Hard to believe it's been a year since the G5 (Kp=9+) geomagnetic storm that brought #AuroraBorealis down to Oregon and beyond. I got pictures of Multnomah Falls with red #aurora behind it, which is looking south. We should normally not see polar lights to the south at 45.5N. https://spacey.space/@AstroHawk/112421293272835687 #AuroraBorealis #astronomy #SpaceWeather

Michael Kerbow - Adaptive Reuse #art

FYI, if you happen to be a scientist in a large English-speaking country with uncertain future research financing; my employer, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) is looking for grad students, postdocs and PIs.

It's a research institute, so no undergraduates, and the working language is English - no japanese required. And its located on a (semi) tropical island in the Pacific.

https://www.oist.jp/careers?f%5B0%5D=oist_job_type%3A819

#NSF #OIST #Japan #academia #PhDLife

Okay, per my previous post about scam, shell-game pricing at Safeway (and likely other company chains like Albertsons and Vons, but I haven't checked), I made a statement that on any given day you could pay 100% more for the same ounce of soda depending on sales and container. But that was just a guess, and I hate guesses. So for science (and for you) I went back to Safeway to check today's price on an ounce of Diet Pepsi, and boy was I wrong...
Today you can spend 483% more for the same ounce of Pepsi! Photo evidence provided. Maximum cost, 14.5 cents per ounce regular price in a poorly named mini-can, and minimum price (3 cents per ounce) in a 2 liter bottle with a loyalty card. And if you don't like those prices, Safeway offers a whole RANGE of prices scattered through the middle! Something for everyone!
And if you DO like those prices, don't get used to them, because they'll certainly be different in a week, and they might be different tomorrow. You don't KNOW! Like I said, shell-game.
(To be fair, I didn't check individual containers for sale in cold cases at the register, and I didn't take the time to price Coke, since Pepsi is what I usually buy, so there are other prices for sugar water and sugar-free sugar water we could be talking about as well.)
#safeway #groceries #groceryprices #foodpriceinflation #albertsons #vons #pepsi #softdrinks

And yeah, I know somebody is going to say, "Hey, Steve, you dummy, just shop somewhere else. Buy local!"
But I live in a small beach town 30 miles from the nearest chain grocery option other than a Grocery Outlet with its limited and uncertain selection. We do have a local, employee-owned chain, and I DO shop there regularly, but again, they have a limited selection overall, and poor meat and produce selections. I've got a lot of dietary restrictions, and I need to buy a lot of fresh, unprocessed stuff, and I have to shop all over town to get it. Beyond that, it's 50 miles round trip to the nearest Fred Meyers, and 100+ to the nearest Costco or Winco (a chain I absolutely LOVE, because of selection, price, and primarily employee ownership).

I've long been infuriated by the endless and malicious pricing shell game that my local Safeway (Albertsons, Vons and other chains are also part of the same company, and I assume pull the same B.S.). It seems to be a very conscious effort to keep consumers in the dark as to what "regular" prices on products are, and the real value (if any) of a sale price on any given item.
For example, just walk into the soda aisle and try to figure out what the going price for an ounce of Coke or Pepsi is. There are countless buying options (larger and smaller cans, often four or five kinds of plastic bottles, six packs and eight packs, "regular" or "real" sales that apply to everyone, loyalty card prices, digital coupon, multiple purchase requirement sales, limited purchase sales, and more. It's easily possible on any give day to pay at least 100% more per ounce on the same ounce of beverage, depending on what version you get and what hoops you leap through and how much of your privacy and information you're willing to sacrifice.
Multiply this by thousands of items changing day by day, and it's an unending dance of scammery. When my grocery bill routinely drops 20-30% when I use a loyalty card, this just tells me that Safeway's "regular" prices are likely overcharging by a large percentage, if not all, of that discount.
But the pictured price tag just really cheesed me off. My wife and I live alone, so we don't need vast quantities of most items. But many Safeway sales require mass purchases, often on perishable items (and many produce items are no longer even AVAILABLE in small quantities). Often that's applied to salad, which I often eat a lot of, but not TEN BAGS AT A TIME or whatever. Four is a stretch to eat before some of it goes bad, canceling out some or all of the savings, and just pointlessly wasting food.
So I checked to see if I really needed to buy three bags this time. But it turns out, no. Look closely, See the math problem? Yeah. Buy one, get the sale price. But buy the STRONGLY suggested three, and Safeway charges you an extra penny for their trouble!
Yeah, it's ONLY a penny, but there are principles here, and again, if they do this over hundreds of thousands of sales, over hundreds or thousands of products, over months and years, it ads up. Plus, they've duped you into possibly buying more than you need AND goosed their bottom-line a little in the process.
It should be illegal. The whole SYSTEM should be illegal. And, IMHO, whoever came up with it should have their testicles or other tender parts nailed to a shopping cart out in the parking lot for everyone's enjoyment. Are we together on this?

#safeway #groceries #grocerieprices #albertsons #vons #foodprices #foodpriceinflation #latestagecapitalism

What a commentary on the stupidity — and venality — of a critical mass of people at this point in history, that, collectively, they/we have chosen to return ALL of us to a situation in which measles will be endemic.

When the disease had been conquered by a vaccine and the willingness of a critical mass to recognize the importance of vaccinating ourselves and our children and in that way, protecting not just ourselves but the common good….

#measles #vaccines
/1

https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-say-measles-likely-to-become-endemic-in-us-polio-diphtheria-rubella/

concept: a show like ramsay's kitchen nightmares, but about software instead

"i'm at spunkchute, a SaaS company that owes $2 million to AWS and is on the brink of closure”

"oh my [bleep] god. the main database server is running Ubuntu 8.04 and has two backdoors and a coin miner. SHUT. IT. DOWN.”

In the 14th century, someone who didn't have a highlighter handy thought to use octopus tentacles to mark the most important parts. I love it so much

(Manuscript from the Bankcroft library, UC Berkeley)

I love that old saying about March: in like a lamb, out like a revolution

"The first flight of Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket lasted just 40 seconds" by @arstechnica - German startup company launching from Andøya Spaceport in Norway may still be able to learn from the launch failure to make the first orbital launch from Western #Europe. This was the first attempt. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/europes-first-private-launch-company-is-learning-to-embrace-failure/ #NewSpace #business

Keeping the Isar Aerospace rocket launch failure in perspective, most first flights of a new rocket fail. The big question is if they can use the data and experience gained from the test toward improvement of the rocket and a successful launch. To date no orbital launch has succeeded from western Europe. Very few have been attempted because eastbound trajectories go over densely populated land. The European Space Agency launches from French Guiana in equatorial South America. #space #business

There are no self-made billionaires. We gotta shut that myth down.

16 Googly-Eyed Street Art Gems That I Love: https://streetartutopia.com/googly-eye-street-art-bulgaria/

I turned in the latest installment of my "Minions at Work" photo comics to Pulphouse Fiction Magazine today, allowing me some time to work on building some Minions props, a process that's a lot more relaxing that doing comic layout and dialog writing.
One ongoing element of my comics is that most of them incorporate one or more "Minion Cats," even if they aren't integral to the plots or jokes of that comic. The premise is that, due to a lab accident, Minion cat (there was originally only one) has become in space, time, and now, the multiverse, and they pop in and out of existence at will, sometimes "many" of them at once.
The cats are "played" by hand painted and sometimes customized plastic cat figures decorated in a "Minion uniform" pattern. The originals originated as a bag of toy cats I ordered from Amazon. Later, I ordered a whole BOX of the same cats from a seller who supplies prizes and favors to carnivals and fairs. With extras, I started cutting them up, swapping parts, and adding limited articulation to some like turning heads and movable tails. A few others are actually 3D printed.
But before I found that carnival supplier, I ordered a lot of other cats on-line hoping for alternate poses to use. Instead, I discovered that most listing for these things are vague or inaccurate in describing the size, and ended up with several assortments of cats that were too small. And thus, came the idea for "minion kittens." I started painting a few, and finished exactly one, before putting it aside as being very difficult. My hands aren't that steady, some some of the "Minion" pattern is pretty fidgety.
But recently I discovered "brush tip" markers for art and calligraphy and wondered if they could be used for painting details on action figures. Tonight I tried it out, and so far, pretty good. I made some slips, but it made it MUCH easier to paint the details on the smaller cats. I don't know of the paint will fade or rub off. Only time and further experiments will tell. But I'm happy with things so far.
In related news, I today and realized that our new shorthair cat, Notty, is a very good physical match for Minion cat. I pulled out a tape measure and sure enough, she's an almost exact scale match for her 1/6th scale counterparts. I can use photo reference of her to design future custom cats, and to figure out better carrying positions and poses for my 12" action figure characters. I asked my wife if that made Notty tax deductible, but she just laughed...

#minionsatwork #pulphousefictionmagazine #Minioncats #notmycat #nottycat #catstodon #catsofmastodon #cats #minatures #comics #photocomicsl

The accidental leak of war plans to a journalist is shocking, but it's part of a much bigger pattern, Trump, and even more his clown college of appointees and hangers on, mostly lack any knowledge of operating in a security/intelligence environment. There will be more leaks, and more, and...the leak adjacent. I listened to a bit of Trump's announcement about Boeing getting the new advanced fighter contract. There was this bit where he started to tell the price, because -- bragging with amounts is his jam, and then stopped himself. This was followed by "I can't tell you the price, because that would give away the size of it. It's a good size." He can't help himself throwing out hints to how "best" it (HIS accomplishment!) is. That's also his nature.
Now, I don't know the meaning of that, I'm an aviation watcher, but not an expert, or a foreign analyst with files of other information. but foreign experts probably will. His statements shrink the box of unknown into which foreign intelligence may be trying to penetrate (if it hasn't already leaked, possibly from earlier incompetence). It may well have provided the last bit of information to figure out the details of the fighter and its capabilities, or it may provide them a target on which to focus future intelligence efforts. And we know how he leaks secrets regularly to his wealthy peers, so this probably isn't the beginning of it, and it won't be the end.
Even as he was speaking the words, I could imagine the CIA and others safeguarding the fighter's secrets banging their heads on the table in frustration. Trump is an idiot, and telling him an important secret is like telling it a talkative five-year-old.
(Full disclosure, my wife and I have a small number of shares of Boeing in our retirement account, and even I'm not sure how I feel about trusting Boeing with this contract, but I trust them more than Trump.) #trump #intelligence #intelligenceagencies #intelligenceanalysis #foreignintelligenceservice #spys #secrets #boeing #boeingfighter #military #trump #intelligence #intelligenceagencies #intelligenceanalysis #foreignintelligenceservice #spys #secrets #boeing #boeingfighter #military

Special shoutout to the repair site iFixit who are now on the Fediverse, you can follow them at:

➡️ @iFixit

They provide repair forums and free repair guides for phones, computers, consoles, kitchen equipment, tools, medical devices, cars etc. They also review and tear down new gadgets to see how repairable they are.

Repairing your existing stuff is much, much better for the environment than buying replacements.

#Repairs #Electronics #DIY #Environment #Gadgets #Tech #RightToRepair

Chuck Schumer just cancelled his planned book tour this week over "security concerns."

Here's the thing: A man who is too cowardly to face the American people is too cowardly to lead the American people.

Schumer should continue his cancellation strategy & resign his Senate leadership & retire.