April 10, 2021

Another vent opens up in Iceland, total now four

It looks like things will start to progress more rapidly now that hotter and less viscous magma is coming up to the surface. It also looks like public safety people will be stepping in soon to keep people away. Here is a video full of geologic background and some speculation about what might happen next.

I happened to catch the new one opening up around 10 PM MDT. There was absolutely no drama, which should scare the hell out of people who want to do volcano tourism at this thing.

Panoramic live video, new vent is second from right and the only one showing incandescent lava in the lousy weather:

April 8, 2021

Third fissure opens up in Iceland

The second fissure remains the most spectacular, both for it's length and output of lava.

Here is a discussion of what is likely to happen.

April 5, 2021

BREAKING: New Fissure Opens North Of Geldingadalur, Area Evacuated

The fissure is at least 100 metres long, and is spraying lava into the air. This new fissure is as well far from populated areas and infrastructure, but no chances are being taken. As such, the eruption site is closed for the time being.

“We can never know ahead of time how this volcano will behave,” volcanologist Magnús Tumi Guðmundsson told RÚV. “There is a certain amount of pressure, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of material coming to the surface, but it could lead to an increased eruption. But we see no signs that it’s decreasing. This event is not at all over.”

https://grapevine.is/news/2021/04/05/breaking-new-fissure-opens-north-of-geldingadalur-area-evacuated/

This one has spooked the authorities because it opened up without a lot of the drama that preceded the first eruption.

April 3, 2021

One of World's Greatest Hidden Fortunes Is Wiped Out in Days

Hwang and his private investment firm, Archegos Capital Management, are now at the center of one of the biggest margin calls of all time -- a multibillion-dollar fiasco involving secretive market bets that were dangerously leveraged and unwound in a blink.

Hwang’s most recent ascent can be pieced together from stocks dumped by banks in recent days -- ViacomCBS Inc., Discovery Inc., GSX Techedu Inc., Baidu Inc. -- all of which had soared this year, sometimes confounding traders who couldn’t fathom why.

One part of Hwang’s portfolio, which has been traded in blocks since Friday by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo & Co., was worth almost $40 billion last week. Bankers reckon that Archegos’s net capital -- essentially Hwang’s wealth -- had reached north of $10 billion. And as disposals keep emerging, estimates of his firm’s total positions keep climbing: tens of billions, $50 billion, even more than $100 billion.

It evaporated in mere days.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-29/one-of-world-s-greatest-hidden-fortunes-is-wiped-out-in-days?utm_source=pocket-newtab

This is such a weird story. I've been following it for a few days. The article outlines part of what happened: Hwang was bounced out of the hedge fund industry for playing fast and loose, then set up a company that used every trick in the book to dodge SEC scrutiny, then played every game in the book to inflate its paper worth. It looks like Goldman Sachs was initially the one to pull the plug.

It shows how quickly some of these fast money billion dollar fortunes can go "poof" when somebody notices how much debt is propping them up. I sincerely doubt Hwang is unique, although his degree of brass might be.

The SEC needs to hire him on its forensic team since he knows all the tricks.

March 26, 2021

Time lapse of unloading and reloading a container ship

This is just to give an idea of how big the ship blocking the canal is and what it takes to unload one of those things.

My best guess says it's going to take a combination of dredging and dragging.

March 23, 2021

Volcano video du jour, partial colapse of largest cone

Ricks start to fall around the 23:15 mark, collapse happens a minute and a half or so later, pretty spectacular.

March 22, 2021

Space debris removal demonstration launches

A Soyuz rocket has launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to put 38 different satellites in orbit.

Among the payloads was a 500kg Earth imager developed by the South Korean space agency; and a pair of spacecraft from the Tokyo-headquartered Astroscale company which will give a demonstration of how to clean up orbital debris.

Astroscale's showcase will be run from an operations centre in the UK.

With the space environment becoming increasingly cluttered, there is heightened awareness that something needs to be done to sweep away spaceflight's legacy of discarded hardware.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56482726

I'm glad somebody is doing this.

March 22, 2021

Interesting article on Ravelry in The New Yorker

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/03/29/how-politics-tested-ravelry-and-the-crafting-community

Some of it is informative, some glosses over the bad behavior of right wingers (doxxing people, death threats, the usual for them) while magnifying other controversies on the site, but it's a decent read for those of us who use the site for patterns and problem solving.

I knew Deplorable was back, there is a disagree on every post I make, even on the kitty threads.

March 20, 2021

Iceland finally begins Reykjanes eruption

No large eathquake,no loud roar, just a glow in the sky near Grindavik.

March 20, 2021

Texas museum forced to take down Trump statue because everyone keeps punching it

A wax museum in Texas has removed its statue of former US president Donald Trump from display after it was repeatedly punched by visitors.

Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks in San Antonio, Texas, had to move the statue to a storage room because some museum visitors kept attacking it.

They punched and scratched the figure, inflicting so much damage that it had to be pulled from public view, Clay Stewart, regional manager for Ripley Entertainment, which owns the museum, told San Antonio Express-News.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-statue-punching-texas-museum-b1819422.html

In TEXAS? I shudder to think what people would have done to it around here.