hold because of America's prioritization of its own requirements for the war with Iran. Talking out of both sides of one's mouth doesn't work anymore, and if Trump wants anyone to blame here, he should look in the mirror. Forfeiting America's security patronage always meant forfeiting our ability to bully and coerce.»
src: https://xcancel.com/michaeldweiss/status/2047689018683408593
Even before Trump, and the invasion of Ukraine, it was transparently obvious that the idea of minimum spending commitment to NATO was intended to prop up the US arms industry rather than actually achieve anything military.
To a certain extent the US occupation of Germany was intended to prevent Germany rearming on its own.
> it was transparently obvious that the idea of minimum spending commitment to NATO was intended to prop up the US arms industry
...to Trump. European leaders took it literally: since the USA stopped being a reliable partner, Europe needs to depend on itself for protection. It makes zero sense to buy American weapons if you can produce/purchase them on the continent.
They're laughing all the way to the bank, the US has locked Europe into so many long-term petrochem supply contracts courtesy of two energy crises, and the US have stated point-blank that the supplies (of LNG, in this case) are tied to the US-EU trade treaty plus whatever changes the US wants to make.
Same protection racket plus a foot on the brake of the EU's push to renewables.
I don't mind buying from china, as long as they're not irreplaceable essentials (like oil). Solar panels and -batteries are fine as long as they meet safety standards and don't have backdoors, and for all the fearmongering that Chinese made tech has backdoors in them, nobody seems to have found any evidence of that. And since it's electronics, any chip and any software can be investigated and taken apart by both amateur hackers and government funded (IT) security bureaus. Nothing. Unless I missed it, but I don't think something as big as that would go by quietly.
> [..] for all the fearmongering that Chinese made tech has backdoors in them, nobody seems to have found any evidence of that. [..]
Are you asserting no backdoors were found in Chinese made tech? I'm not sure how it'd happen in solar panels (which sucks, since I own a couple of these). Another thing to keep in mind is plausible deniability. If you don't patch software, it will be vulnerable, which is an issue in networked software, especially. So what I have seen happening (and I can name some examples of companies here, both Chinese and Taiwanese) where vulnerabilities are simply not patched. Sometimes, they're plain obvious.
I have seen KRACK vulnerability not getting patched. I have seen old MiFi without proper firmware updates, like ever. I have seen motherboard update software still using HTTP instead of HTTPS. And in the world of IoT, it has been a huge mess from the get-go.
Furthermore, the core network of a major telco here was maintained by Chinese engineers who were flown from China. You can probably guess the company name here.
The tactic is obviously not limited to China or Taiwan only, but it can be tackled with reproducible builds and FOSS.
Yes, but it won't matter. The state energy firms of EU countries are going heavily into debt to survive this crisis, and it'll just turn from "paying high electricity prices because oil is expensive" to "paying high energy prices to repay state debt".
I mean it'll help in the sense that energy supply will switch to renewable sources, sure. Great for the climate, hopefully, But it won't help in lowering energy cost.
And before you say "but solar panels". A bunch of states have already started pretty heavily taxing them.
Which state energy firms? Most countries have mostly privatized generation with just the grid in public ownership. EDF is something of an exception, but they have very different economics (and the nuclear fleet).
> "paying high energy prices to repay state debt"
The whole range of general taxation is available for that.
> A bunch of states have already started pretty heavily taxing them.
* making everyone to use natural gas for heating by making it much cheaper than electricity
* slowing down the EV rollout by keeping to subsidize gas and diesel
could definitely be seen as a scheme to make the fossil fuel gravy train last as long as possible.
And that's not even talking about the absolutely out there schemes that didn't succeed like hydrogen powered vehicles (with most of hydrogen coming from fossil fuels and you can theoretically switch to zero emission one but you never would have because the fossil one is always going to be cheaper because making hydrogen is difficult).
Gas for heating used to be the standard but is on its way out now. My house hasn't had a gas connection for 8 years, and many people qre switching to heat pumps and other cleaner methods of heating.
I'm going to guess if net energy use goes up, due to a glut of renewable energy, the gaps on cloudy, windless days will result in greater fossil fuel use than before.
There need to be assurances renewables are replacing fossil fuels rather than just adding capacity.
> Alas, it is exactly the intermittent renewables that create a dependency on fossil fuels.
First of all, this is an insane statement.
> Unless you have nuclear
Second of all, with nuclear most countries will still be dependent on other countries for their fuel needs. So it doesn't solve the problem discussed here at all.
US sells a lot of other things to Europe that Europe doesn't have to buy. That includes tech. I'm not looking forward to the ensuing trade war but it's not a one way street by any means.
I dabble in correcting other people’s spelling on occasion (can’t help it). Somewhat frustratingly, the usual reaction is “language evolves” and “everyone uses it this way” and “if it is understood, it does not matter how you wrote it”.
Still, "loose" is confusing because it makes me think for one second of the actual word "loose", so it breaks the cadence of reading (and thus it is not really "understood"). If the word "loose" didn't exist, I would have no problem with people misspelling "lose" in this way and eventually becoming mainstream.
Well only to a point, I don't think there's been any significant or formal "we spell this existing word like this now" in a very long time.
The only way English language really evolves now is by the addition / invention / adoption of a new word or added meaning to existing words, like yeet, influencer, youtuber, incel, looksmaxxer and simp. And a lot of them are meme words not actually used in normal parlance. Others are the wider adoption of subculture specific words and expressions, like AAVE getting adopted by teenagers / young adults.
The world's rules were written by them, for them, and their allies notably european countries were willing to go along for the ride for all the side benefit of said safety and stability, both pretended it was a gift out of niceness while it was actually massively profitable
But then a portion of the US started believing the whole gift part, and now they're destroying their own control of the world order and forcing other to realign out of their control
The PAX Americana established from '45 and expanded globally after the Soviet Union fell is so all-encompassing that people can't see beyond it anymore. They just can't see the forest as they've been between the trees all their lives.
We've truly fell for our own tricks as we call it "international rulebased order" which hides the fact that it's just a benevolent dictatorship under the American Federal government.
As we say in Dutch: trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback. Perhaps now it leaves in a Boeing.
This will forever change the US' role in the world.
> But then a portion of the US started believing the whole gift part, and now they're destroying their own control of the world order and forcing other to realign out of their control
I'm still not sure whether Trump actually believes it or if he's just using it as a propaganda tool. I remember how he reported a conversation with Macron telling him that Macron will have to increase the cost of drugs for French citizens. It was so completely out of touch as drug pricing works completely different in the EU. But he definitely likes to directly imply that all positive aspects of life in Europe are being sponsored by the USA (rather than citizens paying higher taxes). Who knows, maybe he believes it, I wouldn't be surprised really.
> The US is teetering on the edge of a financial abyss.
Do you say this because of the outstanding debt? Otherwise, just their top 10 publicly traded companies earn more than all but 2 countries. Just the US defense budget ($1T and estimated $1.5T next year), which exports US foreign policy globally, absolutely dwarfs every other country's.
Debt, rather the lack of any via ble means for the US to pay back even a fraction of its debt without having the world's reserve currency.
Yes, theoretically they can always print their way out, but that's just default through inflation and bond yields will correct immediately to account for it.
> just their top 10 publicly traded companies earn more than all but 2 countries
Are not European countries trying to reduce dependency on American tech giants? China was very successful in this regard. Russia is also independent but in the most incompetent way possible. The EU could do it quite well.
The USA is not a reliable partner. To send data to the USA from the EU is a fatal mistake that needs to be corrected. The risk was acceptable in the past, but not anymore.
The USA comes from a very privileged position thanks to many factors. The government is making sure that non of the conditions hold anymore.
The issue is that there's a complete collapse in it's ability to pick good leadership, or at least leadership that can meet the bar of 'doesn't piss on the floor', and no path for course-correction from it. It's in the 'everyone plunder as much as you can carry' stage, and nobody cares.
(Which also means that whatever that debt will be buying will more likely than not, be incredibly stupid, and likely self-destructive.)
Debt can be paid off until it can't, US's budget expenditure on interests has tripled since 2020, it is larger than their expenditure on the military now.
The 10-year bond yield is not controlled by the Fed, if it keeps raising the interests payment will continue the crushing of the budget. The USA currently depends on debt, it doesn't collect enough taxes to cover expenses as it is, with interests raising on an even larger debt amount there's no way out except for raising taxes to plug the gap. Any American politician who raises taxes will be out of a job, it's one of the most sensitive topics for Americans so it will only be done when the problem is out of hand.
Of course, the USA can just print its way out of debt instead of raising taxes but at that point their bonds wouldn't be as attractive, inflation would also become a huge issue (probably the 2nd most sensitive economic topic for Americans).
As far as I know most empires had their pivotal moment when their debt crushed their power, it seems to be inevitable.
> The USA currently depends on debt, it doesn't collect enough taxes to cover expenses as it is
That's where the lack of 'good governance' comes in. Good governance would, as of 2026, require raising taxes. The US has plenty of capacity to pay, it's just that the people running it prioritize keeping capital owners happy over the long-term welfare of the country.
You're right that actually raising taxes is political suicide. That's one of the reasons this dysfunction has no escape clause, but the past 10 years have piled on a lot of other reasons, too. It's one thing when a government is ignoring a financial timebomb, but is otherwise, trying to... Run the country like a country.
It's another when it's ignoring a financial timebomb, while also running the country in the same way that a drunk runs a hurdle race.
All of these financial 'privileges' are based on the US having the world reserve currency and petro dollar. The US in the unique position of being able to 1. Print Money. 2. Externalise inflation. 3. Ensure a base load demand for it's currency based off a worlds need of oil.
These privileges were supported wholeheartedly by all the worlds 'middle' powers e.g. Canada, Australia, Japan, Germany, Spain, Sweden etc. Thus establishing a world order.
The US has seemingly turned on all these middle powers for no reason, decided the world order needed to change when it was already #1. The US will of course still be a superpower but it is going to lose it hegemony.
So many people, including very intelligent and well-informed ones, do not understand this. The US gets truly outsized benefits from having the reserve currency.
And what is that worth, when they failed to properly protect their allies in a war they initiated against something that was obvious and expected ? The attack on Iran has been absolutely terrible for the US's image as an absolute military power
Debt is symptom not a underlying cause. As well big defense budget and very big valuations (1). This is according to Klain and Pettis diagnosis that I think is correct one or at least close to being correct (from the "Trade wars are class wars" book - do not worry this has nothing to do with socialism).
Basically they argue that US (and other trade deficit countries) and China (and other trade surplus countries) are creating mirror imbalances that would have to be rectified - either by policy actions or when driven up to conclusion by system breakage. Like Great Depression or Japan lost decade on the surplus side. And possibly inflationary crisis on deficit countries (but this is my interpretation - I do not think they claim that and I might have not understood something).
In that lenses latest political development in US does make more sense.
(1) trade deficit pushes assets price up - as dolar from trade surplus has to return to US somehow - to buy stocks for example. That would also explain why market looks so good even if "real economy" is not so hot - but as US trade deficit is big so is stock demand. Similarly trade deficit pushes unemployment up - to keep it in check federal policy has to intervene. Could be by Biden IRA or by Trump big defense spending. This in turn results in big budget deficits.
Europe is a lot more diversified than the US (subtract the whole AI / internet tech sector and US treasure bonds and you get a lot less volume than Europe) and spends more in social security which is good for the economy as a whole.
The US has inflated numbers through soft power influence throughout the whole world but that makes its current course only more self-destructive including bond yields when they come crashing down.
People say this about a lot of places, and even Greece is now kind of OK. The US is not yet Argentina. The bad governance is mostly exporting problems to elsewhere, like the new oil crisis for east Asia.
Even the ""government shutdown"" (just ended) isn't a problem. It turns out that you don't have to pay air traffic controllers for months.
They have been saying it about Russia for five years now, and while I'm sure they're hurting, it takes a lot more to fully collapse an economy, especially one as big as Russia or especially the US.
Anybody who had the pleasure to go through relationship with mentally unstable person (for the lack of better words, if I had to guess some undiagnosed borderline disorder on a scale 1-2 out of 10 mixed with some childhood traumas) sees nothing out of ordinary - just daily chaos, tantrums, illogical destructive behavior and very little self-control on the other side.
Narcissism adds a curious twist, but of course for the worse.
The more shocking thing might even be that this whole mess is allowed to continue and that there is no way to stop an out of hand situation. The whole US system can't be trusted even when this administration is gone, it's just broken.
This is the truth. It would only take half a dozen Republicans to stop the madness now so the obvious question is why don't they?
The political system and elite institutions have failed their country. Does the US self correct with the next two election cycles? Hard to believe right now.
And this is a good for EU. In past decades EU lost energy independence and good part of nuclear because croocked politicians that took dictatorships money while feeding same dictator with oil and gas money.
At the same time EU had no proper army to defend itself because dependance on US or a way to supply said army.
Europe sans Russia does not produce uranium - why people constantly paint this as an independent energy source is beyond me. Of all Russian energy companies, it was Rosatom that could not be sanctioned.
You’re right that European nuclear is not "independent" if that means "mined entirely inside Europe". But the dependency profile is not the same for Russian pipeline gas. Uranium is globally traded, compact, cheap to stockpile relative to the energy it contains, and available from several non-Russian suppliers (Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, Australia...). The harder choke points are conversion, enrichment, and reactor-specific fuel fabrication.
Europe does have uranium resources, for instance the Salamanca/Retortillo project, but the constraint is permitting, environmental acceptance, waste handling, and political legitimacy rather than geology. So the honest claim is not "nuclear makes Europe autarkic". It is "nuclear gives Europe a more diversifiable and stockpilable dependency than gas, provided Europe also invests in mining, conversion, enrichment, and fuel fabrication capacity".
Europe managed to get off Russian Gas, but didn’t manage to get off Russian uranium industry. You correctly identified the chokepoints and Russia can’t be replaced fast there.
Kazakhstan is by far the largest uranium producer in the world and has a leg in Europe, west of the Ural river. The important thing is that there are more stable partners worldwide for uranium than Russia is for oil and gas.
There are deposits in Europe, the respective countries decided not to exploit them [0]. This could change depending on external pressures.
They bought all that stuff, but it was also a choice.
I wish Europe was more organized as a group and assertive. But as it stands I don't think Europe is capable of that for reasons beyond just "we bought a lot of stuff". Politically I'm just not sure they're capable.
I'm german and as you just read in the article, Rheinmentall is a german company.
And from whom do i depend on US defense? Against Russia? Who can barely make it in Ukraine? Middle east were everyone is fighting everyone and were Iran is very very pissed at the USA?
> Also funny how you give 2 examples of nuclear powers who attack countries with no nuclear deterrence.
Yes, very funny. When you're done laughing, would you mind reflecting on the fact that neither of those countries have lost their respective war of yet (despite fighting against a nuclear power, both of whom have threatened to use nukes in one way or another?)
I mean, everyone relies on everyone in a world economy, you need to come up with examples. You mean nuclear deterrence? The French are going to share their nuclear deterrence with the rest of the EU.
Yes, indeed. Although on paper UK also joins this venture, they depend on USA for their nuclear arsenal (subs).
On the long-term, EU might need more nuclear weapons for adequate deterrence, and also FR might not be so stable given alt-right over there. So any integration needs to be stable on paper.
No, the US has been losing its stance in the world since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, murdering a million people in cold blood on the basis of outright lies.
It has been downhill ever since then. The support for the Gaza genocide is just one in a long list of atrocities for which the American state is responsible, and for which the entire world is starting to hold America responsible.
The rest of the world has been watching, and knows this - even if Americans, in their bubble, do not.
Its the war crimes, crimes against humanity, and massive violations of human rights at scale which cause the world to lose face in the American system.
Plus, the way Americans treat their own people - nobody wants to live like an American, any more.
Until someone comes up with an antidote for the warrior narcissism which inflicts a huge portion of American society, the maw of the abyss remains wide open.
I’m not from the US and not trying to defend the US actions, but on Iraq and Gaza, much of Europe takes the same position and goes along with it (and even directly joined the wars and sent troops).
I find the online opinion on Europe / US relations interesting. Online you’d think Europe and US are about to split. But in real life, Europe is more dependent on the US than ever. In terms of energy (Russian fossil fuels basically replaced by US fossil fuels), defense, economy (European economy relatively smaller now than 20 yrs ago), and they just finished signing very one sided deals where they guarantee energy purchases and investment after the tariff war. I think there’s a disconnect between European commenters and European politicians.
> I’m not from the US and not trying to defend the US actions, but on Iraq and Gaza, much of Europe takes the same position and goes along with it (and even directly joined the wars and sent troops).
What?!
I'm not talking about the recent events when Europe not only didn't joint Trump's war but openly refused the use of its military bases. Even in the past when the so-called "coalition of the willing" was formed, Europe had the biggest protests in its history. There were not hundreds of thousands but millions people on streets.
So your picture of uniformity was already false 20 years ago, and now it's just crystal clear.
Not trying to be a cynic, but I think you’ve got a bit of a rosy view of what happened and what is happening.
Concerning past wars: yes there were enormous protests. Just like today, many people disagreed with what was happening. But the same was true in the US; many Americans also disagreed with the Iraq war. There was an entire Bush vs Kerry election on that theme. In the end though, there’s a difference between what normal citizens are saying, and what the country actually does. This applies to both the US and Europe. With Iraq, despite all these protests, the majority of European states actually joined the war, with a few standout exceptions like the neutral states and France/Germany. And then they joined the US in several more regime change operations over the following two decades (and with these somehow the IS didn’t even seem like the main cheerleader).
With Iran now, there’s what normal people say and what politicians say and do. I haven’t seen any of the major leaders actually condemn the war apart from Spain. Most tweets are along the lines if “we are watching with concern but we agree something had to be done”. Macron only piped up against it like a month in, and that seemed as much related to Trump insulting his wife as it was to the war itself.
EU is the third largest economy and has 450m people. If they genuinely wanted to do something about this, about their oil being cut off and all the rest of it, they would have.
On Gaza too. Despite the large protests, and there are a few small nations plus Spain being vocal about it, but what concrete actions has the EU and European nations taken on Gaza? And have you actually seen the UK and German government responses to the protests?
It's not exactly rosy as you say, but the leaders are increasingly open with Trump as to what they actually think (see Merz's latest comments) and he uses this as an excuse to realize what they planned a few years ago. There is zero chance that any Europen state starts bombing Iran.
OTOH, while refusing to do wrong is already something, there are limits to what they can actively start doing - and concrete consequences if they start doing something Trump doesn't like. He's highly unstable and can decide to take a decision that can be perceived as crazy, and harmful to the USA, but at the same time harmful to the ex-ally who decided to stand up to him. So the EU leaders basically do what they can to just wait the crazy guy out.
Indeed, we are discussing the propaganda wasteland of Western media, more than anything else.
American media are owned by the same people making profit from selling the bombs falling in the genocide - so, it won't freely and openly report European upset at America's war crimes so readily.
Today it's Iran, or maybe Iraq 2003. Or maybe those pharma factories in Sudan in the 90s. Or perhaps the Serbia bombing. Or maybe Iraq 1991. Or again Panama in 88. Or maybe Grenada. Or maybe Laos. Cambodia. Vietnam. Haiti. Japan. China. Phillipines. Cuba. etc.
It's always something. We are always losing our stance.
Opinion: We need to move our astronomical observation equipment off of Earth and onto other bodies, especially radio astronomy, which, unlike telescopes that operate in other wavelengths, is still affected by Earth's emissions in LEO/near-Earth space. We should put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon [0] to benefit from the thousands of kilometers of lunar material separating Earth's emissions from telescopes.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the only solution.
However, it has serious disadvantages. It will exclude the poorer from astronomical research, except within the limits enabled by whatever cooperation the richer will be willing to do with them.
For the richer, that will make astronomical research much more expensive. When even USA, who claims to be the richest country, cuts a lot of the scientific funding, this makes likely a great reduction in the research targets that could be accomplished, even if a Lunar array of telescopes and radiotelescopes and communication relays for them were approved.
While professionals might still be able to do some work, the amateurs will be able less and less to enjoy the sight of the distant Universe.
There are already many years since I have become unable to see the sky that I enjoyed looking at when young, because it cannot be seen from the city where I live, due to light pollution (and high buildings). To see it again, I would have to go somewhere up in the mountains, far from a city or village, but I have not succeeded to do this recently. Even there now you can hardly look at the sky without seeing satellites, and it will only become much worse.
Nowadays there are many children who have never seen even once the sky that our ancestors were seeing every night, so many passages from old texts that mention the sky are unintelligible for them.
> It will exclude the poorer from astronomical research, except within the limits enabled by whatever cooperation the richer will be willing to do with them.
Isn't it the case that most astronomical research uses source data from large telescopes and sky surveys? An example is the Rubin Science Platform [0] which makes available images and metadata from the Rubin Observatory along with compute and APIs?
I get what you're saying, but poor people want cheap internet/phone connectivity. They can't afford telescopes anyways.
And starlink (and the like) have more uses beyond good remote connectivity. They're a big reason why Ukraine didn't lose to Russia. They're also a potential avenue for people in oppressed nations to talk to the rest of the world (eg: Iran has a death penalty for starlink usage to counter this point).
> Our telescopes actually need the (or at least an) atmosphere to function.
What about Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, JWST, etc? As of my understanding, the only reason we haven't built radio and and other long-wave telescopes in space is because of their impractical size preventing them from being deployed in orbit.
> There are some classes of observatories, which you cannot build in space but which are still affected by satellites to some degree.
This shows that wavelengths between ~10cm and ~10m are largely unaffected by the atmosphere, so you wouldn't gain much from putting receivers of those wavelengths in space. Spitzer and JWST (IR), and Chandra (x-ray) operate in bands that are generally blocked by the atmosphere, and Hubble gets better images than a similarly sized earth-based telescope because of the atmospheric distortion (stars don't "twinkle" when you're in space), however there are still earth-based visible light telescopes because you can more easily build a massive one on earth than in space
Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes, we detect optical light emitted by high energy particle Cascades in the atmosphere to observe cosmic gamma radiation.
The particles need the atmosphere to interact, Cherenkov light is only emitted in an optical medium and because it's optical light we measure we are affected by satellites. Not as strongly as optical telescopes though, because the air showers last for only tens of nanoseconds.
What? The atmosphere gets in the way. Ever heard of an (amateur/)astronomer talking about 'good seeing'? That's when the atmosphere is hindering you less than usual.
The limiting factor of passive optical telescopes on earth is the atmosphere.
IMO, everyone that launches/operates a constellation should pay for launch of large telescope every 5-10 years (assuming science organizations can fund/build them).
Sure, there have already been some launched and predictably they are only adequate to look at the bright stuff we already knew about from the big telescopes.
A small telescope is just a small telescope even when you put it in space.
> . We should put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon [0] to benefit from the thousands of kilometers of lunar material separating Earth's emissions from telescopes.
Do you really think a starlink style installation won't be put in orbit of the moon before such a telescope could be funded?
Those rules won't last long once (IF) there are significant numbers of people on the moon. The rules are easy to agree to today (50 years ago) because nobody could do anything otherwise anyway. Once the rules are getting in the way of a significant number of people they will change.
I make no predictions how they will change, but the current rules are obviously unworkable if significant numbers of people live in space. I also make no predictions on if we will ever get significant numbers of people living in space - there are a lot of hard/expensive problems that may not be solvable.
Starlinks are already spewing out into supposedly protected radio bands on Earth, good look getting these rules respected on the Moon when they aren't here.
Computational photography has long been table stakes for astronomers. They just need to up their game on satellite rejection algorithms. Satellites look nothing like stars, and as such are pretty easy to remove with software. Pictures like this which leave them in are just there to make a point.
True. But that’s never the framing you hear from astronomers. It’s how the satellites are “ruining” the pictures, like this whole thread.
The SNR degradation isn’t even very much. Noise goes down by 1/sqrt(N) samples. In a stack like this might have 5-40 images depending on how they did it. Typically a satellite will only show up on one of those images for a given pixel. So by excluding that image from the stack that pixel’s noise would go up by a ratio of sqrt(N/(N-1)) which for 5-40 images is between 12% more noise and 1% more noise. Only the pixels with satellite tracks.
True there’s more noise if you remove the satellites. But it’s probably only a few percent noisier, and only in the places where the satellite flew. Add a few more images to the stack and accept that the world is changing.
So what? Astronomy doesn’t actually produce anything meaningful.
Hell, astronomers were telling us the sun orbited the earth for 99% of human history. Shoot forward to the present day and they can tell us… the universe started at some point somehow. Great job guys. Really earning those billions in grants.
> In my native Netherlands I'd guess to see that peaking at ~south at say 15-30 degrees, with some lower peaks at east/west combos.
Folks are doing some interesting exploration of the pros and cons of different alignments, e.g.:
> When roof area is limited, the question becomes: What layout lets you install the most space-efficient solar capacity within budget on the available area? In those scenarios, an east–west (E–W) layout can outperform a south-facing layout. The South layout may be “better positioned”, but the E-W allows the installation of more panels in the same area.
I installed a east/west facing set myself on our flat roof. Looking at dynamic power prices of the preceding year, multiplied by expected power output.
Even wrote a simple space optimizer for this one time. But messed up some measurements so had to change on the fly anyways. The old adagium still holds: measure once and curse twice.
I thought the thing to do these days is put them flat and as close together as practical. You lose a few points of efficiency but double the number of panels you can fit in a given area. And panels are so cheap that this trade-off makes perfect sense.
Seems to match my experience as well, I got a set of 12 south facing panels and a set of 12 split over east and west on my flat roof. The E/W start and end a bit before/after the south facing set.
Yeah, I guessed so. Using it as a home battery with incur a lot more cycles I suppose. Although if the battery is large enough so that a day of powering a home only drains the battery eg. 10%, how does that factor into the cycle count? Is that somewhere in the small print maybe?
> How is it decentralization
Producers of electricity being everywhere is more distributed than relatively centralized power generation stations. Regardless of who paid (part of) it
A bunch of square panels with a grid pattern to mount hold on, with the panels hanging on french cleats (with a locking system, #TODO) so the panels are easily removable so I can hang something like planters on the wall as well with the same french cleats.
No AI, a bit of computers to draw things out in CAD, but otherwise just manual building stuff.
https://imgur.com/a/2TIye34 not much to see yet: square panels with a lot of M10 holes and edges (also the edges of the holes...) sealed. I just got the holds, bolts etc the other day. I sanded the panels & primed them for paint last night.
The larger panel is going to be a volume with a bit of a hang. Panels are all tough 18mm outdoor rated 'betonplex' with phenol? resin or the surfaces.
My guess as a Dutch guy, not 100% familiar with our neighboring country's rules etc):
Yes, exporting to the grids. If a house has an old Ferraris meter, it will rotate backwards or a new, smart(er) meter, that has a separate counter for delivery back to the grid.
Getting yourself installed as president while knowing you are incompetent (I mean, look at all those bankrupt businesses, he should know) is nefarious in itself. His entourage is nefarious for supporting the incompetency for their own gain.
Competent enough to receive money, not competent enough to run a country well. But now we're getting into very subjective stuff, I'm sure his handlers are quite OK with what he's doing. It doesn't matter it all looks super suspicious, they are confident they won't face any consequences.
If you're incompetent maybe you don't know you're incompetent? I think probably a lot of people told him, but he's also very stubborn, so. He's been rocking that god fucking awful spray tan for decades now.
I mean, Christ, we have good spray tans, I know we do.
One of the few conspiracy theories I kinda believe is that Trump's 2016 presidential run was a grift and he expected to lose.
Everything since has just been an inability to admit he was in over his head, plus trying to get out of trouble for all the crimes he did. He (and Clinton) just underestimated how susceptible the US was to a demagogue. If you look at his face after the win was announced on election night, and after the first meeting with Obama for the transition, I think it shows plainly on his face.
There is definitely truth that Europe has relied on US defense for too long, but what the US got in return is hard to put into words and economic terms. We bought your tech, culture, defense and so much other stuff.
This rift won't close anytime soon
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