Snowflake's Forum

  Bunny is now back in the Disunited States for a few weeks.  Monster sized cars and trucks.  Single sized snacks large enough to feed four.  Horrid TV.  No way to go shopping or do anything outside of the house without a car.  The weird and complicated medical system. Bunny has been away too long and could not live here.  Now, too strange and uncomfortable.  Well, that is just Bunny.   Has a long span of time away from something made it too difficult to go back? J.P. Bunny 

Techspot reports : Coin-sized nuclear 3V battery with 50-year lifespan enters mass production A Chinese battery manufacturer has developed a breakthrough, sparking a worldwide race for compact nuclear energy. The innovation is a small coin-sized battery powered by a radioactive nickel isotope that decays into stable copper. While the initial cell is relatively weak, it can easily be layered to provide more power for up to 50 years. Energy storage technology has reached a transformative milestone as the BV100, a miniature atomic energy battery, enters mass production. Popular Mechanic notes that the coin-sized cell from Beijing Betavolt New Energy Technology can provide juice lasting up to 50 years without charging or maintenance. The BV100 harnesses energy from the radioactive decay of its nickel-63 core. The two-micron thick core, sandwiched between two 10-micron thick diamond semiconductors, efficiently converts the isotope's decay into electricity. Its modular structure allows ...

As we all know form posts here and info elsewhere, climate science experts are concerned about the collapse of the AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation). That deep sea water current powers the Gulf Stream and a large network of currents in the Atlantic Ocean. AMOC heavily affects weather in Europe . Sci Tech Daily writes about troubles with the Beaufort Gyre, which could wind up accelerating the collapse of the AMOC:  A major ocean current in the Arctic, the Beaufort Gyre, is changing rapidly due to climate warming—and this could trigger a chain reaction that disrupts the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the system behind the Gulf Stream. Scientists warn that melting sea ice may reach a tipping point, causing the Gyre to release massive amounts of freshwater into the North Atlantic. If that happens, the AMOC could weaken or collapse, drastically altering weather patterns across the Northern Hemisphere, especially in Europe. New model ...

Sōichi Kakeya in 1917 when he was 31 Quanta Magazine discusses the importance of solving the Kakeya Conjecture, a conjecture that has bedeviled mathematicians for 50 years. Quanta calls it a "once in a century" mathematical proof. Quanta writes : In 1917, Sōichi Kakeya posed the problem, but with an infinitely thin pencil [or needle or line segment]. He found a way of sliding the pencil that covered less area than the instinctual circular motion. Kakeya's original 1917  2D space solution Kakeya wondered how small an area the pencil could possibly sweep. Two years later, the Russian mathematician Abram Besicovitch found the answer: a complicated set of narrow turns that, counterintuitively, covers no space at all.**  ** Unfortunately, there is no image of the Besicovitch solution. Besicovitch's construction can be mathematically described, but creating a visual image of the full shebang ["infinite iteration process"] is fundamentally impossible due to its fra...

  “Back in my day, we… / we didn’t…” (fill in the blanks).  We’ve all heard that when we were younger.  Maybe we even say it to the young snots of today.  But face it, would you really want to go back?   Bunny grumbling about all the hassle it will be tomorrow to get to the airport, security and immigration check, and the long flight.  But wait.  Bunny will be on the other side of the planet in under 24 hours.  Aside from leaving the front door and getting into the cab, he will not be exposed to the elements at all.  On demand entertainment on the plane.  Bet granny and gramps would never dream of such. Since we are living in the now, what would you say to those clamoring for the good old days? J.P. Bunny

In the last ~4-5 years I started noticing that more and more people are having a hard time checking out of grocery stores and other retail places. In these bouts of bizarre behavior, I look very closely at what the check-out impaired people say and do. They act confused, overwhelmed and/or somehow paralyzed or mentally slowed down. It isn't just old people with this problem. It is  EVERYONE!  It includes middle-school and high-school students, of which there is an abundance of in our happy little neighborhood.  When whining about this, I describe the increasingly annoying check-out problem something like this: Fumbling, bumbling, mumbling, stumbling, fiddling, piddling, diddling, floundering, futzing, putzing, dawdling and farting around. I swear, the problem continues to slowly get worse. Either that or I am getting worse. Something is getting worse.  Today I stumbled across a possible explanation for "impaired check-out syndrome."  Smithsonian Maga...

Quanta magazine reports about a line of research on dark energy that I know all of us have been following very closely: Is Dark Energy Getting Weaker? New Evidence Strengthens the Case. Computer-simulated  flight through the Dark Energy  Spectroscopic  Instrument’s (DESI ’ s)  new map of millions of galaxies  Cosmologists have mapped billions of years of cosmic expansion based on the new data and analysis Last spring, a team of nearly 1,000 cosmologists announced that dark energy — the enigmatic agent propelling the universe to swell in size at an ever-increasing rate — might be slackening . [But that] was tentative and preliminary. Today, the scientists report  that they have analyzed more than twice as much data as before and that it points more strongly to the same conclusion: Dark energy is losing steam. Portions of the newly mapped universe by two observatories 15 million galaxies spanning 32 billion light-years of space[1]  (I think: Top: Southe...

The WaPo reports  ( not paywalled ) about life found in the water and on the seabed after a 19 mile long chunk of ice broke loose in the Antarctic: A huge iceberg broke off Antarctica. What scientists found under it startled them. Crustaceans, snails, worms and fish are among the dozens of creatures that deep-sea explorers discovered under a massive Antarctic ice shelf.  Expectations weren’t high. The scientists didn’t think much life could thrive tucked under such a thick blanket of ice. .... In total, the researchers believe they will be able to identify dozens of new species from the expedition. The tentacles of a solitary hydroid drift in currents 360 meters deep A large sponge, a cluster of anemones, and other life ~230 meters A stalk of deep-sea coral at ~1200 meters A helmet jellyfish drifts with tentacles splayed A giant phantom jelly is documented in the Bellingshausen Sea off Antarctica, at an area where the shelf break and slope are cut by several underwater gu...

  As the title says.  Bunny would like to learn the bagpipes, but not really able to here.   You really need a tutor or instructor for hands on instruction.  None anywhere around here.  Practice at home not good as Mrs. Bunny works at home, plus we have kitties.   If a private tutor found…great.  But scarce as hens teeth here. Is there some skill you would like to learn, but the odds are against it? J.P. Bunny

  Bunny shall give his curmudgeonly side a break and ask if the week has been good for you.  Bunny’s final day of work was last Friday.  This morning, woke up to a nice heavy snowy morning.  The expected root canal out not to be such. Anything good or pleasant for you? J.P. Bunny

A BlueSky post : So, djt says that Biden's pardons were invalid because he used an autopen to sign.  Perplexity!! Wake up you boob!! Huh?? . . . . . What? Q1:  Trump says that Biden's pardons were invalid because he used an autopen to sign. Is that a basis on which presidential pardons can be invalid? A1: The claim by Donald Trump that Joe Biden's pardons are invalid because they were signed using an autopen does not have a legal basis. Legal experts agree that the use of an autopen does not invalidate presidential actions, including pardons  4   5 . The U.S. Constitution does not require pardons to be in written form or signed personally by the president  4 . The use of an autopen is a common practice for presidents when they are unable to physically sign documents, and it has been legally recognized as valid for official actions  5 . Q2:  About how likely is this kerfuffle to wind up in a federal trial court and then at the USSC? A2:  The likel...

  When we were young, we used to hear the old farts going on about the good old days, and how easy we have it.  “Ice water?  Why, when we wanted ice water, we had to wait for winter and go chip ice out of the frozen pond, dodging wolves and bears.” Now, we have become the old farts.  Have you ever given an In-my-day rant?  Want to?  Bunny sitting at a family restaurant with his friend.  Food and conversation.  Another table has four teens, all playing with their phones, ignoring each other.  Bunny wants to scream “Why do you bother coming together if you are going to ignore each other?  Don’t kids nowadays know how to talk to each other? J.P. Bunny

  As the title says.  Books you refuse to read, even if others say they are great.   Bunny does not like westerns or sports stories.   Zzzzz.  No interest at all. What about you? J.P. Bunny

The buzz about Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams has thrown Facebook, Meta and Zuckerberg into a major snit. SFGate reports : Meta, which runs Facebook, is trying to squash the book’s splash. On Wednesday, citing her non-disparagement agreement, the company won an interim arbitration claim that blocks Wynn-Williams from further selling and promoting the book. It doesn’t appear that the order will extend to her publisher, Flatiron Books. From a read of the book, it’s clear why Meta wants to stop the spread of Wynn-Williams’ account: Its chief executive comes off badly. Though many of the book’s larger points have been previously reported, the anecdotes from Wynn-Williams’ globe-spanning interactions with Zuckerberg are the fresh, detail-rich stories you’d expect in a tell-all memoir. She casts him as hot-tempered, unaccountable for his mistakes, ignorant about history and — in one cringey board game session — an extremely so...

A WaPo article reports  ( not paywalled ): A paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday found that the tiny plastic particles could be slashing photosynthesis rates globally. Microplastics, the scientists estimated, are responsible for a reduction in photosynthesis of 7 to 12 percent worldwide in plants and algae. That cut in photosynthesis, the researchers warned, could also impact large-scale crops that humans depend on, such as wheat, corn and rice. Scientists are still working to understand how microplastics — defined as pieces of plastic less than 5 millimeters in size, or around the size of a pencil eraser — are affecting ecosystems around the world. Researchers say, however, that the small shards may be making their way onto crops and agricultural land. Tiny pieces of plastic have been found in most food products, from burgers to seafood, and one study estimated that in Europe alone, 63,000 to 430,000 tons of plastics are likely to pol...

Return trips among Canadians road-tripping to U.S. fell a whopping 23% in February One Canadian travel agency even  reported that leisure bookings  to the U.S. (meaning travel for pleasure, not business) took a swan dive in February, plummeting 40 per cent compared with the same month last year. The agency, Flight Centre Travel Group, noted that Canadians had not stopped travelling completely but rather were looking to travel to locations outside the U.S. As for what the absence of millions of Canadians could mean for the U.S. economy, some small businesses in border towns  are already seeing a drop  in northern visitors. The U.S. Travel Association said that a 10 per cent reduction in those visits  could mean a $2.1-billion hit  to the American economy and thousands of job losses. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-us-border-travel-1.7479387 YABBUT....................... something not quite right about that grap...