Raise your hand if you saw this coming

The TikTok ban (soon to be lifted) is a gift to Trump. It allows him to signal to businesses that he controls their on-off switch. That’s the message of dictators.

Trump originally called for a ban on TikTok. Now, he’s counting on people’s ignorance to claim he’ll be its savior. When people know the facts it’s less easy to manipulate them.

A black and white image of the Wright brothers first flight.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong took this photograph of fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin after they planted the flag of the United States on the moon's surface.

on this day in 1903, the wright brothers had their first successful flight. 66 years later, man landed on the moon.

Happy #caturday to all who celebrate 🪅🎉🌟🎄

Texas Bans Sale Of Luggage To Pregnant Women AUSTIN, TX—In a sweeping prohibition with immediate implications for the Lone Star State’s potential mothers-to-be, Texas banned the sale of luggage to pregnant women Monday. “With this law, we ensure...

Texas Bans Sale Of Luggage To Pregnant Women

Butterfly Nebula (aka NGC 6302, Bug Nebula, or Caldwell 69)

BREAKING 🚨: NASA dropped a new James Webb telescope deep space image 💫💫💫

All the eight-sided features are stars in the Milky Way, everything else is a galaxy 🤯

Hi Blue Sky!
Here’s some astro from my little corner of New Zealand ✨🥝

#astro #photography #newzealand

Three bright, blue-white stars at upper left mark the beginning of a bright and dusty reddish-brown, orange, and white swathe of glowing gas and dust, with its upper portions loosely resembling a snowman with a scarf and top hat. The rest of the image is dark and full of sparkling stars, many with diffraction spikes.

This expansive and cloudy cosmic landscape has sweeping clouds that shine in pink, yellow, orange, and brown. Some large, bright stars are visible glowing within the clouds and other foreground stars are peppered throughout the image.

A bright white point of light is surrounded by glowing lobes of gas to the left and right, shining in green that extends into orange and blue. Distant stars dot the black background of space.

This Hubble view of a portion of the Carina Nebula has a bright, pale blue background dotted with shining white stars. Some foreground stars have diffraction spikes. A brown region of gas and dust snakes through the center of the image.

i’m a nebula kind of girl ✨

Suddenly, Trump’s Ugliest Threats Are Facing Surprise GOP Resistance One of Trump’s central campaign claims was that green energy and immigration pose a massive threat to American workers. But now it seems local Republicans think otherwise.

GOP Representative John Duarte, who just lost his seat in the elections, explicitly tells Reuters that farming interests in his California district depend on undocumented immigrants—and that Trump should exempt many from removal.

newrepublic.com/article/1890...

🔥Get your 4 FREE Covid test kits delivered to you by USPS (thank you, President Biden). But don't wait, order now & please share EVERYWHERE!🙏💜

special.usps.com/testkits

A black and white image. The background is dark grey with many small white stars scattered across it. In the bottom left of the image there are two larger white dots next to each other. The bigger of the two is Earth and the smaller one is the Moon.

Earth from the surface of Mars. The dark Martian landscape is visible and in the gray sky is a tiny white dot with an arrow pointing to it reading “Earth”.

Saturn’s rings cover the top half of the image and the bottom shows the planet with a glowing atmosphere. In the black space between the rings and planet is a tiny white dot, which is Earth.

The infamous pale blue dot image taken by Voyager 1. Against the darkness and emptiness of space, there is a very small dot, which is Earth, suspended in a beam of sunlight.

earth from other planets: mercury, mars, saturn, and beyond neptune

Enough GOP pearl clutching over legal norms and Biden’s pardon. They nominated and elected a FELON. They have no credibility on the question of respect for the rule of law.

There seems to be a vast under-appreciation for the lines we’ve crossed and the world we’re in.

Trump’s win has basically put us in a post-rules world.

People in power don’t feel constrained by rules and any remaining checks don’t feel empowered to be checks.

This reality has not set in yet.

NEVER FORGET!

Annual morbidity in the 20th century, before and after vaccines:

Measles:
Before: 530,000, After: 47

Mumps:
Before: 160,000, After: 429

Rubella:
Before: 50,000, After: 3

Diphtheria:
Before: 20,000, After: 2

Smallpox:
Before: 30,000, After: 0

Polio:
Before: 16,000, After: 0

Thanks @josephgruber.com for bringing us back together! I was at the STS-132 and Juno NASA Tweetups. Memories for a lifetime!

Looks like the rain has passed for the moment, and we have perfect 60 degree temps for this morning's 5K Trophy Trot in Raleigh! #running

A tilted view of Saturn in ultraviolet light with different colored bands of purple, green, yellow, and pink.

A front view of Saturn in ultraviolet light with different colored bands of purple, green, yellow, and pink.

saturn in ultraviolet is the prettiest thing 🪐

the fact that we can do this from EARTH when voyager 1 is 15 BILLION miles away is INSANE.

I'm not a fan of colder weather, but my unscientific observation as someone who takes a lot of #sky photos is that we have the prettiest #sunsets here in NC during fall and winter. Maybe something to do with the sun being lower in the sky.

You all MOCKED George Lucas and said this was boring or dumb but who’s laughing now???

A screenshot of an animation of the Europa Clipper spacecraft in space.

EUROPA CLIPPER HAS SUCCESSFULLY DEPLOYED ITS ICE-PENETRATING RADAR!!! ❄️

In this Webb image, Neptune resembles a pearl with rings that look like ethereal concentric ovals around it. There are 2 thinner, crisper rings and 2 broader, fainter rings. A few extremely bright patches on the lower half of Neptune represent methane ice clouds. Six tiny white dots, which are six of Neptune’s 14 moons, are scattered among the rings. The background of the image is black.

neptune from jwst ✨

Three bright stars with diffraction spikes shine near the center-right of the image, illuminating nearby clouds that glow in pale blue. The clouds darken at the edges of the image, and are dotted with smaller stars, some also with diffraction spikes.

Clouds of gas and dust with many stars. The clouds form a flat, blue background toward the bottom, and become thicker and smokier toward the top. Stars on one side light the nebula. A thick arc of gas and dust reaches around from the bottom-right corner of the image toward the top-left corner. It begins as a dark and obscuring cloud at bottom right and gradually becomes brightly lit by many stars at the upper left. Other large, foreground stars lie between the nebula and the viewer.

A portion of the young star-forming region Serpens Nebula. It’s filled with wispy orange and red layers of gas and dust, and within that orange dust, there are several small red plumes of gas that extend from the top left to the bottom right, at the same angle. There are wispy blue filaments of glass in the bottom right corner of the image. Small points of light are sprinkled across the field, brightest sources in the field have extensive eight-pointed diffraction spikes that are characteristic of the Webb Telescope.

Hundreds of stars and galaxies in varying shapes, sizes and colors on a black background. Two of the largest, most prominent stars can be found in the top left quadrant and near the bottom right edge, respectively. They are tinged with blue and have an eight-point diffraction spike pattern. Near the center of this image is the ZS7 system, made up of a merger between two galaxies and their black holes. The ZS7 system is not easily seen by the naked eye in this image, as it looks like very small red dots.

isn’t it crazy that this stuff is just out there?

Morning at the office #raleigh #northcarolina #sunrise

Tonight's #sunset in #northcarolina