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Princess Turandot

Princess Turandot's Journal
Princess Turandot's Journal
July 19, 2019

Jeffrey Epstein spent hours at home during work release, while his minders waited outside...

If you were wondering how Jeff was able to cope with the sudden deprivation of his thrice-daily 'massages', or why something could go wrong with the proposal he offered to the SDNY, well... As more information is coming in, the sheriff's office has now launched an internal investigation as to how the work release was handled.

Jeffrey Epstein spent hours at home during work release, 'responsible for his own transportation' (WPTV)
Florida sheriff to investigate Epstein’s work release (WaPo)
Florida sheriff to investigate Epstein’s work release
PBSO launches internal investigation into agency's handling of Jeffrey Epstein case

-The logs from the episode show at least 9 instances when he was allowed to return home for hours at a time whilst his minder waited outside of the house. One deputy wrote in the log that he escorted Epstein to his house and "provided security to prevent unwelcome guests from entering his property."

-Epstein was 'responsible' for his own transportation from jail to the office building where he 'worked'. He was picked up by a limo/driver, and was allowed to travel there without any police surveillance. PBSO's monitoring only picked up again when he reached his office.

-The surveillance at his 'office' consisted of a deputy sitting at a desk in a lobby:

One of the deputies who had been assigned to guard Epstein at his office for several days told the AP he did recall young women visiting, but couldn’t say whether there was any inappropriate contact because he was stationed in the lobby, with two doors between himself and Epstein’s private office. (WaPo)

-His 'office' was that of his foundation, The Florida Science Foundation. The entity was established a few months before his sentence began and was dissolved shortly after he was released. He was allowed to use his time there to fulfill a court ordered community service stint! The foundation also wrote checks to the PBSO for a total of $128,000. (WaPo reports that it was reimbursement of costs such as the deputies' salaries whilst 'minding' him, which is typical of these arrangements.)

-There were also some shenanigans concerning his GPS device, furthered discussed at the first link above.
June 22, 2019

Here it is, in all its squiggling glory..

If tentacles give you the willies, you might not enjoy this:

June 2, 2019

Trump gets his wall! US Ambassador's residence in London is surrounded by a ring of steel for the...

...gutless wonder.

Trump gets his wall! US Ambassador's residence is surrounded by a ring of steel as security fences are erected ahead of President's state visit to Britain

-US President Donald Trump will begin his controversial three-day state visit of the UK on Monday
-The billionaire businessman will stay at the US Ambassador's residence Winfield House in Regent's Park
-An eight-foot-high security fence has been erected around the perimeter of the house and gardens
-Around 10,000 police officers will be on duty during the three-day-visit costing the taxpayer £18 million


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7093803/Ring-steel-Ambassadors-residence-ahead-Trump-visit.html


Similar to his earlier visit, FA45 isn't likely to have contact with people whom he isn't directly meeting with. They'll mostly move him around by the Marine 1 helicopter. They're also ramping up security for the first day of the UK’s national commemoration of D-Day 75 ceremonies at Portsmouth, when Trump will be there. On that day, the general public will not have access to the beach area at Southsea. While Queen Elizabeth will be there, as she is not traveling to France on 6/6, it's not likely that they would have taken that step w/o Trump's attendance.

UK prepares for Donald Trump’s state visit


May 28, 2019

SCOTUS *denies* review of Doe v. Boyertown (transgender students' accommodation policy)..

https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/doe-v-boyertown-area-school-district/

This was an appeal of a lower court decision that allowed a Pennsylvania school district to continue its policy of letting transgender students use the locker room/bathroom facilities of the gender that they identified as. The 3rd Circuit had ruled in favor of the school district in July 2018, and the plaintiffs asked for SCOTUS to review the case in November 2018.

Today, the Court declined to hear the case, leaving the lower court's decision and thus, the school board's policy in place.

They did so without any comment: the link above is to SCOTUSblog's case page, if you wish to read about the original suit.
February 9, 2019

New Horizons: 2014 MU69 Images Confirm the Kuiper Belt Object's Highly Unusual, Flatter Shape

2014 MU69: the 'snowman' shape of Ultima Thuli has melted away (so to speak) as new imagery from New Horizons' New Years Day flyby of the KBO is downloaded/analyzed.

The images are the 'rear view mirror' shots taken as the spacecraft left its small target behind at 31,000 mph:

...These aren't the last Ultima Thule images New Horizons will send back to Earth – in fact, many more are to come -- but they are the final views New Horizons captured of the KBO (officially named 2014 MU69) as it raced away at over 31,000 miles per hour (50,000 kilometers per hour) on Jan. 1. The images were taken nearly 10 minutes after New Horizons crossed its closest approach point.
....
The newly released images also contain important scientific information about the shape of Ultima Thule, which is turning out to be one of the major discoveries from the flyby.

The first close-up images of Ultima Thule – with its two distinct and, apparently, spherical segments – had observers calling it a "snowman." However, more analysis of approach images and these new departure images have changed that view, in part by revealing an outline of the portion of the KBO that was not illuminated by the Sun, but could be "traced out" as it blocked the view to background stars.

Stringing 14 of these images into a short departure movie, New Horizons scientists can confirm that the two sections or "lobes" of Ultima Thule are not spherical. The larger lobe, nicknamed "Ultima," more closely resembles a giant pancake and the smaller lobe, nicknamed "Thule," is shaped like a dented walnut.

"We had an impression of Ultima Thule based on the limited number of images returned in the days around the flyby, but seeing more data has significantly changed our view," Stern said. "It would be closer to reality to say Ultima Thule's shape is flatter, like a pancake. But more importantly, the new images are creating scientific puzzles about how such an object could even be formed. We've never seen something like this orbiting the Sun."

https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1093993589544271872
More: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20190208

If you can't see the vids in the tweets, they're also included in the article linked above.
February 8, 2019

NASA (video): 2018 was the fourth hottest year in the modern record...

NASA: 2018 was the fourth hottest year in the modern record, part of a decades-long trend of warming. The record dates back to 1880, when it became possible to collect consistent, reliable temperatures around the planet. NASA and NOAA work together to track the temperatures, part of ongoing research into our warming planet. Music: Sculpture by Axel Coon [GEMA], Ralf Goebel




They've posted more content on global warming on their tumblr account (from 2/6/19): https://nasa.tumblr.com/post/182607983129/global-temperature-by-the-numbers
February 8, 2019

NASA: Hubble Reveals Dynamic Atmospheres of Uranus, Neptune

Always fun to see images of these two, since there aren't all that many of them.

During its routine yearly monitoring of the weather on our solar system's outer planets, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a new mysterious dark storm on Neptune (right) and provided a fresh look at a long-lived storm circling around the north polar region on Uranus (left).



Like Earth, Uranus and Neptune have seasons, which likely drive some of the features in their atmospheres. But their seasons are much longer than on Earth, spanning decades rather than months.

The new Hubble view of Neptune shows the dark storm, seen at top center. Appearing during the planet's southern summer, the feature is the fourth and latest mysterious dark vortex captured by Hubble since 1993. Two other dark storms were discovered by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989 as it flew by the remote planet. Since then, only Hubble has had the sensitivity in blue light to track these elusive features, which have appeared and faded quickly. A study led by University of California, Berkeley, undergraduate student Andrew Hsu estimated that the dark spots appear every four to six years at different latitudes and disappear after about two years.

Hubble uncovered the latest storm in September 2018 in Neptune's northern hemisphere. The feature is roughly 6,800 miles across.
...
The snapshot of Uranus, like the image of Neptune, reveals a dominant feature: a vast bright stormy cloud cap across the north pole.

Scientists believe this new feature is a result of Uranus' unique rotation. Unlike every other planet in the solar system, Uranus is tipped over almost onto its side. Because of this extreme tilt, during the planet's summer the Sun shines almost directly onto the north pole and never sets. Uranus is now approaching the middle of its summer season, and the polar-cap region is becoming more prominent. This polar hood may have formed by seasonal changes in atmospheric flow.
...
Both planets are classified as ice giant planets. They have no solid surface but rather mantles of hydrogen and helium surrounding a water-rich interior, itself perhaps wrapped around a rocky core. Atmospheric methane absorbs red light but allows blue-green light to be scattered back into space, giving each planet a cyan hue.

The new Neptune and Uranus images are from the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, a long-term Hubble project, led by Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, that annually captures global maps of our solar system's outer planets when they are closest to Earth in their orbits. OPAL's key goals are to study long-term seasonal changes, as well as capture comparatively transitory events, such as the appearance of Neptune's dark spot.

More: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/hubble-reveals-dynamic-atmospheres-of-uranus-neptune

https://twitter.com/NASAHubble/status/1093577638801821697
January 31, 2019

Every building in NYC, circa 1940..

The NYC Municipal Archives recently digitized a collection of photos taken during the 1940s of every building in NYC.

The black and white photos were intended to aid the city in assessing property taxes: as a result, they're not exactly worthy of framing. But if you are familiar with an area and want to see how it looked 70-some years ago, it's kind of cool. When I looked at the building where I grew up, I was quite surprised to see that it once had a small garden area in front of it.

Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration, in conjunction with the New York City Department of Taxation, organized teams of photographers to shoot pictures of every building in the five boroughs of New York City. The photographs were taken to improve the process of determining and recording property value assessments.


This link is to the Manhattan set: http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/NYCMA~5~5
The 'category pages' option lets you select places/streets by name from a list.

You can select a different borough using the menu on the left.
December 3, 2018

2 major space exploration events today: lift-off of a new crew for the Int'l Space Station..

..at 6:30AM ET. Coverage begins at 5:30AM ET:


5:30 a.m. – Soyuz MS-11 launch coverage (launch at 6:31 a.m.)
11:45 a.m. – Docking coverage (docking scheduled for 12:35 p.m.)
1:45 p.m. – Hatch opening (expected at about 2:35 p.m.) and welcome coverage

-on NASA Youtube:



-on NASA Live: https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive



Expedition 58 crew members Anne McClain of NASA (left), Oleg Kononenko of Roscosmos (center) and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency

Then around noon, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft takes up orbit around the asteroid Bennu which it has been chasing since its 2016 launch. Its mission includes a collection of a sample to be returned to earth in 2023:

NASA will air a live event from 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. EST to highlight the arrival of the agency’s first asteroid sample return mission. The program will originate from OSIRIS-REx’s mission control at the Lockheed Martin Space facility in Littleton, Colorado, and will air on NASA Television, Facebook Live, Ustream, YouTube and the agency's website. NASA TV also will air an arrival preview program starting at 11:15 a.m. EST.


Bennu, taken at 205 miles away by Osiris on 10-29-18

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