hesgen @hesgen@social.cleverlibre.org

Almost every galaxy in the local Universe seems to contain a supermassive black hole. There's a direct relationship between the two. Astronomers have wondered if this relationship existed in the Universe's earliest times, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Researchers studied images from JWST and other telescopes to identify the earliest galaxies and their supermassive black holes. Does this relationship extend to the very beginning of the Universe?

http://arxiv.org/abs/2401.13742

Ostdeutsche: "Nee, die AfD-Wähler hier sind keine Nazis; die wählen nur deshalb eine Faschistenpartei, weil sie so enttäuscht und wütend darüber sind, was dabei herausgekommen ist, dass sie 1990 und danach konservative Kapitalisten gewählt haben. Das muss man doch verstehen!"

Nee, muss man nicht.

Labour seems set to introduce VAT on private school fees. We thought it would be helpful to set out the ways some private schools might try to avoid VAT, and our assessment of their prospects of success. We've identified some approaches which we've categorised as "good" (likely to succeed), "bad" (likely to fail) and "ugly" (highly inadvisable and maybe even criminal).

Our article is here: https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/01/26/school_fee_vat_avoidance/

Russian Intelligence Operations Tied to Decrease in US Support for Ukraine https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/russian-intelligence-operations-tied?utm_medium=Social#Echobox=1706112169

This should be main stream news

Same as it ever was

I can’t imagine a shot that more perfectly captures the sheer spontaneous joy of childhood than this one by Massachusetts photographer William Van Beckum entitled “Favourite Puddle”.

#WilliamVanBeckum #children #spontaneity #JoieDeVivre

In the last few hundred million years, the Moon has shrunk by about 50 meters. That doesn't sound like much, but it's enough for moonquakes to cause landslides on steep slopes across the lunar surface. When astronauts return to the Moon as part of the Artemis III mission, they'll need to land in regions where they aren't at risk of a landslide. A new paper maps out a series of faults near the Moon's south pole and identifies regions at higher risk for astronauts.

https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/news/Nicholas-Schmerr-moon-shrinking-causing-landslides-and-instability-lunar-south-pole

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if George Santos went on Letterman, ripped off the latex mask, and it turned out the whole thing was Sacha Baron Cohen doing a bit.

#Orban Uses #Sweden ’s #NATO Bid to Take Center Stage in Europe https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/world/europe/hungary-sweden-nato-orban.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QU0.2NWB.1_pJjbi8uP6k&smid=nytcore-android-share
#Hungary
#GiftLink #NoPaywall

Italian mathematician, physicist & astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange was born #OTD in 1736.

Because of his significant contributions in such areas as the calculus of variations, celestial mechanics (including the 3-body problem), & the propagation of sound, he soon established a reputation as one of the greatest mathematicians in Europe. In 1766 Lagrange succeeded his academic adviser, Leonhard Euler, as director of mathematics at the Berlin Academy, where he would stay for the next 2 decades.

I'm curious as to what life events lead a person to wake up in the morning and choose to write this

I've appreciated Burns' work well enough since moving to Scotland a couple of decades ago, I guess, but I still always feel like I'm not quite literary enough when Burns Night rolls around.

This Burns-related piece by Emeka Ogboh a few years ago utterly floored me, though. The layers of hope and sadness, politics and language... I found it really moving in person, and even the video about it still gets right to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWlMrXVVXu4