I'm not being snotty. What is the fixed point from which they are measuring the speed? Is the object moving 1M mph relative to earth? The black hole at the center of Milky Way?
"The state can't give you free speech, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free" ― Utah Phillips
> I had originally intended to spend this trip operating FT8 and CW, but for some reason I found myself really enjoying FT4 (a mode I had never used before), so I spent most of my day camped out on 14080Kc, and then shifted to 10136 and 7074 in the evening.
As a non-radio enthusiast, I was following along until this sentence.
FT8, CW and FT4 are all types of modulations, or ways of imprinting information onto a radio signal. They offer different performance under different channel conditions.
14080Kc ( = 14080 KHz = 14.08 MHz), 10136 (=10.136 MHz) and 7074 (=7.074 MHz) are the frequencies of the radio channels being used.
The ionosphere (which is partly powered by the sun) tends to dissipate at night and not reflect higher frequencies as well. Thus one tends to use lower frequencies during the evening/night and higher frequencies during the day.
As an aside, an ionosonde is a radar which can measure and display the reflectivity of the ionosphere in real-time as function of things like height/range, radio frequency and direction. Not many people get to play with them, but they are a great tool to learn how the ionosphere works. You can sit in front of the display and watch in real-time as the ionosphere's response changes and it's height increases as night approaches and see how it varies from day to day. Beats reading about it in a text book and it's fascinating to watch.
Here's a link to an online ionosonde, displaying ionograms in real-time, updated every 5 minutes:
Haha, I saw this comment coming as I wrote this sentence. I tried to link to everything you might find relevant in the text.
The other comment under yours does a great job explaining things too.
As an additional note KC (Kilo Cycles) is the old way of writing Kilohertz. I just happen to prefer writing Kc for some reason even though I know it's no longer "correct"
I know it might be not be an obvious difference for people living in US these days, but there's in fact a massive difference between a megacorporation and elected government.
We vote for the parliament, which was only like a week ago. Each country also votes for their government, at times specified by their constitutions. Those governments then form the Commission and the Council.
One is a for-profit company known for anti-competitive and cut-throat techniques, as well as expert in tax dodging over the world.
The other is a governmental group formed by 27 rather different countries, all having a wide range of philosophies, cultures, corruption and mentalities.
I know which one I am more likely to get some level-headed decision which might help me.
The EU at the cutting edge of competition law, which is to say it is looking actively at the competitive landscape and saying "what are the problems?" then moving doctrine along to solve them. There's a lot to be said for the approach.
If the EU can be said to have an agenda, it is clear from the rules - their agenda is market fairness, and the ability of new entrants to successfully compete. The DMA is a key plank of that, but there will be others.
My perspective is that emphasizing that the US is a "republic" and not a "democracy" is not just to be pedantic (certainly they enjoy being pedantic) but to underline that the US system is not set up to be a majority rule. All the wolves can't vote to eat the sheep for dinner type of thing.
Personally, I get suspicious when elected leaders start talking about the powers they need to fight the "threats to our democracy".
No. There’s a term for what you’re describing. It’s called, “liberal democracy.”
The whole “We’re a republic not a democracy,” lie isn’t about that at all. It dates to only WWII. Specifically, it was coined by America First’s Boake Carter as quip in response to Roosevelt’s talk about “the defense of democracies” and “the arsenal of democracy” while arguing that it was perfectly fine for the nazis to run wild in Europe. This phrase continued on with John Birch Society, where it morphed into its sophomoric partisan quip and excuse for unpopular minority rule it is today.
When anyone utters this phrase today, it’s a tell that they literally have no idea what any of the words they say actually mean.
> When anyone utters this phrase today, it’s a tell that they literally have no idea what any of the words they say actually mean.
I'd argue it's a tell that they don't understand the history of the term or the perception of it held by those who disagree with them.
For most people who say it, I believe "we're a republic, not a democracy" means "we're not majority rule, there are structures in place to protect the interests of the minority". This is why they don't trot out the phrase every time the word "democracy" is used. It's a rebuttal to specific instances where people invoke "democracy" to mean "most people I know disagree with you, so your opinion doesn't matter".
Maybe I'm projecting my own views here, but I generally agree with what I believe people are trying to convey when they use the phrase. I don't use it myself, because I know it's not an effective way to communicate my position - not because it's technically not a true statement.
For what it's worth, there's also more nuance to the word "democracy" than you seem to be presenting here. At the time of the founding, it basically meant "rule by popular vote", and was pretty much a synonym for "mob rule". A large part of the US system was explicitly designed to work around the shortcomings of direct democracy.
> For what it's worth, there's also more nuance to the word "democracy" than you seem to be presenting here. At the time of the founding, it basically meant "rule by popular vote", and was pretty much a synonym for "mob rule". A large part of the US system was explicitly designed to work around the shortcomings of direct democracy.
But even this is a misunderstanding of the terms as even (mis)understood in 18th century. Representative (i.e. indirect) democracy doesn't inherently provide any defense of the minority. It's literally just a scaling solution. Nor does the constitution as drafted provide any protections to a minority. In fact, this lack of protections was one of the biggest arguments against ratification, and directly resulted in the Bill of Rights to address some of these issues. Even judicial review of unconstitutional laws didn't exist until 1803, and arguably is extra textual.
What's left is split a legislative and executive, a legislature that is a poor copy of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and an idiosyncratic points system that 248 years later has not only yielded three unpopular presidents, but elevates whims of a few voters in depopulated states. None of that protects a minority from an abusive majority, nor does it make an affirmative case about why the majority rule should not apply. Far from protecting the minority, electoral college actually enables minority rule. The same can be demonstrated with gerrymandering and legislative seats. A real concern for minority representation balanced with majority rule would address these obvious failures, but it doesn't.
Even the Wish.com House of Lords is joke as originally conceived, since it empowered state legislatures rather than the people of the state. It's a very concept that is an opposition to the very idea of a common nation, but not alien to the idea of a confederation. Now this may have made sense in a 18th century drawing room, but hasn't made sense over 160 years. They thought they were making a European Union, but that's not what developed.
The American constitution may have been great 250 years ago, but it's not by any modern standard today.
There are far more startups/products using that tagline of "used by developers all over the world"/"used by $x company" than our industry seems to want to admit.
