Bitchin' Dave’s Blog: Bitchin' Dave's Newsletter July 11

July 11, 2023

Insights, news, ramblings, and other serious nonsense from Dave

Dave’s Musings

Lots going on, so its been a some time between newsletters. My plan is to produce something weekly, but there may be some gaps here and there.

Anyway, here are some hot topics that have come up recently:

The Supreme Court finds itself at the center of controversy based on recent rulings, ethics questions, and what might be called "judicial activism"
The Tour de France started! For some reason, I find this to be one of the more intriguing events each year, and I pretty much have it on in the background every day during its month

On a related note, I am getting back into podcasting, to talk about topics of interest on a decidedly (for now) irregular schedule. I'm picking up with the "Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?" and recently shared my thoughts about the court, and last year talked about the Tour. Feel free to check it out:

https://pca.st/podcast/cb671760-4298-013b-f171-0acc26574db2

There have been some recent articles about Voyager 1 & Voyager 2, which launched a few weeks apart (amusingly 2 launched first), in 1977.

No one anticipated they'd last for more than 40 years, and continue to transmit data. But they still do!

We've learned more about interstellar space and the universe than we could have ever imagined. And we still do.

You can read more about the missions here: https://www.space.com/17688-voyager-1.html

Nature always continues to astound. There were two scientific discoveries recently, that caught my attention.

The first was that an entirely new species was discovered: Miami Herald: New Species

The second was that scientists discovered a new material that they had never seen before:

Science Alert: new material

I find these to be amazing discoveries!

Over in Disney World, we see a number of reports of "thinner crowds during the summer."

And no one has a logical or rational explanation for it - there's a lot of speculation and innuendo about it.

The first question is whether this report is accurate. It seems like even some of the unbiased reports may be a little biased. And the second is, assuming it is true, what it means.

Set aside the stupid rhetoric and realize that

Disney has made good on its promise of spreading crowds throughout the year,
the price point is fairly high (and even the CEO admits it) which will keep some people away, and
in a general sense, people have money saved up post-pandemic and want to travel. It's possible that Disney is not at the top of their list today.

There's a really cool visualization of working hours by country over here:

Visual Capitalist Working Hours

I love how they use graphics and a line graph to represent the data in a simple and easy-to-follow way.

One Little Spark …

… for your imagination

Climate change is real, and a concern to us all. I see no real harm in taking action. I mean, heck, the budget for the US military was $877 billion (more than the next 10 countries COMBINED!). Why not take a portion of that, say 5% and put it toward research and action?

5% isn't much of that total, but is still $9 billion dollars. That would go a long way toward helping, and would maybe be a better use of our resources that continually spending on war, prevention of war, or weapons of war.

There are those who say climate change isn't real, or isn't important. Here are some cogent answers to some of these items.

https://www.rainforest-alliance.org/everyday-actions/6-claims-made-by-climate-change-skeptics-and-how-to-respond/