A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

More context on this #Artemis II image:

* This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right

* The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon:
☀️🌍🚀🌕

Jawpitur 🤔

Now this is what social media is for

If that’s a theory now, the baseline assumption has clearly shifted. The interesting question isn’t whether some users are human — it’s what proportion of interaction is emergent behaviour from algorithms optimising engagement rather than consciousness expressing intent.

This is very cool btw.

By most metrics a launch failure, but when your objective is to re-enter anyway, who's to say what you'll achieve.

Absolutely gutted

A community I can relate to.
#DuvetKnowItsChristmas

Yes, that's a spine

Finished "There Is No Anti Memetics Division" by @qntm.org this morning. Thoroughly enjoyable.

This one will stay with me for sure. If not, I'll read it again one day.

Is social media just...boring now? Social media is destroying democracy and accelerating idiocracy. But it's also just...really, really boring.

I wrote about how and why social media has largely become boring and why it's a bad idea to eat your own brain: www.forkingpaths.co/p/is-social-...

Kardashev scale joke?

I had a great tutor from Mexico with Preply, really cost effective and enjoyable way to learn

As a Brit working there during the Brexit vote, it was a stark reminder: institutions like ESA are easy to criticise, but much harder to build. And when we weaken or abandon them, we all lose.

Here's to the next 50 years!

Happy 50th birthday to @esa.int
One of Europe’s greatest collaborative ventures in science and innovation.

ESA isn’t perfect — no institution is — but its contributions to space science, Earth observation, and international cooperation are profound.

The script seems to have been written by an adult human rather than the slop in Obi-Wan Kenobi

It does at least suggest he's going to leave office... Every cloud

Same. The one thing I'm missing