Tootfinder

At 18:15 UTC - 6 hours before the solar eclipse for Artemis II begins - the remains of #Kreutz comet MAPS are hard to see (near the edge of the field in the 2 o'clock position) even with a lot of contrast boosting of the https://ccor.nrl.navy.mil/ccor_realtime/last_image_MinBckgnd.png images.

Corning and Nvidia partner to open three advanced manufacturing plants in North Carolina and Texas dedicated to optical tech, boosting Corning's US capacity 10x (Katie Tarasov/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/06/nvidia-corning-optical-factories-nc-texa…

Nvidia, Corning partner on massive optical fiber deal that may be a game changer for AI
Corning is opening three new advanced manufacturing plants in the U.S. dedicated entirely to optical technologies for Nvidia.

#AccidentallyTheEcoPresident might finally get us to stop producing so much damned plastic.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/591542/th

The global oil crisis is turning into an everything crisis
The global supply of oil and natural gas has been reduced by about a fifth, limiting supplies needed by manufacturers to make car parts, medical supplies, food packaging and fabrics.

Exactly 24 hours from now - at 0:35 UTC on 7 April - the total eclipse for the #ArtemisII crew will begin ... will they see / be able to photograph the fading detached dust tail of #Kreutz comet MAPS imaged here by #ZodiacalLight / potential dust hovering over the lunar limb might record it as well.

I wanna jump one more time on the whole "distraction" framing, because this is a point that needs to be hammered home (and I need a reminder to write something longer).
Attacks on trans youth are not a distraction from other types of coercion, they are central to it. Attacks on trans youth come from a conceptualization of children as property, which is literally patriarchy in the Roman sense of the legal objectification all people who share a household as belonging to a man. This legal structure, Roman slave law, continues to be the root of property rights and therefore the foundation of capitalism.
But colonialism also extends from it through the infantalization of colonized people as a justification for oppression. This can also be turned inward again manifesting as the justification for police (that is, some people "can't handle themselves and need external authority to act right").
The #Epstein stuff isn't some weird thing that rich people get away with, it's core to how wealth works. Money isn't useful by itself, it's a proxy for power. One manifestation of power is being able to violate laws that constrain others (this is the "freedom of the monarch" that Graeber talks about in Dawn of Everything). The war in Iran, especially the threats of nuclear weapons and genocide is not a distraction from the #EpsteinFiles, but rather a manifestation of the same thing.
Power must be demonstrated to affirm that it is real. War is a demonstration power. Violating the law without consequences is a demonstration of power. The most taboo things are using nuclear weapons and child sexual abuse. He has already done one of those, and he is going to do everything he can to do the other.
These are not distractions, these are all manifestations of the underlying thing that we need to fight. But we need to make sure we're fighting it as a single thing. We have to tie these things together, because if we do not then we risk reproducing the same thing again but worse.

The dust cloud born out of the demise of #Kreutz comet MAPS yesterday continues to evolve dramatically in https://ccor.nrl.navy.mil/ccor_realtime/last_image_MinBckgnd.png images, here from 0:45 and 2:30 UTC Sunday - most think it's a former dust tail the comet formed hours before perihelion, with particles being pushed away from the Sun by radiation pressure far enough that they survived their personal perihelia while the comet itself did not. At least for this coronagraph the surface brightness looks pretty high ...

Preventative Medicine, or the Manufacture of Patients?
There is a sentence every American patient has heard at the dentist's chair, the cardiologist's office, the primary-care visit, and the pharmacy counter. It arrives in a tone of grave responsibility: We caught this early. What follows is a crown, an echocardiogram, a statin, a stress test, a referral, a follow-up appointment, and a copay. The word "preventative" has come to function as a moral shield around a…

Preventative Medicine, or the Manufacture of Patients? | David Boles, Blogs
There is a sentence every American patient has heard at the dentist’s chair, the cardiologist’s office, the primary-care visit, and the pharmacy counter. It arrives in a tone of grave r…

The #Kreutz comet MAPS is now also in the field of view of the coronagraph CCOR-1: help yourself to the latest images at https://ccor.nrl.navy.mil/ccor_realtime/last_image_MinBckgnd.png (15 minute cadence). What SOHO's LASCO C3 and PUNCH's NFI see and what it all means I've just summarized the bottom of https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2026/04/01/artemis-ii-vor-dem-start-maps-vor-dem-perihel/ with the still growing thread https://groups.io/g/comets-ml/topic/118640744 as the major source - in a nutshell there is still some life in this sungrazer (25 hours til perihelion!) and no evidence that it's beginning to fall apart which it will certainly do at one point.

The existence of Israel is a manifestation of European antisemitism, both historically justifying the project of Zionism and European governments continuing to fund Israel instead of addressing the core role of antisemitism in maintaining (at least) the conservative elements of the neoliberal order.
If antisemitism props up Israel, then a core part of dismantling Israel (and thus saving the lives of Palestinians) is addressing European antisemitism. There are Israeli Jews who would leave if they felt safe to do so. There are Jews demanding Israel be armed, because they don't feel safe anywhere else.
Protest, boycott, take whatever action you feel is appropriate. There is a limit to your ability to convince governments to stop funding genocide, but you can learn about antisemitism and you can work to fight it, especially within "The Left." You can learn to distinguish between legitimate critiques of Israel, and antisemitic ones, and you can stand and call out antisemitic ones.
Honestly, this is some of the easy work that I think a lot of people don't consider even doing, don't even realize it is a thing that can be done.
I'm talking to Israeli folks who identify as being on the Left. It's hard because they've been through a lot of propaganda. Israel is a cult that terrorizes its members. This is important work that can have a huge impact, because it focuses on dismantling the networks of support that reinforce what's happening now.
Meanwhile, I still run into wild things like "Rothschild" conspiracy theories among people who identify with the idea of supporting Palestinians.
Not only can you support the liberation of Palestine and the Palestinian people while opposing antisemitism, but you must actually do both in order to do either. They are exactly the same fight, and anything short of both is thrashing against oneself.

Twelve hours to go till #Kreutz comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS) reaches its perihelion - and it's still healthy for CCOR-1 in this image from 1:45 UTC today. Fresh ones at https://ccor.nrl.navy.mil/ccor_realtime/last_image_MinBckgnd.png every 15 minutes - and (uplifting) assessments of what's going on in https://www.facebook.com/groups/633346904255340/posts/2004738737116143 and https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10233680923429250