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Tomorrow, January 3, 2026, at 12:15 p.m. EST (1715 UTC), Earth will reach perihelion, its shortest distance from the Sun along its elliptical orbit.
Earth will be 5 million km closer to the Sun compared to that at aphelion in early July. It will also be traveling faster by 3,600 km/h compared to its speed at aphelion.
The effect on temperature on Earth is minor due to this effect compared that of Earth's axial tilt, but it will heighten tides.
In the northern hemisphere, around midnight, the Wolf Moon will be high in the sky, you know why. π The moon's perigee and the earth's perihelion on the Sun's side, will result in heightened King Tide. 3/n
can we just stop calling the moon silly names every month, please? It's the same fucking moon every month, facing us in the same way every time. That's just what the moon does. Giving it a new name every month is just dumb.
It would definitely be colder in the northern hemisphere winter if the tilt was reversed. Perhaps tne tllt has been adjusted over billions of years to compensate.
To add a bit more, tidal forces vary as the inverse cube of the distance between two objects. To "stretch" the earth, the moon's or sun's gravity has to pull harder on one side of the earth than the other, so you have to use the derivative of the gravitational force to get the tidal force.
The Mississippi River is leeching into surrounding aquifers due to draws from Minnesopenuts to Texas. Recharge is not working ==> lowering river levels ==> lower carrying capability on the river. Transportation costs are rising due to a [claimed] 30% drop in cargo capabilities.
Massive water conservation plans are in progress. Probably will turn into the biggest conservation program ever tried in the US to help the river perhaps recover.
But then I've been tracking the Colorado River for a while now. It is broken there too. Not for the river traffic but just keeping the levels behind dams high enough to make power.
interesting to see the #epstein conversation among #conservatives shift to "is it that bad to be attracted to 14 year olds" as if the primary crimes here aren't like, murder, sex trafficking, and blackmail. which you shouldn't be doing with anyone of any age
The U.S. Coast Guard said late Friday it has called off a dayslong search for several people who jumped overboard when their alleged drug-trafficking boats were targeted by the U.S. military.
OK, weβre starting this new adventure that I found in the JAXA bookstore.
HAYABUSA DELIVERS A TIME CAPSULE 7 years, 60 billion km flight
Itβs written for children and thusβ¦ our reading may re-enact this mission in real timeβ¦ and omit the swearing I suspect took place during this crazy journey.
We begin⦠with a mission overview. Which has a VERY PLEASING picture to word ratio.
Thatβs Hayabusa in the top right ready for launch with solar panels and sampler horn tucked in, stuffed inside the M-V rocket fairing on the left, and a photo snapped of the Earth during the swing by in May 2004.
(How can you quickly tell the difference between Hayabusa vs. Hayabusa2? The most distinctive difference is that the parabolic high-gain antenna (big top dish) on Hayabusa was swapped for two flat antennas on Hayabusa2 that could transmit at higher volume Ka-band frequencies. So 2 π‘π‘ for Haya2 π°οΈπ°οΈ.)
New word of the day γ΄γγ΄γ meaning (based on context) rugged AF. Hayabusa arrived at asteroid (γ΄γγ΄γ) Itokawa and landed twice to collect samples. Badness happened on touchdown 1 and Hayabusa was stuck on the surface, requiring an emergency takeoff, but touchdown 2 went smoother. Touchdown is done in a second, as the asteroid surface can be 100Β°C βοΈ.
Running your own Fediverse instance and want to become more visible?
You can simply use relay instances to be interconnected with other instances to exchange posts and it works seamless with #Mastodon, #Pleroma, #snac / #snac2 and many other ones! If you're in tech, you might want to use:
You can simply add it to get a bigger reach but also to get more interesting content into your own timeline which becomes even more important on single user- & smaller instances.
A surprising number of people I have run into this holiday season who have loaded Linux, who I would not expect would be loading Linux. (all driven by owning Windows 10 computers and sick of Microsoft advertising on their desktop). I am talking senior citizens with modest technical skills, but not software or OS or IT people. #Linux
You know the tv show fare is slim pickings when there is a show from 1992 in the first page of the torrent site. Or as Springsteen put it, "57 Channels (and there's nothing on)"
The Justice Department had a chance to show backbone on Jeffrey Epstein. Instead, it offered opacity, delay, and a reminder that accountability still has a VIP section.
it is time once again for Kalvin Cuteness! This was not only cute, but how it was said was really funny! This is taken from a phone call that happened during @MayDay break at work. just listen to not only what Kalvin says after may said he could beat her up, but how he says it. like I said too cute, and funny at the same time. As you will hear, May and I both thought this was toot worthy.
Cenk Uygur and Jill Stein discuss the path forward for a populist movement on The Young Turks. Do you agree with TYT's take? Tell us what you think in the co...
@bluenova Seems like you and I have similar favorites huh? If only Sara was available but she isn't. If at least she was on edge, I would be a happy camper! But Microsoft, didn't!
@bluenova However, you never know, someone might just, ahem, make some sore of thing that enabled azure voices with no API key requirement, you know, people are really, and I do mean, really clever!
@bluenova If someone can make some sort of website with the azure voices and not need an API key,, then someone can code an extention for this too! Let's just hope
About to go to sleep, replaying various conversations in my head, and the one that keeps coming back is the 20yo talking about how each day at the lab seems like it gets worse and worse and more difficult and he hates that. He and his brother got selected to help after applying during a hospital lab overhaul because tue automated systems, track and other things were going to be down from Oct to Jan. It's wrapping up now, but they've seen enough of the real world now to make good observations.
Now I'm the kind of guy who has really good, but not always good for me, work ethic. A Gen X type who isn't much made for today's civilized world, but finds what seems like an increasingly rare place to hide and make a living without getting fired for radically voiced ideas. My kids are Gen Z's and I can hardly understand their world. Both of us piss on Millenials genreally speaking, but for different reasons. But back to where I was going with this little conversation...
I think it's important that if you do a job, you do it well. As well as you can. I question these Gen Z's who want buffers and safety around their time and call out employers quickly for stepping on their personal space. I never had that, but slowly I'm realizing, yeah, they do have a point. Employers will give you all the rope you need and plenty of drop without asking too many questions, and for a guy like me, it can be risky. The Z's, they just hand the rope back. LOL
So, I was thinking, why does my 20 hate the job? He likes the work, but hates the job. He hates the interaction and pressure, plus being young and less experienced, he knows he gets sidelined by co-workers who don't have confidence in his abilities yet. So what's really going on? I mean jobs have always had some suck, but do they suck more now? If it wasn't work, they wouldn't pay you to do it, that's how I was raised. But is something different now?
And after thinking, I want to contend a point that because if inflation, the job sucks more. This is probably a foregone conclusion for many, but for me, I never put it into those terms before. Sure, our wages are so far behind the curve we can't catch up, but it's worse than that. The great big beautiful tomorrow we all got promised was hijacked by corporations and given to shareholders a long time ago. Our lives didn't get better with technology as promised, it got busier. Do more with less.
The reason the job sucks more than it already did, is not only did the value of the dollar go away, but the amount of profit output possible per person went down with it, forcing employers, in order to maintain acceptable profit levels to stay in business, to push down and require each employee whose cost to the company increased through no fault of their own, to do more tomorrow, than somone who worked the same job even years before. It's pretty demoralizing for the few motivated kids.
MANY years ago we dealt with the wage problem as follows: Projects had to have staff like this - 10% senior staff - 50% senior - 30% junior - 10% student So 205 of our workers (half time...) were students at a bit above minimum wage. We hired the good ones to be junior staff.
I haven't seen anything like that for 20 years now.
Big Tech, business groups and the governor successfully gutted State Sen. Steve Padilla's attempt to protect consumers from the costs, emissions & unintended consequences of the AI data center frenzy. Big money wins again! apnews.com/article/data-manageβ¦
REMASTERED IN HD!Amazon: http://bit.ly/Rush2112SDE_WebMusic video by Rush performing The Big Money. (C) 1985 The Island Def Jam Music Group#Rush #TheBigMoney...
TONIGHT'S STREAM: swtor once again we are searching for an escaped bald man because he had too much plot armor to kill we're reaching the current end of the story and we'll move on to something else when we get there live at 10:30 CT @ twitch.tv/skylarkaede & youtube.com/live/6SOq45IMwdo
@halva Just to provide some technical context: the car almost certainly knows that that is a train, but the visualisation has no way to render a train, so it falls back to rendering it as long semi combo.
@halva Video description: A car is stopped at a grade crossing, as a train, marked "Amtrak California" passes. The camera zooms in on a dashboard touchscreen showing each train car rendered as a gray block in the shape of either a tractor-trailer or an elongated sedan, frequently flickering between the two shapes.
Transcription: [laugh] Look how elongated they are! [laugh] I have never seen that. Oh, my gosh! Great song.
the fact i am able to quickly pick up how to use public transit in other countries is just further proof that I am not American, despite being born and raised in America x3
Well what is a train, but a bunch of elongated big cars that can contain many people travelling on a set path, optimally reaching high speeds so it can transport lots of people vast distances?
Of course not. Musk and the airline cartel don't like trains, so we've been told they are slow, uncomfortable, expensive, and unreliable.
You know, just like cars and airlines, except those things make money for Musk and the cartel.
It does always amaze me that the Randites don't love trains more. "Atlas Shrugged" was all about a railroad executive and how perfect that little sociopath was.
Perhaps it is you who don't understand the sheer scale of the United States. The entirety of the British Isles can fit inside Michigan. France is smaller than Texas. All of Europe wouldn't cross the Mississippi River coming from California. Trains are fine when you only gave a couple hundred kilometers to go, but when you're crossing thousands, it's best to take a plane.
Also note the βmoving trafficlightsβ. Shouldnβt they at least have looked at a list of valid traffic signs and verified that everything in that list is properly recognised. Apart from the extreme stupidity in attempting this task in the first place.
TBF I was failed mate organ driving test by not treating a level crossing with enough respect. We just so rarely get them in the UK. I don't think I'd ever encountered one. I hadn't even learned to fear sunset and the deer that come out then.
I wonder how many roadkill shaped dents Tesla's acquire
the fact that the car can't process the train is a passing detail. that it can't process the *lights* is scary as hell.
And this is in the US, yes? imagine how many other sorts of world crossing lights and stop signs this means it can't deal with, if it can't even manage US ones.
I saw similar in Toronto, in a friend's tesla which showed realistic outlines for cars and trucks, but for trams showed nothing. I am not going to let one of those things drive me around by itself.
FYI the models drawn on the screen do not necessarily match the object identified by the vision system. This was proven by people who jailbreak the Tesla like greentheonly or whatever his name is
On one hand, it's kinda funny. On the other hand, the fact that this internationally release "self-driving* car" cannot recognize trains is highly concerning.
alt-text: an animated rainbow-shifting, pulsing, and sparkling planet earth emoji sits in the background as two neofox astronauts float up and down in the foreground. one is captioned saying "wait, it's all gay?" and the other, gun drawn, responds "always has been". there are also a handful of small text symbols fading in and out at different times in the backgroud meant to represent stars #mfm #mfmart
AkaSci π°οΈ
in reply to AkaSci π°οΈ • • •The first full moon of 2026 (aka the Wolf Moon), tonight and tomorrow night, promises to be a super-bright supermoon π
The moon will be near perigee in its orbit around Earth, making it ~30% brighter and ~14% larger than at its farthest point (apogee).
Earth's perihelion will make the moon shine brighter by another ~6.5% compared to July.
Moon perigee: 1 Jan, 21:43 UTC
Full moon: 3 Jan, 10:03 UTC
Earth perihelion: 3 Jan, 17:15 UTC
Happy viewing π
earthsky.org/earth/rare-alignmβ¦
2/n
Rare alignment of Earth, moon and sun in early January
Kelly Kizer Whitt (EarthSky | Updates on your cosmos and world)AkaSci π°οΈ
in reply to AkaSci π°οΈ • • •π
The moon's perigee and the earth's perihelion on the Sun's side, will result in heightened King Tide.
3/n
F4GRX SΓΒ©bastien
in reply to AkaSci π°οΈ • • •Otte Homan - remember Geordie
in reply to AkaSci π°οΈ • • •SpaceLifeForm
in reply to AkaSci π°οΈ • • •Bill Zaumen
in reply to AkaSci π°οΈ • • •