Glenn Fleishman says, "Cometa shuts down. This doesn't show the model of for-fee Wi-Fi is broken, but rather that a company with hype and high expectations can fail to execute and then shut down." Link

A scientist in Oklahoma is planning to build giant, anti-comet airbags that can be sent into space and inflated to deflect the course of world-threating lumps of celestial rock.

Far better to send up a space ship equipped with a massive airbag that could be inflated to several miles wide and used to gently buffet the invading solar body away from a collision course with earth.

New terahertz "T-ray" cameras will allow us to see into space and under each others' clothes.

One camera, already built by a company called QinetiQ and working in so-called millimetric waves, has demonstrated the ability to eerily peer through clothes and reveal a concealed weapon — as well as much of a person's body.

Vanessa sez: "The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has decided to get back at those nasty comets for all the times they slammed into the Earth. In 2005, JPL will crash a 770-lb. payload into the comet Tempel 1, supposedly in order to get the first-ever look at the inside of a comet. — Read the rest

Comet Ikeya-Zhang will be visible to the naked eye until mid-March. "According to SKY & TELESCOPE magazine, the comet is now bright enough to be
seen with the unaided eye from very dark sites free of any light pollution.
Binoculars show a bright, starlike nucleus surrounded by a small, faint
cloud, or coma. — Read the rest

Al Alcorn, creator of Pong and chief engineer at Atari in its earliest days, has put incredible artifacts from his personal collection up for auction.

For example, above is the unreleased Atari Cosmos from 1980, "an unreleased tabletop electronic game system designed to utilize holographic cartridges overlaid against an LED array display. — Read the rest

Fortnite OG is proving to be everything I hoped a tribute to the Chapter 1 game could be. During a brief 1 month pause between major updates, the break between Chapters 4 and 5, Epic has brought back the golden era of Fortnite. — Read the rest

Back when it was released in 2016, we shared OK Go's video for "Upside Down & Inside Out," which was filmed in zero gravity. 

It made quite a splash at the time because it is an incredible video. WIRED described the video as showing the band "floating while ripping apart piñatas, exploding paint-filled balloons and generally wreaking havoc." — Read the rest

Amateur astronomers captured incredible video (example below) of a fireball smashing into Jupiter on August 28. According to Kyoto University astronomer Ko Arimatsu—who leads a program in which backyard astronomers contribute to the scientific study the solar system—this particular impact was comparable to the 1908 Tunguska impact in Siberia that devastated 800 square miles of forest. — Read the rest

This version of the Batman TV show's (1966) theme song by Japanese musicians Johnnys with Jackey Yoshikawa & His Blue Comets is a banger. It includes a new verse, in Japanese, that only adds to the vibe.

This version was apparently used as the ending theme when the show was broadcast in Japan. — Read the rest

Even almost seven years after the conspiracy theory known as "Pizzagate" began circulating, it's still going strong, despite the fact that it's been debunked over and over. Seems like the right-wing conspiracy folks just can't shake their belief in Satanic ritual abuse and elite pedophile rings.  — Read the rest

Not really sure what to make of this trailer for a new Syd Barrett documentary.

Piecing together his comet-like rise to pop stardom, his creative and destructive impulses, breakdown, exit from the band and subsequent life alone, this feature length documentary is set against the social context of the explosive sixties.

TW: death by suicide

Next month (March 26) marks the 26th anniversary of the Heaven's Gate cult mass suicide—when 39 people ingested poison in a Rancho Santa Fe Mansion, in the hopes of catching a ride on the Hale-Bopp comet. — Read the rest

Today (Thursday) at around 4:27 PM, a truck-sized asteroid will fly past the southern tip of South America just 2,200 miles above Earth's surface. That's ten times closer to us than the slew of satellites in orbit, a very rare near miss according to NASA's Scout impact hazard assessment system. — Read the rest

Binoculars make a great gift for any kid (or adult). They really do change your perspective on this world (literally and figuratively) and beyond. Space.com posted a guide to the best real binoculars (not toys) that are lightweight, durale, and small enough for kid hands. — Read the rest

The leading international organization for archaeologists "dedicated to the research, interpretation, and protection of the archaeological heritage of the Americas," the Society for American Archaeology, recently wrote a letter to Netflix requesting that the "docuseries" Ancient Apocalypse be reclassified as "science fiction." — Read the rest

Have you heard that the National Drug Dealers Consortium is planning on spiking your children's Halloween candy bowl with rainbow-colored fentanyl this year? To hear the local news tell, these evil, mustache-twirling criminals are planning to give away hundreds of millions of dollars worth of illicit painkillers in hopes that a few 8-year-olds might get so hooked on the (genuinely addictive) pills that they start stealing money from their unknowing parents' purses and turn into regular customers for the hustlers. — Read the rest

Somehow I missed these "Directed by David Lynch" decals when they first came out, but they are even more relevant now. What a helpful reminder of the true nature of our strange reality. A five-pack is $8.49 from WelcomeToTwinPeaks.com.

As Lynch once said: "This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top." — Read the rest

Here's how creator Johnny Damm explains the project:

Can policing be reformed? How do cops view themselves and their work? To tackle these questions, "I'm a Cop" directly examines the words of police leaders themselves. Damm's innovative comics combine statements made by the heads of U.S.

Substack recently fired one of their freelance editors, Sam Thielman, in an explicit retaliation for the fact that one of the writers with whom Thielman had been working had chosen not to renew his contract with the popular email newsletter platform. — Read the rest