#What NOAA Does

[meteorologistaustenlonek]

Via @NWSMorristown, which covers part of the @WDEFNews12 viewing area, 9.28.24 "Open House has been cancelled due to Hurricane Helene. No backup date has been set yet."

[marzipanandminutiae]

climate change is real and terrifying, and materially altering winter, but also a 60-degree (F) day in December in Boston is not "apocalyptic"

guys

there was not a single December in Boston from 1893-1903 without at least one day in the upper 50s, acording to NOAA data. usually several days. multiple years had December days reaching 60 or above- not always just one, either. December 1895 had more days in the 60s than December 2022 (it also had more days in the 20s, so that's not to say the pattern isn't changing, to be clear!)

(source- there's a dropdown menu at the top for different years)

I recently read a description of the Autumn Grand Prix in Paris c. 1909 that mentioned it being so weirdly warm that the trees started blooming again, and thought I was losing my mind. that NEVER happened in the past, right? but this was an eyewitness account written by a journalist who was there. I think we're all afraid of being labeled anti-science if we acknowledge what any climate scientist would likely tell you: that it's far more complicated than just Winter Is Dead And Every Diversion We Experience From Seasonal Averages Is Completely New Territory

I am not denying climate change. I am gently taking the hand of everyone who's just as (rightly!) scared as I am, just as stressed out by warmer-than-average winter days, and reminding you that climatological history does not begin with your childhood, and that climate change does not mean "every place is going to get hotter at a steady pace forever and there will be no more intense winters." they will change and become less frequent, but they will still be there! we can still act to preserve as many snowy days as possible, now!

we need hope to get through this. and sometimes part of hope can be contextualizing things for ourselves

[bemusedlybespectacled]

I don't understand the chevron law thing, could you explain it like I'm five? Should we be working towards fixing whatever the courts just fucked up?

So, okay, I am condensing like a semester of a class I took in 2017 into a very short explanation, but:

It would be really annoying for Congress to individually pass laws approving every new medicine or listing out every single poison you can't have in tap water, so instead there are agencies created by Congress, via a law, to handle a specific thing. The agencies are created by Congress but overseen by the executive branch (so, the president), which is why we say things like "Reagan's EPA" or "Biden's DOJ" - even though Congress creates them, the president determines how they do the thing Congress wants them to do, by passing regulations like "you can't dump cyanide in the local swimming pool" and "no, you can't dump strychnine, either."

However, sometimes people will oppose these regulations by saying that the agency is going beyond the task they were given by Congress. "The Clean Air Act only bans 'pollutants,' and nowhere in the law does it say that 'pollutants' includes arsenic! You're going beyond your mandate!" To which the experts at the EPA would be like, "We, the experts at the EPA, have decided arsenic is a pollutant." On the flip side, the EPA could be like, "We, the experts at the EPA, have decided that arsenic isn't a pollutant," and people would oppose that regulation by being like, "But the Clean Air Act bans 'pollutants,' and it's insane to say that arsenic isn't a pollutant!" So whose interpretation is correct, the government's or the challengers'?

Chevron deference basically put heavy weight onto how the agency (i.e. the government) interpreted the law, with the assumption that the agency was in the right and needing pretty strong evidence that they were interpreting it wrong (like, blatantly doing the opposite of a clear part of the law or something). If there was any ambiguity in how the law was written, you'd defer to the agency's interpretation, even if that interpretation was different depending on who was president at the time.

(Note: there are other ways of challenging regulations other than this one, like saying that they were promulgated in a way that is "arbitrary and capricious" – basically, not backed by any evidence/reasoning other than "we want it." Lots of Trump-era regulations got smacked with this one, though I think they'd be better at it if Trump gets a second term, since they've now had practice.)

Chevron deference wasn't all good – remember that the sword cuts both ways, including when dickholes are in power – but it was a very standard part of the law. Like, any opposition to a regulation would have some citation to be like "Chevron doesn't apply here" and every defense would be like "Chevron absolutely applies here" and most of the time, the agency would win. Like, it was a fundamental aspect of law since the 80s.

The Supreme Court decision basically tosses that out, and says, "In a situation where the law is ambiguous, the court decides what it means." That's not completely insane – interpreting law is a thing judges normally do – but in a situation where the interpretation may hinge on something very complicated outside of the judge's wheelhouse, you now cannot be like, "Your Honor, I promise you that the experts at NOAA know a lot about the weather and made this decision for a good reason."

The main reason it's a problem is that it allows judges to override agencies' judgements about what you should do about a thing and what things you should be working on in the first place. However, I don't think there's really a way of enshrining that into law, outside of maybe adding something to the Administrative Procedure Act, and that would require a Congress that isn't majority Republican.

I will say that kind of I expected this to happen, just because IIRC Gorsuch in particular hates Chevron deference. IMO it's a classic case of "rules for me but not for thee" – Scalia and other conservatives used to rely on Chevron because they wanted their presidents to hold a ton of unchecked power (except for the EPA), but now that we've had Obama and Biden, now conservatives don't like Chevron because it gives the presidents they don't like unchecked power.

[boinin]

Batten down the hatches: Rin's ego is about to land

The latest chapters show Rin playing with an unfamiliar aura: what looks like swirling rivulets of water.

This represents the refinement of his ego and playstyle since the under-20 match. But what exactly are they going for with the swirling water? Here's my two cents.

Rin is strongly associated with water, specifically the sea. He grew up by the coast; he and Sae shared a love of watching the sunset over the water after training together. Those childhood memories are turbulent now, like dark clouds on the ocean's horizon.

It's here he realises that he can no longer play the puppetmaster football that helped him thrive in Blue Lock. As good as he is, it wasn't authentic... and it's nowhere near where he needs to be to compete with his brother, or even Isagi.

Rin's flow state is the most unique out of any others we've seen. Let's dig into it. All panels are from the official translation, which is important as the translation choices are 1) consistent and 2) likely chosen carefully.

In the dying moments of the match, Rin complains about feeling restrained. Being Itoshi Rin is eating him alive.

Cool, calm and aloof.

A genius. Prodigy. Puppetmaster.

Team player. Team captain.

Isagi Yoichi's partner. Shidou Ryuusei's rival.

Itoshi Sae's little brother.

The prospect of defeat rudely wakes him up. His pretence comes crashing down hard, triggered by his ineffectiveness in spite of the teammates around him. It's one of the best rugpulls in sports manga.

When the power of friendship comes knocking, Itoshi Rin tells it to fuck off and die.

What a glorious moment... and not just because it posits Rin as a Uchiha Sasuke kinnie. I prompt you to examine his eyes in this panel.

They're a swirling vortex of hate and destruction, befitting Blue Lock's angstiest character. The shape reminds me of this:

Satellite images of Hurricane Franklin and Hurricane Idalia, August 2023. Image credit: NOAA Satellites.

Rin's true ego, which he unleashes against Sae, is a storm.

Optional soundtrack for the rest of this post (because Rin 100% listens to this once it comes out in Blue Lock's universe).

Although it isn't portrayed visually as such in the under-20 arc, the metaphor fits Rin's evolving playstyle. What is more destructive, more uncontrollable, more senseless than a hurricane? A violent force of nature that we can predict but never avert?

When a storm approaches, all we can do is rank it, track it, then attempt to mitigate the inevitable damage.

In football terms? Sounds a lot like playing Rin.

It's even alluded to in chapter 250: the graphics for Rin's formation are similar to the satellite images of large storms.

Within the U20 match, there are exchanges that support this theory. Darai calls Rin's evolving playstyle arrogant and avaricious. The latter (meaning extreme greed) is evocative of a force that pursues what it wants without regard for anything in its surroundings. What it can't have, it destroys.

Niou is confident enough in his physicality to try withstand his opponent's attrack. Rin literally flips him into the air. Niou's hubris brings to mind all man-made constructs which are supposedly storm-proof... until a cyclone comes along and proves otherwise.

The contrast between Rin and Sae's egos are interesting. If we accept Rin's is a storm, i.e. a destructive force of nature that cannot be controlled, Sae's is the opposite despite being as impossible to defy. Sae's motif is defined in the manga as "beautiful destruction", plays and passes depicted in graceful data strings. Rather than natural, his playstyle is sleek and controlled, and dominant to the point of appearing pre-ordained by his opponents.

Their attitudes are equally different. While Rin drools and loses composure in the final minutes, Sae does little more than raise his eyebrows throughout the entire game. He's completely emotionless.

It's the extremes of human nature: animalistic rage versus robotic detachment. This time, the latter wins. Will Rin have an opportunity to face his brother again, with a better grasp on his ego? Here's hoping.

My final thoughts on Rin are speculative. How does one beat a storm? Not just endure—but subdue and calm one?

It's beyond human capability. The ability to control the weather exists only in myth and fantasy, and even then it's usually in the hands of powerful entities, not mere heroes or wizards.

Subduing something as powerful as a hurricane would require a god.

Is this Isagi and Rin's endgame?

Time will tell.

[dougielombax]

Fucking WHAT????!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah it’s real!

Could somebody report his ass to the NOAA for this?

Maybe the US Fish & Wildlife Service too.

Maybe any other relevant agencies.

I’ll drop some links for anyone wishing to do so as well.

Here they be.

Pretty sure this violates the US Endangered Species Act and a few other laws too.

Hopefully something comes from this.

This shit is messed up!

*WHALE JUICE?????!!!!!!!!!!*

No I don’t care that it was already dead!

And I don’t care if the brain worms told him to do it!

This is VILE!

The ableism, antivax fuckwittery and suspicious death of his wife, and endorsing Trump was bad enough.

But this is insane!

This is like some serial killer shit!

What is it with this guy and messing around with dead animals?

And where is the head now? What, does he have it stored somewhere?!

Sickening shit!

Feel free to reblog I guess?

[bomberqueen17]

encouraging

Last night I got very mildly high (a really great thing about being middle-aged in this new era of legal weed is that it's really easy to get very consistent and reliable gummies with very consistent and reliable doses of THC so you can get yourself very mildly stoned, not enough to freak out or like lose time or anything, just enough to be Altered and take a little mini-vacation from your own brainweasels, and wake up refreshed the next day instead of hung-over) and scrolled Tumblr until I saw that post about multi-vortex "dead man walking" tornadoes again, and that got me to go search up the one they mentioned by name and then go into a wikipedia spiral about destructive multi-vortex tornadoes. (The post, shockingly, isn't totally accurate, but isn't like. wrong-wrong. For the record though the dead man walking bit of the tornado wasn't as deadly as the just wall-of-black that came later.)

And actually while it was terrifying to see what kind of destruction the weather can wreak, it was kind of... encouraging. Reading the accounts of historical storms and more recent ones, there's this throughline of learning, of new regulations and guidelines, of science being done. The old historic tornadoes, not only were the casualties high, but the aftermath horrible, people missing, fires wiping out survivors, local economies irrevocably destroyed. The newer tornadoes, often the weather itself was more severe, but there are fewer and fewer casualties, better warnings and advice from meteorologists, better government response. I didn't track any of my sources on this and I've closed the window so I'd stop reading about it, but I read with interest about how in 1991 a news team sheltered under an overpass during a scary but relatively weak tornado, and broadcast footage of this, and then in a much stronger early-2000s tornado, a number of people were killed sheltering under highway overpasses, and then by the 2010s the advice to avoid highway overpasses had become common knowledge, and people are no longer being killed this way. (Also I finally had my question answered, having been on the Thruway during a tornado warning: why not shelter under an overpass? Well! Because of fluid dynamics. Just as water pressure intensifies when going through a sudden narrowing in a pipe, so too does wind going through a narrower space, so if you're hiding in that narrow space you are gonna get sucked out of it. So if you find yourself out in the open, do not shelter under a bridge or overpass! Shelter instead in a ditch if you can find one, or a hollow in the ground, something open to the sky so the wind will not intensify passing through it. Now You Know. ok fine I reopened the tab to cite this: NOAA's page on this topic)

Another one was a storm in the 20s where several of the casualties were farmers out in their fields, taken unawares. Normally farmers are weather-savvy, the article said, and would know to shelter from storms, but this tornado had an unusual appearance, and took them by surprise. Contrast that to later storms, where mobile radars were deployed, where meterologists and broadcasters had protocols already in place, where local inhabitants knew to listen and knew how to respond-- there are still instances of bad advice, like an Oklahoma TV weatherman telling people to get in their cars and evacuate which led to gridlock on the local highway which would have resulted in hundreds of casualties save for the tornado missing that area, but mostly people know now what to do. The casualties are much sparser, and many of them now are, instead of people making fatal mistakes, instead people doing the right thing but the storm just being too powerful. (No less tragic, but I suppose it's slightly less heartbreaking to know it was just bad luck and not also poor information.)

And you see examples like in 2011 the 12 oil rig workers, who sheltered in the change house, which due to new information about tornadoes had been built with tie-downs, which nearly failed but did not and all twelve souls were spared, and the company improved construction of future change houses as tornado shelters based on this information.

Anyway, it was a weird thing to fixate on for the evening but in the end it did leave me with a feeling of hopefulness. Like, this is a thing where science and good government actually can concretely improve outcomes.

Let's not extend our worry into climate change making all this worse, just yet, and leave it at this.

LOL this is so poorly cited I'm turning reblogs off, and hopefully I'm done obsessing about tornadoes for a lil bit now. Well, we'll see if that resolution sticks, I reopened tabs to put in at least minimal citations here and haven't closed them yet.

[raraeavesmoriendi]

I just finished last night and I have some questions for people who have read mike bockoven’s fantasticland -

[for those who have not:

- take a climate change-charged hurricane that’s the worst noaa has seen in recent memory and the first to hit daytona beach since 1960

- throw it at a Not-Disney-World Florida theme park with major national nostalgia, where a bunch of the Not-Disney College Program kids and some adult staff have opted to get paid extra to stay inside the park through the storm to prevent looting

- watch as people trapped within the park for more than a month - still with plenty of food and water, mind you - lose their minds, fragment into factions, and begin going full battle royale/lord of the flies on each other

- tell the whole thing testimonial style with different witnesses interviewed each chapter, a la World War Z, with some insanely unreliable narrators to boot

if that sounds like your kind of horror novel, give it a go. it’s not perfect (especially when they call the factions ‘tribes,’ which. yikes.) but I tore through it in like, two days.]

okay, questions below, spoilers for the novel:

1. …is the pirate who comforted the little boy who was evacuating, in interview three with the kansas city dad, Brock Hockley? am I reading too much into that?

like. I don’t remember that we ever get a description of him, so I don’t know about the “weird beard/mustache thing” the dad describes, but just. the emphasis put on “I’d like to shake his hand. I might even give him a hug.” feels so purposeful. part of me wonders if that’s supposed to add some further hindsight horror to what happened in the park and then his prison interview. he says early that he found making little kids happy a fulfilling and rewarding part of his job as a character actor in the park, and we know other people found him charismatic enough to follow, not just because they were scared but bc he could have these moments of surface-level charm or rationality (the code, etc.)

idk, I just thought it felt a bit too one-off to read it as Just Some Guy. but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I could be wrong.

2. we never get any hint as to the identity of the warthog couple, right? I remember the FNG found their masks discarded outside the World Circus, they’re first mentioned in the book as hanging around/inside the circus, and the guy from the Dreamland Hotel interview talks about still getting postcards from them whenever he moves (scariest part of the whole book for me ngl), so we can assume they were walked out with the rest of the survivors. I just wasn’t sure if there was anything else to do with them that I missed.

I’m still thinking about the fact that they turned the Dreamland lobby into a torture theater. like… who was that for? just for them, or did they have an audience? probably not, right? since they weren’t affiliated with anyone? but still. also, who were they taking there, just people they could pick off???

hmm. I wonder if any casualties thought to be faction-related were actually theirs.

3. in Travis’s interview (the guy with the body camera), do we know who the girl is that they found in the crawlspace of the employee locker room? the one whispering “Mommy” over and over? there were enough survivors left that she could be someone we didn’t encounter before, but I just thought I’d check that there wasn’t some other interview where someone describes a girl running off to hide. the Anonymous shopgirl mentioned one of the girls disappeared during the cannon raid on Pirate turf with the Deadpool soldiers before they turned on each other, so I wondered if it could be her.

4. Brock in his interview mentions that Sam Garlieck’s people were terrorizing others during the power outage in the storm shelter, specifically mentioning an instance of sexual assault. does anyone else corroborate this in their interview? Adam Jakes sounds skeptical, saying his research would have turned that up by now, but the only people we really hear from about that period are Sam himself (obviously an unreliable narrator, like, duh) and Stuart Dietz, who mentioned that Sam definitely killed Maria Flynn. did anyone see any other mentions of this anywhere, or did we just move straight out of the storm shelters and never talk about them again once we get to the park? is this just Brock being an unreliable narrator himself to justify how things went down? (but then why would he need to be, when Bryce definitely died?? although he himself says that wasn’t as big a motivator as people writing about him want it to be, so maybe that’s moot)

5. not really a question just an observation: Stuart Dietz, the maintenance guy/Mole Man, is the only person to get two interviews in the entire novel. Not Sam, not Jill, not Brock. I don’t know, I just find that really interesting why he was selected to come back twice. I know part of it is to describe the botched demolition, but I’m also wondering what effect it has on the novel that the only person we hear from multiple times is an older dude from one of the pointedly non-aggressive factions.

6. in looking through posts already in the tag, I don’t quite follow some readers’ comments that there was an attempt at a “cell phones bad!!” message here. I feel like every time it’s come up, it’s been shown by Adam Jakes (author stand-in) to be minimizing what really happened and looking for an easy scapegoat. I don’t think that was part of the intended story at all, I think it’s just been stated over and over as people using an excuse to not think themselves capable of similar violence. just wanted to put that out there.

anyway. one of my favorite things about novels with multi-witness perspectives is finding threads that leave off in one person’s story and pick up in another, so I’m going through my digital copy and highlighting all the places two different interviews tie together (Austin’s fate, the guy who botched branding Adrienne as part of his Pirate initiation, etc.)

if anyone else has noticed anything interesting, I’m all ears 👀

[toasts-httyd-hyperfixation]

Soooooo thinking about riders of berk and uh...... who's gonna tell Hiccup that Thor was in fact angry with toothless?

I mean i guess he felt bad after hitting hiccup in the head with lightning and chilled out but like ya know, he was peeved for a little bit there

Ok so i made this a jokey post originally but i actually want to add in the information

So the episode in question "When Lightning Strikes" the plot is that the gang makes large metal dragon perches, and shortly thereafter, Berk is hit by several lightning storms of noticeably increased intensity

Mildew tries to blame the dragons, but in the end they figure out that it was actually the metal that was causing the lightning storms, and while the vikings all think its just because Thor was angry at the metal, we know its because lightning is attracted to metal, which is what really caused the storms.......

Except

That's NOT TRUE

From the NOAA

From TORRO in the UK

Another

And one more for good measure

So as you can see, while metal is a good conductor of electricity, lightning is NOT attracted to metal.

Lightning is no more likely to hit metal than it is any other material.

Metal does not cause lightning storms, nor will it increase their intensity.

Lightning tends to seek the quickest path to take to the ground, otherwise it wouldn't be hitting trees very often, and every large city would either be unlivable due to the mass amounts of intense lightning storms that occurred, or they would have to construct buildings out of alternative materials.

So the lightning storms on Berk cannot be explained by the presence of the metal structures, it just doesn't work like that.

Now the most likely option is that is was all just a big coincidence, and they made these structures right ahead of a particularly unsettled bit of weather marked by more extreme lightning that they were used to.

Sometimes that just happens, weather is predictable, but never guaranteed.

Now my argument for it genuinely being Thor pissed off at Toothless for whatever reason, is, from my basic understanding of storms and how they form, they should have been experiencing less storms than they had in the past.

____________________

And to be very clear METEOROLOGY IS NOT MY MAJOR.

These are THEORIES based on the class i have been taking, i may not be 100% spot on, in fact i could be 100% wrong.

This is just what i feel it would be based on my understanding of weather. If someone has a degree in this kinda stuff, id love to hear what they think, but like, letting y'all know ahead of time, i am not an authority on this.

Moving on

_____________________

So in order for rain and storms to form they need something called condensation nuclei.

Condensation nuclei is what allows water vapor to take any kind of form. No condensation nuclei, no rain. This is the thought process through which could seeding takes place.

Put more stuff in the clouds for the drops to form on, and the rain will fall! There's really no evidence to support cloud seeding, but that's the idea of it nonetheless.

Now as to what condensation nuclei are.

Book is Meteorology Today by Ahrens and Henson

Condensation nuclei are extremely small particles that float around in the air and give water vapor molecules something to land and condense on.

Many things can be a condensation nuclei - fungi, salt, dust, volcanic ash, and sulfuric and nitric acids.

Now important to this, Smoke is a condensation nuclei.

Smoke, ash, both things that would be extremely common around dragons. And fire, smoke, ash, dust, all that kind of stuff, would be MOST HEAVILY in the atmosphere around Berk DURING the war with the dragons.

Houses constantly being burned down, smoke, dust, flying into the air, falling off anything going up into the sky, whether that's projectiles or the dragons themselves.

So overall Berk should have been experiencing more storms before they were at peace with the dragons, and once they were, there would be less stuff going into the air for the water to condense on.

I cannot say whether there would be a big, noticeable difference, but the difference would be there regardless.

So there being more intense storms after the dragons and vikings are chill with each other doesn't make a ton of sense, if anything, there should be less.

Also, condensation and in cloud precipitation is likely what causes lightning

So taking into consideration that lightning is NOT attracted to metals, and that since the peace with dragons, there should be less clouds and storms, there's no real definitive reason for those intense lightning strikes and ESPECIALLY no explanation for the lightning FOLLOWING Toothless like that.

There's no reason for it to do that!

There's another scene later that show even clearer, i can't find it right now, but it shows where toothless is low to the ground and the lightning is following him.

It WOULD NOT do that!

There is no reason for it to do that unless something was Making it do that!

So, following that logic, it HAD to be Thor (or other god).

Lightning does not behave in that fashion, it would not chase behind a low moving target like that.

There is no other explanation as to why the lightning was behaving like that outside acts of god.

Tragically, Mildew was Correct.

Thor was pissed.

Or maybe he was trying to be helpful!

The village was getting stirred up because of Mildew, maybe Thor knew this would help a lil bit, even though it was also very bad.

And hey, when they put that statue by Mildew's house, the lightning kept hitting him so ya know?

It might have been a misunderstanding!

Either way, not natural how that lightning was behaving, imo, had to be caused by one of the various Norse gods, thank you for you time.

[vintageseawitch]

i urge people to realize that if you don't vote, it literally isn't hurting any candidate. it's hurting other vulnerable citizens. you get on your soap box, making claims like, "it's their fault for giving us a bad candidate" is literally only giving you an ego boost. in your efforts to fight the system you're inadvertently allowing the greater evil to win.

it completely sucks. i hate this timeline. it sucks that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. the elite have made it this way.

i need you to realize that this isn't a normal election. Project 2025 makes it basically existential. if you believe we live in a fascist state now just wait if they're allowed to implement this on a national level. think they'll take us back to the 1950s? nah. think of it as us being stuck in the 1800s but with modern surveillance technology. they'll implement the Comstock Law so anything they deem sexual - abortion drugs, contraception, condoms, sex toys, etc - can't be mailed. they will not allow pregnant women to go through chemo. they want to keep data trackers of periods. they want to keep track of stillbirths, miscarriages, etc. it's beyond what it used to be; it will be worse.

they will consider transgender people, merely existing, as pornography. they want to ban pornography. they want to re-define what pedophilia means & it will conveniently consist of LGBTQIA+ people & they want punishments to be SEVERE. they will also punish anyone - teachers, librarians, authors, etc - for handing out porn (this means any books they don't like).

they want to do mass deportations, the likes of which haven't been seen in this country. they want to remove natural born citizen rights. anyone not white is at risk.

they don't think climate change is "real" & so any good that has happened as a result of this government- NOAA, the EPA - will be gutted. they want to sell National Parks & other natural areas to anyone who wants to destroy them to harvest their resources. the days of Nixon (who started the EPA) are dead. this is very serious especially since climate change is the biggest threat to humanity's survival.

i urge you to re-think that both parties are exactly the same. one will be chosen & will be worse. i'm sorry it comes down to this but you not using your voice at this point us tragic. you will be badly affected as well if trump is re-elected & if you believe that the USA deserves this then welcome to this sinking ship; you're going down with the rest of us.

please never stop talking about Project 2025/Agenda 47. YOUR VOICE DOES MATTER. PLEASE VOTE. check your registration status often. vote early if you can 💙

[nbenvs3000w24]

The Enchanting World of Bioluminescence!

Hi friends!!

Welcome back to another week of blogging… I can’t believe this is the 9th week of blogging! Time really does fly. 

Today I am going to introduce you all to the captivating and mesmorizing world of Bioluminescence! I remember learning about this in a documentary after seeing photos online of bioluminescent beaches and it is one of the most fascinating phenomenons ever! 

To begin, picture this: a moonless night, the ocean gently lapping at the shore, and suddenly, the water bursts into a mesmerizing display of ethereal blue-green light. This is not a scene from a sci-fi movie; it's the magical world of bioluminescence! Bioluminescence is the ability of living organisms to produce light and can be encountered in summer evenings from the flickering lights of fireflies, or in the depths of the ocean from bacteria and sharks (NOAA, 2017). 

What truly sets bioluminescence apart is its sheer beauty and versatility. From attracting mates, luring in prey, communicating with fellow organisms or warding off predators, bioluminescence serves a variety of purposes in the natural world (National Geographic, n.d). For example, the vampire squid uses this as a defensive behaviour as instead of ejecting dark ink to defend against predators, they instead eject sticky bioluminescent mucus which can confuse and delay predators (National Geographic, n.d). Additionally, another really cool theory is that some biologists theorize that some species who are not bioluminescent themselves, take advantage of species that are. For example, a sperm whale might surround itself with bioluminescent plankton in order to eat fish who are the planktons predators as their glowing alerts the whale that fish are nearby (National Geographic, n.d). It is so fascinating to me how the language of light can work in such enticing ways. 

So, the next time you find yourself under the starry night sky or lurking out into the ocean, remember the hidden world of bioluminescense that lies just beyond our sight. It’s a good reminder that even in the darkest corners of the Earth, there is still light to be seen, illuminating the beauty of the world around us.

To end this blog, I wanted to leave you with a question to ponder... in what ways can we draw inspiration from nature's ability to illuminate even the darkest of places within our own lives? What is the hidden symbolism here?

Thanks for reading and looking forward to hearing back!!!

Natalie

Works Cited

NOAA. (2017). What is bioluminescence? National Ocean Service. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/biolum.html

National Geographic. (n.d). Bioluminescence is light emitted by living things through chemical reactions in their bodies. National Geographic Education. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/bioluminescence/

[meteorologistaustenlonek]

NOAA: Tropical Climatology

WhatNOAADoes - (National Hurricane Center) "Have you ever wondered where tropical cyclones tend to form and move during different times of the year? Good news! We've just updated our historical "Points of Origin and Tracks" maps, which are available in the #Climatology section of the NHC webpage at…"

[darkmaga-retard]

David Blackmon

Sep 12, 2024

The best form of humor that arises from the climate alarm narrative always derives from the most unintentional kind. Usually, such unintentional hilarity can be found in the pages of legacy media outlets who take the topic and themselves far too seriously.

Today’s example in this arena comes from the oh-so-serious leftist hacks at the Washington Post, a former news outlet that now functions purely as a propaganda outlet for the Democrat party and America’s intelligence community.

Share

As shown in the photo accompanying this story, the blaring headline to this wonderfully inept story reads “What happened to predictions of a ‘historic’ hurricane season?”

Even better is the even more clueless subhead: “The Atlantic just made history for an unexpected distinction: The longest stretch without a single late-summer cyclone. It has meteorologists concerned delicate public trust is at risk.” [Emphasis added.]

[spiritmander13]

An Essay Of The Fact That Project 2025 May Discontinue One Of The Most Interesting Parts Of The Government

Project 2025 is one of the worst proposals towards the potential government, maybe even the worst EVER in the about-250-year history of the United States, aiming to do so many things that you can easily deem as "At the very least immoral, At it's absolute worst unconstitutional". Many notable examples include, but are not limited to:

Taking away gender affirming care for minors

Destroys the Department of Education

Bans NSFW content (which DOES INCLUDE LGBTQ+ CONTENT AS A WHOLE) and abortions

Gives more power to Trump (if he were to win)

Could potentially reverse the 19th Amendment (Women's Right To Vote)

And more recently; disbanding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service for their involvement of the economy relating to climate change alarms. Those organizations help decipher the weather for America, so thank them for telling you it probably won't rain today.

"But Spiritmander, why do you specifically hate the part that says they'll disband the National Weather Service-"

Because of THIS.

I'm sure anybody in America knows WHAT THE HELL THIS SCREEN IS. But for you people who don't, THIS is the Emergency Alert System, a government-mandated system that is supposed to inform up to the whole country about threats. It replaced the Emergency Broadcast System on January 1st, 1997. You can already hear the SAME tones ringing in your ears when you look at this screen.

Yes indeed, there are screeching tones relating to this screen, and they are called SAME tones! SAME tones, or Specific Area Message Encoding tones, are those three tones you hear when this alert first pops up. As the name implies, the point of SAME tones is to decode the alert. Things like location, time, type of alert, and much more can be found in these tones. The other tone is the attention tone, which its entire purpose is in the name: it sounds bad just to get your attention.

Now that you know how the EAS works, I beg you to PLEASE LOOK AT THE HISTORY BEHIND IT. LOOK AT ALL OF THE FALSE ALARMS, THE HACKINGS. The Hawaii Ballistic Missile incident is not the only incident relating to the EAS.

Of course, here's a listing of most of the alerts. Notice something? They mostly come from the National Weather Service. Of course, this is because the site is the official NOAA site, but doesn't that say anything about why I'm worried that we may lose a fairly interesting part of the government due to Project 2025 wanting to disband NOAA and NWS? The EAS' strongest suite is in WEATHER. Flash Floods, Tornadoes, Wildfires, Hurricanes, Blizzards- THIS HAS PRETTY MUCH EVERY POSSIBLE WEATHER IN AMERICA UNDER ITS BELT.

So the next time you see an EAS alert on your TV, or an Amber Alert on your phone, reminder that Project 2025 may as well take a bit more of your safety that way by disbanding the EAS' strongest suite. Do not be scared of the tones radiating from the EAS or anything relating to it; just keep calm and listen to whatever it has to say.

TL;DR: Project 2025 is probably going to decommission the Emergency Alert System by disbanding NOAA and NWS and that means you won't be as safe as you are now perhaps.

[itmeblog]

Debate thoughts. I'm doing it for me. I have until the hour is up before I have to get back to work. I stop where I stop.

I'm gonna start where I never thought to start before: What's the point of a debate? Who is it for? What is it for?

A debate, this debate, in particular tends to be for undecided voters. If you've been paying attention to what's been going on nothing any of the candidates said... almost nothing the candidates said on 9.10 was any sort of surprise. For many undecided voters this is the first time they've been introduced to Harris and her policies.

Her goal (which she was nice enough to tell us): Introduce herself and her policies, provide an overview of her vision, goad Trump.

Trump's goal: To embarrass Harris, and connect her with Biden's presidency, uhhh something something (the man doesn't really plan)

Connecting Harris with Biden isn't a bad idea, in concept. Biden's ratings are relatively low, he's been painted as incompetent and the Afghanistan pull out is a heavy chain (I will point out that what happened in Afghanistan is as much Trump's fault as it is Biden's, Trump struck the deal and decreased the troops and gave the pull out date, Biden got a bad hand and decided he'd prefer to write apologies overseas than sacrifice the lives he was charged with. I'm going to refrain from assigning a morality to events that occurred.) The raised princes the troubled economy, the housing crisis are similarly connected to Trump's policies but were not felt until Biden was in office.) Connecting Harris to that, to the feeling of things, might have eaten a bit at her lead.

However, one must be able to articulate such ideas for them to work. Shouting "She is Biden" without context will likely only serve to baffle viewers. Particularly if they have already been trained to question what you've been saying.

Trump's problems start early. There is no plan.

The plan is, effectively, Project 2025 (including fun things like defunding the Dept of Education, and NOAA [weather authority] and banning porn, and proposing a national abortion ban. It's wildly unpopular) but it's not his plan, and he can't claim it. He must distance himself from it because Project 2025 is so unpopular he's been losing voters.

But there's literally nothing to replace it. Trump talks a big game (when he's coherent) but he has very little to back it up. In short, he's a con man. He takes any shape he thinks will benefit him. So he cannot answer a question by focusing on policy because there is no policy. He has two moves, denigrate Harris and point out the flaws with Biden's presidency (Which, once again, needs him to successfully chain Harris to it in order for people to care)

His second big problem: He's too online

Yes, yes, I know we always talk about how being chronically online frays the mind and gives you brain worms. Tumblr is actually an amazing example because there's a number of in jokes here that simply don't translate well to real world conversation. But I'm betting most of us here know our audiences well enough to recognize what will hold and what will not, and even if a faux pas occurs, will likely know how to eke out a fix.

Trump does not. He isn't thinking about undecided voters because he caters to his base, the already initiated. Those who follow him on Truth Social! If you listen to the debate, and you, like myself, are uninitiated to deep right wing circles there will be times when you have no idea what the man is talking about. He uses slang J6 (january 6th) and name drops people who have bigger swing in heavily right wing circles Viktor Orban (who I had to google, he is a Hungarian Leader who has been flattering and possibly insulting Trump in equal amount). He nearly lists all the Fox news reporters who I only vaguely recognize. A lot of things he says are thus somewhat indecipherable even when he does have a point.

The illegal immigrants being subjected to forced transitioning in jail on American Tax payer dollars (or whatever the fuck he said) has a real point (for transphobes) in that Kamala indicated in 2019 that she would not be averse to letting those who were already getting government provided healthcare have access to gender affirming care in prison. But he says it so nonsensically that it comes out as more conspiracy theories.

And then there's Kamala who is goading him. And I can tell you with reasonable certainty that being controlled by a woman is an emasculating experience for men like Trump. And it starts at the goddamn handshake.

And Harris is fucking clever about it (though I don't think she imagined it'd work quite this well) but on questions where Trump did have a leg to stand on , the increased border crossing during the Biden Admin and her failure to stem the flow of immigrants would make a decent talking point for more conservative voters. Which is why she chooses that moment to not only discredit him but also bring up his crowd size.

And goddamn if he doesn't fucking go off.

DAVID MUIR: Vice President Harris, thank you. President Trump, on that point I want to get your response. FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I would like to respond. DAVID MUIR: Let me just ask, though, why did you try to kill that bill and successfully so? That would have put thousands of additional agents and officers on the border. FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: First let me respond as to the rallies. She said people start leaving. People don't go to her rallies. There's no reason to go. And the people that do go, she's busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. So, she can't talk about that. People don't leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics. That's because people want to take their country back. Our country is being lost.

And he just can't regain control he goes further and further off the rails and dips into the QAnon bullshit which isn't appealing to people uninitiated to his particular... brand

We're a failing nation. And it happened three and a half years ago. And what, what's going on here, you're going to end up in World War 3, just to go into another subject. What they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country. And look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don't want to talk -- not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame. As far as rallies are concerned, as far -- the reason they go is they like what I say. They want to bring our country back. They want to make America great again. It's a very simple phrase. Make America great again. She's destroying this country. And if she becomes president, this country doesn't have a chance of success. Not only success. We'll end up being Venezuela on steroids.

...this is as far as I got.

[tardistimeladyyeah]

I will try to make this my last post about politics but no promises (I'm anxious and a political science student).

(P.S. If you don't read this whole long post, read the last chunk).

This will make sense at the end of this post, but it deserves to go up here: We can't help people overseas if we're burning, and we're holding a match over a vat of gasoline. The voters are holding the match, the reelection of Trump is the match, and the United States is the gasoline. The ensuing flame is the Civil War they want so badly. We will have nobody to blame but ourselves if we drop that match.

Is there a genocide in Palestine? Yes. Does the United States need to separate themselves from Israel until they stop and align ourselves with stopping it? Yes. Is it worth destroying our lives at home over just because you couldn't vote for Biden? No (LET ME EXPLAIN BEFORE YOU LOSE YOUR MIND).

People protesting against the genocide will not be heard if Trump is reelected. Have you heard of Project 2025? Essentially, it is the plan to dismantle the current system that we have in the United States. This is not a good thing because it was created by the Hertiage Foundation, a far-right group that supports Donald Trump and his ambition to become a dictator (he is connected to 2025. He is lying when he says he's not connected).

What would a second Trump presidency mean? It will take away rights that most Americans have enjoyed for decades (and centuries if you're a white man). You would not be able protest against the genocide because the insurrection act may be invoked, which would deploy the military to quash protests. Trump may force social media companies to promote far-right views (meaning no more talking about Palestine and helping people by providing information) (Source: ACLU link below). A second Trump presidency would bring a lot of other things listed on both Project 2025 AND Agenda 47 (basically diet Project 2025). It would make abortion difficult to access NATIONWIDE (ban mifepristone and Plan B (the morning after pill) via the Comstock Act, it would ban birth control, it would disband federal agencies such as NOAA (and the NWS by proxy) and the Department of Education (and severely restrict other agencies), put loyalists into integral positions, fire 150,000 federal employees (and probably more), and so much more involving the LGBTQ+ community and immigrants, among other things.

Yes, you should be upset about Palestine. Yes, you should be advocating against the genocide. HOWEVER, THAT DOES NOT MAKE CALLING THE ELECTION A DISTRACTION OR MINIMIZING IT OKAY.

This election has the capability of determining the next steps forward for this country. Yes, both options aren't very appealing, but it's worth noting that, as much as you might not want to admit it, Biden has done good things. Those don't overpower helping fund a genocide, but it's also worth noting that Congress has the power of the purse (power to spend money) and the president doesn't. Do they approve the proposal? Yes. Did Biden threaten to stop funding if Israel continued? Yes. I believe he hasn't because he's worried about losing support (this election has serious consequences and I think he knows that) from people who are only voting for him because he's not Trump (a wannabe Hitler) and he doesn't have that kind of power. Executive orders can only go so far and can be thrown out by a judge in minutes.

So, what am I trying to say here? This election has consequences. Project 2025 is real and the Supreme Court gave Trump the okay to start implementing the more egregious parts of it under the guise of "official acts." We may not even know what those "official acts" will be. They likely involve nukes everywhere, including Palestine. Remember when Nikki Haley wrote something to the effect of "kill them all" on a missile being sent to Israel (or something)? Trump will do that. He will blow that entire continent up and say he stopped the tension in the middle east when really all he did was kill a bunch of people. Sure, you can say the same about Biden because of weapons and resources sent to Israel on his approval. But, he won't use America's nukes to do that. In fact, he wants to negotiate the end of the war.

If your single issue is Palestine, you shouldn't vote for a third party. You shouldn't vote for Trump. You should vote for Biden because he'll preserve your right to free speech and non violent protest. Trump won't.

Call him Genocide Joe or whatever all you want. Just know that Trump is worse and you're letting him win if you're in a swing state and vote third party. That's how he won in 2016. Enough people voted for Jill Stein in swing states to give Trump an electoral college victory. Look at the numbers (all of which came from Ballotpedia, a great resource).

Michigan gave their electoral college votes to Trump, but only by 0.2%. Who got more votes that, if they voted for Clinton, would've flipped the state for her? The other votes (including Jill Stein). Those votes were 5.2%, which may have flipped the state blue (Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_battleground_states,_2016) .

Wisconsin gave their votes to Trump in 2016, with 47.2% of voters voting for him, 46.5% voting for Clinton. How many people voted for third parties? 6.3%. Once again, enough votes to flip the state for Clinton if voters decided to go with her instead. (Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_battleground_states,_2016)

Pennsylvania gave their votes to Trump in 2016, with 48.6% voting for him and 47.9% voting for Clinton. How many people voted third party? 3.6%. It was close, but it wouldn't have been if people didn't vote third party. (Source: https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_battleground_states,_2016)

I'm not against third parties, HOWEVER, our government is structured as a two party system and now is not the time to test a three party system out when we're on the brink of fascism. Don't not vote either. Not voting is just as bad in this situation. In fact, not voting (unless you literally can't) is not good. I don't care if you don't think your vote won't matter. It does. Look back at the 2016 swing state numbers. It makes a massive difference.

This is not a time to tell people not to vote or to vote third party. This is a time to say that there will never be a perfect candidate and that you have to make sacrifices on policy to preserve or create new policy that is beneficial. This is a time to defeat fascism by coming together and voting for the lesser of two evils. Everyone in the United States will lose rights, some more than others. But, Project 2025 will impact everybody, especially those fighting for Palestine. Don't believe Republicans when they say they're stepping away from it. They're not. If they're voted in, they will do it. Remember, they said the same thing about Roe and look at what they did! Heck, I'm writing this from a state where abortion is illegal, surrounded by other states where abortion is illegal. It's already a crisis and it will continue to be one until we fix things at the federal level because it will stay illegal until a state question goes through (I often say that good things only happen where I live because of state questions and that is unfortunately true).

We can't help people overseas if we're burning, and we're holding a match over a vat of gasoline. The reelection of Trump is the match and the United States is the gasoline. The ensuing flame is the Civil War they want. We will have nobody to blame but ourselves.

All I can do is hope that this got to some people and made you change your mind. But know that they'll keep rebranding 2025 if they lose. You have to vote consistently against Republican presidential administration until they abandon the idea or until it blows up in their faces. Call me a Biden apologist all you want, I don't care. I'm on your side, but you don't realize how bad another Trump presidency would be. You wouldn't be able to advocate for causes like Palestine anymore. You may have to join the military. You may have to detransition. You may have to stop doing a lot of things that you took for granted if Trump wins again. Sure, some of us survived the first one, but a lot of us didn't and significantly more of us won't the second time around (oh, also, he wants to be President forever. They're going to throw out term limits if they try hard enough. They're going to fudge voting results to make elections look like something out of Russia). Nobody wants this (save for the people who advocate for it and support it) and I don't think you do, either.

Look at the breakdowns of Project 2025. If you don't want that, don't be complacent. Don't feel defeated (even though it's hard sometimes. Trust me, my state would vote for Trump even if he was a bag of rocks and it's hard to not feel an impending sense of doom until my passport gets here). Register to vote at vote.org and check your registration status if you think you're registered.

Don't vote against your own interests this election cycle. You might not get to vote for your interests ever again if the wrong person wins.

Some more important links:

https://www.vote.org/

https://www.vox.com/politics/360318/project-2025-trump-policies-abortion-divorce

https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do.amp?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=17212721431126&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Farticles%2Fc977njnvq2do

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/noaa-project-2025-weather/678987/

Some of these articles may mention Republicans stepping back from these views. DON'T. BELIEVE. THEM. Take it from me, a person who lives in a Republican trifecta (A.K.A. one of Dante's circles of hell. I haven't decided which one, yet). Republicans lie. They lie and lie and lie so much I'm shocked their noses haven't suffocated most of the state.

[starsciencees]

Hey, while we're talking auroras - let's talk space weather!

Many people probably got their Aurora predictions from SWPC, which stands for space weather prediction center. This is a center run by NOAA to predict space weather. But what is space weather?

When people talk about space weather, they're primarily talking about things like the solar wind and solar flares. The sun puts out streams of particles and radiation all the time, with occasional larger bursts. The Earth's magnetic field is the primary shield for protecting the Earth from these harmful particles and radiation. Without the magnetic field, life on Earth would not be possible. Mars lost its atmosphere millions of years ago, which is why it can no longer support any kind of life. Scientists think that this happened because Mars's magnetic field is not strong enough to protect it from the solar wind because it doesn't have a large, rotating iron core like Earth does.

Even though the magnetic field of Earth protects us from space weather in most cases, during particularly large events such as what happened this week, we are still strongly affected by the Sun. Which makes sense! The sun is hugely influential on the earth in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is with space weather.

However, solar flares and CMEs have a much larger effect than just causing Aurora. during solar storms, there are regularly GPS and communications blackouts and damage to satellites (including this week!). During a solar storm in the last year, in fact, multiple starlink satellites were pushed out of orbit by the force of the solar wind and destroyed. Of course GPS and communications blackouts cause a lot of problems for people who depend on those systems. And there have been examples of particularly large CMEs which have the potential to do a lot more damage. During a solar storm of similar magnitude, some power transformers in Canada, I believe, were destroyed about 10 years ago.

Space weather is also particularly difficult to predict. The sun is very far away and we don't actually have very much information about it, although we have many satellites monitoring it. Right now a lot of the data comes from ACE, GOES, and SDO satellites, but it's still impossible to predict solar flares with any kind of accuracy. The best we can do is seeing it when it happens, which gives us about 2 to 3 days of warning. There are some systems going up in the near future which should increase our capacity for seeing space weather quickly, including one mission that I work on called IMAP. But unless something significantly changes in the flare prediction field, it's still going to be a few days of warning at most.

Space weather prediction is a really important part of NOAA and NASA that is not well known by the average person. Recently, Congress has pretty significantly cut funding to NASA and there is a lot of uncertainty right now. This is unfortunate for a lot of reasons, but space weather will have bigger and bigger effects on our society, the more that we depend on satellites and GPS communication.

If you are American, and you think this is something that's important for us to be able to to understand more fully, I would ask you to please call your Congresspeople and express the importance of NASA funding to them. If you aren't American, I know ESA is also working on some space weather projects, and it's possible other space agencies are working on similar things as well.

If you would like to learn more about space weather, spaceweather.com is a great resource, as well as SWPC. You can also read about historical events such as the Carrington event, which is the largest recorded solar flare. It was so powerful that you could send a telegraph over the wire without power - a similar event could be devastating to our society.