Centrist, progressive, radical optimist. Geophysicist, R&D, Planetary Scientist and general nerd in Winnipeg, Canada.

troyunrau.ca (personal)

lithogen.ca (business)

  • 45 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • The tops of the clouds on the night side of Venus are about -45°C. So it’s not actually glowing like the image implies. But in infrared, you can reprocess the colours to make a delightful image like the above.

    Well, I know you’re implying the greenhouse gases will kill us all. And that might be true, but probably not in ten years.



  • Canadian observer. Two things, and I think they’re related effects.

    Harris is a minority and a woman. The Democrats were convinced they were the party that minorities would automatically vote for. But what they failed to realize was that those same minorities are misogynistic as hell. Like, have you ever been to a Baptist wedding? If you ask them what the role of a woman is…

    The US is also the only first world country where the birthrate is above replacement. But if you look at who are having children, you’ll find that it skews conservative. And they’re passing those values along.






  • Unpopular opinion (largely discredited in anthropology circles): cold weather encourages resourceful behaviour and improves human cooperation. In climates where you can survive winter outdoors, homelessness is not as detrimental to continued existence. Three walls and no roof is fine in a slum in Florida, but harder to pull off in Minneapolis.

    This societal coordination which is required to survive winter leads to more orderly and more socialist civilizations. Because hairless apes have no business being in that climate. So it is human ingenuity that is selected for – and that includes development of systems of cooperation.

    If I extrapolate, our space faring descendants will face much bigger hurdles, but ideally will develop even better systems to deal with it.

    Bonus picture. Me doing arctic exploration.






  • Kind of. My own business will probably needs to hire a tech sometime in the next six months. Ideally someone technically inclined with a steady hand (who can be trained to solder connectors onto cables, etc.)

    Oh, the arctic exploration stuff? My old employer is Aurora Geoscience – they have a careers page. There are others like them, depending on your citizenship and location. Many of these companies will hire labourers and semi-skilled technicians who want the lifestyle. You won’t get paid a lot – but it’s kind of like the military experience without the guns and you come out knowing how to do a lot of shit. A good life experience. :)



  • At the time, arctic mineral exploration. However I blew out my knee and started a business with lower personal risk (equipment targeting the same market) ;)

    Free photo – me doing science in the arctic in winter (February, so the sun is up) with curious caribou checking it out


  • Counterpoint: Sometimes you can kickstart a community that you want to see just by consistently posting content. !science_memes@mander.xyz is my favourite example – it was essentially one person who created that entire community (and it’s since been diversifying somewhat – at least there’s traction in the comments).

    But to reinforce your point: I did !spacemusic@lemmy.ca and tried to do the same thing, but it sort of petered out. But it’s way way more niche.

    Rome wasn’t built in a day. Just engage with the content you like and build some places for content you’d like to see.


  • Excerpt from Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood:

    “This is the latest,” said Crake.

    What they were looking at was a large bulblike object that seemed to be covered with stippled whitish-yellow skin. Out of it came twenty thick fleshy tubes, and at the end of each tube another bulb was growing.

    “What the hell is it?” said Jimmy.

    “Those are chickens,” said Crake. "Chicken parts. Just the breasts, on this one. They’ve got ones that specialize in drumsticks too, twelve to a growth unit.

    “But there aren’t any heads…”

    “That’s the head in the middle,” said the woman. “There’s a mouth opening at the top, they dump nutrients in there. No eyes or beak or anything, they don’t need those.”


  • Troy@lemmy.catoComic Strips@lemmy.worldAirplane seatbelts
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    6 days ago

    Almost certainly true of ocean landings. But I’ve spent a lot of time in bush planes (no crashes, knock on wood). I’ve had colleagues survive crashes where others have died. Perhaps it is sample bias, or something particularly about remote crashes.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Air_Flight_6560 – two of the survivors were in the back, both working for our company. After the crash: one never returned, one just quiet quit over the next year or two.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/yellowknife-plane-crash-kills-2-people-1.987369 – this plane crashed into our office building, killing the pilots, but the passengers all survived. I wasn’t there, but coworkers would often describe the experience inside the building.

    It happens often enough that I have two examples where I’m only one degree of separation.

    I had two colleagues survive a helicopter crash into a lake at full speed (calm day, no waves, pilot lost track of where the surface was) – one of my coworked was ejected out the front window of the helicopter (seatbelt was on). Didn’t even warrant a news story. But everyone survived this one, which may be a data point in your favour.

    I don’t have an actual source for stats. Got anything?