Voting from space … again

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Kate Rubins is headed to space in October and, while there, plans to vote in the US Presidential election from the International Space Station, for a second time. It turns out that astronauts have been voting from space for decades.

Rubins also cast her vote from the International Space Station during the 2016 election

Three other astronauts, who have filled out the paperwork, are expected to join Rubin on the Space Station in the final days before the election.

A team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston coordinates between each astronaut’s County Clerk and the "completed ballot is downlinked and delivered back to the County Clerk’s Office by e-mail to be officially recorded."

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Dark Matter as Black Holes redux

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Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine

Stephen Hawking and Bernard Carr hypothesized that conditions close to the Big Bang would have produced primodial black holes, including some that were smaller than can be formed by collapsing stars, and some that are bigger than is easily explained by stellar collapse black holes combining over time.

And at some point, there was a school of thought that the unexplained "missing" mass in the universe might actually be caught up in black holes that we are not able to detect. This idea lost popularity, in the scientific community, as people explored ideas like Weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) but after decades without seeing signs of the required fundamental particles, some are investigating the idea again. Some recent evidence from gravitational limits the possibilities, but some researchers remain hopeful that the explanation for the universe’s "missing" mass is tied to black holes rather than exotic particles.

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Gesundheit II

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February 2018 photo of The Gesundheit II machine (University of Maryland School of Public Health via AP)

Just how does the virus that causes COVID-19 spread from one person to another? To help find out, people infected with the new coronavirus take turns sitting in a chair and putting their faces into the big end of a large cone that sucks up everything that comes out of their mouths and noses for analysis.

Scientists disagree about whether aerosols are contributing to the spread of the disease, but even those who warn about aerosols say current recommendations make sense.

Wearing a mask is still important, and make sure it fits snugly. Keep washing those hands diligently. And again, staying farther apart is better than being closer together. Avoid crowds, especially indoors.

Additional recommendations align with previous guidance, but suggest greater ventilation. Spread is less likely outdoors than indoors, for example.

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Brain-eating amoeba

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Naegleria fowleri (a. k. a. “brain-eating amoeba”)

I figured that a teenager dying from brain-eating amoeba, was pretty strange, but a quick search turned up cases of Primary Amebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM) in Texas, Georgia and Florida in recent weeks.

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Choose red, you live….

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Liquorice rolls Bulk sale at a confectioner’s. (Photo by: Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

It’s a known phenomenon, but perhaps not widely known, or at least not widely enough to help a Massachusetts construction worker whose switch from red to black Twizzlers killed him.

Discussions with his family revealed he had been eating one to two “large” bags of black licorice every day for about three weeks before his heart stopped.

It’s not just Twizzlers. Licorice flavored jelly beans, and other candies, and even some Belgian beers and chewing tobaccos contain glycyrrhizic acid.

In your gut you have hundreds kinds of bacteria, as well as viruses and fungi, collectively called your microbiome. And among the bacteria are some that turn glycyrrhizic acid into glycyrrhetinic acid. In the kidneys, glycyrrhetinic acid derivatives suppress conversion of cortisol to cortisone, which regulates ion, salt, and water balances. At the end of this chain reaction, you have critically low potassium levels leading to erratic behavior by the heart and lots of other problems.

If you’re wondering why the FDA would allow even small amounts of such a chemical, remember that all rice contains arsenic, and almost all fish and shellfish contain mercury.

A spokesman for the Hershey Company, which makes Twizzlers, wrote “all of our products are safe to eat and formulated in full compliance with FDA regulations,” but also that all foods, including candy, “should be enjoyed in moderation.”

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Happy Weekend

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Well it’s rainy as all get out around me, but … the air’s a lot cleaner.

And there are still plenty of other fires, and hurricanes, probably some fire tornadoes and murder hornets, and … oh yeah … that global pandemic thang.

But … this Old Fashioned is quite tasty, Happy weekend.

"The drink will never be any better than the quality of the cheapest ingredient" ~ David Embury, in The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks

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Voting for Democrats and Republicans

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Apparently, in the United States, if you vote for a candidate that you like and want to hold the office, people call that a "protest vote".

However, if you instead vote against whichever party you hate most, because hating them is more important than even liking the candidate that you’re voting for … that’s not a protest vote.

George Orwell would be proud 😕

Social Dilema?

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Poster art likely owned by producers/distributors of the movie

I’m trying to wean myself off of Facebook, and have never been drawn into Trump’s platform (Twitter). I’ve tried out MeWe and some of the other also-rans, and I really wish that decentralized networks like Diaspora seemed more viable, but … they don’t.

An eye-opening look into the way social media is designed to create addiction and manipulate our behavior. It will make you immediately want to toss your smartphone into the garbage can, and then toss the garbage can through the window of a Facebook executive.

Anyway, this is about the movie, and I have yet to watch it, which is no surprise as I don’t tend to watch a lot of movies. But, in a recent trip into the Facebook dumpster fire, I found two friends recommending this movie. One of them cheered when vigilante thugs ran a bunch of peaceful protesters out of a Colorado town, calling them "antifa" despite pretty much zero indication that any of them were doing the modern antifa thing — which is still anti-fascist by the way. The other is quite supportive of the BLM protests, excepting those acting violently or cheering the violence, in fact noting that much of the violence is likely not from BLM activists at all.

Not surprisingly, something recommended by both of these people seems like it could be a good bet, so … putting it in the queue for eventual watching.

Covid-19 often spreads through aerosols

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The 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), portrayed in an illustration created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ALISSA ECKERT, MS; DAN HIGGINS, MAM

Covid-19 often spreads through aerosols. This continues the pattern in which what we know about the virus has continued to get scarier even while much of the country chooses behavior that explicitly aids our enemy.

For months, scientists and public health experts have warned of mounting evidence that the novel coronavirus is airborne, transmitted through tiny droplets called aerosols that linger in the air much longer than the larger globs that come from coughing or sneezing.

For what it’s worth, I’m still taking precautions against transmission through contact. We have spray bottles of 70% to 99% isopropyl alcohol at various points around the house and a mini alcohol bottle filling station set up in the downstairs bathroom. It’s low effort, and might help, so … I keep doing it. However, I also continue to use KN95 masks pretty universally when anywhere near humans … or more recently smoky air.

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