Alexander F

@underthenettle @asymmetricinfo Turning wine into 93% water isn’t as impressive.

it's Good Friday, which means it's time to share my favourite tumblr post of all time

A newborn sperm whale can’t swim. It starts sinking the second it’s born. If nobody pushes it to the surface, it drowns in mile-deep water. On July 8, 2023, a sperm whale named Rounder went into labor off the coast of Dominica. Researchers from Project CETI, a $33 million AI initiative out of MIT, Harvard, and Northeastern that’s trying to decode whale language, happened to be there doing routine fieldwork. They had drones in the air and underwater microphones running. What they captured over the next six hours just got published in two papers, one in Science and one in Scientific Reports. Eleven whales gathered at the surface before Rounder even started delivering. Her mother, Lady Oracle, was there. So was her daughter Accra. Three generations in the water. But the wild part: half those whales belonged to a completely separate bloodline that normally keeps its distance from Rounder’s family. On a typical day, these two family lines split off to hunt in different areas and rarely cluster together. For the birth, they all converged before labor started. The unrelated family somehow knew it was coming. The delivery took 34 minutes. Sperm whale calves come out tail-first with their flukes still folded from the womb. They haven’t developed the oil-filled organ in their heads that helps adult whales float, so the moment they’re born, they’re dead weight in the ocean. Every adult whale in the group, related and unrelated, started taking turns pushing the calf up to breathe. They kept this rotation going for three hours. When a pod of pilot whales (known to be aggressive toward sperm whales) and a large group of Fraser’s dolphins showed up during delivery, the adults formed a wall around the newborn until the threat passed. The underwater audio is where it gets interesting. CETI’s microphones picked up the whales changing their vocal patterns during the birth. The click-based sounds they use to talk to each other shifted at specific moments, and vowel-like structures appeared in the recordings. This builds on what CETI found in 2024 when they ran machine learning on over 8,700 recorded whale calls and discovered sperm whale communication isn’t a basic 21-sound code. It’s a system of about 300 distinct sound combinations, with the whales adjusting rhythm and timing in real time, speeding up and slowing down the way a musician does mid-performance. A 2025 follow-up from UC Berkeley found these clicks also contain vowel patterns, something scientists had assumed only humans could produce. Sperm whales carry the largest brain of any animal on the planet. About 9 kg. Roughly six times heavier than yours. The evolutionary analysis in the new Science paper suggests this kind of cooperative birthing goes back over 36 million years, to the common ancestor of all toothed whales. The calf was spotted a year later, swimming with its family.

@Coast2Clutch @BradeauxNBA Moonbound Speed: ~25,000 mph (after Trans-Lunar Injection). Initial Orbital Speed: ~17,500 mph (low Earth orbit).

@BradeauxNBA It was amazing to watch. They said it got up to 2000 mph. Can't imagine the G-force but what a beautiful sight. 2028 they will go back to the moon. Same year the Rockets will go the Finals. 😁

This is by far the coolest video I’ve ever seen. Imagine looking out the window of your flight and seeing a shuttle launch.

@be_yours3 @louis30274036 @bayek_of "Women initiate the vast majority of heterosexual divorces, with studies showing they file for approximately 69% to 90% of all divorces. This trend is consistent across decades, often driven by higher levels of dissatisfaction."

@louis30274036 @bayek_of Yo lo unico que voy a decir es que hay mas mujeres enfermas dependientes solas que hombres enfermos dependientes solos. Los que se rinden ante cualquier dificultad en su mayoría son hombres. Se van con una mas joven, o simplemente porque no es lo mismo que antes

Mis abuelos estuvieron casados durante 60 años. Un día le pregunté a mi abuelo: "¿Cuál es el secreto para amar a la misma mujer toda la vida?". No se rió, no dijo "comunicación", no dijo "citas románticas". Miró a mi abuela, que estaba en la cocina y dijo: "No se ama a la misma…

@jperrings @GuntherEagleman "passed via voice vote" = opportunity was given for any Senator to ask for confirmation of quorum which would have stopped proceedings. Rs & Ds agreed in advance to "unanimous consent" congress.gov/crs-product/96…

From Grok; “Yes, five U.S. senators effectively advanced (and the Senate passed via voice vote) a DHS funding bill in the early hours of Friday, March 27, 2026.16 This occurred around 2:18–3 a.m. during a late-night session, just before the Senate's two-week Easter recess. Only five senators were present on the floor: reports identify Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune (S.D.), Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio, presiding), and Democratic Sens. Brian Schatz (Hawaii) and Andy Kim (N.J.). The bill was H.R. 7147 (a further consolidated appropriations measure, often called a continuing resolution or CR in this context), which funded most of the Department of Homeland Security but notably excluded full funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the immediate” You can make what you like out of the above…

🚨House Republicans are BLOCKING the Senate’s weak DHS Democrat compromise and replacing it with something much better. Chip Roy made it clear: The House is not accepting this garbage deal. Thune better come back to DC.

@jperrings @GuntherEagleman Your framing was "If 5 Senator's can get together, in the dark of night to pass legislation..." I'm asking for the second time: When have 5 senators passed legislation? Your response is about procedure -- not legislation -- and even then requires a majority of quorum, i.e. >5

A summary from Grok; "Fastest realistic way (internal party vote): At least 5 Republican senators formally request a conference meeting (per Republican Conference rules). This puts the issue on the agenda quickly. The Conference convenes and holds a vote (typically by secret ballot if contested). A simple majority of attending Republican senators (roughly 27 votes out of 53) can elect a new leader and effectively remove Thune." I believe this is the process that was used to install Thune shortly after Trump was elected. This resistance point was established prior up to President Trump taking the oath of Office for the second time...

@jperrings @GuntherEagleman I searched & could not find an explanation about 5 senators passing legislation. What are you referring to?

Here is an idea! If 5 Senator's can get together, in the dark of night to pass legislation, what would keep 5 Senators from getting together, in the dark of night and requesting a conference meeting to replace the current Senate leadership? This would create an agenda item and a vote which would identify who stands with whom! All of the talk from the Senate is getting tiresome and the people want action.

@BobBurg11324144 @SPQR_Austin @JeremiahDJohns uschamber.com/environment/su…

@BobBurg11324144 @SPQR_Austin @JeremiahDJohns atra.org/garland-should… heritage.org/crime-and-just…

A fun corruption hack is to have your supporters sue the govt for something done under Biden, then immediately give them a huge settlement since you control the Justice Department. Perfectly 'legal' and can be done an unlimited amount of times. Money printer for loyal goons.

@candiedwishkey @SPQR_Austin @JeremiahDJohns uschamber.com/environment/su…

@candiedwishkey @SPQR_Austin @JeremiahDJohns atra.org/garland-should… heritage.org/crime-and-just…

This was supposed to be a great week for Houston tourism. Then Trump rejected a bipartisan deal to fund the TSA. houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editor…

@TheJasonNichols @mattyglesias There are 272M +/-5M adults in America. Source usafacts.org/just-the-facts… 30-40% = 81.6-108.8M Agreed that's a large 'bubble', but not following "~250M". That would be 92% of adults.

@mattyglesias Roughly 30-40% of adults can read at the higher level discussed. That's not a bubble. It's ~250 million people. The much larger learning gap, as you display (no offense), is in math and logic.

@BarredinDC @CrystalLNosal "non-responsive"?

@CrystalLNosal Agree that decline comment is misleading or a straight up lie. Not sure what’s the middle ground here

POLL - if a journalist asks a govt official/etc for comment on a story, and govt official respond with a non sequitur/insult that does not substantively respond to the question/story, is it ok for reporter to report they “declined to comment”? Sh

@dilanesper Meanwhile the Shakers have surged by 50%. /s npr.org/2025/08/19/nx-…

If you tell people "in order to believe in our God, you have to espouse a bunch of stuff about a central human activity that you know is not true", well, you'll keep a core of true believers who insist on being super-devout, but you'll lose a whole bunch of others.

Fun fact: the teachings of major organized religions on this subject have never actually worked or been accepted by even their own believers. Even long before the sexual revolution.

NEWS that Congressional staff are not going to like- Delta is suspending its special congressional desk service for members of Congress until the shutdown is over. @ajc ajc.com/politics/2026/…

Beyond concerning! Taking such an action would negatively affect millions of Iranians and cause severe humanitarian impacts. That no longer becomes actions targeted at the regime, but very much collective punishment of a population.

@RickD_GK @gotrice2024 She literally threw away 80% of her second plate.

@gotrice2024 Well, thats the hotels choice to make. If they're gonna allow it, people will take advantage. Better than wasting the food...

Many hotels serve a complimentary breakfast to their guests, it’s often setup in a cafeteria style room by the front desk. Many of these areas aren’t secured by keycard and that people off the streets could just walk in and eat and leave. This woman and many others have figured that out and what they do is walk in during breakfast, eat and leave. Most of the time they are never even caught, the hotels always make too much for guests anyways and that the food is thrown out if not eaten. The woman here is going to work and just stops at random hotels so that she can eat for free and leave for work. She claims it’s not stealing because the hotel advertised a free continental breakfast and that they are gonna throw it out anyways. So based on that should anyone just be able to walk in without being a paying guest, eat what we want and leave without any consequences, is it still theft if they throw it away anyway?

Guys, relax, the only risk in transiting the Strait of Hormuz is that Iran will shoot a missile at your ship. Otherwise it's open for transit. An all-time quote from our Secretary of War.

@AllanRicharz @JeremiahDJohns Damn newspaper pressmen always insisting on starting with moveable type BEFORE moving to photographic offset.

Eh, prof was right and the class missed the point. It's not that the archaic skill itself will ever need to be used; it's that you learn the underlying theory/skill/history behind the modern practice. People just want to skip ahead to the end product without learning the boring fundamentals, and then wonder why the resulting product is garbage (even though it's "technically" correct)

When my wife was in J-school, she had a prof who forced students to learn manual layout design for newspapers. I'm talking X-acto knives, physical plates, glue, etc. This was in the mid 2000s, decades after digital software was common. They all learned a valuable lesson - that the professor was an out of touch relic and those skills were pointless. Same professor had never himself used InDesign btw, lmao.