your weirdness refill

Influential activist Leonard Leo helped fund media campaign lionizing Clarence Thomas

Source: Washington Post

The 25th anniversary of Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court was approaching — a moment that would draw attention to his accomplishments on the bench but also to the misconduct claims that had nearly derailed his rise. Among the wave of retrospective accounts set to come out that year, 2016, was a star-studded HBO film dramatically recounting Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations.

That spring, a flurry of opinion articles defending Thomas and railing against the film appeared in news outlets, penned by a D.C. lawyer who had worked in the George H.W. Bush White House during the confirmation. Websites celebrating Thomas’s career — and attacking his onetime accuser — popped up. And on Twitter, a new account using the name “Justice Thomas Fan Account” began serving up flattering commentary.

“Justice Thomas: The most open & personable of Justices, intimate in sharing his feelings, easily moved to laughter,” read one early tweet on the account.

It was not apparent at the time, but the rush of favorable content was part of a coordinated and sophisticated public relations campaign to defend and celebrate Thomas, according to a Washington Post examination of public and internal records and interviews with people familiar with the effort. The campaign would stretch on for years and include the creation and promotion of a laudatory film about Thomas, advertising to boost positive content about him during internet searches and publication of a book about his life. It was financed with at least $1.8 million from conservative nonprofit groups steered by the judicial activist Leonard Leo, the examination found.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/07/20/leonard-leo-clarence-thomas-paoletta/

How ancient 'skywells' are keeping Chinese homes cool

Ru Ling loves spending time in skywells. To her, these courtyards of old Chinese houses are the perfect place to be in on a hot and humid day.

"They are airy, cool and well-shaded," says 40-year-old Ru.

From 2014 to 2021, Ru lived in a century-old timber-framed home in the village of Guanglu in eastern China's Anhui province. She moved there for a change of life after living and working in air-conditioned buildings for many years.

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Ru says that the house's skywell helped create this cooling effect. And she's not alone in extolling the benefits of skywells in hot weather. Studies have found that the temperatures inside some of the skywells in southern China are significantly lower than the outside – by up to 4.3C.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230712-how-ancient-skywells-are-keeping-chinese-homes-cool

Coronal rain has been seen splashing on the sun

By Lisa Grossman
July 12, 2023 at 9:00 am

Plasma rain in the sun’s atmosphere makes a splash when it lands. New observations from the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter have revealed previously unseen details of how this coronal rain falls, including bright fireball effects and sudden upward surges in plasma.

“These are the highest resolution images we have ever obtained from the solar corona,” says solar physicist Patrick Antolin of Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He presented the results at the National Astronomy Meeting in Cardiff, Wales, the week of July 3 and in a paper to be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The corona is the sun’s wispy upper atmosphere, the sizzling tangle of plasma and magnetism that is visible during a total eclipse (SN: 6/30/19). When clumps of scorching-hot plasma in the corona suddenly cool, they condense and fall toward the solar surface, just like water droplets in Earth’s atmosphere. This coronal rain has been observed before, but details of its formation and falling were fuzzy (SN: 5/24/18).

The 2020 launch of Solar Orbiter promised to change that (SN: 2/9/20). The probe is making passes over the sun’s unexplored polar regions, carrying high resolution cameras and other instruments to investigate solar mysteries. In late March 2022, Solar Orbiter made its closest approach to the sun to date, swooping within 49 million kilometers of our star — about a third of the distance between the sun and Earth.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronal-rain-sun-space

Wednesday weirdness

You deserve a laugh break today

Giant sloth pendants suggest people arrived in the Americas thousands of years earlier than thought

July 12, 2023, 6:38 AM EDT / Source: Associated Press
By Associated Press

New research suggests humans lived in South America at the same time as now extinct giant sloths, bolstering evidence that people arrived in the Americas earlier than once thought.

Scientists analyzed triangular and teardrop-shaped pendants made of bony material from the sloths. They concluded that the carved and polished shapes and drilled holes were the work of deliberate craftsmanship.Dating of the ornaments and sediment at the Brazil site where they were found point to an age of 25,000 to 27,000 years ago, the researchers reported. That’s several thousand years before some earlier theories had suggested the first people arrived in the Americas, after migrating out from Africa and then Eurasia.

“We now have good evidence — together with other sites from South and North America — that we have to rethink our ideas about the migration of humans to the Americas,” said Mirian Liza Alves Forancelli Pacheco, a study co-author and archaeologist at the Federal University of Sao Carlos in Brazil.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/giant-sloth-pendants-suggest-ancient-migration-americas-rcna93812

A little Tuesday weirdness

This sparked fond memories of our beloved late MFM

Your Sunday evening dose of weirdness

Plan to slice New York pizza oven emissions by 75% causes backlash

By Max Matza
BBC News

A proposal to slice emissions from coal and wood-burning pizza ovens in New York City by 75% has left a bad taste in the mouths of some locals.

A rule change proposed on Friday would require pizzerias to evaluate whether they can install emissions control devices for their kitchens stoves.
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On Monday, a man tossed slices of pizza at New York City Hall in protest.

"Give us pizza or give us death," shouted conservative activist Scott LoBaido, in a reference to an anti-British Revolutionary War slogan.