Side note, there’s been a few recent publications showing that dark energy may not be needed to explain what we are seeing.
1. Inhomogeneity backreaction (Moffat 2025)
Large-scale cosmic inhomogeneities such as voids and dense regions can create an effective expansion history that mimics evolving dark energy when averaged using standard homogeneous assumptions.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20912
2. Timescape cosmology (Wiltshire)
Because cosmic voids expand faster than dense regions and dominate volume at late times, observers may infer acceleration from redshift data even if the universe is not globally accelerating.
https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/dark-energy/...
3. Local giant void hypothesis
If the Milky Way resides inside a large underdense region, locally measured redshifts and distances can bias expansion measurements and partially explain apparent acceleration and Hubble tension.
https://www.livescience.com/space/cosmology/echoes-from-the-...
4. Void universe models (LTB cosmologies)
Placing the observer near the center of a large cosmic void can reproduce supernova redshift–distance relations without dark energy, though such models struggle with other cosmological constraints.
https://arxiv.org/abs/0807.1443
5. Structure formation and virialisation effects
The growth of cosmic structure and entropy production alters averaged expansion rates, potentially generating an apparent dark-energy-like signal without introducing a new energy component.
https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2024/09/aa50818-...
6. Redshift drift as a discriminator
Measuring how cosmological redshifts change over time can distinguish true cosmic acceleration from redshift effects caused by voids or inhomogeneous expansion.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0091
Prompt: Here is the front page from today: <...snip...> Your task is to predict, and craft, in HTML (single file, style-exact) the HN front page 10 years from now. Predict and see the future. Writ it into form!
update: I told Gemini we made it to the front page. Here is it's response:
LETS GOOOO!
The recursive loop is officially complete: The fake future front page is now on the real present front page. We have successfully created a temporal anomaly.
I hope the comments are confused about why they can't click the links to download the Neuralink drivers.
Enjoy the karma, time traveler! Just remember to warn them about the 2035 Office 365 price hikes while you're up there. ;)
See also depictions of vaguely European historical trappings in anime, especially as in Miyazaki’s works, a variety of shojo manga and anime since the 70s, and many isekai settings.
“Representations of Europe in Japanese Anime: An Overview of Case Studies and Theoretical Frameworks”. Mutual Images Journal, no. 8, June 2020, pp. 47-84, https://doi.org/10.32926/2020.8.ara.europ .
An especially interesting quote from the above:
> According to Frederik Schodt, Jaqueline Berndt, and Deborah Shamoon, the European settings, depicted in the 1970s shōjo series took the role of a remote idealised elsewhere with a strong exotic appeal, radically different from Japanese society and reality, where the recurrent conventions of the shōjo narratives were developed. Some of these themes, like the deconstruction of the feminine subject and the development of transgressive romantic stories (which contain incests, infidelities, idyllic and allusive sexual scenes or homosexual relationships), were hard to conceive in the Japanese society of that moment, which enabled the European setting with a range of creative possibilities due to the depiction of foreign cultures (Schodt, 2012 [1983]: 88-93; Berndt, 1996: 93-4, Shamoon, 2007, 2008). Such a use and depiction of Europe fits with what Pellitteri has coined as the “mimecultural” scenario of anime, a mode of representation present in those anime series that adopt contents, settings, and other visual elements from different cultural backgrounds to develop their original narratives and plots (2010: 396). [italics added for emphasis]
The concept of “mimecultral” aspects of anime and manga is not new to me, but that phrasing itself is, and it reminds me of Dawkins’ conception of memes.
I think it would be wise to listen to Nobel Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa of The Philippines, regarding unchecked social media.
"You and I, if we say a lie we are held responsible for it, so people can trust us. Well, Facebook made a system where the lies repeated so often that people can't tell."
"Both United Nations and Meta came to the same conclusion, which is that this platform Facebook actually enabled genocide that happened in Myanmar. Think about it as, when you say it a million times... it is not just the lie but also it is laced with fear, anger and hate. This is what was prioritized in the design and the distribution on Facebook. It keeps us scrolling, but in countries like Myanmar, in countries like Philippines, in countries where institutions are weak, you saw that online violence became real world violence."
"Fear, anger, hate, lies, salaciousness, this is the worst of human nature... and I think that's what Big Tech has been able to do through social media... the incentive structure is for the worst of who we are because you keep scrolling, and the longer you keep scrolling the more money the platform makes."
"Without a shared reality, without facts, how can you have a democracy that works?"
"According to investors, today's value of Nvidia's expected future profits over its lifetime equals the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced within a medium-sized country in a year."
Don't compare market cap with GDP, when you spell it out it's clear how nonsensical it is.
As Europeans look upon what is happening in the USA and think "that could not happen here..."
Please be aware that what happened in the USA was largely a product of Fox News (News Corp.)
While still in their nascent forms, the EU equivalents are Axel Springer [0] and Euronews [1]. If what happened in the USA is to be avoided in the EU, then these extremely ideological news publishers must be tarred and feathered as soon as possible. Avoiding the path of the "post-truth" USA [2] is the greatest task of our time.
Probably because unlike 25 years ago, US lawmakers and enforcers, realized a large chunk of their economic dominance is dependent on big-tech abusing their market position as gatekeepers, so they intentionally look away when they see how much of their GDP these companies bring in, not to mention aiding the US dragnet mass-surveillance capabilities being the icing on the cake.
What else are they gonna do to earn $? It's not like the world is lining up to buy their ultra reliable and high quality cars and planes.
Well if you know about Okinawa, then you should know the Japanese were conscripting middle school Ryukyuans who are not ethnically Japanese (Yamato) , as well as using this ethnic group as human body bags and a buffer state to slow the invasion into the Japanese mainland. Most of those civilian casualties were not treated as Japanese (Yamato) by the Japanese government and people, and were second class citizens, maybe not even as the darling colony they treated Taiwan as. If anything, the victims of Okinawa is a testament to the evils of Japan imperialism / colonialism during WWII more so than it does America. The imperial Japanese government kidnap the leaders of Okinawa, and forced Okinawans into assimilation. In years prior, Okinawa had become a puppet state and used to proxy trade from Japan, as there were trade embargoes between Japan and China. The Japanese didn’t care about the ethnic majority of Okinawa then, and still don’t care now (Okinawa is the most impoverished of Japan’s prefectures), but when it comes to painting America as evil, then yes, Okinawa is conveniently Japanese
It's painfully easy to have a clear intuitive picture of quantum physics. You just have to ditch one concept.
Universe is not made of little balls.
Particles ARE their wave functions. Nothing less, nothing more.
Sometimes those two wavevy objects interact as if two little balls bounced at one point, but that's only "accidental" similarity between the way they exchange the energy (and momentum) and the way macroscopic balls exchange the energy. Yes. It's not deterministic, what will be the parameters of that interaction. At what spot exactly will it seem to have happened, how much energy will be exchanged and how will it reshape and redirect the inital wavy objects. But thanks to our math we can predict likelyhood of everything that might happen.
Well, not exactly accidental because the way macroscopic balls bounce comes out of the exchange of energy by microscopic wavy objects bound tightly together. Same way that macroscopic magnetic interactions come from microscopic interactions of many thightly bound and oriented particles.
Wave functions never collapse into little balls, they just interact as if two balls bounced, and they get reshaped to be smaller and less fuzzy, but that's it. You can easily spread them back by interacting with them again in a different manner.
There's no such thing as a measurement. Measurement is just interaction with large rigidly bound chunk of matter which reshapes the measured particle because any interaction always reshapes.
There's really no reason to think that particles are little balls or matrial points or anything similar.
Initially people thought that because of photoelectric effect. That energy is transferred in quanta. But it's not hard to imagine this as purely fuzzy, wavy phenomenon where electrons are stuck around the nucleus in a sort of "harmonic" and they can't jump up to the place half-way to their next more energetic harmonic. Check out how orbitals look (and Chladni figures) if what I wrote seems unclear.
If you know any reason to think particles are little pointlike objects please let me known because I couldn't find any.
1. Inhomogeneity backreaction (Moffat 2025) Large-scale cosmic inhomogeneities such as voids and dense regions can create an effective expansion history that mimics evolving dark energy when averaged using standard homogeneous assumptions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.20912
2. Timescape cosmology (Wiltshire) Because cosmic voids expand faster than dense regions and dominate volume at late times, observers may infer acceleration from redshift data even if the universe is not globally accelerating. https://www.livescience.com/physics-mathematics/dark-energy/...
3. Local giant void hypothesis If the Milky Way resides inside a large underdense region, locally measured redshifts and distances can bias expansion measurements and partially explain apparent acceleration and Hubble tension. https://www.livescience.com/space/cosmology/echoes-from-the-...
4. Void universe models (LTB cosmologies) Placing the observer near the center of a large cosmic void can reproduce supernova redshift–distance relations without dark energy, though such models struggle with other cosmological constraints. https://arxiv.org/abs/0807.1443
5. Structure formation and virialisation effects The growth of cosmic structure and entropy production alters averaged expansion rates, potentially generating an apparent dark-energy-like signal without introducing a new energy component. https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2024/09/aa50818-...
6. Redshift drift as a discriminator Measuring how cosmological redshifts change over time can distinguish true cosmic acceleration from redshift effects caused by voids or inhomogeneous expansion. https://arxiv.org/abs/1010.0091