Astronomy Picture of the Week: The Keeler Gap

Another one from Cassini’s Grand Finale mission

Here’s the text from the photo page; the image is below the fold (and, as usual, you can click on it for the tiff download)…

Before Cassini entered its Grand Finale orbits, it acquired unprecedented views of the outer edges of the main ring system. For example, this close-up view of the Keeler Gap, which is near the outer edge of Saturn’s main rings, shows in great detail just how much the moon Daphnis affects the edges of the gap.

This image was part of a mosaic that included Daphnis (The Realm of Daphnis).

Daphnis creates waves in the edges of the gap through its gravitational influence. Some clumping of ring particles can be seen in the perturbed edge, similar to what was seen on the edges of the Encke Gap back when Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 3 degrees above the ring plane. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 18,000 miles (30,000 kilometers) from Daphnis and at a Sun-Daphnis-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 69 degrees. Image scale is 581 feet (177 meters) per pixel. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 16, 2017.

[Read more…]

Pointless Rant: Why I Won’t Get an iPhone

I’m very stubborn about what I require in a cell phone. The basics, of course… wi-fi and 4G connectability, access to apps, good phone call quality, good sound quality, and so on; the kind of stuff that most people today expect in a smart phone. I like having a portable internet, and as it gets better, I get happier.

But there are four specific things I require that seem less and less popular these days as more and more companies move away from them. The various reasons people give for not needing these things anymore are nice and all, but I simply don’t agree.

Unfortunately, some of the best phones on the market currently lack these features, meaning I have to sacrifice performance for their sake, which gets more and more annoying as time goes on.

For example… I’ve reached a point of abhorring my current phone, the LG G4. I got it, in part, because it offered all the features I want, plus many others that had me excited. Many of those features, however, have become useless as this phone breaks down with major, annoying lag. And apps like Clean Master don’t help; they largely just make it worse. Despite even that, however, I still demand these four features, and until technologies are good enough that even having them as a security blanket is pointless, I will continue to demand them.

[Read more…]

This is Unfiltered, Unbridled Propaganda

(h/t PZ Myers)

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. This is Fox News, after all. Of course it’s courting this transparent propaganda. But here I am, actually shocked that this disgusting piece was aired. Here’s the full YouTube Video. I’m also going to include a transcript below the fold, with my responses (though starting of with PZ’s response to the beginning, because it was perfect).

[Read more…]

German Car Sales Are Destroying America!

From Paste

Trump’s ever-expanding axis of evil (i.e. anybody he doesn’t find “tremendous”) grew just a little bit more yesterday. Along with Muslims and exercise, Trump has now decided that Germans are “very bad.” Trump, eloquent as ever, has taken offense to Germany’s trade surplus with the United States. According to German news outlet Der Spiegel (presumably German for “fake news”), Trump made his remarks while voicing his frustration during a meeting with top EU leaders.

Elon James White *blink*

Animated gif of Elon James White blinking in confusion…

[Read more…]

Jared Kushner Actually Thought this Would Work?

From Salon

This hasn’t been a good week for Jared Kushner.

After it was revealed yesterday that the presidential son-in-law was being targeted by the FBI as a “person of interest” in the ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, the Washington Post dropped another shocking revelation today in a report stating that Kushner asked Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak if they might set up a “secure communications channel” in a “Russian diplomatic facility,” which would allow the Trump team to have an open and private channel to the Kremlin.

Um… that’s not… you can’t…

What?!?

[Read more…]

This is What Comes from White Supremacy

Yesterday, on May 27, it was reported that a White Supremacist got on the MAX train in Northeast Portland. He saw two teenage girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab, and immediately launched into a racist, Islamophobic tirade.

Two teenage girls boarded a MAX train in downtown heading to Northeast Portland early Friday evening when a man got on at a later stop and immediately launched into a racial tirade as soon as they caught his eye.

“He was saying that Muslims should die,” said Dyjuana Hudson, a mother of one of the girls. “That they’ve been killing Christians for years.”

Hudson recounted what her daughter, Destinee, told her hours after police tracked down the man as he ran from the rush-hour train into the Hollywood neighborhood. Other passengers chased him from a distance and called 911.

Three Good Samaritans attempted to intervene. One is in the hospital, and the other two are dead.

Two men were killed in a stabbing on a MAX train Friday when they tried to intervene as another man yelled racial slurs at two young women who appeared to be Muslim, including one wearing a hijab, police said.

A third passenger who tried to help was also stabbed, but is expected to survive, said Portland police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson.

[Read more…]

Keyser Soze’s Reveal

I’ve decided to drop “Self Care” from the titles of these posts. It’ll still be a category and in the tags; they’re still Self Care posts.

This is one of the greatest endings of one of the greatest movies ever made. Obviously, spoilers for The Usual Suspects, but this movie’s been out for 22 years. I think we’re well past the point where spoilers matter… and yet I’m still gonna put it below the fold… (there is a bit of ableism in this clip, BTW… and no, we’re not debating that)

[Read more…]