Secrets of Indigenous astronomy revealed in new exhibition. Newcastle Art Gallery presents the distinctive and intricate work of the Torres Strait Islander artist in its first major solo survey following a four-year refurbishment. (Australia)
From the intro:
The Victorian Web... originated in hypermedia environments (Intermedia, and Storyspace) that existed long before the World Wide Web. One of the oldest academic and scholarly websites, it entered the Internet in 1994... [I]n contrast [to Project Gutenberg and other archives], [it] presents its images and documents, including entire books, as nodes in a network of complex connections. In other words, it emphasizes the link rather than the search tool.
In the Victorian Web we encounter books, paintings, political events, and eminent and not-so-eminent Victorians in multiple contexts, which we can examine when and if we wish to do so.
The website is currently self-funded. Thanks to the famous physicist, Gerald Guralnik, one of the discoverers of the Higgs Boson, it was first housed at Brown University, on externally funded computers in his High Energy Physics Group. Subsequently, for a few years in the 1990s, Brown's Scholarly Technology Group, under the guidance of Alan Renear, housed the site. However, it has never received direct financial support from Brown University. In the later 1990s, Landow and Noah Landow, President of Macktez Corp, funded servers that host the site, and they have again done so since 2008. From 2000 the University Scholars Program at the National University of Singapore, where Landow served as the founding Dean, funded a main server, a mirror site, support staff, and four post-doctoral or senior researchers. Then in 2020 victorianweb.org finally became a 501(3)c non-profit corporation. The site appears to have been last linked on metafilter in 2025 and routinely between 2004 through 2018. It has never been posted on its own terms, and that seems like a mistake.
The Victorian Web... originated in hypermedia environments (Intermedia, and Storyspace) that existed long before the World Wide Web. One of the oldest academic and scholarly websites, it entered the Internet in 1994... [I]n contrast [to Project Gutenberg and other archives], [it] presents its images and documents, including entire books, as nodes in a network of complex connections. In other words, it emphasizes the link rather than the search tool.
In the Victorian Web we encounter books, paintings, political events, and eminent and not-so-eminent Victorians in multiple contexts, which we can examine when and if we wish to do so.
The website is currently self-funded. Thanks to the famous physicist, Gerald Guralnik, one of the discoverers of the Higgs Boson, it was first housed at Brown University, on externally funded computers in his High Energy Physics Group. Subsequently, for a few years in the 1990s, Brown's Scholarly Technology Group, under the guidance of Alan Renear, housed the site. However, it has never received direct financial support from Brown University. In the later 1990s, Landow and Noah Landow, President of Macktez Corp, funded servers that host the site, and they have again done so since 2008. From 2000 the University Scholars Program at the National University of Singapore, where Landow served as the founding Dean, funded a main server, a mirror site, support staff, and four post-doctoral or senior researchers. Then in 2020 victorianweb.org finally became a 501(3)c non-profit corporation. The site appears to have been last linked on metafilter in 2025 and routinely between 2004 through 2018. It has never been posted on its own terms, and that seems like a mistake.
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
The BepiColombo Mercury arrival phase mission control team gathers in the main control room at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) to begin the extensive simulations campaign.
Credits: ESA
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
Thirty years after the European Space Agency first demonstrated the power of flying two satellites in very close formation, the concept was recently recreated. By temporarily positioning two Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellites to replicate the pioneering ERS-1–ERS-2 ‘tandem mission’, ESA achieved one-day repeat imaging of the same Antarctic region. The results once again demonstrate how this approach can be used to measure glacier motion and pinpoint the critical grounding line with exceptional precision.
This ice-flow velocity map of glaciers and ice streams in the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica is derived from multiannual Sentinel-1 observations. The map provides regional context for the study areas, with the Scar Inlet Ice Shelf highlighted in the inset.
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Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data, processed by ENVEO
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
Thirty years after the European Space Agency first demonstrated the power of flying two satellites in very close formation, the concept was recently recreated. By temporarily positioning two Copernicus Sentinel-1 radar satellites to replicate the pioneering ERS-1–ERS-2 ‘tandem mission’, ESA achieved one-day repeat imaging of the same Antarctic region. The results once again demonstrate how this approach can be used to measure glacier motion and pinpoint the critical grounding line with exceptional precision.
The image shows Evans Ice Stream – a six-day Sentinel-1A–Sentinel-1C interferogram (left), a one-day Sentinel-1C–Sentinel-1D interferogram (centre), and a Sentinel-1C–Sentinel-1D double-difference interferogram (right). The shorter repeat-pass interval and double-difference processing clearly reveal tidal deformation zones and shear zones, demonstrating the enhanced capability for mapping ice dynamics, shear zones and the grounding line.
Read full story
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data, processed by ENVEO
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission captures Canada’s Great Bear Lake in striking colours.
Straddling the Arctic Circle, Great Bear Lake lies in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Its area of 31 328 sq km makes it the largest freshwater lake entirely within Canadian borders and the fourth largest in North America.
Irregular in shape and containing many small islands, Great Bear Lake is surrounded by boreal forests and tundra, providing a rich habitat for diverse wildlife. It’s famous for its cold, clear waters, which are covered with ice from late November through to July.
The presence of lake ice can be monitored effectively by imaging sensors and standard satellite observations. In this false-colour image, three specific bands from Copernicus Sentinel-2’s visible and infrared channels have been used to process the image. Each channel has been assigned a colour to enhance the contrasts between different surfaces. This band combination is particularly suitable for monitoring ice melt, water bodies and vegetation health.
A massive sheet of sea ice covering most of the lake can be seen in shades ranging from bright blue to cyan, depending on the ice thickness. This range of colours is due to ice and snow having a higher reflectance in the visible part of the spectrum, here assigned to blue. The image, which was captured on 17 June 2026, features an intricate network of seasonal fractures, cracks and shifting ice floes across the lake surface.
Because water reflects very little light back to the satellite, it appears dark blue or black, making areas of melted ice easy to distinguish. These dark areas are typically visible along the shorelines and in the bays, where shallower water warms more quickly than the deeper centre of the lake, creating a clear moat of ice-free water between the land and the remaining ice sheet. Black fractures of open water can also be seen in the icy surface.
Shades of green dominate the landmass surrounding the lake denoting the northern boreal forest and the tundra vegetation, greening as the Arctic summer approaches.
Distinct reddish-orange and pink patches are scattered across the green landscape, indicating exposed rocky terrain, typical of the Canadian Shield, sparsely vegetated tundra or older fire scars that have not yet fully revegetated.
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission is based on a two-satellite constellation. Each satellite carries a high-resolution camera that images Earth’s surface in 13 spectral bands. This capability, together with the mission’s frequent revisits over the same area and its high-resolution imagery, provides crucial information about the conditions on Earth, such as land use, vegetation health, and changes in inland water bodies and the coastal environment.
Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2026), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
europeanspaceagency posted a photo:
On 1 June 2026, the BepiColombo mission control team across ESA, JAXA and industry met at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) to kick off the simulations campaign in preparation for the Mercury arrival phase. Throughout the campaign, this team of teams will rehearse the key separation steps that comprise arrival: MTM separation, Mercury orbit insertion, MPO-Mio separation, and MOSIF sunshield separation.
Credits: ESA
raaen99 has added a photo to the pool:
"In spring they were a tangle of white froth and carried primroses and cowslips at their base... In winter they would be peppered with scarlet, black and rust berries..." — Anonymous
The theme for “Smile on Saturday” for the 11th of July is “berries and cherries”. Although it is winter where I live, I have access to my archive of photographs, so I have chosen an image taken in autumn a few years ago, taken whilst on a walk out and about. I came across some blackberries ripening in the afternoon sun in the overgrown ruins of a garden of an old house that sadly was later demolished. Blackberries are considered to be quite a noxious weed here, and they do invade areas of farmland and costal areas quite pervasively, yet I love them. They remind me of blackberrying as a child. I like eating blackberries, and whether dark and ripe, or richly red and jewel like in their unripe state, I think they are beautiful to photograph. Of course, I do have to watch out for all the prickles that grow along their stems! I hope you like my choice for the theme and that it makes you smile.
Gemeenten en provincies mogen deze zomer probleemwolven eerder laten afschieten, laat staatssecretaris Silvio Erkens weten. Maar hoe weet je of een wolf ook daadwerkelijk een probleemwolf is? Volgens het kabinet moet een gesprek met een psychiater uitkomst bieden.
“Een psychiater kan zo’n wolf aankijken en zien hoe de ogen staan”, stelt Erkens. “Een gesprek over de jeugd, eerdere delicten en de motieven van de wolf moet meer duidelijk maken over de incidenten. Net als een onderzoek bij het Pieter Baan Centrum. Misschien heeft zo’n wolf wel een hele moeilijke jeugd gehad, een verslaving of een ontwikkelingsstoornis. Moeten we allemaal rekening mee houden. Anders mag je ‘m gewoon neerschieten.”
“Is een wolf ontoerekeningsvatbaar? Is het een relwolf die gewoon wat foute vrienden heeft en in een moeilijke periode in zijn leven zit? Zouden we een wolf met veel therapie niet opnieuw in de bossen kunnen laten herintegreren? Was de wolf vroeger een bloedmaatje van wolf Bram en zweert hij nu wraak? Zulke vragen moeten we stellen voordat we zeker weten of een wolf een probleemwolf is. Maar áls het een probleemwolf is, dan grijpen we keihard in.”
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EPISODE 13 "It's just a quick pitch session. You won't have to stay long," the Boss wheedles. "Thanks, but..." I reply. "Come on, you'll meet some new people." "Boring people," the PFY interjects. "... and hear some stories..." "Boring stories..." "You might even learn something!" the Boss pleads. "Something boring," the PFY says. And he's not wrong. Cross-department pitch sessions are drier than a sawdust sandwich in the Sahara. To add insult to injury, the sessions are scheduled at the end of the day and we're all crammed in the boardroom for the duration. "Oh no," the Boss counters, when I mention it. "It's being held at the pub across the road. We booked the upstairs bar." >Kaching!< "You know what, some users have really great ideas!" the PFY lies. "And I've often wanted to hear more about the benefits of controlling the air-conditioning system from a VBA macro in Excel," I chirp. ... later that evening... "What's that noise?" the Boss asks, as the PFY and I enter the upstairs bar of our local. "What noise?" "That clicking noise." "Oh that! That's my Steigercounter," the PFY admits. "Your what?" "My Steigercounter." "You mean... Geiger counter?" "No, no, Steigercounter, i.e. Rod Steiger. It… uh… detects weirdos." "Weirdos?" "Yeah, you know. People who exist outside the normal distribution – in more ways than one. A Beancounter who thinks that AI is secretly changing the numbers in his spreadsheet to make him look bad." "Is it?" the Boss asks, concerned. "Of course not, that's just Stephen," I respond, nodding at the PFY. "You have to make your own fun." "And... that's... your... Steigercounter?" the Boss asks, pointing at a large badge on my lapel. "No, I don't use a Steigercounter. I have an Affleckometer." "Which is?" "It's nothing to do with witches. It detects the presence of dull or overrated people." "The badge does?" the Boss asks. "No, the badge is a dosimeter. The reading on the badge, which has gone up two bars – or 20 centiMusks – since I've been speaking to you, will report a critical exposure to dull or overrated people." "What happens then?" "If I'm overexposed, I'd probably need to take a break to detox – or do some alcohol therapy. Either way, though, it's a bit of a zero-sum game." "In… uh… what way?" "A break doesn't lower the exposure level, though alcohol will. The only problem is that alcohol raises the exposure gain. It's basically a race condition." "You say that like it's a problem?" "Well, yes. The danger is that over time you might start seriously considering what they're talking about." "And how do you prevent that?" the Boss asks dryly. "It's an imprecise science," I reply, stepping over to the bar, "though the key point is – as for most self-medication – start slowly and pace yourself." ... "So you see," a user explains, "AI could look around the office and see if people appear hot or cold and automatically make adjustments to the air conditioning." "Sounds great," the PFY says, downing a large glass of therapy. "Tell me less." "Less?" "Oh, sorry, I meant more." "Well, you see, if you had cameras in every..." "I think we could use AI to improve workplace morale," a user tells the Boss and me. "Really?" I say, reaching for a pint of medication. "Yes, you see, I have always struggled with self-love," he admits. "Not in a physical way I hope?" I ask, now that my medication is taking effect. "No, I mean AI would be an ideal tool to offer positive reinforcement. It would make people happier, which would in turn make the workplace happier." "Don't they already do that with prescription pharmaceuticals?" I ask. "No. AI could encourage you in everything you do – just small comments to lift your self-esteem." "Oh, you mean the lift telling you that you pressed the first-floor button really well. Or the toilet telling you that you totally nailed that last run of… well, runs." "I don't know how you'd implement it, but you're the IT guys. Surely you can figure out some positive message criteria for AI to use on us." What concerns me is that the Boss hasn't had any medication, but still seems to think this is a good idea. To make matters worse, my dosimeter screen has started blinking and I don't think I have the capacity for more medication. Time to switch to the single-malt medication... ... The next day I drag myself into work suffering the effects of what can only be described as a medication error. The PFY appears to be similarly disabled, and flashbacks from last night keep coming back to me. Something vague about writing a bit of code for the PA system? >CRASH< "I THOUGHT YOU WERE BLOODY JOKING ABOUT THAT TOILET THING!" the Boss rants. Oh yeah. But on the building PA system. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Damn that alcohol therapy. BOFH: Previous episodes on The Register The Compleat BOFH Archives 95-99
