tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

Astronomers have found a seriously gravitationally messed up planet. It speeds up and slows down so much that its year changes length by up to *15%*. Imagine one year being 11 months and the next being 13. The market for belated birthday cards would be HUGE.

https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/astronomers-find-exoplanet-year-keeps-changing-length

Nu är första poddavsittet ute. Jag och @alexvoronov vill gärna veta vad ni tycker, och vad ni vill att vi pratar om framöver.

Godmorgon Ukraina: Skolstart i krigets skugga https://pod.space/godmorgonukraina/skolstart-i-krigets-skugga

#Ukraina #podd

Disney recreated Peter Cushing’s face in “Rogue One,” but is now facing a lawsuit that claims it didn’t have the proper permission.

Kevin Francis says Cushing signed a contract with him and his production company to protect his likeness after his death.

https://kotaku.com/star-wars-rogue-one-peter-cushing-disney-sued-1851645468

#tech #disney #starwars #ai

I grew up a few km away from the border to France. My classroom was 100 meters away from the Rhine. I was in 9th grade when they opened the borders. I was in 12th grade when they introduced the Euro. Visiting other countries in the EU suddenly felt truly magical. "Fuck you" to all politicians in this country who are currently destroying this magical idea for pure populism, to appease some fascists. It's all about staying in power - as if that helped - and I couldn't despise them more for it.

I handed in my older brother's handwritten GCSE coursework for Geography, pretending it was my own, despite him having the same teacher as me only 2 years before. I got a B and he got a C.

The DOJ will recommend remedies for addressing Google’s monopoly dominance of search in December.

Options vary from banning Google from paying Apple, Mozilla and others for search defaults to forcing the company to sell the Android operating system.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/google-search-monopoly-case-remedies-come-by-december-2024-09-06/

Macron et Marine Le Pen auraient passé un accord secret pour la nomination de Barnier à Matignon, selon le JDD, évoquant plusieurs sources en Macronie et au RN. Ce deal aurait été mené par Thierry Solère, conseiller officieux du président et politicien le plus mis en examen en France à ce jour. Je mets un gros conditionnel sur ces informations car le journal de Bolloré a déjà propagé plusieurs fake news par le passé.

#Politique #Macron #MarineLePen #RN #Barnier #Gouvernement

Barnier donne sa première interview exclusive à la presse au JDD, devenu un journal d'extrême-droite depuis son rachat par Bolloré. https://www.lejdd.fr/politique/exclusif-les-premieres-confidences-de-michel-barnier-au-jdd-149225

#Politique #Barnier #Medias #Presse #ExtremeDroite #Bollore #Interview

Your Honor, the Wu-Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with

#CitationNeeded #crypto #cryptocurrency

Ça m'avait échappé: L'ex-dircab de Darmanin, Jérôme Fournel (dont je vous révélais qu'il a été placé chez Barnier à Matignon) est mis en cause pour avoir aidé le PSG à ne pas payer des dizaines de millions d’euros de taxes contre l’administration fiscale. En toute logique, il a donc été promus par Macron. Avec toutes les casseroles de la Macronie, je n'arrive plus à suivre. https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/070924/le-directeur-de-cabinet-de-michel-barnier-est-mis-en-cause-dans-l-affaire-darmaninpsg

#Politique #Mediapart #Darmanin #Barnier #Administration #Foot #PSG #Gouvernement

The framing on this story is wild. Summary: as a deadly fungal epidemic in bats spread across the US, increased insect activity resulted in an average 31% increase in pesticide use by local farmers, resulting in an average 8% increase in human infant mortality in affected areas.

And the message is: bats provide important economic benefits.

And yes, very true.

But also: The correlation between pesticide use & infant mortality is that well known & it's still allowed???

https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/bats-north-america-research-1.7314579

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

Don't listen to websites telling you to "learn more". These days, basically every Unix system comes with less, which is a drop-in replacement that's more comfortable to use and has a lot of additional features.

'In their new paper 'Do large language models have a legal duty to tell the truth?', published by the Royal Society Open Science, the Oxford researchers set out how LLMs produce responses that are plausible, helpful and confident but contain factual inaccuracies, misleading references and biased information. They term this problematic phenomenon as ‘careless speech’ which they believe causes long-term harms to science, education and society.'

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-08-07-large-language-models-pose-risk-society-and-need-tighter-regulation-say-oxford

no no no *you* can't freely scan through the collected works of humanity, that right is reserved for the large language models.

Stockholm Resilience Centre "advances science for a liveable planet"

We are hiring

3 Postdocs
4 PhD positions
and 1 project manager

to work on:

+emerging pests and pathogens

+resilience and transformations in fragile contexts

+resilience and sustainability in food systems

+Building models of, with and for sustainability transformations

+financial risk analysis

+manager for Global Resilience Partnership

https://www.https://www.stockholmresilience.org/about-us/careers.html