I can't believe that CraigOh guy isn't banned yet; every thread he makes is about asking people for oddly specific information about their lives. It's just a matter of time before he starts threads like "What are the last four digits of your Social Security Number?" or "What are the names of all your childhood best friends?"

Three Teslas in nine years? What the fuck!?

For the purpose of the satire, they left out the whole point of the books, which is something you'd know if your knowledge of LotR wasn't based entirely on cultural osmosis.

Trump and Harris agree on every policy you mentioned, as well as one you didn't: they both love genocide.

Over 200,000 Palestinians haven't survived the past year and you don't care. Never trust a narcissist to have anyone else's interest at heart.

You support genocide. You're a geek without a soul.

Remember: the lunar version of Starship was picked as NASA's Human Landing System in 2021, and Artemis III was supposed to have landed on the moon this year. Thanks, Musk!

$4.5 million, 20% down at signing.

Trump was best buddies with Jeffery Epstein andremovedd a 13-year-old girl at Epstein's New York apartment -- Trump being into kinky sex with consenting adults would be a significant improvement.

That's part of it. The other part is just the fact that SK is more industrially and economically developed -- the DPRK has been subjected to decades of unconscionable sanctions while SK has been an ally of the US and the "global community" for the same time period.

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/153325/the-korean-peninsula-at-night

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station took this photo of the Korean Peninsula showing the distribution of nighttime light. North Korea (extending beyond the top of this image) lies on the upper part of the peninsula and is almost devoid of nighttime lights. In contrast, South Korea lies on the lower part of the peninsula and exhibits night lights from many cities of different sizes.
[...]
Astronaut photograph ISS070-E-80670 was acquired on January 24, 2024, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 24 millimeters. It is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 70 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed.

While it's true the DPRK has much less urban development than SK (and half the population), you can see how this NASA photograph compares to the one in the OP; most "lol north korea no electricity" photographs greatly enhance the amount of light emitted by SK while dimming or even erasing light from the DPRK.

There are a few things the source paper claims that the article ignores: the Qianfan satellites have a much greater range of brightness (magnitude 4 at zenith, magnitude 8 near the horizon) and the design of the Qianfans potentially allows for future brightness mitigation, despite the article implying otherwise.

The primary source of the linked article: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.20432

Observed magnitudes of Qianfan spacecraft range from 4 when they are near zenith to 8 when low in the sky.

Since this is the first run of the Qianfan satellite constellation, the most appropriate comparison would be to Starlink's original satellites. As you can see below, the notion that China's satellites are "significantly brighter than those of Western systems" is a inaccurate.

A 2022 paper on Starlink Original, VisorSat and Post-VisorSat models: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.17268

The Original spacecrafts have a relatively flat phase function, so they are comparatively bright over a wide range of phase angle. [...] the characteristic magnitudes are: 4.7 (Original) [...]

A 2024 paper on Starlink newer Direct-to-Cell satellites: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.03092

The mean apparent magnitude of Starlink Mini Direct-To-Cell (DTC) satellites is 4.62 while the mean of magnitudes adjusted to a uniform distance of 1000 km is 5.50.

Clearly, even the newest Starlink satellites are well above the magnitude 7 limit astronomers recommend for satellite brightness.

On Hexbear, transphobes are executed on sight.

I'm cis. I love Fallout. I do not forsee regretting this post in, say, one or two years.

I was having a shitty day. Now I'm having a much better day. Thank you.

ACAB (Assigned Cake At Baking)

...this isn't a news article... the headline being serious editorializing... Not saying it's not true...

Harm reduction for me (Imperial Core citizen) but not for thee (2+ million Palestinian men, women and children).

Just openly admitting you support genocide. Disgusting. And don't even pretend you care about anyone represented in the bottom half of the image; if Democrats said murdering trans folks was necessary to beat Trump, you'd support that too.