Scorpions rock you like a hurricane tab

Without the iPod, we may have never known the iPhone. And yet, it was the iPhone that absorbed the iPod whole and relegated it to the category of tech you would maybe only want, never again strictly need. (Representational image: Insung Yoon via Unsplash) Back in 2006, I was given my first iPod: The first-gen iPod Nano. It was my father’s gentle way of creating a diversion from my blinkers-on desire for a Moto Razr that all us college kids were hopelessly infatuated with. And it worked. Like millions, the iPod was my first brush with an Apple device - this was the third iteration of the iPod, after iPod Classic and the iPod Mini - and I was instantly enamoured. Unboxing was not a thing back then, nor was ASMR – but ripping that plastic off this black box was deeply satisfying. The click wheel! The tiny colour display! The possibility of carrying 500 songs (mine was the budget 2GB version) and photos everywhere! All in a device so slim and tiny it fits into that little pocket … [Read more...] about The iPod and my musical education

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin With fires continuing to ravage the West Coast , Hurricane Sally making landfall with large scale flooding, and several other tropical storms developing, there are several extreme weather events to discuss this week. I’m going to focus on the fires in California, Oregon and Washington because the threat of massive wildfires, both in frequency and intensity, is rising worldwide. The science of weather, and the application of fire weather forecasting, plays a big role in helping cities, wildfire management and the public prepare and possibly reduce the risk of wildfires. So, what is fire weather? To explain we start with the fire triangle. All fires need three things —fuel, oxygen, and heat—to ignite and be sustained. Weather can influence each of these factors, which is why it is called fire weather. Air temperature contributes to wild fires as a heat source.  Building materials and vegetation ignite faster and burn … [Read more...] about The Science Of Fire Weather And Using It To Predict Wildfires

Billionaire brothers John and Patrick Collison built Stripe into one of the world’s most-hyped, highest valued — and profitable! — startups, worth some $95 billion. Now they must stave off going from disruptor to disrupted. I t’s just before five o’clock, and Stripe Cofounder John Collison is preparing to address his hundreds of Ireland-based employees on the top floor of his headquarters in Dublin’s “Silicon Docks” District. Such regular Friday town halls, which are also simulcast to New York, San Francisco, Singapore and anywhere else its 7,000 employees want to tune in from over Zoom, are an almost sacred tradition at Stripe, the payments company that Collison cofounded with big brother Patrick in 2010. With Patrick away getting married, it’s up to John, 31 and with a dusting of gray hair now topping his boyish face, to field questions. It could get contentious: There’s a social media “kerfuffle” playing out over Twitter this week: Stripe has been accused in a … [Read more...] about The Collison Brothers Built Stripe Into A $95 Billion Unicorn With Eye-Popping Financials. Inside Their Plan To Stay On Top

Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin In the foothills of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain front range —- an area well known for cutting-edge space technology —- Jack Burns, a longtime astrophysics professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder —- may finally be seeing a decades-old vision of a low frequency lunar radio telescope coming to fruition. Since the mid-1960s, Burns and colleagues have been saying that our Moon’s far side would make a perfect spot for low frequency radio astronomy. “It’s the most radio quiet location in the inner solar system,” Burns told me in his Boulder office. In order to get this quiet, you would have to go all the way out to the equivalent orbit of Jupiter in order to reduce the amount of radio noise coming from Earth down to the same level it is on the Moon’s far side, he says. But unlike previous initiatives to make a lunar far side telescope array a reality, this time commercial space technology’s accessibility has created a … [Read more...] about Bezos’ Blue Origin May Ferry Futuristic Radio Telescope To Moon’s Far Side

Stand-up comedian, YouTuber, and author Sorabh Pant. Sorabh Pant is a stand-up comedian, author, YouTuber, former television writer, and founder of comedy company East India Comedy. After writing novels such as The Wednesday Soul: The Afterlife with Sunglasses (2011), Under Delhi (2014) and Pawan: The Flying Accountant (2017), doing two comedy specials for Amazon Prime Video, and travelling extensively with his show “Pant on Fire” – also the name of his YouTube channel – he is out with a new book titled Vote For Pant (Rupa, 2022). An email interview with him: What made you try your hand at non-fiction with your fourth book 'Vote for Pant'? Frankly, I thought it would be easier to write than fiction. As a comedian I'm essentially writing non-fiction on a daily or at least weekly basis. During the pandemic, there were no stages. So, I decided to write stand-up for an audience of myself. Since it is non-fiction, it couldn't just be written as stand-up; that would not … [Read more...] about Sorabh Pant: “30 pages is just not enough to get an advance from publishers – which was my end goal”