Mastodawn

Matt Black Feb 23, 2023

@kairyssdal
If you need a space themed Make Me Smile, the James Webb Space Telescope is turning out some head scratching science that could help rewrite our understanding of the universe.

https://www.colorado.edu/today/2023/02/22/webb-telescope-spots-super-old-massive-galaxies-shouldnt-exist

Webb telescope spots super old, massive galaxies that shouldn’t exist

In a new study, CU Boulder astrophysicist Erica Nelson and her colleagues spotted six "fuzzy dots" of light in images from the James Webb Space Telescope. The candidate galaxies may have existed just 500 to 700 million years after the Big Bang and contain almost as many stars as the Milky Way.

CU Boulder Today

Matt Black Jan 6, 2023

Jackie Leonard Dec 18, 2022

In 2023 let's normalise only putting out a news alert FOR ACTUAL NEWS.

Matt Black Jan 5, 2023

Matt Black Dec 23, 2022

Whitney Champion 🍪Dec 23, 2022

this article is absolutely brilliant and beautiful, @catvalente

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media

I bet you're wondering how we got here...

Welcome to Garbagetown

Matt Black Dec 22, 2022

Polychrome

Dec 22, 2022

The bit about a lawyer being stopped from entering a music hall in the US because its facial recognition system picked up that she's part of a law company that's suing them is even crazier than I thought.

The law company isn't suing the music hall - it's suing a restaurant, in another state, which is owned by the hall's parent company MSG Entertainment. MSG gone ahead and harvested photos of all the lawyers in the firm and fed it to an image recognition system to ban them from every MSG Entertainment owned location.

People always tell me that if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to fear. She's got nothing to hide and they still went after her.

If this doesn't start making people worried about facial recognition then there's serious trouble coming.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/12/facial-recognition-flags-girl-scout-mom-as-security-risk-at-rockettes-show/

MSG defends using facial recognition to kick lawyer out of Rockettes show

MSG Entertainment began using facial recognition at venues in 2018.

Ars Technica

Matt Black Dec 22, 2022

BBC News (World)Dec 22, 2022

The making of a young Hero of Ukraine https://bbc.in/3YEWIol

The making of a young Hero of Ukraine

Quentin Sommerville traces the journey of a 22 year old from the start of the war to being awarded the highest honour for bravery.

BBC News

Matt Black Dec 22, 2022

Scott marsroverdriver Maxwell Dec 22, 2022

I was at this great party. *Everyone* was there. I mean, *Steven King* was there, *George Takei* was there -- *that* kind of party. It went on forever, like literally years on end, and I was having a ball.

But then this new jackass took over the building and started inviting Nazis in. So, like, fuck that: we all left and went next door, where there was a better party going on anyway.

Matt Black Dec 21, 2022