Breaking down plastics

Here's an interesting bit of study into using iron trichloride along with sunlight to break down plastics. 

So far this inorganic and seemingly non toxic compound has shown some great success in achieving the goal. 

Science for the win!

https://interestingengineering.com/science/tough-plastics-sustainably-broken-down

Civilian space walks!

SpaceX continues to do some surprising things.  They are, of course, in the money making business, with an eye on the future. They have starlink satellites that provide service. They launch satellites for companies, nations, and even small groups of people.  And they have contracts with NASA to go beyond that.

And sometimes, they act like their competitors, and launch people into space for civilian space travel.  

This past week, they launched a Polaris mission with a few paying customers, and they gave one of them - and a SpaceX engineer - an opportunity to open the Dragon capsule and step out into space.

On September 12th, they successfully did just that. Each of them was in space for a few minutes.  It was remarkably cool.  But more than that, SpaceX has been working on a lighter weight space suit that allows for more mobility than what NASA has ever had.  And on this space walk, they got to test them out.

In effect, someone was paying to field test all of their R&D work.

This

Eloquently put. 😍

Steve Jobs told Bob Iger to plan for his retirement … back in 2011

This is an interesting tale. Steve Jobs told

Bob Iger to retire and enjoy life. 

And 13 years later, we're still pretty much where we were. Iger is still in charge and there's still no succession plan at Disney. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-bob-iger-not-to-stay-too-long-disney-2024-9

Russian influence

One of the more intriguing stories this election season has to do with Russian influence.  

At the end of the week, the DOJ announced charges against a group of US-based, and fairly prominent bloggers/podcasters/youtubers/influencers.  They are charged with accepting money from Russian agents to produce content that is, essentially, Russian propaganda.  

Of course, there was some content that was specific to the Ukraine war. But there also was a large amount of MAGA-related content.

The influencers all are pleading ignorance.  They didn't know where the money was coming from, and that stories were merely suggested, and it was more about the quantity of stories.  They're innocent!

But as you dig deeper, you see that the money was significant.  They claim its not out of the ordinary for what they take in from advertisers and whatnot, but that is simply not true; it was more than they'd make in several years of doing their work. And it also turns out that the same general stories were told by each of them, effectively nullifying their claim that stories were just suggestions

Of course the orange menace had to chime in on this.  He railed about it being DOJ overreach, and people were falsely accused,  Then added that Putin really wants "Comrade Kamala" elected and not him, so it can't possibly be true! 

Yeah, this is where we are...

Compare and contrast: school shooting responses

Kamala broke down during her speech.  That is Presidential.

Tim Walz says 'there's work to be done' which in the context of his whole talk strikes the right balance. I'll buy that as vice presidential

https://www.the-independent.com/tv/news/georgia-school-shooting-tim-walz-b2607131.html

meanwhile, on the other side....

JD Vance just accepts it as a 'fact of life' which is not very vice-presidential. In fact, its idiotic. Is he even human?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/06/georgia-school-shooting-trump-vance-harris

And of course, the dumpster fire of an orange person completely missed the mark and has no empathy.  He said: 

"It's a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we're going to make it better. We're going to heal our world. We're going to get rid of all these wars that are starting all over the place because of incompetence,"

Now which candidates do you think actually care about people?