Notices by Minoru Saba (minorusaba@toad.social), page 10

@Schubertsworld
Great picture!🙂
"Floating around the neighborhood"
by Francisco Fonseca (Porto, Portugal)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B_sA0nLJ6eO/?utm_source=ig_embed

Mahalo to the folks at the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center for inviting a group of us from the STScI to come to the island of Hawai'i to collaborate, and for organizing a trip to the summit of Maunakea and a tour of the Keck observatories. What a special, beautiful, otherworldly place!

"Ocean acidification close to critical threshold, say scientists, posing threat to marine ecosystems and global liveability"

"...any human perturbation of the global environment that we observe at the moment … cannot be addressed as if they were separate issues..."
#PIK #environment #pollution #crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/23/earth-breach-planetary-boundaries-health-check-oceans

🔸Not confident we can stop nature exacting its revenge on human arrogance😬

@FlockOfCats Brings back memories of using Sharwood's curry powder decades ago in London, but lost the knack along the way and now the default is House's 50% calorie-off Java Curry roux chucked in after adding a can of sliced tomatoes to the usual line up of veggies & chicken with a dash of rice vinegar.

"Japan will have a new leader after outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s governing Liberal Democratic Party holds a vote on Sept. 27 to choose his replacement."
https://apnews.com/article/japan-governing-party-prime-minister-kishida-candidates-8dae3f367e20dd8ef4ad4f370c586b5c
🔸Probably judging their chances to be slim, AP article (12 Sept 2024) omits details on 3 candidates: Yoshimasa Hayashi, Takayuki Kobayashi, and Katsunobu Kato
#Japan #politics

After mentioning a past visit to the Yoichi Distillery in Hokkaido, the bartender at the Bar Montagne on the 17th Floor of Hotel Aomori brought out a bottle of Nikka "Hirosaki" Apple Brandy and naturally the recommendation was accepted🙂
#Aomori #Hirosaki #AppleBrandy

A 110-million year old mantis [1], a ~20/5-million year old mantis [2], and a mantis from our garden [3].

[1] "An exceptionally preserved 110 million years old praying mantis provides new insights into the predatory behaviour of early mantodeans", Hörnig et al. 2017 https://peerj.com/articles/3605/
[2] "A new species of mantis (Insecta: Mantodea: Amelidae) from the Miocene Amber-Lagerstätte in Mexico", Terríquez-Beltrán et al. 2022 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2022.2134782
[3] https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/179582544

#iNaturalist #Mantodea #entomology #insects #mantis

@JohnBarentine It's a solid argument—and a needed warning—against an online service that promises to gobble your input for training data, but it's too broad a brush if it includes locally hosted tools. There could be other good arguments against that, but not on confidentiality.

"A central Asian leader who knows Putin well was asked by a western interlocutor whether the Russian president will negotiate. Yes, came the prompt reply, “when his generals tell him he’s losing”."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/21/volodymyr-zelenskyy-peace-jpe-biden-kharkiv-ukraine-russia
#Ukraine

"...Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed at least 14 people including a senior Hezbollah leader and wounded 66"
"It was the latest in a series of attacks that rocked Lebanon this week"
"UN political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo said: “We risk seeing a conflagration that could dwarf even the devastation and suffering witnessed so far.”"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/20/top-hezbollah-leader-airstrike-beirut-israel
🔸Bad feeling it's all heading to an Archduke Ferdinand remake with more devastating consequences. Hell of a way to solve global warming😱

@currentbias Haven't seen official analyses, but from personal observation fewer people are masking on trains and in public areas indoors in Tokyo. Also, last booster was nearly a year ago so probably not much immunity against latest COVID variants.
Thankfully people are still 100% masked in hospitals.

Infection status
Released Sept 20, 2024.
- As of period from Sept 9 - Sept 15, 2024 -

No. of patients per medical facility (nationwide) 5.28
Change from prev. week -1.29
[Source: Health-Labor-Welfare Ministry weekly report]
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/001306004.pdf
🔸Downward trend of 11th wave continues.
Saga at 3.23, Tokyo at 4.41, Akita at 8.75, Hokkaido at 5.89, Okinawa at 2.05, Miyagi at 10.8.
#Influenza (nationwide) at 0.51, but Okinawa at 16.52!
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/001306592.pdf
#CovidIsNotOver #Japan

Stumbled on NASA's fascinating "Eyes on Asteroids" app.
Haven't got the hang of how to navigate it, so it's still quite disorienting as Earth keeps popping out of frame, but the scale is impressive.
https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/nasas-eyes-on-asteroids-reveals-our-near-earth-object-neighborhood/

Link to app:
https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/asteroids/#/home

#NASA #JPL #asteroids

"...an asteroid [2024 PT5 ] roughly the length of a city bus will be captured by Earth’s gravitational pull and orbit our planet for about 2 months, becoming a “mini moon”... from 29 September until 25 November before returning to its home, an asteroid belt revolving around the sun"
"The asteroid was discovered on 7 August by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (Atlas), a Nasa-funded program"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/19/mini-moon-asteroid
#2024PT5 #asteroid #MiniMoon

Ich konnte nichts dafür, wirklich nicht!!! Die sind einfach in den Einkaufswagen gesprungen 🥺

@srepetsk
"Tama (Japanese: たま, April 29, 1999 – June 22, 2015) was a female calico cat who gained fame for being a railway station master and operating officer at Kishi Station"
"In lieu of an annual salary, the railway provided Tama with a year's worth of cat food"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tama_(cat)
#Tama #cat #Wakayama #Japan #スーパー駅長

"A [10 year old] Japanese boy stabbed by a man while on his way to school in...Shenzhen died...early Thursday morning (19 Sept 2024)"

"Given Wednesday marked the 93rd anniversary of [the Mukden incident] Japan had asked the Chinese Foreign Ministry last week to take thorough safety measures for Japanese schools, according to Japan's Foreign Minister Kamikawa"
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20240919/p2g/00m/0in/006000c
#Shenzhen #Mukden #Japan

Mukden incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_incident

@mattblaze 🤪

What if I LIKE buying dodgy counterfeit equipment through Amazon or eBay or Alibaba for supplying my militias?

"...Exploding pagers pose new threat but your phone is probably safe, experts say" (Independent, 18 Sept 2024)
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/pager-attack-lebanon-phone-safe-explained-b2614983.html
🔸"probably" doing a lot of heavy lifting after Pandora's box being opened.
Can imagine mobile device industry in panic mode as they can't guarantee doctored devices not ending up on the other side of the globe given the interconnected nature of the world today.

I don't think Israel realizes how this supply-chain attack means that every Israeli software developer and hardware developer will now be treated as a potential attacker on the company payroll.

Every commit should be treated as being developed by Mossad.

And to think it was only a few months ago that we learned about the helpful contributor that injected trojans on open source libraries.