Jim Harper's brain

This is Jim Harper's brain. Whatever I come across comes across here.

[jimharper3]

Impeach now.

[jimharper3]

Come join us at Washington Park in Ithaca, New York 1-3 pm, June 14th for a national day of action and mass mobilization to show the OrangeMenace that in America we will not bow to kings or dictators!

Register here: https://www.mobilize.us/mobilize/event/786342/

#Indivisible #ithacaevents #ithacany #ithaca #nokings

[jimharper3]

If you have never listened to Pod Save America, please listen to all of this one. The hosts get (understandably) enraged by the horrific things the new administration is doing. I've never heard these guys (former Obama staffers) so incensed.

[batboyblog]

Tonight House Republicans voted 217 to 215 for a budget that'll take $1 TRILLION dollars from Medicaid, attack food benefits for kids, hurt seniors and vets.

but I don't want to talk about that, I want to talk about these two Democratic members of Congress you've never ever heard of.

Democrats, Congressman Kevin Mullin of California and Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen of Colorado.

Congressman Mullin had knee surgery that didn't go well, two surgeries, a life threatening blood clot and a week long stay in the hospital, and the moment he was discharged from the hospital he got on a five hour flight to DC to vote against the Republicans evil budget, using a walker to get to the floor of the House

Congresswoman Pettersen gave birth to her son Sam, in the picture, exactly one month ago on January 25th. They flew from Colorado to DC after Republicans refused to allow her to vote by proxy after having a baby. Congresswoman Pettersen took Sam onto the floor of the House to vote to protect the Health care of 400,000 Colorado kids.

why talk about this? because so much of the conversion is about telling people there's no one good, no one worthy, no one fighting. I promise you there are people undergoing personal hardship to do the right thing.

[afriblaq]

Did you know that white people make up only 7% of the global population? This thought-provoking question was raised by Yaya, a biracial woman, in a viral social media video. She shared her surprise that so many people, herself included, were unaware of this fact. Yaya reflected on how such a small percentage holds disproportionate global influence, stressing that white supremacy persists not because the numbers support it, but because it is actively allowed. Her video sparked widespread conversations about power, privilege, and representation. If Black people are the global majority, how can African people, both on the continent and in the diaspora, unite to dismantle white supremacy and build a more equitable future?

@pastperfectwithyaya

[nasa]

Sharpening Our View of Climate Change with the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Satellite

As our planet warms, Earth’s ocean and atmosphere are changing.

Climate change has a lot of impact on the ocean, from sea level rise to marine heat waves to a loss of biodiversity. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide continue to warm our atmosphere.

NASA’s upcoming satellite, PACE, is soon to be on the case!

Set to launch on Feb. 6, 2024, the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission will help us better understand the complex systems driving the global changes that come with a warming climate.

Earth’s ocean is becoming greener due to climate change. PACE will see the ocean in more hues than ever before.

While a single phytoplankton typically can’t be seen with the naked eye, communities of trillions of phytoplankton, called blooms, can be seen from space. Blooms often take on a greenish tinge due to the pigments that phytoplankton (similar to plants on land) use to make energy through photosynthesis.

In a 2023 study, scientists found that portions of the ocean had turned greener because there were more chlorophyll-carrying phytoplankton. PACE has a hyperspectral sensor, the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI), that will be able to discern subtle shifts in hue. This will allow scientists to monitor changes in phytoplankton communities and ocean health overall due to climate change.

Phytoplankton play a key role in helping the ocean absorb carbon from the atmosphere. PACE will identify different phytoplankton species from space.

With PACE, scientists will be able to tell what phytoplankton communities are present – from space! Before, this could only be done by analyzing a sample of seawater.

Telling “who’s who” in a phytoplankton bloom is key because different phytoplankton play vastly different roles in aquatic ecosystems. They can fuel the food chain and draw down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to photosynthesize. Some phytoplankton populations capture carbon as they die and sink to the deep ocean; others release the gas back into the atmosphere as they decay near the surface.

Studying these teeny tiny critters from space will help scientists learn how and where phytoplankton are affected by climate change, and how changes in these communities may affect other creatures and ocean ecosystems.

Climate models are one of our most powerful tools to understand how Earth is changing. PACE data will improve the data these models rely on.

The PACE mission will offer important insights on airborne particles of sea salt, smoke, human-made pollutants, and dust – collectively called aerosols – by observing how they interact with light.

With two instruments called polarimeters, SPEXone and HARP2, PACE will allow scientists to measure the size, composition, and abundance of these microscopic particles in our atmosphere. This information is crucial to figuring out how climate and air quality are changing.

PACE data will help scientists answer key climate questions, like how aerosols affect cloud formation or how ice clouds and liquid clouds differ.

It will also enable scientists to examine one of the trickiest components of climate change to model: how clouds and aerosols interact. Once PACE is operational, scientists can replace the estimates currently used to fill data gaps in climate models with measurements from the new satellite.

With a view of the whole planet every two days, PACE will track both microscopic organisms in the ocean and microscopic particles in the atmosphere. PACE’s unique view will help us learn more about the ways climate change is impacting our planet’s ocean and atmosphere.

Stay up to date on the NASA PACE blog, and make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of sPACE!

[jimharper3]

Iowa Caucus Results Analysis:

51% of Iowa Caucus attendees are idiots. They desire a psychopath to take their money and give it to himself. They are happy to be governed by someone who, at best, will never help them or their families. Their concept of "best" is even a pipe dream.

72% don't want a woman in charge.

21% really hate Disney.

100% voted for their favorite candidate to send the American economy into a tailspin, allow the world to descend into full-scale world war, and strip Americans of the rights and freedoms they have fought for over two centuries to secure.

[jimharper3]

“absolutely gobsmackingly bananas”

"Global temperatures soared to a new record in September by a huge margin, stunning scientists and leading one to describe it as “absolutely gobsmackingly bananas”. … The researchers overwhelmingly pointed to one action as critical: slashing the burning of fossil fuels down to zero."

‘Gobsmackingly bananas’: scientists stunned by planet’s record September heat

The carbon emissions driving the climate crisis and rapid arrival of an El Niño event are to blame, researchers say

[jimharper3]

This chart from The Guardian should freak out everyone. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/29/something-weird-is-going-on-search-for-answers-as-antarctic-sea-ice-stays-at-historic-lows

[jimharper3]

Fireworks.

When I was young, Fourth of July meant fireworks. Everyone would park down at the local shopping mall to sit in lawn chairs or on top of their cars to watch the spectacle. As years have passed, the fireworks have gotten more elaborate, and each little village now has their own night of fireworks, so that now you can go see fireworks for 4-5 days in a row during the holidays.

Plus it appears they've lifted the ban on selling fireworks to non-licensed pyrotechnics professionals in New York State, and so there are often fireworks going off all weekend outside the houses all over our neighborhood.

But I've become less interested, even less tolerant, of fireworks anymore. Too many lives lost in real, deadly wars that still rage around the world. Too many mass shootings in America. Too much intolerance. Too much rage directed against "the other".

I have had to develop a heightened awareness of what a gunshot sounds like. To learn to "run/hide/fight". To realize that at any moment I will have to protect my students and/or my family from someone with a gun.

A gun that makes a sound like fireworks.

I think I will skip the fireworks again this year.

[jimharper3]

#Starship and #Twitter are having the same problems…what could possibly be the connection???

[halfbakedpoet]

I know tumblr has accepted the whole “cat’s internal monologue is a desolate Victorian child” thing but what if a cat’s internal monologue was Gollum/Sméagol

[halfbakedpoet]

-scratching the floor near their bowl- “Nasty, filthy dry foods they serves us. We wants soft, juicy morsels from the canses.”

[halfbakedpoet]

-sitting in the window- “What’s it doing, precious? What noises it makes with pointy mouth. We wants it…”

[halfbakedpoet]

“Wicked, tricksy humanses doesn’t feeds us in hours. Must reminds them or we’ll starve. Wait for dinners? Oh no. That would kill us! Kill us!”

[halfbakedpoet]

-bringing dead animals to owner- “Look! Look! See what good kitty finds! Eat them! Eat them!”

[cwnerd12]

There are many flavors of cats. Victorian child cats and Gollum cats are both equally valid.

[prismatic-bell]

And so are can has cats, who are probably orange.

[m--ood-deactivated20181217]

This steampunk clock writes the time every minute, and erases it before writing again.

[avatarthelastzed-deactivated202]

This is the most ridiculous, inefficient, and needlessly complicated thing…..

[no-mere-mortals]

I know. It seems almost completely unwieldy and useless.

I want it.

[drneverland]

okay, but this is really what a Steampunk watch should be. Not just a dial watch with a cover made of bits of brass and copper.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

At first I thought it was a stationary clock and thought ‘well that’s inefficient in a cool way’ and then I NOTICED IT’S A WATCH and fucking lost it

[synthbug]

@zzoupz

[jimharper3]

[jimharper3]

ENIAC vs. iPhone 4

I was curious to see what a comparison of the first general-purpose electronic computer, the “Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer” (ENIAC)—completed in 1946—and an Apple iPhone 4 (circa 2011) would look like. How much computing power have we managed to put into a device that we can cram into our pocket?My father sold computers back when they required their own giant rooms with dedicated air conditioning systems running all day and all night. Only large corporations could afford these huge machines, and it took a team of specialists to run them. Those “mainframe” computers were state of the art back in the 1960s.

One of my first jobs in the 1980s was trying to put a small company’s bookkeeping system on what was then termed a “mini-computer”. A mini-computer in those days was the size of a large refrigerator, and this one was housed a few miles away from our office, accessed by a terminal attached to analog phone lines via a modem. Since it was a time-share system, you were charged by the minute to access the computer, so it was expensive just to log in and learn how to upload data into the machine.

To satisfy my curiosity about how far we had come now in computing hardware, I did a little research on the Internet (an amazing leap in technology and information science itself) and came up with the following facts to compare the ENIAC with the iPhone 4.

The ENIAC at the time of its construction—back in the days shortly after the Second World War—cost almost $500,000 to build (that price is equivalent to nearly $6 million in 2010). In comparison, in 2011 the Apple iPhone 4 (the 32GB model) was available with contract from either AT&T or Verizon for $300. That means you could buy around 20,000 iPhones in 2011 for the same price as one ENIAC.

ENIAC was certainly not a lightweight in the history of computing. Literally. It weighed more than 30 tons. In comparison, the iPhone 4 weighs 4.8 ounces. Let’s see, 16 ounces to a pound, 2,000 pounds to a ton…that works out to needing 18,000 iPhones to match the weight of one ENIAC.

This first real computer was definitely not pocket-sized, either. It was roughly 8 feet tall by 3 feet wide by 100 feet long, and took up a total of 1,800 square feet. It was also very hungry. The ENIAC when running consumed 150 kW of power. In comparison, the iPhone is touted as capable of running for days off its small internal lithium-ion polymer battery.

The iPhone 4’s specifications state that it can provide up to either 7 hours of “talk time” or 300 hours on standby between recharging. Because of the reliability limitations of vacuum tubes, the longest up-time for the ENIAC (between having to replace at least one of the tubes because of burn outs) was only 116 hours. Can you imagine getting any work done on a modern smart phone or computer if you had to get it repaired every four days?

The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, and 10,000 capacitors. There were around 5 million hand-soldered joins. The iPhone, like most modern computing devices, runs on integrated circuits probably soldered together by passing the entire motherboard over a pool of molten solder on an automated assembly line.

But the real differences are not in the impressive differences in size, but in the relative speed and computing power of these two devices. The ENIAC could do around 385 multiplication operations per second—which sounds impressive until you realize the iPhone 4 runs on an Apple A4 CPU that is able to do up to 2 billion instructions per second (2,000 MIPS).

The way that humans and computers interface has also changed dramatically. Before there were computers, IBM had already perfected punch cards, which could hold 80 bytes (characters) of data or machine instruction code. The ENIAC utilized punch cards for input via an IBM card reader, and an IBM card punch machine was used for output. The punched cards could be used to produce printed output (offline) by physically taking the stack of them and running them through an IBM accounting machine, such as the IBM 405. Pity the poor person who dropped the stack and had to figure out how to re-sequence hundreds of cards.

The iPhone, on the other hand, has 32 gigabytes of internal non-volatile flash memory. 32 GB is equal to 34,359,738,368 bytes or 429,496,730 punch cards. Imagine trying to fit 429 million 7 3⁄8 inch by  3 1⁄4 inch punch cards in your pocket.

But instead of having to feed punch cards into a slot on the iPhone, the input on the iPhone starts with simply four buttons and a touch screen. The touch screen is the real marvel since it can be configured in an almost infinite number of ways to accept touch-based input, including virtual keyboards that can accept input in any number of different language alphabets and scripts.

However, input to the iPhone is not limited to pressure applied to the buttons or screen. Data can be gathered via radio waves in the form of Wi-Fi, cellular, and Bluetooth protocols. There is also a port for connecting to other computational devices via a USB interface. If that is not enough, visual data is captured by the 5-megapixel camera, and audio data by the microphone (or the headphone jack when there is a microphone attached to it). But that’s not all. Data is also gathered and processed from the built-in three-axis gyro, accelerometer, proximity sensor, and ambient light sensor.

Punch cards are also not needed for outputting the data. Output on the iPhone 4 includes a 960 x 640 pixel LCD display. Remember that the ENIAC could do 385 multiplication operations per second? Just to run its full-color screen the iPhone must process at least 614,400 bytes of data 30 times per second.

Audio data output goes through either the speaker or the headphone jack. The iPhone also pumps out massive quantities of data through the aforementioned USB, Wi-Fi, cellular, and Bluetooth connections.

It was the stuff of science fiction in the 1940s to think about wearable electronic brains, and who knew that these devices would ever be able offer so many types of inputs and outputs in such a tiny package as the modern smart phone. In the span of just over 60 years to go from a huge machine that could do mere hundreds of calculations a second to one that can do billions of operations per second—while fitting in the palm of your hand—is mind boggling.

But the iPhone 4 is already yesterday’s technology. New generations of smart phones with even greater computing power and storage—in even smaller and lighter packages—have already come out, and I have not touched on the even greater computational power available in today’s personal computers. And those machines are dwarfed by the current generation of networked computers and supercomputers that can do tasks such as map the whole world’s weather in real time, or parse the multivariate patterns of human speech. What will the next sixty years bring?

[jimharper3]

[maaarine]

The Huffington Post: “60 Stunning Photos Of Women Protesting Around The World”

[marielxhearts]

Go girls go

[huffpost]

<3