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Tag: Update

  • Restless Times

    A recent credit card outage in France was blamed on botched payments system update. The reason for ATM failure in Scotland was not clear from the same post.

    My thoughts:

    Resolution Weekend?

    Cyber attack?

    Beginnings of the Zapad 2025?

    Considering the banks are claiming it was just a botched update, my paranoia instinct would tend to cyber attack (private or foreign public sector) or frenzied preparations for Central Bank Digital Currencies supposedly becoming to EU this October.

    @@@@@@@@@@@@

    It is speculated that French government will collapse in this budget crisis. Belt tightening proposals include removal of two holidays: Easter Monday and May 8th (celebrating victory of WWII) to ‘increase the productivity’ by making people work more for the good of the country (who decides how the extra profits are used?). Aside from reducing the well-being of working people, I think this to be an arrogant display of cultural insensitivity, especially the claim that Easter Monday does not have any religious significance.

    There is also chatter that France is going to need IMF bailout next week.

    Meanwhile, French government is demanding that the hospital system be prepared for mass casualty event by March 2026.

    I have low expectations for the quality of life during the next few years.

    Update Sep 08, 2025:

    The French prime minister Bayroy has lost the confidence vote, and will reportedly submit his resignation to Macron on Tuesday.

  • Jigsaw Puzzles – 5

    To apologize for the vanished free jigsaw puzzles, here are two until I design more. These are photographs from around Berkeley, CA, which I gave more color and adjusted brightness and contrast. As before, click the picture to open a jigsaw puzzle and, please, have fun!

    Weed

    Unbothered. Moisturized. On my lane. Happy. Focused. Flourishing.

    Humble but resilient weed (80 pieces).

    Colored Magnolia Flower

    ( 130 pieces)

  • Update on K2-18b

    There might not be hycean worlds, that is worlds with hydrogen rich atmosphere over liquid ocean.

    A recent study could explain the spectral signature of another potential hycean world, TOI 270d, by an atmosphere over a magma ocean, an environment not conductive to our kind of oceanic of organic life. Bummer.

    But a lava world with boiling atmosphere is interesting to me – those were the conditions of early Earth during Hadean Eon, just after forming. Once the lava cooled enough to form a crust and tolerate liquid water, we got our early ocean, either from meteors or from inside the mantle.

    Earth was small enough to cool soon, now only the ferrous core is molten, maintaining the Earth’s magnetic field and volcanism, both essential for life. Magnetic field shields us from space radiation whereas volcanism recycles back to surface nutrients, gases and water that would otherwise have sedimented or seeped into ground.

    The reason we have oceans in the surface is volcanism, which pushes water towards the surface. Yet, lithosphere contains water, maybe multiple times the amount in world’s oceans.

    So, while a hycean world is not proven, it is not impossible, either. I wonder if maybe, once a large lava world with lots of hydrogen and water vapor cools down enough to have an ocean, a hycean world arises.