Beamer

A while ago a friend of mine asked me what time it was on Mars. I didn't know the answer, other than 'UTC'. Looks like there isn't an answer yet, but they're working towards it! What time is it on the Moon? [nature.com]

Everyone better grab something heavy and hold on for dear life, the Earth's core has slowed down and may possibly reverse its rotation (relative to the mantle): https://phys.org/news/2023-01-earth-core.html Ok, maybe it's no "The Core"... let's hope it's not, I don't think I could survive that 'quality' of plot writing and acting in reality.

I have not read the book yet, but I've seen a lot about it in the press. After watching the first 2 episodes I can't say the show is really gripping me. I find the premise that scientists are massively offing themselves because they find out their science isn't right wholly unbelievable - then again, maybe they are being offed by some agency that hasn't been introduced yet (don't spoil it if that's the case ). I find it very fascinating to see how Chinese TV tropes are different from western ones though. It's extremely rare for anything Chinese to make it to my screens, and the ones that do are usually literary or historical dramas - not my cup of tea. It's nice to see a big 'popular' TV production for a change instead of just the latest film that won the Oscar for best foreign movie.

Thought this might be of interest to space and sci-fi nerds: the first four episodes of TenCent's adaptation of the Three Body Problem novel are streaming for free on YouTube. English subs available. Note: some Chinese commercials included.

Gina Lollobrigida, the 'European Marilyn Monroe', famed Italian star of the Golden Age of Hollywood, died aged 95.

I turn fast travel off in Skyrim. Never built the SETA module in X4. Never used the travel terminals in Cyberpunk. Play 90% of my Warframe in Ivara prowl mode (no parkour). Don't use travel packs in Horizon Zero Dawn. Made a trip to Sag A* in Elite Dangerous without using Neutron stars (and back again of course). I think good games are worth to be experienced slowly, because there aren't all that many of them I'd rather play a good game slow than hurry through it so I can play a couple of bad games until the next good one comes out. And good games tend to provide plenty of entertainment in between the story/plot points. I would even go so far as to say that's a large part of what makes them good. If anything KSP and other sandboxey type games are proof of that - if what you can do is fascinating or entertaining enough in itself, you don't even need any story or game plot. I have no idea if Squad is like that though, never heard of it. Maybe it's just a boring walk through pixelated terrain that you have to get through or your mates will hate on you

"If you wanna watch telly, you should watch Scooby Doo. That show was so cool because every time there was a church with a ghoul or a ghost in a school they looked beneath the mask and what was inside? The ****ing janitor or the dude who ran the waterslide! Because throughout history every mystery ever solved turned out to be... NOT MAGIC!" From Tim Minchin's Storm The Animated Movie.

That Nathan Watts bass kills me every time. Genius.

Why hurry and take unnecessary risks? It's not going anywhere. The ultimate answer is going to be "No, there's no funding". NASA decided based on the 2013 decadal survey that Europa wasn't going to be a priority for now (instead focusing on Mars). This year's review may change that but that's never going to be on time for a 2024 launch. Keep in mind Clipper has been in development since 2013 with the design going as far back as 2011 and the availability of funding coming from the 2003 decadal survey. That's 21 years from funding to launch. And the only reason it got funded at all after 2013 was because of Senator Culberson's clever trickery, otherwise it would have been 30+ years. That money is already spent and even if there was any left it would not be available for additional Europa missions AFAIK (Culberson's efforts only forced NASA to one Europa mission). If this year's survey earmarks Europa, we might see a lander mission in the next decade, but funding and designing a lander mission in 1 year by a government organization, I'm sure you know as well as anyone that's going to be a pipe dream. Even if it can be done 'relatively cheap', it's still going to be 'relatively hard', and that's probably an understatement.

X4: Foundations. Picked up the latest DLC from Steam (v5.10), found out the latest version had a dynamic resolution setting so I booted up an old savegame (v2....80?) that I stopped playing because my fps in Grand Exchange I had sunk to a steady 3 near my HQ or industrial park and a max of 7 when not near any factory. Found out my fps around the HQ is now around 12. Very acceptable*! It's a nice save, all ARG/PAR/TEL blueprints in possession (this was before the Split/Human expansions), 3 full wharfs/shipyards constantly pumping out ships, ruling 10 sectors including some of the core ones. Over 2100 ships and 38 highly optimized factories. 66 billion credits in the bank, earning an additional 50-150 million an hour depending on how many ships I build for myself. Max rank ally with every major faction, I could tie up every single shipyard in the game for weeks with mega ship orders and not break a sweat. The shipyards are a gold mine, I sell to everyone, and of course the HOP are at war with everyone (as they do), so as soon as the ships leave my yards they are starting their fight. I'm fairly certain that less than 20% of what I sell ever leaves visual range of the shipyard, it's a constant fireworks show and boy does it keep the factories churning. It's nice to pick it up again, I need to get a hold of those juicy Split engine blueprints so I need to start increasing rank with them. * For some definitions of 'acceptable'.

Robbie Knievel (son of, and a true daredevil in his own right) dies aged 60 from pancreatic cancer: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/robbie-knievel-daredevil-son-of-evel-knievel-dies-at-60/ar-AA16k7Rk?OCID=ansmsnnews11

I always think the idea of a "Great filter", as in a single bottleneck that you must pass to become inter-planetary/stellar/galactic life, is a bit too easy (or maybe just hopeful). A good filter consists of many layers. We have wormed our way through some of them, there's abiogenesis, eukaryotes, multi-cellular life, "tool use intelligence" (for lack of better words), technology. All of these could be considered layers of a filter and it's very hard to quantify which one is harder to get through, even though we made it to the other side, since all of them happened only once (or maybe a few times for some). And if you ask an astronomer or geologist instead of a biologist you would get another set of answers altogether. We can have a good guess at what's close ahead - getting our eggs out of the single basket (=planet) and then expand our single egg shop (=star) to a franchise, but the exact details of how to get there and if they will split up in multiple distinct filter layers is debatable. And hey, for all we know there's no end to this filter and we just keep running into new layers forever. Looking back, even the definition of the 'end game' as we think of it (i.e. spreading out through the galaxy at least, the universe if possible) is still in its infancy and we might well have entirely different ideas of what our ultimate destination is a few hundred years from now. That would change what we think of as filters that still lay ahead, and might even make us question if it's worth trying to get through altogether.

Witness a once in a 10 thousand (or more) year event, the definition of a new epoch: When exactly did the Anthropocene start? [www.theguardian.com] It's Pluto all over again, grab your popcorn and don your lazy slippers!

Amateur astronomers discover a huge mysterious cloud of double ionized oxygen right in our cosmic back yard: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-recently-discovered-gas-cloud-near-andromeda-stumps-astronomers/

If you have a Science.com subscription you can find more here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade1696 There's also a PDF with supplementary text that contains a lot of extra information (no sub needed): https://www.science.org/doi/suppl/10.1126/science.ade1696/suppl_file/science.ade1696_sm.pdf

Starship Full Stack for size... Because when you're talking about the latest wind turbines, a banana just won't do. (Note: image not meant to represent actual turbine blade profile, just the length of 128 meter) https://newatlas.com/energy/h260-18mw-biggest-wind-turbine/

133 days of solar activity in 4K, courtesy of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory:

At this point, you are making a whole lot more assumptions than the people who published this research. You're underestimating and/or understating the knowledge of both the ancient and the modern people. Astronomy is older than scripture, and 'counting moons' is probably as old as... well, counting. You don't count the moons since the beginning of time, you count the moons since the solstice, or the first snow, or the spring floods, etc. It wouldn't get you to the office on time but it's accurate enough for a hunter. We do know the people from 17000 years back had the same brains as we do, we can figure that out using our modern knowledge of biology, evolution, mutation rates and genetic variance among their descendants (i.e. us) combined with fossil record. We have that power. That's why we call them Homo Sapiens, just like us. I'm not going to go point by point because you seem to be off on a bit of a rant, but suggesting that a cave that was used to document images of hundreds of animals for many generations is the result of some random doodles about last day's breakfast rather than an attempt at preserving knowledge for future generations, that's just downright silly. I don't think you understand the site. People didn't live in these caves and scribbled some random graffiti on the wall when they were bored, they went there specifically to paint, for a thousand years or more, deep inside caves where the paintings would stay well preserved.

You don't need to track individual animals, or even a specific herd. Typical prey animals as depicted will generally mate at the same time and all give birth at the same time. People who live among animals and hunt them know these sorts of things It doesn't really matter if you think it's a battery, divine intervention or genetics, the pattern is pretty clear. The paintings weren't made over tens of thousands of years but more like hundreds. IIRC the caves were abandoned and re-populated several times during a thousand year period or so, so each series of paintings stretches a few hundred years, say a dozen generations at most. It's generally estimated to be around 17000 years old. People started domesticating animals at least 15000 years ago. Keep in mind stone age people were just as smart as we are, they just didn't have google. None of that means the markings actually refer to fertility cycles, but you can rest assured that people were aware of how baby deer came to be long before the Lascaux paintings were made. One of the reasons the Lascaux paintings are considered so interesting is because the depiction of the animals is quite advanced, using techniques like perspective that weren't seen before. It's safe to say these people were astute observers of the animals around them and made an effort to reproduce them in a realistic rather than symbolic manner. I visited the Lascaux site in the 80s, it's quite impressive. I was young at the time, but to me it felt more like a library than some sort of religious site. You can't go into the original caves anymore, they've been closed to the public since the 60s, but there are great reproductions that give a good impression of the magnitude and quality of the paintings, and a museum with plenty of photographic material. I'd recommend a visit if you're ever in the area.

Why the Romans had better buildings than us: https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/roman-concrete-mystery-ingredient-scn/index.html / https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add1602

Gummy bears...

Mathematically it should be a dimensionless point. Pretty cheap to make, I have a house full of them. Physically it should be an invisible pink unicorn. Much harder to find. Go Jupiter! More votes for the King of Planets plx >.<

As a fan of rallysport and an avid player of various racing games like the DiRT franchise I was most definitely a fan and was shocked to hear about this. Not big in the classical European rally formats, but an absolute master at Gymkhana and without a doubt the western world's most influential promoter of that sport. This man didn't sit in his cars, he wore them like a comfortable shoe, they truly became an extension of his body. Aside from that, also one of the earlier viral stars on YouTube, I think his Gymkhana series started way back when YT was only 4 years old and I remember gawking over them with friends and colleagues whenever a new one came out. Definitely worth the watch if you like seeing cars burn some rubber.

According to wikipedia, all planets of the solar system have at least one city or town named after them, except for Uranus. That includes Earth, Texas, USA (, Earth). There is however a tourist attraction on the old Route 66 called Uranus in Pulaski County, Missouri, USA. It has 25 residents but no local government, and all local businesses are owned by a single person who calls himself "Mayor of Uranus". Most notably it holds the Guinness World Record for having the largest belt buckle in the world. Just thought you would want to know that...