I guess this means god doesn't like Trump?
"Evacuation disrupts Trump’s planned DC speech after threat of thunderstorm"
It's a small thing, i know, but amusing. It's a pity we won't know how bad the fireworks would have been though.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/04/trump-speech-dc-evacuation-thunderstorm
Happy Birthday American Empire! 🥳
The Onion, America's most truthful news source, provides this useful educational film of the history of the USA. 250+ tumultuous years in 26 minutes. (Cw: nudity, implied sex, wigs, spitting, naughty words, twin towers.)
The last flying Lockheed L-1011 tristar has successfuly launched the last Pegasus rocket to space carrying a robotic satellite called LINK. The purpose of the satellite is to boost the Swift space telescope, whose orbit has decayed, to a higher orbit.
The telescope was not designed for on-orbit servicing. The LINK satellite will now spend a couple of weeks testing itself and determining where it can grapple on to the telescope. If it can do so, it will then use ion thrusters for two or three months to boost the telescope.
Modern life is hostile to humans, exhibit 261: sitting (or lying down during the day) for more than half an hour at a time correlates with increased risk of death from cancer. The risk increases with each additional hour. Even some movement helps counteract the risk.
In Terry Gilliam's film "Zero Theorem" the knowledge worker protagonist's workstation in the office is a recumbent stationary bike. Given my current tribulations and this new study, there may be merit in that arrangement.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jul/02/sitting-minutes-cancer-death-risk-study
The Vera Rubin telescope in Chile is beginning its 10 year project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. It will take a photo every 40 seconds and images will be compared to find moving objects. Apart from anything else we should now see a lot more interstellar objects like 2I/'Oumuamua and 3I/Atlas.
If campaign donations don't affect the outcome of elections then there is no reason not to strictly limit them.
If campaign donations do affect the outcome of elections they allow rich people outsized influence, which is anti-democratic, and they should be strictly limited.
Young people are not responsible for regulating or soothing the emotions of adults.
https://ymhc.ngo/workbooks
#mentalhealth #mentalwellbeing #mentalwellness #youthmentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters #ymhc #healthyhabits #boundaries #healthyboundaries #emotions #feelings
Be aware that a malicious website is using guttenberg.org (two “T” not one) to distribute malware. We haven’t been able to neutralize them yet, still working on it.
my asteroid is also large and harmless. https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/sci-tech/2026/06/26/a-large-harmless-asteroid-will-zip-past-earth-this-weekend
A light plane is reported to have hit Beijing's tallest building. Looking at the gps track it seems likely to be intentional, to me. Footage, track, some details in yt short.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/QtwQhjD8bZ8
Huh! I was today years old when I realised that the mighty @libreoffice has a great tool for generating QR. In a world where online QR code generators tend to re route via themselves this is an awesome tool to find! #opensource
The goose which lays the golden eggs is not a factory. It is probably some kind of exotic nuclear reactor, transmuting light elements like calcium and carbon reliably into gold.
I suspect posessing it would lead to death by radiation. Which is how it should be, for enormous unearned wealth.
🫀 A walnut-sized clam grows its own fiber-optic cables - and it has been doing it for millions of years.
The heart cockle (Corculum cardissa) has a shell packed with microscopic transparent windows made of aragonite crystals arranged like fiber-optic tubes. They pipe sunlight directly into the clam's tissue, where symbiotic algae photosynthesize and produce food for the animal.
Even wilder: the crystal structure acts as a selective filter, letting beneficial wavelengths through while blocking most damaging UV radiation. It's a built-in sunscreen and light pipe in one, achieved entirely through mineral geometry.
A 2024 Nature Communications study showed the shell transmits more than twice as much useful light as harmful UV. Nature converged on fiber optics long before we did.
Amazing graph
Please boost, PSA: @MichaelaKHulse has started government petition telling the government to honour its commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement.
#Wellington #LowerHutt #NewZealand #AotearoaNZ #Aotearoa #NZPol
https://petitions.parliament.nz/0cbe8214-89b7-45e5-3c5b-08dec98aceba?lang=en
My body has declined again, and again I'm not sure why. My needle guy didn't seem too worried though. I will try to trust in the process. I don't see that i can do much else.
To be fair, algae were here long before even the first mammals and they will be around long after we are gone.
What's the point!?!
Top dressing training in NZ, 1967. A national film unit black and white film with some quite hair-raising flying. Tiger moth, training in a Cessna 180(?), and at the end some Fletchers i think.
Firefox android alerted me to a new so-called AI feature, page summaries. Here is how you can turn off so -called AI features in FF Android:
Click the three dots, click settings, click AI Controls. Click to turn on Block AI enhancements. Individual features can be turned back on there, if you want.