Ah, you're right, I did some more digging and we do include it in our internal acronym glossary. Though I probably didn't need to bother, it's spelled out in full in the logo (in Arabic) right below where it says "Explorer"! That seems pretty official to me.
(it lets me pretend maybe it stands for Main Belt Reconnaissance or something)
My understanding is "Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt" (EMA) is the name of the mission, and "MBR Explorer" is the name of the spacecraft, which is not expanded in official communications.
Simpsons bus driver meme where he says "don't make me tap the sign" and then he's tapping a screenshot of a mathematical explanation of how to uniformly select points on a sphere
Don't forget to sample those coordinates uniformly in area next time!
mathworld.wolfram.com/SpherePointP...
Two color images of the crescent of Mars with a cyclone near the north polar ice cap at the top of the image. The images were taken on August 7, 2025 at 12:30 and 14:20 UTC.
Two color images of Mars with a cyclone near the north polar ice cap at the top of the image. Also visible in the center of the images are the three large volcanoes of Tharsis Montes and Olympus Mons volcano. The images were taken on August 7, 2025 at 16:18 and 18:10 UTC.
Seasonally recurrent annular cyclone on Mars in processed images from newly released data from the EXI camera system onboard the Hope probe (EMM - Emirates Mars Mission).
The images were taken on August 7, 2025 between ~12:30 and 18:10 UTC.
Credit: Emirates Mars Mission (EMM)/EXI/D. Machacek.
funniest outcome of this is that the justice system functions as intended and they have to send maduro right back, a free man
if you are talking today about how bad maduro was and were alive, at all, during the run-up to the iraq war you are potentially the dumbest person to ever live
This is NOT what America is about. America is about *opens history book*
uh oh
*Frantically starts flipping though pages*
uh oh. oh no. no no no. uh oh
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...
the big hay goat from sweden or something looking very unburned and majestic with text from the old "you wouldn't download a car" but it reads "you wouldn't burn a goat"
it's advent you know what that means
From "Linguistic structure from a bottleneck on sequential information processing", Futrell & Hahn, 2025. doi.org/10.1038/s415...
A cat and a dog, grouped four ways indicating how different language architectures might express the same semantic information A) natural language: "a cat with a dog" B) unnatural semantic: "a gol with a nar" C) non-local systematic: "waitacdahogt" D) holistic: "vek"
Science diagrams that look like shitposts
Before and after comparison of a detail from the 1432 Ghent Altarpiece by Van Eyck, showing the face of a lamb with a radiant halo. The pre-restoration version looks pretty naturalistic, with wide-set, side-facing eyes, appropriate for a grazing animal low on the food chain, and soft, uplifted ears. This appearance was apparently modified at some point in the past five centuries from the (now-restored) original version, shown on the right, which has the uncannily human, front-facing eyes of a predator, along with tube-shaped ears (like Shrek), set low on its head for some reason, giving an altogether alien appearance. These eyes are calm, but locked in an intense gaze, fully making eye-contact with the viewer. Presumably the artist had seen a sheep before, and chose to depict this lamb with the front-facing eyes to better express the lamb's divinity as the Lamb of God, symbolic of the crucified Jesus.
Prepping D&D, I'm thinking I'm gonna give the deer avatar of one of my gods forward-facing predator eyes like the restored Ghent Altarpiece lamb, to better express its uncanny divinity.
HB 1312, nice
Maybe I could use it again somehow. Or should I try to put a costume together and be Andreas for Halloween? 🤔
The code wheel, disassembled. The face plate has holes which reveal the scrambled letters underneath, on the base plate.
Close up view of the code wheel.
By the way, I had to use a computer to make sure none of the holes overlapped, and even then had to make up constellations from what I had. Making sure the rotational summery didn't make the letters overlap was tough. Lots of respect for the original designers, who also used real constellations!
I had fun working on it, but it also took like 8 hours to make so I'm hoping the players get more than 5 minutes of fun out of it, but this is like throwing a piñata to the bears at the zoo for enrichment, they're just gonna tear through it. And I'll be proud of them!
A multicolored wheel made of paper, inscribed with alchemical symbols and a star chart, plus other scraps of paper including an encoded clue with zodiac symbols and Greek letters, and a chart relating zodiac symbols to classical elements.
I made the code wheel puzzle from pentiment this weekend for my D&D campaign. I'm really pleased with how it turned out!
NAU also has folks on NEO Surveyor, Lunar Trailblazer, MMX, and ESCAPADE!
this is art
Lines for italian beef are too long at the Tempe Portillos when the Cubs are playing spring training games in Mesa! Arizona calls out for the bounty of the steppe!
Just in! 📸 The first images from yesterday’s #HeraMission flyby of Mars and its moon Deimos. 👇 www.esa.int/Space_Safety...
Season 1 of The Terror was really good.
Not super great that today feels like a "we should have class outside today!" kind of day, and it's February
Let us pledge in final chorus, Illinois, Illinois
That in struggles still before us, Illinois, Illinois
To our heroes we'll be true,
As their vision we pursue. In abiding love for you, Illinois, Illinois.
In abiding love for you, Illinois.
In abiding love for you, Illinois.
youtu.be/zE1gpEtQHMA
The root that tears apart your foundation begins as a seed of distrust, hate, and blame.
The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe didn’t arrive overnight.
It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.
