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

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Nearly missed means it hit?

[–] [email protected] 32 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] 36 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] 26 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] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah but the power going out is what is supposed to happen. Its a good thing. It means the fault was cleared and the area made safe. The issue with one of these events is were not currently protecting against it in a lot of places. So real bad things have the potential of happening WITHOUT the power going out. No breakers tripping (or not tripping fast enough) means more equipment damage. It currently takes over a year to build a HV transformer, and that's with power. What happens when 500 all explode at the same time (cause the power didn't go out fast enough) and we need to replace them all at once? Without power?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah but the power going out is what is supposed to happen. Its a good thing. It means the fault was cleared and the area made safe.

No, it means a tree fell on a power line.

[–] [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] 13 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] 8 points 2 years ago

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