Month: August 2022

It can be distressing to think about the state of the planet. The climate is changing at a rapid pace, species are being lost at an alarming rate and the world’s oceans are being filled with plastic.

But as legendary TV pitchman Billy Mays famously said, “Oh wait, there’s more!”

The planet’s rotation is speeding up, creating shorter days.

On June 29, 2022, the Earth had its shortest day since the 1960s when scientists began measuring the length of a day using high-precision atomic clocks, The Guardian reported. It was the shortest day in the lives of most people on the planet although nobody noticed it because it was only 1.59 milliseconds shorter than expected.

The change in the Earth’s rotation comes after years of slowing. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) accounted for the slower spin by adding leap seconds as recently as December 31, 2016.

“Since 2016 the Earth started to accelerate,” Lomonosov Moscow State University scientist Leonid Zotov told CBS News. “This year it rotates quicker than in 2021 and 2020.”

If the Earth continues to move faster than our clocks, things will become out of sync.

As the number of shorter days has increased over the past few years, scientists are now considering removing a second off the atomic clock. “Since we can not change the clock arrows attached to the Earth rotation, we adjust the atomic clock scale,” Zotov said.

This sounds like a great idea in practice, but tech experts warn that it may lead to devastating consequences. “The impact of a negative leap second has never been tested on a large scale; it could have a devastating effect on the software relying on timers or schedulers,” Meta engineers Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagowi wrote on the company blog. “In any case, every leap second is a major source of pain for people who manage hardware infrastructures.”

Messing with the time on global technology seems like it could cause significant problems. But didn’t a lot of people predict that when the year changed from 1999 to 2000 it would create a global disaster known as Y2K, which never happened?

The big question is, why is the globe spinning so fast?

Forbes senior contributor Jamie Carter says there are multiple reasons why the Earth’s rotation is ramping up. He points to glacier melt that puts more pressure on the poles, motion in our planet’s inner molten core, seismic activity and the movement of the planet’s geographical poles across its surface.

Obleukhov and Byagowi believe the rotation change is a symptom of climate change. They speculate that it may be caused by the melting and refreezing of the ice caps on the world’s tallest mountains.

“This phenomenon can be simply visualized by thinking about a spinning figure skater, who manages angular velocity by controlling their arms and hands,” they told CBS News. “As they spread their arms the angular velocity decreases, preserving the skater’s momentum. As soon as the skater tucks their arms back in, the angular velocity increases. Same happens here at this moment because of rising temperatures on Earth. Ice caps melt and lead to angular velocity increase.”

The good news is that the Earth is spinning faster and no one seems to notice. However, for those of you who like to worry, Popular Science speculates that if Earth’s rotation sped up by one mile an hour, sea levels would rise and telecommunications satellites would stop functioning. It currently spins at about 1,000 miles per hour at the equator.

If Earth’s rotation sped up to 17,641 miles per hour you’d become weightless, according to NASA astronomer Sten Odenwald. That would be cool, but you probably would have drowned before that happened.

When the first images of space came back from the high-powered James Webb Space Telescope on July 12, 2022, it felt like the whole world stopped for a moment to marvel. Never before have we seen such an intricate look at what’s out there, and the detail was stunning. Since then, we’ve seen a steady stream of visual wonders far beyond our solar system, delighting our eyes and tickling our imaginations.

But what about those who aren’t able to see them? Do people who are visually impaired simply miss out on the joy of “seeing” these gorgeous glimpses of our universe?

Nope. NASA has made sure that these images are accessible to all and has done a stellar job of it. The alt text descriptions of the Webb telescope images are truly wonderful, giving not only visual descriptions but additional details that all of us can benefit from.

For instance, here’s a recent alt text description from one of the Webb telescope images:

“A dramatic blade made of red gaseous wisps comes down top-to-bottom in the center of the image as smaller green wisps feather out in horizontal directions. A bright star shrouded in blue light is near the center of the bow-like blade. Blue dots in different sizes dot the background of the image, signifying neighboring stars.”⁣

And here’s the image it’s describing:

u201cA powerful stellar explosion from a nearby star propelled Zeta Ophiuchi about 100,000 mph (160,934 km). Data from @ChandraXray shows a bubble of X-ray emission (blue) around the star is produced by gas that has been heated to tens of millions of degrees: https://t.co/bsJZAp6kKwu201d

— NASA (@NASA)
1659039589

Or check out this image of the Cartwheel Galaxy and the way the alt text describes it.

u201cWebb is on a roll! ud83eudd38nnThis new @NASAWebb near and mid-infrared composite image highlights the Cartwheel Galaxy, the result of a high-speed collision that occurred about 440 million years ago, along with two neighboring galaxies. Get the details: https://t.co/c8lEVBBlubu201d

— NASA (@NASA)
1659449558

“Image Description: A large galaxy on the right, with two much smaller companion galaxies to the left at 10 o’clock and 9 o’clock. The large galaxy resembles a speckled wheel, with an oval outer ring and a small, off-center inner ring. The outer ring contains pink plumes like wheel spokes, with dusty blue regions in between. The pink areas are silicate dust, while the blue areas are pockets of young stars and hydrocarbon dust. The inner ring is smoother, filled in with a more uniform pale pink. This smaller ring is interwoven with thin, orange-pink threads. On the galaxy’s right edge, a bright white star with 8 diffraction spikes shines. The two companion galaxies to the left, one above the other, are about the same size and both spiral galaxies. The galaxy above is a reverse S shape but similar in coloring and texture as the large ring galaxy. The galaxy below is smoother and largely white, with a blue tinge. The background is black and full of more distant, orange-red colored galaxies of various sizes.”

Alt text is often brief and concise, offering enough description to get a general idea of what an image is but not a ton of detail. Such brevity is helpful in certain contexts, but not when you’re describing awe-inspiring pictures of the deep universe.

According to an article by Theresa Vargas in The Washington Post, the descriptions come from a team of writers, designers, educators and scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

“It’s been really heartening to see how much this has touched people,” Tim Rhue II, principal informal education specialist at the institute, told the Post. “It’s something that’s deeply personal to so many people. On top of that, we do it because we want to make astronomy accessible to everyone. It’s astronomy and dinosaurs that are gateways to science for so many people.”

In an interview with NPR, Rhue described creating the alt text descriptions as “a labor of love.”

“Space is for everyone,” he said. “It shouldn’t matter who you are.”

NASA’s alt text descriptions not only make the images accessible to everyone, but they make the science of the images more accessible for everyone. Even those without visual impairments can appreciate reading the scientific detail of what makes certain colors or shapes in the images. The team at the Space Telescope Science Institute goes out of its way to include lots of detail, going beyond simple surface descriptions. It matters, and it’s being noticed by people of all abilities.

Thank you, NASA, for illustrating the fact that when we embrace greater accessibility, we all win.

The things human beings have figured out how to do boggles the mind sometimes, especially in the realm of medicine.

It wasn’t terribly long ago that people with a severe injury had to liquor up, bite a stick, have a body part sewn up or sawed off and hope for the best. (Sorry for the visual, but it’s true.) The discoveries of antibiotics and anesthesia alone have completely revolutionized human existence, but we’ve gone well beyond that with what our best surgeons can accomplish.

Surgeries can range from fairly simple to incredibly complex, but few surgeries are more complicated than separating conjoined twins with combined major organs. That’s why the recent surgical separation of conjoined twin boys with fused brains in Brazil is so incredible.

The twins, Bernardo and Arthur Lima, are almost 4 years old and have never seen one another’s face. They’ve spent their lives conjoined at the top of their heads, facing opposite directions. Born as craniopagus twins (joined at the cranium), their brains were also fused together, making their separation extremely complex. According to the BBC, they’ve been cared for at the Instituto Estadual do Cérebro Paulo Niemeyer (Paulo Niemeyer State Brain Institute) in Rio de Janeiro for the past two and a half years.

Surgeon Noor ul Owase Jeelani is the founder of medical charity Gemini Untwined, which funded the surgery. He helped lead the team of nearly 100 medical workers who worked for months to prepare for the boys’ separation, which was one of the most complicated of its kind.

Jeelani told the BBC that it was the first time surgeons in separate countries practiced by operating in the same “virtual reality room” together, wearing VR headsets.

“It’s just wonderful,” he said. “It’s really great to see the anatomy and do the surgery before you actually put the children at any risk. You can’t imagine how reassuring this is for the surgeons. To do it in virtual reality was just really man-on-Mars stuff.”

Watch Jeelani explain how they prepared for the procedure:

Prior attempts to separate the twins had been unsuccessful, making the surgery even more challenging due to scar tissue. However, after multiple surgeries that took more than 33 hours collectively, the boys were successfully separated in June.

“It was without a doubt the most complex surgery of my career,” said neurosurgeon Gabriel Mufarrej of the Paulo Niemeyer State Brain Institute, according to EuroNews. “At the beginning, nobody thought they would survive. It is already historic that both of them could be saved.”

Jeelani told the BBC that the boys’ heart rates and blood pressure were “through the roof” for four days after the surgery—until they were reunited and touched hands.

According to Reuters, Bernardo and Arthur are the oldest twins with fused brains to be successfully separated. They will spend the next six months in rehabilitation.

Congratulations to the Lima family and to the global team that combined dedication, perseverance and the miracle of modern technology to create a brighter future for these young boys.

As Marvel continues to face increased criticism for the quality of its visual effects work and the working conditions of the teams struggling to keep up with the studio’s massive output, another veteran VFX artist has come forward with his experience working on Guardians of the Galaxy. According to Emmy award winner Joe Pavlo, the production “was a mess,” and that was before Marvel significantly upped its cinematic output and branched into mammoth streaming series, which has only exacerbated the situation.

While speaking to The Guardian, Pavlo explained that the VFX industry is “filled with terrific people with lots of goodwill,” that all goes away when you have a demanding client who has become accustomed to making wild changes on the fly.

“All the goodwill in the world just evaporates when everything gets changed and they decide they’re replacing that character with a different actor or changing the entire environment – they’re now in a pizza restaurant instead of a cornfield,” Pavlo said. “It can be that extreme at the very last minute.”

Those demands turn into a bullying problem, which quickly trickles downhill, Pavlo told The Guardian:

“The average artist doesn’t even have any contact with the clients. It’s really just the people at the producer and the supervisor level and then they pass it on to their crew. So you could say, oh, the supervisor’s a real bully, but actually it’s a knock-on effect and then the people who are the team leaders, once they can’t handle it, end up being bullies.

“Bullying is a huge problem in our industry because everybody’s so desperate sometimes. It seems like there’s such a high level of stress and pressure on these jobs to complete on time, to change everything at the drop of a hat.”

As the plight of VFX workers starts to become a more prominent issue, She-Hulk star Tatiana Maslany recently came to the artists’ defense and didn’t deny that they’re working under extreme time crunches.

“I feel incredibly, like, deferential to how talented these artists are and how quickly they have to work, obviously, like much quicker than probably should be given to them, in terms of like churning these things out,” Maslany told Variety ahead of She-Hulk‘s premiere.

(Via The Guardian)

August is upon us in the NFL, and anticipation is building across the league. As usual, the majority of franchises have at least some hope of top-tier success this season, and that applies to three of the four clubs in the AFC South.

No one would mistake the AFC South for the sexiest division in the league, but there is still a lot to discuss. Jacksonville has a new coach after a disastrous (and brief) tenure with Urban Meyer at the helm. Houston remains in a rebuilding phase, though there are some positive signs. Matt Ryan has the helm in Indianapolis after a fringe Hall of Fame run in Atlanta. And, finally, Tennessee is back after winning the division title in 2021, albeit with a bit of a different cast at wide receiver.

With that in mind, let’s take a quick look at the biggest question facing each squad in the division.

Jacksonville Jaguars: What does Trevor Lawrence look like in a post-Urban Meyer world?

The Jaguars were very, very bad in 2020, but that wasn’t really an issue because the lack of success paved the way to draft Trevor Lawrence. In 2021, Jacksonville’s plan likely did not entail a three-win performance but, with Urban Meyer driving the bus straight off a cliff, it felt as if the Jaguars simply lost a year of development. That is the case for Lawrence, who did show flashes as a rookie but did not perform at the A-plus prospect level some believed he might. Lawrence completed fewer than 60 percent of his passes, threw more interceptions than touchdowns, and did not benefit from the level of tutelage befitting of a franchise quarterback. Now, the situation is vastly different in Jacksonville — former Super Bowl winning head coach Doug Pederson is now in charge — and the big question is whether Lawrence can immediately show the promise or whether his rookie season really dampened things. The smart money may be on the former, but the Jaguars are still projected for a win total of around six or seven games. It cannot be overstated just how much of a disaster the Meyer tenure was for the Jaguars, but perhaps Lawrence will prove to be immune from any long-term consequences. It will be interesting.

Houston Texans: Is Davis Mills a quarterback to build around?

As noted above, Houston is really the only team that is not projected as a potential playoff group coming out of the AFC South, and that is reasonable when examining the team’s roster at this stage. That comes from a complete teardown that began a year ago, and the Texans might have actually over-performed to reach a 4-13 mark in 2021. That is how dire the personnel situation was in the wake of the Deshaun Watson fallout and everything else that accompanies a rebuild. Alas, 2022 can still be interesting for the Texans, and perhaps the biggest question is the future of Davis Mills. The rookie from Stanford made 11 starts last season and did show some positive signs, compiling nearly 2,700 yards and connecting on 16 touchdown passes in 13 overall appearances. However, Mills slipped to the third round of the 2021 draft while not being considered a top-tier prospect, and he didn’t necessarily light the entire league on fire. Houston may be picking near the top of the draft again and, if Mills doesn’t prove to be the guy, the Texans need to know it soon.

Indianapolis Colts: What’s the dynamic between Jonathan Taylor and an improved passing game?

Jonathan Taylor led the NFL in rushing attempts, rushing yards, and rushing touchdowns a year ago. Taylor, who is now entering his third season, earned All-Pro honors and was the undisputed centerpiece of an offense that was quarterbacked by Carson Wentz. Without piling on, Wentz was not a notable strength for Indianapolis, and the Colts tabbed veteran Matt Ryan to steer the ship in 2022. Ryan is past his prime at this juncture, but the former MVP produced at a star level in Atlanta and, at the very least, should represent an improvement over Wentz’s performance from 2021. Ryan is likely comfortable taking something of a backseat to a legitimate star at running back, but Taylor may not see quite the same volume as he did last season, particularly if the Colts can find some success through the air. Finding that balance could be a bit tricky, especially in the early going, and Indianapolis has top-tier upside if the group can find its groove sooner rather than later.

Tennessee Titans: Can they still build the entire plane around Derrick Henry?

Tennessee is in the midst of a retooling phase on offense. Gone are the days when the Titans could simply throw the ball to AJ Brown and get out of the way, and the Julio Jones experiment didn’t exactly go the way Tennessee hoped. Still, Tennessee produced a 12-win season and a division title a year ago, and the Titans did it with only eight regular season appearances from Derrick Henry. While Taylor led the NFL in rushing categories across the board, Henry was actually in the driver’s seat until he was injured, and he finished in the top ten of the league in rushing attempts while playing fewer than half of his team’s games. Henry also would have led the league in rushing yards per game (117.1) if he qualified, and the former AP Offensive Player of the Year is still a monster. However, Henry will turn 29 in January, and he has more than 1,400 regular season carries through six seasons. He did manage to return for the playoffs, rushing for 62 yards on 20 carries, and that does assuage some concern. Still, Tennessee’s receiving corps projects to be notably worse without Brown, and it isn’t as if the Titans are built to dominate through the air. Between roster turnover and scheme tweaks, it isn’t a guarantee that Henry is the number one, two, and three options as he has been previously. From there, it’s also possible that he isn’t quite the same dominant force when he’s out there, as age (plus wear and tear) eventually comes for us all.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if your sibling was watching over you on a date? How about if they could see you making out with someone by a pool in the south of France? It’s… awkward, to say the least.

Netflix’s latest reality dating series is basically Love Island, but your siblings are there. The teaser trailer for Dated & Related (which sounds a bit more Lannister twins than it actually is) indicates that courtship in front of a family member is weird and gross.

Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix:

Imagine having to think about your sibling dating… how they flirt, how they treat their partners, and what their signature moves are. In this brand-new reality dating series, pairs of siblings will be seeing each other’s love life up close and personal as they search for ‘the one’ together. Having the person who knows you better than anyone should help you navigate the tricky world of dating. But will they act as the ultimate wingman and help you find love? Or scupper your plans and call you out on all your bullsh*t? Either way it might just be Awkward. As. Hell.

The Dated & Related trailer suggests that dating with a sibling around is not easy, with very protective siblings and people who don’t want to make out with someone in front of a family member. But one of the pros is that every contestant has someone they trust while on this very weird reality show, so that’s nice? The series is hosted by Too Hot To Handle’s Melinda Berry from season two.

Over three years have passed since Game of Thrones aired a Season 8 episode, “The Last of the Starks,” which launched fan chaos after a Starbucks cup was spotted sitting next to Dany amid celebrations of a dead Night King. This turned into a raging mess of embarrassed confirmations and finger pointing, which was all pretty inconsequential if you think about what the world has gone through since that simple, innocent mistake.

Yet the pressure is on for House of the Dragon to not repeat the same sort of distraction. Showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik got jokey about it with The Hollywood Reporter, but it’s clear that they were taking the subject semi-seriously, too. No one wants to give the Internet even more fodder for ridicule, and by no one, I’m kind-of referring to George R.R. Martin, who’s completely over the “f*cking toxic internet” and its response to Season 8. And no one can blame Condal and Sapochnik for wanting to get things rolling in the right direction.

Condal told THR that the set was “a very heavily policed set — there was lots of Starbucks-hunting going on.” Whereas Sapochnik declared that he took to dropping off cups “everywhere we could so that later on we could paint them out digitally.” And he offered up a “prize” to anyone who can find Starbucks evidence in the spinoff.

House of the Dragon premieres on August 21. Happy hunting.

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Since mid-June, it has been rumored that Lady Gaga had landed another major acting gig, co-starring alongside Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux. Now, the rumor is confirmed by Gaga herself.

Today, she took to Twitter and shared a teaser video featuring Phoenix’s name and a silhouette of him in character as The Joker, followed by Gaga’s name and a silhouette of her. Then, there’s a reveal of the movie’s title and a silhouette of them both together, as well as the release date: October 4, 2024. All of this is set to an instrumental rendition of Fred Estaire’s Irvin Berlin-penned classic “Cheek To Cheek.”

The French phrase in the title, “folie à deux,” is defined by the Indian Journal Of Psychology as “an identical or similar mental disorder affecting two or more individuals.” The movie is also rumored to be a musical, although no confirmations have been made on that front. Speaking of rumors, Gaga is supposedly portraying Harley Quinn in the film, but that too has yet to be confirmed. Based on the movie’s title and Quinn’s close association with the Joker, though, it would appear likely.

Regardless, this represents yet another major film role for Gaga, who was the co-lead in 2018’s A Star Is Born and also starred in 2021’s House Of Gucci. Before both films, she made a splash on TV in American Horror Story: Hotel in 2015 and American Horror Story: Roanoke in 2016.

Kanye West has been making moves. Recently, Yeezy Gap was brought to stores for the first time, and now it looks like he’s re-launching his website. Nothing can be found on the site except for a blank slate with the words “Coming soon” across it in all caps. Fans online are on the edge of their seats waiting for what the rapper is up to.

The Donda performer recently took to social media to express frustration with Adidas for supposedly trying to stop him from bringing Yeezy Gap to stores and for launching this year’s Yeezy Day without his approval. “Adidas made up the Yeezy day idea without my approval. Then went and brought back older styles without my approval,” he wrote, “then went and brought back older styles without my approvals picked colors and named them without my approval went and hired people that worked for me without my approval stole my colorways without my approval stole my styles and material approaches without my approval.”

It was also recently revealed that West almost joined A Tribe Called Quest for their last album, 2016’s We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service. Consequence told the Drink Champs podcast, “What many people don’t know is Kanye was, at one point, was supposed to join Tribe for the last album.”

Brittney Griner’s trial on drug charges in Russia came to an end on Thursday with the WNBA star getting sentenced to nine years in prison. The sentence, which was handed down by a judge and includes a fine of 1 million rubles (this comes out to just over $16,000), is slightly less than the maximum sentence of 10 years. Griner’s legal team plans to appeal the ruling, which it calls “absolutely unreasonable” and argues it “completely ignored all the evidence of the defense, and most importantly, the guilty plea.”

“I want the court to understand that it was an honest mistake that I made while rushing and in stress trying to recover post-Covid and just trying to get back to my team,” Griner told the court while testifying on Thursday, according to the New York Times.

T.J. Quinn of ESPN noted that a sentence being handed down was an important step in the efforts by the U.S. State Department, which has long classified the Phoenix Mercury center as “wrongfully detained,” to get Griner home. Much has been made of the fact that the Biden administration offered to send a Viktor Bout, arms trafficker who is serving a 25-year sentence in Illinois, back to Russia in exchange for Griner and another American who is serving a prison sentence after being convicted on espionage charges in 2020 named Paul Whelan.

As Quinn noted, Griner getting sentenced means that conversations can escalate between officials with an eye on striking some sort of deal.

In the aftermath of the ruling, President Joe Biden released a statement saying, “Today, American citizen Brittney Griner received a prison sentence that is one more reminder of what the world already knew: Russia is wrongfully detaining Brittney. It’s unacceptable, and I call on Russia to release her immediately so she can be with her wife, loved ones, friends, and teammates. My administration will continue to work tirelessly and pursue every possible avenue to bring Brittney and Paul Whelan home safely as soon as possible.”

The NBA and WNBA likewise released a statement, calling the decision “unjustified and unfortunate.”