CaaC (John)

@nudge DEVIL WOMEN

Astronomers have discovered a 'super-Earth' just 31 light-years away. But, is it habitable or glacial? N'dea Yancey-Bragg © NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith This illustration shows one interpretation of what GJ 357 d may be like. A potentially habitable 'super-Earth' has been discovered just 31 light-years away from our solar system, astronomers announced Wednesday. The planet, named GJ 357 d, is about six times larger than Earth and orbits a dwarf sun GJ 357, much smaller than our own, every 55.7 days. The international team of astronomers that discovered the planet said in a news release that it could "provide Earth-like conditions." “With a thick atmosphere, the planet GJ 357 d could maintain liquid water on its surface like Earth, and we could pick out signs of life with telescopes that will soon be online,” Lisa Kaltenegger, the director of the Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell and associate professor in astronomy, said in a statement. “If GJ 357 d were to show signs of life, it would be at the top of everyone’s travel list – and we could answer a 1,000-year-old question on whether we are alone in the cosmos.” Without an atmosphere, the planet would have an equilibrium temperature of 64 degrees below zero, according to NASA, which would make it "more glacial than habitable." While using NASA’s planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) in early 2019, Kaltenegger's team first discovered another planet GJ 357 b, a “hot Earth," orbiting the dwarf sun. The satellite finds other worlds by monitoring the nearest and brightest stars for periodic dips in light. These dips, called transits, suggest a planet may be passing in front of its star. Follow up observations from the ground lead to the discovery of two more planets orbiting the dwarf sun, including the super-Earth. Two of the planets discovered are considered too hot to support life as we know it, but GJ 357 d is in the host star's habitable zone meaning it's not too hot or too cold. Kaltenegger told NBC News that a pair of telescopes that are expected to begin operating in 2021 and 2025 should reveal whether the planet is rocky or has oceans. “This is definitely going to be one of the best targets for these telescopes because it’s so close and so bright,” Kaltenegger told NBC News. “This means we can collect that light and analyze it further to see the chemical composition of the atmosphere, or if we see signs of liquid water or oxygen. The closer the better and the brighter the better, and this one happens to be both.” https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/astronomers-have-discovered-a-super-earth-just-31-light-years-away-but-is-it-habitable-or-glacial/ar-AAF9u9j

A group of vultures are called a venue. Can you guess these other surprising names for groups of animals? SLIDES 1/21

This ancient predator had claws like rakes and a body like a spaceship Kat Eschner © Lars Fields/Royal Ontario Museum A reconstruction of Cambroraster falcatus. What has claws like rakes, a circular mouth like a slice of pineapple, and is named after the Millennium Falcon? Cambroraster falcatus, that's what. This newly-discovered aquatic species lived more than 500 million years ago and was a giant of its time. "In terms of animals that it might look most similar to today, you could think of horseshoe crabs," says Joseph Moysiuk, a Royal Ontario Museum palaeontologist who is the first author of a paper describing the Cambroraster for the first time. Like the horseshoe crab, the animal had a "huge head shield in the front, relatively small body," he said. Also like the horseshoe crab, Moysiuk and his colleagues believe the Cambroraster spent a lot of time in the mud, where it must have been a strange sight. The creature was about a foot long in a time when most animals were smaller than your little finger: it was a gigantic predator, trundling around the ocean floor of the Cambrian Period and scooping prey into its mouth with giant claws that had spines on them to filter out dirt but capture even small prey. When his team found the first fossils of this beast in 2014, says Moysiuk, “we weren’t exactly sure what to make of them, and we just nicknamed them the ‘spaceship.’” After years of exploring the site, he says, “we’ve discovered many more and that allowed us to piece the animal back together.” When the time came to give the animal a formal designation, they stuck with the nickname and gave it a title that references the famous movie spaceship it looks most like. Cambroraster tells us the period it lived in and the way it hunted (raster is Latin for "rake"), but falcatus—that's pure science fiction. The fossil was discovered in the Burgess Shale, a Canadian site notable for its preservation of bodies from the "Cambrian explosion," a time when Earth's animals diversified and developed into the distant ancestors of the many fauna we have today. There are a number of competing theories about why the Burgess Shale preserved animals so unusually well, Moysiuk says, but one thing’s certain: mudslides under the ocean or other similar events must have swept over the diverse creatures, cutting their bodies off from air that would otherwise have supported microbes and small animals as they gnawed on soft tissue. Researchers have found creatures in the Burgess Shale so well-preserved, even their stomach contents could be examined for hints at their last meals. Among the animals that have been found on this site are a number of relatives of the Cambroraster. Collectively, they're known as Radiodonts, for the arrangement of their teeth around a circular mouth. They were the first large predators, says Moysiuk, and looking at the variety of ways that they hunted shows the sophistication of early animals. The most famous member of the group, Anomalocaris, was long and skinny and swam around actively hunting prey. Another member of the group is believed to have eaten algae in the upper water column. Looking at the Cambroraster as part of this group shows that related animals in the period had distinct, sophisticated strategies for getting food, Moysiuk says: "They're not simply predators that are typecast into one role in the ecosystem." "Cambroraster falcatus adds to this increasingly complex picture of radiodont diversity by showing that some representatives of this group had evolved a highly modified morphology and ecology," says Rudy Lerosey-Aubril, an invertebrate palaeontologist at Harvard University. "It was clearly adapted to life as a bottom dweller feeding on the small organisms inhabiting the seafloor—this is a radical departure to the lifestyle of all the other members of the group." ttps://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/this-ancient-predator-had-claws-like-rakes-and-a-body-like-a-spaceship/ar-AAFaFtv?li=AAg17eQ

Me

Light rain and showers but muggy as hell, 18c and thunder, rain and lightning moving in so I see.

Nah, some of them I can have a good laugh

Mudbound (2017), I would give this an 8.5/10, the wife picked it from Netflix as she likes movies like this and so do I, worth a view.

This has got to be a piss-take, why didn't she or he undo the buckle on the shoe and then get it out of the ceiling

Especially that twat, he could break his fucking leg cutting his toe-nails and break a mirror looking into it!!

One of the best.

Nothing there... Cheers moved.

Edit: Deleted, wrong thread, moved.

Well, the saying 'When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do' refers to the importance of adapting yourself to the customs of the people who are in a certain place or situation and behave as they do. is true then and we still do this nowadays I came to London in 70AD and all I got you was a lousy pen: Roman iron stylus unearthed in the City of London bears 'welcome gift' inscription A Roman iron stylus pen unearthed in the City of London and dated around 70AD bears the inscription: ¿I have come from the city. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me' It's a familiar slogan you’ve read on any number of cheap modern-day tourist souvenirs: ‘My dad went to wherever and all he got me was this lousy...’ But a remarkable archaeological find suggests vendors had a similar sense of humour nearly 2,000 years ago. A Roman iron stylus pen unearthed in the City of London and dated around 70AD bears the inscription: ‘I have come from the city. I bring you a welcome gift with a sharp point that you may remember me. ‘I ask, if fortune allowed, that I might be able to give as generously as the way is long and my purse is empty.’ And perhaps in contrast to today’s recipients of the slogan’s modern equivalent, archaeologists have hailed the poetry and humour on the stylus. Michael Marshall, a senior Roman finds specialist, said: ‘It’s one of the most human objects from Roman London. ‘It’s very unpretentious and witty. It gives you a real sense of the person who wrote it.’ The pen was found during excavations underneath Bloomberg’s European headquarters near the Cannon Street Tube station on the bank of the river Walbrook, a now-lost tributary of the Thames. The pen was found during excavations underneath Bloomberg¿s European headquarters (pictured) near the Cannon Street Tube station During the excavations between 2010 and 2014, experts recovered about 14,000 artefacts which archaeologists are continuing to work through. Due to corrosion, the inscription on the 5in stylus – used to scratch letters on a wax-covered tablet – was exceptionally difficult to read and became legible only after painstaking work by conservators. Paul Roberts, a curator at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum where the stylus is on display, said: ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like it.’ https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/offbeat/i-came-to-london-in-70ad-and-all-i-got-you-was-a-lousy-pen-roman-iron-stylus-unearthed-in-the-city-of-london-bears-welcome-gift-inscription/ar-AAF3kGs

Man Utd academy graduates played more Premier League minutes than other clubs' last season Manchester United's academy graduates played more than 27,000 minutes during the 2018-19 Premier League season - almost 10,000 more than any other club. According to research by PA Sport, 20 players who finished playing youth football at the club featured in the top flight during last season. Including the likes of Paul Pogba, Marcus Rashford and Jesse Lingard, they accumulated 27,395 minutes. Tottenham are second with their 13 graduates amassing 17,903 minutes. Meanwhile, 16 Southampton academy graduates, including United's Luke Shaw and Fulham's Calum Chambers, played 15,964 minutes, putting them just ahead of Chelsea in the standings in third. Portuguese sides were the only clubs from outside English football to reach the top 10. It is the third year in a row that United have topped the standings as the "leading developers of Premier League talent", according to PA Sport's data, despite their graduates' playing time dropping year on year. More than a third of United's minutes were accumulated by players still at the club, who helped Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's team finish sixth in the league. In addition, Joshua King, Michael Keane and Craig Cathcart played more than 3,000 minutes for Bournemouth, Everton and Watford respectively, while Burnley trio Tom Heaton, Phil Bardsley and Robbie Brady - who all began their careers at Old Trafford - amassed more than 4,400 minutes. Consistent Blades and the rise of the Portuguese Sheffield United have been a permanent fixture in the top 10 of the standings for the last three seasons, placing eighth in 2016-17 and fifth the following season - despite only being promoted to the Premier League themselves this summer. They placed sixth in the 2018-19 study, largely helped by Wales midfielder David Brooks playing 2,400 minutes for Bournemouth. Kyle Walker, Harry Maguire, Phil Jagielka, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Matt Lowton and Kyle Naughton also contributed to the Blades' statistics. Elsewhere, Coventry jumped 113 places to reach the top 20 with Leicester midfielder James Maddison, Wolves defender Cyrus Christie and Bournemouth striker Callum Wilson all playing regularly for their clubs. While Ajax and Feyenoord have previously been the best-represented clubs from outside Europe, last season was the turn of Portuguese sides to enter the top 10 with Benfica and Sporting Lisbon's graduates amassing 11,032 and 10,127 Premier League minutes respectively. Manchester City's Ederson and Bernardo Silva, in addition to Wolves pair Helder Costa and Ivan Cavaleiro and Everton's Andre Gomes are Benfica academy products, while Wolves' Rui Patricio and Joao Moutinho graduated from Sporting's academy. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49156788

Former Germany striker Jurgen Klinsmann, 55 on Tuesday, is in talks with VfB Stuttgart to become their first-ever CEO. (Bild - in German) ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ NEUER STUTTGART-BOSS?|Klinsmann bestätigt erste VfB-Gespräche 29.07.2019 - 19:34 Uhr Jürgen Klinsmann (wird am Dienstag 55) und der VfB Stuttgart – es wird ernst! Der 1990er Weltmeister und frühere Bundestrainer hat erste Gespräche mit dem Verein geführt. Es geht um den neu geschaffenen Job des Vorstands-Vorsitzenden der VfB Stuttgart AG. Der „Stuttgarter Zeitung“ sagt Klinsmann: „Der Informationsaustausch verlief sehr positiv.“ Er hatte sich bei einem Heimatbesuch mit den VfB-Aufsichtsräten Wilfried Porth und Hermann Ohlicher sowie dem kommissarischen Klubchef Bernd Gaiser getroffen. Ein Repräsentations-Amt als Präsident lehnt Klinsi ab.

Don't do gfs in every post, only when a certain post gives me an idea for a gf.

Sorry for butting in on your and @Stan's chin wag but I would like to say that my father was English and my mother was Scottish, I was born in England but grew up in Australia when I was 11 until I returned to the UK in 1972, where I joined the army, ended up in Germany and marries a Scot's girl (40 odd years coming up this Dec) and when I was de-mobbed from the army I moved back to Scotland where I have been here ever since. So, I have more Scottish & Australian than English in my blood so as right of birth I class myself as Scottish on my mother's side, I could have chosen Australian if I wanted as I still have family out there since 1959 but I am happy in classing myself as Scottish.