The last time the Aurora Borealis was a thing back in May, I dragged out my camera and tripod and was disappointed with the shots I got compared to what others were getting. So when I heard that she would be making a repeat performance last night, I thought I'd study up how to take better photos this time around. Then ultimately decided I didn't care enough to do that. I'll just look at other people's photos and stay inside where it's warm

But then I remembered that I have a new iPhone and decided to throw on a jacket to see what happens when I used it to snap some photos...

What people are not saying is that you don't just walk out your door and see this. It's barely visible until you pull out your phone or camera and make a long exposure. To actually walk outside and see this you need to go to Norway. Or Alaska (which is where I saw it for realsies). Or somewhere way north. Still... it's pretty to look at through my iPhone.

I kept looking through my bedroom window and waited to see if the pink/red got stronger before going outside, because at the start it was mostly green like last time. And yes, before you ask, I changed the photo style in iPhone Camera from my new go-to "Amber" undertone to the "Vivid" filter setting (which was my former happy place in the app before we got "Amber")...

Some interesting things to note...

First, all of the above photos were shot with the wide-angle lens. I was really hoping to get something cool out of the new 48MP ultra-wide lens, but the results were terrible. It's as if the shake reduction is not working and the "Vivid" setting wasn't doing anything to help. All I could get without a tripod were grim, blurry photos. So disappointing...

Second, I shot a couple videos to capture the shifting lights, but that turned out even worse. I think if I got my tripod that I could have gotten something worthwhile, but my cats were already pissed off enough that I had left them.

Third, when I looked through my photos more carefully this morning, I found that what I really liked was when the stars shined through the aurora. Now I really wish I had grabbed my tripod, because I would have liked to have gotten a crisper take of that. But still, the iPhone's shake reduction is darn good. Considering how small the stars are, I expected a lot more blur than what I got. This is a 100% pixel crop of how iPhone did with the wide-angle lens...

Fourth, I opened my laptop this morning and of course social media is overflowing with "tHIs iS nOt NORmal! ThIS IS The hEAVy metaLs ThAT thE GuberMINt aRE putTing InTO The air to CREaTE hURRICaNes!" Because of course. We can't have nice things any more because despite explanations by scientists and astronomers as to what's happening, everything has to fit into some nonsensical confirmation bias narrative. Everything. It must be fucking exhausting spending so much time trying to sus out what the latest conspiracies are and how they can sandwich into the demented fantasies that people are building to explain the world around them. Fantasies which don't rely on empirical evidence, rational thought, or all the evil lying scientists around the world who have been paid by NASA to deceive us from the truth. It's absolutely bonkers that we've regressed back to the Stone Age, and everything humanity has learned is being tossed out the window in favor of absolute bullshit. But that could just be my eight COVID boosters talking. I get vaccinated because I have respiratory issues and getting COVID could kill me, so I guess I'll just keep believing in science so I can survive even though it means that I am crazy-stupid for believing in science? Who the fuck knows any more.

And there you have it. A pretty nice display of this cool consequence of stronger-than-usual solar storms hitting earth's magnetic field and interacting with gasses in the upper atmosphere which is visible further south than usual.

Or it's Obama and the Deep State using unicorn blood as a sacrifice to satan for summing death and destruction upon the earth which our prayers to Jesus combated, thus creating pretty lights. Or what the fuck ever you want to believe. I give up.

I'm scrubbing up after seven months of having my shower doors collecting dust in my hallway, but now that they're moved, I can move on... and blog... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Make Mine Marvel! I fully expected to get a Deadpool 3 trailer at the Superb Owl. And though I'm not watching the game, I wasn't disappointed. Now titled Deadpool & Wolverine, it's absolutely everything I dreamed of...

This may very well be worth a trip to the theater.

   
• Yawn! I was wandering through the internet and saw a photo of some cats that immediately reminded me of the famous Pet Shop Boys album cover for actually...

Classic. The Instagram account didn't credit the creator of the photos, but a reverse image search pointed me to this Tumblr here. Hopefully that's the right place. Kinda frustrating when creators don't get credited for their work.

   
• DOON TOO! Um. Wow. Can't wait for the second half of Dune. The whole idea of riding a big worm through the desert is just so comical, but here Denis Villeneuve actually makes it look terrifying...

I've always been a fan of what David Lynch managed to do with his original film back in 1984, but this is phenomenal. If only Frank Herbert could see how his master work has been so beautifully adapted.

   
• Call Me... Charlie Baltimore! I love maps. This short video is on a subject I've read about many times... but this is a very clear way of illustrating The Baltimore Phenomenon...

Alice Springs was an interesting place to visit. I went so I could see Uluru (AKA "Ayer's Rock), and it feels very much like a place that's there just to service people doing exactly that.

   
• I'm Blue! Oh how I love science. The story of the development of the blue LED is fascinating...

The implications of sterilization LEDs is mind-boggling.

   
• Shorted! It's been a while since I've read Optic Nerve. But I was excited when I heard that Randall Park was adapting Shortcomings from the original comic. THEN I saw that it was to star Justin Min (he's Ben in The Umbrella Academy) and Ally Maki (who I fell in love with from Wrecked) and was all in...

It ended up being darn good. Kinda slice-of-life with some humor to it. And though I don't recall seeing Sherry Cola in anything, she is hilarious. All the actors are really good, but holy crap should Justin Min be tearing up Hollywood. Good looking with the bone structure of a god... and incredible talented to boot.

   
• Poppin'! TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES ONLY APPLY TO WOMEN! MEN CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT! IT'S IN THE BIBLE, YOU CAN LOOK IT UP! Meanwhile... misogyny never looked so fabulous. That lip gloss and those frosted tips are poppin' on him! Way to find a look that's so glam on you, my brother in Christ! (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...

The lack of awareness is just next level here.

   
And now? Back to playing clean up.

I hope you're sitting down... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Ingenuity! The absolutely remarkable longevity of the little Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has been an absolute joy to behold. He was supposed to max out at five flights over 30 days. He completed 72 flights over three years! Way to go!

If you haven't yet, please go to Google and search for "Ingenuity Mars Helicopter" then click on the little animated copter to see what happens.

   
• Beefalo! I don't know how people cannot love the Kelce brothers...

I'm so glad that I was a fan of them both before Taylor Swift entered the picture. And even before Travis's incredible guest-host spot on Saturday Night Live

   
• Remote Remote! The question "Who lives in this remote crater in Madagascar" that tags this video is not the question they ask in the actual video. That would be "Why did these people move to such an isolated space?" And the reason they changed it is likely because they realized that the why is obvious. It is painfully clear that it's in a volcano, volcanos have incredibly rich soil, and it looks green so there must be water there... which is backed up by the fact that there's very clearly some agriculture happening at the location. Regardless, this video combines my love of maps, cultures, and travel into a heck of a worthwhile watch...

Satisfying. Right?

   
• This Country Hates Women, Part 3,257: I Miscarried in Texas. My Doctors Put Abortion Law First. Stories recounting this type of repugnant fucking bullshit enrages me to the point that I can't even see straight. I honest to God marvel on a daily basis that women haven't put a torch to this country.

   
• Faith! Oh look. Sometimes a “Man of God” is actually a man of God...

The number of hypocritical "Christians" I see on a daily basis who pick-and-choose which of Jesus's teachings they have to follow just blows my mind.

   
• Resort! I've lived in Washington State for the vast majority of my life. And even though I'm not a skier, you'd think that at some point it would have occurred to me that people simply do not fly here to ski. I can name a dozen "destination" ski resorts around the world, but not one of them are in Washington or Oregon. And here's a look at why...

Makes perfect sense. And yet I never thought about it until I saw this video.

   
• STORY: NFL fans could do a whole lot worse than singing the Black National Anthem at the Super Bowl. I wonder if all these people losing their minds over Lift Every Voice and Sing (AKA "The Black National Anthem") that will be performed at the Super Bowl have even taken ten seconds to look up the lyrics and the meaning of the song. And has everybody forgotten Sheryl Lee Ralph's stunning performance of the song just last year? The outrage machine fires people up for money. Making people mad and divided gets them paid. And we let them do it. This song is perfectly appropriate to be sung at the Super Bowl, and anybody who knows what it's about should have zero problem with it. And, oh yeah, THEY ARE STILL GOING TO SING THE USA NATIONAL ANTHEM! NOTHING IS BEING TAKEN AWAY OR REPLACED!!

   
Okay. You can stand up now. See you for more bullets in a week.

Yeah, there's no post today.

Look, I am not going to candy-coat this... after "discovering" BobbyBroccoli, all my non-work time has been watching every single video he's produced. And I remain completely blown away.

BobbyBroccoli's channel is six years of video games. Then, three years ago, something changed. All of a sudden Broccoli (Kavan S) switched the focus of his channel to scientific scandals. And this is when things get very, very interesting. His first video in this new direction is actually a video in three parts about Jan Hendrik Schön. If you are a science geek, it's riveting. Mostly because he doesn't just go "Hey, there's this science guy and his lies almost got him a Nobel Prize." Oh no. He goes into glorious detail explaining how everything happened.

PART ONE: The Rise of Jan Hendrick Schön.
PART TWO: The Lies of to Jan Hendrick Schön.
PART THREE: The Demise of to Jan Hendrick Schön.

Last year BobbyBroccoli ran through a series on Ammerica's Missing Collider. As with everything else, it's an absolutely fascinating deep dive into the subject which spans three presidencies...

PART ONE: Ronald Reagan & the Biggest Failure in Physics.
PART TWO: George Bush Vomited & Set Physics Back by a Decade.
PART THREE: Bill Clinton & the Day Physics Died.

That mostly gets you caught up to what I posted yesterday. There's a few other videos, including this fascinating look at The Image You Can't Submit to Journals Anymore...

Assuming I don't fall down another YouTube rabbit hole, I'm guessing things will go back to whatever passes for "normal" here at Blogography.

I watch a lot of videos. If I'm awake and working, odds are I am watching (but mostly listening to) YouTube videos. And the subjects I have running in those videos are crazy eclectic because I enjoy loads of different subjects. But ultimately the videos I tend to watch more than others are those that can teach me something. AKA educational videos.

More specifically, math and science videos.

I have watched hundreds upon hundreds of such videos. So when I tell you that I have now found my favorite science video that I've yet seen, I am not speaking from lack of data.

It's an absolutely brilliant video about "element hunting" and "the man who tried to fake an element." Not only is is just wildly entertaining (both in the way it is told and the way it is graphically represented), but it is mind-bogglingly fascinating. On top of that, it miraculously is fairly easy to follow for non-scientists despite tackling a rather complex chain of events.

And it's a year old!

I'm posting it here. It's well worth your time. And you're welcome...

Now, isn't that just fantastic?

As I type this, I'm in the process of watching it a second time immediately after having finished watching it the first time.

What's so utterly bizarre is that YouTube shows me that I've seen two of BobbyBroccoli's previous videos. I remember watching both of them, liked them, and have no earthly idea why I didn't subscribe immediately after watching. It's only thanks to the YouTube algorithm that I happened upon his channel again. Which only goes to show... the algorithm isn't always bad.

At least this time I had the sense to subscribe.

UPDATE: Yeah... I may not get any sleep tonight. This guy makes exceptional videos. Like these, which breaks open a huge scandal in a beautifully visual way...

Yikes. I mean... this is the very definition of a train wreck that you can't look away from.

It may be getting cold enough that I'm contemplating turning on the heat, but it's always warm on my blog... because an all new Very Special Video Edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Kookaburra! Now, granted, I would not want this outside my window (and I remember them very well from my trip to Australia), but it's sure nice to admire them from afar...

So cute. Are there any baby creatures that are not adorable?

   
• Andor! Diego Luna is precious and life-affirming. This entire video is fantastic...

On top of that? He's a remarkably gifted actor. I am dying for the second season of Andor to arrive.

   
• ¡Yo Quiero! "It's the same thing in a different thing." — HE'S FIGURED IT OUT! HE'S DISCOVERED THE TACO BELL FORMULA!

LOL. These foreign takes on quintessentially American things never gets old!

   
• Does Whatever a Spider Can! Video games have reached the point where you're basically playing a feature film. This looks incredible...

This was a Spider-Man game when I first started playing...

Insanity. And soon we'll have much, much better VR experiences, which could take it to an even more immersive level.

   
• Unreal! If you want a look into the absolutely fascinating world of 3D computer graphics, this is an amazing behind-the-scenes look at how photogrammetry works...

Now, I've written about the Unity gaming engine a couple times before. The stuff people are doing with it is breathtaking (including companies like Lucasfilm and Marvel using it for producing their projects). It is an amazing, amazing tool. Unfortunately, they've just unveiled a hugely controversial licensing model, which is gouging game developers in a terrible way. It's easy to say "Just switch to a different gaming engine if you don't like the cost!" Except video games take years to develop. Even for large studios with hundreds of employees. So if you've been working on a game for two or three years... how can you afford to switch to a different engine? This is a major deal. So major that some game projects are being canceled... and some developers are going to switch engines despite the additional time needed...

Of course the people behind Unity deserve to get paid for their hard work. But to kill developers to get there seems like a horrifically bad business model. Hopefully they will re-evaluate what they're doing and come up with something more reasonable.

   
• SCIENCE! Despite an inexplicable (and highly selective) anti-science movement by fucking idiots, science marches on. And this is fascinating...

Fascinating and scary. Plants screaming? But in brighter news... research into Alzheimer's just keeps advancing. Very promising that one day we might have a cure.

   
• HomeShit! For anybody saying that I am exaggerating about just how fucking shitty Apple's HomeKit is, this guy is a total expert and even he can't solve the problems he's been having. He finally ended up resetting and rebuilding his entire HomeKit setup...

If I get this desperate, I'm just going to bail on HomeShit altogether and go with Matter and some kind of smarter home hub (like Homey Pro). In the meanwhile, I am just applying Band-Aids to try to solve the massive fucking problems I'm having. As an example, I just installed a light and motion sensor in my garage as a backup to automatically turn the light on when the doors open since HomeShit automations keep dying on my door sensor for some reason (even though the light switch and sensor itself is operating perfectly).

   
And on that happy note... enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

When I got home from work today, I was just... numb. Didn't have the energy to do anything except plop down in front of the television with an ice cream cone. Which sounds more entertaining than it was because I never bothered to actually turn the television on.

Instead I told Siri to put on some music while I caught up on the news.

And the first headline I see? FDA grants full approval to new Alzheimer's drug meant to slow disease.

Now, this is a hell of a long way from an actual cure. It costs $26,500 a year, it has been linked to death, it only slows progression for around five months, and it's more for friends and family than the person with dementia, but it's a step! And, from somebody who's intimately familiar with it... from somebody who would have given anything to have a chance at five more months with my mom where she was still mostly herself... I'd have paid the $26,500 and been grateful if it in any way helped.

And that's the way science goes.

AIDS, some cancers, and many diseases are survivable now, and it all started with a step. A step just like Leqembi is for dementia.

But there will always be those for which the science came too late.

For those left behind, I guess you just cling to the consolation that other people may be spared what you had to go through.

Maybe.

One day.

I don't understand people who don't find space exploration utterly fascinating.

The United Arab Emirates has a Mars probe (named Hope) that sent back one of the most amazing shots I've ever seen. It's of the moon Deimos above The Red Planet, and the image composition is so amazing that you'd think it was Photoshopped. Or CGI. Or a painting. Or anything except a photograph...

Photo from Emirates Mars Mission

The mission was originally set to end by now, but the UAE just extended it another year. The probe's wide orbit of the planet allows study of the planet and its moons in a way we haven't had before.

My fascination with Mars is directly attributed to the Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom novels...

Incredible painting by Michael Whelan shown the Martian moons of Barsoom for Thuvia, Maid of Mars

Burroughs had a fascinating take on the moons Phoebus and Deimos, which Barsoomians (AKA "Martians") call Thuria and Cluros. Because the moons are very small... just 17 miles and 9 miles across, respectively)... people shrink when they approach them. John Carter visits Thuria in the book Swords of Mars only to find the surface area was similar to that of Mars, relative to his tiny size.

Phoebus and Deimos are notable not just because they are so small, but also because their orbits are really close to Mars. Phoebus is just 5,800 miles away... Deimos 14,500. Earth's moon, for comparison is 238,900 miles! But it gets worse. Phoebos's orbit is decaying 6 feet every hundred years. Which means it's likely to break apart (Mars gets a ring!) or crash into the planet in another 50 million years.

Thanks to NASA's Perseverance rover, we actually know what a solar eclipse looks like on Mars...

I could go on for pages writing about Mars and its moons. The exploration of our neighboring planet is a fascinating subject on which there are volumes of research, photos, speculation, and fiction available. It's a bottomless pit from which I'm happy to keep falling.

Spring is finally in the air and the bullets are flyin'... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• Faux! I have put the "news" in FOX "News" in quotations because anybody who's paying attention knows that it's neither fair nor balanced and is sure the fuck not actual news. It's 1000% propaganda that's mostly exaggerations and outright lies. And now we know that the people actually at FOX "News" know that they are pushing lies. A bunch of internal texts have been uncovered that prove it. This will come as no shock to anybody outside the FOX "News" bubble... but it should be a surprise to those inside of it. Except it likely won't matter, because lies that fit their narrative are better than facts and truth. Which is actually true for everyone and everything.

   
• Down Under! Do yourself a favor and go look at the winners of the Underwater Photographer of the Year awards. Because holy crap...

Winner: Fade by J. Gregory Sherman (United States)

It's incredible how absolutely mind-bending some of these shots are. Well worth your valuable time.

   
• Oranges! There's a TikTok channel devoted to golden monkeys eating. That's it. That's all it is. But it's fantastic. I mean, come on... JUST LOOK AT THIS (here's a link in case TikTok is being a dick)...

But don't take my word for it... go take a look!

   
• Healing! I seriously, seriously for the love of God hope that we can normalize psychedelics as treatment for trauma. It has been proven time and again that it is astoundingly effective in providing relief to those who are hurting. John Oliver really breaks it down in a way that everybody can understand. Well worth your valuable time...

It's not a magic bullet, obviously, but more research and testing needs to happen. Especially for our veterans.

   
• Licorice Pizza! Magical...

It's amazing that all this works. But oh so cool that it does.

   
• Twain Train! I was watching the best talk show ever to exist, The Graham Norton Show where it was revealed that Shania Twain has a train named after her in Switzerland. It's called Shania Train, which is epic...

This rivals the great names that they give snowplows!

   
• God Rod! Derek Muller's Veritasium channel is always entertaining. But some of his videos are just wildly worth watching, and he released a doozy last month. If you've got 20 minutes to kill, this is worth a watch...

It makes you wonder how many crazy, untested ideas actually gets funded with our tax dollars.

   
Until next time, true believers!

Today I fell down an anti-vax, anti-science, flat-earth, we-never-landed-on-the-moon rabbit hole of stupid that still has me shaking my head. It's like... the "expert" that gets cited is always just some guy. Or some disgraced doctor. Or some "trust-me-bro" media personality. And the "data" is usually opinion masquerading as facts. Or good data interpreted badly. Sometimes people don't bother reading past a headline to form a complete opinion... even if the headline has absolutely nothing to do with what's actually happening.

But the big mystery for me is how the world's ENTIRE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY and THE VAST, VAST MAJORITY OF DOCTORS AND SPECIALISTS are all on the payroll of NASA or Big Pharma or whom-the-fuck-ever. Do you know how many doctors there are worldwide? How many scientists? The money needed to pay off every last one of them would exceed all profits of all these entities that are supposedly paying them to keep quiet about the "truth."

Am I saying straight-up that vaccines are 100% harmless and NASA isn't hiding shit? Oh hell no. Anybody that certain is selling you something (probably "nutritional supplements" guaranteed to cure COVID!). And I am always open to the possibility that new facts and new data may come to light which can refute any science or data currently in evidence.

But this whole "My wife's cousin's best friend's co-worker's neighbor's electrician's dog groomer's pediatrist's mortician says that vaccines cause massive blood clots in every vaccinated corpse they examine!" is about the most sublimely idiotic excuse for "research" imaginable.

But, to an increasing number of people on this planet, that's the "reasearch" that matters, so good luck to us not going extinct or whatever.