#Benoit Billion

[athenastits]

I'd actually kill to see Stephen Merrick get Benoit Blanc'd

[whim-prone-pirate]

rian johnson has managed to evade all common ethical problems in his screenwriting and i want everyone to know that the knives out mysteries are a perfect representation of how to write about a certain community respectfully AND simultaneously not make a big deal of how good you are at being a diverse writer.

in knives out and glass onion, both main characters are women who have been wronged by the other main character(s)—in marta's case, she experiences xenophobia from the thrombey's constantly; in andi's, she came up with a billion dollar idea which was stolen by a white man. when she took him to court for it, her entire friend group sided with this man; this directly affects helen after andi's death.

andi and marta's stories specifically represent real experiences for women who are minorities in america, but the stories are told without being too ham-fisted or obvious about it. these aren't stories about racism, xenophobia, and misogyny, they're stories involving racism, xenophobia, and misogyny, which i feel is something you don't often see. they're not triyng to prove a point by telling these stories, they're just stories being told—it's a difference that's hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. it's got less of a looking-into-the-camera-for-emphasis vibe.

alongside this, benoit was never a white/male savior to neither helen nor marta (respectively). he helped helen when she came to him about andi and he stood behind marta when he saw the tox report, but he never took over the case and they were never treated like damsels in distress. in the end, helen and marta took control of their own revenge and benoit nudged everyone else to the side while they did it. benoit is not the hero of these stories, helen and marta are.

this is good fucking writing!!!! i need film bros to be positively insufferable about rian johnson NEOW

edit 12/26/22: i've been told that ana de armas is a white latina. genuinely i did not know, she always looked brown to me and i haven't seen her in anything other than knives out, that's truly my bad. i've updated the post now to change the language about marta, other than that everything remains!

[myersesque]

one thing i love abt benoit (there are many - he's one of my favourite characters ever) is that he's fully aware of how much these people underestimate him. he's disarmingly sweet and seems to ramble endlessly about the most insignificant things, and tops it off with some good ol' southern charm. he knows that none of the rich assholes he often has for suspects sees him as a threat - they're underestimating him from the second they meet him. he knows this, and so he uses it to his advantage, rambling about just the right topics, asking just the right innocent questions, so by the time they remember he's the world's greatest detective, he's already got them - and i will gladly keep eating that shit up for another billion movies if they keep making em.

[animentality]

glass onion trended for like a solid week, if not more. puss in boots is still trending, and has been for at least over a week.

meanwhile, i still haven't seen avatar 2 content. no theories, no fanart, not even fans thirsting.

bizarre.

avatar is such a bizarre mega billion dollar franchise. a cgi spectacle bereft of cultural staying power and creative energy.

the normies might watch it, and throw their cash in a colorful wet dumpster, but the artists of tumblr have SPOKEN.

they are thirsting over that white wolf and headcanoning weird benoit blanc scenarios.

god bless us all.

impeccably deranged tastes. as always. good show, tumblr.

[apod]

2024 February 18

Hoag's Object: A Nearly Perfect Ring Galaxy Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble; Processing: Benoit Blanco

Explanation: Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Arthur Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a ball of much redder stars that are likely much older. Between the two is a gap that appears almost completely dark. How Hoag's Object formed, including its nearly perfectly round ring of stars and gas, remains unknown. Genesis hypotheses include a galaxy collision billions of years ago and the gravitational effect of a central bar that has since vanished. The featured photo was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and reprocessed using an artificially intelligent de-noising algorithm. Observations in radio waves indicate that Hoag's Object has not accreted a smaller galaxy in the past billion years. Hoag's Object spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 600 million light years away toward the constellation of the Snake (Serpens). Many galaxies far in the distance are visible toward the right, while coincidentally, visible in the gap at about seven o'clock, is another but more distant ring galaxy.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240218.html

[fipindustries]

i saw a review of glass onion that inadvertently made my opinion of it go lower.

apparently that scene where benoit blanc comes to the realization that the millionaire guy is actually an idiot was supposed to feel like a genuine reveal? like some kind of big revelation that was supposed to recontextualize the film up to that point?

at first i thought that scene was meant to be merely benoit stalling for time to let the other lady get her bearings and gather the evidence but the way they cut back to all those scenes of him using words wrong to sound smart was supposed to make you jump at the realization you didnt catch that clue and now you have to re-examine everything you thought about the movie, plus the way benoit makes a huge deal out of it, it all tells me that we were supposed to be impressed by this.

and im like, seriously? the movie is not particularly subtle about it, the guy is obviously a phony. he is clearly meant to be an idiot, like yeah, of course. not even in a "the clues were all there and i picked up on the subtext", i mean in a "this is the blatant text of the story". why is the movie patting its back as if its revealing something surprising at all?

am i supposed to be like "oh my gosh! if this billionaire is revealed to be a dumbass when i assumed he had earned his billions... who other billionaires might this apply to in real life??????"

such a stupid stupid movie

[cuchufletapl]

It's so funny to me that the Avatar thing is repeating itself. The Way of Water has made more than 1 billion dollars at the box office globally but I'm seeing absolutely no one commenting it in earnest. No gifs, no meta posts, no memes, no one changing their icon to a character they liked. I'm sure they're there somewhere, there can be a fan community for absolutely anything, but if you compare it to when Encanto came out, or Glass Onion right now — they made/are making way less money, but people wouldn't shut up about them. Right now I can't scroll for too seconds before finding someone posting a screencap of Benoit Blanc or analysing the movie.

My brothers went to see Avatar 2 a couple of days ago and all they had to say was, "Impressive special effects. The story exists, I guess."

It's a spectacle. Fireworks you'll see any other summer night that you'll forget a day later. Doomed to have no real cultural impact because its story and characters have no substance lmao

[warningsine]

A densely wrought exploration of Mandelbrot equations, the Droste effect, the Barnsley theorem, and other thorny problems of mathematics.

“How long is the coastline of Cornwall, UK?” That’s a question that would have sent Newton and even Einstein into the depths of despair. It’s owing to an insight by Polish-born mathematician Benoit B. Mandelbrot that we can map out the three-dimensional world in which we live to some degree of certainty thanks to fractals, which, in nature, reveal themselves to be miniature images of the larger whole: “the magnified detail,” writes Cambridge econometrician Linton, “is exactly the same as the whole thing.”

The attendant conceptual difficulty is that any map that is sufficiently detailed to reveal the whole accurately will be the size of the whole thing itself: A map of the universe would be the size of the universe, a thought that would have pleased Jorge Luis Borges. Lacking room and the wherewithal to prove the point with that map, mathematicians have come to develop numerical shortcuts—but those shortcuts are extraordinarily demanding of data, such that the GPS in your car relies on billions of numbers even as “nature…uses fractals for reasons of economy.”

This is not a book for the mathematically weak of heart. Although it’s admirably short, certainly as compared to what might have happened to the discussion in the hands of a Douglas Hofstadter, each page bristles with equations and heady prose: “The pattern is clear; if you need l unit objects to make it m times larger then the number of dimensions the object has is d where l = md.”

If that sort of writing is your cup of pi, then Linton’s compact explication of fractals will be child’s play; others will be flummoxed.A small treasure for those who enjoy brain teasers and mathematical formulas.

[twnkwlf]

the fact that even though benoit clearly lives with a man but they still never actually unambiguously say that he's gay or that his roommate is his husband...he's just "phillip"...and the fact that phillip calls him "blanc"....and even though the cast and crew confirm that he's gay off screen, the text never actually affirms it, just leaves it up for interpretation....not to be a fucking killjoy but that's actually some cowardly bitch ass sus piece of shit late stage capitalist billion dollar fucky ass streaming service bullshit

[meltorights]

ok so a billion of years ago a super advanced alien race called the leviathans created the reapers( the group thats trying to kill you) in order to try and solve the dispute between organics and synthetics the reapers solution was to kill all species in the galaxy advanced enough to create synthetic life including the leviathans and than to come back every 50.000 years to do it again. the people who existed in the 50.000 year cycle before ours called the protheans created the blueprints for the machine called the crucible but never finished it due to disputes about how to use it and than you find the blueprints in the middle of mass effects 3 with no hints towards it or mentions of it so it is pretty much just a deus ex machina

at first i was like "this is so advanced and so stupid" but then like benoit blanc i realized it was just stupid

[nuadox]

Could ‘Peer Community In’ be the revolution in scientific publishing we’ve all been waiting for?

- By Denis Bourguet , Etienne Rouzies , Thomas Guillemaud , The Conversation -

In 2017, three researchers from the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE), Denis Bourguet, Benoit Facon and Thomas Guillemaud, founded Peer Community In (PCI), a peer-review-based service for recommending preprints (referring to the version of an article that a scientist submits to a review committee). 

The service greenlights articles and makes them and their reviews, data, codes and scripts available on an open-access basis. Out of this concept, PCI paved the way for researchers to regain control of their review and publishing system in an effort to increase transparency in the knowledge production chain.

Birth of an idea

The idea for the project emerged in 2016 following an examination of several failings in the science publishing system. Two major problems are the lack of open access for most publications, and the exorbitant publishing and subscription fees placed on institutions.

Even in France, where the movement for open science has been gaining momentum, half of publications are still protected by access rights. This means that they are not freely accessible to citizens, journalists, or any scientists affiliated with institutions that cannot afford to pay scientific journal subscriptions. These restrictions on the free circulation of scientific information are a hindrance to the sharing of scientific knowledge and ideas at large.

Moreover, the global turnover for the academic publishing industry in science, technology and medicine is estimated at US$10 billion for every 3 million articles published. This is a hefty sum, especially given that profit margins enjoyed by major publishing houses have averaged at 35-40% in recent years. Mindful of these costs and margins, the PCI founders wanted scientists and institutions to take back control of their own publishing. And so, in 2017, the Peer Community In initiative was born.

By science communities for science communities

PCI sets up communities of scientists who publicly review and approve pre-prints in their respective fields, while applying the same methods as those used for conventional scientific journals. Under this peer-review system, editors (known as ‘recommenders’) carry out one or more review rounds before deciding whether to reject or approve the preprint submitted to the PCI. Unlike virtually all traditional journals, if an article is approved, the editor must write a recommendation outlining its content and merits.

This recommendation is then published along with all other elements involved in the editorial process (including reviews, editorial decisions, authors’ responses, etc.) on the site of the PCI responsible for organising the preprint review. This level of transparency is what makes PCI unique within the current academic publishing system.

Lastly, the authors upload the finalised, approved and recommended version of the article – free of charge and on an open access basis – to the preprint server or open archive.

A revolution unfolding in science publishing

PCI is making traditional journal publication obsolete. Due to its de facto peer-reviewed status, the finalised, recommended version of the preprint is already suitable for citation. In France, PCI-recommended preprints are recognised by several leading institutions, review committees and recruitment panels at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). At the Europe-wide level, the reviewed preprints are recognised by the European Commission and funding agencies such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

PCI is also unique in its ability to separate peer review from publishing, given that approved and recommended preprints can still be submitted by authors for publication in scientific journals. Many journals even advertise themselves as ‘PCI-friendly’, meaning that when they receive submissions of PCI-recommended preprints, they take into account the reviews already completed by PCI in order to speed up their editorial decision-making.

New ground broken in 2021

This initiative was originally intended exclusively for PCIs to review and recommend preprints, but authors were sometimes frustrated to only see their recommended preprint on dedicated servers (despite being reviewed and recommended, preprints are still poorly indexed and not always recognised as genuine articles) or having to submit it for publication in a journal at the risk of being subjected to another round of review. However, since the creation of Peer Community Journal, scientists now have access to direct, unrestricted publishing of articles recommended by disciplinary PCIs.

Peer Community Journal is a diamond journal, meaning one that publishes articles with no fees charged to authors or readers. All content can be read free of charge without a pay-wall or other access restrictions. Designed as a general journal, Peer Community Journal currently comprises 16 sections (corresponding to the PCIs in operation) and is able to publish any preprint recommended by a disciplinary PCI.

An innovative model on the rise

Currently there are 16 disciplinary PCIs (including PCI Evolutionary Biology, PCI Ecology, PCI Neuroscience and PCI Registered Reports) and several more are on the way. Together, they boast 1,900 editors, 130 members in the editorial committees and more than 4,000 scientists-users overall. PCI and Peer Community Journal are recognised by 130 institutions worldwide, half of which (including the University of Perpignan Via Domitia) support the initiative financially. The number of French academics who are familiar with and/or who use PCI varies greatly between scientific communities. The percentage is very high among communities with a dedicated PCI (e.g., the ecology or evolutionary biology communities, with PCI Ecology and PCI Evol Biol, wherein an estimated half of scientists are now familiar with the system), but remains low among those without one.

To date, more than 600 articles have been reviewed through the system. Biology maintains a significant lead, but more and more fields are popping up, including archaeology and movement sciences. There is still plenty of scope for growth, in terms of greater investment from those familiar with the system and the creation of new PCIs by scientists from fields not yet represented by the current communities.

Other open-science initiatives have been set up across the globe, but none have quite managed to emulate the PCI model. Mostly limited to offers of peer-reviewed preprints (often directly or indirectly requiring a fee), these initiatives, such as Review Commons and PreReview, do not involve an editorial decision-making process and are therefore unable to effect change within the current publishing system.

While the PCI model is undeniably growing and now garners more than 10,000 unique visitors per month across all PCI websites, the creation of Peer Community Journal shows that the traditional academic publishing system is still intact. And it will doubtless endure into the near future, even though the preprint approval offered will hopefully become a sustainable model due to its cost-effectiveness and transparency across the board.

In the meantime, PCI and Peer Community Journal present a viable alternative for publishing diamond open access articles that are completely free of charge for authors and readers. In these changing times of unbridled, unjustifiable inflation placed on subscription and publishing prices, numerous institutions and universities are backing the rise of these diamond journals. PCI and Peer Community Journal embrace this dynamic by empowering all willing scientific communities to become agents of their own review and publishing process.

When science and society nurture each other, we reap the benefits of their mutual dialogue. Research can draw from citizens’ own contributions, improve their lives and even inform public decision-making. This is what we aim to show in the articles published in our series “Science and Society, A New Dialogue”, which is supported by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

Denis Bourguet, Directeur de recherches, Inrae; Etienne Rouzies, Conservateur des bibliothèques, Référent Science ouverte, Université de Perpignan, and Thomas Guillemaud, Directeur de recherches, Inrae

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

--

Read Also

Research: The rise of preprints in the COVID-19 era

[desicosplay]

Cosplans!

(cause I keep forgetting which ones I want to do)

--- (to be built/something missing) ---

Ti'zo from Pyre

The Pure Vessel from Hollow Knight

Saheeli Rai from Magic the Gathering

82 White Chain Born in Emptiness Returns to Subdue Evil from Kill 6 Billion Demons

Howl from Howl's Moving Castle

Sophie from Howl's Moving Castle

Calcifer from Howl's Moving Castle

Ahsoka from Star Wars

Shaak Ti from Star Wars

Sleeper from Citizen Sleeper

Ankhita from Citizen Sleeper

Aaravos from the Dragon Prince

Emily from the Corpse Bride

Morana from Castlevania

Hector from Castlevania

Benoit Blanc from the Knives Out franchise

Mermista from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

--- (completed, but need to remember) ---

Kali from Stranger Things (completed)

Shouta Aizawa from My Hero Academia (completed)

The Artificer, my OC (completed)

[tritonmarketresearchamey]

Automotive Telematics Market: Transforming Fleet Management

As per the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, around 79.1 million motor vehicles were produced globally in 2021. Also, logistics services have witnessed substantial growth globally, spearheaded by the e-commerce industry. These developments have paved the path for telematics solutions, especially in fleet management, offering real-time data on driving styles and vehicular movement. According to Triton’s estimates, the global automotive telematics market is set to garner $435.88 billion by 2030, progressing with a CAGR of 16.06% during the forecast years 2023-2030.

With the integration of sensors and cameras, vehicles have emerged as mobile data centers generating a high volume of data. From documenting in-vehicle infotainment choices to navigation routes, telematics has redefined the automotive industry since its inception. And the advent of smart city initiatives has fueled smart mobility programs for real-time traffic management, systematic emission control, and predictive parking systems.

Automotive Telematics: A One-Stop Solution for Fleet Management

With surged competition and growing cost pressures, fleet managers and proprietors require data insights to streamline operations. In this regard, telematics fleet systems significantly help reduce fuel costs (almost 10%) while also decreasing downtime with preventive maintenance. Here, onboard diagnostics-based telematics offers well-timed system alerts by capturing the vehicle’s location, speed, mileage, etc. Triton’s analysis portrays that fleet or asset management leads the studied market in terms of application with 34.78% in 2022, closely followed by safety & security.

Moreover, with the rise of software-as-a-service (SaaS), telematics systems have gained popularity among small businesses to optimize their fleet with features like route planning to maintenance scheduling. Several small as well as large fleet owners are opting for two-wheelers integrated with vehicle telematics due to affordability and convenience. Our research indicates that the two-wheeler category is predicted to witness the fastest growth at a CAGR of 18.38% during the forecast period 2023-2030 in the vehicle segment, surpassing passenger and commercial categories.

Embedded telematics type, expected to observe the fastest growth at CAGR 15.58%, is another trend that has upgraded fleet operations. This system provides autonomous driver assistance, GPS-based navigation, emergency solutions, etc., enabling vehicles to transmit stored data via the internet. For instance, in Feb 2023, Wejo announced partnering with Mercedes-Benz Connectivity Services to offer customized connected vehicle data to participating cloud-connected fleet vehicles in Europe. This will enable fleet managers to utilize data straight from embedded OEM hardware and support fleet services.

In a press release, Benoit Joly, Chief Commercial Officer at Wejo, said, “With Mercedes-Benz Connectivity Services, we can deliver TSPs and FMS companies more data-driven, enhanced fleet management insights for their fleet customers and help improve safety and drive efficiencies on the roadways.”

China: An emerging leader in the Asia-Pacific market

China continues to host the world’s largest vehicle market in terms of annual sales and manufacturing output. In recent years, third-party logistics providers have surged their long-term capacity and digital capabilities. In this regard, the establishment of China Logistics Group, a merger of five-stated owned companies, redefined the logistics industry operations, creating a high demand for advanced solutions like telematics to mitigate risks associated with freight movement. Such developments are thus likely to drive the Asia-Pacific automotive telematics market with a CAGR of 17.11% during 2023-2030.

Connectivity Demand Drives Strategic Contributions

Competition among players differs in terms of price, data security, and product quality. The race to provide a broad application of telematics to customers has resulted in various strategic steps, from partnerships to launches.

Listed below are some of the latest steps by players to expand their footing:

In February 2023, Qualcomm introduced Snapdragon Auto 5G Modern-RF Gen 2 at Mobile World Congress, adding to its growing Snapdragon Digital Chassis connected car portfolio.

In January 2023, Uplight partnered with Rolling Energy Resources (RER) to develop an EV grid edge solution to manage grid load with the help of telematics.

Also, in January 2023, Lighting eMotors launched the ‘Fleet Planner’ to enable managers to receive a customized operating cost analysis and carbon reduction metrics.

Walmart, in July 2022, collaborated with Platform Science to equip the retailer’s truck fleet with telematics devices.

Technological Advancements Prompt Growth Opportunities for OEMs

Rapid innovation in telematics and interface design enables better driving experiences while benefiting the entire automotive ecosystem. In this regard, telematics systems integrated with cutting-edge technologies like AI, machine learning, and voice assistance assist OEMs in significantly reducing costs and cycle times in the latest models. These steps to differentiate product lines hold the potential to widen the scope of the smart fleet management market. Aligning with this, the rising technological advancements to shorten production time via real-time performance statistics of vital components creates opportunities for the automotive telematics market.

FAQ:

Q1) What is the size of the automotive telematics market?

In 2022, the global automotive telematics market obtained revenue worth $121.12 billion and is expected to reap $435.88 billion by 2030.

Q2) Which are the key types integrated into telematics devices?

Embedded, integrated smartphones, and tethered are key types integrated into telematics devices.

[wrasslin-lps]

Smackdown! vs Raw: Part 8 - Wrestlemania.

Another cold open, except this time it’s LuLu limping his way to the ring. To his shock, he’s cheered by the honkeys of WWE. They cheer him, and boo when he mentions Eddie, Cena and Vince, and then cheers when he says they couldn’t finish the job. Between this and the Big Show, LuLu has been left rattled. 

LuLu calls out McMahon, who gloats that he expected LuLu to have learned his lesson after the beating on Sunday.

LuLu makes a solemn oath. He will never break - if McMahon wants him gone, then he’ll need to kill LuLu. “You may make my life a living hell, but I swear, I will drag you to hell with me.” And LuLu reveals why he called McMahon out.

McMahon and Cena are shocked, but McMahon laughs it off. He points out that LuLu can barely stand - but LuLu is undeterred. He makes an offer; he beats John Cena here and now, and he faces McMahon at Wrestlemaina. “You’re completely insane” McMahon sneers “But alright, you asked for it!”

The stakes couldn’t be higher!

John Cena is no joke, and with LuLu being injured, he has a hell of a match ahead of him. But as a Babyface, LuLu is determined to fight honourably. And when I say honourably, I mean use Torrie to distract the referee and attack Cena with a weapon.

With a hard earned victory, the next week McMahon announces that he is a man of his word. “Last week I made a gamble that backfired on me, so I’ll be appearing at wrestlemania... in a hell in a cell match." he says, clearly nervous. But he's as bitter as he is nervous, and decides McMahon decides that LuLu will have a tag team match against Chris Benoit and Garrison Cade - but hm, LuLu doesn’t have a tag partner. How about - Trish Stratus!

Backstage, Trish is very worried about the match, since she would be fucked up. LuLu assures her that his goons are after him, not Trish. And besides…

The match mostly goes as you would expect, Benoit and Cade kick the ever loving shit out of LuLu and poor poor Trish. The sitruation is dicey, but my mind whirs like a pc playing Crysis (christ, remember that game? It still runs like shit on most PCs, btw) and I devise a plan.

I was able to figure out how I could win the match despite my weak tag partner - throw her to the wolves. Despite what cutscene LuLu said, LuLu let Benoit and Cade beat the shit out of Trish and then ambushed Cade while Benoit put poor Trish in a crippler crossface to win the match.

After the match, LuLu celebrates with Trish - but hark! Benoit was pretending to be defeated!

He starts kicking the shit out of LuLu… but who runs in to save but LuLu's best friend and brother, the Big Show

Yeah. Yeah it is.

The next week, Vince McMahon grumbles that a certain wrestler dared interfere with the match. Vince gloats that to teach him respect, Show will be forced to- 

In walks Kurt Angle, back from the firing. And even the Boss answers to a higher power…

Kurt fires Benoit and Cena, and declares that since Vince McMahon will be wrestling at Wrestlemania, he loses access to his administrative powers. And in some genuinely glorious schadenfreude, Vince has to wrestle in a handicap match against the Big Show and LuLu.

I really can't communicate how good this feels.

After a brutal beating and a slam to McMahon’s grapefruit, Show and LuLu celebrate in the ring while the commentators muse whether or not McMahon will even survive the Hell In A Cell match... at Wrestlemania!

Backstage, LuLu is chatting with Trish in a manner that for once isn’t deeply unsettling and cringe for once. LuLu makes his intentions clear:

Trish wishes him well, and they hug. LuLu got Trish dragged into his own mess, but brief as their interactions have been, I do find them kind of sweet.

Elsewhere, McMahon is being interviewed before the match. His intentions are just as clear - and he feels that as someone who went from a trailer park to the chairman of billion dollar company, he’s not gonna lose.

“And once it’s over, nobody will say “no” to Vincent Kennedy McMahon!”

The match stays in the ring for about a minute before LuLu leaves to grab some weapons.

LuLu slaps Vince around for about a minute before LuLu decides to take to the sky!

Of course, what comes up…

But while McMahon draws breath, this match isn't over yet!

Wow, after such an astonishing stunt, the match has to be over! And when I say over, I mean they’re on their feet literally 5 seconds later.

But this match really will end with a bang!

And with a final Shattered Dreams…

LuLu wins the match!

After the match, LuLu puts Vince on the table, and climbs up the Cell and hey wait a sec I already did this!!

Yeah it's cooler in the cutscene but I did it twice!!!

This shot does have some power to it though…

Regrettably, Vince is still breathing, but still - a hell of a way to end the year.

LuLu humiliated the bastard CEO, and learned to forgive Yakub's people - while securing his legacy forever. A glorious ending to Season Mode... for Smackdown, at least.

[spacenutspod]

We’re inching closer and closer to reliably detecting biosignatures on distant planets. Much of the focus is on determining which chemicals indicate life’s presence. But life can also create free energy in a system, and excess energy can create chemical disequilibrium. That’s what happened on Earth when life got going. Could chemical disequilibrium be a biosignature? When a system has excess energy, it manifests as a chemical equilibrium. Each planet is a system, and life can generate excess energy. So, if we detect chemical equilibrium, are we detecting a biosignature? Are we detecting life? Maybe. Especially if we’re looking at an exoplanet very similar to early Earth. New research tackles this question. Its title is “Inferring Chemical Disequilibrium Biosignatures for Proterozoic Earth-Like Exoplanets.” The lead author is Amber Young from the Department of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at Northern Arizona University. The paper is in pre-print now. “When attempting to infer if a distant world is inhabited, chemical disequilibrium is a potential indicator of life that has a long history of study in solar system planetary environments,” the authors write in their paper. When methane (CH4) and oxygen (O2) are both present in an atmosphere, it’s an indication that life is at work. That’s because, in an oxygen environment, methane only lasts about 10 years. Its presence indicates disequilibrium. For it to be present, it has to be continually replenished in amounts that only life can produce. The Gibbs free energy concept tries to capture this idea. When a system reaches chemical equilibrium, the thermodynamic potential is minimized. The further away from chemical equilibrium a system is, the more Gibbs free energy there is. “A primary metric for quantifying chemical disequilibrium involves calculating the difference in chemicalenergy associated with an observed system and that system’s theoretical equilibrium state,” the authors explain. Researchers are exploring how they can use Gibbs free energy to understand worlds in our Solar System. More importantly, researchers are working to understand how it can be applied to Earth’s history. This research focuses on the Proterozoic Eon, the third of Earth’s four eons. It ranged from 2.5 billion years ago to 541 million years ago and spans two critical events in Earth’s history. Free oxygen appears in Earth’s atmosphere at the beginning of the Proterozoic, and the Proterozoic ends just prior to the appearance of complex life. This is an oncolite, a layered structure formed by cyanobacteria during the Proterozoic Eon. The Proterozoic lasted two billion years, and simple life like this persisted and changed the atmosphere during the entire eon. Image Credit: Benoit Potin, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en The stumbling block to using the Gibbs metric as a biosignature is that we don’t know what the observational uncertainties are when trying to understand it on Earth-like exoplanets. In this research, Earth-like means “an ocean-bearing, Earth-sized world with surface pressures and temperatures similar to Earth and with an atmosphere dominated by N2, H2O, and CO2 with trace amounts of CH4 and varying levels of O2,” the authors explain. Scientists understand quite a bit about Earth during the Proterozoic eon, though, of course, there are lots of unanswered questions. In their effort to understand some of the observational uncertainties, the researchers modelled two different scenarios for Earth and one for Mars. Each scenario contains a different amount of free atmospheric energy. They then explored how the atmospheres of each of these simulated planets would reflect light in different scenarios: high, medium, and low biosignature gases in the atmospheres. The result was light spectra that we might observe in exoplanets’ atmospheres that mimic three different cases for Proterozoic Earth. This figure from the research shows three atmospheric spectra for three simulated cases of Proterozoic Earth from high Gibbs energy abundance to low Gibbs energy abundance. The x-axis indicates thewavelength in µm, and the y-axis represents the planet-to-star flux. The idea is that if we’re observing spectra from distant exoplanets, any that are similar to Proterozoic Earth could have similar spectra. In the legend on the upper right, the listed chemicals and the ‘x2’ indicate the precision needed to observe each chemical species. We don’t have the needed precision yet, but upcoming telescopes will. Image Credit: Young et al. 2023. “Constraining the available Gibbs free energy is a promising characterization strategy that synergizes wellwith established techniques for biosignature gas detection,” the authors conclude. But to realize that potential, we need better telescopes with better signal-to-noise (SNR) performance. And those, hopefully, are on the way. “For a 6 m-class space telescope with noise properties modelled on the LUVOIR-B concept, the high-SNR cases explored here could be achieved for an Earth-like target around a solar host at distances of 5—7 pc (16 to 23 light-years) with an investment of 2—4 weeks of observing time,” the authors explain. While that might sound like a lot of observing time, it’s in line with expected target observing times with the HabEx telescope concept. And a potential Proterozoic Earth-like exoplanet is a high-value target worthy of that much dedicated observation time. Is there something else space telescopes should prioritize? Not likely. “From an observational perspective, characterizing the CH4 and O2 abundances is essential to inferringthe atmospheric chemical disequilibrium signal of Earth analogs over most of its evolutionary history,” the authors write. This is an artist’s illustration of Kepler 62f, a super-Earth in the habitable zone of a star about 1200 light years away. We’re getting good at finding exoplanets, but the next step is to characterize their atmospheres. Maybe some of them are like Proterozoic Earth. Image Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle Though we tend to normalize everything we see around us, Earth’s current state is hardly “normal.” Earth was much different for most of its history. It makes sense to look for planets that are similar to how Earth was during the Proterozoic. The Proterozoic lasted for two billion years, and life actively shaped its atmosphere during the entire period. If we’re fortunate enough to ever discover another life-supporting exoplanet, then purely by chance alone, it’s likely to look more like the Proterozoic Earth than the modern Earth. The post Life Might Be Easiest to Find on Planets that Match an Earlier Earth appeared first on Universe Today.

[atlanticcanada]

Housing strategy revealed for New Brunswick

Minister Jill Green revealed her long awaited province-wide housing strategy in Moncton on Thursday, which included $500 million to be spent over three years.

“This is the start,” she said.

“This strategy is providing a number of different pillars and funds to help get things moving, but we’re not done and so this is identifying the most immediate, faster things we can get in place to make the biggest impact over three years.”

Included in the provincial blueprint is a plan to create a rent bank to offer short-term loans to help renters with upfront costs and offer a new $22 million fund to lower the subsidized housing wait list. The province said it hopes to drop the number of households needing subsidized housing to 7,500 by 2026, and raise the number of new residential construction projects to 6,000 per years.

The current waitlist is more than 11,000.

“This strategy is about balance. The programs and the funding we put forward is about balance,” said Green.

There are four main target areas within the Housing for All plan that was released:

 a healthy and competitive housing market

 affordable homes for low-to-mid income earners

 a safe home for vulnerable New Brunswickers

 a strong foundation for the housing system

Green says within each pillar is a number of different, new or enhanced existing programs to address the current crisis.

“It’s a puzzle that we’re putting together. There are the foundational pieces in here to begin correcting this problem that we have,” she said.

However, what’s absent in the strategy is a rent cap.

“New Brunswick has seen, you know, a rent increase in 2023 which is double the national average,” said Liberal MLA Benoit Bourque.

“So obviously the rent cap was working last year and this year, the fact that it’s not there, is creating hardship for New Brunswickers in terms of rent increases.”

He says it’s disappointing to see that they haven’t taken a more aggressive stand when it comes to rent.

“What has been currently, you know, done by this government in terms of the residency tenancy tribunal and other things have clearly not been enough,” said Bourque.

While excluded right now, some say there just isn’t enough research to back up a rent cap.

Executive director with Ability New Brunswick, Haley Flaro, says it was a heavily debated topic.

“There’s a lot of economic analysis that needs to go into rent caps, moratoriums and at this time our board really struggled with the decision on whether or not to recommend that so it’s not in the plan now, does it mean it won’t be in the plan in the future? There’s some really strategic actions in the plan that need to be tested first,” she said.

Overall, she says she’s happy with the strategy in place now.

“We went to the summit, we submitted a brief, and our board had long discussions about strategic recommendations and many of them are reflected in the plan.”

Another part of the plan that raised flags for the liberal opposition was the amount of money being put forward.

“They’re talking about $500 million, which on the surface is a sizeable amount of money, but when you know that to actually fix the current crisis it is estimated that we would need $2 billion, we’re far from that mark,” said Bourque.

Minister Green says if she needs to go back and ask for more assistance she’ll do that. 

For more New Brunswick news visit our dedicated provincial page.

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