So, personally, I love snowboarding, I’ve been doing it for like 9 or 10 years I think. I learned at Mt Bachelor in Oregon which, is a pretty cool mountain if you ask me. It’s got some pretty sick runs and the summit is super sick. Honestly, the best mountain to snowboard on, way better than Mammoth. Mammoth is pretty solid though, I gotta say. Snowboarding is one of the best sports out there, everyone should try it, except maybe Ella, she’d be horrible. Anyway, there’s a lot you can do too. Like the jumps and stuff, so sick. And when there’s a lot of powder it’s like floating in the air. It’s so cool, you like don’t even feel the snow. Anyway go try it, except Ella, she’d be bad.
Well, it’s official, the ISS (international space station) will be falling out of the sky by 2031. NASA has stated that in ten years’ time they will bring the ISS down into Point Nemo in the Pacific ocean. What’s special about Point Nemo? It’s the furthest point from land on the earth. It has become a spacecraft graveyard, dozens of satellites, telescopes, rocket boosters, and other such things. The ISS has provided us with tons of experiment data, product testing, and even some world records. It has become a safe international space, where men and women from multiple countries come together to spend a few months doing repairs, experiments, and other space things they might be required to do. It has given us opportunities for peace as well as development. The next ten years will see the last experiments done on the station and then its ultimate burial in the sea. In ten years’ time, we will no longer see the small dot flying across the night sky.
So, I know what you’re thinking, here we go some privileged American white kid is gonna complain about the small inconveniences he experiences in his country. But no, that’s not what this is. I’m talking about the real problems. The massive amount of poverty and homelessness, gun violence, crime rates, education, healthcare, all that bad stuff. So many people in this country think its the best country in the world, but in reality we are not in even in the top ten in education, over 40 million Americans are living in poverty, and recently more and more books on historical tragedies are being banned every year. Our healthcare system is probably the most corrupt industry in our country. The first thing you do when going to the hospital is fill out some personal information and then show them your insurance card, that insurance decides what level of care you get. You have a sprained knee? If your insurance is good you’ll get an x-ray, maybe even an MRI (which really isn’t necessary they just want the money). If your insurance is bad, you get ice, Advil, and an ace bandage. This disparity in levels of care goes all the way up, if you’re rich with cancer you have a much higher chance of surviving, if you’re poor, you might not even know you have cancer till you’re already dead. People get turned away at hospitals for not having health insurance or means to pay a hospital bill. Then there’s our actual government system, and the corruption within it. All senators are paid a maximum of $174,000 yet the average net worth of a senator is $14,000,000. Nothing goes through without the support of corporations. This government is supposed to be by the people, for the people, and of the people, but it has become a massive oligarchy in which the poor get poorer while the rich get richer. Corporations have blocked laws to make the government essentially calculate your taxes for you, from there they send a check or a bill to your house, but companies like TurboTax have paid senators off to keep it from passing, allowing them to keep their profits. “Healthcare” companies have paid senators and house members to keep universal healthcare bills from going through, as well as running smear campaigns calling universal healthcare socialism and saying this like the government would have access to your medical records. This is just straight-up false. This country is probably among the most corrupt in the world, and we are doing nothing to stop it. The media has turned us against each other so we don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes. The worst part is nothing will ever change, people are far too greedy to allow anything to change. For now, we’re just gonna have to deal.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has finally reached its orbit at Lagrange point 2. There it will stay in the shadow of Earth to take pictures. Now these won’t be ordinary pictures, while the Hubble Space Telescope has been taking photos in the visible light spectrum, the light we can see, the JWST will be taking photos in the ultraviolet spectrum. This will allow us to effectively see through any sort of cosmic clouds which have previously blocked our view. The photos will be taken in the ultraviolet, translated into black and white, and then colorized to give us some of the most incredible pictures we have ever seen. The telescope can’t take photos right away though, it will take about six months to cool (it needs to be -233 C to detect ultraviolet light) calibrate, and undergo incredible amounts of testing. When photos begin to be taken and released our understanding of our universe as we know it may very well be flipped on its head.
Well, some debris might muck up the International Space Station. The Russians did a counter-satellite missile test, destroying one of their own satellites. While this practice is not uncommon, as it is done by many countries including the United States, most of the time it is done to satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Russia, however, destroyed a satellite in a much higher orbit, causing many large pieces of trackable debris, though these are not the real danger, it also created thousands of small untrackable pieces headed straight to the ISS. The astronauts onboard the ISS had to go into the small escape capsules on the station and wait until the ISS was out of the debris field. This has caused massive uproar amongst countries that have satellites in Earth’s orbit. It has not only put experiment and surveillance satellites at risk, but it also puts the lives of the entire crew of the ISS into harm’s way. As of today, the majority of the debris has fallen into Earth’s atmosphere and burned up leaving the ISS in the clear and allowing the crew to continue their duties on the station.
So, as many of you already know, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched a couple weeks ago. Now that might not seem like such a crazy thing, but it most definitely is. This telescope is the most complex telescope humankind has produced to date, it has the ability (hopefully) to see the first light emitted from the Big Bang 13 billion years ago. Now that fact is confusing to some, how can we see back in time? Well, basically, light has a speed of 299 792 458 m / s to be exact (approximately 670616629 mph). We measure this in terms of distance, as lightyears. Say a super bright lightbulb is turned on somewhere ten light-years from earth, it would take ten years for the light to reach us so that we could see it. Now if we take that principle and scale it up, the further we look, the longer it’s taking for us to see that light, so if we look at something 13 billion lightyears away, then we are seeing 13 billion years in the past, and since the universe is constantly expanding finding something 13 billion lightyears away is not very difficult. Anyway back to JWST, it will be in an orbit we have called “L2” which is just behind the Earth so it will constantly be in Earth’s shadow, it will be 1.5 million km (1 million miles) from the earth, which is far past the moon. From that orbit, it will take pictures. A lot of pictures. Of course, our time with the JWST is limited so NASA has allocated certain hours for researchers for an approved project. This telescope will bring in a new era of research, we may learn the origins of the universe, and if not we will still learn so many things from this telescope. Things like planets with potential life, we will learn about the formation of galaxies, and many many more things. I am excited to see the pictures this incredible telescope will take.
So, as of right now my test results haven’t come back, but I’m pretty sure I have covid. My mom and dad both came back positive when they were tested, and seeing as I have been quite sick over the last week I’m pretty damn sure its covid. My mom is holding out hope that I’m negative so I can go to school, but I’m less optimistic. The actual sickness hasn’t been all that bad most of the time. The worst part for me are the headaches and the dizziness. Plus I’ve had these weird things I call “brain shocks” that I normally get when I miss my meds. I really don’t know how to describe them other than brain shocks. Thats like what they are, they suck ass though. When I was taking a different medication, Pristyq, they would get so bad that I would blink and get them. They suck, a lot. Anyway, I’m hoping I can go to school soon but I kinda doubt it. I probably won’t be back till next week, which sucks because I’m gonna get behind in AP chem and that is not good at all. Luckily it gives me more time to work on my research paper for english that I still have not finished. Anyway, long story short, don’t get covid, its not a vibe.
So ya boi was driving to get lunch during his robotics meet, and basically he slid out and hit a pole. He all good tho so like we chillin but the car is not chillin. There was a lot of oil and transmission fluid leaking and power steering fluid all over the place. But it might not be super bad because the side that hit the pole is the one with all the fluid tanks so I guess we’ll see.
So my friend and I decided to make a Minecraft server for some school friends.
Photo credit: Google Play
It’s going pretty well except that I cant seem to figure out how to give people permission to do certain things. and some kid accidentally destroyed my villager trading hall. Anyway its pretty cool cause like I just log on and chill. It’s a really good de-stressor after work or school or a particularly bad conversation about some dumb drama or another such emotional topic. I love Minecraft its frickin sick like actually, it’s so nice to have. I know I sound like a nerd but I actually love it. It is so fun and it is just a distraction from everything thats going on you know. I don’t have to sit there with my own thoughts. Anyway, Minecraft is awesome.
So basically after soccer practice the last couple of days; Eugene, Logan, Ben, and Emanuel have been making dumb TikToks. They’re pretty cool, we tried to post one where the camera followed Ben into the bathroom and he started dapping everyone up, except everyone was in weird spots, like Caleb was in the weird corner spot where everyone throws their smelly sh*t, Emanuel was on top of the lockers, I was in a stall barefoot and morgan was “peeing” with his pants at his ankles. Unfortunately, TikTok took it down for violating community guidelines, so the next day we did it again but morgan had his pants on. Anyway, u should follow TikTok the username is ‘lemmelineuupbud” there’s a bunch of videos on there one even has like 20,000 views.
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