Category: Uncategorized

NASA’s Lost Contact With A Microwave-Sized Cube-Sat — It Was To Slowly Float Toward The Moon…

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The news is troubling, to be sure — but not irretrievable. Not… yet.

There are several days of slack in the next needed engine burn, and the team has a very good idea where the tiny box is, in space — relative to Earth. But if a critical antenna component, or similar, is gone, and the backup functionality is gone, as well — this may be a lost item. We shall wait and see:

…Following successful deployment and start of spacecraft commissioning on July 4, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) spacecraft experienced communications issues while in contact with the Deep Space Network.

The spacecraft team currently is working to understand the cause and re-establish contact. The team has good trajectory data for the spacecraft based on the first full and second partial ground station pass with the Deep Space Network. If needed, the mission has enough fuel to delay the initial post separation trajectory correction maneuver for several days. Additional updates will be provided as soon as possible….

Now you know… onward, smiling.

नमस्ते

Hinderaker Ought To Live… Just A Few Nights, Out Driving In America — As A Black Man…

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I’ve said it dozens of times before, and Hinderaker has offered scores of these feckless opinion pieces, before: he says in essence “if black men would just obey the police, they’d not get dead.”

Funny. John never made the “just obey the police” argument, as George Floyd was being murdered by Derek Chauvin (a cop) on the pavement, completely subdued, and lacking an airway — for well over seven minutes.

There, John argued it was “Mr. Floyd’s fault” because he had some drugs in his system, the coroners’ lab report allegedly revealed. Of course, John didn’t mention that the same coroner ruled the drugs were not the proximate cause of Mr. Floyd’s death. It was his restricted airway — via Derek Chauvin’s knee, on it.

Feckless — utterly feckless. And no apology, from John — when Mr. Chauvin was found guilty, and ultimately sentenced to a long stint in prison, for a homicide — either. Charming.

In this latest case (Akron, OH), John fails to mention that at least five officers emptied their entire clips into his body, as Jayland Walker fell dead, wholly-unarmed.

I do wish John would have to spend even just a few nights, in the streets, with brown skin — as any random group of mostly whyte, male, law enforcement officers… followed him around — just looking for the smallest excuse… to detain him.

I wish.

But soon enough, willfully evil morons like Hinderaker will have died off. So it goes.

Amazon Corporate Is Delaying 12 Buildouts, Of New Facilities — And Has Outright Cancelled Four New Facilities, Altogether.

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This is all… plainly a reflection of the slowing growth in online purchasing — as Covid-19 “stay home” protocols wane. It is also the product of a souring overall US retail purchasing environment, due in no small part to excessive tariffs (an idea discredited in the 1890s, BTW) from the prior tangerine administration.

But like Coinbase, and Kraken, it is also clear that the CFO of Amazon was aiming build out projections at the high end of a very frothy, and now volatile, market forecast for Amazon “last mile” deliveries. So, just as unionization takes a firm grip on the future of labor costs inside this vast array of delivery facilities. . . Mr. Bezos is facing flat- to declining demand for the empire he’s built. Yep — a coming “perfect storm” of sorts, at that:

…[Amazon] CFO Brian Olsavsky said the company chose to expand its warehouse network based on “the high end of a very volatile demand outlook.” So far this year, though, it has shut down or delayed plans for at least 16 scheduled facilities.

“We currently have some excess capacity in the network that we need to grow into,” Olsavsky told investors on Amazon’s Q1 2022 earnings call. “So, we’ve brought down our build expectations. Note again that many of the build decisions were made 18 to 24 months ago, so there are limitations on what we can adjust midyear….”

Basic, boring but competent management of financial resources… should have won the day — and he, and his CFO, should have been more… circumspect, in building plans. So it goes — no, trees don’t grow to the sky, forever — despite what the digiterati and crypto- communities would have us believe. Grin.

नमस्ते

When A Nation Studiously Follows Public Health/Pandemic Abatement Science Leaders’ Advice, Ebola’s Mortality “In The Wild”… Plummets.

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The fourteenth widely-recognized Ebola outbreak (since 1985) resulted in only five cases and four deaths. It was declared over, as of yesterday morning. [Backgrounder, here.]

That compares to over 15,000 in 2014; and over 3,000 as recently as early 2019. Vaccines work; ring strategies… work. In sum, early and aggressive intervention… works. The lessons are clear, here:

…There were four confirmed cases and one probable case — all of whom died, the WHO said on Monday.

The previous outbreak in the forested province, from June to November 2020, claimed 55 lives.

WHO’s regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said in the statement that the authorities reacted rapidly, limiting the spread of Ebola with a vaccination campaign four days after the start of the outbreak.

“Crucial lessons have been learned from past outbreaks and they have been applied to devise and deploy an ever more effective Ebola response”….

We wish all of good will only the best — in independence from maladies of whatever sort, this fine and hopefully peace-filled barbeque day. Jerk steak on the grill — with lots of Teriaki-, and regular barbeque- chicken too, as a backup protein… grinning — ever grinning.

नमस्ते

More Thoughts, On Last Night’s Concluding Remarks: Fourth of 2022 Edition.

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It has been clear for about three years now, that I have more faith in America, than Hinderaker does.

My faith is rooted in the fragile, but enduring, improbability that is… America’s dream: “from many… one.”

John has been preaching about (and impliedly hoping for?) a new civil war, ever since it became clear Tangerine was going to lose the White House in the summer of 2020.

Those two are correlated for him. Not for me. Our democracy is at its best when all of us of good will engage, to peaceably petition our leaders — for change.

The graphic above reminds us what happens to principled dissent at Powerline: how very “Putin” of you boys. Mirengoff was voted off the island for offending the snowflake Hayward. In any event….

Here it comes, John. Watch the mid-terms… 70 per cent of all Americans, and over 60 per cent of all GOP women, vehemently disagree with the Thomas / Alito Dobbs decision.

You old privileged whyte guys… have egregiously miscalculated. Again.

Me? I will remain optimistic, on all fronts….

Despite the real peril our fragile experiment in ordered liberty faces in this tumultuous moment, with the highest court increasingly looking like an overtly -Xian religious governing body…

I believe our republic will remain resilient enough to weather this storm. Most of all, because I and many others smarter than I am, will now throw in, shoulder to shoulder — to peaceably change the things we see… as broken — or “unfinished” to borrow young Amanda Gorman’s memorable prose, from the last Inaugural morning, on January 21, 2021. Out.

नमस्ते

The “God Particle”… That… Wasn’t: Ten Years Later.

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It is easy to imagine how… having suddenly discovered it… it would be both a blessing, and a curse, for the involved physicists (like yet another “re-discovery“, in August of that year). The expectations — after the popular press dubbed it (incorrectly) the “God Particle” — were blasted… completely off the charts. And people have hounded the discoverers… essentially ever since.

In fact, it is a vastly-important validation of many a prior theory’s predictions, but in particle physics, as with everything (it seems), it raises far more profound questions, than it answers:

…This July 4 marks 10 years since the discovery of the Higgs boson, the long-sought particle that imparts mass to all elementary particles. The elusive particle was the last missing piece in the Standard Model of particle physics, which is our most complete model of the universe.

In early summer of 2012, signs of the Higgs particle were detected in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, which is operated by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The LHC is engineered to smash together billions upon billions of protons for the chance at producing the Higgs boson and other particles that are predicted to have been created in the early universe….

Q.: As the Large Hadron Collider gears up for its new “Run 3,” what is hoped for, to discover next?

One very interesting question that Run 3 might give us some first hints on is the self-coupling of the Higgs boson. As the Higgs couples to any massive particle, it can also couple to itself. It is unlikely that there is enough data to make a discovery, but first hints of this coupling would be very exciting to see, and this constitutes a fundamentally different test than what has been done so far….

As any other good physicist, I hope though that we can find a crack in the armor of the Standard Model, which is so far holding up all too well. There are a number of very important observations, for example the nature of dark matter, that cannot be explained using the Standard Model. All of our future studies, from Run 3 starting on July 5 to the very in the future FCC, will give us access to entirely uncharted territory. New phenomena can pop up, and I like to be optimistic….

Me too — I will remain optimistic, on all fronts… for perhaps… a decade on, and a… re-discovery, yet again.

Perhaps more prosaically, despite the peril our fragile experiment in ordered liberty faces in this tumultuous moment, with the highest court increasingly looking like an overtly -Xian religious governing body…

I believe our republic will remain resilient enough to weather this storm. Most of all, because I and many others smarter than I am, will now throw in, shoulder to shoulder — to peacably change the things we see… as broken — or “unfinished” to borrow young Amanda Gorman’s memorable prose, from the last Inaugural morning, on January 21, 2021.

नमस्ते

The Supremes’ EPA Decision… IS A FARCE. Kagan’s Dissent Acerbically Proves It.

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Not to go on at too much length, here — but the rule of five… now ignores all its own prior admonitions. [Again, the insipid Powerliner blog team mischaracterize the rulings of this morning. YAWN. We will lay them out, successively.]

It simply ignores plain text in statutes long thought settled to create politically-convenient “GOP endorsed” rights… out of thin air. Let’s read Justice Kagan’s dissent (starting at page 28), instead of the majority:

…Some years ago, I remarked that “[w]e’re all textualists now.” Harvard Law School, The Antonin Scalia Lecture Series: A Dialogue with Justice Elena Kagan on the Reading of Statutes (Nov. 25, 2015). It seems I was wrong. The current Court is textualist only when being so suits it. When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the “major questions doctrine” magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards. Today, one of those broader goals makes itself clear: Prevent agencies from doing important work, even though that is what Congress directed.

That anti-administrative-state stance shows up in the majority opinion, and it suffuses the concurrence. See ante, at 19, 25–26; e.g., ante, at 3–6 (GORSUCH, J., concurring). The kind of agency delegations at issue here go all the way back to this Nation’s founding. “[T]he founding era,” scholars have shown, “wasn’t concerned about delegation.” E. Posner & A. Vermeule, Interring the Nondelegation Doctrine, 69 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1721, 1734 (2002) (Posner & Vermeule). The records of the Constitutional Convention, the ratification debates, the Federalist — none of them suggests any significant limit on Congress’s capacity to delegate policymaking authority to the Executive Branch. And neither does any early practice.

The very first Congress gave sweeping authority to the Executive Branch to resolve some of the day’s most pressing problems, including questions of “territorial administration,” “Indian affairs,” “foreign and domestic debt,” “military service,” and “the federal courts….”

These are… indeed, perilous times — for the rule of non-partisan law in the United States.

नमस्ते

Note To Drew Bruce Tipton: The Word “May” Can Never Be Tortured Sufficiently… To Read “Must”. End Of The Lesson.

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This is mostly just. . . sad, because the Biden Administration has spent two and a half years, now trying to teach a Trump appointed Texas USDC trial judge (supposedly, a college educated man) how to read the English language.

But it is all over now. The Supremes have spoken, six to three. Just as we said, Judge Tipton… some words cannot be tortured enough… to become their antonyms. Full opinion — and a bit:

…The problem is that the statute does not say anything like that. The statute says “may.” And “may” does not just suggest discretion, it “clearly connotes” it. Opati, 590 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10) (emphasis in original); see also Jama, 543 U. S., at 346 (“That connotation is particularly apt where, as here, ‘may’ is used in contraposition ‘shall.’”). Congress’s use of the word “may” is therefore inconsistent with respondents’ proposed inference from the statutory structure.

If Congress had intended section 1225(b)(2)(C) to operate as a mandatory cure of any noncompliance with the Government’s detention obligations, it would not have conveyed that intention through an unspoken inference in conflict with the unambiguous, express term “may.” It would surely instead have coupled that grant of discretion with some indication of its sometimes mandatory nature — perhaps by providing that the Secretary “may return” certain aliens to Mexico, “unless the government fails to comply with its detention obligations, in which case the Secretary must return them.

The statutory grant of discretion here contains no such caveat, and we will not rewrite it to include one…

Onward to a backyard Japanese steakhouse catered event, under the stars. . . grin.

नमस्ते

Now Potentially 2,500 Covered Employees In Lithia Springs, Georgia Seek Union Representation — At Amazon.com Services Branches… More New NLRB Charges Filed Monday.

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As we await the arrival of the actual charging letter, from the FOIA offices of NLRB / ALJ… we will note that this is a potentially larger group, not quite the size of JFK8, but close — at 2,500 employees.

What is known is here, at the moment. It does allege violations of Section 8(a)(1) rights. We will update, over the holiday weekend, likely. But the flames… they will grow… much higher (unless Bezos pulls his head “out of his John Brown hind-parts“):

…AMAZON.com Services, Inc.
Case Number: 10-CA-298254
Date Filed: 06/27/2022
Status: Open
Location: Lithia Springs, GA
Region Assigned: Region 10, Atlanta, Georgia….

We cannot discern which union entity is leading this charge, yet. More, when the charging documents become public. So for now, we will just run a generic Amazon trademark as the graphic.

Onward, grinning — with a backyard set-up / pop-up Benihana® full-chef’s dinner, around a giant but fully portable Hibachi grill (complete with onion ring volcanoes for the grand-nieces!) on tap, for tomorrow night… calm, cool evening — and no rain in the forecasts… should be a lobster and sirloin… hoot, under the stars! Can’t wait!

नमस्ते