Daily Archives: May 23, 2022

We Hear You: Tampons in Men’s Rooms, Marxists in Classrooms, and Abortions for ‘Persons’ – Daily Signal

Posted: May 23, 2022 at 11:53 am

Editors note: One common theme of late in The Daily Signals mailbag is our audiences dismay at the political uprooting of common sense and reality across the nation. Heres a sampling of what you sent to letters@dailysignal.com.Ken McIntyre

Dear Daily Signal: I am 74. In high school back in the 1960s, I had a teacher who developed in me a fascination with current affairs that exists to this day.

Over the years, a few stories have triggered a What the heck is going on? reaction. Today, it seems almost daily that I see a news story triggering that reaction.

But putting tampons in mens bathrooms for transgender individuals, as Tony Perkins writes about Oregons new law (Striving for Menstrual Equity, Oregon Puts Tampons in Mens Bathrooms at Public Schools, Colleges)?

Over 2,500 cellular and structural differences exist between mens bodies and womens bodies. But we are supposed to believe that after a few physical changes, a new hair style, and different clothes, presto chango, you no longer are the gender you were born into?

And people are buying into it.Edward Towle

***

Around 2019, the Massachusetts-based company I work for started to stock tampons in its mens rooms. When I first saw the move,I puzzled over it for a bit.

The median salary around here is at least around $150,000, so no question that any transgender employee could easily afford tampons. Clearly its a form of virtue signaling, and a rather cheap one at that.

To increase the cost to roughly where it ought to be for real virtue, I decided the ethical thing to do was to grab most of the tampons and donate them to my local church. (Id leave a few for any actual transgender folks.) My church runs a beeline down to places like South America, where women (and men) with limited resources often have to go without such personal hygiene items.

I recommend this as common practice.I also get a kick out of knowing that the same older ladies who count the collections also sort the donations.Mike S.

Dear Daily Signal: Although I share Douglas Blairs concern with ever-decreasing standards for children, to call this group of morons (i.e. English teachers) Marxist is giving them too high praise (Why the Left Wants Twitter Over Tolstoy in Our Schools).

Yes, they borrow Marxist language. But thereissuch a thing as legitimate Marxist critique (regarding self-reference, power structures, and so on). However, in order to understand any of it, you mustfirst be able to read.

What this is really about, ultimately, is half-educated whack-a-dos borrowing bits and pieces from things they half understand, and coming up with the conclusion that they dont have to teach children anything.

The emphasis needs to be on theincompetenceof so many teachers, not on some nefarious plot to indoctrinate the children. (It isnt what the children learn, it is that they dont learnanything.)

Seeing evil forces at work gives these people far too much credit. The evil force here is usnamely, that we round up some of the dumbest people we can find and let them teach. Dave Baxter

Dear Daily Signal: In this radically leftist, socialist-engineered environment that we live in, the Democrat purveyors of ambiguous truth may have left themselves open for the fallout of their own politically correct ambiguity, as Virginia Allen reports (Democrats National Abortion Bill Replaces Word Woman With Person).

Trapped by their own war on words, they successfully have blurred the lines of meaning to such an extent that now their own words clearly can be used against themor at least against any ill-conceived political intent to recast Roe v. Wade as a womens right or womens health issue.

First, we must acknowledge that, based upon the Democrats legislative record on abortion, the radical left is desperately trying to perfect and protect their claim on infanticide, a gruesome practice shunned by most developed cultures and people.

Secondly, in the current climate of gender pronoun fluidity, where the word person is substituted in preference to any gender specificity, and where vacillations of identity shall not be questioned, the only identifiers permissible for those who contributed to the conception of a new third party infant entity would be the 50% shareholder as sperm donor and the 50% shareholder as egg bearer.For ease of understanding, we shall refer to each party to the conception, as well as the conceived party, as it.

If it is a 50% shareholder in the 100% conception of it, then who or what is to say that it should not have a say in the disposition of it?Furthermore, if it decides that it now chooses to invoke the superior standing of the other 50% shareholder of it, then who is to say which it has superior standing? Certainly not the law.

Since the left is so gung-ho to preserve the right of it to elect federally sanctioned and enforced infanticide, then what is to protect it if there is a dispute over the disposition of it in the face of this brave new world that we are constructing, where homicide is permissible by federal law?

To what depths will we citizens of this once great nation stoop, to demonstrate tolerance for such abject lunacy?Greg Mann, Texas

Dear Daily Signal: Your readership should notethat despite claims to the contrary from some in the heterodox Jewish world, the predominant position of the major traditional authoritiesin Jewish law is that abortion is prohibited unless there is a direct physical or emotional threat to the health of the mother.

This position also allows for cases such as incest or rape, which is determined on a case-by-case basis by rabbinical authorities who are viewed as having the requisite knowledge.

The traditional Jewish position is a nuanced rejection of both an absolute right to life and the agenda of reproductive freedom that advocates abortion on demand for the full nine months of pregnancy, with some even advocating infanticide. It is tragic that our society today valuesdestruction of the family, sacrificing children rather than protecting the family and sacrificing for children

Judaism and Jewish law arestrongly pro-marriage, pro-children, and pro-family in the most traditional sense of those termsand reject the hook-up culture that we all confront.

Justice Samuel Alitos draft majority opinion, if it is the ultimate opinion of the Supreme Court, is an excellent survey of the principles of constitutional law and federalism, as well as a realization that sonograms today depict a growing life in the earliest stage of pregnancy. This was clearly not evident in 1973, rendering the first trimester rule of Roe v. Wade scientifically incorrect.

>>>Read Justice Samuel Alitos draft opinion

It is a disgrace that some are trying to force Justice Alito to live in a witness protection program for being intellectually honest, telling the truth, and reminding us that Roe v. Wade rivaled Dred Scott as an incorrectly decided ruling with no basis in the Constitution that failed to resolve a hotly debatednational issue.

The leak of the draft opinion represents what happens when the ends justify the means becomes acceptable as both a means of policy and as a means of intimidating public institutions and dissenting views.

The demonstrations and rhetoric since the leak are all too reminiscent of the riots of the summer of 2020 and the ongoing assaults against American Jewish supporters of Israel and their houses of worship by the woke left.

May we all pray in our own ways for domestic tranquility, as set forth in the Constitution. Please keep up your excellent work.Steven Brizel

***

One or more persons in the Supreme Courts internal organization is a Judas (Could Supreme Court Leaker Be Criminally Prosecuted? Maybe). That person has done grievous damage to the Supreme Courts decision-making process, which relies on confidentiality.

Why did that person violate his or her oath by leaking Justice Samuel Alitos prepared, but yet agreed to, majority opinion? Because the totalitarian Democrats mantra has been that the ends justify the means.

If that Supreme Court traitor is revealed, I predict the Democrats will lionize the person. If the deed serves the Dems quest for power, no deed, no lie, no crime, no deception, no tactic is wrong.

This is the historical route to an evil society. Remember Stalin? Remember Hitler? Look at what is going on in the streets in front of the Supreme Court justices homes. Take heed!George G. Rose, Charlotte, N.C.

***

Having worked as an RN in a college health service, I had more than ample time to counsel young women on pregnancy options. However, I was discouraged from talking with them about continuing the pregnancy, keeping the baby, or adoption.

Having had two miscarriages and three full-term pregnancies, I had actual knowledge of pregnancy and childbirth. I also had nearly eight years as a single mom,beginning four months before my first child actually was born and my husband left. I knew the struggles and joys of single parenting.

I am so disgusted what Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, and all these imbeciles are doing to my America.Deanna Turner, New York

Dear Daily Signal: The U.S. was energy independent on Jan. 20, 2021, and the price of gas here was $2.17 per gallon (the national average was $2.38 a gallon). But on that first day in office, President Joe Biden signed executive orders, one of which attacked the oil and gas industry and set into motion an inflationary spiral that has crippled every Americans budget.

Today, Biden says it was Putins war in Ukraine that caused inflation. But Putin didnt invade Ukraine until Feb. 24, some 13 months after Biden took office. Is this president being truthful?

Examples of this administrations failed, nonsensical policies are numerous and growing.

So where is the rest of the U.S. press, and why dont they question this president and his administration? A silent press is simply not a necessary press.Mike Simon, Glen Ellyn, Ill.

***

I appreciate the time and effort it takes to publish a reasonable, conservative news product daily. It must be really difficult to dig through the liberal lies, innuendos, and mass hysteria createdby people preoccupied with tearing our country down.Jack Casebolt

***

Thank you. Just nice to hear opposing views, what I hear as the truth, about all the hatred spewing from CNN, CBS, NBC, et al.J. Fawcett

The Daily Signal publishes a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Heritage Foundation.

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We Hear You: Tampons in Men's Rooms, Marxists in Classrooms, and Abortions for 'Persons' - Daily Signal

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Lykke Li: I struggled a lot with self-hate and my looks and my body – The Independent

Posted: at 11:53 am

Lykke Li is sick of being lovesick. She is sick of singing about being lovesick. She is also sick, period. As in physically sick. Unwell. Im in bed with a fever, the Swedish singer-songwriter mews down the phone from her hotel room. She is in London promoting her latest album EYEYE, a record that is all about breaking patterns. Lovesickness be damned.

People may wonder why someone in Lis position a singer who has weathered the storm of Noughties celebrity and come out the other side, the kind of elusive, enduring artist that many indie musicians aspire to be would want to break such a successful cycle. Anyone who has ever listened to a Lykke Li song will know why: she writes about heartbreak. Her own. Over and over. Across four now five records, Li has reached into the crevices of her bleeding heart and found catchy tunes. Albums move subtly between heartbreak and heartache, longing and yearning. The pain is most palpable in her torch ballads but listen close, and youll hear it pulsating like a migraine even in her most radio-ready pop moments. Fifteen years after finding success at 21, Li is ready to break the cycle.

I didnt want to get stuck in the repetition of being hurt and making songs about it, she says. Admittedly, EYEYE does chronicle the dissolution of another relationship, but it also examines Lis impulse to create art out of pain. I wasnt aware of it before. This was the first time that I took a step back and analysed my whole relationship to love from even before I was born, she says. Li dissected the many fantasies she had internalised as a young girl devouring films, poems, and art. Im ready to break my own repetition and perfect the circle to create some harmony and balance. Its an album to myself and what I started many years ago. Think of EYEYE as a last hurrah then, or rather a final sob.

The tracks on her previous record, 2018s exquisitely named So Sad So Sexy, drew on hip-hop with trap beats and rap features. An eclectic assortment of super producers including Vampire Weekends Rostam Batmanglij, and Frank Ocean producer Malay were brought in to assist. Li can see now that this outside intervention served a personal purpose at a difficult time. I was in a very hard place in my life, she says. She had just given birth but she had also separated from her partner, the Grammy-winning producer Jeff Bhaskar. Her mum had died of brain cancer. It was like all the worst things that can happen, happened. The album became a way of surviving. It was something for Li to cling to while the world around her atomised. Looking back, Li is both astonished and proud that she managed to pull it off. I dont understand how I got it done when I was in so much grief and pain, plus the exhaustion of having a baby. She finds it interesting that So Sad So Sexy is the album that sounds the least like me.

If So Sad So Sexy was a digression, EYEYE is a homecoming. Li can remember lying in bed, exhausted from touring and nursing another broken heart. She listened to the voice memos on her phone, where she records snippets of inspiration and melodic ideas. I really thought, I dont want to destroy the rawness of those this time. I want to make the most intimate and raw and alive piece Ive ever made, she says. To those ends, EYEYE was recorded without headphones or click-tracks. There is the sound of a dishwasher running in the background. Everything was one-take.

The writing process was low-key: at home alone in her bedroom. Well, my home is very much one big bedroom, Li says, explaining there is wall-to-wall carpet everywhere. I like to be horizontal and just dream. She also returned to the safe hands of her longtime collaborator Bjrn Yttling, who has worked on all her records except So Sad So Sexy. It was during that period that Li began psychedelic-aided therapy. She took psilocybin, ayahuasca and 5-MeO-DMT together with her therapist. Actually, not the ayahuasca, she clarifies. That was with a shaman.

Im quite sensitive when I have to be out there in the world, so I get sick a lot on tour, says the 36-year-old

(Theo Lindquist)

Like many of her best songs, EYEYE revels in abject feeling. On the album opener No Hotel, she sings to near nothingness. Her voice is long-breathed and solitary: I know I hold on/ To someone not here / But you wont go away. Her music is not so much a cooling balm for your wounds as it is a hot iron to cauterise them. Languish with me fellow sad-sacks, her songs seem to say, and I will make our pain into something beautiful.

If even half the anguish Li sings about is real she later tells me that sadly it all is you would not blame her for hardening to love. Instead, Li remains painfully open to it. I think its quite heroic, she laughs at her enduring belief. At 16 she was a complete romantic. At 36, she remains one. Li suggests that maybe it is because she is an artist. Im potentially more open in general. Like, Im trying to be open.

A side effect of that, though, is that she is often unwell. Im okay with being vulnerable in my work because its somehow protected but when I have to be out there in the world, I always get sick. Li hosted a listening event last night, hence this mornings fever. As if on cue, a doorbell rings and she politely excuses herself to answer room service who have brought her a cup of tea. A metal spoon dings against porcelain. She continues, Im quite sensitive when I have to be out there in the world, so I get sick a lot on tour. I ask if she thinks of herself as an empath, someone who feels the moods of others as though they are her own. I think so. I need to learn how to shield myself.

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That energy of celebrity and Hollywood is something I really detest

Speaking to Li, its easy to believe. She is not the husky-voiced chanteuse of her sad, sexy songs. Instead, she has a spacey air about her and a girlish lilt. She is the sort to giggle, rather than laugh. I feel myself lowering my voice, to match her whisper. Although Lis camera is not on, if it were, I might see her spectral face with big eyes and a small mouth framed by a dirty blonde pixie cut.

Li had a nomadic childhood, moving around several times with her family: Stockholm, Portugal, Lisbon, Morocco, Nepal, back to Stockholm. Winters were spent in India. Growing up, she spent her time reading and listening to music on her Walkman. Michael Jackson was her first CD. A bit politically incorrect now, she says. Li began dancing at five. At 15, she decided she wanted to do something more creative. She applied to music school in Stockholm but didnt get in. That was devastating but it somehow awoke the underdog in me and made me certain that I wanted to do music.

Li has been sure of herself ever since. Strangely, Ive always had a clear idea of what I dont like so Ive been able to say no quite easily. No, its not right. No, its not there yet. It was easy when I was younger because I was quite cocky. Her Swedish accent sticks on the double consonants like toffee. Li says her greatest regrets are the times she allowed things to slip through that she knew werent quite right. This idea of creative purity preoccupies Li endlessly. Naturally, she has dreamt of clearing out her catalogue. She would wipe it all other than I Follow Rivers and I Never Learn. Li is a perfectionist to the extreme. Even when I look at this room, I wish this or that was a bit to the right or to the left. When Im ordering food, I want this very specific thing. I carry a vision inside of me and then when it doesnt translate, its very painful. At last nights listening event, Li wished the lights had been less bright; that a hotel sign was not in view; that the audience were facing the other way. Im always imagining a better situation.

Li counts herself fortunate that her career has been mostly smooth sailing. Having entered the industry at 21, she knows how easily the opposite couldve been true. I wonder why I never had those #MeToo situations happen to me, Li says. Later, she posits a theory. Maybe its because I never leaned into my sexuality. I wasnt even aware of my sexuality. I never had that energy and I think maybe thats why it was completely shut off from me because it was always about the art.

But if being a young woman in music did not throw up challenges, becoming a mother certainly did. Overnight or rather nine months the industry grew increasingly dismissive of her. I feel like its improved a little bit now, she says. Im happy to see Rihanna out there with a belly. Its like the hottest thing ever and so pregnancy is becoming less destigmatised. You see power in it now. She pauses and circles back. But I guess thats not really true because she has infinite resources so its a false example.

Becoming a parent wasnt what she expected. For one thing, Li thought motherhood would temper her ambition. In reality, she has never been more driven. But practically, she asks, how are mothers expected to do this? I want to work; I want to be completely lost in my creation, but I also have to take care of this child. Its quite brutal, to be honest. And thats when you really see What is it called? Im not so good in English with these types of words. She searches her brain for a moment before finding it. Inequality. You see the inequality. Its very hard to be a woman. It really is.

Uninterested in fame, Li says she would be completely happy being an anonymous songwriter

(Theo Lindquist)

The effect motherhood had on her body image was similarly surprising. I have had a really complicated relationship with being a woman; I never felt like one, to be honest. I struggled a lot with self-hate and my looks and my body. I felt that I didnt have the power that women had, she says. In pregnancy, that changed. I found both the strength and softness, I was like, Wow, I am a woman. Li adds that on EYEYE, she leaned into her masculine side and realised she is quite androgynous. Its been interesting to play with gender identifications. Its yin and yang. Opposites. Duality. Everything is both.

On the subject of bodies, we speak about the time Rihanna once complimented Li on her tits. She giggles at the memory. Sadly, thats when they were fresh and quite large at the time, and now they arent anymore, she says. I really struggle with that, but I think its interesting to have body parts you struggle with, especially in this world where all these young girls get plastic surgery and fillers. Li is curious to see if soon itll be viewed as antiquated not to have had any plastic surgery. She isnt judging. Just curious.

The singer mostly keeps to herself. She lives in LA but never ventures west. That energy of celebrity and Hollywood is something I really detest. The only thing she cares about is the music, she says. I just want to write a good song. Li would also like to try her hand at writing for others, adding that she is completely happy being an anonymous songwriter. Perhaps she can smuggle any future heartbreak into songs sung by other people.

Lis most devoted fans view her as a patron saint of modern-day sadness. And they make countless memes to that effect, the best of which Li has compiled together on her Instagram. But Li wants a new challenge, and hopefully to find a lasting love. Its almost more difficult to describe the fragility of something good and beautiful. Complete love is something Im curious to try describing.

EYEYE is out on 20 May

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Hubble telescope refines universe expansion rate mystery – Space.com

Posted: at 11:52 am

Scientists have a new, more accurate, measurement of the expansion of the universe thanks to decades worth of data from the Hubble Space Telescope.

The new analysis of data from the 32-year-old Hubble Space Telescope continues the observatory's longstanding quest to better understand how quickly the universe expands, and how much that expansion is accelerating.

The number astronomers use to measure this expansion is called the Hubble Constant (not after the telescope but after astronomer Edwin Hubble who first measured it in 1929). The Hubble Constant is a tough one to pin down given that different observatories looking at different zones of the universe have delivered different answers. But a new study expresses confidence that Hubble's most recent effort is precise for the expansion it sees, although there is still a difference from other observatories.

The new study confirms previous expansion rate estimates based on Hubble observations, showing an expansion of roughly 45 miles (73 kilometers) per megaparsec.(A megaparsec is a measurement of distance equal to one million parsecs, or 3.26 million light-years.)

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

"Given the large Hubble sample size, there is only a one-in-a-million chance astronomers are wrong due to an unlucky draw ... a common threshold for taking a problem seriously in physics," NASA said in a statement on Thursday (May 19), paraphrasingNobel Laureate and study lead author Adam Riess.

Riess has affiliations at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) that manages Hubble, as well as the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Riess and collaborators received the Nobel in 2011 after Hubble and other observatories confirmed that the universe was accelerating in its expansion. Riess calls this latest Hubble effort a "magnum opus" given that it draws upon practically the telescope's entire history, 32 years of space work, to deliver an answer.

Hubble's data nailed down its observed expansion rate under a program called SHOES (Supernova, H0, for the Equation of State of Dark Energy.) The dataset doubles a previous sample of measurements and also includes more than 1,000 Hubble orbits, NASA stated. The new measurement is also eight times more precise than expectations for Hubble's capabilities.

Efforts to measure how fast the universe is expanding usually focus on two distance markers. One of them are the Cepheid stars, variable stars that brighten and dim at a constant rate; their utility has been known since 1912, when astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt marked their importance in imagery she was reviewing.

Cepheids are good for charting distances that are inside the Milky Way (our galaxy) and in nearby galaxies. For further distances, astronomers rely upon Type 1a supernovas. These supernovas have a consistent luminosity (inherent brightness), allowing for precise estimates of their distance based on how bright they appear in telescopes.

In the new study, NASA stated, "the team measured 42 of the supernova milepost markers with Hubble. Because they are seen exploding at a rate of about one per year, Hubble has, for all practical purposes, logged as many supernovae as possible for measuring the universe's expansion." (Again, Hubble has been in space for about 32 years, having launched on April 24, 1990; a mirror flaw that hindered early work was addressed by astronauts in December 1993.)

But the expansion rate still does not have full agreement across different efforts. The new study says Hubble's measurements are roughly 45 miles (73 kilometers) per megaparsec. But when taking into account observations of the deep universe, the rate slows down to about 42 miles (67.5 kilometers) per megaparsec.

Deep universe observations rely principally upon measurements by the European Space Agency's Planck mission, which observed the "echo" of the Big Bang that formed our universe. The echo is known as the cosmic microwave background. NASA said astronomers are "at a loss" to figure out why there are two different values, but suggested we may have to rethink basic physics.

Riess said it is best to see the expansion rate not for its exact value at its time, but its implications. "I don't care what the expansion value is specifically, but I like to use it to learn about the universe," Riess said in the NASA statement.

More measurements are expected to come in the forthcoming 20 years from the James Webb Space Telescope, which is completing commissioning work in deep space ahead of looking at some of the first galaxies. Webb, NASA said, will look at Cepheids and Type 1a supernovas "at greater distances or sharper resolution than what Hubble can see." That may in turn refine Hubble's observed rate.

A paper based on the research will be published in the Astronomical Journal. A preprint version is available on arXiv.org.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter@howellspace. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcomor Facebook.

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Hubble telescope looks deep into the Needle’s Eye in this dwarf spiral galaxy photo – Space.com

Posted: at 11:52 am

A fresh image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a deep view of the eye of a galactic needle.

The spiral galaxy is nicknamed the "Needle's Eye", although more officially it is known as NGC 247 and Caldwell 62. NASA said May 10 the nickname is appropriate given this galaxy is a dwarf spiral, making it a relatively small group of stars compared to our own Milky Way.

The Hubble Space Telescope image portrays a hole on the other side of the galaxy, which NASA said puzzles astronomers. "There is a shortage of gas in that part of the galaxy, which means there isnt much material from which new stars can form," the agency wrote.

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

"Since star formation has halted in this area, old, faint stars populate the void. Scientists still dont know how this strange feature formed, but studies hint toward past gravitational interactions with another galaxy," the agency added.

The hole is not the only mystery this galaxy holds.

Below the disk of the galaxy, you can spit a few more smaller and distant galaxies beyond the Needle's Eye marker of 11 million light-years, a relatively close distance to us in galactic terms. But learning about those faraway galaxies is something astronomers are also trying to do.

"Bright red indicates areas of high-density gas and dust, and robust star formation rather close to the edge of the galaxy," NASA said. There's also a bright foreground star that happens to be in the field of view.

Embedded in the heart of the galaxy is an ultraluminous X-ray source, too, but it is unclear where that came from.

"Are they stellar-mass black holes gorging on unusually large amounts of gas? Or are they long-sought 'intermediate-mass' black holes, dozens of times more massive than their stellar counterparts but smaller than the monster black holes in the centers of most galaxies?" NASA asked.

Independent studies of the galaxy using other forms of light, such as X-rays with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, suggest the X-rays are coming from an intermediate-mass black hole's disk. But more studies will be required to decide for sure what is going on.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter@howellspace. Follow us on Twitter@Spacedotcomor Facebook.

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Hubble Telescope: Something weird going on in universe – us.bolnews.com

Posted: at 11:52 am

The Hubble Space Telescope is one of the most powerful technologies available for measuring interstellar distances.

Hubble is currently working on a much bigger mission: figuring out how fast the cosmos is expanding.

New evidence suggests that the cosmos is not expanding at the same rate everywhere.

There is a difference in the rate of expansion of the universe as it is around us and observations made after the Big Bang.

NASA observes that something weird is going on in the cosmos based on Hubble data.

NASA notes that the study of how the universe grew and how rapidly it began decades ago in 1920, when measurements by Edwin P Hubble and Georges Lemaitre revealed that galaxies beyond our own were not stationary.

These galaxies are actually travelling away from us.

These galaxies were travelling at a non-uniform, increasing rate, according to Hubble.

The further a galaxy was from Earth, the faster it was moving away.

Since then, scientists have been attempting to comprehend the phenomenon and determine the pace of expansion.

However, now that Hubble data is available, it appears that the expansion is considerably faster than models expected.

Scientists are now awaiting data from the new James Webb Space Telescope, which will offer a more in-depth examination at the matter, as the new data kicks off a new review of our understanding of the universes expansion.

The Webb Space Telescope will extend on Hubbles work by showing these cosmic milepost markers at greater distances or sharper resolution than what Hubble can see, NASA said.

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James Webb Space Telescope and 344 Single Points of Failure – thenewstack.io

Posted: at 11:52 am

Earlier this year, the single greatest site reliability engineering (SRE) lesson unfolded itself out in space. Last week we saw the very first, better-than-even-expected images from the James Webb Space Telescope or JWST.

After ten years of design and build on a $9 billion budget, this was an effort in testing 344 single points of failure all before deploying to production, with the distributed system a million miles and one month away.

Needless to say, there are a lot of reliability lessons to be learned from this endeavor. At his WTF is SRE talk last month, Robert Barron brought his perspective as an IBM SRE architect, amateur space historian, and a hobby space photographer to uncover the patterns of reliability that enabled this feat. And how NASA was able to trust its automation so much that itd release something with no hopes of fixing it. Its a real journey into observability at scale.

Its a great platform for demonstrating site reliability engineering concepts because this is reliability to the extreme, Barron said of the James Webb Space Telescope. If something goes wrong, if its not reliable, then it doesnt work. We cant just deploy it again. Its not something logical, its something physical that has to work properly and I think there are a lot of lessons and a lot of inspiration that we can take from this work into our day-to-day lives.

After 30 years of amazing photos from the Hubble Telescope, there was a demand for new business and technical capabilities, including to be able to see through and past clouds as they are created.

When designing the Webb telescope, the design engineers kicked off with the functional requirements, which in turn drove a lot of non-functional requirements. For instance, it needed to be much more powerful and larger than Hubble, but to achieve that it needed a significantly larger mirror. However, an operational constraint arose that the mirror is so large that it doesnt fit into any rocket, so it needed to be broken up into pieces. The non-functional requirement became to create a foldable mirror. A solution arose to break the mirror up into smaller hexagons, which can be aligned together to form a honeycomb-shaped mirror.

The second non-functional requirement of the JWST was to go beyond Hubble in not only seeing invisible light, but in seeing hot infrared light. But, to be accurate, the mirror needs to keep cold. Not just colder, but we need to be able to control the temperatures. Exactly. Because any variation and were going to look at something and think Oh, this is a star. This is a galaxy. Not thats just something there on Webb itself, which is slightly colder or warmer than it should be, Barron explained.

Unlike Hubble which orbits the Earth, Webb is unable to orbit because then its temperatures would vary greatly in sun and shade. Plus, it needs to be much farther away from earth than Hubble has ever gone. With this in mind, the controls and antennas face Earth and the telescope faces away with the honeycomb set of mirrors that reflect into a second set of mirrors which then sends the images back to the cameras, which are located in the middle of the honeycomb mirrors. Then behind it is a massive set of sunshades that work to control the temperature of the telescope.

When NASA decided back in 1995 to make this next-generation space telescope, the agency assumed itd cost about a billion dollars. In 2003, they started to design it, and they realized that its not just scaling up Hubble, we need technological breakthroughs the foldable mirrors, precise control of the temperature, the unfurling of the heat shields, and so on, said Barron. Over the next four years of high-level design, they moved the budget to $3.5 billion and planned on another billion for a decade of operations.

Then between 2007 and 2021, NASA dove into the design, build and test phase of what was named the James Webb Space Telescope.

Like good SREs we test and, because we have ten technological breakthroughs that we need to achieve, we have a lot of failures, Barron said. So we retest and fail, and retest and fail. And this takes a lot of time, and the project is nearly canceled many times. And eventually it costs $9.5 billion dollars just to build it. And that $1 billion that we thought would be enough to operate for 10 years is only going to be enough to operate for five years.

All things considered, the JWST was launched in December of last year, kicking off its operation, and what Barron referred to as pirouetting and ballet moves through space.

You can see that over a period of 13 days that the telescope, like a butterfly, opens up, spreads its wings, and started reporting home. And then starts going further away from Earth until it reaches the location where it will remain for the next decade, he explained. This journey took a total of 30 days.

As of the WTF is SRE event that Barron spoke at the end of April, the JWST was considered mid-deployment, before reaching production were doing the final tests before we can say that the system is working and can start giving actual scientific data.

During this deployment phase, there are so many components and pieces moving and changing, it uncovered many points of failure 344 to be exact.

Webb is famous for having over 300 single points of failure during this process of 30 days, each of which has to go perfectly, each of which if the fails, the entire telescope will not be able to function, Barron explained.

When those first exceptional photos came back, discovering new, fainter galaxies, was it luck or a feat of extreme site reliability engineering?

How did NASA reach the point where they could send $10 billion worth of satellite out into space without being able to fix anything without being able to reach out with an astronaut to say, Oh, I need to move something, I need to restart something, I need to do something manual. How can the system be completely fully automated? And can I trust that no dragons will come from outer space and do something to the telescope which will cause it to fail?

Robert Barron @FlyingBarron

You could say this is more than a leap of faith. That trust that NASA had in all this working properly, Barron believes, comes from its decades-long history of sending crafts into space, which is grounded in the values of:

Both the Voyager spacecraft that went to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and the Mars Rover were actually sets of identical twin crafts, in case one failed. Similarly, constellations of satellites work in tandem as fail-safes. This redundancy has long been embraced by NASA, but wasnt the option with the JWST price tag.

When redundancy is out, NASA next reaches for repairability. The Hubble Telescope has been repaired and upgraded multiple times for both fixes and preventive maintenance. And, according to Barron, 50% of the astronaut time on the International Space Station is actually spent on toil.

If the astronauts left the International Space Station, then, in a very short period of time, it would just break down and theyd be forced to send it back down into the atmosphere to burn up, he explained.

But, again, the non-functional requirement of repairability was also not an option for the Webb Telescope because it is floating far beyond the current capability of astronauts.

So the next step toward reliability came from building the JWST out of component architecture.

Barron went through a brief history of the Space Race between the Soviet Union and the U.S. from 1960 to 1988. He uncovered the pattern that redundancy didnt actually matter much because the failure modes were shared in both crafts each time, like an alloy wasnt durable enough or a launch was during a sandstorm. He did note that the Soviet space program chose not to publish their mistakes, so they were less likely than NASA to learn from them.

Redundancy is very good, but sometimes at a system level, it doesnt solve a problem because the problem is much wider, which Barron said happens to SREs as well. Kubernetes, for example, has componentization, redundancy and load balancing built-in, but that doesnt matter if the problem is with the DNS or an application bug. Often reliability demands more than simple redundancy.

The monolith Hubble was designed from the start with repairability and upgradeability in mind. With this repairability out of the picture, there had to be a lot more testing on Webb versus Hubble, for each single point of failure. For example, each mirror was a smaller component that could be realigned remotely. He analogized this to Kubernetes, where you want to allocate the right amount of CPU, memories, and resources available to each and every microservice.

In fact, Webb saw some observability trade-offs because it could only allow for so many selfie cameras to observe its own condition because adding more could affect the temperature and alter its observations.

Theres no doubt that the James Web Space Telescope SRE strategy has more stakes than any enacted on Earth. It still makes for a fantastic example of how site reliability engineering and observability needs vary within the context of circumstances. And that sometimes chaos engineering can only be performed before it goes into production.

Barron observed some of the JWSTs SRE strategy:

The JWST experiment is also a good reminder that, with fewer stakes than NASA, much more frequent, smaller deployment cadence, and with less than 100% uptime required, you can experiment more with redundancy, repairability and reliability to continuously improve your systems. Under ideally significantly less pressure.

As SREs, we dont want to aim for 100% availability. We want the right amount of availability, and we dont want to overspend neither resources nor budget in order to get there. We dont want to embrace too many new technologies for new products, Barron said. A lot of the lessons from Webb are what not to do.

Disclosure: The author of this article was a host of the WTF is SRE conference.

The New Stack is a wholly owned subsidiary of Insight Partners, an investor in the following companies mentioned in this article: Saturn.

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Hubble clicks photo that shows future of Milky Way Galaxy – WION

Posted: at 11:52 am

James Webb Space Space Telescope may be humanity's future 'eye in the sky' but good ol' Hubble telescope still has a place in our hearts. Hubble has faithfuly relayed images of distant stars and galaxies to Earth for three decades. The space telescope does not cease to make us awestruck, amused and appreciate the endless beauty of the cosmos.

Latest image clicked by Hubble is such. While it may not be as exciting as a colliding galaxy, exploding star but this image tells us about our future.

The photo shows an elliptical galaxy called NGC 474. It is 100 million light-years away from Earth. It is about two and a half times larger than Milky Way Galaxy. The galaxy may not have a beautiful spiral structure like our own galaxy. It just looks like a wisp or smokey haze. But studying NGC 474 galaxy is vital because it gives us glimpses of our on future.

As much as we love our Milky Way Galaxy, it is on collision course with an even bigger galaxy. Andromeda galaxy is racing towards Milky Wayat an unimaginable speed.

We can breathe a little sigh of relief though because the galactic collision will take place billions of years from now. This collision of galaxies may not be as apocalyptic as movies have us believe. But immense gravities of Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies will tear material out from the cosmic dance partners. After a merger process that will last billions of years still, both galaxies will lose their spiral shapes and the resulting 'Milkdromeda' galaxy will have an elliptical shape just like NGC 474 which Hubble has clicked!

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#SpaceSnap The Alluring Crab Nebula Captured by the Hubble and Herschel Space Telescopes – iTech Post

Posted: at 11:52 am

The Crab Nebula, an iconic supernova remnant in our Milky Way galaxy, was photographed by the ESA's Herschel Space Observatory and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in this composite image.

According to NASA, the Crab nebula is a wispy and filamentary cloud of gas and dust that was discovered by Chinese astronomers in 1054 as a remnant of a supernova explosion.

(Photo : ESA/Herschel/PACS/MESS Key Programme Supernova Remnant Team; NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University))

Space.comreported that the glow from cosmic dust contained in the nebula is shown by Herschel's observations, which are displayed in red. Hubble's view, in blue, shows the nebula's oxygen and sulfur gas.

A team of scientists using Herschel to study the nebula discovered that it contains far more dust than they anticipated - nearly a fourth of the mass of the Sun. The newer findings also revealed the presence of argon-based molecules, the first time such a molecule has been discovered in space.

Read More: #SpaceSnap: Hubble Space Telescope's Photo of Gas Clouds Inside NGC 1977 in The Running Man Nebula

The Herschel image is based on data collected at a wavelength of 70 microns with the Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) instrument, while the Hubble image is based on archival data from the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).

"Herschel is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission with important NASA contributions, and Hubble is a NASA mission with important ESA contributions," NASA said.

Behold since the Crab Nebula isn't the only thing the Hubble Telescope has seen thus far. The following are some of the most fascinating images captured by the telescope:

(Photo : NASA, ESA, STScI, Julianne Dalcanton (Center for Computational Astrophysics / Flatiron Inst. and University of Washington); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

NASA said that the image above is a "spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies fueled the unusual triangular-shaped star-birthing frenzy." On the right, the NGC 2445 is the more dazzling spiral galaxy, while the NGC 2444 lies on the left. Arp 143 is the collective name for them. [read more]

(Photo : NASA, ESA, K. Luhman and T. Esplin (Pennsylvania State University), et al., and ESO; Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))

The Hubble Space Telescope image above depicts one of the Chameleon Cloud Complex's three segments. The photo was taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2. [read more]

(Photo : ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini)

A magnificent image of a laser-like jet of gas blasting from a very young star has been caught by the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, one of the space telescope's five scientific instruments, captured the image. The Herbig-Haro object HH34, which is 1,250 light-years away from Earth, is depicted in this snapshot. [read more]

(Photo : NASA, ESA, and N. Da Rio (University of Virginia); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))NASAs Hubble Space Telescope captures another Flame Nebula.

The Hubble Space Telescope captured a stunning image of the Flame Nebula, officially known as NGC 2024. NGC 2024 is a large star-forming region around 1,400 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion. [read more]

(Photo : NASA, ESA, and J. Bally (University of Colorado at Boulder); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America))

Inside the Running Man nebula complex, the telescope captured breathtaking gas clouds. The Hubble Space Telescope's favorite subject to shoot is nebulae, and these photographs have helped scientists learn more about them. [read more]

Related Article: #SpaceSnap: Hubble Space Telescope Captures Amazing 'Space Triangle' Created by Colliding Galaxies

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Bad Advice: Should vaping be allowed at birthday parties? – Worcester Mag

Posted: at 11:51 am

Shaun Connolly| Correspondent

DEAR SHAUN: My brother recently yelled at me for vaping at my nieces 5th birthday party. He said it was inappropriate to have an adult blowing those toxic vapors into the air around a bunch of children. I said that Im an adult and I can make my own choices and that it wasnt like I was blowing it in their faces. Should I be allowed to smoke at my nieces parties and other get-togethers where children are at?

DEAR MY FELLOW HOMO-VAPE-IEN: Bro, when you got to vape you got to vape. I say you not only should vape, but for every birthday, holiday or random get-together you gift your niece a vape and some of that sweet, sweet juice. Heres the thing: Yes, as an adult we do have autonomy on what we put in our body. And yes, we have the freedom to do what we want when we want it. Theres no reason why on a Sunday afternoon party with 20+ 5-year-olds running around you shouldnt be able to do what you want to do when you want to do it and if that means vaping that new blue-razz juice you got, then so be it.

I bet your brother has some beers and wine available at this party and that he sees nothing wrong with that. I see the hypocrisy though. He can consume liquid poison flavored like a bubbly lime that some corporation named White Claw, and you cant inhale laboratory created liquid flavored like a candy and made to get you addicted? I cant seem to find the logic either. What, would cocaine be OKtoo? Where does it end?

This seems like he is holding onto some hang ups from when you were growing up. This could be retaliation from when you told him your dad wasnt your real dad and the dad that was living with you was an alien in a skin suit. Or when you told him that cars have a sensor on them that knows when kids are running in the street and they will stop no matter if the driver sees you or not. Or when you pretended to be his pen pal and wrote love letters pretending to be a beautiful girl in Spain named Esperanza. Thats what this is about, your brother cant get over the past and move on.

I suggest you tell your brother to grow up and mind his own dang business. Let him and his daughterand his partner do him and you will do you. Vape wherever you dang well please and catfish your own brother again for good measure. Blue-Razz Juice For Life!

Worcester comedian Shaun Connolly provides readers bad advice in his weekly column. Send your questions to woocomedyweek@gmail.com.

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Vaping in the Workplace – What employers need to consider – Lexology

Posted: at 11:51 am

Vaping has become extremely popular in recent years, particularly among younger generations (18 25 years old). Unlike cigarettes which have a natural end point once the cigarette has been consumed, vaporisers (commonly referred to as vapes) have no natural end. As a result of vapes being more readily accessible, their consumption indoors has become an increasing issue, particularly in workplace environments.

The vapour produced from vapes does contain toxins, although many are at lower levels than smoke produced by conventional cigarettes. However, exposure to some of these toxins (including heavy metals) may be greater than in conventional cigarettes. So, whilst these clouds of candy-smelling vapour are considered to be less harmful than cigarette smoke, they are not completely harm free.

Health NSW & World Health Organisation

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has stated that any level of exposure to the substances produced by vapour, may be harmful and should be avoided. It is also known that passive (or second hand) exposure to the vapour can aggravate existing chronic health conditions such as asthma or COPD.

Under the Smoke-free Environment Act 2000, people cannot use e-cigarettes (vaporisers) in smoke-free areas, or any places where smoking is banned. These include all enclosed public places and some outdoor public places that involve close contact with others and children (full details can be viewed here).

Health NSW provides that individual establishments, including workplaces, may develop their own smoke-free policies to ban the use of e-cigarettes within the premises.

This means that private workplaces are not always automatically smoke-free environments and may have to be dealt with separately by way of workplace policies.

Addressing vaping in the workplace

As stated above, employers should address vaping in the workplace in a similar way to smoking. When this is done, the rules on usage of vapes at work should be absolutely clear. If an employer already has existing smoking policies, this should be amended to cover off and include vaping e-cigarettes, so that the same rules apply to both.

It is also important to make clear when and where employees are allowed to use vapes and where smoking (whether conventional cigarettes or vapes) is permitted. This can include having a designated outdoor smoking area, or simply stating that vaping must only be done outside the work building and in accordance with all other legislative requirements in relation to smoking areas.

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