In other news...

[Duke Bushido]

4 hours ago, Starlord said:

In a hundred years it will become a giant dystopian rollerball arena.

 

Not gonna lie:  this would make me _so much happier_ than just replacing it would.

 

 

 

[Pariah]

"Leave no trace."

 

Local climbers take credit for dismantling curious Utah monolith

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

This is why we can't have nice things.

 

[Cygnia]

Now the Romanian monolith has disappeared, just like the mysterious Utah monolith

[Cancer]

And then there's the others no one spotted while they were up.

[dmjalund]

Is there even a picture of the Romanian monolIth?

[Cygnia]

5 minutes ago, dmjalund said:

Is there even a picture of the Romanian monolIth?

[Badger]

9 hours ago, Cygnia said:

Now the Romanian monolith has disappeared, just like the mysterious Utah monolith

Let us be honest, there is only one of them, and it is teleporting itself.🤯

[Cancer]

*sigh* When testing an array of phase-coupled devices, you have to test each element in the array individually.  Is this really that difficult to understand?

[Old Man]

Should this be in the Cancer Quit Destroying The Universe thread?

[wcw43921]

The Monolith May Be Closer Than We Think

[Starlord]

29 minutes ago, wcw43921 said:

The Monolith May Be Closer Than We Think

 

Heh, the comments were funnier than the cartoon. 

[Cancer]

You guys could work out where they all are supposed to be by taking the geodetic coordinates of the ones in Utah, Romania, and above Lake Vostok, doing the coordinate system rotation, and then working out what order of spherical harmonic is needed to get nodal points placed like that, and then assume in the final deployment the monolith array will have one element at each node point in that spherical harmonic.  I mean, spherical harmonics are the way to correctly space the resonator antennas so you get nice uniform coverage of the hyperspatial phase adjustment field, so half the world doesn't get temporal-spatial whiplash when we activate the FTL drive to get us the hell out of here before the blast wave arrives from the black hole-magnetar merger developing in the Hyades.

 

EDIT: Wait, do you guys know about the one over Lake Vostok yet?  I forget the exact sequence how this plays out.

[Cancer]

Ground & drone video of the Arecibo radio telescope collapse

 

There's some historical pre-collapse footage there as well, which includes someone walking around in the support structure, which gives you a scale for the structure that you didn't have in the earlier footage.

[tkdguy]

16 minutes ago, Cancer said:

Ground & drone video of the Arecibo radio telescope collapse

 

At least we can use the footage in physics and engineering classes.

 

Edit: I meant to put this as a different post, but my replies were merged.

 

Four dead in Bristol explosion

[Bazza]

 

[dmjalund]

I'll still watch Dune in cinemas if I can

[pinecone]

4 hours ago, wcw43921 said:

The Monolith May Be Closer Than We Think

The Monolith is in da house!!!!!

[Badger]

16 hours ago, Cancer said:

*sigh* When testing an array of phase-coupled devices, you have to test each element in the array individually.  Is this really that difficult to understand?

Why do you want ruin our fun?🥺

[Michael Hopcroft]

19 hours ago, dmjalund said:

I'll still watch Dune in cinemas if I can

Good luck finding one. One of the biggest multiplexes in the Portland area is facing eviction after being shuttered for nearly nine months.

 

EDIT: Oops, the story is stuck behind a paywall. Sorry.

[Ternaugh]

3 minutes ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

Good luck finding one. One of the biggest multiplexes in the Portland area is facing eviction after being shuttered for nearly nine months.

 

EDIT: Oops, the story is stuck behind a paywall. Sorry.

 

Regal briefly opened back up in our area, but then all of their theaters worldwide closed down "until 2021". Many of their multiplexes here are located in casinos, and I wonder if casino management is making some arrangement with them so that the space doesn't go empty permanently.

[unclevlad]

On 12/1/2020 at 1:10 PM, Cancer said:

Rust ... the next scientific programming language?

 

Interesting.  I don't do that much number crunching any more, but one never knows.

Besides, it'll be something do to over the long winter quarantine.

[unclevlad]

20 hours ago, dmjalund said:

I'll still watch Dune in cinemas if I can

 

I'm afraid that will be a very, very big "if."  I doubt theaters will be able to reopen in most areas before, say, July.  

The mall evicting the cineplex...what else can they do?  But it's a foreshadow, too;  how many malls and shopping centers are going to collapse because they're going to lose so many tenants, especially in combination with their general downward trajectory anyway?

[Michael Hopcroft]

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

 

I'm afraid that will be a very, very big "if."  I doubt theaters will be able to reopen in most areas before, say, July.  

The mall evicting the cineplex...what else can they do?  But it's a foreshadow, too;  how many malls and shopping centers are going to collapse because they're going to lose so many tenants, especially in combination with their general downward trajectory anyway?

Meanwhile, the massive and obviously struggling AMC chain is furious with Time-Warner, claiming they are promoting their streaming service at their expense. Warner's 2021 slate does not look all that impressive to me (I can do without another Dune remake), but theaters will be in a lot of trouble if the other studios follow suit.

 

In the very old days, many theaters were owned by the studios. When you wanted to see a Fox movie, for example, you went to a Fox-owned theater. There was no middleman. Antitrust regulators put a stop to that, but that line of thinking appears to be making a comeback, especially with Paramount's parent company starting its own streaming service. So with Disney, Viacom, Paramount, and Time-Warner all having services, where do theaters fit in? For that matter, what about Netflix?

 

These sea changes might well be very good for studio and very bad for everyone else in the movie business. Will actors and directors still be able to collect portions of the gross if there's no reliable way to measure the gross?

1 hour ago, unclevlad said:

 

I'm afraid that will be a very, very big "if."  I doubt theaters will be able to reopen in most areas before, say, July.  

The mall evicting the cineplex...what else can they do?  But it's a foreshadow, too;  how many malls and shopping centers are going to collapse because they're going to lose so many tenants, especially in combination with their general downward trajectory anyway?

Lloyd Center in Portland, one of the oldest malls on the West Coast, was already struggling before the pandemic hit. Now their largest remaining tenant, Macy's, is pulling out. The owners attempted to convert much of it into office space, but that is becoming significantly less desirable. macy's has already lost its store space downtown, which has been converted to a hotel with retail on the ground floor. (Of course, upscale hotels aren't doing well either).

[Cancer]

Northgate Mall in Seattle ... the oldest(?) purpose-built indoor mall in the country (and a 40-minute walk from my house) ... closed nearly everything and started demolitions in the autumn of last year, before the pandemic started.  A few peripheral units of it remain in operation, but the main mall is being torn down.  Most of the space will be taken up as the administrative and training center for the new NHL team, Seattle Kraken.

 

The old movie theater that was part of Northgate was free-standing but it's been gone for rather more than a decade, turned into a restaurant and parking.  OTOH a massive "modern" movie complex (a Regal complex) was put up across the street to the south of the mall, and it was doing well until the pandemic hit.