TFA leads off with: "Weather happens in the boundary layer, the atmosphere from ground level to a few thousand metres, but this can be difficult to study in detail: weather stations are too low, and aircraft are expensive."

So, a very targeted augment. To what extent are they firing off balloons simply to grab that boundary layer data rather than the 30km stuff they're great at? I don't know. I suspect that even if not a single balloon is replaced, getting a bunch of high resolution low altitude data upwind of population centers will make the local forecasts a lot better.

We're also now in the era where we're learning what less balloon data looks like, that was one of the cuts DOGE did to the NWS. So getting back SOME data in a more efficient way can only help.

This is plausible: at least from the "big impactors extinct things" perspective. As the sun orbits the galaxy, it also has a vertical oscillation about the galactic plane. So, a path like a horse on a carousel. We know this to be true, both from measurements and the way gravity works.

The galactic plane is a busy place, so close passes with other star systems will be more common. More bumps to things in the Oort cloud, more things zooming by earth, more big whacks that kill things.

The total amplitude of this effect? Uncertain. Chance of impact per pass? Wide error bars. Chances of geological stuff happening because plane crossing? Yeah, right. But the impact correlation is at least plausible.

Sorry, that's not my experience as a PhD scientist in academia. What people fail to realize: scientists love nothing more than proving each other wrong. That injects all the self-correcting motivation you need for the system to work. Perhaps at the cost of people being jerks, but ok.

More pressure to get results generally gets more results, yes.

And some fraction of those results won't be good ones, true.

BUT - the whole way science is set up is self correcting, so the bad results... just plain don't work. So you won't ever be harmed, by, say, getting the wrong diagnosis from a Theranos machine. Because it just doesn't work. Instead, people will have egg on their faces, get fired, waste money. (hey wait, wasn't Theranos a business side venture not academia? Surely that must make it immune to ... pressure?)

But: more research means more results overall, some fraction of which is good, so, more overall good work out there, more useful stuff for humanity.

Not mentioned elsewhere in this thread: the fact that grad students do much of the actual research work out there. They're motivated, learning, and make the whole process go (and then go on to be the next generation of scientists, both inside and outside of academia). Fewer students directly scales to less research output. Research output, in the exact modern sense of the phrase we're talking about, is why we're not still living in the 1940's. The Unabomber is sad about that. Why are so many slashdotters?

You turn them into static batteries that sit there and be backup power for a house. Even if they're real crap and only 50% SoH, that's more than enough capacity for sitting there providing a power reserve. Because it you rally want 100%, you buy two 50%'s and hardly notice the physical size difference, since you're not driving your house around.

Also the fact that so many ICE vehicles are several size too large SUVs and pickup trucks. That Expedition or Silverado weighs way more than my EV6, even though I'm lugging around a battery. People spouting this tire dust BS are probably not the ones driving Corollas or Civics.

Stuff falling in is really falling quite a long way. If its path doesn't intersect the event horizon, ie, it "misses" the black hole: it either smacks (really hard) into other stuff down there that's also not quite fallen in, or slingshots back out. The event horizon being comparatively small, a lot of stuff ends up either in a very hot accretion disk around the black hole, or being blown back out in jets or winds.

This is why black holes are the hearts of some of the most energetic astrophysical objects in the universe: powered by stuff almost falling in, and all that gravitational potential energy turning to kinetic energy turning to thermal energy.

The "new eyes" thing is why the membership rotates on a regular basis.

But now, if you were someone whose opinions might be valuable... why would you bother wasting any time contributing to the board, knowing the rug could get randomly pulled for no reason? So, no actually open "eyes" will end up on whatever might get recreated in its place. Wonder what might be the over/under on the number of Fox news talking heads on the new board?

However, the squadron of USN minesweepers stationed in the Gulf for this purpose were decommissioned shortly before the Special Military Operation started. Talk about good planning...

Maybe when you're sitting there on battery trying to do something?

Part of the interest in a lunar south pole location for the base is one could put the panels on a ridge which sees the sun the whole time. Of course, then they'd have to be rotating, more things to go wrong: but even just some spifft rotating ones would help a lot with the night-time problem.

Got to make sure to keep open the markets that mystery people in the administration have been scamming with insider trades.

heh. So the ATM will have to ask the age along with your PIN to comply. And, who is using the router, or smart plug, etc? These day's it's OS's all the way down to the turtles.

The Trump Random Tax generator, at this instant in time, says.... "25% tariff on all Koren products". By the time you read this it might be different. An EV, while certainly any EV specific taxes apply to it, gets at least the overall rate. Unless it's one of the products or companies to have suitably bribed our Dear Leader, in which case it would have an exemption. It would proably have to have an extra large bribe because EVs don't burn dinosaur juice, though, and those companies have paid a lot to keep their market share.

Then they'd have to admit their lies about who's actually paying for this tax.