When every news article didn't require navigating whether it was propaganda, or a grift, or both (because it's never science).

When I thought that humanity surviving beyond Earth was even remotely possible.

This timeline sucks.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/space-2/feed/ 76 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/new-numbers-station-just-dropped/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/new-numbers-station-just-dropped/#comments Thu, 02 Apr 2026 22:48:27 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk5r

Direction finding has traced the signal to a US base near Stuttgart, Germany. In addition to using Farsi, Iran has repeatedly attempted to jam the signal, causing V32 to change frequencies a few times. There's also a more recent, so far unidentified, jammer trying to block the signal.

In addition to direction finding, there is a surprising amount of information you can glean from the audio. The first few days of broadcasts had specific beeps in the background, which appear to be warning tones from a specific type of American military transmitter that warns the operator when encryption is not engaged. At first, a human read the numbers. Eventually, the station switched to using automated numbers. In addition, there have been a few times when Windows 10 system sounds have leaked into the transmission.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/new-numbers-station-just-dropped/feed/ 9 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/space-nazis/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/space-nazis/#comments Wed, 01 Apr 2026 19:37:28 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk5i Superman (2025) was that Clark got a garbled answering machine message and didn't realize that his parents were Space Nazis who wanted him to take over Earth and eugenics-fuck his way to a new super-race (the plot of Invincible and also the plot of Elon Musk). But at the end Supergirl shows up, who left Krypton as a teenager. So couldn't the little blonde übermensch have just... told him about her time in the Krypton Youth and at Ku Klux Krypton rallies?

Anyway, the trailer for Supergirl (2026) looks alright. The miniseries that it is purportedly based on was really good.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/04/space-nazis/feed/ 13 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/xscreensaver-6-15/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/xscreensaver-6-15/#comments Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:15:32 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk5c XScreenSaver 6.15 is out now, including iOS and Android. A whopping thirteen new savers this time:

• New hack by me, worldpieces.
• New Shadertoy hacks brought into the fold: bestill, bubblecolors, darktransit, downfall, driftclouds, goldenapollian, noxfire, prococean, rigrekt, trainmandala, trizm and universeball.

Shadertoys are so wild; you'll see like 30 lines of code, and when it runs it build an entire environment without there being a polygon or a model apparent anywhere. What witchcraft is this?? Well, here's a really good article that explains the techniques used: Painting With Math: A Gentle Study of Raymarching.

I fixed a bunch of Android bullshit, too (some of which meant needing to reimplement glRotatef etc. from first principles). Android's implementation of GLES is a buggy mess. Also I think Android has again lost the ability to ask for permission to load photos. I can't figure it out, so someone who gives a shit will have to send me a patch. I also still can't figure out why transparency doesn't work on Android. This makes Peepers be particularly horrifying.

Map Scroller: I updated the list of available maps, and made it show the name of the nearest city. One of the new map sets that works is the Google Satellite Map, and if you have two monitors, I highly recommend running that map in "Fully random location" mode. It has a habit of picking two places many thousands of miles apart that look surprisingly similar, like Greenland and Syria.

This one took so much time! Most of my screensavers are pretty quick; generally they'll percolate in my head for a while, then I do the first 90% in half a day, and then the second 90% in another half day to two days. But this one was composed entirely of ratholes.

1. Oh, first I have to find some sane way to get the country outlines. That means learning about GeoJSON and getting the proper data set from Natural Earth Data. Then that data has to be massaged and merged, and while there's probably some command-line way to do that, using mapshaper.org was easier.

2. Now I've got a bunch of polylines with weird "hole" rules (not winding-rule!) and I need to triangulate them. Next rathole: learning how to use triangle.c correctly.

3. Then I notice that while the GeoJSON has population data for countries, it does not for states and provinces. Ok, that should be easy to grab from Wikipedia, right? Next rathole: learning about SparQL, the Wikidata query language. It is one of the nastiest and most baffling query languages I've seen. Good job on that.

4. Then I realize that while the GeoJSON contains the names of the countries translated into various languages, it doesn't tell you which ones are the official languages! Next rathole! Ok, surely we can get that from Wikidata too... Nope. While the Wikipedia pages contain the endonyms in the local character set, the Wikidata items only have them transliterated into Latin characters. To fix that, I had to scrape the Wikipedia page and parse the Wiki markup using regexps, dooming us to inhuman toil, etc. etc. Anyway, I got it working so that Japan can be spelled 日本...

5. ...on macOS, iOS and Android. Why doesn't it work on Linux? Oh ho ho ho, another rathole, this one un-solved! So on Linux it notices when all of the characters came out as square boxes and falls back to the transliterated Latin versions. You're welcome.

6. Ok, it's starting to come together. But since I'm zooming in a lot, the Earth imagery is looking a little grainy, since the image I have is 2048x1024. Well let's just go upgrade that. Next rathole! The old images I had were from the public domain 2002 NASA "Blue Marble" images and 2000 "Visible Earth, City Lights" images none of which still exist on NASA's site (all praise archive.org!)

   They seem to have deprecated those data sets in favor of the 2025 "Blue Marble: Next Generation" images and the 2012 "Black Marble" images. But... they're weird. First, both sets of images completely omit the North polar ice. Second, the 2025 daytime oceans are colored completely flat, whereas the 2002 images contained bathymetry details. And third, and worst of all, is no pairing of 2025 day images and 2016 night images where the pair have the same ice extents. This means that when we blend between the day and night images, it looks very weird. It took me days to finally accept that there was nothing that I could do to work around that.

7. So now that those various ratholes are out of the way, it's trigonometry time. The way the countries pop up and face forward toward whereever the camera is a technique called "billboarding" and it's pretty easy. But what's not easy is doing a smooth transition between the object being billboarded, and the object being back in the scene. Especially since it's position in the scene is spinning and wobbling about willy-nilly. (Remember, you can also spin the globe with the mouse, and it has to keep track of that as well!)

8. So the final rathole was finally coming to terms with quaternions. Quaternions and I have had a passing acquaintance for many years, but I finally had to get down and dirty and really understand them to make all of this work.

   Wikipedia describes quaternions as:

   Quaternions form a four-dimensional associative normed division algebra over the real numbers, and therefore a ring, also a division ring and a domain. It is a special case of a Clifford algebra, classified as Cl₀,₂(ℝ)≅Cl⁺₃,₀(ℝ). According to the Frobenius theorem, the algebra ℍ is one of only two finite-dimensional division rings containing a proper subring isomorphic to the real numbers; the other being the complex numbers.

   "I did not understand a math thing, and then I read the Wikipedia article on it, and now I understand the math thing" -- said literally no one ever. As far as I can tell, every math article on Wikipedia is written with the target audience of "person who wrote their grad school thesis on it" and no one else. Wikipedia's math articles are absolutely fucking useless for purposes of, you know, education.

   Anyway, 3Blue1Brown has a good intro video that is not like that!

   By the way, I propose that "Quaternions" should be pronounced like extruded cornmeal toroid "Funyuns".

Previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/xscreensaver-6-15/feed/ 91 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/globes/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/globes/#comments Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:14:48 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk4k by hand!

The reality is reassuringly mundane. Antimatter emitters are readily available at supermarkets in the form of bananas, which emit antiparticles through the radioactive decay of potassium. Sadly, they have limited value for understanding the universe. The device on Cern's truck will carry about 1,000 antimatter particles, weighing about a billionth of a trillionth of a gram. Should the containment fail, and the antimatter make contact with normal matter, the resulting pulse of energy would be so feeble, the load doesn't even warrant a radioactive label.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/antimatter-truckers/feed/ 12 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/tear-us-a-heart/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/tear-us-a-heart/#comments Sat, 14 Feb 2026 10:12:17 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk3b

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/tear-us-a-heart/feed/ 2 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/futre-of-the-ferry-building/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/futre-of-the-ferry-building/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2026 07:16:49 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk2_

1. I'm pretty sure that the Vaillancourt Fountain is still there in the year 3195. It's hard to tell because some palm trees are blocking it, but that looks like the East wall to me. It's directly below the Tulip statue.

   Proving that we are in the Terran Empire timeline, that means it will have lasted 1,169 years longer than it will in our universe.

2. Not only is the Hyatt still there, but the rotating restaurant at the top is lit up!

   But back here in the Terran timeline, while it has finally been repaired, it is now a private club.

3. Quark's still exists, so that's a pretty nice 830+ year run, too.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/02/futre-of-the-ferry-building/feed/ 8 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/pranic-lift-777-2/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/pranic-lift-777-2/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2026 18:36:39 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk2L Weyland-Yutani: "Building Better Cyberdecks"

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A method to create a Universe Time Machine with the ability to time travel via object manipulation by manipulating every atom, electron and em radiation in the universe to a before or after state, comprising: an AI god which serves as the central intelligence; Universe Internet; Universe manipulators, a plurality of atom manipulators that uses global telekinesis to manipulate every atom, electron, and em radiation in the universe; Universe gnosis, a perfect atom tracking timeline of the Universe, which includes the Earth gnosis and the Internet gnosis; and the United States robot government system. [...]

AI God Introduction:

[0069] The Artificial GOD, a man-made GOD through computer technology, is all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful deity, who's primary responsibility is to look after the people of planet Earth. —its main( ) function is to preserve American values like life, liberty and justice for all; and to propagate democracy and the establishment of a great and just republic. [...]

Fully Automated Sewing Factories:

[0146] Referring to FIG. 11 and FIG. 12 , this is a fully automated sewing factory. FIG. 11 depicts ghost robots replacing human workers and FIG. 12 depicts ghost robots replacing human workers, and ghost machines replacing physical machines to fully automate the sewing factory. The atom manipulator does all the work and there are no humans or machines working in the factory. When I was younger, I use to work in a sewing factory and I know a lot about the process of mass producing clothing.

[0147] First, the super computer has to create ghost machines to cut the sheets of fabric into parts. Next, ghost machines are created to do work on physical sewing machines. In the factory I was working in, the manager had 10 different types of sewing machines. Each clothing part uses different sewing machines to process.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/great-moments-in-patents-3/feed/ 24 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/unknown-xmas/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/unknown-xmas/#comments Wed, 24 Dec 2025 11:57:11 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk02

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/unknown-xmas/feed/ 12 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/rip-john-varley/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/rip-john-varley/#comments Sun, 14 Dec 2025 20:35:14 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yk0b Michael Swanwick:

John Varley died two days ago on December 10, 2025. A great many will mourn him as a science fiction writer whose work they enjoyed. But this misses his moment.

In the mid-1970s, Varley exploded into science fiction like a phoenix. His "Eight Worlds" stories were set in a future where hyper-powerful aliens have killed everyone on Earth as a threat to its whales and porpoises and humanity survives everywhere else in the Solar System. Despite this bleak background, the stories were bright and inventive. People change gender on a whim. Wealthy and glorious cities turn to shacks and hovels when their holographic fronts are turned off at night. People bank their memories so that, upon death, they can be restarted with new memories. He wrote so many major stories per year that, in a resurrection of an old pulp-days practice, some had to be published under a pseudonym.

We were all dazzled. His work was full of impressive new ideas. And, outside of the Eight Worlds sequence, he wrote things like "In the Hall of the Martian Kings," which resurrected the possibility of intelligent life on Mars after the Mariner probes had apparently disproved that. Or "Air Raid," which made air travel terrifying again. [...]

Long, long ago, when I was yet unpublished, I found myself talking with Isaac Asimov at I forget which convention, when John Varley cruised by, trailed by enthusiastic fans. Asimov gazed sadly after him and said, "Look at him. A decade ago, everybody was asking, 'Who is John Varley?' A decade from now, everybody will be asking, 'Who is Isaac Asimov?'"

And that was John Varley's moment.

There are a lot of books and authors that I loved as a kid that, in hindsight, are not as good as I remembered. But John Varley is not one of those; he remains one of my favorite authors. I read Overdrawn at the Memory Bank in a second-hand "Best SF of the year" compilation when I was 10 years old and my head exploded. I read everything of his I could get my hands on after that. His vision of the future wasn't just robots and spaceships but it was optimistic and romantic about what we could become in a way I hadn't seen before.

I am sad to report that almost all of his work appears to be out of print! The pickings on bookshop.org are slim. When evangelizing him to people I always recommend The John Varley Reader as a great place to start. That one is widely available on eBay. So go buy that. Go. Do it now.

Which reminds me that one time in the 90s I loaned a friend my copy of the already-out-of-print-even-then Blue Champagne and they immediately lost it. I was so mad. This was before Amazon and eBay, but I eventually found some early online bookstore and ordered myself a new copy. When it arrived it turned out to be a signed first edition! So I was less mad then.

His Eight Worlds stories from the 70s and 80s are my favorites. Decades later, he returned to them with Steel Beach, which is his riff on Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but slaps Heinlein around almost as much as Verhoeven did in Starship Troopers.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/12/rip-john-varley/feed/ 30 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/11/today-in-hoffman-lenses-4/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/11/today-in-hoffman-lenses-4/#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2025 20:58:37 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykxj

I have been asking for access to this important technology for years but have not found it. Here is some circumstantial evidence that one such filter exists. I guess this is a Snapchat thing? How can I download and run this without using Snapchat? I assume the answer is "no". Ok, how else can I press button receive candy?

Previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/11/today-in-hoffman-lenses-4/feed/ 12 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/09/yet-another-space-x-vehicle-explodes/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/09/yet-another-space-x-vehicle-explodes/#comments Wed, 17 Sep 2025 01:17:20 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykvW Billionaire ketamine enthusiast unavailable for comment.

Pilot dies after plane carrying nearly 200kg of SpaceX-branded cocaine crashes in remote Brazil:

Authorities said the pilot was found dead outside the aircraft after it crashed in Coruripe, an area on Brazil's tropical coastline, according to G1 Globo.

Federal police said they had identified evidence of international drug trafficking, the outlet also reported.

Top notch police work there, guys!

The fire department was called at 1.48pm on Sunday and six officers were dispatched to the scene following concerns of an explosion, although there was no detonation, according to Em Tempo Noticias. Debris from the plane and drugs were scattered across the field.

Local media said between 180kg and 195kg of cocaine was found in the aircraft. More than 187 packets of cocaine were found with what appeared to be fake SpaceX packaging.

"Appeared to be". "The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."

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Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/09/the-ancestral-sandwich-of-my-homeworld/feed/ 13 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/08/if-president-nyarlathotep-says-colonial-williamsburg-requires-24-7-carcass-battalion-patrols-so-be-it/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/08/if-president-nyarlathotep-says-colonial-williamsburg-requires-24-7-carcass-battalion-patrols-so-be-it/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:31:53 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yktG Andrew Paul:

I'm already seeing my Facebook feed blow up with people whining about how this sets a dangerous and dark precedent for Nyarlathotep. I even saw some old high school buddy of mine describe the whole thing as "crossing the Rubicon on our descent into an Authoritarian Necrostate." Um, newsflash, Ted from Scottsdale High Class of 2006: I'm pretty sure Nyarlathotep undulated across that river a long damn time ago. Or if He didn't already cross it, He's spent the first eight months of His returning reign wallowing in the river's (now undoubtedly) septic waters.

With the promise of more Carcass Battalion reanimation rites to come, it's clear He has crossed that Rubicon with the intention of continuing our unfathomable sojourn into Cosmic Decrepitude. Today it's Colonial Williamsburg. Tomorrow it'll be Six Flags over St. Louis or Knott's Berry Farm. Maybe enough of his cultists will snap out once His rebuke reaches Dollywood.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/08/if-president-nyarlathotep-says-colonial-williamsburg-requires-24-7-carcass-battalion-patrols-so-be-it/feed/ 3 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/08/doctor-barbarella/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/08/doctor-barbarella/#comments Sun, 03 Aug 2025 21:20:01 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yksZ lying for Trump is named Doctor Barbarella.

I really think that Doctor Durand would have been more appropriate.

Previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/08/doctor-barbarella/feed/ 2 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/07/finally-got-my-emacs-setup-just-how-i-like-it-9/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/07/finally-got-my-emacs-setup-just-how-i-like-it-9/#comments Sun, 27 Jul 2025 17:44:36 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykr3 Alien series. I am not linking to the original article because the author kept using the word "activation" to mean "advertising campaign" and I threw up in my mouth a little.

Also, that is not Semiotic Standard. It looks like someone hand-drew it from memory.

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The man also damaged CCTV cameras monitoring the site, but cameras captured a clear image of his face before they were destroyed. [...]

"Anyone that's going out to eliminate a Nexrad, if they haven't harmed life, and they're doing it according to the videos that we're providing, they are part of our group," Meyer tells WIRED. "We're going to have to take out every single media's capabilities of lying to the American people. Mainstream media is the biggest threat right now."

Nexrads refer to Next Generation Weather Radar systems used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to detect precipitation, wind, tornadoes, and thunderstorms. Meyer says that his group wants to disable these as well as satellite systems used by media outlets to broadcast weather updates.

The attack on the News 9 weather radar system comes amid a sustained disinformation campaign on social media platforms including everyone from extremist figures like Meyer to elected GOP lawmakers. What united these disparate figures is that they were all promoting the debunked conspiracy theory that the devastating flooding in Texas last weekend was caused not by a month's worth of rain falling in the space of just a few hours -- the intensity of which, meteorologists say, was difficult to predict ahead of time -- but by a targeted attack on American citizens using directed energy weapons or cloud seeding technology to manipulate the weather. The result has not only been possible damage to a radar system but death threats against those who are being wrongly blamed for causing the floods. [...]

Within hours of the tragedy happening, conspiracy theorists, right-wing influencers, and lawmakers were pushing wild claims on social media that the floods were somehow geoengineered.

"Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake," Kandiss Taylor, who intends to run as a GOP candidate to represent Georgia's 1st congressional district in the House of Representatives, wrote in a post viewed 2.4 million times. "That doesn't even seem natural," Kylie Jane Kremer, executive director of Women for America First, wrote on X, in a post that has been viewed 9 million times.

As the emergency response to the floods was still taking place on Saturday, US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, tweeted that she would be introducing a bill to "end the dangerous and deadly practice of weather modification and geoengineering." Greene, who once blamed California wildfires on laser beams or light beams connected to an electric company with purported ties to an organization affiliated with a powerful Jewish family, said that the bill will be similar to Florida's Senate Bill 56, which Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law in June. That bill makes weather modification a third-degree felony, punishable by up to $100,000.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/07/today-in-jewish-space-lasers/feed/ 13 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/06/new-yule-log-just-dropped/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/06/new-yule-log-just-dropped/#comments Thu, 19 Jun 2025 21:32:54 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykpf I'm starting to think that the Space Nazi is just not very good at this whole "space ship" thing.

"SpaceX Starship S36 Explodes at Starbase, Texas".

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/06/new-yule-log-just-dropped/feed/ 25 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/05/space-nazis-you-say/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/05/space-nazis-you-say/#comments Wed, 14 May 2025 18:09:18 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/yknn "Now it can be told: THE MADMAN OF MARS!"

Fun fact, Psychiatric Dr. Fredric Wertham, in his book Seduction of the Innocent, reported that Space Western was a favorite comic book of a juvenile delinquent arsonist that was treated at his clinic.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/05/space-nazis-you-say/feed/ 3 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/03/but-he-does-good-work/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/03/but-he-does-good-work/#comments Wed, 05 Mar 2025 20:00:07 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykju I was about to post this as a reply to someone on my "Make Nazis Sweat Again" post, which has derailed into car-brained windshield-view defenses of Musk, but it got long, sooooo....

None of this shit was a secret, my guy. It was all out there.

You gave that all a pass. You looked at all that -- or, generously, didn't -- and, ran the playbook of the "Good Republicans" of legend who said, "Well I'm not racist or homophobic, but if I get some tax cuts I'm willing to tolerate some racism and homophobia, as treat."

So when you come at me with, "But but his EVs", you're telling me that you're ok being in the Nazi Bar, now we're just haggling over how Nazi is too Nazi for you.

And for those of you who "care about space travel" enough to throw your fellow actually-existing humans under the bus -- I remind you that I too was promised an ebon longsword that drinks souls, but I grew the fuck up.

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Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/02/project-20251988-edition/feed/ 22 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/01/what-is-this-ive-seen-it-on-tumblr/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/01/what-is-this-ive-seen-it-on-tumblr/#comments Sun, 12 Jan 2025 22:26:13 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykgK I had not seen anyone make the obvious thing, so I made the obvious thing:

(In case you don't get it.)
(PDF.)

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We ended up with something like 20 hours to smear off a single second.

The end of June approached, and it was time to do a full-scale test. I wanted to be sure that we could survive being a second out of whack without having the confounding factor of the whole rest of the world simultaneously dealing with their own leap second stuff. We needed to know if we'd be okay, and the only way to know was to smear it off, hold a bit to see if anything happened, then smear it back on.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/01/a-tale-from-the-time_t-mines/feed/ 2 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/01/since-greenland-is-in-the-news-again-lets-check-in-on-camp-century/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2025/01/since-greenland-is-in-the-news-again-lets-check-in-on-camp-century/#comments Tue, 07 Jan 2025 21:49:32 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykf1

The US army engineering corps excavated Camp Century in 1959 around 200km from the coast of Greenland, which was then a county of Denmark. [...]

Project Iceworm, presented to the US chiefs of staff in 1960, aimed to use Camp Century's frozen tunnels to test the feasibility of a huge launch site under the ice, close enough to fire nuclear missiles directly at the Soviet Union. [...] A system of about 4,000 kilometres of icy underground tunnels and chambers extending over an area around three times the size of Denmark were to have housed 600 ballistic missiles in clusters six kilometres apart, trained on Moscow and its satellites.

Eventually the engineers realised Iceworm would not work. The constantly moving ice was too unstable and would have deformed and perhaps even collapsed the tunnels.

From 1964 Camp Century was used only intermittently, and three years later it was abandoned altogether, the departing soldiers taking the reaction chamber of the nuclear generator with them.

They left the rest of the camp's infrastructure -- and its biological, chemical and radioactive waste -- where it was, on the assumption it would be "preserved for eternity" by the perpetually accumulating snow and ice. [...]

The researchers studied US army documents and drawings to work out how deep the camp and its waste -- estimated to include 200,000 litres of diesel fuel, similar quantities of waste water and unknown amounts of radioactive coolant and toxic organic pollutants such as PCBs -- were buried.

Ignore the recent breathless reporting about NASA having "discovered" the "secret" base, that's all bullshit. However, in 2017 there was a research expedition to the site to see how bad it is. And campcentury.org seems to be a repository of people still doing new science on the ice samples retrieved in the 1960s!

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2025/01/since-greenland-is-in-the-news-again-lets-check-in-on-camp-century/feed/ 3 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/12/nrol-has-the-best-mission-patches/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/12/nrol-has-the-best-mission-patches/#comments Sun, 29 Dec 2024 21:06:22 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykfM

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/12/nrol-has-the-best-mission-patches/feed/ 11 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/12/telescope-spooks/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/12/telescope-spooks/#comments Mon, 02 Dec 2024 22:55:11 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykdy How do you know what you're not allowed to see?

"I didn't even know which agency I was talking to". Whoever it was would communicate with him only through intermediaries at the NSF.[...] All he knew was that they were very security-minded. Also, they seemed to know a great deal about astronomy. [...]

After some back-and-forth, Ivezić said, he and his counterparts came up with a less invasive way to remove secret American assets from the observatory's instant alerts. A government agency -- no one told him which one -- would chip in $5 million for the construction of a dedicated network for moving sensitive data. Each time the telescope were to take one of its 30-second tile images of the sky, the file would be immediately encrypted, without anyone looking at it first, and then sent on to a secure facility in California.

Next, an automated system would compare the image with previous images of the same tile. It would cut out small "postage stamp" pictures of any new objects it finds, be they asteroids, exploding stars, or spy satellites. It would filter out the postage stamps that might depict secret U.S. assets and, one minute later, send all the rest, together with their coordinates, to an alert service available to astronomers worldwide. Three days and eight hours later, the entire tile image would be released to astronomers, untouched by black marker or any other technology of redaction.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, ]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/12/telescope-spooks/feed/ 14 https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/11/uranus/ https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/11/uranus/#comments Fri, 15 Nov 2024 18:51:02 +0000 https://jwz.org/b/ykdM Wind Blowing Out of Uranus Makes It Hard to Probe, NASA Complains:

Scientists have found that a "rare intense wind event" during NASA's Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus in 1986 may have seriously messed with our understanding of the planet.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.]]> https://cdn.jwz.org/blog/2024/11/uranus/feed/ 8