Notices by Minoru Saba (minorusaba@toad.social), page 3

Have heard that the flag found on an okosama lunch (お子様ランチ: kid's lunch plate)[1] was exempted from the problematic flag desecration bill[2] which is wending its way through Japan's parliamentary (Dietary?) processes. Would have thought there were more urgent fish to fry.🙄

1. Okosama Lunch:
https://en.namu.wiki/w/%EC%98%A4%EC%BD%94%EC%82%AC%EB%A7%88%20%EB%9F%B0%EC%B9%98

2. Japan criminal law experts voice opposition to flag desecration bill
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20260709_13/

Statement from the only candidate willing to run against #NigelFarage in Clacton. This is real.

Oh. My. GOD. All in for Count Binface!

@michael_w_busch @tanavit This is what you get for providing snacks at conferences 🤨

"Through fresh analysis of supernovae data, a team of astronomers has discredited a recent study that suggested that dark energy has weakened since the early universe.
Led by Phil Wiseman at the UK’s University of Southampton, the team showed that the apparent weakening almost disappears after accounting for a known correlation between supernova brightness and galaxy mass."
https://physicsworld.com/a/cosmic-crisis-averted-as-supernovae-put-dark-energy-back-on-track/
#DarkEnergy #soton

Was dragged along by wife into central Tokyo a couple of weeks ago to see items from the Vatican Apostolic Library which are on show at the Printing Museum, Tokyo, until 20 July 2026.
Found that there were actually only a handful of exhibits from the Vatican, but there were plenty of interesting items owned by the Printing Museum itself including a 1739 edition of Newton's "Principia" and a 1719 edition of Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe".
https://www.printing-museum.org/en/collection/exhibition/t20260303.php

RE: https://mastodon.social/@camelliakyoto/116847569584384152

Happy Tanabata (七夕) to all that celebrate.
#Orihime #Hikoboshi #Amanogawa #Vega #Altair #MilkyWay

Clocks all down at work. Cos enshittification, our clocks have to be networked for some reason. Tried turning mine off at the mains, then back on again, seemed to work, it started ticking at maybe 60X speed to correct itself.

So I reset all the clocks in the department.

But no, instead of all reading 4 o'clock (they're analogue) they all just reset to 12 o'clock.

Still, I did it at about 11.50am, so for one glorious minute...

Randomly wondering about turtle hibernation, but it seems the correct term is "brumation".
"During brumation, a turtle’s metabolism slows, activity drops, appetite falls, and the turtle uses far less energy..."
https://www.allturtles.com/turtle-hibernation/
...which might explain how: "Disaster Area’s frontman, Hotblack Desiato, an old friend of Ford Prefect’s, is spending a year dead for tax reasons." (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams)
https://www.hhgproject.org/entries/disasterarea.html
#brumation #turtle #uspol

Was thinking as it rushed by with sirens screeching and red lights flashing that "ambulance" was a misnomer as "ambulare" means "to walk", but it seems "ambulance" originally meant "mobile hospital"...
https://www.etymonline.com/word/ambulance
... So MASH was an ambulance?🚑

Infection status
Released July 3, 2026.
- As of period from Jun 22 - Jun 28, 2026 -

No. of patients per medical facility (nationwide) 1.08
Change from prev. week +0.21
[Source: Health-Labor-Welfare Ministry weekly report]
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/001718145.pdf
🔸15th wave?
Saga at 2.46, Tokyo at 0.16, Akita at 0.28, Hokkaido at 0.15, Okinawa at 0.3

#Kagoshima at 9.19

#Influenza monitoring paused until Sept
https://www.mhlw.go.jp/content/001697528.pdf

#CovidIsNotOver
#Japan

As global temperatures continue to increase, it would seem the games would be more sustainable if they were held at fixed venues; e.g. the Philippine Arena for summer and Ski Dubai for winter🤪

"The head of the International Olympic Committee's Future Host Commission has expressed hope that Japan will host a future Winter Games"

"In Nagano, a local business group submitted a proposal to the city earlier this month, urging it to bid for the Games"
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260629/p2g/00m/0sp/014000c
🔸Setting aside IOC's existential motives, it seems yet another ruse for vested interests local and otherwise to raid Japan's national coffers. Cui bono?

@FlockOfCats I think, due to the use of generative ai, face to face meetings might make a big come back.

We have people use ai to cheat at interviews on video calls. Soon face to face will be the only way you can trust people.

🚨 Beyond the limit 🚨

New ESO study finds that current proposals to launch 1.7+ million satellites into orbit would have devastating consequences for astronomy.

The most extreme proposals come from SpaceX & Reflect Orbital

1/4

📷 F. Kamphues, ESO/M. Kornmesser

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science #environment #pollution

The CRASH Clock (which is an acronym, I apologize deeply) is our metric for how dangerous orbit is. We download real orbits for everything (satellites, rocket bodies, tracked debris) and calculate how long it would be for a collision to occur if no orbital maneuvers happen.

This is a worst-case calculation. What if everyone suddenly lost control due to a solar flare, a bad software update, or someone hacking Starlink? How long do we have to regain control?

I am getting sick of this conflating of every case of "computer use algorithm" into the single gelid blob of "AI" making it impossible to have a productive conversation on the subject

When people say they're "against AI", they usually mean certain specific things. "Image generators displacing human-made art" and "LLM summarizers and chatbots being shoved into every software and website we use regardless of our preferences", maybe with a side of "black box deep learning algorithms being used for predictive policing and determining court sentences" and the like if they're particularly woke.

We don't like AI books being sold alongside real ones. We don't like ChatGPT being used to write scientific papers or legal briefs. We don't want AI slop code used in the programs we depend on every day. We especially don't like the next generation of children and youth being taught that this is the normal and accepted way of doing things.

We do not mean spellcheck, or machine translation, or optical character recognition. We do not mean procedural generation or enemy pathfinding in video games. And whatever genuinely beneficial use case you are bundling into "AI" when you tell us that we shouldn't be blanket against it, if it doesn't fall under the above rubric, we don't mean that either.

We are against the de-skilling of the human species and the wholesale replacement of the output of our brains with low-quality machine-generated trash. If we can keep whatever your brilliant "AI" hack is while eliminating all the rest of this crap, I'm all for it. But using those edge cases and overdefinitions to delegitimaze criticism of AI in the broad strokes is at best repeating bad-faith propaganda. Stop it.

May this piece of peanut butter chocolate chevre pie power me through writing an FCC comment draft, the first draft of a space junk pamphlet for Saskatchewan farm kids, AND my last meeting of the day!

(Chevre pie?! Yes, I just sub chevre into pretty much anything that uses cream cheese. Goat farmer pro-tip!)

In the same segment they showed the heavy lifting roomba-like robots that have been around for a decade too and explained that "AI" is going to make automation more possible.

80 percent... where did we hear that before? Self driving cars and trucks are perfect for 80 percent of driving tasks.

And yet we still don't see fleets of driverless semi-trucks on the interstate.

80 percent of coding tasks? Why not?

That 20 percent is a real problem though.

3:20 p.m. in the Netherlands, and the first part of the country has reached temperatures above 38°C, with two stations above the 38.4 mark that used to be the all-time national high for 75 years, and was first exceeded in 2019.

#heatwave #extremeweather #climatechange.

@wilpercy Hope it doesn't trigger Mount Fuji, though Tokyo revised its eruption preparation plans last year.
https://www.fujisan-kouhai.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en/top_en/