Featured Links - July 5, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. 

This week's post is a bit later than usual because of the Canada Day and Independence Day long weekends, so I've got a few more links than usual.

Soon to be a monster home

• A Stratospheric wind anomaly is developing over the Equator, expected to impact the Weather along the El Nino in the next Winter Season. "A large-scale atmospheric phenomenon is currently changing its phase high in the atmosphere. Called “the heartbeat of the atmosphere,” it has a known effect on the Winter weather and will combine its influence with the El Nino event to impact the weather patterns in the 2023/2024 Winter season." This is one of the best articles about climatology and weather that I've seen in quite a while.
• AI Is Writing Lots of Code—How Good Is It? "With so much excitement about the technology’s potential—and wild speculation about how it could take over the world—subtler and yet more substantive evidence of how AI deployments are working out could be overlooked. Just about everything in our future will be underpinned by software—and if we’re not careful, it might also be riddled with AI-generated bugs."
• The Space Race may already be won. "SpaceX is using Apple’s business model to assert its will on both commercial space and governments."
• Tonga Eruption Triggered A Record-Smashing 11-Hour Lightning Marathon. "The light show broke several records including the largest lightning rings ever observed."
• Welcome to Mars! Caltech’s Jaw-Dropping, 5.7 Terapixel Virtual Expedition Across the Red Planet. "Caltech has used data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to create the highest-resolution global image of Mars ever, a 5.7 terapixel mosaic. The mosaic is designed to be accessible to everyone, from scientists to schoolchildren and the general public, and captures cliffsides, impact craters, and dust devil tracks in stunning detail."
• Why the CDC’s New Mask Guideline Proposal May Actually Imperil Frontline Workers. "The decisions some of these public health people are making are not getting better. They’re getting worse." I cannot believe that health authorities are still not acknowledging the effectiveness of and need for N95 masks in healthcare settings. 
• Cosmography of the Local Universe. If you want a true understanding of just how insignificant we are in the cosmic scheme of things, look at Figure 8 in this article.
• How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City. "A visionary novelist and a revolutionary chronicler of gay life, he’s taken American letters to uncharted realms."
• Smelling Plastic? Millions Are In the Path of the Smoke Plumes. "No, there isn’t a pile of tires on fire nearby; what you smell is smoke from the wildfires."
• Who killed Google Reader? "Ten years after its untimely death, the team that built the much-beloved feed reader reflects on what went wrong and what could have been."