@Techmeme@techhub.social2026-03-25 00:26:17
Source: SpaceX is aiming to file its IPO prospectus with regulators later this week or next week, and could try to raise more than $75B (The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/spacex-aims-file-ipo-soon-week
@pre@boing.world2025-12-26 08:40:32
Nice to see a UK party leader demonstrate some actual compassion and care this Christmas. I'm so fed up with politicians pedaling hate and division trying to pander to terrible racism and xenophobia, trying to pick up the votes of the hateful.
This is what political leadership really is. Not following the right wing media hatred but countering it.
Zack Polanski's Christmas message is less than five minutes.
#green #christmas
@Mediagazer@mstdn.social2026-01-25 16:30:39
Foreign correspondents at WaPo send a letter to Jeff Bezos raising alarm over impending layoffs, which are expected to "land hard" on international coverage (@erikwemple)
https://x.com/erikwemple/status/2015432558851301380
@jswright61@ruby.social2026-01-25 20:17:07
Just got an email from one of my Senators, Jon Ossoff, GA with some welcomed news:
Good afternoon,
On Sunday, U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff demanded civil liberties protections before further funds are appropriated to ICE and announced he will oppose the measure scheduled for a vote this week.
(Full text of letter in the image alt-text)
#UsPol
@arXiv_physicsfludyn_bot@mastoxiv.page2026-02-26 09:23:30
A minimal wake-vortex model explains formation flight of flapping birds
Olivia Pomerenk, Kenneth S. Breuer
https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22043 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.22043 https://arxiv.org/html/2602.22043
arXiv:2602.22043v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Collective patterns of motion emerge across biological taxa: insects swarm, fish school, and birds flock. In particular, large migratory birds form strikingly ordered V-shaped formations, which experiments and direct numerical simulations have demonstrated provide substantial energetic benefits during long-distance flight. However, the precise aerodynamic and morphological mechanisms underlying these benefits remain unclear. In this work, we develop a reduced-order model of the wake-vortex interactions between two flapping birds flying in tandem. The model retains essential unsteady flapping dynamics while remaining computationally tractable. By optimizing over a six-dimensional state space, which comprises the follower's three-dimensional relative position and three independent flapping parameters, we identify the energetically optimal leader-follower configuration of northern bald ibises. The predicted optimum agrees quantitatively with live-bird measurements. Because of its simplicity, the model allows for direct interrogation of the physical mechanisms responsible for this optimum. In particular, it isolates precisely how the follower's wing kinematics interact with the leader's wake to enhance aerodynamic efficiency. The model predicts an 11% reduction in total mechanical power for a follower in formation flight -- consistent with experimental estimates -- and shows that this saving arises from reductions in both induced and profile power, dominated by decreased profile power enabled primarily through reduced flapping amplitude and, secondarily, reduced upstroke flexion. These results provide a mechanistic explanation for the structure of V-formations and offer new insight into the aerodynamic principles governing collective flight.
toXiv_bot_toot
@stargazer@woof.tech2026-01-24 22:50:28
"I have always believed in deeds, not words."
As the ongoing Russian attacks keep crippling our infrastructure (as seen from a cold unpowered home with a failing cell connection), I am left with few options. One of them, ruminating before sleep on a strange recurring phenomenon. If not careful, we become what we fight.
We're not infallible. It's the values we keep, the tradeoffs we make to succeed that shape us.
Be vigilant. Watch yourself.
And stay sa…
@cdarwin@c.im2026-01-21 03:57:27
Trump’s IRS chief reorganizes tax agency days before filing season
The Internal Revenue Service will reorganize its senior ranks
days before this year’s tax filing season opens
and try to use technology to become more efficient,
the Trump administration’s IRS leader Frank Bisignano told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
Administration officials named Bisignano the IRS’s chief executive,
a role that does not formally exist in the agency’s governing structur…
@floheinstein@chaos.social2026-02-23 10:00:53
None of us have to be millennials anymore.
If you were born between LOTR (animated version, 1978) and LOTR The Fellowship (2001), you are the Hobbit Generation: Promised wealth and adventure - but only receiving war and ruin.
(Original source: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUO2zZlCLdG/ …
@brian_gettler@mas.to2026-03-18 18:47:04
Allow me to doubt the federal government's claim that "the planned reductions" at the Canadian Museum of History are really "intended to improve efficiency and provide greater long-term flexibility in fulfilling its mandate."
Response from Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and Minister responsible for Official Languages to Colin Coates, President of the Canadian Historical Association.
@rberger@hachyderm.io2026-01-19 23:02:02
"Yet what matters isn’t the specific phrases, but the overall message: Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland."
#GiftArticle #USPolitics
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/trump-letter-to-norway/685676/?gift=E9o0y7Rlfcfv2OQ1sSVCEm2HqWTlvBG_uUPQ_7tcOpI&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share