there are people who find it in order to share it with people who need it. There is a fine video in this post, and a link to another blog that is oh-so-nice; I saw great news about bottle-nose porpoises, and even a headline for a story in the US. Please care for your health, and let yourself see there are good things happening. Some of them, readers can support. 💖
| August 12, 1953 The first Soviet hydrogen (thermonuclear or fusion) bomb, far more potentially damaging than those dropped on Japan, was exploded in the Kazakh desert, then part of the Soviet Union. Igor Vasziljevics Kurcsatov, head of the Soviet Uranium Committee, said to Josef Stalin at the time: “The atomic sword is in our hand. It is time to think about the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”  The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program |
August 12, 1982 Open missile tubes on Trident sub Twelve were arrested in an attempted blockade of the first Trident submarine, the USS Ohio, entering the Hood Canal in the state of Washington. In motorboats, sailboats and small handmade wooden vessels, the demonstrators were objecting to the presence of nuclear weapons in Seattle. The Coast Guard overturned some of the vessels with water cannon. |
August 12, 1995 Thousands demonstrated in Philadelphia and other cities in support of journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal (on death row for murder since 1982) in the largest anti-death-penalty demonstrations in the U.S. to date. All Out For Mumia Abu-Jamal |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august12
Supernova remnant G278.94+1.35, dubbed ‘Diprotodon’, captured by CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope. Credit: Sanja Lazarević
Something explosive always seems to be happening in space. We often see headlines in the news about dramatic events like a flaring star, a gravitational wave from colliding neutron stars, or the latest supernova erupting in a galaxy far, far away.
The stories normally tend to focus on the peak periods of these energetic events, which generate in a week roughly a trillion-trillion times as much energy as we generated on Earth last year. But what remains after a star’s collapse – a supernova remnant, as astronomers call it – is both spectacular and scientifically interesting.
Stars are endlessly collapsing under gravity. This immense pressure drives a fusion reaction, where hydrogen particles join together into heavier elements. The energy produced by this fusion reaction pushes outwards, stopping the star from collapsing in on itself. However, when a star starts to run out of fuel for its fusion engine, the balance breaks down and things get interesting.
For stars roughly the size of our Sun, there is no big explosion as they reach their final years. Instead, when they run out of fuel, they gently shrink into a glowing lump of carbon and oxygen called a white dwarf. White dwarfs don’t collapse entirely under the force of gravity, because the electrons in the remaining atoms are strong enough to push back. This is thanks to a quirky quantum effect called electron pressure.
A white dwarf can produce a supernova, but only under very specific circumstances, when the white dwarf is orbiting another star. When a white dwarf gets too close to the other star – which could even be another white dwarf – its gravitational influence will start to pull in material from the other star. This breaks the balance between gravity and those simmering electrons, ultimately causing the white dwarf to explode!
Bigger stars do end their lives in a supernova, and usually without any outside help. These stars – with more than 8 times the mass of our Sun – live fast and die young. They burn through their nuclear fuel faster than their smaller cousins, with lifetimes of millions (not billions) of years. These stars start by fusing hydrogen into helium in the core. As that runs out, they start fusing helium atoms together instead. And so it continues up the periodic table. The heavier the element, the faster the star runs out of fuel – with carbon and oxygen burning for mere years and months, respectively. But this can’t go on forever.
Once the core is made of iron, the fusion process grinds to a halt. With no new energy keeping the star inflated, its layers suddenly collapse. The rush of material inwards hits the remaining iron core and produces a shockwave that moves outwards at speeds nearing a quarter of the speed of light. These aptly named core-collapse supernovae usually leave their densely packed remains behind in the form of a neutron star – or, depending on how massive they were, a black hole.
For both classes of supernova, the stellar matter from the explosion is launched out across space at thousands, or even tens of thousands, of kilometres per second. Moving at these speeds, the leading front of the supernova can take tens of thousands of years to slow down, usually after spreading out across several light-years of space (one light-year is about 9.5 trillion kilometres) and sweeping up any additional material they encounter along the way. This is a supernova remnant: an interstellar bubble created by the wake of one of nature’s most energetic explosions.
This powerful blast wave contains fast-moving electrons that interact with nearby material in a fascinating way. The space around a supernova is filled with magnetised matter, and because of the special relationship between electricity and magnetism, the electrons curve rather than flying straight. As their paths change, the electrons are forced to slow down. Some of their energy is converted into light – but not always as light our eyes can see.
Visible light is just one window into the full spectrum of electromagnetic waves. It has a short wavelength of a few hundred nanometres; for context, the average width of a single human hair is nearly 100,000 nanometres. Most of the light in supernova ‘bubbles’ has much less energy, with a wavelength of tens of centimetres or even metres. This particular type of light is called radio.
Radio astronomers have built just the right instruments to detect this kind of light emitted by supernovae. From the initial blast to the giant bubble-like structures they create as the explosion moves out through space, radio telescopes can detect these explosive supernova ‘bubbles’ expanding and eventually slowing down as they become a remnant.
We also see the brightness and energy of the light changing depending on how much material the shockwave sweeps up as it expands, or how strongly magnetised the surrounding material is. By studying the radio light generated by supernova remnants, we can learn when and how they formed, as well as what kind of dense objects the explosion left behind.
Radio astronomy has a long, continuous history in Australia. We were one of the first countries in the world to use radio instruments to study celestial objects. The American radio engineer Karl Jansky, widely considered the founder of radio astronomy, first detected radio emission in 1933 from a dense region somewhere in the Milky Way. However, in 1954, CSIRO astronomers in Sydney figured out that the source of Jansky’s detection was located right at the centre of our galaxy.
As the field of radio astronomy developed, astronomers and engineers began exploring different types of telescopes that could be used to study a range of objects in the sky. Depending on the design of the instrument, we can use them to detect point-like radio sources – like the centres of distant galaxies – or diffuse clouds and filaments, like the boundaries of a supernova remnant. And using advanced image-processing techniques and modern telescopes like CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope, we can create images that show the beauty of the radio sky at both small and large scales.
Supernova remnants are stunning markers of the explosive history of our galaxy. And luckily for astronomers, we’ve already discovered hundreds of them. Observations of that white road of stars that runs across the sky, the Milky Way, have revealed a foamy sea of interstellar bubbles created by ancient supernovae.
The shapes of supernova remnants reflect the circumstances of their formation and their encounters with neighbouring objects, including cosmic clouds of gas and dust. Some appear symmetrical, while others take on distorted forms, moulded by interactions with nearby material or overlapping with other expanding bubbles. In fact, our whole solar system sits near the centre of a ‘superbubble’ – a vast cavity containing most of the stars visible to the naked eye. Scientists reckon the superbubble was carved out by the cumulative explosions of multiple supernovae over millions of years.
Radio astronomers estimate that as many as 1,500 supernova remnants may be still hiding in our galaxy undiscovered. New observations with highly sensitive radio instruments like ASKAP and the upcoming SKA telescopes will help us uncover these elusive interstellar bubbles, and reveal more details about the energetic processes that shaped the Milky Way.
Kovi Rose is an astrophysics PhD candidate at the University of Sydney who studies the radio light from nearby dwarf stars and distant supernovae.
Originally published by Cosmos as The ghosts of dead stars
| August 10, 1883 Adrian “Cap” Anson refused to field his visiting Chicago White Stockings team in an exhibition baseball game if the Toledo Mud Hens included star catcher Moses Fleetwood Walker in their lineup. Chicago’s Captain Anson, who grew up in slaveholding Iowa, said he wouldn’t share the diamond with a non-white player. After more than an hour’s delay, Charlie Morton, the Toledo manager, insisted that if Chicago forfeited the game, it would also lose its share of the gate receipts; Anson relented.  Moses Fleetwood Walker Morton had not planned to have Walker catch due to injury, but insisted on putting him in at centerfield, despite Cap Anson’s objections. |
August 10, 1948 Gay rights activist Harry Hay organized what later became the Mattachine Society (originally ~ Foundation), a groundbreaking 1950s gay rights organization. The group was named after the Mattachines, a medieval troupe of men who went village-to-village advocating social justice. Mattachine: Radical Roots of Gay Liberation |
| August 10, 1984 Two Plowshares activists, Barb Katt and John LaForge, damaged a guidance system for a Trident submarine with hammers at a Sperry plant in Minnesota. In sentencing them to six months’ probation, U.S. District Judge Miles W. Lord commented, “Why do we condemn and hang individual killers, while extolling the virtues of warmongers?”  Barb Katt More on the Sperry Software Pair More plowshares actions |
| August 10, 1988 President George H.W. Bush signed legislation apologizing and compensating for the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. President Franklin Roosevelt had authorized the round-up of hundreds of thousands of Americans of Japanese ancestry, some of whom were American citizens, as security risks. Most lost all their property and were moved to relocation camps for the duration of the war (though not in Hawaii, then not yet a state, where public opposition would not allow it).  |
| August 10, 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as the second woman and 107th Justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. |
| August 10, 2005 Mehmet Tarhan was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment on two charges of “insubordination before command” and “insubordination before command for trying to escape from military service” because he refused to serve in the Turkish Army. He would not sign any paper, put on a uniform, nor allow his hair and beard to be cut. He went on two extended hunger strikes to protest his arrest and abuse while in Sivas Military Prison. War Resisters International has supported his efforts throughout his ordeal. He was released unexpectedly from prison after one year.  Read more |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august10
This one’s about trouble for all coastal states, coming from Louisianans.
Louisiana Fights Against Becoming Another Not There No More Statistic by Jerileewei
Terrebonne Parish: Where the Rivers Meets the Sea Read on Substack
CCJC Audio Podcast Episode 00086, Season 2
“It’s not just the land we’re losing. It’s the stories. The way we talk. The smell of the air before a big storm.” — Emile Navarre
Back from his month long vacation in Chacahoula, Louisiana, Cajun Chronicle Podcast, Writer/Editor, Emile Navarre arrived for our first staff meeting armed with fresh material for a future episode, as soon as Marie Lirette, our Outreach Coordinator can reach out to potential experts on the topic of “Ain’t There No More” – a nation wide trending group talk everywhere these days, as our world changes in ways none of us could have imagined.
Here is his recount of his lifelong story telling to his family’s youngest children:
“Come closer, chérs,” he said, his voice a low rumble like the last Lafitte skiff shrimping boat of the day heading down the Bayou Lafourche over Galliano or Golden Meadow way. His cane bottom rocking chair seat creaked a steady rhythm against the worn Cedar floorboards as he said that.
The sun, a too warm blanket he could feel, but not see, was sinking somewhere behind the great oak in the yard he will always remember. He ran a hand over the cane of his chair, then rested it on the knee of a boy sitting on the steps below him. He lifted his walking stick and pointed off to the right side. “You see that big fence, hein?
“Or that levee your mamans and pépère have to climb to get home from work at the Bollinger Shipyard, just to get up to the house? We didn’t have such a thing when I was a boy. Back then, my feet knew every dip and bump in this land”.
“From our porch right down that oyster shell road to the bayou where the shrimp jumped so high, you’d swear you could catch them in your mouth, if you were quick.” A ripple of giggles ran through the children.
“Ah, oui,” he chuckled, “I lost a good tooth catching shrimp that way. But the land, it was different. We were like a river family. She’d bring us a big muddy hug every spring, and we’d be happy for it.”
“The floods, they were always a part of life. We’d move our things up high, sing songs, and wait for the water to go down. When it did, Mother Nature would leave behind a gift, a rich, dark mud that made our gardens burst with life. You could feel it in your toes, a soft, giving sponge of sandy soil that told you everything was going to be alright.”
He paused, and the laughter faded, replaced by the chirping of crickets.
“My pépère, he’d sit right here on the back porch with a fishing line tied to his toe, but in his mind, Gaia was always busy with the water. He’d talk about how the Lafourche river was a living thing, always moving, always changing. ‘She builds, and she takes away,‘ he’d say.”
“We knew that. A little bit here, a little bit there. It was a fair trade. But then came the men with the big ideas. They came from places where the land didn’t move so much. They told us we could stop the river’s big hugs. They said we could make a straight line and build high walls, so the water would stay in its place.”
Emile’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “The young people, they thought it was wonderful. No more floods! No more moving furniture to the attic! But my pépère, he just shook his head. ‘You can’t trap a wild woman, not for long,’ he said. ‘She will find her way, and she will be angry for it.'”
“And she was,” he said, his hand now clutching his walking stick. “For years, the river was quiet, but our land, she was not. I can’t see it anymore with my eyes, but I felt it with my feet. The soil grew tired, no longer receiving her yearly gift.”
“The ground began to sag, and the bad marsh saltwater, it came closer in to say hello, not from a storm, but like a thief in the night, creeping up through the channels les Américains dug for the oil. They were for the big machines, the big money, but they were also a wound. A wound in the land that never healed.”
He turned his head toward the silent children, his milky blind blue eyes fixed on something only he could see. “Now, this levee you have, it protects you from the river, oui? But it holds the land in a box. It cannot breathe. The land is sick, and the ocean is hungry, taking a football field from our home every hour, the experts say.”
“I hear it in the wind now, not just the storms, but also in the sad whispers of the marsh, of the birds that have no place to land anymore. The land is leaving us, and we are left behind. We traded our river’s muddy hugs for a straight line and some high walls, and now we pay for it. Now, it’s not just the water that takes. It’s the land that gives itself away.”
The porch was silent, a stillness that was heavier than the humid air. The children looked at each other, not understanding all the words, but feeling the weight of them. One of the little girls, her braids tied with pink ribbons, quietly moved her hand to rest on the Emile’s knee as she headed inside for bed.
Emile smiled, his face creasing with a thousand invisible memories. Talking to the breeze, he raised his fist and threatened, “But you know what else my pépère said? He said, ‘As long as we tell the stories, the land is not truly gone.’ So listen, chérs, listen closely to my bedtime stories. Because now, it is your turn to remember.”
He had felt the last of the children’s light footsteps fade into the dusk, and the porch was still again except for his rocking chair. His head turned to the quiet rustling of the adults lingering on the porch. “You hear my stories, oui?” he said, his voice now lower, rougher.
“You too remember what I said about the river’s gift of mud? We didn’t know it, but we were like a family that had a big, generous table. Rivers brought food, and our land ate it. Every year, she’d get fat and happy. We thought we were so smart, so clever, when we built those high walls.”
“We told Gaia to stop eating for a while, believing for a while that she didn’t need the mud. ‘Don’t worry,’ we said, ‘We’ll protect you from the floods.’ But what we really did was put the food in a box and send it out to sea. Now, the land is starving. You cannot see it in a day, or a year. But that’s happening rapidly.”
“But I feel it in every part of my mind and body. Every year, she gets thinner, weaker. And like a sick old person who can’t stand anymore, Mother Earth’s starting to melt away. The medicine to save her is that very food we cut her off from. But the walls of levees and the canals the Corps of Engineers built? They are so high.”
“How will we get the food back to Louisiana’s coast before she’s gone entirely? That is the story my heart tells me now. And that is the story for you all to worry about. Time’s running out. I’m 75 years young this month. In another 75 years I won’t be here to see that my beloved Louisiane will be added to that dreaded list, “Ain’t Here No More.“
Cajun Chronicles Note: Sediment Starvation: The settlers’ levees and later government agencies built, while protecting their land from floods, also had an unintended consequence that would become a major factor in today’s coastal crisis. By containing the rivers, they prevented the natural flooding that would have deposited sediment into the wetlands.
This sediment was the building block of the delta. Without it, the land began to sink (subsidence) and slowly disappear. The settlers since the 1800s and later colonists were unaware of this long-term process and the vital role of the Mississippi’s and other rivers’ sediment in sustaining the land.
Louisiana has the highest coastal land loss rate in the United States. Since the 1930s, the state has lost about 2,000 square miles of land. This is a significant amount, roughly the size of the state of Delaware.
Without major intervention, the state of Louisiana is projected to lose an additional 700 to 1,000 square miles of land by the year 2050. This is an area roughly the size of the greater Washington D.C.-Baltimore area.
By the year 2100, the projections are even more dire, with some worst-case scenarios suggesting that up to 3,000 square miles of land could be lost. Some scientists have even warned that the entire remaining 5,800 square miles of Louisiana’s coastal wetlands in the Mississippi River delta could eventually disappear.
A Word of Wisdom:
Our fictional and non-fictional tales are inspired by real Louisiana and New Orleans history, but some details may have been spiced up for a good story. While we’ve respected the truth, a bit of creative license could have been used. Please note that all characters may be based on real people, but their identities in some cases have been Avatar masked for privacy. Others are fictional characters with connections to Louisiana.
As you read, remember history and real life is a complex mix of joy, sorrow, triumph, and tragedy. While we may have (or not) added a bit of fiction, the core message remains, the human spirit’s power to endure, adapt, and overcome.
© Jerilee Wei 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Neil deGrasse Tyson says you’ll regrow organs and vacation in space by 2050 — lock in.
By Asheea Smith Published August 2, 2025
Leave it to Neil deGrasse Tyson to casually predict the next 25 years like it’s no biggie. During episode 1904 of the Joe Rogan Experience, the astrophysicist, author, and science celeb offered a bold glimpse into where humanity might be headed in the next 25 years. While flying cars didn’t make the cut (sad face), his projections are closely aligned with today’s advances in science and technology — and some could be closer than we might expect.
So, who exactly is Tyson, and what does he think the world might look like by 2050? Get in — we’re going exploring.
If you’ve ever caught the eye-watering space series, “Cosmos” or heard someone break down the mysteries of the universe without sounding like a textbook — you’ve probably heard of Tyson. Born in New York City, Tyson graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. He later earned his Bachelor of Arts in Physics from Harvard University in 1980 and went on to complete a Masters and Ph. D in Astrophysics from Columbia University in 1989 and 1991, per Britannica.
Tyson is best known for hosting the celestial TV series, “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” and his radio program, “StarTalk.” Beyond his obsession with exploding stars, black holes, and dark matter, he gives viewers a grip on what the heck is going on in the cosmos, and what it has to do with us.
Now, for his next trick, Tyson’s turning that cosmic lens toward laying out what he believes is next for humanity.
“Neuroscience and our understanding of the human mind will become so advanced that mental illness will be cured, leaving psychologists and psychiatrists without jobs,” Tyson, 66, said during the interview.
“Self-driving electric vehicles will fully replace all cars and trucks on the road. If you wanna be nostalgic with your fancy combustion engine sports car, you can drive on specially designed tracks,” Tyson explained.
“The human space program will fully transition to a space industry, supported not by tax dollars, but by tourism,” Tyson said.
It seems that in Tyson’s vision, regular folks will be able to book a trip to orbit. Voyager Station — a space hotel set to open in 2027 — is already in the works, complete with a bar, restaurant, concert hall, gym, and a cinema theatre, per Astronomy.
“We develop a perfect ani-viral serum and cure cancer. Medicines will tailor to your own DNA, leaving no adverse side effects,” Tyson predicted to Rogan.
“We will learn how to regrow lost limbs and failing organs, bringing us up to the level of other regenerating animals on earth, like salamanders, starfish, and lobsters,” the “Cosmos” host stated.
“Instead of becoming our overlord and enslaving us all, artificial intelligence will be just another helpful feature of the tech infrastructures that serve our daily lives,” Tyson concluded.
Scottie's Playtime 