"Titanium that was distributed with fake documentation has been found in commercial Boeing and Airbus jets," reports CNN. America's Federal Aviation Administration is now investigating whether those components pose a safety hazard to the public," along with the manufacturers of the aircraft and supplier Spirit AeroSystems.
"A parts supplier found small holes in the material from corrosion," the New York Times reported Friday:
Boeing and Airbus both said their tests of affected materials so far had shown no signs of problems.
Boeing said it directly purchased most of the titanium used in its plane production, so most of its supply was unaffected. "This industrywide issue affects some shipments of titanium received by a limited set of suppliers, and tests performed to date have indicated that the correct titanium alloy was used," Boeing said in a statement. "To ensure compliance, we are removing any affected parts on airplanes prior to delivery. Our analysis shows the in-service fleet can continue to fly safely."
Please do JOIN THE INNER HIVE and get each week's Tom the Dancing Bug comic at least a day before publication! Plus other exclusive content like process pics, extra comics, contests, insider info, puzzles, puns, celeb stories, dog photos, and juicy gossip! — Read the rest
"Yet the value of returning to the fantasy genre in later life cannot be understated. Mystical novels filled with world-building brilliance at once allow us to explore both the trials and tribulations of otherworldly creatures and of very human characters with preternatural destinies. In both cases, nevertheless, magic and mystery boil down to very simple universal truths and lessons. Indeed, it was Lewis Carroll in his beloved Alice in Wonderland who wrote, "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it"."
Even in fiction, brands are important. In a richly-illustrated discussion, members of the Barbie, Wes Anderson, and Adult Swim design teams share their thoughts on bringing the fictional brands to life and furthering the story.
Jim Ray riffs on the satirical 2021 tweet about "Don't Create The Torment Nexus" with a short fiction story told as a thread on Mastodon starting: "Like seemingly everyone on this app I have plenty of opinions about the launch of The Torment Nexus, the opening of the Xthonic Gateway, and release of the arch-demon Tzaunh MAY HIS REIGN BE DARK AND ETERNAL, who has begun his foretold 10,000 years of suffering and torment. I figure now is a good time to open up a bit about my experience at the company." The skewerings in the 17 following posts call to my mind The Bug by Ellen Ullman or the Knives Out films. Ray noted, "The Call of PMthulu writes itself".
It's nice to see stop-motion animation getting the respect it deserves in modernity. As computer-generated animation began to skyrocket in popularity, other "outdated" forms of the medium started to fall by the wayside. And while stop-motion was never the dominant force in the world of animation, it was always a respected format that demanded intense attention to detail and the patience of a saint. — Read the rest
Former Vice President Mike Pence didn't make a good impression on the American people. In fact, Trump's White House doormat made no impression at all. To prove this, the Jimmy Kimmel Show conducted an experiment, asking random people on the street if they could name the forgettable gentleman in a photograph, and their perplexed expressions said it all. — Read the rest
WOW! Watch this whippet named Sounders flying through the air at the "Flower Power" North America Diving Dogs event that was held over the weekend. Sounders is 8 years old and competed alongside a hundred other dogs at Valley Center Dog Dock in Valley Center, California. — Read the rest
Moon Dog is a fun little short from young Australian filmmaker Nat Kelly. If it's a gloomy day where you are, try this charming distraction. That is all.
Smut surfers in Utah are facing disappointment if attempting to visit Pornhub lately. Rather than their planned, er, viewing, they're instead greeted with a video informing them all access to the site has been blocked within their state.…
In this Far Out Magazine video, they look at Steely Dan's 1972 track, "Only a Fool Would Say That." The song was written to mock the "dangerously insensitive" naivety of John Lennon's "Imagine," as he sings about no possessions on an all-white Steinway inside of his all-white rock star mansion. — Read the rest
Wired explains how insects and bugs play a role in crime scenes. Forensic entomologist Dr. Paola Magni explains "Insects never lie. Insects are tiny witnesses". She uses these "tiny witnesses" to bring justice to victims of violent crimes. Bugs can reveal how much a body has decayed, giving investigators an insight into details such as time of death. — Read the rest
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Pure Invention author Matt Alt explains why QAnon didn't take off in Japan. In short, as a conspiracy theory, QAnon is like a 1980s American car: shoddily constructed, with low-quality components and no overall vision. — Read the rest
America's studios, creators and marketers are relying, more than ever, on digital platforms that allow them to gauge what audiences like-- and would like to see more of. From a report: They're not just looking for test screenings, either. They're looking to check in with potential audiences at every stage of production, from before a script is written until the moment their new TV show, film or music video debuts. Ever since George Lucas ushered in the era of endless sequels (and prequels), Hollywood executives have tried to capitalize on the success of the Last Big Thing by churning out more of it. But content budgets are increasing far faster than established franchises can keep up. Netflix is projected to spend more on new and acquired content in 2020 -- $17 billion -- than Apple spent on research and development in 2019. With stakes that high, minimizing risk when creating new content "at scale" means treating it like any other mass-market product. Executives, producers, writers, directors and marketers need to be able to consistently craft programs that are more likely than not to find their target audiences. Critical approval and industry awards -- even box-office blowouts -- while nice, aren't the endgame for most.
A teenage girl lost her phone privileges so she used her 3DS to go online. Her mother found out and confiscated it. The girl resumed tweeting on her Wii U. After her mother took that away, the girl started tweeting from the LG smart refrigerator in the kitchen. The girl said her mother has made plans to remove it.
The Lonely Island Presents: The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience is a Netflix special by comedy rap group The Lonely Island. Billed as a "visual poem",[1] the special is directed by Mike Diva and Akiva Schaffer and stars Andy Samberg and Schaffer as Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, respectively. It is presented as a rap album written and performed by Canseco and McGwire in the 1980s, when the pair was known as the Bash Brothers while playing for the Oakland Athletics
Samberg: We both grew up—and Jorma too—in Berkeley, so they were our team and are still. To be a kid and for your hometown team to be that Oakland A's team, which was, I would argue, one of the most exciting sports teams ever to watch—we all had the Bash Brothers poster on the wall.
Schaffer: They went to the World Series three years in a row when we were like 10, 11, 12. What a dream."
A work of art, it's worth spending ~30 minutes reliving the highs and lows of the steroid era as told through song, and nice to see an oft overlooked team getting some time in the spotlight.
How can the other players up their game on and off-premises?
Analysis Run the Azure Stack on-premises and you can move data and apps to the Azure public cloud with ease. It's the same software environment. Run the Oracle Cloud at Customer on-premises and move apps and data to the Oracle public cloud with ease. It's the same software and billing environment.…
Sneakerheads can rock a pair of fresh adidas even while covered in vomit and regret during Oktoberfest thanks to the company’s new adidas München Oktoberfest.
The ~$240 shoe has already sold out through the German footwear website 43einhalb Sneaker Store, but shoppers can be notified when they become available.
High-quality leather, made with a durable “puke- and beer-repellent coating” (DPBR), is designed to complement traditional Bavarian lederhosen, according to 43einhalb’s website.
Slogging through the beer and puke-riddled streets of Munich has never been so easy and stylish.
Foxconn has wrung a promise of $3 billion in corporate welfare from the state of Wisconsin, but even that is no guarantee that it will open a factory there, even if it swears up and down that this is in the cards.
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Enlarge / This picture taken on September 24, 2016 shows the Five-hundred-metre Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope in southwestern China's Guizhou province. (credit: STR/AFP/Getty Images)
During the second season of The Big Bang Theory, the aspiring actress Penny borrows money from Sheldon. Without a second thought, the theoretical physicist grabs a peanut brittle can in which he stores his extra money, and urges Penny to borrow as much as she wants. "This is money I'm not using," Sheldon explains.
Nick Suntzeff, an astronomer at Texas A&M University, recalled this episode when asked why no astronomers had yet taken a lucrative position to run the world's largest radio telescope, in China. The job pays about $1.2 million annually. "Now, that is an exaggeration," Suntzeff said of the TV show. "But I know many astronomers who would do such a thing. They want to be paid well, yes, but the money does not buy you telescope time, or access to supercomputers, or fund postdocs and graduate students."
China has built a staggeringly large instrument in the remote southern, mountainous region of the country called the Five hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, or FAST. The telescope measures nearly twice as large as the closest comparable facility in the world, the US-operated Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. Radio telescopes use a large, parabolic dish to collect radio waves from distant sources, such as pulsars and black holes—or even alien civilizations.
*So, the US is supposed to respect EU privacy laws, and occasionally they make a big to-do about it. But you can tell the US doesn't care much, as the honcho in charge of European privacy complaining is supposed to be an environmentalist. Meaning the "Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and Environment." […] The post European privacy must surely be safe with nobody in the job appeared first on WIRED.
Rocky and metallic inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Ceres) formed in the Inner Zone where heavier elements concentrated closer to the Sun during Solar System formation. Gaseous and mainly icy planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and their satellite planets) formed in the Middle Zone. Icy planets, most of which are probably dwarf planets (which are"full-fledged" planets) formed in the Outer Zone where lighter elements remained during Solar System formation.
"It's a scientifically useful bit of nomenclature and, I think, given the psychological power behind the word planet, it's also more consumable by the general public," Runyon said.
"A classification has to be useful, or else it's just lipstick on a pig," countered planetary scientist Carolyn Porco. Runyon's definition "is not useful at all."
...
"If you look at the solar system with fresh eyes, it is really hard to not realize that there are eight big things dominating the solar system and millions of tiny things flitting around," said Caltech astronomer Mike Brown, whose discovery of the dwarf planet Eris, announced in 2005, precipitated the IAU vote a year later.
Brown was not at that vote, but he said that a definition based on orbital dynamics "is the most profound classification you can come up with."
"That's the one that asks the question we're asking as planetary scientists," he explained. "Why did the solar system form with these eight giant things and all these other things around them?"
