Gone Fishin'

 Quite a bit like this actually. Eventually:

Wish us luck.

Tattoo Thrursday

Science Alert, FDA Finds Bacteria in a Third of 'Sterile' Tattoo Inks, And That's a Problem. Just think of it as a live vaccine.

New Light on Dark Matter?

From New Scientist, The first signs of dark matter particles may finally have been spotted

Researchers may have spotted the first signs of a dark matter particle. If the result is confirmed, it could be one of the most monumental discoveries in the history of physics. Dark matter makes up about 85 per cent of the universe, but for decades physicists have been unable to determine what it itself is made of. Hypotheses have ranged from different sorts of particles and forces to strangely behaving gravity and everything in between – but the leading idea has always been that of the weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP. As we have built more and more powerful detectors to search for WIMPs, though, their failure to show up has led many to doubt their existence and move on to more exotic ideas.

That doubt may soon come to an end. A new analysis of data from the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment in South Dakota has revealed a single particle that may be the first WIMP ever detected. “This result is certainly an exciting one, because it provides some potential positive hint for what dark matter could be, not just what dark matter could not be,” says JiJi Fan at Brown University in Rhode Island, who wasn’t part of the analysis.

LZ looks for dark matter using a 7-tonne tank of liquid xenon, surrounded by several layers of shielding and buried more than a kilometre down to keep out other types of particles. When an outside particle hits a xenon atom, it creates a tiny burst of light that is measured by sensitive detectors surrounding the tank. Researchers can then use that light to reconstruct the path of the incoming particle and the energy level of the interaction.

In the search for WIMPs, we generally look for events with energies below about 30 kiloelectronvolts (keV), says LZ spokesperson Richard Gaitskell, also at Brown University. That assumes the simplest sort of interaction, in which the WIMP is essentially bouncing off an individual nucleon in the xenon nucleus. Having not found any hints of WIMPs in that energy range, the LZ team decided to reanalyse the first 220 days of data from the detector, searching for events with higher energies. That is where they found their dark matter particle candidate, at about 248 keV. “You must never make an assumption that nature is going to do something the easy way,” says Gaitskell. “Nobody can accuse our universe of making the simplest and most natural-seeming choices.”

A WIMP Detector

In particle physics, the statistical threshold for a finding to go from an intriguing hint to a solid discovery is a number called 5 sigma, which means there is about a 1-in-3.5 million chance that a signal like this would show up as a fluke rather than a true sign of dark matter. Right now, this detection from LZ sits at 2.6 sigma, which means that there is about a 1-in-200 chance it could appear as a fluke.

That might still seem fairly secure, but in the search for dark matter it is far from enough. “In science we sit down and we do so many damned experiments, I’m afraid you come across a 1-in-100 event fairly often,” says Gaitskell.

Back in my biology days we were pretty happy with a 2.5 sigma result, provided you had done adequate correction for multiple tests. Still, basing the result on the alleged detection of a single WIMP seems a little sketchy. Your not going to get very good statistics with n=1. That is certainly a weakly interacting particle.

Flotsam and Jetsam - Trump Lights Up Iran Again

This will be the last flotsam and jetsam for a while. Going out of town, and the county, up to Canukistan for a boys only fishing trip with Pete and a bunch of fish fanatics. Internet is likely to be sketchy, although Pete and one other guy have promised to bring Star Links. Hopefully, though, I'll be able to post some big fish pics. But don't worry, to keep you coming I've preloaded some morning eye-openers. 

Now back to the news. PJM's Cathy Salgado reports Trump Confirms ‘Large and Powerful’ Strikes Near Hormuz Strait, in retaliation for some attempted attacks on US forces in the region, and on allies. From News Wax, US Hit Iranian Tankers in 'Tanker-for-Tanker' Escalation. PJM's VodkaPundit says You Gotta Be Kidding Me: We're Still Playing 'Let's Make a Deal!' With Iran? Well, you have to be able to talk, in case they get serious. In the meantime, you have to put up with their bullshit. From I&I, What Will TDS Sufferers Do If The U.S. Wins The Iran War? Deny and obfuscate, of course. The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee, "Suspicions Of Ayatollah's Death Rise After His Name Appears On California Voter Rolls," and Illinois and Michigan, and Massachusetts and Maryland... 

At Insty VodkaPundit notes COMPLAINING ABOUT MEMES IS HOW YOU GET MORE MEMES: Polymarket @Polymarket, "JUST IN: Mark Carney declares Canada will only resume trade talks with the U.S. when Americans “stop doing memes.” Stephen Kruiser at PJM says Begun, the Meme Assault on Canada Has... Northern Barbarian @xnoesbueno, "Turns out all we need to do to win the Canada war is memeTF out of them. (It’s like drones. A total battlespace gamechanger. Only even cheaper.)" Quote Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson, "Mark Carney Says He will Start Trade Talks Again Once "Americans stop making memes" Internet — You know what to do." At Pirate's Cove, LOL: Canada’s PM Whines About Memes During Trade Spat. At the NatPo, (CA), Joel Kotkin worries Carney aligns with the anti-free speech China and EU. News Wax reports Apple Maps Changes Name of Lake Ontario to 'Lake America'. Wundermap still hasn't. VodkaPundit thinks THE SECOND-ORDER EFFECTS ARE OUTSTANDING: The Post Millennial @TPostMillennial, "Canada is enticing academics to leave the US due to Trump’s crackdowns on research funding for topics like climate, equity, and gender studies."

Hat Hair's Beege Welborn is satisfied now that Keir Starmer Just Quit Parliament, Too. From USA Today, 'Cuba is opening up.' Reforms begin as US tightens grip. 

Ars Technica explains Why it matters that President Trump just dialed in to a NASA news conference. 

Eli Lake @EliLake, "If JD Vance thinks he can win in 2028 and still be aligned with this mental patient, he’s smoking meth." Quote Eitan Fischberger @EFischberger, "WHOA: Tucker just called for President Trump and the congressmen pushing for American-Israeli military cooperation in the NDAA to face Nuremberg-style treason charges."

Kurt Schlichter @KurtSchlichter, "Remember for reasons that have never quite been explained Donald Trump can win an election, but doesn’t have a right to do the things the president does, again because reasons." Quote Roger Parloff @rparloff, "Letting Trump’s WH Ballroom go forward, SCOTUS majority misleads from the 1st sentence, calling it a “federal govt” project. But it's not. It's a Trump project. That's why it’s illegal. He failed to get Congress’s permission. The 4 dissenters (at right) correct the record, also 1st sentence. ..."

Driscoll at Insty, WHICH IS WHY WE NEVER SEE THE OMELETTE. From Althouse, "Last week, Dr. El-Sayed mused in a social media post about whether the vice president would take her 'back in time to meet Papaw' if he could..." "... referring to Mr. Vance’s deceased grandfather and seeming to imply that he would not have approved of the Vances’ interracial marriage." Racism straight up. At NewsBusters, HYSTERICAL Oliver Darcy MELTS DOWN Over CBS Story on El-Sayed’s Deleted 9/11 Tweets. Speaking of old stuff, Capt. Ed at Hat Hair has Talarico in 2020: Capitalism Is White Supremacy and Texas Oil Is Kinda Racist. Twitchy enjoys a Capitalism Clash: Kmele Foster Slaps Jemele Hill With Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’ on CNN. Hayden Daniel at Da Fed, Leftists Will Never Self-Reflect, And They Will Never Apologize For The Horrors They Inflict. DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican, "http://DATAREPUBLICAN.COM STRIKES AGAIN: TRUMPBLOGS, FORMERLY KNOWN AS NOBLOGS THE ANARCHIST INTERNATIONAL ON NOBLOGS, MAPPED — EVERY BLOG, EVERY CELL, EVERY CITY. The militant far-left has spent years hiding in plain sight on http://Noblogs.org — the anonymous blog network that quietly powers antifa, anarchist, squat, and "solidarity" cells around the world. So on my own time, for free, I scraped the whole thing. Because I kick commie *** for fun and need no government funding or sanction for it. Introducing an interactive map of 7000+ blogs across many countries and languages — antifascist, anarchist, ecological, prisoner-solidarity, migrant-border, revolutionary. Every one classified, geolocated, and searchable down to the verbatim quote...."

Shipwreckedcrew, sees lawsplains a Federal Judge Almost Certain To Block New Mail-In Voting Regulation Based On Her Previous Ruling It Is “Ultra Vires” - Is She Right And Will It Stand Up?. "She found the E.O. on which the regulation is based was an unlawful exercise of authority the President does not have because the mechanics of conducting elections are given to Congress and States." Cathy Salgado hears 400,000 California Voters Didn't Provide Any ID at Registration, but that's OK because no one ever lies.

RedState's Bob Hoge is disgusted that Lindsay Clancy Trial Gets More Insane As Woman Arrested for Interfering With Jurors. At Da Wire, Nancy Mace opines Lindsay Clancy’s Children Are Dead And The Jury Is Deadlocked. The whole thing is just sad. Driscoll at Insty is not entirely satisfied that TYLER ROBINSON TO STAND TRIAL IN CHARLIE KIRK MURDER CASE WITH SUSPECT FACING POTENTIAL DEATH PENALTY. Northern Barbarian @xnoesbueno, "Firing squad would be appropriate. Aim for the neck."

At Da Signal, Legal Fight Escalates Over Leftist Billionaire’s Funding of E. Jean Carroll’s Lawsuit Against Trump.

JTN reports Feds seize domains in San Diego to block China from cyber hacking entities, from NASA to the Fed, "Federal law enforcement has seized core infrastructure reportedly used by a Chinese state-sponsored cyber platform to target high-profile U.S. government entities and critical infrastructure in a campaign dating back to 2018."

Althouse, "In 1986, Justice Byron R. White... summoned his clerks to his chambers for a special assignment that took several weekends. Together they marked his quarter-century on the court..." "... by feeding his records, including from the landmark Miranda rights case, into a shredder purchased for the occasion, according to Dennis J. Hutchinson, his biographer. 'Well, here’s an article. Here’s an entire book,' one of the clerks later told Mr. Hutchinson, describing what it was like to insert invaluable history into the jaws of the machine. 'I couldn’t believe how much history was going down the chute,' he said." Writes Jodi Kantor "How the Supreme Court Locks Away Its Own History/After Justice Scalia died, the justices held private negotiations about locking away their papers. We may not see the ultimate record of the Roberts court for decades" (NYT gift link)."

From NYPo, ICE nabs over 2K illegal migrants across NY in ‘Operation Rotten Apple’ — including child rapists, killers and Markwayne Mullin says DHS rolling out border biometric scans ‘as fast as we can’ after massive underreporting of foreigners’ rap sheets. Cathy Salgado happy, DHS Arrests More Than 2,000 Illegal Aliens in New York ‘Operation Rotten Apple’ Matt Vespa at TownHall cites Sen Moreno to CT Gov: an Ohioan Was Killed by an Illegal With a CT Driver's License. Please Explain? Townhall.com @townhallcom, "Marcus Coleman, the father of a 5-year-old girl who was severly disabled in a car accident caused by an illegal alien driving an 18-wheeler, goes OFF on Democrats for their fake sympathy. "I reject your guys' sympathy to be honest with you. There’s no way you guys are sorry […] My daughter doesn't deserve this […] It is your guys’ fault. I hold each and every one of you responsible for it." From the Virginia Pilot, a Judge temporarily blocked part of Virginia’s new immigration enforcement law. "The law, which took effect July 1, placed new restrictions on localities’ agreements with federal immigration authorities. Under the law, new and existing 287(g) agreements — contracts that deputize local law enforcement to do immigration enforcement — would be required to abide by the new restrictions." Rep. Fallon to Newsmax: Make Birth Tourism a Crime. I like the idea, but I'm not sure I know how that works. At Not The Bee, Not the Bee Illegal aliens are stripping Connecticut beaches clean of crabs and clams, but woke officials are ignoring it. A lot of Hispanics come to Matoaka to fish on weekends. They're not too fussy about the game laws either. Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh, "BOMBSHELL: Los Angeles County is STEALING funds from a wildfire relief fund to give up to $15K CHECKS to noncitizens or residents "impacted by ICE raids" All "without checking the recipient's immigration status" $5 MILLION has already been redirected. THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS! 600 days, most LA residents still can't even return to their homes after they were lost to the wildfires But now money might be handed out to noncitizens? California is AMERICANS LAST!"

Ilya Shapiro @ishapiro, "Wait, the editor-in-chief is actually doing her job?" Quote Dominic Michael Tripi @DMichaelTripi, "NEW: Head of CBS News Bari Weiss reportedly personally intervened to tweak headlines about candidates in midterms who oppose Israel." nero @n3ro, "Editor in Chief performs journalism . .. leftists outraged". Matt Margolis at PJM enjoys a little schadenfreude as Wolf Blitzer’s Trump Mail-In Voting Lie Blows Up in His Face With Humiliating Correction. Kurt Schlichter @KurtSchlichter, "As I predicted, @washingtonpost has finally edited its despicable and inaccurate report on me @CynicalPublius & @RobManess to correct the embarrassing misspellings of my name by @DanLamothe. Now, they should correct the false implication that we were paid to spread propaganda for the Pentagon and apologize to us."

Matt Calkins asks Did Colin Kaepernick do more harm than good for the Black community? "He first knelt 10 years ago today. But was his reason for doing so based in fact?" Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630, "We are quite literally teaching people to be America-hating criminals." Quote Rob Henderson @robkhenderson, "Relative to Americans with a high school education, Americans with graduate degrees are twice as likely to support political violence. More education = higher support for political violence. It couldn't be otherwise." Well, I think there might som bias caused by different views of those who chose to go on in education. Brad Todd @BradOnMessage, "There's a lot of truth in here, as you'd expect from @asymmetricinfo, but there is one more layer: for 30 years, we have allowed only ONE real lender for college tuition, with zero under-writing & ample political pressure to waive even principal payments. Monopoly lending helped create this beast's appetite. If we had instead under-written every college loan based on the potential for the borrower to pay it back, we would not have a lot of useless masters programs & climbing walls & zen rooms in rec centers of middling colleges that have compass directions or denominational labels in their names." Quote Megan McArdle @asymmetricinfo, "I think the correct formulation is that colleges are in trouble because the wage premium stagnated, but during the lag before people figured that out, colleges increased tuition to the point where expected value declined for marginal students."

Maryland, My Maryland

 Jay Rogers at TownHall, When 87 Percent Isn't Enough

On Wednesday, a judge in Annapolis handed Maryland Democrats a rare loss in a year when they usually get whatever they draw up. Democrats already hold seven of the state's eight congressional seats, 87.5 percent of the delegation, and Gov. Wes Moore called a special session in August hoping to grab the last one too. The judge said not so fast, at least for the November ballot. The state filed its appeal within hours. This fight is not over. But the ruling is worth sitting with, because it says something true about how power actually behaves. It never volunteers to share.

If they take away the last Republican seat, do I get to stop paying state taxes? No taxes with representation, after all. 

The Wednesday Wetness

Fox News,  Texas becomes testing ground for new defense against attacks on America’s water systems. "The six-month pilot pairs federal agencies, Texas Cyber Command, and firms like Microsoft and Dragos to defend utilities."