viernes, 20 de mayo de 2022

War and the Future, de H.G. Wells

Is a classic World War I story that focuses on Italy, France, and Britain in the Great War.

This book is a piece of war propaganda by H.G. Wells which was published in North America under the title Italy, France and Great Britain at War (the subtitle of the British original).

With the exception of the opening piece, its chapters were published as articles in the press.

Although he proclaimed at the beginning of the volume that "I declare myself an extreme pacifist", Wells strongly supported Britain's war against Germany "in the hope that thus we and the world can get rid of the German will to power and all". its humiliating and disgusting consequences from now on forever.

War and the future is divided into four parts. In the first part, titled "The Death of the Effigy", Wells argues that "the great man in this war is the common man", sketching a portrait of General Joffre as "a single figure who represents the best quality of warfare." ally", due to his "leadership without vulgar ambitions... It is as if it were the ordinary common sense of men, incarnate." In an account of a visit to the King of Italy, "the first king I ever knew", Wells is impressed by the monarch's lack of pomp and regality.

The second part, entitled "The War in Italy" (August 1916), describes the city of Udine and the mountain warfare, as well as a visit to Verona, Venice, and Milan.

The third part, "The Western War" (September 1916), describes visits to the Western Front near Arras and Soissons in France. Wells expresses his confidence that aerial dominance methods, combined with photography, have allowed the Allies to develop tactics that will surely defeat Germany.

Wells praises the British soldiers but criticizes the officer corps for its rigidity of mind. He emphasizes that new technologies have transformed the art of warfare in ways that military professionals are too slow to comprehend. In particular, fighting in disciplined formations and cavalry are no longer of military importance, while "artillery is now the most essential instrument of war." Wells describes a tour of a munitions factory given by André Citroën. He devotes a chapter to tanks as "the beginning of a new phase of warfare" and notes that in 1903 he had described a tank in a short story ("The Land Ironclads").

The final part of War and the Future is entitled "How People Think About War" and addresses a variety of topics:

- The inability of contemporaries to understand the nature and causes of war;

-The psychology of what he calls "the profitable pacifist" (willing to accept any kind of peace), origins that he finds in "the resentful employee", and the "conscientious objector"

-The effect of war on religious thought;

-French and Italian doubts about the British;

-The effect of the war on future labour relations;

-The prospects of ending the war. On the latter issue, Wells saw a chance for victory in 1917, but conceded that "the universally detested war may continue until 1918 or 1919."

Wells said that "the United States should finally take responsibility for a world peace agreement.


In general, it is a slow book, but with an interesting vision of the war from the ideological point of view of the English Empire.

jueves, 12 de mayo de 2022

First image of Sagittarius A* Black Hole

This is the black hole at the centre of the galaxy. It's been pictured for the first time. The object, known as Sagittarius A* is four times larger than our Sun. You can see the central dark area where the hole is located, which is circled by light from super-heated gases that have been accelerated by enormous gravitational forces. The Event Horizon Telescope was collecting data to create a remarkable image of the Milky Way’s supermassive Black Hole. A legion of telescopes, including three NASA X-ray observatories in Space, were also use.

These observations are being used by astronomers to understand how the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, known as Sagittarius A* (or simply Sgr A*), interacts with and benefits from its environment, which is 26,000 light-years away from Earth.


The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which observed Sgr. A* in April 2017, made the new image. Scientists in the collaboration also looked at the black hole using facilities that detect different wavelengths. They assembled X-ray data collected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Arrays (NuSTAR) and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, radio data from East Asian Very Long-Baseline Interferometers (VLBI), and Global 3-millimeter VLBI arrays; infrared data taken from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile Goddard coordinates the Swift mission with Penn State, Los Alamos National Laboratory (New Mexico) and Northrop Grumman Space Systems (Dulles, Virginia). The University of Leicester, Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Britain, Brera Observatory, Italy, and the Italian Space Agency are other partners. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Southern California, manages NuSTAR for NASA Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission partners and contributors include NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center (NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center), the Italian Space Agency, (ASI), Columbia University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.


One of the main goals was to capture X-ray flares. These flares are believed to be driven magnetically similar to the Sun's but can be tens to millions of times more powerful. The EHT observes flares approximately every day in the sky, which is slightly larger than the event area of Sgr. A*, the point at which there is no return for the matter that falls inward. A second goal was to get a better understanding of what's happening on a larger scale. The EHT result shows striking similarities to M87*, which was the last black hole it imaged. However, the larger picture is more complex.



"If the EHT image shows us the eye of a black hole hurricane then these multiwavelength measurements reveal winds and rain equivalent to hundreds, or even thousands, of miles beyond," Daryl Haggard, McGill University, Montreal, Canada, one of the leading scientists in the multiwavelength campaign. "How does the cosmic storm interact with, and even disrupt, its galactic environment?"


One of the most important questions about black holes is how they gather, ingest, expel, or ingest material at near-light speed. This is called "accretion" and is essential to the formation of stars, planets, and black holes of any size throughout the universe.



Chandra images of hot gases around Sgr A*, which are vital for accretion studies, tell us how much material is captured by nearby stars by the black holes' gravity and how much makes it to the event horizon. These critical details are not available using current telescopes for M87* or any other black holes in the universe.


"Astronomers agree on the basic facts -- black holes have material swirling about them and some of that falls across the event-horizon forever," Sera Markoff, a coordinator of multiwavelength observations at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. "With all the data we have gathered for Sgr. A*, we can get a lot more than this basic picture."


The large international collaboration of scientists compared data from NASA's high energy missions and other telescopes to state of the art computational models. These models take into account factors like Einstein's general theory and effects of the magnetic field, as well as predictions about how much radiation material around the black holes should produce at different wavelengths.



Comparing the models to the measurements suggests that the magnetic field surrounding the black hole is strong. The angle between the line of sight to the black holes and its spin axis is also low, less than 30 degrees. This means that we see Sgr A* from our vantage point more than we do from side-on. It is remarkably similar to EHT’s first target M87*.


The EHT observations also revealed that the researchers were able to capture X-ray outbursts from Sgr. A*. One was faintly seen with Chandra, Swift, and another moderately bright with Chandra. Chandra regularly observes X-ray flares similar in brightness to those seen with Chandra. However, this is the first time the EHT simultaneously observed Sgr. A*. This gives the EHT an exceptional opportunity to identify the responsible mechanism by using actual images.


The ring is approximately the same size as Mercury's orbit around the star. This is approximately 60 million kilometres or 40 million miles.

This monster is far away, at 26,000 light-years, so it's unlikely that we will ever encounter any danger.




What is a "black hole"?


-A black hole is an area of space in which matter has collapsed on itself


-The gravitational pull on everything is so strong that even light cannot escape.


-The explosive demises of large stars will lead to the formation of black holes


-Some are even more massive than others and weigh billions of times as much as our Sun.


-It is not known how these monsters, which are found in galaxy centres, were created.


-It's evident that they are energizing the galaxy and will impact its evolution


-Grey presentation line


This is a technical tour.


EHT uses a technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) to trick the system. This essentially combines eight radio antennas in a wide spacing to create a telescope that is the same size as our planet. This arrangement allows the EHT to measure the angle of the sky in microarcseconds. EHT team members speak of a sharpness in vision that is similar to seeing a bagel on top of the Moon.


Even so, supercomputing is required to create an image from several petabytes (PB = one million gigabytes).


A black hole's lens or bends can indicate that there is no light. However, the brilliance and power of matter bursting around the darkness and expanding out into an accretion disk is a clue to where it is.

viernes, 15 de abril de 2022

Raid Shadow Legends

 This is my conclusion after playing raid shadow legends for more than 280 days.

It is an entertaining game and knows how to hook you. It has missions and challenges both daily and weekly as well as monthly that keep you entertained.

The graph is very good for both mobile and PC.

Overall I give 7 out of 10

I'm not going to deny that it's designed for you to spend real world money, but compared to other games this one is still entertaining and fun without putting money.

If you plan to invest money, I only recommend that you do it in gems, my recommendation is in the monthly program of $9.99.

Your first investment has to be to get the gem mine to level 3 which allows you to produce 15 gems every day.

Let's talk about wounds

Common: they are useless in fights only to level up other herues.

Uncommon: I only recommend these and at maximum level and with all the mastery explored.

The markswoman who is a dark elf and the archer who is a Hidalgo. They have the same mechanics just different appearance

Cefira is a great help as she applies a continuous healing buff every 3 turns.

Rare: these are the ones that will invest more of your time and resources, it is easy for the game to give you the necessary books for their improvements and with the correct combinations of weapons and mastery they are very effective throughout the game.

Epic: except for a few and almost all support, they are not worth the amount of resources they need is exaggerated and it is very difficult to improve them without real money.

Legendaries are the only ones that I recommend you invest after rare now they are very difficult to improve without real money, but the game gives you enough resources to have about 6 to 7 powerful enough to play the game.

It is very important that you keep in mind that it is very unlikely to have a hero that is good for PVP and PVE.

You have to read the wikis a lot to know which heroes you are going to invest time and resources in. Remember that you have different masmoras and that you have to have heroes from each clan to fight in a clan system that only allows heroes from that clan.

I leave you this video I hope you like it.




viernes, 8 de abril de 2022

Sylvanas Book 25

 This book offers us almost nothing new, it only confirms what was already known or expands on the already existing content.

That does not mean that it is not a good book, especially the audiobook version since it is narrated by the voice of Patty Mattson.


Ranger-General. Banshee Queen. Warchief. Sylvanas Windrunner has borne many titles. To some, she is a hero . . . to others, a villain. But whether in pursuit of justice, vengeance, or something more, Sylvanas has always sought to control her own destiny.


The power to achieve her goals has never been closer, as Sylvanas works alongside the Jailer to liberate all Azeroth from the prison of fate. Her final task? Secure the fealty of their prisoner—King Anduin Wrynn.


To succeed, Sylvanas will be forced to reflect on the harrowing path that brought her to the Jailer’s side and reveal her truest self to her greatest rival. Here, Sylvanas’ complete story is laid bare: from the breaking of the Windrunner family and her rise to Ranger-General; to her own death at the hands of Arthas and her renewed purpose in founding the Forsaken; to the moment she first beheld the Maw, and understood the true consequences of what lay beyond the veil of death. But as her moment of victory draws near, Sylvanas Windrunner will make a choice that may ultimately come to define her. A choice that’s hers alone to make.

miércoles, 23 de marzo de 2022

Informal Chat with Dr. Sian Proctor

 I just finished a live presentation that Dr. Sian Proctor, has made to the members of the Solar system Ambassador, it has been very interesting and educational.

One of the most interesting things was his explanation about how to paint in space.

 I have enjoyed it a lot




viernes, 11 de marzo de 2022

Artemis by Andy Weir

 Jazz Bashara is a criminal. Well, sort of. Life on Artemis, the first and only city on the moon, is tough if you're not a rich tourist or an eccentric billionaire. So smuggling in the occasional harmless bit of contraband barely counts, right? Not when you've got debts to pay and your job as a porter barely covers the rent.


Everything changes when Jazz sees the chance to commit the perfect crime, with a reward too lucrative to turn down. But pulling off the impossible is just the start of her problems, as she learns that she's stepped square into a conspiracy for control of Artemis itself - and that now her only chance at survival lies in a gambit even riskier than the first.


Bringing to life Weir's brash, the whip-smart protagonist is actress Rosario Dawson (Marvel's The Defenders, Sin City, Death Proof). With the breathless immediacy of one realizing they're one cracked helmet visor away from oblivion, Dawson deftly captures Jazz's first-person perspective – all while delivering sarcastic Weir-ian one-liners and cracking wise in the face of death. And with a cast of diverse characters from all walks of life calling Artemis home, Dawson tonally somersaults to voice Kenyan prime ministers, Ukrainian scientists, and Saudi welders. It's a performance that transports listeners right alongside Jazz, matching her step for step on every lunar inch of her pulse-pounding journey.

viernes, 11 de febrero de 2022

Among Thieves by M.J. Kuhn

In just over a year’s time, Ryia Cautella has already earned herself a reputation as the quickest, deadliest blade in the dockside city of Carrowwick - not to mention the sharpest tongue. But Ryia Cautella is not her real name. 

For the past six years, a deadly secret has kept her in hiding, running from town to town, doing whatever it takes to stay one step ahead of the formidable Guildmaster - the sovereign ruler of the five kingdoms of Thamorr. No matter how far or fast she travels, his servants never fail to track her down...but even the most powerful men can be defeated. 

Ryia’s path now leads directly into the heart of the Guildmaster’s stronghold, and against every instinct she has, it’s not a path she can walk alone. Forced to team up with a crew of assorted miscreants, smugglers, and thieves, Ryia must plan her next moves very carefully. If she succeeds, her freedom is won once and for all...but unfortunately for Ryia, her new allies are nearly as selfish as she is, and they all have plans of their own.