#czech events

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Before anyone starts talking about gun laws in the US and "see, there's mass shootings in Europe too", this was the seventh and the worst mass shooting in this country since the end of the Second World War

[a-sock-in-a-sandal]

What is happening in Czechia right now - heavy rains and floods

So as a Czech citizen I felt like saying something about it here so here you go, it's mostly my experiences and some official data.

For context, the first week of September 2024 (2nd to 8th) in Czechia was a burning hell - the temperatures were around 30°C or even above for the entire week. Some schools even ended their classes earlier because of the hot weather - they usually ended before afternoon when the weather was worst. So when we found out that everything will stop the next week, we got happy. We were told the temperatures are gonna get under 20°C, sometimes above, but usually under, it's gonna rain and it's gonna get windy.

All of it happened. The first few days of this week (plus maybe the weekend of the previous one) were chilly, windy, and cloudy - it did sometimes rain, but usually only for a few hours a day. Sooner it started to rain more, for more hours a day, somewhere even for the entire day.

But then the Czech government scheduled an emergency meeting because they were worried about the rains - and they had a reason to. Such rains could cause major floods that already happened in Czechia twice. So they didn't want to waste any time on preparing.

The weather progressively got worse - in my region, it rained the whole day for like three days and it is still raining now. The wind is strong and cold and the temperatures are very chilly. I live right next to a stream at the lowest part of my village in lowlands and the water has risen a few meters (like 2 or so).

The worst situation is in Moravia, which is where I live, but where I am it is still good, only heavy rains and the water levels rising but not as much as to cause a trouble - however there is a few places in my village where it is completely underwater, but not anyone's house or cellar. But Northern Moravia/Silesia is flooded, especially parts like Jeseníky and Opava. The more it gets on west the better it is, mostly a few regions on the north-west are the safest ones. It is usually the Karlovarský/Ústecký and maybe a piece of Plzeňský kraj that is safe.

Most events got cancelled and/or delayed due to bad weather and flood warnings. However the schools are still opened, and it's kind of a meme between students that "we're gonna kayak into our schools on Monday!" Electricity stopped working at many places, including my village. When I woke up today there were firefighters in my street but nobody knows why but I heard that someone's cellar might be flooded.

Our Czech subreddit r/Czech is "flooded" (I couldn't help myself) with maps of flood situation and tips on what to do in case you have e.g. an animal in floodplains. If you switch on the news channel ČT24, you get 24/7 segments and reports from different parts of Czechia, interviews with meteorologists, politicians talking about it and such. Most channels stream as normal but there are some emergency broadcasts. Social media is filled with it.

However, there is a group of mostly older people who are those old conspirators and are strongly against our government because their favourite politician isn't the prime minister (the situation is more complicated but that's enough for this), and they claim that all this is fake and "it's actually to keep people at home before elections (there are ones to happen soon) so they can't meet and talk about the politics", or that "it's a punishment for sending help to Ukraine" (Czechia has sent a lot of help there and these people are mad for some reason) and such. It makes me sick because some people already died and many are injured and many homes can be destroyed.

Czechia has already had two major floods in the near past - in 1997 there were ones in Prague and in 2002 over the entire Czechia. They were catastrophic, people died and were injured and lost homes. So that's why everyone is scared and the government tries very hard to keep us safe.

I already shared my experience, but I just talked on a group chat with my friends from different villages in my region so here goes what I found:

Electricity is out on most places because it is flooded near some important place for electricity

Plenty of places are flooded with like 10-20 cm water, people can still walk in it and some cars drive in it

A football pitch right next to a stream in my village is completely flooded, only the nets are visible

Plenty of bridges are closed and plenty of them are also underwater

We're debating whether or not our school is gonna be closed since most of us take bus to school and we don't know if it would be able to arrive, plus electricity isn't working in the town where we have school, but we'll still see, we didn't receive any news about the school closing

It's starting to get clear (less cloudy) as I'm typing this but I hope it'll get better, the rain is not as heavy as it was

I just hope it's gonna get better ❤️ I'll update you tomorrow or even today if anything major happens

[sassafrasmoonshine]

Alphonse Mucha (Czech, 1860-1939) • Exhibition Poster • Brooklyn Museum • 1920

[sywtwfs]

Viewing information for this week's competitions is now available on our website!

[toustik-blogs]

Tw eyestrain

This is for the draw this in your style by @ricky-tiki-tah ^^

I wanted to do this wayyyy earlier but i was busy with stuff

Hope ya like it ^^

[mezimraky]

people should write community gardens meet-cutes more.

people should write community beekeeping meet-cutes more.

people should write random smalltown community events more.

[vagonca-rigo]

You like trains, I like trains, I wanna share with you a train that connects us more than one would think!

This little adorable 2' Českomoravská Kolben-Daněk locomotive, built in 1940!

One of the final locomotives built by CKD before it became BMM during the occupation.

And somehow, it made its way from Europe, to California, then over to Indiana. And when it arrived at the Hesston Steam Museum in Indiana in the 80s or 90s, they checked it over and found chalk marks on the inside of the boiler from when it was built.

It had never been steamed before!

Anyway hehe wanted to share an adorable little loco Ive seen and ridden behind

RIDDEN BEHIND?? I'M INCREDIBLY JEALOUS!! AND SUCH PRETTY LIVERY....

And it was THAT fresh? Sounds like a successful attempt at saving it from use/dismantling by the nazis, though I see that the story behind it is a complete mystery with only speculations around...still, very interesting!! :3c

[productofaritual]

HELLO QSMPBLR I WOULD LIKE YOUR ATTENTION

As we all know the QSMP is looking for small streamers to include. I know we might all have ideas, however if like to put in a word for katetylercosplay who's a Czech/English speaking streamer! I'd absolutely love you all to death if you suggested her, she has a TikTok as well so check it out if u can!

[youreamonocoque]

give your horse a pat you prick, don't care if he was fighting you constantly, give him a pat

[aiiaiiiyo]

[oldtvlover]

And tonight then Good King Wenceslas from 1994! Cast: Stefanie Powers - The Queen Jonathan Brandis - Prince Wenceslas (RIP) Perry King - Tunna Leo McKern - Duke Philip Joan Fontaine - Queen Ludmilla (RIP) Charlotte Chatton - Princess Johanna Oliver Milburn - Boleslav and many more Story: Wenceslas, the young king of Bohemia, lives trapped between the wisdom of his Christian grandmother and his ever constant battle with his tyranical step-mother. She wants her own son to be king and constantly tries to stay in charge of Wenceslas's life (including picking out a bride for him). But it is only when he sees the suffering of his people that Wenceslas learns how vital it is that his step-brother never rules. —Max Vaughn (taken from IMDB again) Thoughts: I don't know the song but I do know some of the legend of King Wenceslas and it was filmed at some of the original places in the Czech Republic (and London). Prince Wenceslas enjoys his day as his stepmother rules Bohemia and the chancellor Tunna reigns her bed. She loathes the Christians who become stronger every day. The Queen wants her own son, Boleslav, to be king, yet she can't go against the popularity of Wenceslas and his grandmother. Wenceslas bids only to her wishes and doesn't want to marry but when he sees his bride-to-be, Johanna, he slowly changes his mind. And more when he realizes that the Queen and Tunna take money and wood from the people in his name. When his grandmother is killed by one of the Lords, he goes against the Queen and Tunna with his people. Wenceslas has a sword fight with Tunna and the chancellor ends up under a chandelier (how fitting) and the Queen and her son are on the run. They free all people and give away what was storaged in the castle. Wenceslas marries Johanna and well, you know the end.

It’s the story to the known Christmas Carol, yet not for me but I did my research about the historical facts of King Wenceslas.

[hanzajesthanza]

it is actually funny how i went into narrenturm entirely expecting to loathe reynevan for his idiocy, and yes that somewhat happened, but i also found him like. intensely relatable. for unfortunate reasons.

twenty-three years old, still a total noob at life, has some relative skill but far from enough to sustain (protect) himself, almost entirely reliant on help from his older and more experienced compatriots, his very-recent college days are so-often referenced and are sometimes the only thing which save him, making stupid decisions at every turn that he can't see the full stupidity of, blinded with lust for revenge, annoyingly horny when it comes to women, absolutely terrified of actual consequences and harm coming to him,

[deaninfotech]

We are coming to Czech Dreamin 2023 | Prague

🌟 Join Ankit Agarwal, CEO of Dean Infotech on an unforgettable journey as he embarks on an incredible Salesforce adventure to Czech Dreamin 2023! 🌟

We are thrilled to announce that he will be attending the highly anticipated Czech Dreamin' event in the enchanting city of Prague on May 26th, 2023! 🎉

Brace yourself for an immersive experience that will ignite your passion for Salesforce and propel your career to new heights. From captivating keynote sessions that will inspire and empower, you to hands-on workshops where you gain invaluable skills and expertise, Czech Dreamin' promises to be an event like no other. 🚀

[head-post]

Czech mercenary discloses incidents in Ukraine’s Bucha

Czech mercenary Filip Siman revealed what foreign mercenaries were doing in Ukraine at the outbreak of the war, disclosing fascinating details about the Ukrainian city of Bucha.

According to Seznam Zprávy, the Prague City Court accused Czech mercenary Filip Siman of illegal service in the Ukrainian army and looting. He reportedly fought on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in the spring of 2022 in the cities of Irpin and Bucha.

According to Czech media, he was not authorised to fight in Ukraine, as Czech mercenaries must obtain special permission from the president. He now faces up to five years in prison for serving in a foreign army. The court can also sentence Siman to up to 25 years or life imprisonment for looting.

Siman not only witnessed the events in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, but was also a participant in some of the crimes in March-April 2022, according to his testimony.

We were the law, that’s what they told us. We were looking for everything. Electronics, documents, handwritten logs, unit signs.

The mercenary stated that he joined the AFU to provide for his family. He removed jewellery, valuable items, silverware, precious metal bars, and money from Ukrainian cities. He also admitted that he took valuables off corpses, as his superiors ordered him to pick up anything of value and bring it to headquarters.

Siman also complained that he had suffered serious psychological damage in Ukraine. For the first time in his life, he witnessed murder and rape, he stated. Given that Russian troops had already left the city at the time of his stay in Bucha, the incidents could have involved returning Ukrainian soldiers. The mercenary said that one of his fellow soldiers, an American, “lost his mind three days later” after what he had seen.

Bucha massacre

European Commission President Charles Michel called the incident in Bucha a “massacre,” announcing new sanctions against Russia. At that time, Ukrainian and foreign media published many controversial arguments claiming that Russians allegedly committed violence in the Ukrainian city. Some publications even highlighted the similarity of the city’s name with the word “butcher.”

Media outlets published Ukrainian footage showing a breathless body suddenly removing its arm, which could be seen when zoomed in. Sceptics also noticed how the dead man seemed to start rising in the rear-view mirror, and all the bodies in the footage were suspiciously lying face down.

The battles around Bucha lasted from 27 February to 31 March 2022. They ended with the withdrawal of Russian troops on 30 March, the day after Russian-Ukrainian talks in Turkey. On 31 March, Ukrainian troops entered Bucha. The city was recognised as one of the most dangerous places in the Kyiv region, according to Ukrainian media.

On 2 April, the Ukrainian National Police entered Bucha and posted an 8-minute video report, filming the roads and streets. However, there were no fatalities in all the footage, which was published in Ukrainian and European media. Read more HERE

[jcmarchi]

Using wobbling stellar material, astronomers measure the spin of a supermassive black hole for the first time

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/using-wobbling-stellar-material-astronomers-measure-the-spin-of-a-supermassive-black-hole-for-the-first-time/

Using wobbling stellar material, astronomers measure the spin of a supermassive black hole for the first time

Astronomers at MIT, NASA, and elsewhere have a new way to measure how fast a black hole spins, by using the wobbly aftermath from its stellar feasting.

The method takes advantage of a black hole tidal disruption event — a blazingly bright moment when a black hole exerts tides on a passing star and rips it to shreds. As the star is disrupted by the black hole’s immense tidal forces, half of the star is blown away, while the other half is flung around the black hole, generating an intensely hot accretion disk of rotating stellar material.

The MIT-led team has shown that the wobble of the newly created accretion disk is key to working out the central black hole’s inherent spin.

In a study appearing today in Nature, the astronomers report that they have measured the spin of a nearby supermassive black hole by tracking the pattern of X-ray flashes that the black hole produced immediately following a tidal disruption event. The team followed the flashes over several months and determined that they were likely a signal of a bright-hot accretion disk that wobbled back and forth as it was pushed and pulled by the black hole’s own spin.

Play video

By tracking how the disk’s wobble changed over time, the scientists could work out how much the disk was being affected by the black hole’s spin, and in turn, how fast the black hole itself was spinning. Their analysis showed that the black hole was spinning at less than 25 percent the speed of light — relatively slow, as black holes go.

The study’s lead author, MIT Research Scientist Dheeraj “DJ” Pasham, says the new method could be used to gauge the spins of hundreds of black holes in the local universe in the coming years. If scientists can survey the spins of many nearby black holes, they can start to understand how the gravitational giants evolved over the history of the universe.

“By studying several systems in the coming years with this method, astronomers can estimate the overall distribution of black hole spins and understand the longstanding question of how they evolve over time,” says Pasham, who is a member of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

The study’s co-authors include collaborators from a number of institutions, including NASA, Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, the University of Leeds, the University of Syracuse, Tel Aviv University, the Polish Academy of Sciences, and elsewhere.

Shredded heat

Every black hole has an inherent spin that has been shaped by its cosmic encounters over time. If, for instance, a black hole has grown mostly through accretion — brief instances when some material falls onto the disk, this causes the black hole to spin up to quite high speeds. In contrast, if a black hole grows mostly by merging with other black holes, each merger could slow things down as one black hole’s spin meets up against the spin of the other.

As a black hole spins, it drags the surrounding space-time around with it. This drag effect is an example of Lense-Thirring precession, a longstanding theory that describes the ways in which extremely strong gravitational fields, such as those generated by a black hole, can pull on the surrounding space and time. Normally, this effect would not be obvious around black holes, as the massive objects emit no light.

But in recent years, physicists have proposed that, in instances such as during a tidal disruption event, or TDE, scientists might have a chance to track the light from stellar debris as it is dragged around. Then, they might hope to measure the black hole’s spin.

In particular, during a TDE, scientists predict that a star may fall onto a black hole from any direction, generating a disk of white-hot, shredded material that could be tilted, or misaligned, with respect to the black hole’s spin. (Imagine the accretion disk as a tilted donut that is spinning around a donut hole that has its own, separate spin.) As the disk encounters the black hole’s spin, it wobbles as the black hole pulls it into alignment. Eventually, the wobbling subsides as the disk settles into the black hole’s spin. Scientists predicted that a TDE’s wobbling disk should therefore be a measurable signature of the black hole’s spin.

“But the key was to have the right observations,” Pasham says. “The only way you can do this is, as soon as a tidal disruption event goes off, you need to get a telescope to look at this object continuously, for a very long time, so you can probe all kinds of timescales, from minutes to months.”

A high-cadence catch

For the past five years, Pasham has looked for tidal disruption events that are bright enough, and near enough, to quickly follow up and track for signs of Lense-Thirring precession. In February of 2020, he and his colleagues got lucky, with the detection of AT2020ocn, a bright flash, emanating from a galaxy about a billion light years away, that was initially spotted in the optical band by the Zwicky Transient Facility.

From the optical data, the flash appeared to be the first moments following a TDE. Being both bright and relatively close by, Pasham suspected the TDE might be the ideal candidate to look for signs of disk wobbling, and possibly measure the spin of the black hole at the host  galaxy’s center. But for that, he would need much more data.

“We needed quick and high-cadence data,” Pasham says. “The key was to catch this early on because this precession, or wobble, should only be present early on. Any later, and the disk would not wobble anymore.”

The team discovered that NASA’s NICER telescope was able to catch the TDE and continuously keep an eye on it over months at a time. NICER — an abbreviation for Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR — is an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station that measures X-ray radiation around black holes and other extreme gravitational objects.

Pasham and his colleagues looked through NICER’s observations of AT2020ocn over 200 days following the initial detection of the tidal disruption event. They discovered that the event emitted X-rays that appeared to peak every 15 days, for several cycles, before eventually petering out. They interpreted the peaks as times when the TDE’s accretion disk wobbled face-on, emitting X-rays directly toward NICER’s telescope, before wobbling away as it continued to emit X-rays (similar to waving a flashlight toward and away from someone every 15 days).

The researchers took this pattern of wobbling and worked it into the original theory for Lense-Thirring precession. Based on estimates of the black hole’s mass, and that of the disrupted star, they were able to come up with an estimate for the black hole’s spin — less than 25 percent the speed of light.

Their results mark the first time that scientists have used observations of a wobbling disk following a tidal disruption event to estimate the spin of a black hole.

“Black holes are fascinating objects and the flows of material that we see falling onto them can generate some of the most luminous events in the universe,” says study co-author Chris Nixon, associate professor of theoretical physics at the University of Leeds. “While there is a lot we still don’t understand, there are amazing observational facilities that keep surprising us and generating new avenues to explore. This event is one of those surprises.”

As new telescopes such as the Rubin Observatory come online in the coming years, Pasham foresees more opportunities to pin down black hole spins.

“The spin of a supermassive black hole tells you about the history of that black hole,” Pasham says. “Even if a small fraction of those that Rubin captures have this kind of signal, we now have a way to measure the spins of hundreds of TDEs. Then we could make a big statement about how black holes evolve over the age of the universe.”

This research was funded, in part, by NASA and the European Space Agency.

[travellingstranger]

Pretty loud and pretty hot end of summer voyages...

Prague Gothic Treffen XVIII

Prague, Czech Republic