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• Post #4459611

  "So what explains the rage directed at Fauci, one of the most distinguished scientists of his generation? Some of it is the result of an era in which a major political party—in this case, the Republican Party—has become deranged and captive to conspiratorial thinking. It draws energy from the dark passions. Many people within the party, especially within its leadership and the right-wing ecosystem, delight in destroying institutions and individuals." https://www.theatlantic.com/ide...

• Post #4403197

  NASA is reporting that the Voyager 2 team has successfully deployed the “Big Bang” fix, a procedure that involved simultaneously turning off certain devices and substituting them with lower-power alternatives while maintaining spacecraft temperature. The savings should provide power to keep its 3 active instruments operating for at least an extra year with its dwindling power supply. No word on which devices were powered off and what they were substituted with. https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/...

• Post #4377401

  The picture that defines trump's standing on the world stage. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/08/04/trump-keeps-making-threats-washington-world-have-stopped-flinching/ #UsPol 1/n

• Post #4367855

  Thanks Gov. Spanberger. "There are still roughly four million people across the rest of the country who are prevented from voting due to felony convictions, according to The Sentencing Project. Voting rights experts say that such laws are racially discriminatory given that African Americans are disproportionately falsely convicted of crimes in the U.S." https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/virginia-gov-spanberger-has-restored-voting-rights-for-66000-people-with-past-felony-con...

• Post #4359417

  "So they created Threehalves, a machine standing roughly two meters tall with a humanoid torso grafted onto a four-legged locomotion base, an angular horned skull with illuminated eyes, and power tools where its hands should be. It is, quite literally, a centaur. It’s also the stuff of nocturnal horrors. So much so, that you might think it’s a joke (Satyress did not respond to a request for comment by publication)." 😮 https://www.fastcompany.com/91582982/satyress-threehalves-robot 1/...

• Post #4358420

  "Romanian naval forces carried out a controlled explosion to help redirect cooling water from the drought-hit Danube to the country’s last working nuclear ⁠reactor, while neighbouring Hungary ​said it may be able to eke out two more days of power from its only atomic plant. Both countries have been forced to shut down nuclear reactors cooled by the Danube for the first time, as record-low water levels deepen fears of an energy crisis across the region." https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

• Post #4355962

  The "hummingbird" image of Nunatak Zaterjavshijsja, a mountaintop in East Antarctica. Taken by radar instruments aboard the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite, which can look below the surface. "As the moving glacier passes the obstruction, the mountain’s topography causes stresses in the ice, heavily fracturing the surrounding surfaces with deep cracks, called crevasses, which show as sharp green lines in the image." https://www.nasa.gov/missions/nisar/u...

• Post #4336842

  Will Bunch: "The stench of death has already become unbearable. The MAGA movement thrives on a brand of white supremacy that pumps up its adherents by dehumanizing everyone else. And when people are stripped of their humanity, the Ten Commandments seem to no longer apply to their tormentors. It’s hard to reach Trump’s promised goal of 1 million deportations every year unless the deportees are just a number — not a mom, or a dad, or a cherished neighbor." https://www.inquirer.com/opin...

• Post #4335668

  Dumpster fire with the clueless HHS Sec. RFK Jr. this morning. #UsPol 1/n

• Post #4302571

  The DOJ has dismissed the Reflecting Pool vandalism case against former Olympian David Hearn, saying that damage to the pool was "the result of botched installation and not vandalism." Will there be consequences for this out-of-control regime that threatens people with made-up charges and attempts to ruin their lives? Of course not. But let's make sure the electorate is aware of the hideous and destructive acts of this regime. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/us/politics/davi...

• Post #4286929

  The future of AI is here. AI + low-skill-workers-and-managers = slop + garbage AI + MAGA = ? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89n0xykw2go #UsPol 1/n

• Post #4278636

  Instead of weights and multiplications, this approach uses table look-ups in neural networks, which is much faster and uses lot less energy (~1,000x improvement). Works in specialized domains so far. How far can it go? https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-energy-weightless-neural-networks?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub #AI 1/n

• Post #4258428

  Happy Birthday to Marie Tharp (July 30, 1920 – August 23, 2006), American geologist and oceanographic cartographer. An extraordinary woman, whose pioneering work was done under the shadows of men - her name did not appear on any of the major papers on plate tectonics that her collaborator Heezen and others published between 1959 and 1963. Check out the thread below for a glimpse into her life and work. https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/112876640022072269 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Tharp #...

• Post #4223462

  xkcd #3278 by Randall Munroe. Title: Vera Rubin Observatory. Title text: 'Spurious signals from the kitchen' is harder for an optical telescope than a radio one, but with enough determination and creativity, I believe it's possible. See if you can identify some of the allusions and puns in the bingo card of things the Vera Rubin Observatory might discover. https://xkcd.com/3278/ https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3278:_Vera_Rubin_Observatory 1/n

• Post #4214105

  A field of polygons as seen by the NASA Mars Curiosity rover. Aka honeycomb textures and polygonal fractures, each one is about 4 to 8 cm across. "A variety of processes can contribute to the honeycomb textures, including repeated, perhaps seasonal, wet-dry conditions, cycles of warm and cold temperatures or compression that squeezed water out of the sediment when the surface was buried" https://www.nasa.gov/missions/mars-science-laboratory/curiosity-rover/nasas-curiosity-mars-rover...

• Post #4200435

  "It’s easy to assume that people who mistrust vaccines are undereducated, and therefore, the solution is to provide better info about science and vaccines. While science-driven messaging has to be truthful and faithful to the complex reality of science, vaccine-skeptic stories don't. Vaccine hesitancy is fueled by a range of issues, including misinformation, the desire for social belonging and deeply held religious beliefs. (And politics)." https://theconversation.com/how-vaccin...

• Post #4184159

  An Airbus A350-1000ULR flew 23,076 km from Melbourne, Australia to Tolouse, France in a 24-hour test flight. With the Airbus A350-1000ULR, Qantas will offer non-stop service from Australia to Europe and U.S. next year. ULR stands for "ultra long distance", a feat made possible by an additional 20,000-litre rear centre fuel tank fitted to Airbus's A350-1000 model. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/airbus-completes-record-24-hour-174404170.html 1/n

• Post #4182633

  Flight 13 Starship had notable white streaks across the heat shield, cracked tiles and broken edges, suggesting hot gas may have penetrated these boundaries. Laborious inspections and refurbishments are obstacles to rapid reuse. SpaceX company has made substantial investments in the tile technology which originates from the Space Shuttle era, but experts say that fundamental new research is needed. Perhaps, non rapid reuse is a good thing for Earth? 🤔 https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/07/d...

• Post #4178818

  About the direct imaging of Betelgeuse B, the companion star of Betelgeuse - The binary companion was long suspected to be the cause of the ~6 year variation in Betelgeuse's brightness. Betelgeuse B is ~250x less bright than the parent star; estimated mass is 1x-3x that of the Sun; the angular separation is just 0.000014°. It was predicted to be at max. elongation in its orbit on 2024 December 6, when observations were made, without a coronagraph. 🤩 https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2611...

• Post #4178627

  Note that the Katalyst Space LINK robotic servicing spacecraft will use three Hall-effect ion thrusters, powered by 60 about 60 kg of xenon gas, to slowly raise the orbit of the NASA Swift observatory over a period of several months. A Hall-effect ion thruster works by ionizing and accelerating gases like Xenon using an electric field, thereby producing a slow steady thrust for an extended period of time. It effectively converts solar energy into thrust. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/swift/...

• Post #4150617

  "The govt's sole grand jury witness in a case against a former Olympic canoeist accused of tampering with the Reflecting Pool testified that the area was already damaged and would have required repairs regardless, lawyers said in a court filing Monday. The witness testimony also raised questions about whether the grand jury was properly instructed about the core elements of the alleged crime." https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/reflecting-pool-case-witness-conced...

• Post #4141871

  Just another trump vanity project at tax-payer cost. "The govt spent hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase equipment needed to train pilots to fly the 747-8 plane so quickly, on top of the approx $400 million cost of the upgrades that the administration has publicly acknowledged. The Pentagon has tried to mask the total price tag — including from Congress — by taking the funds from a classified budget for nuclear modernization." https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/us/politics/tr...

• Post #4141780

  Tesla Cybertruck is the new Edsel. Only 7,133 registered in the US this year through May. Projected annual sales at launch was 250,000 per year. :eyeroll: https://www.ttnews.com/articles/teslas-cybertruck-could-be-big-flop-ford-edsel 1/n

• Post #4139690

  Fires, smoke, heat dome, a cat 5 hurricane in the east Pacific - we it all covered this week in north America. 🙁 Stay safe. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:24hrs;@-106.0,39.8,4.0z https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/ #ClimateChange #Climate 1/n

• Post #4125453

  Here are 2 images of a crescent Earth and Moon taken by one of the twin NASA ESCAPADE spacecraft on July 3. The 2nd image was taken in infrared, where Earth glows due to heat absorbed by the oceans, land and atmosphere. The night side of the Moon remains cold. Distance to Earth: 584,600 km To Moon: 186,100 km The ESCAPADE spacecraft are currently in a “loiter” orbit around Lagrange point L2. In Nov, the spacecraft will fly by Earth to slingshot their way to Mars. https://science.nasa.gov/ima...

• Post #4123686

  Will Bunch: "I elected to write about this, because it is alarming how numb the U.S. body politic has become to violence, especially the kind perpetrated by our warrior cops, in the years since the last echoes of the Floyd protests faded out." https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/corey-ruiz-police-killing-madison-20260726.html https://bsky.app/profile/willbunch.bsky.social/post/3mrkyzzgswc24 #UsPol 1/n

• Post #4119753

  The NASA DSN site in Madrid, Spain remains offline as wildfires have threatened the site and its equipment over the past few days. Personnel have been evacuated. It appears that there has been "no significant structural damage observed to antennas or buildings." 🤞 1/n

• Post #4119349

  The MAGA spirit was on display today by the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz. - Blame, deflect, gaslight, intimidate - There is no moral compass - There is no relationship with the Truth - Make contradictory statements to impress MAGA world #UsPol 1/n

• Post #4111777

  David French: "But what if you violate the Golden Rule? Is there a consequence for failing to love thy neighbor as thyself? At this moment in American history it seems as if a substantial portion of America’s ruling class is putting all its chips on the answer being no, rules are for suckers. Nolan's retelling of “The Odyssey” is an admonition: Moral transgressions always carry a consequence." #UsPol https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/opinion/odyssey-christopher-nolan-greek-go...

• Post #4104395

  Who's worse when dealing with women in the press? Who's more pathetic? More insecure? More crass? More clueless? More inhuman? #UsPol 1/n