Archive of entries posted on 23rd November 2024

IMAO Continues Trying To Be Semi-Informative

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“Smectite?”

Asteroid Bennu sample shows more signs of a watery past
Astronomy Magazine | July 24, 2024 | Theo Nicitopoulos

Bennu is a roughly 0.3-mile-wide (500 meters) asteroid that orbits in near-Earth space. Scientists suspect it’s a chunk of a larger asteroid that broke off due to a collision farther out. Telescope observations and data collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft showed that Bennu has minerals that have been altered by water. Hence, scientists suspect the asteroid’s parent body accreted ice that subsequently melted after it formed around 4.5 billion years ago…

The team found various varieties of the aqueously altered minerals, including serpentine, smectite, carbonates, magnetite, sulfides, and phosphates. The minerals are present as individual particles and as crusts coating other materials.

Cosmochemist Rhian Jones of the University of Manchester, who is a member of the Sample Analysis Team, suspects Bennu’s parent body became a “muddy ball” over time, when the ices melted.

The study team also found evidence of fluid flow. In particular, some of the phyllosilicates had filled tiny fractures that look like veins in the rocks. Images taken by OSIRIS-REx also show meter-long-veins in boulders, also thought to be minerals that precipitated once water evaporated.

The study team also found magnesium-sodium phosphate. Lauretta says this type of phosphate is intriguing because it only forms when water has become saturated with carbonates, suggesting that pools of water persisted on Bennu’s parent body for an extended time.

Cartoons and Memes : Saturday Night Special

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“Hi Mr. Walrus, looking forward to the Holidays?”

“You bet. You’ll be bringing round my other end of year bonus?”

“With bells on!”

“Nothing else, I hope.”

Winner

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This week.

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Which one is funniest?
116 votes · 116 answers
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Just Saying

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A guy on the internet had a just saying:

This is a saying I learned in the U.S. Navy:

“A stiff male reproductive organ has no conscience.”

News headline:

Navy launches USS New Jersey, first gender-neutral submarine in US fleet
Fox News | Sep 15, 2024 | Stephen Sorace

Just saying.

1

I’m Not a Neuroscientist and I’ve Never Taught Rats To Drive — So Which Of Us Is of More Value To the World?

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I’m a neuroscientist who taught rats to drive − their joy suggests how anticipating fun can enrich human life
The Conversation | 11/11/2024

We crafted our first rodent car from a plastic cereal container. After trial and error, my colleagues and I found that rats could learn to drive forward by grasping a small wire that acted like a gas pedal. Before long, they were steering with surprising precision to reach a Froot Loop treat.

As expected, rats housed in enriched environments – complete with toys, space and companions – learned to drive faster than those in standard cages. This finding supported the idea that complex environments enhance neuroplasticity: the brain’s ability to change across the lifespan in response to environmental demands.

After we published our research, the story of driving rats went viral in the media. The project continues in my lab with new, improved rat-operated vehicles, or ROVs, designed by robotics professor John McManus and his students. These upgraded electrical ROVs – featuring rat-proof wiring, indestructible tires and ergonomic driving levers – are akin to a rodent version of Tesla’s Cybertruck.

Indestructible tires? Assuredly, that word doesn’t mean what you think it does.

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… Possibly related in some way:

Plane Grounded After 130 Hamsters Run Loose

10Play.com.au | Nov. 18, 2024

A plane was left unable to take off from Ponta Delgada airport in Portugal for four days after more than 130 hamsters escaped their transport carriers and ran loose in the hold.

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The New York Times Wastes Your Time

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Here is a headline that contradicts itself in two sentences:

I Never Panic. I’m Panicking Now.
The New York Times | Nov. 20, 2024 | Lydia Polgreen

And here is the opening paragraph. The peg. The grabber. The who/what/when/where/why of every news story:

For over a month now, my mother has been pestering me about her missing passport. It was in her closet, she said, and suddenly it was gone. It was expired, and renewing would be easier if she had the old one. She had no immediate travel plans, just a vague desire to visit Ethiopia, the country where she was born and raised, at some point in the future.

I guess if you have unlimited time in your life, then you have time to read NYT drivel about somebody else’s mother’s closet clutter. What, after all, is a newspaper of broken records for?

Don’t worry: she gets down to brass tacks, very sensitively and inclusively, in paragraph 2:

As we often do with our elders, I gently brushed off her increasingly insistent requests for help. She lives in Maryland; I live in New York. It hardly felt urgent. She is forgetful. She misplaces things all the time. It would turn up, I was sure.

In paragraph 3, she sidles up to the point:

What if Trump’s administration made good on its deportation promises and she suddenly needed to prove that she is, indeed, a naturalized citizen of this country? Did my frail, 73-year-old mother have her papers in order should the knock come on her door?

But then sidles away from it. Does her mother have documentation or not? We’ll never know. At least, not while the New York Times can control information. Trump’s Gestapo may very well be at the door!

Anyone Can Fall Victim To an Ingenious Scam, But COME ON! This?

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Gold bar scam sweeping Wisconsin, costing residents their life savings
Channel 3000 News | November 17, 2024 | James Stratton

… gold bars that she purchased after scammers convinced her that her bank account was hacked. A grand total of $433,279.53 was taken from the Prescott, Wisconsin, woman …

She is not alone. Across the state of Wisconsin, 49 people have reported to the FBI they were caught up in the scam, losing a total of roughly $13 million, an average of more than a quarter-million per person.

Here’s how it works: People receive a phone call claiming their bank accounts are hacked and that to protect their money, they need to invest in gold. From there, they convince the person that it is safer to give them the gold to protect it,

!

adding that it is going to the Federal Reserve in Washington, D.C. Then, a courier comes to their house to pick up the gold bar, and the gold is never seen again.

This woman’s case started with an email on her iPad from someone claiming to be from Apple, saying her IP address had been stolen.

“I thought, I have an Apple phone, I have an Apple iPad,” she said. “So, I thought it was legitimate.”

?

… a courier was sent to her house to pick them up.

“He never said nothing to me. I never said nothing to him,” she said.

No, ummm, receipt?

Oppo Reads Another Mandatory Disclaimer: “It Would Be Nice if She Was 18 or Older”

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Doesn’t look it, though. I can wait.

There’s that blonde in the jeans shorts, though…

Walrus maintains I need to get out more.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (13271427l) Student loan forgiveness advocates attend a press conference on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 25 August 2022. Student loan advocates rallied to celebrate the Biden Administration’s announcement to forgive 10,000 US dollars in student debt for millions of borrowers and up to 20,000 US dollars of debt for low and middle income borrowers who received a Pell grant. Student loan forgiveness advocates rally to celebrate the Biden Administration’s announcement to forgive partial student debt, Washington, Usa – 25 Aug 2022

Straight Line of the Day: Other Things Congress Demands of Hollywood: …

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Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman Demands Black Jedi Lead Character in Next ‘Star Wars’ Movie
Breitbart | 11/20/2024 | David Ng

Outgoing Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) — a member of the far-left “Squad” — is demanding that the next Star Wars movie features a black Jedi lead character, saying he will refuse to watch and will even denounce the movie franchise if his demand isn’t met.

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Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who is set to leave Congress in January after losing his primary, made his demand known in an X post on Tuesday.

More instructional videos on when to pull a fire alarm!

Cue Monty Python Theme Song

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They’re just flesh-filled appurtenances, if I’m not mistaken. Males have analogs. Some fat guys go way overboard. Some journalists use them to keep your attention when reading the news.

Wait: Expelling milk, too, right? Totally cute. But probably unnecessary once we move on to bison meat.

Science! Note the scientific labels.

Guys like to fondle these things, for reasons that escape even them.

I put in an inordinate amount of time Photoshopping this for this PG website.

I’m guessing she probably wants me. Who the hell wouldn’t? I’m the Thrustmeister.

All interns declined to pose for this post. I had to go outside for cooperation. Cost me plenty.