2025 World Champion Lando Norris will extend his stay with McLaren until at least the end of 2030.
Lando Norris speaks to Lawrence Barretto about signing a new long-term contract with McLaren.
Lawrence Barretto digs into the circumstances behind Lando Norris' new deal with McLaren.
With 11 races left of the 2026 season, we look at the winners and losers in the F1 development battle and how it is affecting the betting markets.
Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） posted a photo:
peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:
Akagawa fireworks festival
赤川花火大会
The first shell launched into the sky over the Akagawa River was, once again this year, a magnificent Shakudama (12-inch shell). It became a wonderful summer memory.
赤川の空に上がった最初の1発は、今年も見事な尺玉でした。夏の良い思い出になりました。
Tsuruoka city, Yamagata pref, Japan
peaceful-jp-scenery posted a photo:
Kumanotaisya Shrine
熊野大社
The steps along the approach to the shrine were filled with Tanabata decorations. It was a lovely shrine.
参道の階段にいっぱいの七夕飾り。素敵な神社でした。
Nanyo city, Yamagata pref, Japan
LONDEN (ANP) - Autocoureur Lando Norris heeft zijn contract bij McLaren verlengd. De 26-jarige Brit heeft zich tot eind 2030 aan zijn team verbonden. De oude verbintenis van de regerend wereldkampioen in de Formule 1 liep tot eind 2028.
"Op dit moment is er echt geen reden om ook maar te overwegen ergens anders heen te gaan," reageerde Norris. "Ik wil mijn hele carrière bij McLaren doorbrengen, want ik ben hier gelukkig. Ik hoef niet weg. Ik wil met McLaren vechten, zelfs als het even tegenzit. Ik wil met McLaren winnen als het fantastisch gaat. Dus ja, aan het einde van mijn carrière zal ik heel erg blij zijn als ik kan zeggen dat McLaren het enige team is waar ik voor heb gereden."
Norris volgt het voorbeeld van Max Verstappen. De Nederlander verlengde anderhalve week geleden zijn contract bij Red Bull met twee jaar tot eind 2030. Norris debuteerde in 2019 voor McLaren in de Formule 1. Inmiddels heeft hij dertien races en een wereldtitel gewonnen. Norris startte tot dusver achttien keer van pole.
"Deze verlenging geeft ons vertrouwen in de richting die we samen willen inslaan," zei teambaas Andrea Stella van McLaren. "Met hem en Oscar Piastri vormen we een van de meest eensgezinde teams in de Formule 1."
A defense startup has raised $7 million to develop its counter-drone system that uses small interceptors to defend against swarms of FPV (First-Person View) drone swarms, the kind causing heavy battlefield casualties in Ukraine. San Francisco-based Mara says it has secured the funding to bring its Spike drone defense system to market, aiming to provide a cost-effective counter to small FPV attack drones - typically quad-copters with an explosive payload. The system comprises separate Spotter sensor / targeting units and multiple Seeker kinetic interceptors. The latter are small (250g / half a pound), fast (200 kmph / 124 mph), tube-launched, and have onboard intelligence to help find their way to the target. Mara claims that deployments can scale from a single rucksack kit to protect a squad of troops, to a vehicle-mounted launcher, up to a multi-kilometer perimeter shield for a base or site. A launcher can be fitted with up to 48 of the Seeker interceptors, and reloaded in less than a minute, or so the firm says. The Spotter detection and tracking sensor combines electro-optical and acoustic sensors with an optional low-signature radar, for day and night all-weather protection. “Small drones changed the battlefield because they distributed the cost and capability of precise attack,” Mara co-founder and CEO Daniel Kofman said in a statement. Yet many defensive countermeasures are concentrated into one costly point solution, he claims. “Spike creates a distributed mesh of small, cheap nodes that can each aim and shoot in multiple directions at once.” The components of its Spike system have already been tested by potential customers, Mara says. Seeker completed intercepts cued through US Army systems at an exercise in Texas, while Spotter has been operated on an armored vehicle during another Army exercise in Europe. Most recently, Ukrainian forces operated Spotter near to the front line in their country, where it tracked multiple FPV drones. Mara says it has research and testing agreements with three US defense organizations, and is in early-stage engagements with international military partners in the UK, Czech Republic and Ukraine. The $7 million funding round was led by Khosla Ventures. We asked Mara for further details, such as the range of its Seeker interceptors and just how inexpensive they are, and will update if we get answers. ®
Bas Smit zou z'n eigen hond nog verkopen op een clandestiene Zuid-Chinese markt voor een beetje aandacht. Om die likes en clicks binnen te harken gaat zo'n gozer namelijk heel ver: van het larmoyant uitmelken van leed van mensen die hij nauwelijks gekend heeft tot het voortdurend bij alles en iedereen in de buis kruipen. Bas Smit zit de hele dag met z'n ene hand bij de pincet en z'n andere hand op de telefoonknop om obligate reacties bij kankerberichten te plaatsen, en vaak gaat dat dan nog mis ook. Het is een extreme combinatie van een leven lang als poseur, patser, praalhans, aansteller en onzekere fluitketel, en dan krijg je zo'n als mens vermomde Adformatie-nieuwsbrief. Wat natuurlijk helemaal prima is, zijn leven, maar je moet daarbij wel snappen: Bas Smit springt niet in dat water voor Maarten van der Weijden, Bas Smit springt in dat water voor Bas Smit. Sterker nog: Maarten van der Weijden moet maar blij zijn dat hij een stukje met Bas Smit mee mag zwemmen! Álles draait om Bas Smit, met in z'n kielzog Nicolette van Dram, z'n levende handtas. Je kunt genocide plegen op een volk of een heel land platbranden maar alles gebeurt altijd in de kantlijn van wat er in het leven van Bas Smit gebeurt. Nu is Bas Smit weer VIP bij KLM en dan moet iedereen weer aanhoren dat Bas Smit VIP is en de rest niet. Enfin, volgens Tina Nijkamp is Bas Smit een 'proleet' en dat geloven we meteen.
Welcome back to the Abstract! These are the studies this week that went interstellar, entombed the sky, hit the gas, and renewed the world.
First, scientists predict that there are thousands of objects from alien star systems lurking in the outer reaches of the solar system. Then: ancient air is hidden in glassy Moon beads, the “worst energy policy in the world,” and a mysterious Mississippian luxury.
As always, for more of my work, check out my book First Contact: The Story of Our Obsession with Aliens, or subscribe to my personal newsletter the BeX Files.
The interstellar objects we met along the way
Over the past decade, three interstellar objects have been spotted streaking through our solar system. It’s likely that dozens more of these interlopers will be discovered in the coming years. These objects travel so fast that they can escape the gravitational clutches of the Sun, which is why they are only visible for weeks before hurtling back out to speed-run the galaxy.
But while some interstellar objects (ISOs) leave in a hurry, others may be here to stay, lurking in the outermost reaches of the solar system, known as the Oort cloud, reports a new study.
Over the course of its 4.6-billion year lifespan, the Sun has wandered close enough to other stars to collect thousands of non-native objects from the fringes of those passing systems. It may have also sent off many of its homegrown objects to join alien star systems during these encounters, like some kind of stellar gift exchange.
“The Solar System has long been suspected to contain captured, non-native material,” said researchers led by Sean Raymond of the Bordeaux Astrophysics Laboratory. “The recent ISO discoveries have now confirmed directly that extraterrestrial material regularly passes through the Solar System.”
Drawing on these discoveries, Raymond and his colleagues ran models to predict how many ISOs might be exchanged between stars during close encounters, called stellar flybys. The Sun is estimated to have had at least one or two of these meetups during its life so far, which could be “responsible for a large fraction of the captured ISOs currently residing in the Solar System.”
“Given that flybys are unavoidable in the Galactic field, most stars should host sparse Oort clouds populated with ISOs captured during stellar flybys,” the team said.
The Oort cloud — composed of frozen comet-like objects — extends for about three light years away from the Sun, so it’s not currently possible to send a spacecraft to go out to sift for ISOs in these distant wilds. Still, it’s neat to know there are so many interstellar hitchhikers riding in the Sun’s backseat.
Ancient magic Moon beads
A memory of an ancient ephemeral sky on the Moon may be locked inside glass beads scattered across the lunar surface, according to a new study.
The Moon is airless, but there’s evidence that it was surrounded by a transient atmosphere billions of years ago, which was fed by volcanic eruptions in its early history. Rocks crashing into the surface may have also vaporized material and created brief, gassy skies over time.
Scientists have now examined glass beads that were scooped up from the far side of the Moon by China’s Chang’e 6 sample-return mission, and delivered back to Earth in the summer of 2024 (that’s so Brat). The lunar glass, which was forged by rocks crashing into the surface, captured the chemical signatures of the vapor plume created by those impacts, capturing a whiff of a long-lost transient atmosphere.
“Chang’e 6 (CE6) mission has returned the first lunar samples from the farside of the Moon,” said researchers led by Ziyan Han of Nanjing University. “The returned CE6 lunar regolith contains impact glass beads that could have recorded impact-induced vaporization on the Moon's farside and may serve as barometers, providing critical constraints on the global distribution of the Moon's transient atmosphere.”
The team noted that these fleeting impact-induced atmospheres might exist on other airless bodies in the solar system, and beyond it. For this reason, the researchers warned that atmospheres detected around exoplanets “may not always solely represent stable, long-lived atmospheres” which could “complicate the interpretation of atmospheric data as evidence of long-term planetary habitability on the rocky exoplanets.”
There you have it—just some ancient glass beads that contain the breath of past lunar skies. Carry on.
The real cost of cheaper gas
Mahdavi, Paasha and Ross, Michael L. “The worst energy policy in the world.” Science.
How bad does an energy policy have to be for experts to declare it the worst in the world? Buckle up because we are hitting the gas.
In an editorial published in Science this week, a pair of researchers lament the widespread rollout of consumer fossil fuel subsidies in response to the spike in gas and oil prices caused by the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. While it’s understandable for governments to want to ease financial hardships, the team stressed that these subsidies are a major setback to confronting the climate crisis and they fumble the chance to present the Iran war as a clear example of why we need to reduce global reliance on fossil fuels.
“Consumer fuel subsidies are the worst kind of energy policy: they boost the most polluting kind of energy—fossil fuels—with a policy that is wasteful and deceptively hard to reverse,” said authors Paasha Mahdavi of the University of California, Santa Barbara and Michael L. Ross of the University of California, Los Angeles.
“The Iran war represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels,” the team continued. “But short-term measures that governments are taking—to help their citizens cope with unaffordable gasoline and diesel prices—will have long-term effects. Making fossil fuels cheaper now will have catastrophic consequences in the future.”
To channel the old joke from The Simpsons: “It’s the worst energy policy in the world…so far.”
A Mississippian taste for cacao
Let’s close with a finely-aged dessert. And I mean, really aged—this decadent treat is 1,000-years-old.
Humans have been consuming the delectable fruits of the cacao tree for many thousands of years in Central and South America, and the plant made its way into parts of North America, such as the American Southwest. Now, archaeologists have discovered cacao was also consumed as far east as the Etowah Site in Georgia, an ancient city built by the Mississippian culture, revealing the unexpected spread of the delicacy deep into the Southeast.
“There is very little material evidence of connections between people living in Mississippian places like Etowah and those living in Central America,” said researchers led by Adam King of the University of South Carolina. “As a result, the possibility that the Mississippian world had access to cacao has always seemed remote.”
But one should never underestimate the power of chocolate, and this study bears that wisdom out. When the team analyzed ancient DNA sequences of residue found on Etowah pottery, they detected notes of cacao.
“Despite the fact that Etowah is separated from potential sources of cacao by great distances, ancient DNA confirms the site’s inhabitants consumed cacao,” the team said. The researchers speculated that Etowah may have sourced its cacao from trade routes to Mexico or the American Southwest, but noted that no “direct connections to Mexico nor the American Southwest are supported by archaeological evidence for now.”
“These results ask us to reopen lines of research long closed, especially regarding contacts between the impressive civilizations of Central and South America and the great Mississippian civilization of the Eastern Woodlands,” King and his colleagues said in the study.
As to the cultural role of cacao, the study suggested that “at Etowah and possibly across the Mississippian world, cacao consumption played a role in world renewal rites of intensification.”
Given the previous story about fossil fuels subsidies, we need all the world renewal rites we can get, so eat dessert first.
Thanks for reading! See you next week.
‘Total peace’ plan of previous government led only 99 of Colombia’s 30,000 armed combatants to disarm, but new president Abelardo De la Espriella opposes peace agreements
In mid-June, 99 guerrilla fighters were flown by helicopter to a small settlement in a rural area of southern Colombia where they lined up and, one by one, handed their weapons to government officials: rifles, pistols, machine guns and grenade launchers.
They also stripped off their heavy tactical vests, field packs and camouflage uniforms, which were each piled into a bonfire to mark the beginning of a new life away from an armed conflict that has claimed nearly half a million lives in the last six decades.
Continue reading...A family day in a Florida back yard was the setting for a summertime memory it would be impossible to recreate
Trace Meek is abundantly proud of his Florida back yard. For the last 10 years, he and his wife, Lauren, have worked diligently on it. “It’s our happy place,” he says. “We live in Belleair Bluffs, and I’ve watched my son and daughter grow up playing in the dirt under our giant oak trees, swinging on the tree swing, riding their bikes and scooters on the circular path, and swimming in our pool. It’s big, with a really deep end and three water fountains that shoot over the top. We like to have a last jump into the pool before bed and, best of all, there are no iPads or TVs.”
The family had friends visiting for 4 July celebrations when Meek took this photo on his phone. There were six adults, six children and two dogs present. Harvey, a braque français, is pictured here on Lauren’s lap.
Continue reading...
Misja Vos werkt al bijna dertig jaar in de haven. En dat merkt hij aan zijn schouder en elleboog. “Die doen niet meer leuk mee.” Juist daarom strijdt hij tegen de plannen van het kabinet om 6,5 miljard euro te bezuinigen op de sociale zekerheid. Want die hebben ook gevolgen voor uitkeringen bij arbeidsongeschiktheid en werkloosheid.
peaceful-jp-scenery has added a photo to the pool:
Kumanotaisya Shrine
熊野大社
The steps along the approach to the shrine were filled with Tanabata decorations. It was a lovely shrine.
参道の階段にいっぱいの七夕飾り。素敵な神社でした。
Nanyo city, Yamagata pref, Japan