{"id":832,"date":"2026-02-02T23:04:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T23:04:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/?p=832"},"modified":"2026-02-02T23:04:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T23:04:16","slug":"2-feb-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/uncategorized\/2-feb-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Feb 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<hr>\n<p>Ethically I don&#8217;t like educational elitism which is based on the idea of selecting people (youngsters) according to a menu of policy driven aptitudes and talents &#8230; yet it might be a strategy to help the UK counter American imperialism &#8230; <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/68f60392-88bf-419c-96c7-c3d580ec9d97\">https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/68f60392-88bf-419c-96c7-c3d580ec9d97<\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\u00a7<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">On that point, it seems to me that the worst case is the self-identifying genius who simply makes money enough to pay other geniuses to make stuff \u2026<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><a title=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/01\/31\/elon-musk-2026-election-donations-00758992\" href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/01\/31\/elon-musk-2026-election-donations-00758992\">https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/01\/31\/elon-musk-2026-election-donations-00758992<\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">And then, as if to rpve the point that he is more dork than genius up pops this:<\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><a title=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/news\/elon-musk-odyssey-lupita-helen-troy-b2911572.html\" href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/news\/elon-musk-odyssey-lupita-helen-troy-b2911572.html\">https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/arts-entertainment\/films\/news\/elon-musk-odyssey-lupita-helen-troy-b2911572.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\u00a7<\/p>\n<p>Space travel is different: <a title=\"https:\/\/www.m1roofers.co.uk\/02-164062-albert-einstein-predicted-it-and-mars\/\" href=\"https:\/\/www.m1roofers.co.uk\/02-164062-albert-einstein-predicted-it-and-mars\/\">https:\/\/www.m1roofers.co.uk\/02-164062-albert-einstein-predicted-it-and-mars\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s actually happening isn\u2019t sci\u2011fi at all; it\u2019s general and special relativity doing exactly what they\u2019ve always promised to do. On Mars, gravity is about a third of Earth\u2019s. That means spacetime is less \u201ccurved\u201d, so time ticks slightly faster on the surface than it does here. Satellites around Mars, flying high and fast, feel their own distortions: special relativity slows them because of their speed, while the weaker gravity speeds them up.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPut it all together and you get a messy ballet of clocks. Earth time, Martian surface time, orbital time. **Future human crews won\u2019t just carry watches; they\u2019ll live inside a field of shifting seconds**. And every maneuver, landing, and emergency response will depend on tracking those shifts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\u00a7<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&#8230;it is puzzling that the question of screen time [used for teaching] in schools is left out of discussions. &#8230; No social media ban will compensate for an education system that conditions [students] to turn to screens for every task.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/jan\/30\/what-good-is-a-social-media-ban-when-screens-are-rife-in-classrooms\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/jan\/30\/what-good-is-a-social-media-ban-when-screens-are-rife-in-classrooms\">https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/jan\/30\/what-good-is-a-social-media-ban-when-screens-are-rife-in-classrooms<\/a><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\u00a7<\/p>\n<p>Robots that smell:<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2026-01-smelly-snapshot-current-state-electronic.html\" href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2026-01-smelly-snapshot-current-state-electronic.html\">https:\/\/techxplore.com\/news\/2026-01-smelly-snapshot-current-state-electronic.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\"><\/p>\n<p align=\"left\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ethically I don&#8217;t like educational elitism which is based on the idea of selecting people (youngsters) according to a menu of policy driven aptitudes and talents &#8230; yet it might be a strategy to help the UK counter American imperialism &#8230; https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/68f60392-88bf-419c-96c7-c3d580ec9d97 \u00a7 On that point, it seems to me that the worst case is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/uncategorized\/2-feb-2026\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;2 Feb 2026&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":833,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions\/833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brevities.harddfan.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}