this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Today I Learned (TIL)

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Nearly missed means it hit?

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That’s a fun little language nuance. Narrowly or barely would be better, physically describing the distance of the miss is uncommon.

It was a near miss though, as in “close call”.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 years ago

The nuance is that "near miss" and "nearly miss" mean exact opposites.

"Near miss" means it almost hits, but actually misses.

"Nearly miss" means it almost misses, but it actually hits.

They just messed up the phrase.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago

It missed in a near fashion

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 years ago

Dude so the Mayans and all the Nostradamus hooplah could've coincidentally occurred with that solar storm?! Ya'll remember that right?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A Carrington event level impact will be quite a disaster, and it's only a matter of time. But if that's not bad enough for you, look up Miyake events. Seemingly far more devastating in what it could do to a technological society, and we don't know what the source is. Doesn't seem to be the Sun as it doesn't line up with other things. And we're within the time range for another one, given when the last few ones were based on evidence.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

new fear unlocked

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (2 children)

One of these hit Earth in the late 1800's, and it was wild. Telegraph lines were setting on fire and people would get shocked just from touching the telegraphs. And that was when we had just barely started to wrap the world in conductive wire, if this happened now we would be majorly screwed.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Would we? I remember reading Ted Koppel’s book Lights Out a few years ago, but I’d assume that utilities, grid operators, and governments have been making efforts to improve grid resilience

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

God bless the Eastern Interconnection lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Being proactive for risks that are small for the near term is expensive, and not very profitable for the shareholders.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

My power goes out every hurricane which is at least once a year.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Plot twist: it did hit in 2012. Any survivors had their consciousnesses uploaded to simulation.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

That would explain a lot.. things seemed normal until about 2013...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

uploaded by who

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 years ago

Dammit. We need a good solar flare to remind us what's real and what isn't