American Education

 

Aboriginal Painted Rock

Hundreds of years ago, in a cramped cave, Indigenous people in Australia painted a pair of watercraft whose origins have puzzled archaeologists since the artworks' discovery about 50 years ago. Now, a new study may have solved the mystery: The paintings likely depict "fighting craft" from what is now Indonesia, hinting that there may have been "physical violence" between the Indigenous people and visitors from afar.


Archaeologists identified the boats as being warships from the Moluccas (also known as the Maluku Islands), an archipelago off the eastern coast of Indonesia that's located directly north of Australia, according to a study published May 2 in the journal Historical Archaeology.


"Just these two craft suddenly add another dimension to the sphere of interaction of northern Australia — that Australia is not just some sort of land that's on its own, in the middle of nowhere and is cut off for 65,000 years from everywhere else," study co-author Daryl Wesley, an archaeologist and senior lecturer at Flinders University, told ABC News Australia.  READ MORE...

American Justice

 

Life of an INTJ Scorpion

When I was 30 years old, I took my first Myers-Briggs Personality Questionnaire and the results indicated I was an INTJ.  I took the test again when I was 40, 50, and 60 years old for shits and giggles and the results were always the same.  Therefore, one could safely say I am an INTJ.

According to the Myers-Briggs website:

INTJ is one of the rarest personalities in the world. These personalities make up about 2.6% of the total world population. The percentage of INTJ men is 3% while INTJ women contribute 2.2% to the general population. Thus, the ratio of INTJ men is slightly more than that of women. INTJs have an insatiable curiosity for the world, and they want to know the answer to everything they think of. In every way possible, they strive to improve themselves.

INTJs prefer to work alone, but when working in teams they tend to be helpful to the people. They are ambitious individuals who aim high and try to achieve their goals. They feel comfortable working in an environment without emotional influence. Further, they tend to search for new and innovative approaches to promote the organization’s growth. They don’t stick to traditional methods and want to welcome all possibilities before making any decisions. In a nutshell, INTJs excel in any organization because of their confidence, vision, decision-making, and logical approach.

However...

I have been misunderstood all my life and until I had my first personality results, I seriously thought that there was something mentally wrong with me.  It was weird to find out that my personality was exactly the way my personality was supposed to be like.

Throughout the course of my life, my first wife wanted a divorce because of my personality; my brother and sister no longer wanted to have anything to do with me after our parents died; and, my daughter just up and stopped communicating with me, giving me no reason for doing so.  It's been over 7 years since I heard from her and no answers to the emails that I sent to her.

My current wife and I are constantly misunderstanding each other because of our conflicting personalities and my personality has resulted in me not having any friends.  Most of my so-called friends were idiots anyway as their thoughts were extremely shallow and lacked depth.

AND TO MAKE MATTERS WORSE, I am a SCORPION by birth....  October 31...

The scorpion is the symbol for Scorpio, and that wicked stinger tail is no myth. Scorpio can lash out and slice you in two with his bitter tirades. You'll quickly understand what a tongue lashing is all about if you give him reason to test it out on you. The scorpion sting is no fable. A Scorpio male can be vengeful if he's betrayed by his lover or discovers their feelings for him weren't real. Even though he's a water sign, it can quickly become boiling water.

One thing about a Scorpio man when it comes to love, he isn't in it for the pure fun of it. To the Scorpio male, love is as serious as it gets. Scorpio won't ever pretend he does if he doesn't feel love for you. Genuine feelings are the height of passion and integrity for Scorpio. He will drown himself in the throes of a passionate love affair and enjoy every second of both agonies and ecstasies of love.

My Scorpion attributes makes it very difficult for me to have a serious relationship with any female let alone a marriage partner.  

What I found out was that women wanted only superficial relationships... like:

• Take me out to dinner
• Take me out dancing
• Take me out to this movie
• Take me out to this party

Of course, my choices in females could have been responsible for that because I looked for females that I thought might be good in bed.  Not many females are really interested in poetry (other than you writing them a poem) nor are the interested in any form of art:  classical, abstract, or modern.

Of course, I was also a NONCONFORMIST at the time so I was rather unconventional from the getgo.  I also was shy, got my feelings hurt easily, and had low self-esteem that took me several years to overcome.  This was created in part by my father's verbal abuse.  He lived like a military man and that kind of structure was the last think I wanted and certainly did not motivate me.

At 75 years of age, I really don't give a rat's ass what people think of me, nor do I need any friends to enjoy life around me.  At one point, I counted on my second wife more than I should have but don't do that anymore.  My Siamese cat likes me and does not judge me and accepts me for who I am and actually likes being around me.  

LIFE IS GOOD

Hydrogen Electric Vehicles

To comply with carbon emissions regulations, many automakers have pledged to phase out the production of gas and diesel vehicles in the near future. But there is something in their plans that is hard to ignore. While the pathway to achieving zero-emission vehicles offers two options - battery and hydrogen fuel-cell EVs - the latter has been massively sidelined. Only a handful of hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicles (HFCEVs) have been produced so far.  

The Toyota Mirai, the Hyundai Nexo, and the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell, which was discontinued in 2021. Speaking of which, only three companies are responsible for all hydrogen cars in the market. In contrast, millions of BEVs are gracing our roads today, and nearly every car manufacturer can claim production responsibility for at least one model.

In light of automakers' actions, it appears as if achieving zero emissions is synonymous with producing BEVs instead of exploring other available options. Not long ago, the world’s largest automaker, Toyota, was on the receiving end of criticism for being deliberately slow in shifting toward the production of all-electric vehicles. 

All this time, the company was experimenting with other options, including hybrid and hydrogen cars, which they believed could be better alternatives to achieving the same goal of reducing carbon emissions. 

In their defense, the then CEO Akiyo Toyoda said that EVs are just a hype that will backfire when they flood the market and cause overload on the grid along with more emissions indirectly through electricity generation. Guess what he proposed was the true green vehicle – you got it right – hydrogen fuel-cell cars.  READ MORE...

Update on Titanic Sub

 

Blood Sweat & Tears

 

Controlling Autonomous Robots

In the film "Top Gun: Maverick," Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, is charged with training young pilots to complete a seemingly impossible mission—to fly their jets deep into a rocky canyon, staying so low to the ground they cannot be detected by radar, then rapidly climb out of the canyon at an extreme angle, avoiding the rock walls. 

Spoiler alert: With Maverick's help, these human pilots accomplish their mission.

A machine, on the other hand, would struggle to complete the same pulse-pounding task. To an autonomous aircraft, for instance, the most straightforward path toward the target is in conflict with what the machine needs to do to avoid colliding with the canyon walls or staying undetected. 

Many existing AI methods aren't able to overcome this conflict, known as the stabilize-avoid problem, and would be unable to reach their goal safely.  MIT researchers have developed a new technique that can solve complex stabilize-avoid problems better than other methods. 

Their machine-learning approach matches or exceeds the safety of existing methods while providing a tenfold increase in stability, meaning the agent reaches and remains stable within its goal region.

In an experiment that would make Maverick proud, their technique effectively piloted a simulated jet aircraft through a narrow corridor without crashing into the ground.  READ MORE...

Justice

 

Change of Location

My wife and I have lived in the same location for 23 years.  We have an upstairs and a downstairs and if we want to get out to the backyard we have to walk down stairs just like for the basement.  We  have an acre of yard that is mostly in the back and the mowing and weed eating takes 2-3 hours with a riding lawn mower.  

We also have several areas where we have planted flowers that need weeding and other annual maintenance.  Our 26' round pool requires a top cover for the winter that we hold down with landscaping bricks that weigh 10-12 pounds each.  Taking them off is quite a chore each year, especially as the bending over gets harder from one  year to the next.

So, we decided to downsize and found a house, 200 square feet larger but with no stairs and a yard that can be mowed and weed eaten in an hour.  We purchased the house about two weeks ago and on Wednesday of this week, our new appliances and furniture arrive.  I say new because we sold all of our old stuff.  The movers come the next day (Thursday) and except for a few odds and ends, we are MOVED.

We want to put our old house up for sale as close to the end of June as possible.  We are hoping that the improvements we made to it and the areas that we newly painted will attract a buyer quickly.

We had a glitch with Lowes in ordering our flooring so the soonest they they put down the floor is July 24.  We are looking around for another installer and will meet with him this Thursday while the movers are here.  Hopefully, he will be able to do the job in the next several days.

We have the money to stay where we are and have someone tend to the yard and open and close the pool but the sets of stairs that we have to constantly go up and down is only going to get worse with age.  I had 5 disks fused together a year ago and have lost strength in my right leg when walking up stairs.  My wife has numerous back issues as well including another hip that needs to be replaced.

Downsizing in one's 70s makes sense from a physical standpoint.  It also FORCED us to sell, give away, or trash a lifetime of accumulation that we no longer needed.  Memories that we had forgotten all about.  We discarded bunch of clothes we no longer needed as well.

It will take us a couple of weeks to unpack, sort out, and arrange all our stuff but our pace will be much slower.

Our neighbors are much better than the ones we had so that is encouraging.  No more loud traffic sounds on the road where we were, no more barking dog, and more silence as we move deeper into our community.

The house is about as good as the one we are leaving, built about the same time, with few repairs needed.  We made some changes that we did not need to do but wanted to do to accommodate our tastes.

By August/September, it will be like we never lived anywhere else...

Secrets

 

A New Phase of Matter

Physicists have discovered a new phase of matter, the “chiral bose-liquid state.” This state, discovered through the exploration of kinetic frustration in quantum systems, exhibits robust properties such as unchangeable electron spin and long-range entanglement. The discovery, requiring high magnetic fields for observation, expands our understanding of the physical world and could have applications in fault-tolerant digital data encoding.

For Experimental Physicists, Quantum Frustration Leads to Fundamental Discovery
“Chiral bose-liquid state” is a new phase of matter, according to UMass Amherst professor.

A team of physicists, including University of Massachusetts assistant professor Tigran Sedrakyan, recently announced in the journal Nature that they have discovered a new phase of matter. Called the “chiral bose-liquid state,” the discovery opens a new path in the age-old effort to understand the nature of the physical world.

Under everyday conditions, matter can be a solid, liquid, or gas. But once you venture beyond the everyday—into temperatures approaching absolute zero, things smaller than a fraction of an atom or which have extremely low states of energy—the world looks very different. “You find quantum states of matter way out on these fringes,” says Sedrakyan, “and they are much wilder than the three classical states we encounter in our everyday lives.”

Sedrakyan has spent years exploring these wild quantum states, and he is particularly interested in the possibility of what physicists call “band degeneracy,” “moat bands” or “kinetic frustration” in strongly interacting quantum matter.  READ MORE...

Five Situations Be Silent

 

Light

 

Partial De-Dollarization is Possible

The world could soon see the dominance of the US dollar start to wane, amounting to a partial de-dollarization of the global economy, according to JPMorgan, but that doesn't mean it's at risk of being replaced by a competitor like the yuan.

In a recent note, strategists at the bank explained that even if China's economy surpasses that of the US, it is still unlikely that the hegemony of the greenback would take much of a hit, and history suggests that any shift would happen at a glacial pace.

"While the US surpassed Great Britain as the world's largest economy in the latter part of the 19th century, the US dollar is commonly perceived to have overtaken the British pound as the world's foremost reserve currency only by the end of WWII," JPMorgan strategists wrote. 

"Historical experience thus suggests that if China were to overtake the US as the world's largest economy around 2030, dollar dominance may persist even into the second half of the 21st century."  READ MORE...

Our Debt

 

Our Local Lowes Needs New Management and Employees

 It's a pain in the ass to move from one home location to another, especially if that new home location is in another state.  It is worse than a pain in the ass, if the couple moving is in their 70's.  But, it is unbelievably miserable, if you have placed a flooring order with LOWES to redo the entire house with two different kinds of flooring and LOWES SCREWS UP THE ORDER by ordering only one kind.

No RED FLAGS popped up...

My wife and I ordered vinyl for the bathrooms and laundry room and laminate for the rest of the house, three bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, and closets.   LOWES ordered vinyl for the entire house.

My wife had arranged for there to be absolutely nothing in the house for the installers to have to work around.  All our furniture was going to be delivered the next day.   To us, this would be a dream job for installers.  On the scheduled day, they arrived and spent two days, taking up the old flooring (which they did not have to do) and installed the vinyl.

LOWES reordered the materials and they are to arrive today but the installers cannot come back until July 24 which is over a month away as the movers are moving our house on June 22.

The installers will not move us up on the schedule because it would piss off other customers.  LOWES is now saying that the BLAME is OURS because we did not read the invoice and discover the ERROR that they had made.

Talk about PISS POOR customer service!!!

So, for a month we have to live on subflooring throughout the house except for in our bathrooms and laundry room.

We cannot unpack stuff and put anything away because we would just have to take everything back out of the drawers for instance, so that the furniture could be moved around.

Now the installers are going to have to move everything over to one side, put half the flooring down, then move everything back over to the other side so they can put the other half down.  Their job will now be much worse.

I have no more respect for LOWES in general because of the ignorant level of employees they hire.  Any company that blames the customer for their mistake, is not going to stay in business very long....

THIS CANNOT BE BLAMED ON WHITE SUPREMACY...

Protect Data

 

Scientists Search for Aliens Searching for US

A team of scientists will scan the sky near a supernova explosion in search of signals from an advanced civilization. Credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA // Image Processing: J. Miller (Gemini Observatory / NSF’s NOIRLab) / M. Rodriguez (Gemini Observatory / NSF’s NOIRLab) / M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab) / T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage / NSF’s NOIRLab) & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)





Scientists around the world have turned their telescopes in the direction of the Ursa Major constellation to gaze at a supernova discovered there last month.

When something awesomely bright and powerful explodes, humans are instinctively compelled to look.

That's exactly what James R. A. Davenport and his team of collaborators were thinking when they designed a new study that will scan the space around the supernova over the next few months. What they're looking for are potential radio signals from an advanced alien civilization that might use the star's blast as something akin to a flare gunshot or a Batman-esque bat signal.

Astronomers have mulled this concept since at least the 1970s, Davenport told Mashable, though this is the first observation coordinated to look for alien technology around a supernova.

"It's an old idea that goes back to how you get somebody's attention, especially if you don't have the ability to just put up a giant neon sign that says 'We are here,'" he said. "It's hard to transmit a signal over light-years, even for presumably an advanced civilization."  READ MORE...

Slavery