New Lego Hubble.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/hubble-space-telescope-11382?consent-modal=show&age-gate=grown_up

Woo US debt is $40T!

https://www.us-debt-clock.com/live

No one will say anything about this until a Democrat is in power, at which point it will become a national emergency.

It is also useful to know that the percentage of GDP spent on interest on that debt is still lower than it was for basically all of the 80s and 90s.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XNEY

Anyone know anyone at Atlas Obscura? Can you email them and ask them to fix the thing in the map where it believes there are hundreds of locations in a single point?

You can special request a US passport with Trump's face on it. I look forward to the stories of red hats whining about getting denied service at hotels because of it.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-passports-state-department-d149546cb15c8e6b67356168d248ccf4

New, by me: The Justice Department is prosecuting an American for allegedly providing U.S. border agents with a "duress" passcode that wiped the contents of his phone when they entered it. We've confirmed the phone was running GrapheneOS.

Read more: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/24/us-accuses-american-of-allegedly-wiping-his-phone-using-a-duress-password-during-border-search

Bypass for ad-blockers: https://web.archive.org/web/20260724175443/https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/24/us-accuses-american-of-allegedly-wiping-his-phone-using-a-duress-password-during-border-search/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_cH5-daLjg

There have been several attempts to build boosters that fly back like a plane, most notably "Baikalk"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/argy-bargy

The p value on most futbol games is <0.05.

I hadn’t realized that Anderson Erickson invented the “missing child” milk carton. That was the brand of our milk growing up.

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/100-objects-009-missing-children-milk-carton/

(If you gave up on 99pi after they sold out, it seems like they have recovered; the 100 objects series has been good, as have been the normal episodes.)

India's Skyroot Aerospace appears to have made orbit on the first try, which is pretty unusual. Congrats to them!

I tried to go to Wagamama for lunch as is my custom in T5, but they had a guy positioned to intercept people and tell them that they were only accepting cash.

I asked if they would take Gibraltar Pounds, as I stupidly withdrew some the first time I was there. He, correctly, had no idea what a Gibraltar Pound was, but did say they would accept Scottish pounds.

Mostly a note for myself, above gate A4 in T5 at Heathrow is a good spot to spend a layover. Never got busy, good A/C, and directly faces the landing planes.

yet another 10/10 headline from 404 media. https://www.404media.co/ai-fiction-is-easy-to-detect-because-its-stupid-and-bad-research-finds/

My profile pic is a self portrait in infrared, from about twenty years ago, of a house near where I grew up. Today went to see the slightly more famous depiction of the same house.

Later from the ground in Iowa looking to the north it was nearly invisible by eye, and just a bit of color by camera. The moon being so big, plus humidity and high altitude haze and contrails is tough for dim aurora.

Somewhere over southern Illinois I could see a line in the sky toward the front of the plane and I didn’t know what it was, roughly southwest. Took a photo and didn’t look at it closely. Landed, and woke up a bit, and it’s quite startling aurora. I wish I’d taken more than one photo and gotten it to focus!

Some excellent cathedrals of water though.

Botched another seat selection, was hoping to see recently exploded LC-36 (indicated by rocket pointer) and familiar sites like the VAB and Shuttle Landing Facility. I thought they’d fly out over the water, but they hung a left.

A big fault movement seen at the beach in Trinidad apparently as a result of the two 7 mag earthquakes hundreds of miles away in Venezuela. So sever that fish ended up out of the water.

Also the comments love the way the dude pronounces "instantaneous" in the Trinidad accent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXXHVsZ9o0c