The dys effectively means disorder of. Lexic reading and writing ability. It’s a disorder of reading.

In the same family you have some others. Dyscalcula is a disorder of maths ability. Dyspraxia is a disorder of motor control.

Science likes Latin based words. Because it’s a dead language, the meanings don’t change/drift. Most scientific language can be deconstructed this way.

The game changer will be swarm capable drones.

A few smart drones can be used to guide a swarm of cheaper drones on target. Additional sensor drones can feed back info to improve this.

Currently, defensive systems can cope with a drone attack. However, if you have 20 coming in from all directions, in perfect coordination, they will be overwhelmed. You don’t even need all of them to be armed, just a couple, protected by the rest.

Current drone usage is akin to the first tanks in WWI. The WWII equivalent will be terrifying.

More than I see very few of them anymore. I see more of them when I look in the junk mail, but even hotmail has gotten good a filtering out all the crap.

Does it however? I’m not up to speed on modern anti spam, but a huge number of spelling mistakes screams spam to me. I would be extremely surprised if it wasn’t the case. The best way to deliver spam is to make it indistinguishable from legit messages.

Also, the existence of spear fishing implies it’s a choice.

No evidence that we have. The spammers obviously think it’s worth doing however, and they are the ones that would have the statistics.

The initial fishing is a low effort, wide net. What follows actually takes the investment of man hours and/or other resources. They would rather get 1 catch they can take all the way, than 500 where 495 will figure it out later and bail.

The ISS has been pinholed by debris a few times. Likely paint. The shuttle was damaged by foam breaking off, amongst other events.

By comparison orbital velocity is around 7km/s, while a bullet is around 0.367km/s. Any mismatch will push debris up to bullet speeds easily.

As for relativistic speeds. C is 300,000km/s assuming you get up to 1/3C (barely relativistic) you are moving at 100,000km/s or 14,000x faster than the ISS moves, or 39000x faster than a bullet. A 10g rock would hit with 10kilotons of energy. About 2/3 the energy of the first atom. bombs.

It’s actually a legit concern with any (hypothetical) interstellar mission. Even hydrogen atoms will hit with significant force. Dust hits like nukes, and an asteroid is just game over.

The maxim used in a lot of sci-fi is an ablative armour plate. Often in the form of ice. Interstellar ships would likely aldo be needle like, to minimise their cross section. We could also use electric and/or magnetic fields to move smaller particles out of the way.

As for densities, I believe it’s a couple of hydrogen ions per m^3 . Dust is rarer, but still present. It’s only bigger rocks that are rare enough to just hope to avoid.

Entropy is the tendency of systems to move from order to disorder. It’s intrinsically tied to energy and its flow.

Basically, if I gave you a box with 1000 dice, all showing 6, bar 1 showing 5, it has an extremely low entropy. If you shake it, the entropy will tend to increase. You’ll likely get an event spread of values. This is a high entropy state. The chances of all 6s is tiny, and gets everything smaller as the number of options gets bigger.

Gas expanding into a space is another example. The entropy of the gas increases as it expands.

The rule of thumb is that entropy always increases in a closed system. If it seems to decrease, you’ve likely missed something.

Increasing entropy can also be harnessed for energy. An expanding gas can drive a piston upwards. We can even work out the amount of energy that can be extracted from a system, based on the entropy change involved.

That about covers the basics of entropy, without diving into the maths.

I fully agree that nuclear SHOULD have been part of the solution. I disagree that it should now be part of it. We have lost too much knowledge regarding nuclear power to lack of investment. We no longer have time to rebuild that to get it online. Hopefully it can become part of the solution eventually, but 10-20 years is now far too long to wait.

I agree with the mental bandwidth. I’m fine with he/him, she/her, they/them. I’ll also tend to default to appearance, though I will try and correct if asked to do so.

I’ve yet to find anyone who wasn’t also an arsehole who has an issue with this. That includes places where seeing an obvious male in a dress could equally be someone taking their first steps away from norm, or just a guy that likes wearing dresses. Also, neither was seen as unusual at the event.

I help with a social group. We jokingly refer to it as anarchism under a lazy iron fist.

Day to day decisions are made in a fairly ad-hoc manner, by those involved. If there is a disagreement that can’t be resolved, or if it will have large repercussions (e.g. changing the fabric of the building) it gets raised to the committee and chairman.

The chairman is the sort who is only there because no one better wanted the role. He has no interest in micromanaging, but will resolve issues to get them to go away.

It’s a remarkably effective system. Unfortunately it’s a bit unstable in large groups. Those who want the role are also those you REALLY don’t want with that power. No one has yet solved the issue however. How the f@#£ do you keep the troublemakers out, when they are also the ones most willing to work towards getting the role?

The other problem with anarchism is that the natural self policing systems break down by the Dunbar limit. Parasitical or cancerous behaviours tend to become crippling, forcing people to adopt other unofficial power structures.

Orbits are all about speed, not height. To deorbit, you need to reduce your speed at the highest part of your orbit. This will lower the lowest part. You jump off the back. You would need to jump FAR harder than your legs are capable of though.

Unfortunately, the sheer speed will kill you, without shielding. As you hit the air, you are going so fast, the air can’t get out of your way. You compress it ahead of you, that heats it up. It gets hot enough to melt most metals. The air will cook you, long before you get slow enough to use your parachute.

For comparison, terminal velocity (max speed you reach falling) is around 200km/h. Orbital velocity is 7km/s or around 25200km/h.

The glue gets weaker when it’s heated. They use the same film for oven meals as well. It comes off fine when you finished heating, but it’s a pain in the arse when cold.

You can still have an eidedic memory (as mentioned by Brenstar).

A photographic memory is just a perfect visual memory.

I tried training it once. It didn’t go well. It turns out I’m mostly aphantastic as well. I can still have fully visualised dreams however, which is always odd.

It’s mostly a non issue in my group. Our ages run from late teens to OAP. I often don’t even notice ages. I just talk to them as a person with a shared interest.

It does help that at least half of us are neurodiverse. Most awkwardness doesn’t even get noticed by either side. Enthusiasm covers a lot of sins!

I mostly judge people by skill level in the subject. If they are knowledgeable, I’m happy to pick their brain for info. It doesn’t matter if they are 20 years older or younger. Conversely, if they are new, I try and share the lessons and tricks I’ve picked up.

I’ve seen this more than a few times, as well as felt it myself. It’s a particular form of situational depression.

In short, the solution is to “find your tribe”.

Your problem is 2 fold.

• Humans are a social animal. We need a group to socialise with, to be stable and happy. The requirements vary, but it’s almost always non-zero. The lack of meaningful contact sends us into a downward spiral.

• 99% of people are boring to you. This is actually completely fine and reasonable. Unfortunately the 1% that aren’t boring to you tend to be hard to find. Even worse, weirder people tend to mask. They pretend to be normal and boring to fit in.

The goal, therefore, is to find what 1% you need and where they congregate, with their masks down. They are out there, you just need to find them. You do this by trying new hobbies and activities. Most won’t hit the mark, but some will resonate with you. It’s OK to try a lot of things before you find it.

For me, it was a makerspace. I actually ended up founding one, since there wasn’t one locally. I’ve seen a number of other people come along and discover there really is a group of weirdos that they fit into that aren’t boring. They, in turn, add their brand of weirdness to the group and make it better for all involved.

Without knowing more about you, I can’t point you in the right direction. I can say they are out there. You just need to find them.

Go find your tribe.

Edit to add:

You preferably want to find somewhere in person, not online. There is a lot of social feedback that our minds need, that gets lost with online communication. Online is better than nothing, but it’s a service station mac Donald’s compared to a Michelin star restaurant.

Nope.

It’s down to you to either read the room correctly or apologise for getting it wrong. You just don’t get judged too harshly for the first offence.

The difference between a joke and bullying is entirely down to the victim. They are allowed to be as sensitive as they want. “Its just a joke” tries to turn it back on them. The only reasonable response is along the lines of "I intended it as a joke, but obviously screwed up. I’m sorry. "

The only grey area are those who are happy to dish it out, but not receive. You should expect people to wind you up to the same level you wind them/others to.

I fully agree, there’s some stupid ones out there. But they are actually less common than you initially think.

I spend far too long going up and down the motorways. I get bored and start comparing the various problematic cars. Most lack the nice clean cut off line, or it’s set so high as to be invisible. I’ve rarely been dazzled by cars with a properly set beam dip. It’s either high beams, or messed up beam dip.