> So you're saying that fixed wing airliners are better than helicopter airliners because shooting them down requires larger missiles?
Yes, it not only increases the barrier to entry for attackers but airlines can install some defenses against MANPADS since they're easier to counteract than more advanced missiles. Some Israeli companies have developed and certified flare based anti-MANPADS systems like Flight Guard and laser based ones like C-MUSIC, though I don't think airlines have widely deployed them yet.
Once they're at cruising altitude, man portable AA can't bring them down.
My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to go see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest… where the tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn’t a single road for a hundred miles.
That’s a neat collection of graphics. I’m curious how bespoke the creation process is for each graphic or if this is something everyone just does in ArcGis or similar.
That last graphic about the Western US being the only other candidate is interesting because the two sides of the Rockies weren’t connected by a highway until the I70 over Glenwood Canyon was completed in 1992. Before its completion, the western and eastern halves of Colorado were practically different states and it took the interstate highway project half a century to get there because the terrain was so challenging.
Rather, go to Atacama, in Chile. It's a desert with pretty transparent air and little to no clouds, far from anywhere, and easier to traverse than a forest.
It's also rather closer to the South pole, so not as hot as Amazon.
Apparently the desert in Kashmir (I think Ladakh specifically) is also excellent for astronomy for similar reasons - a dry desert, cool due to its altitude, and also benefits from thinner air causing lesser distortion.
The most amazing sky I’ve ever seen was when I arrived in Urubichá in Guarayos region of Bolivia in 1998 before the electricity arrived in the area. I traveled by bus to visit my friend’s childhood home. The bus only went to the big city an hour away so I road in the back of a jeep the rest of the way, at night. I remember vividly not understanding what this super-bright light was in the sky. I know now it was either Venus or Jupiter, but it looked artificial because it was so much brighter than I was used to seeing.
> My key takeaway from this article is that the best place to go see the Milky Way is deep in the Amazon rainforest… where the tree cover is nearly 100% and there isn’t a single road for a hundred miles.
Pine Mountain Observatory, if you're on the West coast, has some of the darkest skies, best weather and stable atmosphere for good seeing. 24 inch telescope, too.
The problem with your takeaway is that you a) won't be able to realistically get deep into the amazon rainforest and b) the tree canopy would cover all of the sky ;)
As someone who once worked tangentially in search and rescue, please do not even consider this. The ocean is a serious thing, doubly so at night. Unless you are renting a boat large enough to come with its own staff, please do not just head over the horizon simply to see the stars. And fyi, the stars at sea move as the boat you stand on moves. They are brighter, but also more blurry.
Cruise ships dont have dark decks or other places to view the ocean directly at night. It would be like standing on your porch with the exterior lights of ypur house left on.
Avoiding light pollution is not really about seeing stars through light pollution. Thats for astronomers with telescopes. For human eyes it is more about being dark enough thay your iris can relax and let in more light. Try a dark forest, even a city park, surrounded by trees but able to see up. You will see more stars even if inside an urban area.
Also an area that is dark enough for ‘far enough’ that your eyes will naturally adjust to pick up these faint light sources. While some adjustment happens even in a few minutes, the difference between that and after several hours of darkness is mind blowing.
Most folks in a city likely have never been able to experience being able to walk by true starlight on a moonless night, and seeing clearly. It would be nearly impossible to get the right conditions even with a lot of effort.
A city park may be okay ish, but you’re unlikely to ever get the level of sight you’d get walking on a deserted playa in the desert. Not enough time with true darkness, and too much other light pollution.
You should have very dry air for the best place, which I guess with all that Amazon rainforest thing, would not be your best option. Chile has the one of the driest deserts in the world.
I love these maps, it’s an awesome collection! I make data vis maps for my day job and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that each of these are completely bespoke, made by different people, using a unique technique - python, hand drawing, ArcGIS, Blender, and even R can be used to make these, and I usually use deck.gl
They’re fun to make combining design, data, graphics programming, and lots of fiddling to get the tools to do what you want!
I think the graphics have numerous sources and mostly/entirely aren't made by the post author. There are five different styles in the first six map images!
I've been on a dark ship in the middle of the ocean and that was pretty good for stargazing, though I guess Australia might be a tiny bit better due to less reflective surface (compared to the ocean)?
I remember feeling, once, that night time was when everything in the universe could be seen, and daytime was when we slept in the shade of the sun, away from it all.
We had Japanese exchange students in High School, and the teachers stayed in our house (Mum & Dad were teachers). Even though I was only ~15, I have a very strong memory of the 50, 60 and 70 year old Japanese people staying outside until all hours stargazing.
Fair point about the exact terminology but those are tiny two lane roads with impassable grades for the majority of commercial traffic. The term highway has drifted in colloquial use (hence your use of the word “was”).
No it hasn't. "Highway" encompasses a lot of levels of road. If you're referring to an interstate, say so. That's the only thing that actually means that, and only that.
Yes, they were two lane roads. But no, they did not have impassable grades. Neither Loveland nor Berthoud Pass were easy, especially in winter, but they did in fact carry lots of commercial traffic (though I would think twice about sending an oversized load over them). In fact, to this day the old two-lane road of US 6 over Loveland Pass is used to keep hazardous material out of the I-70 tunnels.
I mean, I remember around 1968-69, before they finished building Interstate 80 up Echo Canyon, and that tiny two-lane road had to take all the commercial traffic that there was on "the main street of North America".
The sky from the top of Mauna Kea is ridiculous, and it's pretty easy to get there: fly to the big island of Hawaii, then sign up for the tour, I think it's less than $100. The milky way is stunning.
Just check the lunar phase before you book. Made the mistake of being in Hawaii during the full moon, so we didn’t get much of a view of the stars on our Mauna Kea trip. Don’t get me wrong - the experience of visiting to the top and watching the telescopes opening up was worth the trip, but we missed out on a real stargazing opportunity.
And we did see a fireball meteor, so that kinda made up for it. But I don’t think those are guaranteed.
Not really, that would probably be the north of Chile on the Atacama desert, there's a reason why the Extremely Large Telescope, Giant Magellan Telescope and Vera C. Rubin are being built there.
Watching this footage of the Very Large Telescope in Chile was the first time I really grasped that we're all together on a rock tumbling through the vastness of space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpeM3fxJoQ
Pretty sure you can rent telescope time it's just booked so you might have to wait.
You can still go physically, there's tours and such. But it doesn't make sense for a physicist to go there when all the imagery is captured by a computer anyway.
Also, if you've been to those altitudes you know it's not a walk in the park either!
It wouldn't give you the bombastic views you are used to from press realeases.
Those are all longer exposure, at different wavelengths, stitched together digitally.
With your bare eye in the focal point of that thing you'd just see Jupiter and some of its moons, the Rings of Saturn, some extrasolar nebulae and some galaxies better than with common amateur telesecopes. Otherwise just more and brighter stars, with some more hints of color.
You'd have more immersion by using binoculars with a wide field of view, and low magnification, like 10 to 20, maybe 30 times. But the latter with a wide field of view are rather heavy, so bring a foldable camping chair to lie down on, and some contraption to have the binoc hanging down on you, easily movable, but not shaky. Or a tripod, but they are impractical for looking straight up. (with common binocular eye-pieces)
My nomination for night sky viewing: Ölgii in western Mongolia (was there for the golden eagle festival). Clear desert sky, accessible by airplane, not a tiny town either.
> In late May, a 21-year-old enlisted man from California was killed — beheaded, in fact — while on a camping trip with six of his fellow paratroopers; once again, no arrests have been made in the case.
It’s pretty obvious why Rubbermade is losing out: it looks sterile while the Koala Kare one has a cute little koala graphic on it. I bet it wins out in the market entirely thanks to that graphic.
Curiously, I'm the opposite. I feel the cutesy companies and products in baby care space are just cringe at best, and scams exploiting emotionally-drained parents at worst; my instinct is to trust things that look like medical devices more. And I inherently distrust anything associated with furries. 0_o.
Yeah, my take is that companies with strong marketting efforts, particularly emotionally manipulative ones, are trying to compensate for something. That something is usually poor value products (which might be well made but overpriced.)
I think you're correct. I'm finding it difficult to think of a worse toilet paper brand or more annoying ads than Charmin.
That stuff is basically useless and no other brand has the issues they claim to solve in their ads. It's the kind of propaganda you'd expect from a cult.
Datadog popularity is due the fact that you can throw logs in it and it just works and the dashboard is quite nice same cannot be said about competitors.
Koala care has the largest market share. They can use that money to make the product cheaper, better, more innovative. They can use this money to make the business better(better marketing, sales channels).
They are proven as reliable for 10-15 Years, at many places. Strong brand.
Peak MBA brain. "How does this business do so well that they're a monopoly without using bully business tactics?" Well, the product is good, they deliver on specs, their marketing speaks for itself, and they aren't trying to expand into other niches that they aren't organizationally knowledgable in, and they aren't irritating their customers with AI integration, side-selling, trying to get them to upgrade to a newer version for no reason, on and on and on.
Like, just make a damn product, make it well and to last, and sell a damn product for a reasonable price and shock of shocks, you'll get pretty far.
> Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop.
It clears the way for Presidents from either party to carry out abuses they wouldn't have dared consider otherwise. All they'll need to do is find or make an angle that qualifies it as an official act.
> All they'll need to do is find or make an angle...
that's not anything new though, Obama's drone strikes weren't ordered until his lawyers felt they had a very good defense for him in case he was charged with assassinating US citizens without due process.
The majority specifies some ways this may apply that very much make all kinds of things directly shielded by this ruling, and indirectly shields more by restricting the use of evidence that has to do with official acts.
The way they’ve set this up, the people involved have a lot to do with it. It sure looks like the President can now openly discuss corruption like selling secrets or pardons with e.g. relevant cabinet members, and none of that can be prosecuted, nor can it be evidence presented in a prosecution of crimes.
The wording is definitely not clear enough in that section, however I don't think this is the intended reading (and I'm hoping we get clarification on this) -- the pardon would be an official act, but according to footnote 3 the sale of the pardon and discussions about that would not be included in the bar on evidence of the official act, because they're not considered part of that official act. It seems (with the footnotes considered) to be a very narrow interpretation of "official act," which does seem to contradict the plain reading. Very annoying.
Let's imagine that a president decides to, say, stop aiding Ukraine, and in exchange, Putin promises said president a couple billion dollars.
Stopping aid to Ukraine is definitely an official act, which, on its own, is within their powers. Trading said official action for the billion dollars is what is fraudulent, but if I am understanding the Roberts opinion correctly, it cannot be prosecuted, because the motives of the president should not be used as part of the ruling of immunity. So... free bribery, as long as said president pays their taxes.
It was abandoned because they made the mistake of trying to build it through South Pasadena which is very wealthy and full of politically connected old money families that didn't want anything to do with that kind of traffic. They dragged Caltrans through decades of lawsuits and Caltrans spent who knows how many millions on property in the area so I don't know if eminent domain was really an option, at least not in the 21st century. Their last ditch attempt was going to be a tunnel that cost >$1 billion per mile but the city shut that down fast too, even though it wouldn't have required seizing any land.
Source: South Pasadena is my home town and I left shortly after Caltrans officially gave up. The year after Caltrans dropped the project altogether, a massive chunk of the city's budget was reallocated back to the schools and roads which made a huge difference to the infrastructure.
This reminds me of what happened in Sydney, Australia. Sydney has this freeway (the M4, formerly the F4) which starts in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, the western edge of the Sydney metro area, around 55 km west of the city centre. And it heads due east, towards the centre of the city. And they built the western portions of the freeway first, since the land acquisition costs were cheap. By the late 1970s, it finished 15 km short of the city centre. And the government had acquired the land to continue it to the edge of the city centre, another 13 km or so. But a lot of local residents didn't want the freeway built. So in 1977, the recently elected centre-left Neville Wran government decided not just to cancel its construction, but also sell the land reservation to property developers to ensure it never could be built.
Did that actually stop its construction? No. The state government ended up building the eastern section anyway, starting in 2019, and it opened in 2023. But the surface reservation had been lost, and reacquiring it through eminent domain would have been prohibitively expensive due to high property prices, and politically too controversial too, so it had to go through a tunnel. A surface freeway would have cost AU$1–3 billion, with underground tunnelling the cost was well over AU$15 billion (around US$10 billion)
Wran's 1977 decision to sell the freeway land reservation was arguably one of the most expensive decisions ever made in Australian history. In the long-run it had made life worse for local residents, as the freeway dumped commuter traffic 15 km short of its primary destination, and they had to put up with that traffic traversing their local roads–which made the eventual completion of the freeway almost inevitable
Is the solution to build things through poorer neighborhoods where people still feel exactly the same but can't stand up for themselves?
The issue wasn't that they tried to put the freeway where someone didn't want it because nobody wants a freeway nextdoor, the issue is they tried to force it upon people who could fight back.
> Is the solution to build things through poorer neighborhoods where people still feel exactly the same but can't stand up for themselves?
Pretty much. The history of US highway construction is full of politicians using freeways to bulldoze and split poor communities. That's how the euphemism "urban renewal" got its name.
Caltrans would buy it the land this case. They've got a pretty significant real estate portfolio that they've acquired for a variety of projects over the decades.
One random house I think they still own is Julia Child's childhood home in Pasadena.
> The UK has been burning coal since 1882 so that feels like quite a significant milestone.
The UK has been burning coal since the 13th century for heating so it's an even more significant milestone than that. There was a short ban because of the pollution it caused but otherwise the UK has been continuously burning coal since the late middle ages.
I recommend Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese. The history of coal in Britain is fascinating and closely intertwined with the birth of the industrial revolution, some of the first workers rights, etc.
IMO their space program is very cavalier. This was apparently a secret facility near a residential area so they should have at least been distributing safety and emergency information. Not even telling the people living next to it that the facility exists is inexcusable.
This is not a secret facility. It's a test facility, not a launch site, i.e. there's public news on activities at facility when searching 河南巩义市综合试验中心 [0]. Catastrophic failure made it one, but that's like people saying they don't know XYZ industrial complex was located out side of town until it explodes spectacularly.
Tianlong3 actual launches is anticipated to happen at Wenchang Commerical in coastal Hainan, a cordoned off space port like Kennedy [1]. I would say (relatively) commercial players like Space Pioneer less cavalier than the national space program because bad optics can kill them.
> This was apparently a secret facility near a residential area
How 'secret' can an engine test stand be when the sound level produced by those things is enough to kill at short range while producing thick clouds of noxious fumes?
Yes, it not only increases the barrier to entry for attackers but airlines can install some defenses against MANPADS since they're easier to counteract than more advanced missiles. Some Israeli companies have developed and certified flare based anti-MANPADS systems like Flight Guard and laser based ones like C-MUSIC, though I don't think airlines have widely deployed them yet.
Once they're at cruising altitude, man portable AA can't bring them down.
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