George Budd @Gbudd@qoto.org

This is the surface of a comet! Dust is swirling around the surface of Comet 67/P -- captured in 2016 by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, processing by Jacint Roger Perez.

Still one of the most remarkable scenes in space exploration.

#space #science #astronomy #ESA

Every turtle should be provided with a skateboard.

i uh spend a lot of time thinking about whether various surprising software design choices are

a) intrinsic to the problem domain ("it turns out it DOES make sense!”)
b) made sense historically ("this made sense in 1992, but it didn't age well”)
c) just a typo/mistake (the "Referer" header)
d) related to budget/time constraints (“well, prototyping with shell scripts is fast!”)
e) cultural/organizational (“well, Google is the main funder for this project, and…”)
f) something else

#Oppenheimer feared nuclear annihilation – and only a chance pause by a Soviet submarine officer kept it from happening in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, as it gave him time to rethink before firing his nuclear torpedo/.

“World War III was very likely averted as a result of a brief delay in time caused by a sailor who happened to be stuck in the right place at the right time..."

https://theconversation.com/oppenheimer-feared-nuclear-annihilation-and-only-a-chance-pause-by-a-soviet-submariner-kept-it-from-happening-in-1962-223148

#ColdWar #WorldWarII #WWII #histodons #history

devops is a lie 😂

@mattblaze @SteveBellovin It's "the Search for Safety - A History of Railroad Signals and the People Who Made Them"

by the Union Switch & Signal Division, American Standard Inc. 1981

No ISBN number.

@GustavinoBevilacqua @jamigibbs I finally finished it! The last coat of paint is still drying, but I think it turned out pretty well for a first attempt.

#woodworking

Don’t fuck with moon dust. No seriously, do not fuck with moon dust.

Absent any moisture or atmosphere, millennia of asteroid impacts have turned lunar regolith (soil) into a fine powder of razor sharp, glass-like particles. What’s more, the solar wind imparts an electric charge on the dust, causing it to cling to any and every surface it touches through static electricity. On earth, sand tends to get smoother over time as wind and water tumble the grains about, eroding their sharpness. Not so on the moon – lunar dust is sharp and deadly. This is Not A Good Time if you’re an explorer looking to visit our celestial neighbor.

During Apollo, the astronauts faced a plethora of unexpected issues caused by dust. It clung to spacesuits and darkened them enough that exposure to sunlight overheated the life support systems. Dust got in suit joints and on suit visors, damaging them. It ate away layers of boot lining. It covered cameras. Upon returning to the cabin, astronauts attempting to brush it off damaged their suit fabric and sent the dust airborne, where it remained suspended in the air due to low gravity.

Inhaling moon dust causes mucus membranes to swell; every Apollo astronaut who stepped foot on the moon reported symptoms of “Lunar Hay Fever.” Sneezing, congestion, and a “smell of burnt gunpowder” took days to subside. Later Apollo missions even sent a special dust brush with the team to help clean each other and equipment. We don’t know exactly how dangerous the stuff is, but lunar regolith simulants suggest it might destroy lung and brain cells with long-term exposure. 1

In fact the dust is so nasty that it destroyed the vacuum seals of sample return containers. We no longer have any accurate samples of lunar dust, “Every sample brought back from the moon has been contaminated by Earth’s air and humidity […] The chemical and electrostatic properties of the soil no longer match what future astronauts will encounter on the moon.” 2

Whats worse, the solar-charged dust gets thrown up off the moon’s surface via electrostatic forces. The moon doesn’t technically have an atmosphere, but it does have a thin cloud of sharp dust itching to cling to anything it can find.

And it probably isn’t just the moon. “A 2005 NASA study listed 20 risks that required further study before humans should commit to a human Mars expedition, and ranked "dust" as the number one challenge.” 3

The coolest solution I’ve heard about in next-gen spacesuit design is a mesh of woven wires layered into the suit. When activated, the wire mesh would form an anti-static electric field that repels dust. Quite literally a force field. 4
#astronomy #apollo #moon #lunardust

@icedquinn @tdverstynen literally nothing about Paxlovid is ivermectin. At all. Ivermectin is an antihelminthic that works by modulation glutamate gated chloride channels. Paxlovid is a combination of antivirals that work by a completely different biochemical mechanism. Nirmatrelvir works by inhibiting a Sars-CoV-2 protease, and ritonavir works by inhibiting another viral protease (it was originally used for HIV). Ivermectin and nirmatrelvir-ritonavir are not the same.

I watched part of the #SOTU last night with my first grader. Having grown up watching CSPAN (I'm a nerd) and then getting my polysci degree, I felt it might be a good educational opportunity.

Party way through, she asked me "why won't anyone stop shouting and just let that man speak?" I got about 30 seconds into an explanation about partisan politics and ... gave up.

Modern American politics is embarrassing. We turned on cartoons instead and ate dinner. We owe it to our children to be better.

Just a couple weeks after adopting Waldo from the LA Animal Shelter, he started doing this thing where he hunts for me, leans on me wherever I am & falls asleep with a small satisfied smile.

#dogs #dogsofmastodon

Have you ever had an uncanny or possibly paranormal experience?

I have! It happened when I was in undergrad, I had a workstudy in the Archivists Office in the rare books section of the library. The library is a classic modern building from the 50s, once ahead of its time, now well behind. The computer system was similar, my college being one of the first to adopt a digital library catalog in the late 60s

So, as you can see this is in part a story of a haunted computer terminal. 1/

The Doctor: The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through that door, and believe me, they've tried.

Voice from outside: This is the Lock Picking Lawyer, and what I have for you today is a Type 40 TARDIS....

While social media can be toxic for women, it can also be used to empower them:
- Follow more women
- If you see a woman attacked online, counter it by posting something positive about her
- Report content that violates community standards
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-03-05/women-social-media-instagram-linkedin-toxic

The number 30 is pretty cool. Check out the numbers relatively prime to it and smaller than it:

1, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29

Except for 1 they're all prime! 30 is the largest number with this property.

It's not that hard to see why. Suppose we had a bigger number with this property. It needs to be divisible by 2, 3, and 5, or else some product of two of these primes would be relatively prime to it and smaller than it, but not prime. So the next option is 60. But that doesn't work since 7² is smaller than 60 and relatively prime to it but not prime. So our number needs to be divisible by 7 too, so the next option is 210. But this doesn't work since 11² is relatively prime to it and smaller than it, but not prime. And so on - it's a losing battle.

Furthermore, those primes I listed form a palindrome:

30 - 1 = 29, 30 - 7 = 23, 30 - 11 = 19, 30 - 13 = 17,
30 - 17 = 13, 30 - 19 = 11, 30 - 23 = 17, 30 - 29 = 1

This stuff is not a meaningless coincidence: it comes from 30 being the "Coxeter number" of the group E8. Notice there are 8 numbers on our list - that actually comes from the "8" in E8. If you add 1 to each of these numbers you get the so-called "magic numbers" for E8:

2, 8, 12, 14, 18, 20, 24, 30

Why are they magic? For example, if you take any maximal torus in E8, its normalizer mod its centralizer is a finite group with

2 × 8 × 12 × 14 × 18 × 20 × 24 × 30 = 696,729,600

elements. And if you double these magic numbers, subtract one from each and sum them up:

3 + 15 + 23 + 27 + 35 + 39 + 47 + 59 = 248

you get the dimension of the group E8.

Wacky stuff! For explanations go to the bottom of this page:

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/octonions/integers/integers_5.html