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Through a Distorted Lens: A prisoner's view of the free world.

Hey there!

This is my attempt to bring you the outside world's news as we insiders see it. There's no real fact checking, beyond what I might hear on inmate-dot-com, the finest (?) news source in my prison or blurbs I catch on local television, radio, or podcast sources, and that's just how it goes behind the wires.

Some personal commentary will, of course, be included. :)

Russia crashes into the moon, cries about it.

Roscosmos sends up the Luna-25, tries to beat India to landing so they can be the fourth nation to put something on the moon.
Congrats, you landed a debris field on our Lunar body.
Roscosmos blamed the 47-ish year delay between their previous journey to the moon as the USSR and now for the crash.

India settles gracefully on the moon, learns things.

India puts the... Chandrayan? on the moon, discovers there's sulfur, titanium, and other elements present in a two week lunar stroll by their rover before parking it.
Many congratulations are deserved for doing the science world a good deed. \o/
Also, congratulations on seat #4 at the table of Earth countries who have successfully landed on the moon. :)

JAXA en route to the moon.

At the roundabout, take the second exit. In a few hundred thousand kilometers, turn to starboard.
Japan has a rocket on the way to the moon, wanting to be the fifth nation to successfully touch down. You can do it!
Just don't put Shinji in the robot.

Hydropanels exist!

I heard a company out there has these panels that generate ~3.78 liters of water a day out of thick air. Since there's water vapor in our air, it basically sucks the vapor out of it and turns that into potable water!
Wonder what's keeping skyscraper operators from slathering these panels all over their buildings and generating deciliters of water daily to help curb our water consumption.. .

But is it really less water?

Global Warming is whipping up nasty beastly hurricanes, cyclones, monsoons, and their ilk. We end up with lots of rain all at once in already saturated parts of the world, leading to devastating flooding that batters aged or unmaintained infrastructure that ultimately fails, claiming hundreds, even tens of thousands of lives. Meanwhile, other areas receive historic low rainfall, resulting in drought conditions.

If only we had solutions to curb our contributions to the increasing temperatures...

Less Cursive Johnsons, more Kenvue.

Johnson and Johnson is retiring the cursive signature that has been their marque for over a century, has fragmented the company into new chunks, and brands many of us grew up with will wear the new Kenvue marque in time.

Come now, no more tears.

Oregon, Oregrown! You can't spell Psilocybin without is in.

There are now facilities with facilitators in Oregon taking people through the psychedelic experience, which is purported to help those suffering from deep depression, PTSD, and other issues. There are rules laid out to help ensure a safe 'shroomsperience for those who can afford the hit to the wallet.

I'd say ~$2,000 is a small price to pay if it results in lifting the fog of depression from someone's shoulders. Imagine the number of days someone misses work because the depression is so heavy. If they aren't missing those days anymore... :) But at the same time, there are people who need the therapy, and really can't take the $2,000 hit. They're working on pricing.

Many of the facilities with facilitators have waiting lists at this time, due to interest.

Modular Nuclear Reactors exist!

The country of Rwanda will be helping a Canadian-German company test their modular nuclear reactor in the next few years.

The idea of a small scale reactor intrigues me, especially as they describe it as modular, with components that can be prefabricated and shipped to the destination site.
How are they being shipped, if this is true? Electric vehicles, charged by one of their other reactors? :)

If it works decently and is safe, I would love to see more of that around, and honestly, I like the idea of a meshed power grid with fail over mechanisms, rather than one big central juice supply -- while there are more places to fail, unless you have a cascading failure, your system as a whole is more resilient.
But that's my thought on it.


I hope you all have a pleasant local time of day, and remember to be good to and for each other. Thanks for reading!