Category Archives: Blog

The Olympics are practically tailor-made for inspirational posts. That’s not necessarily a good thing.

As the 2022 Winter Olympics spin up in and around Beijing, The Guardian reports that the Chinese government has, via a consulting firm, hired scores of social media influencers in an attempt to burnish its tarnished reputation. The UK firm in question is reportedly tasked with promoting the content specifically in the United States.

The content in question will allegedly both highlight Beijing’s history and culture, as well as emphasize positive aspects of the relationship between China and the U.S.

Of course, that a host country would use the Olympics as a marketing opportunity is itself not new or even surprising. That’s kind of what the global sporting event is all about, after all. That a country might hire marketing firms to flood social media with seemingly organic content is worth noting, however.

The social media push comes at a time when the Chinese government is facing sustained criticism for its internment of Uyghur Muslims, and a so-called diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics by the officials representing the U.S., Australia, Britain, and Canada.

It also comes on the heels of a sport-specific scandal. In November, the Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai went missing after publicly accusing a former vice premier of China of sexual assault.

Tweet may have been deleted

The hashtag “#whereispengshuai” even trended in response to her disappearance.

We imagine any hashtags coming out of China’s social media Winter Olympics sponcon plans will be of a different sort entirely.

Mimas, Saturn’s cryptic-looking moon, is awfully deceptive.

The small moon is dominated by an 80-mile-wide crater, giving it the appearance of the grim Star Wars Death Star — a space station equipped with a planet-destroying weapon. But otherwise, Mimas appears as a frozen chunk of ice.

Other moons, like Saturn’s Enceladus and Jupiter’s Europa, have cracked surfaces or telltale plumes shooting from the ground, which are compelling evidence for sub-surface oceans. Mimas doesn’t outwardly offer hints of an ocean.

“When you look at Enceladus and Europa, there’s clearly an engine in these moons that is running,” Alyssa Rhoden, a planetary scientist who researches ocean worlds, told Mashable. “When you look at Mimas it’s the opposite — it can’t possibly be an ocean world.”

Or so Rhoden thought. Looks are deceiving.

In new research published in the planetary science journal Icarus, Rhoden and her coauthor describe how they unexpectedly found evidence for an ocean beneath Mimas’ icy shell. The moon may not be a frozen chunk of ice, after all.

The giant crater on Saturn’s moon Mimas. It’s called the Herschel Crater.
Credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

Plumes of water ice on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, captured by the Cassini spacecraft.
Credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute

Mimas does have an attribute that could allow it to harbor an ocean. Its orbit around Saturn is highly eccentric, meaning it gets tugged and stretched as it swings close to the powerful gravitational force of the planet and then orbits farther away. (Each orbit takes just 22 hours and 36 minutes!) This process, called “tidal heating,” creates vast amounts of heat in ocean worlds like Europa.

With this reality in mind, Rhoden, a principal scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, a science organization, followed up on an earlier observation of a tiny wobble in Mimas’ orbit around Saturn. An icy sea sloshing inside Mimas could potentially trigger this wobble. Might tidal heating have melted enough ice inside Mimas to create a sea? If so, there couldn’t be too much heat (that would melt through the icy shell) nor too little heat (then the ocean would freeze).

The researchers calculated that if there was indeed an ocean inside Mimas large enough to trigger its wobble, the water would exist beneath an icy shell some 14 to 20 miles thick. So they ran computer simulations of how the heating (from tidal heating) would impact the ice on Mimas. Unexpectedly, it showed an ocean under 14 to 20 miles of solid ice.

“We came up with exactly the right number,” Rhoden said.

This isn’t, Rhoden emphasizes, nearly certain proof that Mimas harbors an ocean. But there’s now compelling evidence that an ocean could exist there, with the information available.

“There’s a lot of different ways life might be able to emerge.”

Oceans, as we know on Earth, are immensely diverse places, brimming with life. “Water is at the top of the list of ingredients that make life possible,” writes NASA. And on ocean worlds like Europa, tidal heating may ultimately allow life to thrive, though there’s still zero evidence of life outside Earth. “Tidal heating could be powering a system that cycles water and nutrients between the moon’s rocky interior, ice shell, and ocean, creating a watery environment rich with chemistry conducive to life,” NASA added.

Sometimes, the search for life gets narrowed down to “habitable zones” in solar systems, which are the relatively narrow regions where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Earth, for example, exists in our solar system’s habitable zone.

Europa and Enceladus, located in the frosty regions of our solar system, are well outside the habitable zone. But these worlds harbor oceans. And potentially, life may have emerged there.

“Habitability is not one swath of a solar system,” said Rhoden. “There’s a lot of different ways life might be able to emerge.”

It seems Apple had a change of heart. Either that, or the $3 trillion company realized the optics of making life even just a little more difficult for teachers and students aren’t so hot.

Apple has reversed course on its plan to force educators and learners to prove their status in order to receive educational discounts, according to MacRumors. The company had, for a brief moment earlier in the week, required proof through the student discount website UNiDAYS.

“Save on a new Mac or iPad with Apple education pricing,” reads Apple’s educator and student store website. “Available to current and newly accepted college students and their parents, as well as faculty, staff, and homeschool teachers of all grade levels.”

When Apple abruptly added the verification requirement in January, Redditors speculated as to the reason.

“Sadly I saw this coming and to be honest I do hold people on Macrumors and Reddit to blame for constantly promoting people publicly to abuse the Apple Education Online Store when they are not even students or teachers or in the education field simply because Apple wasn’t requiring education verification,” read one typical comment. “Too many people blabbing it on the internet led to Apple closing up the hole.”

We reached out to Apple and asked what inspired the quick change of heart, and if this is just a temporary pause with some sort of verification requirement to be reinstated at a later time. We received no immediate response.

Hopefully the requirement is gone for good, however, as teachers and students have better things to do than prove their status to a tech giant.

Professional comedian and amateur ceramicist Seth Rogen is back on Hot Ones.

Sitting down with host Sean Evans, Rogen made his third appearance on the hot wing-centric interview show Thursday to kick off the web series’ Season 17. The agonizingly spicy episode covers everything from Rogen’s upcoming projects (Pam & Tommy, The Boys Presents: Diabolical) to his staunch stance on thick versus thin burger patties.

Along the Scoville scale, Seth makes charming observations about the spiciness of the wings he’s eating (“I felt that one in my ears!”) and asks bolds questions about digestion (“How will this make my ass feel?”)

The true “extra dab” moment, however, doesn’t come until Rogen’s longtime creative partner Evan Goldberg joins in for the last wing and prompts Rogen to share a truly shameful story from their shared Canadian youth.

“There was a time in 10th grade when you did one of the least brave things I’ve ever seen someone do,” Golderg begins, before Rogen picks up the story.

“[We were at] this huge, outdoor paintball facility,” he explains, already laughing. “And these guys showed up that were like professional paintball guys. We’re like 15-years-old. Right away, they just fucking unload a torrent of automatic [fire]. And I run off into the woods as literally all of my friends got annihilated.”

“I got shot 25 times in the back,” Goldberg chimes in.

“Everyone was really pissed at me,” Rogen recalls. “I had to earn back their trust.” Makes sense!

On Mars, dust storm season has commenced.

NASA’s distant satellite, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, recently captured a sizable regional dust storm on the Red Planet, encompassing the area where the space agency’s Perseverance rover is investigating the Martian surface. This area, a former river delta called Jezero Crater, is shown by the white circle in the image below.

The hazy storm also obscured Syrtis Major, a dark volcanic area hundreds of miles long.

Dusty conditions put a hitch in NASA’s plans to once again fly its expectation-exceeding Ingenuity helicopter (part of the Perseverance mission). The air became too dense, and insufficient sunlight would have reached the little experimental chopper’s solar panels for a safe flight. (Flight 19 is now scheduled for no earlier than Jan. 23.)

“The presence of this storm came quite early – even before the dusty season traditionally starts!” NASA wrote. “In fact, we have never seen a storm of this strength so early in the Mars year before.”

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a regional dust storm on Mars on Jan. 9, 2022.
Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS

Elsewhere on Mars, thousands of miles away, another dust storm forced NASA’s solar-powered InSight lander to power down into “safe mode” on Jan. 7. “In safe mode, a spacecraft suspends all but its essential functions,” explained NASA. When dust storms completely drain a Martian robot’s batteries, engineers might not be able to restart the machine. A mighty dust storm ended the legendary Opportunity rover’s mission in 2018.

Fortunately, InSight, which is recording earthquakes on Mars among other geologic investigations, exited safe mode as the skies began to clear.

Martian dust storms can be huge, but they’re also normal. “Every year there are some moderately big dust storms that pop up on Mars and they cover continent-sized areas and last for weeks at a time,” explained Michael Smith, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Sometimes, these regional dust storms graduate to planet-encompassing monsters. Those great storms occur around every five-and-a-half years. It’s an intense extraterrestrial event, and NASA’s Mars satellite will watch the stormy scene from space.

There’s a giant camera orbiting Mars.

It’s attached to NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and can spot things as small as a kitchen table (including robotic rovers). It’s aptly called the High Resolution Imaging Experiment, or HIRISE. And it recently captured a brilliant view of a Martian crater.

The image, taken in late 2021 but released on Jan. 20, shows a crater (likely created by an ancient impact) filled with vivid dunes. Mars may often be some 140 million miles from Earth, or at times much farther, but Earth-like geologic processes continually transpire there.

A dune-filled crater on Mars.
Credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona

The crater, while an impressive feature in the Martian desert, also serves an important purpose for planetary scientists. It accurately marks the location of zero longitude on Mars, the line separating Mars’ western and eastern hemispheres.

On Earth, that point is marked by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in the UK. But on Mars, a place brimming with evidence of past asteroid impacts, a crater must do.

A formidable underwater volcano created the twin islands of Hunga Tonga and Hunga Ha‘apai. Then, on Jan. 15, that volcano destroyed them.

Located in the South Pacific, the eruption was one of the most powerful ever captured on satellite. The size and fury of the resulting plume made a jaw-dropping scene on Earth’s surface and amazed scientists. Unfortunately, the eruption has had disastrous and deadly local consequences: A tsunami nearly 50 feet high pummeled some of Tonga’s populated islands.

The historic eruption was also energetic enough to create powerful shock or pressure waves that rippled through the atmosphere and all over the globe. It’s not too different than a rock tossed in water.

“Think of the ripples that you see when you throw a rock into a calm pond,” explained Ryan Torn, chair and professor at the University at Albany Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences. “Immediately, you see circular ripples, which are waves emanating from where the rock enters the pond.”

When the Tonga volcano erupted, these waves (also technically called “acoustic gravity waves”) traveled through the air at around the speed of sound, 343 meters per second, or some 760 mph. The blast’s wave of energy knocked against air molecules, and they bump into each other. The animation below shows the global event well.

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

The atmosphere acted like a fluid because the atmosphere is actually a fluid. It’s not as dense as a liquid, but gas particles react to temperature, pressure, and things flowing through in similar ways, explained Phil Blom, an expert in acoustics and geophysics research at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

And out in the open atmosphere, there’s not much friction to stop these waves. “It will circle the globe multiple times,” said Blom. An atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami, Brian McNoldy, recorded six waves (as of Jan. 19) passing over the region. The waves traveling through the atmosphere are picked up by weather stations that record changes in the atmosphere’s pressure, but are imperceptible to us. Eventually, the waves dissipate in the air.

“It will circle the globe multiple times.”

Only a profoundly energetic blast creates such world-traveling waves. Though the scientific investigation has just started, volcanologists suspect that seawater interacting with the volcano’s magma (molten rock) beneath the surface ultimately provided this eruption with the pressure for such a massive explosion. Water converted into steam creates intense pressure. “That’s what gave this [eruption] outsized energy, we think,” explained Josef Dufek, a volcanologist at the University of Oregon.

Eventually, like opening a shaken-up soda can, there’s a great pressure release, which is the eruption. Blown-apart pieces of magma, known as volcanic ash, are thrust high into the air. This ash plume reached over 22 miles (35 kilometers), noted Dufek, and may have even topped some 30 miles (50 kilometers).

Tweet may have been deleted

Tweet may have been deleted

The resulting pressure waves even stoked meteotsunamis in Europe. Whereas tsunamis are long waves of displaced water (often by earthquakes), meteotsunamis are driven by momentous changes in air pressure, like from a storm, or a blast from a volcano. The changes in air pressure are transmitted to the water and can drive a surge of water. Sea levels went up by some eight inches (20 centimeters) in parts of Spain.

Indeed, a geologic event in the remote South Pacific impacted the entire globe. Soon after the eruption, weather stations in Europe began detecting the pressure waves.

“These facts are reminders that we all share the same atmosphere, all around the 🌎🌍🌏globe,” the World Meteorological Organization tweeted.

It’s no secret that politics can make people miserable.

At its worst, national politics in the U.S. amounts to watching highly-paid elected officials fight over slivers of power while they get little done for the people they represent. Toss in the breathless media coverage over who’s “winning,” the insults traded between politicians and partisans on social media, and the alarming right-wing drift toward authoritarianism, and the whole project of American democracy feels rather hopeless sometimes.

A study published recently in PLoS One indeed found that politics was a chronic stressor for millions of Americans during the Trump administration. Thanks to politics, people said they slept less, experienced more stress, anxiety, and depression, and even had more frequent thoughts of suicide. The finding echoes other survey results from the same era in which participants reported that politics negatively affected their mental health. Additionally, some participants in the PLoS One study said politics led them to post things online they later regretted, created problems in their relationships, and led to compulsively thinking or talking about politics.

The study also suggests that not everyone who feels the toll suffers equally. Those who experienced the worst effects were consistently younger, identified with the Democratic party, actively engaged in politics, disdained political opponents, and had lower levels of political knowledge. Those variables independently predicted who reported poorer mental health, meaning some respondents may have expressed one or two traits while others expressed all of them. This pattern emerged in three separate surveys from just after Trump’s inauguration to weeks after his defeat in the 2020 election.

The startling finding raises a question that urgently needs answers: What happens when, in particular, young people and those actively engaged in politics feel that American democracy harms their well-being or mental health? And why do these traits, in addition to disdain, lower political knowledge, and identifying with the Democratic party, predict who reports worse mental health?

The author, Kevin B. Smith, a political scientist at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, can only speculate for now.

Smith does acknowledge that people’s emotional and psychological distress makes sense in a political environment that’s divisive and polarized, with an element of “despair.” But he’s troubled by the conundrum that presents.

“For democracy to function, or at least function well, you want informed and engaged citizens,” says Smith. “But if doing that leads you to be stressed and fatigued and costs you friendships and leads you into compulsive behaviors you later regret, that doesn’t seem like a particularly healthy thing to do.”

When faced with something we know makes us sick, say like a novel virus, a typical approach is to minimize exposure to that risk. But if young people specifically feel they must withdraw from politics to preserve their well-being, we stand to lose the clarity and conviction many of them bring to solving our most pressing problems, like gun violence and climate change.

At the same time, they’re bearing the brunt of the failure to meaningfully tackle these crises. They will inherit a country and planet that, in many ways, the adults in the proverbial room have neglected. The so-called fragility of Generation Z and Millennials is often a punchline, but their frequent insistence on both justice and comfort is unsurprising.

“I think young Americans are looking around them and they’re looking for reassurance, and they’re looking for signs that things will be OK.”

“I think young Americans are looking around them and they’re looking for reassurance, and they’re looking for signs that things will be OK,” says Alan Zhang, student chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project. “And then they turn on the TV and they see the chaos going on in D.C., they see the chaos going on at the Capitol, they see the constant political division, constant polarization going on. They see this, and it’s no wonder that it’s had a negative impact on their mental health.”

Zhang, who is 19, notes that his generation grew up in the shadow of Sept. 11, with constant worry about school shootings. He says young adults are tired of facing crises that leaders refuse to solve. That sentiment is showing up in polling. Despite their high voter participation in the last presidential election, young Americans seem to be losing confidence in the state of American democracy, according to the most recent Harvard Youth Poll of 18-to-29-year-olds. Only 7 percent of respondents viewed the U.S. as a healthy democracy and 13 percent agreed that it’s a “failed democracy.” We should be worried that such dismay may make authoritarianism more appealing to young people who feel that American democracy costs them much more than it’s worth. The Harvard Youth Poll also found that a quarter of politically engaged youth reported that politics had a negative affect on their mental health.

Despite these alarming signals, there are signs of hope. The spring 2021 Harvard Youth Poll found that young people were more likely to be politically engaged than a decade ago. Now the challenge is to deliver on the promise of their involvement so they don’t abandon American democracy. Smith’s findings suggested that knowledge of how the political system works protects against negative mental health effects. While the study didn’t answer why, it’s possible such knowledge leads to less disappointment or better prepares people for legislative setbacks. Yet Zhang believes something else matters a great deal, too.

“One of the most important parts of making politics into a more positive force in young people’s lives is to make them feel empowered in politics,” he says.

That means holding roles as voters and elected officials. It also means lawmakers listening to young people and integrating their feedback in decision-making so they can see that their actions have tangible political consequences.

“I think it really falls to our generation and those in power to make sure that young people have the opportunities for political engagement [and] political empowerment in order to make their own mark on politics,” says Zhang.

Apple SharePlay is a fun new feature that enables people on FaceTime to watch videos or listen to music together. With synced playback and shared controls, it really feels like you’re experiencing it at the same time.

SharePlay, which is currently only available for iPhone/iPad, was released with iOS 15.1 and iPadOS 15.1 so make sure your device is up to date. It’s not yet available for Mac devices, but Apple says it will arrive in an update to macOS Monterey later this fall.

Enabling the feature on your Apple device is takes a few simple steps. Here’s how.

1. Start a FaceTime call on your iPhone/iPad

To start a FaceTime, open the FaceTime app on your iPhone or iPad and tap “New FaceTime.” If the person you’d like to FaceTime with is already saved as a contact, type their name and tap it when it appears. If you don’t have it saved, you can type the person’s phone number or email address directly into the search.

Once you’ve found the person you’d like to FaceTime with, tap the camera icon to begin a video chat, or the phone icon if you just want to use audio.

2. Open a streaming app

With the other person still on the call, go back to your home screen by swiping up from the bottom of the screen for an iPhone or iPad with FaceID, or by pressing the home button for the older versions of the iPhone or iPad. From the home screen, open up the app that you want to share. SharePlay works with Apple Fitness+, Apple Music, Apple TV+, NBA, Paramount+, SHOWTIME, TikTok, Twitch, and many others.

Note: Some apps with a subscription plan require everyone to have an account in order to access the content. You’ll know this is the case if it doesn’t play for the other party or if they’re prompted to sign up.

3. Start sharing

If you get a banner at the top of your device saying “Choose Content to Use SharePlay,” choose your content and tap play. The other person will be invited to “Join SharePlay” to access the content.

If it’s a streaming app like TikTok that automatically plays, tap the screen-sharing icon at the top and choose “Play for Everyone.”

This banner tells you that SharePlay is available.
Credit: Apple

Tap the screen share icon on the far right to select sharing options.
Credit: Apple

4. Enjoy!

Whether it’s a movie, TV show, album, or fitness class, SharePlay will start playing for everyone on the call at the same time. All users can access the controls, so you can pause if you need to answer the door, or rewind if you missed something important. Plus, SharePlay also has Picture-in-Picture so you can use other apps while you’re watching or listening.

You can also send what you’re watching by tapping the AirPlay icon in the streaming app or in the control center. The video plays in sync on the TV so you can watch on the big screen while staying connected to FaceTime on your iPhone/iPad.

SharePlay takes FaceTiming to a fun new level.
Credit: Apple

From the bitchy shop girls in Pretty Woman to the bitchy shop girls in Legally Blonde, the retail workers tasked with helping you shop for clothes get a bad rap. But even Elle Woods — who knows the value of talking someone out of a truly heinous angora sweater — might not be stoked about Amazon’s latest retail concept that minimizes the role of human shopping associates in a big way.

On Friday, Amazon announced that it is opening a new brick-and-mortar clothing store in the L.A. area called Amazon Style. The concept is basically that it combines physical shopping with an app-based experience. 

The first Amazon Style will be a 30,000 square foot space at the Americana at Brand shopping center — An outdoor mall that embodies capitalist hell so much that it has inspired a meme account with the same name. Amazon is actually already an Americana tenant with its Amazon 4-Star store, so Jeff Bezos is apparently doubling down on his mall real estate footprint with Amazon Style.

Tweet may have been deleted

When you enter the store, you’ll open the Amazon Shopping app. The store floor will only have samples of the clothes that are available, so if you see something you like, you scan the item’s QR code. This will let you select the size or other details on your phone, and send the item to a dressing room where all the clothes you’ve picked out will be waiting for you. 

This theoretically solves a couple problems. The first is having to rummage through a clothing rack to find (or not find) your size. It also eliminates the slightly annoying experience of walking around a store and loading up your arms with clothes to try on. 

When you get to the dressing rooms, you’ll enter the queue on your phone, and a room will be prepared for you. Inside, a screen will welcome you by name. This is sort of the digital equivalent of when hippy-chic Anthropologie employees would write your name in chalk on your dressing room door, so that associates could attend to you by name — which certainly makes me feel oh-so-special. 

Amazon robots are here to help.
Credit: Amazon, Inc.

You’ll also be able to continue to shop for clothes on that screen, and request other sizes. This could take some of the awkwardness out of shopping, when you have to wait for someone to come around to get you a bigger or smaller size. 

One corporate director described the fitting room experience to Reuters as a “magic closet.” But it isn’t magic, really — your clothes appear thanks to the back-of-house Amazon workers who will likely see what you’ve ordered, get those items from the store’s warehouse space, and deliver them to dressing rooms. A truly “magical” process! If you don’t think about the human laborer behind it all. 

This is, of course, what Amazon does best: Using invisible human labor to power shopping experiences designed to make spending your money as easy as possible. Those human interactions with shop workers that can either be helpful or uncomfortably pushy? Unnecessary. The expertise of a human recommendation? Imprecise, expendable. Amazon Style essentially Amazon-ifies in-person shopping by making it recommendation-based and only using human labor for the jobs it hasn’t figured out how to get a robot to do, yet. 

Amazon of course says retail workers will be a big part of the Amazon Style shopping experience, and notes that “hundreds” of employees will work at the store. So while humans may not be the go-to source for clothing recommendations, Amazon assures us that they’ll still be super important.

“Amazon Style’s personalized shopping experience would not be possible without our employees who are dedicated to helping customers find looks they love and feel great in,” an Amazon representative said over email. “The store will employ hundreds of employees to provide customer service, deliver items to fitting room closets, merchandise the store to inspire discovery, help customers at checkout, manage back-of-house operations, and much more.”

Robot, get me that lewk, stat!
Credit: Amazon, Inc.

It might be unfair to view this app-centric experience as a loss of the human retail touch that can help you find items you like, and more than that, perhaps even constitute an actual human connection that leaves both parties feeling fulfilled. That’s because instead of the more hands-on experience you get at a high-end department store like Nordstrom, going to Amazon Style might be more akin to going to an Old Navy or another big box store. Associates at places like those are usually stretched too thin, in too chaotic of an environment, with paychecks that compensate them too little, to provide that hands-on experience. It’s no wonder those sorts of jobs are so hard to fill these days — and why Amazon might be giving those tasks to robots, not humans. Perhaps Amazon Style can give people who usually wouldn’t get that personalized shopping experience some of that same feeling of being treated and seen.

But the move to replace or at least supplement retail associates with algorithmic recommendation, and reduce the amount of human interaction in brick-and mortar shopping, is a bit sad. Maybe the glamor of the shop girl job has long since waned. But I’m not sure an app telling me I’d look great in this top would give me the confidence boost that’s all part of the fun of in-person shopping. But I guess that’s expendable, too.