Pat @Pat@qoto.org

#BlackHistory #BlackHistoryMonth #BlackGenealogy #USPol #flotus #potus

Michelle Obama was the second black woman to be First Lady of the United States. The first black woman to be First Lady was Sally Hemings who was First Lady during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson. Hemings lived with Jefferson as his concubine during his presidency. They had three children while he was in office: Harriet Hemings (dob. May 1801), James Madison Hemings (dob. January 19, 1805), Thomas Eston Hemings (dob. May 21, 1808).

Because marriages between black and white people were not openly accepted at the time, they never officially married and Jefferson instead asked Dolley Madison to serve as hostess during official events. Legally, Hemings was considered one of Jefferson’s slaves. The exact personal dynamics of their relationship is unknown.

(Note: The term “First Lady” has no official meaning in law and it was not actually used in writing until the mid-19th Century.)

#Turkey #Syria #earthquake

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the death toll from the Turkey/Syria earthquake will top 3,000 people.

That's almost as many people who have died this past week in the US from COVID-19.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/powerful-earthquake-strikes-turkey-and-syria-killing-more-than-1-300-people-11675680084

#covid19 #deaths #respirator #CDC #ZeroCovid

Here are the latest totals in China and the US. (Source: Johns Hopkins Univ.)

China
Cases: (data unavailable)
Deaths : 100,922

US
Cases: 102,601,564
Deaths: 1,111,546

#press #humint #econ #finance #slang

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Fun Fact:

In the world of economics and finance the word “press” is slang for a source of money.

In the intelligence community, “press” is slang for a source of information.

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #trains #power #future #climate #change #CW7 #class #postApocalypse

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Snowpiercer (2013)

I don’t like this film but I’m including it in the series because it’s original and a lot of other folks like it. It’s a post-apocalyptic film about a train that, as the title suggests, rides through a wintry Earth that has frozen over when an attempt at climate-change mitigation goes bad. The train is an ark that carries the last survivors.

Quite a bit of suspension of disbelief is required to watch the film because the entire premise is ridiculous, but it's really just a metaphor anyway, so that’s how you need to see it. The acting is really well done and the writing is very good for what it is, but the cinematography – particularly the lighting and exposure – is done in a way that makes it nearly impossible to see what is going on. A lot films do this to try to invoke a depressing or fearful mood, but its just irritating to not be able to see what's going on.

If you like post-apocalyptic movies about trains, big naked metaphors and poorly lit scenes, then you’ll probably like this one, otherwise I’d skip it.

Note: When this film was first released, Weinstein demanded that 25 minutes be cut from the film, however due to fan requests, a director’s cut was later released under TWC’s house brand, Radius-TWC. I think a review of both versions might give insight to how Hollywood censors and molds the messages in its films.

You need to make some assumptions, e.g., that the room is on Earth and that "no air in the room" means a vacuum (until the smoke is introduced). Also, smoke includes both particulates and gases, so the assumption is that the gases are not significant and would not cause Brownian motion (which is what causes smoke remain suspended in air for long periods).

So, I think the most correct answer is one second. If the smoke particles don't have significant vertical motion when they are "scattered" in the room, then they would just fall to floor just like a hammer, which would take less than a second for a room that was less than few meters high. (This is because there is no air resistance, like the lunar experiment with the hammer and feather). Some of the particles may come in contact with the walls or ceiling in which case they would likely adhere to them via electrostatic attraction.

However, if any particles were near the floor and had just the right amount of positive vertical velocity, they could first move upwards toward the ceiling coming close to it but not touching it and then fall back to the floor, which would take more than a second for a room with a 3 meter ceiling.

There is also a rare scenario in which a particle could be at just the right distance from the ceiling that the electrostatic attraction from the ceiling would balance out gravity and the particle would be suspended there. However, thermal motion in the molecules in the ceiling and the particle would quickly alter the balance so that the particle would either be pulled to the ceiling or fall. I don't know if this process could take more than a second or not.

So, the most correct answer to this puzzle is "less than a second", but "less than a minute" and "less than an hour" are also correct.

#covid19 #deaths #respirator #CDC #ZeroCovid

Here are the latest totals from China and the US. (Source: Johns Hopkins Univ.)

China
Cases: 4,903,496
Deaths : 97,643

US
Cases: 102,310,448
Deaths: 1,107,852

*****Puzzle spoiler*****

The Moon's gravity is 1.622 m/s^2, much less than Earth's 9.80665 m/s^2.

If you scatter a lot of smoke in an average-size room, it will hang there for over an hour. But how long would it hang there if there was no air in the room?

#poll #puzzle #quiz #science #gravity #air #moon

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Fun Fact:

If someone smokes a joint in a zero-G environment, all the smoke just hangs there.

#science #zeroG #space

(image CC-BY-2.0, Elsa-Olofsson)

#CSPAN #USPol #UnfairEdit
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Here's a minute and a half summary of today's CSPAN callers.

#catuday #felix #science #fiction #scifi #STEM

Here’s a 1950’s children’s cartoon, Felix the Cat. “Master Cylinder” is introduced in this episode. Some of the science demonstrated in this episode:

- Coherent solenoidal optical tractor beam

- Levitation of biological organisms via a superconducting magnet

- Whole-brain scanning and uploading to a non-biological brain emulator

- Realtime telescopic photonic image processing, enhancement and display

- Fully articulated robotic arm with semi-anthropomorphic end effector

- EMP (electromagnet pulse) weapon

Yeah, our grandparents were smarter than we are.

(Episode: Master Cylinder, King of the Moon (1959), fair use reproduction for educational, critical… blah, blah, blah... )

Also, this film was made a few years after Star Wars, with C3-PO and R2-D2, so audiences were primed for cute robots.

@QOTO #BugReport

@freemo

The icons under my toots and menus are displaying improperly. Seems to happen after I send a toot. Refreshing the page fixes it.

#science #fiction #ScienceFiction #SciFi #FTW #sfftw #film #movie #robots #AI #future #military #weapons #war #MtSaintHelens #vegetarian

Retro SciFi Film of the Week…

Short Circuit (1986)

Robots in fiction have a long history of being portrayed as adorable or affable characters, beginning with Tik-Tok and the Tin Woodman from Baum’s Oz books.* (Ironically, the name Tik-Tok was used by John Sladek as the titular character in his 1983 novel for an evil robot.) The robot in this silly film, Number 5, is a nice robot.

Number 5 has a high-pitch, whiny-sounding voice, which apparently is appealing to people because the same voice has been used over and over again ever since for many robots. In fact, an almost identical clone of Number 5 (same voice and personality) stars opposite Tom Hanks in Finch (2021).

Although the robot has a main role in this film, the movie is really about Ally Sheedy, who plays a woman who operates a vegetarian food truck in Oregon. (I think her character was given most of the silliest lines in this film.)

I almost didn’t pick this film for Retro Scifi Film of the Week because the film has an all-white cast – there are no black characters or characters played by people of color at all in the film. Also, the sidekick character “Ben” uses that phony Hollywood Indian accent which is now universally considered offensive. And one of the main characters, Newton Crosby played by Steve Guttenberg, tells an antisemitic joke at one point in the film, which is kind of weird since both Guttenberg and Sheedy are Jewish. But 1987 was definitely a different time, coming after the 50s-60s civil rights movement, but before the Rodney King beating in 1991. I only included this film because it has a lot of otherwise positive messages.

Sheedy also starred in WarGames (1983) which I including in this series. (See: https://qoto.org/@Pat/109282008723785446 for more on the history of the time during which these films were make.)

(* - Also, coincidentally Sheedy’s mother’s maiden name is Baum.)

(fair use image from the film)

Just a reminder...

More people died this past week in the US from COVID-19 than died in the 9/11 attacks.

Please wear your respirator when you are in public.

(image CC-BY-SA-2.0, Martin Von Creytz; modified with inset of N95)

***TruthBeTold Spoiler***

This statement is true. Burkina Faso is only 38 years old.

However, Burkina Faso is a country in Africa. The woman pictured in this TruthBeTold is actually Agatha Barbara, the first woman president of Malta. (The Republic of Upper Volta was renamed Burkina Faso in 1984.)

#TruthBeTold

Believe it or not, but Burkina Faso is only 38 years old.

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#TruthBeTold = A statement that is logically or literally true (or partly true), but seems to imply something that isn’t true or is just plain weird. (for rhetoric, logic or propaganda studies… or just for fun)

#women #leaders #malta #BurkinaFaso

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Capitalism gave us airplanes.

#capitalism #econ101 #airplane #WrightBrothers #freedom #progress #kittyhawk
(images PD; and CC-BY-SA-2.0, Bill Larkins)