DWYM: Snow driving tips
We’ve all been dealing with snow covered roads all week, which can be a nightmare to drive on. In the coming days – with snow melting and refreezing – there’s a bigger risk: black ice.
For the first time ever, NASA has captured video of a rover landing on the surface of Mars, plus audio of the wind whistling past it after the landing — and Amazon Web Services is playing a key role in making all those gigabytes of goodness available to the world. The stars of the show are NASA’s Perseverance rover and the hundreds of scientists and engineers supporting the mission to Mars at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and other institutions around the world. But the fact that thousands of images are being pumped out via NASA’s website with only a few… Read More
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture says it’s targeting the fourth quarter of 2022 for the first flight of its orbital-class New Glenn rocket — which marks a major schedule shift. The company had previously planned to conduct its first New Glenn launch from Florida by the end of this year, although it was becoming increasingly clear that timeline wouldn’t hold. In a blog posting, Blue Origin said its team “has been in contact with all of our customers to ensure this baseline meets their launch needs.” Blue Origin noted that the updated timeline follows the U.S. Space… Read More
But first, scientists need to see if it's ready.
The Postal Service just decided it's time to get weird.
The shapes of fossilized teeth from 65.9 million-year-old, squirrel-like creatures suggest that the branch of the tree of life that gave rise to us humans and other primates flowered while dinosaurs still walked the earth. That’s the claim coming from a team of 10 researchers across the U.S., including biologists at Seattle’s Burke Museum and the University of Washington. In a study published by Royal Society Open Science, the team lays out evidence that an ancient group of primates known as plesiadapiforms must have emerged before the mass-extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs. (Technically, modern-day birds are considered the… Read More
Stoke Space Technologies, the Renton, Wash.-based company founded by veterans of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, has attracted $9.1 million in seed investments for extending rocket reusability to new frontiers. The first goal will be to develop a new kind of reusable upper stage, Stoke co-founder and CEO Andy Lapsa said. “That’s the last domino to fall in the industry before reusability is commonplace,” Lapsa told GeekWire. “Even right now, I think space launch is in a production-limited paradigm.” Rocket reusability is the watchword, to be sure — not only at Blue Origin, where Lapsa was an award-winning rocket… Read More
The bomber is bound for an early retirement in the Arizona desert.
Imagine charging your Apple Watch with ... yourself.
An evaporative or ultrasonic humidifier will defend you from winter’s dry air.
Because if it’s not a sharp knife, it’s not a good knife.
A new experiment shows it's possible to talk to dreaming people—and actually hear back.
Expert-tested essentials for hunting deer, elk, ducks, birds, and beyondFrom Popular Mechanics
Christopher Havens got his number theory problem published in a college-level mathematics magazine.
Here's the sneaky way to find out where practically any picture came from.
These compact table saws easily go where the work is: outside, in the garage, or to the job site.
Prefer pen and paper to a smartphone or tablet? These smart notebooks will let you take notes the old-fashioned way and easily digitize them.From Popular Mechanics
A Fort Worth man was killed Sunday morning by a wrong-way driver, police said.
Data: Chamberlain, 2020, "United States of America Cabinet Appointments Dataset" Chart: Will Chase/AxiosIt's harder now for presidents to win Senate confirmation for their Cabinet picks, an Axios data analysis of votes for and against nominees found. Why it matters: It's not just Neera Tanden. The trend is a product of growing polarization, rougher political discourse and slimming Senate majorities, experts say. It means some of the nation's most vital federal agencies go without a leader and the legislative authority that comes with one. Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.By the numbers: Not only are there more votes cast against presidential Cabinet nominees than in the past, but President Trump received no unanimous consent votes or voice votes for his nominees, which tend to indicate broad bipartisan support.President Obama had 19 such votes and President Bush had 23. This year, the process is also taking longer. President Biden's nominees have been confirmed at a much slower pace than past presidents: There are now seven confirmed Cabinet members in addition to the director of national intelligence and U.N. ambassador.By Feb. 24, 2017, Trump had nine Cabinet nominees confirmed. At the same time in 2009, Obama had 12. More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free
Ask Lucia DeClerck how she has lived to be 105, and she is quick with an answer. “Prayer. Prayer. Prayer,” she offers. “One step at a time. No junk food.” But surviving the coronavirus, she said, also may have had something to do with another staple: the nine gin-soaked golden raisins she has eaten each morning for most of her life. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times “Fill a jar,” she explained. “Nine raisins a day after it sits for nine days.” Her children and grandchildren recall the ritual as just one of DeClerck’s endearing lifelong habits, like drinking aloe juice straight from the container and brushing her teeth with baking soda. (That worked, too: She did not have a cavity until she was 99, relatives said.) “We would just think, ‘Grandma, what are you doing? You’re crazy,’” said her 53-year-old granddaughter, Shawn Laws O’Neil, of Los Angeles. “Now the laugh is on us. She has beaten everything that’s come her way.” It is a long list. Born in 1916 in Hawaii to parents who came from Guatemala and Spain, she lived through the Spanish flu, two world wars and the deaths of three husbands and a son. She moved to Wyoming, California and back to Hawaii before finally arriving in New Jersey, where she lived with her oldest son. After turning 90, she moved to an adult community in Manahawkin, New Jersey, along the Jersey Shore, where she remained active until she injured herself in a fall about four years ago. “She is just the epitome of perseverance,” O’Neil said. “Her mind is so sharp. She will remember things when I was a kid that I don’t even remember.” DeClerck, the oldest resident of her South Jersey nursing home, learned that she had contracted the virus on her 105th birthday, Jan. 25, the day after she had gotten her second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to Michael Neiman, the home’s administrator. At first, she said she was scared. She did not like being isolated, and she missed the daily chatter from the parade of caregivers at Mystic Meadows Rehabilitation and Nursing, a 120-bed facility in Little Egg Harbor. She showed few symptoms, Neiman said. And within two weeks she was back in her room, holding her rosary beads and wearing her trademark sunglasses and knit hat. To her two surviving sons, five grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great grandchildren, who call her Grandma Lucia, she has a new moniker, O’Neil said: “The 105-year-old badass who kicked COVID.” On Monday, she got a shout-out from Gov. Phil Murphy, who described a phone call with her during a coronavirus news briefing. “What an uplifting conversation,” the governor said. DeClerck’s family gathered in January 2020 at Mystic Meadows to celebrate her 104th birthday before the onset of the pandemic. When they learned that she had contracted the virus, they braced for the worst. “We were very concerned,” her son, Phillip Laws, 78, said. “But she’s got a tenacity that is unbelievable,” he added. “And she’s got that rosary — all the time.” A devout Catholic, DeClerck led rosary prayers each week at the nursing home and, before the pandemic, was a fixture at weekly Mass. She raised three sons and ran a corner store for decades with her first husband, Henry Laws Jr., in Los Angeles. She married twice more after returning to Hawaii, where she worked as a home health aide and welcomed grandchildren for summerlong visits. DeClerck is one of 62 residents of Mystic Meadows to have contracted the virus; four patients died, including three who were receiving hospice care, Neiman said. “We’re as careful as possible,” he said, “but this finds a way of sneaking in.” In January, residents were being tested twice a week, and a rapid test in the last week of the month showed that DeClerck had contracted the virus. “At first she was a little apprehensive, a little scared, but she said, ‘God will protect me,’” Neiman said. She had also been vaccinated, which most likely contributed to her recovery. The first studies of Britain’s mass inoculation program showed strong evidence Monday that even one dose of vaccine can help slash coronavirus-related hospitalizations. DeClerck is not the oldest person to beat the virus. Europe’s oldest-known resident, Sister André, contracted the virus at 116. She celebrated with a glass of Champagne on her 117th birthday earlier this month at a nursing home in Toulon, a city in southeastern France. Like Sister André, DeClerck may be ready for a toast. But it is likely to involve gin and a handful of golden raisins. Her family is following suit. “Now all of us are rushing out and getting Mason jars and yellow raisins and trying to catch up,” O’Neil said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company
Without in-person classes, DHS and ICE banned first-year international students from entering America. Now they're fighting back with a lawsuit.