Category: Space

Taiwan’s little EU problem and other things

  1. So the EU ambassador to China, a Spaniard, has announced that the Spanish government’s position on Taiwan (peaceful reunification for 1 China) is actually the EU position. It’s not. Horror across the internet this morning at this blatant contradiction of the majority stakeholder view across the EU.
  2. I’m so itchy I’m having trouble sleeping. My tear ducts seem to be blocked up too, and my eyes are sticking shut.
  3. Started working on Part II – 73 words so far.
  4. Three shootings in Toronto last night, one dead, two gravely injured, shooter or shooters still at large.
  5. Words cannot describe how much I’m hoping – and I’m an abolitionist – that Steve Bannon goes to jail in the same country where someone said that the economy would fall apart if jails didn’t contain almost free labour.
  6. Putin says Russia’s high tech sector is facing ‘colossal’ problems due to sanctions.
  7. They’re emptying the jails and putting the dregs of Russian society at the front, according to sources inside Russia.
  8. 110 degrees F in Fort Worth TX today that’s 43 degrees C. The grid in TX is teetering thanks to Repulsigan policies and chronic underspending by ERCOT on maintenance. Bad things are going to happen, it’s like sunshine and gravity.
  9. Wonderful Nova program about the JWST and the first pictures. I knew it was a hellaciously complex and overbudget project, but just HOW complex and HOW overbudget was kind of heartstopping, so thank science it worked. Ain’t nobody going to fix it if it quits.
  10. CBC is reporting lightheartedly that repeated COVID infections will be the norm and don’t pose a problem and this is directly counter to every reputable clinician and epidemiologist that I follow stating loudly and clearly that every repeat infection raises the spectre of disability from Long Covid. Fuck them for saying that.
  11. With Jeff’s kind assistance, I have taken Otto to the krankenhaus. I will receive word on Thursday.
  12. Keith reports that Jim is doing much better.
  13. I have finally seen “The Trouble With Harry”. Damn but John Forsythe was hotter than August in his prime, and what a freaking voice.
  14. 40 degree C weather in Britain. Monuments and bridges are at risk of cracking, damage and failure. Brits don’t take heat seriously so the betting is it will be super hard on the disabled and elderly. Australians and Americans on twitter are trying to help with inexpensive advice. From today’s twitter: In more “country totally prepared for hot weather” news: Blackpool Victoria Hospital (note, in the UK) has propped its doors open to keep the building cool, but now the hospital is full of seagulls  AND HERE’S ANOTHER ONE “SKY NEWS REPORTER, CITING MILITARY SOURCE: UK ROYAL AIR FORCE HAS HALTED FLIGHTS IN AND OUT OF ITS LARGEST AIR BASE IN THE UK BECAUSE THE “RUNWAY HAS MELTED” IN THE HOT WEATHER and ANOTHER:

    UK airport suspends all flights as heatwave melts runway tarmac

    A spokesperson for Luton Airport said: “Following today’s high temperatures, a surface defect was identified on the runway.”

  15. My dad does not like seagulls. Not in his aircraft engines and definitely not in his hospitals. NO WORD ON HOW HE FEELS ABOUT MELTY TARMAC
  16. The ERs at Dr. Helmcken Memorial Hospital in Clearwater and South Okanagan General Hospital in Oliver are on diversion due to staff shortages.
  17. let’s talk about everything that’s wrong with this article. First off, fuck that family for booking a Disney cruise in Alaska during a pandemic. Second, Air Canada SAID it was going to be cancelling flights left and right at the end of June. Did they not get the memo? What did they think was going to happen. THIRD their daughter HAD COVID BEFORE THEY STARTED TRAVELLING or she wouldn’t have popped symptoms on the fourth day…..they would have ended up on a boat with a sick child anyway. How the fuck is that a vacation? fourth they got treated terribly by Air Canada and had to sleep in airports and it’s like HAVE YOU NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION TO THE NEWS? EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM CITED IN THIS ARTICLE has been part of the nightly news since the travel season started. There’s NO ROOM in the current Air Canada schedule for aircraft going mechanical.
  18. Maybe Roger Waters of Pink Floyd is a more important figure and musician than the Weeknd and Drake but why the fuck would he say so in public? I’ll tell you why!! HE DIDN’T GET REVIEWED IN THE MAJOR PAPERS! Oh, you poor poor man.  that’s get off my lawn style crankiness and RACISM. PS I hold no brief for either of them and Drake’s a creepy asshole who macks on minors and makes for great memes but HE’S A HOMETOWN CHILD IN TORONTO so of course it was a big deal. Not understanding the local politics doesn’t make you a likeable figure dude.
  19. Time to back up your computers, earth’s about to get smacked hard by a coronal mass ejection.  Radio and GPS disruption expected, low latitudes aurorae, first thing tomorrow. Chances of being an x event is 10% but we’ll get something for sure….
  20. WHO confirms a Marburg outbreak in Ghana.
  21. Zelenskyy remains pissed at Trudeau, line forms on the left pal.
  22. July 2022 heat dome temperature gradient europa
  23. Above is the atmospheric ‘ pot lid’ on Europa.
  24. NASA’s ‘climate spiral’ video.
  25. SO ITCHY

still no eeg results

I’ll call the clinic again next Monday. Many things slow down over the festive season so even though it was supposed to be ready it probably isn’t, yet.

You know Hudson & Rex is a terrible advertisement for St. John’s, right? One percent of the population is Black and that’s not how the show demographics works…. also…. you know that they have like a murder a year and so in the first episode they blow through the murder rate like theysa going backwards.

Georgia turned blue, but it was the rest of us holding our breath. FUCK MITCH MCCONNELL.

While I’m in the mood, FUCK AIR CANADA.

If that link disappears, it’s to a story claiming that Air Canada is sending influencers on holiday to sunny places to pad their advertising budgets during A GODDAMNED PANDEMIC ….I mean I knew they were slimy bastids but that’s low.

Buns dough is in the bread-maker. I really am fine with never eating white bread again if I can have yummy brown bread buns fresh out of the oven within 2 hours of conceiving the notion.

In 774 AD the biggest coronal mass ejection in 10k years hit the earth. (Per Phil Plait the Bad Astronomer.) If the same thing hit the earth today satellites would plummet, the grid would fail, the internet would fly up its own asshole and choke and it would be weeks in many places and years in others before the power came back on. So thank your lucky stars you only live in an earthquake zone, lol

I’ll be wandering over to Planet Bachelor later today.

Letters to two Daves in the mail today. pOp’s getting a very big sketch of Baby Yoda.

No progress on UPSUN.

another appointment

Next week. Waiting is.

Here’s a list of gender neutral words, quite thought provoking and useful.

Here’s a list of words to clarify language around slavery.

Speaking of language, even Wikipedia has troubles with shitposts:

Image

cleanser:

An image of Jupiter taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light on Aug. 25, 2020, is giving researchers an entirely new view of the giant planet and offers insights into the altitude and distribution of the planet's haze and particles.

credit NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team

Further cleanser, which is a stoat on a trampoline

and speaking of shitposts, which we weren’t, right? right? Here’s a lovely hit to the face of christian witness:

Image

Meeping

I meeped at Chipper for a while yesterday and she expertly diagnosed my problem and helped me get back on the rails. I’ve been sessile for a couple of days but I’ll be back to writing today. For background, coming up on 2nd anniversary of breaking my arm and losing the shop, so that’s probably feeding into the other issues.

I have a strong cup of coffee beside me and Jeff’s making more.

PLUTO FLYBY!!!! SO HAPPY.

I finally went on a trip through the Stargate with Jack O’Neill last night.  Woke up with a big smile on my face, with his strictures ringing in my ears.

LATER

Buster just climbed the dead tree in the back yard.  I could barely see him through the blinds.  Wilde kittye!!!

Drifting off

I am not always smart about my physical limitations, and I worked on Mike last night past my ability.  So I have a very sore right shoulder which I am being gingerly with, and also recognizing I’m coming up on two years for breaking my right shoulder in the first place…. and I’ll be throwing somatic fart bombs at myself to remind that on this day a bad thing happened, cause that’s how humans who understand a calendar roll.  Stuff that’s on the surface gets stuffed under, like the motion of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves in that first mutual encounter with shear.

 

I want you to read it here first. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong with a big smile on my face.  But I’m tellin’ you, the features on Pluto are not physical.  They are clouds.  The atmosphere is so cold that weather systems can form hexagons, and they are nose to tailing across the atmosphere like a dragon.  I bet you also that the hexagons play crack the whip, and sometimes one of the hexagons will break off the end and die. The different colours of the surface are from the  large scale weather systems picking up tholins off the ground where they’ve been deposited and mixing them with other compounds that change the albedo of the top of the atmosphere.  It just LOOKS like physical features. Closer to the ground, pretty much everything is reddish orange.  There are also scars from collisions and impacts but I think the picture we’re getting from Pluto is weather, almost all of it.

I’m taking myself off line for writing for the rest of the day.  I’m in a very strange mental state and I just want to sit and try to process.

Last night Mike played Poems Prayers and Promises for me, by John Denver (I thought that it was a Denver tune before he told me, so I’m glad my ability to see another artist is not completely verkockt) and it was amazing.

Then he practiced the guitar portions of a bunch of classic Simon and Garfunkel, and that’s what I fell asleep to.    Sometimes the simplest magic is the most powerful.

I’m feeding Ayesha, so I need to figure out when I’m heading over there this afternoon.  I am SO HAPPY it started to rain.  We all need it, physically, environmentally, emotionally.

 

Quiet day yesterday

I helped Paul pack and clean up yesterday… yes, he and Keith are moving Planet Bachelor into the third of the four apartments in the building they are in.  They will very much enjoy having more space and a spare room.

Today I meet a former coworker for coffee and once again attempt to assemble the second section.

Philae lands today. I am quietly thrilled, and here’s something to watch about it.

Rounding up

Marylke’s taking me to Spamalot tonight!  Woot!

The slow leaking death of the commentariat. Metafilter founder has some comments.

I won’t believe it until the cat is sleeping on the results.  Washerless clean clothes.

Wanna know the current position of the ISS?

According to the Ubisoft What’s Your Hacker Name meme going ’round the internet, my pOp’s hacker name is M4ster Zero, and mind is Sh4dow Root.

Jeff loaned me the car yestterday, and I feel much better today!

The tiramisu I bought from Balkan House Restaurant yesterday was freezer burned, then thawed and left at a nasty temperature, and then re-refrigerated.  It took about 45 minutes for the taste to get out of my mouth but I guess it had so many preservatives in it that it couldn’t sustain microbial life.  Jeff, don’t eat it.  I should go throw it out.

I ran into a pest control specialist yesterday who told me to abandon all previously purchased music programs and get this instead.  I don’t feel like spending a thousand dollars on something that won’t likely run on either of the computers I currently own, but it sure would be nice to be able to sing into a computer and have notation spit out the other end.

A crazy ass seagull banged its bill repeatedly into the front door at work.  Scariest sound I’ve heard in a while.  In more pleasant news there are many geese families right out front of work right now but you can’t get too close because the parents will assault you.

Interviews for my replacement have commenced; the good candidates all want too much money.  I don’t imagine they’ll get somebody like me any time soon for the price.  And that’s the last I’ll complain on the subject, and I’m not naming names.

 

wotcher

How’s everybody this morning?  Good?  Not so good!? Hm. Let me see what I can do about that.

Just when La Mami Naturaleza seems to have shot her last bolt in the weird department, along comes something like this.  Do please watch the video.

I bought and now have used a bunch of equipment for my rehab.  I am already stronger and more able to extend my arm forwards at 90 degrees.  Jeff rolls his eyes when I do exercises while watching TV, it’s quite distracting.

Jeff’s first impressions of the Mac Mini. There’s something useful in there about the Home/End issue which people transitioning from pc to mac always trip over.

Hey, I don’t mind fashion when it looks like this.  Possibly, erm, not suitable for work.

More evidence, although it didn’t need to be adduced, why Stephen Fry fucking RULES.

The Nepean Redskins will be changing their name and logo at the end of this season.  VERY PLEASED ABOUT THIS.  On the other hand there is this piece of dreck masquerading as a sports common tater.  In a hundred years we will look back and wonder why the hell we did this to ourselves.

And in this Brave New World, homeless people use Bitcoins.

I could do this without breaking a sweat. After all, I’ve already done it, just ask Jeff.

 

 

 

news roundup

The ISS space walk was successful!  Go team Space!

Just for the headline (SFW)

This is a candle for Katie’s bestie, who is having serious problems with her first pregnancy.  Katie will hang with her later today at a birthday barbecue.

Katie is going to go camping for May two-four weekend, first time since she was a kid.  She is squee-level five looking forward to it.

I am going to go back to cleaning my room and doing laundry now.

 

 

Curiosity has landed

Jeff and I stayed up, and were pleased when everything came out as planned.  Al Chen should do an audiobook of classic porn, I’d buy the hell out of such a thing.

I made some steampunk bling for Otto yesterday.

Other than that my day consisted of me lying around attempting not to die from 28 degrees at 77 percent humidity yesterday.  The air conditioner ran night and day.  It was hot all through the house, basement included; I felt like a lizard panting on a rock all day.  Miserably sweaty.  Finally I dragged out one of the fans and it actually made a difference.

 

 

 

Sundry and various

Mars landing today.  It will either be an expensive failure or a spectacular success.

I think I’ll head off to Costco once it opens and pick up some serplies.  I definitely want to do it before the sun is up too high.

I have fallen in love with fresh chard salad.  Chop bunch of chard.  Nuke until soft.  Add butter and lemon. Refrigerate.  Nom.  It doesn’t get much simpler than that and my body provides very happy feedback when I ingest it.  (Oh, iron… b vitamins…. you love me, you really love me!)

2020 says THIS SHIT IS TURRIBLE FER YER KIDNEYS

I really wish it wasn’t so hot.  When it’s this hot at 8 in the morning it’s hard to get enthusiastic about any kind of physical labour.

Cleaned up the guest room, which used to be Katie’s dumping ground for all of her clothes (she refused to sleep on the guest room bed, always sleeping on the downstairs sofa).  I have removed the last of the Katie debris, cold medication, her assessment from the fitness club, half an earring set and suchlike, and now I’m contemplating dragging the vacuum cleaner downstairs.

I just want to stay curled up in bed with a Dorothy Dunnett novel, except it’s too hot to even do that.