Radiation from the pulsar PSR B1509-58, a rapidly spinning neutron star, causes nearby gas to glow with X-rays (gold, from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory) and illuminates the rest of the nebula, here seen in infrared (blue and red, from WISE).
Image Credit: NASA
We wound up discussing Blue Mountain coffee during last night’s podcast, and my podcasting partner Dianna Deeley heartily recommended this brand. She had received some as a Christmas gift and is greatly enjoying it.
Click on the image on the left to order some from Amazon.
Seven years ago today, the Great Snowpocalypse of 2016 was bearing down on Westminster. After sending the Lickspittle Broadcasting System crew home early, it wasn’t possible to get that day’s BLOGSMOKE episode finished, so I cued up this pair of Johnny Atsign episodes and got ready to shovel two feet of global warming.
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ANNOUNCER: From Westminster, it’s time for—
SOUND: Landline phone rings once.
JOHNNY: Johnny Atsign.
LT. BRADSHAW: (Telephone Filter) Atsign, it’s Bradshaw.
JOHNNY: Why, Lieutenant, to what do I owe the honor?
LT. BRADSHAW: (Telephone Filter) Cut the sarcasm, Atsign. As much as I hate to admit it, I need some help.
JOHNNY: From me, Lieutenant?
LT. BRADSHAW: (Telephone Filter) Yeah. From you, Atsign.
JOHNNY: You must be in one helluva hole. Tell me more.
MUSIC: Theme up and under.
ANNOUNCER: The Lickspittle Broadcasting System presents W. J. J. Hoge in the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed Twitter account, America’s fabulous free-lance Internet investigator …
JOHNNY: Yours Truly, Johnny Atsign!
MUSIC: Theme up to music out. Continue reading
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
Poit! Brain … is that a picture of a senator on this old butter package?
Stacy McCain, Dianna Deeley, and I will be at our mics at 7 pm ET for the next episode of the The Other Podcast Live. Join us on Podbean.
Likely topics include Twitter, Our Betters, and Crazy People Are Dangerous™.
This picture of the Andromeda Galaxy was made at the Mt. Palomar Observatory sixty years ago. Back then, the 200-in Hale Telescope was the largest in the world. Now, it’s in 20th place for ground-based instruments.
Image Credit: Mt. Palomar Observatory
Brett Kimberlin’s lawfare campaign has been a failed attempt to use the courts to suppress the First Amendment rights of the those of us who have written about his past and present activities. In fact, this blog took no notice of him until his attacks on blogger Aaron Walker. Ten years ago today, I took a look at how Kimberlin’s lawfare was going with this post titled Dread Pirate #BrettKimberlin and Reputation Management.
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So what’s the result of a year of TDPK’s brass knuckles reputation management via lawfare? When one googles him, this is the result.
He’s “best known as the perpetrator of the Speedway bombings in 1978.”
The truth is still out there.
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And now, the Supreme Court has denied Kimberlin’s petition seeking to set aside his bombing conviction.
The truth is still out there.
There is no civility, only politics.
—Sheev Palpatine
… then you pay for what you got. After Trump was elected, a video surfaced of a Google employee meeting in which the corporate leadership said they could not allow an election like that to happen again, and there’s plenty of evidence suggesting that Google participated with other tech companies in tipping the scales in Biden’s favor in 2020. They got what they paid for.
Of course, what they paid for is a dangerously incompetent administration. The poor economy is but one Joe Biden’s failures. Google may be big, but it’s not so big that it isn’t affected by a stagnant economy. They’re laying off 12,000 employees.
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
I think so, Brain … but couldn’t playing poker with a tarot deck have lethal consequences?
The Andromeda Galaxy (aka Messier 31) has several satellite galaxies. The best known are M32 and M110. M32 probably underwent a close encounter with Andromeda Galaxy and had its stellar disk removed by M31. That encounter caused a sharp increase of star formation in M32’s core region. M32 is the large galaxy near the center of the image.
M110 is the smaller galaxy below and to the right of MN32. It also appears to be interacting with the Andromeda Galaxy. Astronomers have found in the large galaxy’s halo a stream of metal-rich stars that appear to have been stripped from the satellite galaxies.
Image Credit: Torben Hansen, CC BY 2.0
It was ten years ago that Bill Schmalfeldt first took a turn as editor of Breitbart Unmasked Bunny Billy Boy Unread. Pointage, laughery, and mockification began immediately with this post titled Cabin Boy #BillSchmalfeldt and the Beanstalk.
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Cabin Boy Bill Schmalfeldt is now the editor of Breitbart Unmasked (No, I won’t link to it). Although I have never seen him in person, his pictures on the Internet lead me to assume that his is a rather large fellow. Given the image on the masthead of BU, he must think of himself as a giant. The most famous giant who threatens to grind one’s bones for bread is the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk.
Fee-fi-fo-fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive, or be he dead,
I’ll have his bones to grind my bread.
Or so it goes in Joseph Jacobs classic version of the fairy tale. As I remember the story, it doesn’t turn out well for the giant.
Now, where did I put that axe?
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It would be several weeks after that post went up that I first met the Cabin Boy™ in person. Although I never had to use an axe, our interactions have cut him down to a size more in line with his talents and karma.
His last known employment has been as editor of the Center Republican in North Dakota. (Schmalfeldt. Republican. Karma. Some assembly required.) Last night, when tried to access his LinkedIn page (Bill Schmalfeldt – Editor – Central Nordak Publishing | LinkedIn), the link 404ed.
Hmmm.
Sooner or later everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
… but I am pleased to report that Twitter has finally removed the last of the false and defamatory sensitive content warnings to my tweets linking to my astronomy posts. They have also ceased applying new warnings.
While the operations side of Twitter is still almost completely opaque, a black hole into which request for help disappear without result, Twitter’s new legal team was responsive.
Thank you, Twitter, for doing the right thing.
I think so, Brain … but would Critical Race Theory apply to both Formula 1 and NASCAR?
… is to ask the wrong question.
The Washington Free Beacon is reporting that a bill introduced in the Connecticut legislature would allow women to skip the Candidate Physical Ability Test for firefighters and qualify with a test with “revised physical standards.” It seems that the Democrats who have authored the bill are looking for an answer to the question “How do we make fire departments more diverse?”
Perhaps Connecticut should consider the question “How do we make our fire departments more effective?”
The first is the iconic 1995 Hubble image, the next is Hubble’s sharper 2014 view, and the third is JWST’s near infrared view.
Video Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA /STScI
This episode of Your Truly, Johnny Atsign first ran eight years ago today.
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ANNOUNCER: From Westminster, it’s time for—
SOUND: Skype rings once.
JOHNNY: Johnny Atsign.
CALLER: (Telephone Filter) Mr. Atsign, my name is Steve. I’m a fan of your show.
JOHNNY: Hello, Steve. What can I do you?
CALLER: (Telephone Filter) Well, you could check for a DM from me in your Twitter account.
JOHNNY: Oh?
CALLER: (Telephone Filter) Yes. I believe you’ll find the link it contains intriguing.
MUSIC: Theme up and under.
ANNOUNCER: The Lickspittle Broadcasting System presents W. J. J. Hoge in the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed Twitter account, America’s fabulous free-lance Internet investigator …
JOHNNY: Yours Truly, Johnny Atsign!
MUSIC: Theme up to music out. Continue reading
Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.
—Sophocles
I think so, Brain … but why would we need to jack crackers?
Do the schools in Minnesota admits students from a species other than homo sapiens?
This a spiral planetary nebula, and it’s pretty.
The binary star at its center is a white dwarf in a 4 day orbit around the rare low-mass Wolf-Rayet type central star.
Image Credit: NASA
Something will happen in 26 days, or maybe it won’t.
Stay tuned.
Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky