The Vatican Observatory has been around for almost as long as that, "now" is a pretty relative term.

Keep two things in mind. 1) Galileo (not killed, btw) was a contemporary of Machiavelli, in the days when politics and the church were totally intertwined. He also had made fun of the cardinal who later became pope in his books. 2) Lots happens in 2000 years of any institution, for good or ill. Things not only are seldom black and white at any given instant, but give people that long and they'll flip back and forth between the two repeatedly. So, judging the current state of things by past conditions is a fool's errand.

Sure. The Vatican Observatory and people who run it are directly in that space. One of the oldest astronomical institutes out there.

If you want to hear some thoughtful words about the intersection of faith and science, go watch talks or interviews by the last two directors, Br. Guy Consolmagno or Fr. George Coyne. You might not agree with their take on the "faith" side of things, but even noted anti-religion polemicist Richard Dawkins had a great conversation with Fr. Coyne (easy to find on youtube). We could all learn a thing or three from how they approach the interview, even if you don't care about the topic one way or the other.

Not quite. If the university hires a professor to lead that research who's not a citizen, it's an H1-B. No university can afford to pay $100,000 more as part of the hiring process. So, if the best research is being done by someone with the wrong passport, they're now not going to be doing it in the US. Is that really what we want as a country?

Especially stupid move considering that LIGO needs both antennae to function at all: it works because two waves are seen in the two detectors at about the same time. Otherwise, hard to tell what's noise. So, that move would most definitely waste a lot of money rather than save it.

"They take much better photos but since there's no option for a cloud backup even if manually triggered, I'm left with finding a local solution that is always going to be more cumbersome."

Wifi SD cards exist and will let you transfer photos from camera to computer.

Tell me one thing you do now that you couldn't do on a 32-bit system.

The Apollo moon lander only had 8-12 bit memory.

If you need a 64-bit system to do what we did on far less in the 70s, well, that's a skill issue.

Sugar is addictive too.

Oh really? I can quit any time I want, I just choose not to!

Because the lifetime earning potential, even after paying for that devalued degree, is still much higher than can be achieved without a college degree

While this is true, it's also true that if one subtracts the cost of education from lifetime earnings and amortizes that over the time spent getting an education, unpaid overtime, keeping current in one's career field, etc... the average hourly pay is worse than that of a truck driver.

Yes, you will make more, but you'll give more of your life to your employer and enjoy less of your life.

"Preventing police from having lethal force available isn't a real alternative"

Yes it is and you'd better re-read our constitution to show where it in fact is proscribed as a remedy - that removal of one's life without DUE PROCESS is a violation of the constitution.

So disarm the fuckers until they can show they're worthy enough to hold a gun.

JUNO's 100's of $M, not $B. DUNE's the multi-$B one, which is in the US, and being a large project in the US, is behind schedule and over budget (full disclosure: I work on that one). It's also not just China working on JUNO, but much of the rest of the world too. Except for the US, which won't fund participation in projects in China anymore.

But my main point: science works in spite of the repressive regimes in charge there (and now here). Some talking head can say wonderful things, but scientists have to actually prove that it works to other scientists. Xi can make a billion people study his speeches, and Trump can spout out a torrent of inanity that gets to scroll on Fox News chirons all day. While big chunks of the world just suck this up and grin, scientific claims get real scrutiny. JUNO's the Real Deal, it's a well done project that will teach us things, and fairly quickly.

Andrew Ferguson is probably sitting in the Epstein files.

"The issue is that gmail ONLY filters republican political spam"

No it doesn't, I have it filter out ALL political spam.

"Anyone who can't see the blatant hypocrisy is either ignorant, an idiot or is duplicitous."

No, you're just fucking stupid.

As a chronic imgur user from day one, yes imgur will transcode certain formats straight to webp.

"Why the fuck would mileage matter much for the calculations?"

Emitted particulate caused by vehicle degradation over time, more specifically tires, bushings, hoses and wiring, etc.

I drive like a full fucking bat out of hell on some of the hardest mountain desert terrain out there, often with a full load of said mountain both inside and attached to my vehicle (trailer.) I do not go through tires nearly as fast as an EV.

Oh, and most EV drivers do drive like idiots. Bolts, Teslas, i-drives, etc. Almost all of them appear clueless as to even the location of their turn signals.