Yes. Someone has been trying real hard to make AI-gen Harrypotter Scifi happen. It’s not going to happen.

Hard agree. Wool is amazing. The good stuff doesn’t scratch, either.

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Okay, interesting, but how about this: just discard the 13 stars, since nobody cares about new england actually. set the number of stripes to just two with red on the bottom half and white on top, then make the blue stretch all the way to the bottom and probably make it a little less wide to compensate, then center the lone star among the blue sky. I think that’d be a much better flag.

4?

On the topic of The Matrix, I’m surprised by the number of people who think that Matrix 1 2 & 3 are the only Matrices. In my opinion, The Animatrix is better than both sequels combined, by a lot, and most people seem to have never heard of it. If you’re a fan of The Matrix, watch The Animatrix!

The 1973 BBC Radio Dramatization of Asimov’s Foundation. It’s about eight hours long and the voice work is quite good. It’s comfortable for me to listen to and come back to, very digestible. One complaint: I’ve yet to find a version that had properly equalized sound levels, so the comfortable listing volume for their speech throughout the work is suddenly jarringly loud when they switch to the machine-clacking “encyclopedia” segments that serve as segues between parts of the story. Other than that, I have no complaints: It’s a fairly faithful adaptation of the original work, and does not suffer from the fatigue and dating many other works do (in my opinion, audio balancing notwithstanding).

Under very specific circumstances, this technology really can reduce surface temperatures by up to the claimed 3.5C. The first I heard of this technology was on Tech Ingredients’ channel about a year ago, where they go into very specific detail about how it works. Since then, I’ve seen Nighthawkinlight attempt to refine the material by producing consistent nanospheres. You could make the stuff yourself, they tell you how.

To be absolutely clear, I’m not knocking these inventors, who have found a novel incremental advance in this technology (they made the technology more durable so it wears in the weather better) I’m saying the article is bad and the author should feel bad. “Unlike previous attempts at cooling coatings…” does more than suggest that those “attempts” were somehow unsuccessful at being a cooling coating, especially when taken with unequivocal claims to unique “invention.” It reads like an ad or propaganda, which of course it is. Daniela Benites is the Communications Coordinator for the University of Maryland School of Engineering, and the author of this article. You’ll never guess where these two researchers/scientists/inventors/students/whateversoundsbestinthearticleatthetime go to school.

This article is a fluff piece of grossly overstated popsci which does a poor job of explaining how the “new technology” works. (some major disadvantages: being almost useless on cars, actually useless in the shade or on any surface that doesn’t point directly into space, and useless when obstructed by clouds) It isn’t new, it isn’t magic, and these guys didn’t invent it. They found a new material/production method, but they don’t get any credit for inventing what is basically reflective paint. Standard science “journalism” stuff, not surprised you doubted it.

Don’t worry about all that though, there’s a handy little popup that says the article is totally trustworthy: We are assured this is a “fact-checked, peer-reviewed publication” from a “trusted source” and has been “proofread.”

Interesting and Anxiety-Inducing in about equal measure.

Talk about clickbait. The lab didn’t start to glow at all!

Enshittification happened.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.