Paul Sutton @zleap@qoto.org

It's probably a surprise to no one, but telescopes have a lot of reflective surfaces just begging for selfies! 🤳

This #SelfieSunday, take a browse through some of our recent favorites from our #RubinTeam 📸

About these selfies:
1: The CNRS-IN2P3 filter team in an LSST Camera filter
2: Selfie in the 144-megapixel detector of the Rubin Commissioning Camera
3: LSST Camera Team's Travis Lange in a camera filter
4: Rubin staff in the telescope's secondary mirror

Astronomers have just discovered the first known "Einstein zigzag."

Due to a rare, lucky cosmic alignment, the combined gravity of two galaxies bent light like spaghetti & split a distant quasar into six different images.

This six-part image could allow a very accurate measure of the expansion of the universe.

https://www.science.org/content/article/first-known-double-gravitational-lens-could-shed-light-universe-s-expansion #science #space #astronomy #physics

I would like to remind everybody where viruses mutate.

I feel like Dr. Seuss when I say: Do they mutate in the air? Do they mutate everywhere? Do they mutate on the ground? Do they mutate all around?

No.

They mutate within living creatures.

The host.

You are a living creature.

You are a host.

When you contract #Covid, you are potentially a Petri dish for such mutations.

It mutates a lot. It's a virus. That's its job; to survive and infect hosts.

You, yes you, are potentially a vector for transmission of a mutated version of the virus every time you get it.

This is the piece that nobody cares to understand.

These new variants come from people who get infected and spread it. They don't magically come from Narnia or a different dimension or trees. They come from people.

You are people.

If you get sick, you are potentially cooking up a mutation of the virus that will then go on and harm another person. Maybe dozens. Maybe thousands.

Is that fucking simple, but nobody pays attention to this. Nobody cares.

Yes, the only ways to stop transmission of this current virus includes doing things that you don't like to do:

Wear a well-fitted #N95 or higher respirator in the presence of others.

Ventilate and clean indoor air.

Monitor CO2.

Avoid potential super-spreader events.

Don't go out when you're possibly sick without wearing a good mask.

Don't assume you don't have the virus if you think or know you've been exposed. (Asymptomatic transmission is at least half of transmission these days.)

Don't be a petri dish. Please. Just don't.

#CovidIsNotOver #MaskUp #Ventilate

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but apparently it’s not obvious enough:

The effectiveness of a vaccine—even the effectiveness for you, personally—doesn’t just depend on you taking it. It depends on other people taking it. The more the better.

Epidemics are complex systems, with feedback effects. https://mas.to/@gleick/113493200280387680

Half-life Alyx is at a historical low price. If you're a VR gamer, this is a must play.

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/half-life-alyx/info/

#videogames #vr #halflifeanniversary #halflifealyx

PSA: Scam Warning.

This is the third time in a week I’ve spoken to someone who’s had their phone stolen, then a few days or weeks later received an SMS or WhatsApp message with a malicious link in it pretending to be Apple/Samsung and they’ve found your phone.

Not real. They’re looking to sting you a second time, the theft was only the first part of the scam. They get your number from the SIM card, expecting you to keep your old number.

Can we stop hearing about how Musk was forced to pay billions for a platform that wasn’t “worth” that sum because advertisers, subscribers, blah blah blah. Musk bought the platform to use it for exactly the purposes he’s used it for, extremist right wing propaganda and organization, and to disrupt the spread of real time truth, news, and organization of resistance to government by tech billionaires and fascism. His backers paid for that reason. He didn’t “lose money”; he’ll see it returned ++.

We're going to have an absolute idiot with no medical experience responsible for National Health who's planning on firing Federal Heatlh workers nationwide.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

"Teen in critical condition with Canada's first presumptive human case of bird flu "- Reuters
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/teen-critical-condition-with-canadas-first-presumptive-human-case-bird-flu-2024-11-12/

#h5n1 #birdflu #trump #kennedy