gobsmacked
@gobsmacked.bsky.social
500 followers 680 following 410 posts
Your basic Bay Area boy: flâneur, film buff, hiker, foodie, culture vulture, PhD dropout. Underemployed and over-caffeinated. Liberté, Egalité, Flâneurité!
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I suspect the weather in Antarctica / Mount Vinson is actually more predictable than for Annapurna/K2/Everest
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“Starshield's unusual transmissions have the potential to interfere with other scientific and commercial satellites, warns Scott Tilley, an amateur satellite tracker in Canada who first spotted the signals.”
What is Space Caligula up to?🤔
“A constellation of classified defense satellites built by the commercial company SpaceX is emitting a mysterious signal that may violate international standards, NPR has learned.“
A classified network of SpaceX satellites is emitting a mysterious signal
An amateur satellite tracker stumbled across the signal, which is coming from Starshield satellites in a "hidden" part of the radio spectrum.
www.npr.org
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I normally hope Tolkien is at peace wherever he is but if he could rise up and haunt Thiel until he stops this would also be great. thank you for your attention to this matter
Tolkein continues to resonate. The new bank being set up by Palmer Luckey and backed by Peter Thiel is named Erebor after the “lonely mountain” in The Hobbit. This was also an interesting line in this rpt on the new bank by @tabbykinder.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/202d...
This looks and sounds amazing. Can't wait to bring it with me on my next trip to London (where I divide my time between Camden and Southwark, and like Sandi Toksvig spend a lot of time on the number 12 bus.
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If Gary Larson is back that means Bill Watterson is going to come back. Light is gonna reenter the world like when Gandalf showed up with new clothes.
I'm a big fan - as was my family - of torta di mele - Italian Apple Cake. Simple and easy to make and delicious
www.recipesfromitaly.com/italian-appl...
Artists have created visualisations of the impact of the climate crisis on some of the world’s most recognisable landscapes, in a project to highlight the environmental effects of tech consumption.
Overconsumption and ruin: before and after images visualise how tech could harm our planet
From Venice to the Iguazu Falls, an exhibition in London illustrates the hidden cost of our gadgets and devices
buff.ly
I am one of those who remembers exactly where I was

And also pretty much everything that happened for at least the next 24 hours. It was A LOT
Most Bay Area residents remember exactly where they were #onthisday in 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck at 5:04 p.m. The ferocious shaking—measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale—lasted a terrifying 20 seconds.
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Melvyn Bragg made more than 1000 podcasts. It’s an amazing collection of expert knowledge about history, philosophy, culture, science, and art. I’ve listened to at least 100. A treasure of the English language.
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The Chicago Pope coming after Leonard Leo wasn’t even on my wish list and I cannot overstate how joyous I find it.
BREAKING: Pope Leo XIV is set to effectively disband Opus Dei in the coming weeks.

This would be the most sweeping internal reform of his pontificate — and a dramatic continuation of Pope Francis’s legacy.
NEW: Pope Leo Set To Break Up Opus Dei
If Pope Leo does indeed approves a plan that effectively dissolves Opus Dei’s structure, it would be the most significant internal action of his short pontificate to date.
open.substack.com
I feel like we've actually had a lot of movies made in recent years by filmmakers with an "idea" but with no visual skills - or other skills beyond raising money. And they have sucked. I don't see AI improving that.
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The violence being done to the word “idea” is extremely galling. What they’re talking about is a logline.
It’s tiresome at this point, but again, their entire pitch is “wouldn’t it be great if there were no such things as talent, craft, and skill,” and what that means is a bland, slop-filled world. www.businessinsider.com/marc-andrees...
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Aka walking in San Francisco.
I am going to die on this hill because it is very steep and I am incredibly out of shape.
If you're ever in San Francisco, let me know and I'll see what I can do here...
This riffs on the perennial situation with the statue of the Duke of Wellington in Glasgow
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equestr...
I'd say Annapurna is the deadliest overall. Everest is deadly but also a sort of solved problem with support so extensive that a lot of the summiters are practically carried to the top

The problems of getting to and around Antarctica are less than they were 10 or 20 years ago, but still non-trivial
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The Metro NY Library Council is creating an outdoor library in Westchester County. We now own 26 acres — and this wknd we’re hosting a group of international librarians to help us think about what this place can be! It’ll soon be open to the public + usable by all our 100s of member institutions ☺️
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University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein, 61 adults about 8 months after COVID were scanned by MRI.

Those with persistent smell loss showed structural changes in the amygdala linked to smell and emotion, along with higher anxiety and depression scores.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Alterations of the amygdala in post-COVID olfactory dysfunction - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Alterations of the amygdala in post-COVID olfactory dysfunction
www.nature.com