Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@qoto.org

While waiting for the bus, I had one earbud in (never two unless I’m in a very safe place) and a man walked up to me, on the side where I had the earbud. He tried to tell me something and I didn’t make it out. He gestured for me to remove my earbud and I almost did and then I remembered

A man I don’t even know doesn’t get to claim my attention like that. I just pointed to it and said “I can’t hear you” and ignored him trying to keep talking to me.

Of course I don’t know if he needed directions or something totally benign but if so he can go into a store and not approach a woman waiting for a bus at 10 pm

Invent Monopoly, do not collect $200...

Lizzie Maggie's "Landlord's Game" and how an anti-capitalist board game invented by a woman became an uber-capitalist game that profited a man: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-landlords-game/

Today the Parker Solar Probe will get 7 times closer to the Sun than any spacecraft ever has, going faster than any spacecraft ever has - 690,000 kilometers per hour. WHEEEEEE!!!!!!!

But the really cool part is what the newspapers are barely talking about: what it's like down there. The Sun doesn't have a surface like the Earth does, since it's all just hot gas. But it has an "Alfvén surface" - and the probe has penetrated that.

What's the Alfvén surface? In simple terms, it's where the solar wind - the hot gas emitted by the Sun - breaks free of the Sun and shoots out into space. But to understand how cool it is, we need to dig a bit deeper.

After all, how can we say where the solar wind "breaks free of the Sun"?

Hot gas shoots up from the Sun, faster and faster due to its pressure, even though it's pulled down by gravity. At some point it goes faster than the speed of sound! This is the Alfvén surface. Above this surface, the solar wind becomes supersonic, so no disturbances in its flow can affect the Sun below.

But it's even cooler than that, because "sound" in the solar wind is very different from sound on Earth. Here we have air. The Sun has ions - atoms of gas so hot that electrons have been ripped off - interacting with powerful magnetic fields. You can visualize these fields as tight rubber bands, with the ions stuck to them. They vibrate back and forth together!

You could call these vibrations "sound", but the technical term is "Alfvén waves". Alfvén was the one who figured out how fast these waves move. Parker studied the surface where the solar wind's speed exceeds the speed of the Alfvén waves.

And now we've gone deep below that surface!

(1/n)

King of the morons. Blazingly stupid.

Trump actually said, during the press conference - “The United States and Italy are bound together by a shared cultural and political heritage dating back thousands of years, to ancient Rome."

He lacks any factual knowledge of history or America. He absurdly claims we’ve been here for thousands of years and that the USA has had a relationship with ancient Rome. Truly, a disgrace.

Source:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/donald-trump-raises-eyebrows-by-saying-us-has-been-bound-with-italy-since-ancient-rome-a4263566.html

@karlauerbach @shuttersparks There's a point where we can make contact.

@shuttersparks 77th birthday of the transistor?!! Oh boy, let's have a party. We can meet at the junction.

We pay tribute to the men & women who took up arms and stood to fight the Russian invaders.
They will not be forgotten.

RIP – Vadym Prokopchuk, Vladyslav Shein, Volodymyr Vylianskyi, Volodymyr Tyshchenko

Rest in Peace

@Npars01 This has already been an issue in Tornado Alley. Radar or storm guidance via anything but a storm radio means 30s+ of timed video ads before seeing any actionable information, while your phone starts burning your hand processing four video streams at once, frying your battery so it won't have more than an hour of juice left if the disaster does hit you directly.

Wealthy people can pay to bypass some amount of that, of course, but they're more likely to have reinforced shelters.

Gas stoves can emit a whole bunch of pollutants, including carbon monoxide and methane.

While we measured those gases, we largely focused on nitrogen dioxide, which irritates your respiratory system, and benzene, a carcinogen.

These are the two pollutants with demonstrative health effects that scientists at PSE Healthy Energy find most frequently.

The World Health Organization sets guidelines for safe exposure to nitrogen dioxide and benzene:

🔸Nitrogen dioxide, exposure for a short time of an hour: 100 parts per billion
Nitrogen dioxide, chronic exposure: 5.3 parts per billion

🔸Benzene: “No safe level can be recommended”
That means if I’m baking cookies and frying potato pancakes and spike the level of nitrogen dioxide in the air up past 100 ppb, WHO recommends I only breathe that in for an hour.

And if I’m always breathing in more than 5.3 ppb, I need to figure out some better form of ventilation.

Nitrogen dioxide “is one of the clearest things that negatively impacts our respiratory health,” said Carlos Gould, assistant professor at UC San Diego School of Public Health.

“It makes your respiratory system, your throat, your lungs really angry.”

Studies dating back to the 1970s have found an association between nitrogen dioxide and respiratory issues like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
https://www.kqed.org/science/1995336/heres-what-happened-when-scientists-tested-the-air-with-my-gas-stove-on

Elon Musk’s mother, Maye Musk, is facing criticism after suggesting that people should have children regardless of whether or not they can afford them.

Now we know where #elon 💩 got his brains from...

The arrogance of the rich is boggling at times as they have never had to worry about making choices like buying groceries or paying the rent and utility bills.
The cost of a baby in a hospital with ZERO complications for the mother OR child is $13-$18K

#deportelon

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/elon-musk-mother-maye-kids-b2665958.html

The Internet didn't make people stupid. But it did end up helping to make it EASIER for people to become stupid.

❝Far right news isn't a for-profit concern, it's a loss-leader for oligarch-friendly policies.

It's a steal: a million bucks' worth of news buys America's ultra-rich a billion dollars' worth of tax-cuts and the right to maim their workers and poison their customers for profit.❞

Nail on the head from @pluralistic:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/12/the-view-from-somewhere/