Recent posts

#31

Music / Re: What are you listening to?

Last post by Icarus - February 21, 2026, 07:13:26 AM

Until the Trump person becomes aware, each of our branches of service have outstanding musical groups. They travel all over our nation doing free concerts. I have attended many of them and have  never been less than thrilled. Something about live music that grabs me as it does many others.

Here is  a small example of military musical talent. And yes, the musicians are also trained as warriors if the need arose.

 

[wuh]

#32

Laid Back Lounge / Re: i was today years old when...

Last post by Recusant - February 21, 2026, 04:08:33 AM

The word "cubewano." I was rummaging around in the controls and options in the Stellarium program (a free planetarium program I've mentioned here before). In one of the menus I saw something unfamiliar, and I've been paying attention to astronomy for a while.

A cubewano (pronounced "kyoo-bee-wuh-noh") is a classical Kuiper Belt object. The word comes from the final few digits of the provisional designation of the first observed Kuiper Belt object (other than Pluto and Charon): (15760) 1992 QB₁ now known as 15760 Albion (Wikipedia link). As far as I'm aware I've never previously encountered the word. A pleasure. 

A reminder that though I am more up to date with and cognizant of astronomy than the average bear, I'm no astronomer!

#33

Miscellaneous / Re: Failure of justice

Last post by zorkan - February 20, 2026, 12:46:03 PM

He probably thought the knock at the door was the postman delivering sacks of birthday cards for his 66th.
He might have had plans to go for a celebratory meal, but instead landed up in custody.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/16/prince-andrew-denies-sex-with-teenager-as-at-home-after-pizza-party

Not since King Charles I in 1649 has a royal been arrested.
He also lost his head.

#34

Miscellaneous / Re: Failure of justice

Last post by Recusant - February 20, 2026, 06:01:12 AM

Proper King Charlie: "Happy birthday. I'm just glad Mum isn't here to see this. You were always her favourite, you tosser."

#35

Science / Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cou...

Last post by Recusant - February 20, 2026, 05:54:49 AM

Certainly. The article mentions observations of tool use by our simian cousins. Maybe our ancestors were more interested in that sort of thing than theirs were. It may be that their way is more sustainable but we've managed to see things far beyond their ken. If we learn not to be heedless arseholes we could see a lot more. If.

#36

Science / Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cou...

Last post by Icarus - February 20, 2026, 04:11:10 AM

Imagination is basis of invention tool use and onward.

#37

Miscellaneous / Re: Failure of justice

Last post by zorkan - February 19, 2026, 01:16:58 PM

Ladies and gentlemen, at last they got him.
But let the law take it's course.

https://metro.co.uk/2026/02/19/a-member-royal-family-ever-arrested-26992157/

As one critic described him, "He doesn't have much in the brain department".
I suspect that he won't be seen riding on the Sandringham Estate, where he now lives, or playing golf at the exclusive Swinley Forest anytime soon.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/royals/29583676/inside-prince-andrew-hidden-royal-lodge-life/

This one is not the famous St Andrews golf links in Fife, Scotland, but it's nearby and attracts mainly golfers from America and China.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq8deqv8e74o

I guess he could still pop along to the secretive and called for a reason Queenwood Golf Course that admits only A Listers like royals and celebrities in Berkshire near London.

Let's not forget this one.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/18191591/prince-andrew-lockerbie-pan-am-flight-103/
I was so deeply moved to visit the victim's cemetery there several years after the event.

[Abstract:]

#38

Science / Re: Homo sapiens and Their Cou...

Last post by Recusant - February 19, 2026, 08:06:12 AM

^^^ We don't appear to be having much of that sort of connection trouble these days, touch wood.

Meanwhile, it looks as if it's been shown that bonobos have the ability to interact with imaginary objects. Well, one bonobo anyway.

"This Bonobo Just Did Something Scientists Thought Only Humans Could Do" | SciTechDaily

A bonobo demonstrated the ability to track imaginary objects in controlled tests, challenging the belief that imagination is uniquely human and hinting at deep evolutionary roots.

In a set of carefully designed experiments modeled on children's tea parties, researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that an ape could engage in pretend play. The results mark the first controlled demonstration that an ape can imagine objects that are not actually there, a skill long considered uniquely human.

Across three separate tests, the bonobo interacted with invisible juice and imaginary grapes in a consistent and reliable way. The performance challenges longstanding assumptions about the limits of animal cognition.

The researchers conclude that the ability to understand pretend objects falls within the mental capacities of at least one enculturated ape. They suggest this ability could trace back 6 to 9 million years to a common ancestor shared by humans and other apes.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is behind a paywall.

Abstract:

Secondary representations enable our minds to depart from the here-and-now and generate imaginary, hypothetical, or alternate possibilities that are decoupled from reality, supporting many of our richest cognitive capacities such as mental-state attribution, simulation of possible futures, and pretense.

We present experimental evidence that a nonhuman primate can represent pretend objects. Kanzi, a lexigram-trained bonobo, correctly identified the location of pretend objects (e.g., "juice" poured between empty containers), in response to verbal prompts in scaffolded pretense interactions. Across three experiments, we conceptually replicated this finding and excluded key alternative explanations.

Our findings suggest that the capacity to form secondary representations of pretend objects is within the cognitive potential of, at least, an enculturated ape and likely dates back 6 to 9 million years, to our common evolutionary ancestors.

#39

Politics / Re: Duke of Bullshit: "The" Do...

Last post by Recusant - February 18, 2026, 05:23:46 AM

. . . Not that the US has ever been particularly concerned about international law except when it offers a convenient way of pursuing "national interest." Party to many treaties but not above some covert operations including outright assassinations. In my opinion the current administration has moved past being an unreliable ally, headed more into rogue territory. So it goes.

#40

Science / Re: Black Holes in the News

Last post by Recusant - February 14, 2026, 03:21:29 AM

This one got onto the US's public radio news, and perhaps elsewhere. I'd bet a fiver that it got onto at least Radio 4 from the BBC, if not their television news. So there's a good chance the remaining lucky few here have already heard tell of the vanishing star.

"A Giant Star Vanished, And Scientists Think a Black Hole Is to Blame" | ScienceAlert

One of the brightest stars in the Andromeda galaxy quietly collapsed into a black hole without any of the fanfare of a spectacular supernova.

What makes this startling discovery even more remarkable is that the first signs of the transformation were recorded back in 2014 – data that is crucial for understanding the different ways black holes can form after the death of a giant star.

"This has probably been the most surprising discovery of my life," says astronomer Kishalay De of Columbia University in the US, who led the research. "The evidence of the disappearance of the star was lying in public archival data, and nobody noticed for years until we picked it out."

When a massive star many times heavier than the Sun dies, it's not expected to go quietly. Once nuclear fusion in the core can no longer generate sufficient outward pressure against the inward pull of gravity, the core collapses.

This can send a giant shock tearing outward through the star, triggering a supernova explosion that sends the star's outer material flying, while the core transforms into either a neutron star or a black hole.

However, this is not the only way this transformation can take place. In some scenarios, the outward shock stalls. Instead of ripping the star apart, the explosion fizzles out, and the material ends up falling back onto the newly formed black hole. Because this is a much less dramatic process than a supernova, clear evidence of it is relatively rare.

"Unlike finding supernovae, which is easy because the supernova outshines its entire galaxy for a few weeks, finding individual stars that disappear without producing an explosion is remarkably difficult," De explains.

Only one such event had been documented previously, a star recorded vanishing around 2010 in a galaxy 22 million light-years away. Now, by carefully looking over archival observations of the Andromeda galaxy, De and his colleagues have found another, and it's even clearer than the previous example.

M31-2014-DS1 was a supergiant star that started out about 13 times the mass of the Sun and shone brightly, even across the 2.5 million light-year distance between the Milky Way and Andromeda.

Then, in 2014, NASA's NEOWISE telescope recorded it suddenly shining more intensely in infrared, increasing its brightness by about 50 percent over about two years.

Then, between 2016 and 2022, it dimmed dramatically to the point where, by 2023, it completely vanished from view in optical wavelengths.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is behind a paywall, but I found a revised preprint version. Though I haven't gone into the paper yet, the abstract from the preprint is identical to the published version.

"Disappearance of a massive star in the Andromeda Galaxy due to formation of a black hole" | arXiv

When a massive star reaches the end of its lifetime, its core collapses and releases neutrinos that drive a shock into the outer layers (the stellar envelope). A sufficiently strong shock ejects the envelope, producing a supernova. If the shock fails to eject it, the envelope is predicted to fall back onto the collapsing core, producing a stellar-mass black hole (BH) and causing the star to disappear. We report observations of M31-2014-DS1, a hydrogen-depleted supergiant in the Andromeda Galaxy. In 2014, it brightened in the mid-infrared, then from 2017 to 2022, it faded by factors of ≳ 10⁴ in optical light (becoming undetectable) and ≳ 10 in total light. We interpret these observations, and those of a previous event in NGC 6946, as evidence for failed supernovae forming stellar-mass BHs.