Dominique Luchart's Blog, page 642
April 24, 2021
Someone deciphered the Ted Lasso shortbread recipe from Apple’s Spring Loaded event,
During Tuesday’s Spring Loaded event, Apple announced (among other things) that the second season of its runaway hit show Ted Lasso would drop on July 23rd. This is extremely good news for fans of the show (including myself) who have missed the earnest football coach with the impossibly sunny outlook on life, which provided a bit of a respite during the coronavirus pandemic last summer.
At the very end of Spring Loaded, however, there was a Ted Lasso-related Easter egg: a graphic of a little box with the text “Ted Lasso’s Secret Shortbread (Makes about one box).” The recipe itself was barely visible. But eagle-eyed developer David Smith was able to read the text, and Googled it, only to find it matched a New York Times recipe for shortbread (albeit a slightly different recipe than Ted’s).
He blogged about it here:
Looking closely at the fractional letters visible I’m pretty confident that this first line reads:
1 1/2 cups / 340 grams cold unsalted butter cut into 1/2 inch pieces plus more for greasing pan
This is definitely a recipe for shortbread, I mean what else would need that much butter!
That really is a lot of goddamned butter.
For those who don’t watch the show (and why the heck not?), the shortbread cookies are a key part of the plot. Ted is trying to win over Rebecca, the owner of the English football team he’s suddenly coaching, and presents her with a small pink box that has the shortbread inside (we later discover that Ted has been baking the shortbread himself, not purchasing them, because that’s Ted for ya).
Rebecca enjoys them.
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There are not many pure, good things on the internet anymore (she said as she wrote for an internet news site haha of course I did not mean The Verge, we are great), but a little sleuthing to uncover a shortbread recipe from the best show on streaming reminds me of those innocent days gone by. Like Ted reminds us: you just have to believe.
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Elon Musk is hosting Saturday Night Live and no this is not a joke, Kim Lyons
Photo by Hannibal Hanschke-Pool/Getty ImagesElon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, will be hosting Saturday Night Live on May 8th, the official SNL account tweeted Saturday. The musical guest will be Miley Cyrus. Musk is known for his— how shall we put this — quirky sense of humor on Twitter, his preferred method of social media communication, but it’s not totally clear whether he’s actually funny enough to sustain a 90-minute hosting gig on the late-night comedy show.
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) April 24, 2021
Musk has made many notable media appearances over the years— there was that time he smoked weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and he had a cameo in Iron Man 2 (he even had a line for his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). He also…
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Elon Musk is hosting Saturday Night Live and no this is not a joke,
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, will be hosting Saturday Night Live on May 8th, the official SNL account tweeted Saturday. The musical guest will be Miley Cyrus. Musk is known for his– how shall we put this — quirky sense of humor on Twitter, his preferred method of social media communication, but it’s not totally clear whether he’s actually funny enough to sustain a 90-minute hosting gig on the late-night comedy show.
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl)
Musk has made many notable media appearances over the years– there was that time he smoked weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and he had a cameo in Iron Man 2 (he even had a line for his debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). He also played himself on an episode of The Simpsons, titled “The Musk Who Fell to Earth,” and on the now-retired show The Big Bang Theory, and its spinoff Young Sheldon. When he appeared on the Stephen Colbert show, the host likened him to Lex Luthor (which, all things considered, he probably enjoyed).
So he’s not totally without some show biz chops. How willing he’ll be to parody his — unique– public persona, well, we’ll have to wait a few weeks to find out.
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Go read this saga of McDonald’s ice cream machines and why they’re out of order all the time, Kim Lyons
If you’ve ever tried to get ice cream at a McDonald’s restaurant, there’s a better-than-average chance you were stymied in your quest for soft-serve goodness by an out-of-order ice cream machine. A new report from Wired attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery of the McDonald’s ice cream machines, why they have a secret repair menu that most McDonald’s workers don’t have access to, and one couple’s attempts to hack the machines for the greater good.
…after years of studying this complex machine and its many ways of failing, O’Sullivan remains most outraged at this notion: That the food-equipment giant Taylor sells the McFlurry-squirting devices to McDonald’s restaurant owners for about $18,000 each, and yet it keeps the machines’…
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Go read this saga of McDonald’s ice cream machines and why they’re out of order all the time,
If you’ve ever tried to get ice cream at a McDonald’s restaurant, there’s a better-than-average chance you were stymied in your quest for soft-serve goodness by an out-of-order ice cream machine. A new report from Wired attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery of the McDonald’s ice cream machines, why they have a secret repair menu that most McDonald’s workers don’t have access to, and one couple’s attempts to hack the machines for the greater good.
…after years of studying this complex machine and its many ways of failing, O’Sullivan remains most outraged at this notion: That the food-equipment giant Taylor sells the McFlurry-squirting devices to McDonald’s restaurant owners for about $18,000 each, and yet it keeps the machines’ inner workings secret from them. What’s more, Taylor maintains a network of approved distributors that charge franchisees thousands of dollars a year for pricey maintenance contracts, with technicians on call to come and tap that secret passcode into the devices sitting on their counters.
It’s weird to consider that a company the size of McDonald’s would be hampered by what is mainly a right-to-repair issue. The restaurants have to use Taylor’s repair techs, and the machines themselves tend to be fragile and temperamental, according to franchisees bound to use the machines by agreements with McDonald’s. So Jeremy O’Sullivan and Melissa Nelson created a device that would hack into the machines and provide diagnostic info, including access to the secret menu. They called it Kytch.
One franchisee, who asked that WIRED not identify him for fear of retribution from McDonald’s, told me that the ice cream machine at one of his restaurants had been down practically every week due to a mysterious failure during its pasteurization cycle. He’d scrutinized the assembly of the machine again and again, to no avail.
Installing Kytch revealed almost instantly that an overeager employee was putting too much mix in one of the machine’s hoppers. Today he wakes up every morning at 5:30, picks up his phone, and confirms that all his machines have passed their treacherous heat treatment. Another franchisee’s technician told me that, despite Kytch nearly doubling its prices over the past two years and adding a $250 activation fee, it still saves their owner “easily thousands of dollars a month.”
I’m not going to spoil the plot twists, but suffice to say that Wired reporter Andy Greenberg tells the tale of the ice cream machines and the well-intentioned hackers almost like a spy thriller; I was half-expecting a Jason Bourne-like hero to come in and set everything right. Go read this fascinating deep dive into the wonky ice cream machines that even McDonald’s itself jokes about.
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With 11 people on space station, astronauts get crafty with sleeping spots, ,
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station have had to devise some creative sleeping arrangements, because the orbiting lab is a little crowded right now.
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In the light of the Super Pink Moon, look for the radiant Tycho crater, ,
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Astrophotographer John Chumack took this image of Tycho Crater on the moon’s surface on Feb. 19, 2016. (Image credit: John Chumack/ www.galacticimages.com)If you look up at the Super Pink Moon this Monday (April 26), don’t expect to see anything rosy — this full moon is named after a flower, the wild ground phlox, which proliferates during April and has a distinctive pinkish coloration. But with binoculars, you may be able to spot a magnificent lunar feature.
While most amateur and professional astronomers detest a full moon because its dazzling light blots out all but the brightest stars, the lunar disk appears flat and one-dimensional, and its topography is hard to distinguish, there is one feature that appears at its best during a full moon: Tycho, a crater named after Tycho Brahe, a 16th-century Danish nobleman, astronomer and writer known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical observations.
Tycho is a spectacular target, thanks primarily to its magnificent system of rays that emanate in all directions, in some cases for more than a thousand miles.
Related: The moon has way (way) more craters than we thought
To some, Tycho looks like a sunflower on the moon. Others see something else. “Tycho and its amazing rays give the full moon the general appearance of a peeled orange, the crater marking the point where the sections meet,” Ernest H. Cherrington Jr. wrote in his book “Exploring the Moon Through Binoculars” (McGraw Hill Publishing, 1969).
Tycho’s topographyAt 53 miles (85 kilometers) in diameter, Tycho is a fairly large crater. Yet it can be completely overlooked when it’s positioned near the lunar terminator — the line separating day and night on the moon — because of the abundance of other craters on this part of the moon, some of which are even larger.
But from a few days before to a few days after the full moon, there is no way you can miss Tycho. Indeed, at full phase, the crater appears most dazzling — so bright that no details within it can readily be seen. And around its periphery, there appears to be a gray ring, or collar, from where its bright rays radiate in all directions.
In terms of lunar topography, the walls of Tycho rise more than 12,000 feet (3,660 meters) above the lunar surface and contain peaks 5,000 feet (1,500 m) higher. Near the center of the crater lies a central mountain, some 5,200 feet (1,600 m) tall. On the crater’s northwest flank is a smaller mountain and, between the two, a short cleft.
Check out these mountains, as well as many of the other features of Tycho, in this incredible 3D video composed of images taken by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kaguya (Selene) Terrain Camera.
New kid on the lunar blockThe moon is approximately 3.9 billion years old, but Tycho is a relatively “new” feature. Based on analysis of samples from one of the crater rays recovered during the Apollo 17 mission at Mare Serenitatis in December 1972, scientists think Tycho is “only” about 108 million years old.
Around that time, a meteoroid — a projectile from space likely measuring 5 or 6 miles (8 to 10 km) across — crashed into the rock of the moon, seemingly at a relatively low angle. The intense heat of impact vaporized that rock as it rose high above the lunar surface. Then, it quickly condensed into a liquidy substance, forming spherical shapes and freezing almost immediately — not into crystalline material but into baubles of glass, which were collected and brought back to Earth by the last crewed lunar mission.
Indeed, yet another subjective impression one might get by gazing at Tycho is its resemblance to a pane of shattered glass surrounding a bullet hole.
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Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took this photo of the moon’s Tycho Crater in January 2012. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/D. Ehrenreich/IPAG/CNRS/Universite Joseph Fourier)How to spot TychoA full moon can be blindingly bright; glare dazzles the eye and can make you squint too much to perceive any real detail. And after just a minute or two of gazing through the eyepiece, you may need to turn away to relax your eyes. Therefore, you can get the best views of a full moon through a small telescope at low power (25x to 40x) or good binoculars.
You can easily spot Tycho through handheld 7-power binoculars by looking about one-third of the way up from the center of the lunar disk.
Historically, some astronomers have claimed that Tycho is even visible to the naked eye at the full moon. If you think you have better-than-average eyesight, you might want to try.
As exciting as it is to gaze at Tycho around the time of the full moon, next month’s full moon, on May 26, will offer even more excitement, with the occurrence of the first total lunar eclipse in nearly two and a half years.
Space.com will have much more to say about that event next month, so stay tuned!
Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York’s Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmers’ Almanac and other publications. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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SpaceX could land astronauts on the moon in 2024, Elon Musk says, ,
Elon Musk doesn’t think NASA’s 2024 moon-landing goal is out of reach.
The space agency is working to get people back to the moon via its Artemis program, which aims to establish a long-term, sustainable human presence on and around Earth’s nearest neighbor by the end of the 2020s.
In 2019, the Trump administration directed NASA to make the first crewed Artemis landing by 2024. Experts have generally viewed that target as overly ambitious, and it’s unclear whether the timeline will hold under President Joe Biden. But Musk, SpaceX’s billionaire founder and CEO, thinks it is indeed achievable with the company’s Starship deep-space transportation system, which NASA recently selected as Artemis’ crewed moon lander.
Related: NASA unveils plan for Artemis ‘base camp’ on the moon beyond 2024
“I think it will happen. I think 2024 seems likely,” Musk said Friday morning (April 23) in a news conference after the successful launch of SpaceX’s Crew-2 mission, which is sending four astronauts to the International Space Station under a contract with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.
“We’re gonna aim for sooner than that,” he added.
Indeed, Musk said he thinks Starship — a giant, reusable rocket-spaceship combo — could be flying people regularly by 2023.
“Obviously, we need to, like, not be making craters,” he said with a laugh. “Got some work to do, but making rapid progress. We’ve got to make sure we’re accelerating the rate of innovation, and then it could be ready in a couple years.”
The craters remark is a reference to the Starship test-flight campaign, which has been quite explosive recently. Since December 2020, SpaceX has conducted four high-altitude test flights of Starship prototypes at the company’s South Texas facilities. All four vehicles performed well for most of the flight, but none of them managed to stick the landing (though one did touch down in one piece, only to explode a few minutes later).
Related: SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy rocket in pictures
Those flights involved iterations of the 165-foot-tall (50 meters) Starship spacecraft, which is known (somewhat confusingly) as Starship. The giant first-stage rocket that will launch Starship off Earth is called Super Heavy. SpaceX has built a Super Heavy prototype but has not yet flown one.
SpaceX is getting set to take another crack at the Starship high-altitude test flight. The latest prototype, named SN15 (“Serial No. 15”), is on the pad in South Texas, going through a series of preflight checkouts.
Musk acknowledged that his target timelines tend to be optimistic and should be taken “with a grain of salt.” But the occasion of today’s news conference offers some reason for optimism, highlighting as it did SpaceX’s human spaceflight achievements (albeit with a different transportation system, the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule). With Crew-2 safely on its way to the space station, SpaceX has now launched three crewed missions to Earth orbit in less than 12 months.
Mike Wall is the author of “ Out There ” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
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Mars helicopter Ingenuity snaps epic of rover tracks, will attempt 3rd flight Sunday, ,
NASA’s history-making Mars helicopter Ingenuity will make its third Red Planet flight this weekend, if all goes according to plan.
The Ingenuity team is targeting early Sunday morning (April 25) for sortie number three. The flight plan calls for Ingenuity to get about 16.5 feet (5 meters) above the floor of Mars’ Jezero Crater, travel a total of 330 feet (100 m) and stay aloft for 80 seconds, chief pilot Havard Grip of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote in a blog post today (April 23).
Grip did not give an estimated liftoff time but did say that data and photos are expected to starting coming down to Earth around 10:16 a.m. EDT (1416 GMT) on Sunday.
Video: Zoom in on Ingenuity helicopter’s 1st flight on Mars
Ingenuity’s first two flights were not so involved. On its groundbreaking first flight, which occurred on Monday (April 19), Ingenuity went straight up and down, attained a maximum altitude of about 10 feet (3 m) and stayed aloft for 39.1 seconds. On Thursday (April 22), the solar-powered helicopter remained airborne for nearly 52 seconds, got more than 16.5 feet (5 m) high and moved laterally a total of 13 feet (4 m).
During that second flight, Ingenuity snapped a photo of Jezero’s floor and the tracks made by its much larger partner, NASA’s Perseverance rover. It’s “the first color image of the Martian surface taken by an aerial vehicle while it was aloft,” NASA officials wrote in a caption for the newly unveiled photo, which Grip featured in his blog post today. (Ingenuity took photos during its first flight as well, but apparently only with its black-and-white navigation camera.)
Ingenuity is a technology demonstration designed to show that aerial vehicles can operate on Mars. A successful flight campaign could open the Red Planet’s skies to extensive exploration, NASA officials have said.
The helicopter landed with Perseverance on Feb. 18 and deployed from the rover on April 3 to prep for its month-long flight campaign, which ends in early May. The Ingenuity team aims to make a total of five flights during that span, with each one more ambitious than the last.
Mike Wall is the author of “ Out There ” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.
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SpaceX’s first reused Crew Dragon docks at space station with four Crew-2 astronauts, ,
A used SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station as part of the company’s Crew-2 mission docked successfully at the orbiting lab early Saturday (April 24).
The Crew Dragon Endeavour, which launched SpaceX’s first crewed flight for NASA in May 2020, linked up with the station’s U.S. built Harmony module at 5:08 a.m. EDT (0908 GMT) as both spacecraft sailed 264 miles above the Indian Ocean.
The spacecraft launched from pad 039A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Friday (April 23). The Crew Dragon spacecraft previously carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of SpaceX’s Demo-2 test flight. This flight is the first time that a SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicle was reused for a launch and the first time that two Crew Dragon vehicles are docked at the station at the same time.
Arriving at the ISS on Endeavour today were four veteran spaceflyers: NASA astronauts Megan McArthur and Shane Kimbrough, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut Akihiko Hoshide and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet.
The four astronauts arrived safely at the station about 23 hours after their successful launch, ready to begin their mission in space. They’re expected to open the hatches between their Crew Dragon and the station at 7:15 a.m. EDT (1115 GMT).
Live updates: SpaceX’s Crew-2 astronaut mission for NASA
Meet Crew-2: See the 4 astronauts aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon
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SpaceX’s Crew-2 Crew Dragon Endeavour arrives at the International Space Station with four astronauts aboard in a smooth docking on April 24, 2021 one day after launching into orbit. (Image credit: NASA TV)Image 2 of 3[image error]
SpaceX’s Crew-2 Crew Dragon Endeavour arrives at the International Space Station with four astronauts aboard in a smooth docking on April 24, 2021 one day after launching into orbit. (Image credit: NASA TV)Image 3 of 3[image error]
The International Space Station and SpaceX’s Crew-1 Crew Dragon spacecraft Resilience (top) can be seen in this camera view from the Crew-2 Dragon Endeavour during docking operations on April 24, 2021. (Image credit: NASA TV)“Our crew is flying astronauts from NASA, ESA and JAXA, which hasn’t happened in over 20 years,” Kimbrough told SpaceX flight controllers just before launch on Friday, thanking the mission teams at both NASA and SpaceX. “Off the Earth, for the Earth, Endeavour is ready to go.”
The flight to the International Space Station wasn’t entirely smooth. As the astronauts were preparing for sleep on Friday, SpaceX flight controllers called up to warm them that U.S. Space Command radar had picked up a possible space junk collision hazard.
“For awareness, we have identified a late breaking possible conjunction with a fairly close miss distance to Dragon,” SpaceX capsule communicator Sarah Gilles told the astronauts at 1:24 p.m. EDT, according to CBS News. “As such, we do need you to immediately proceed with suit donning and securing yourselves in seats. We will be erring on the side of caution to get you guys into a better configuration.”
The Crew-2 astronauts put their SpaceX pressure suits and helmets on and returned to their seats as directed, but the debris ultimately passed by the Crew Dragon capsule without incident.
After a successful docking, the seven-person crew of Expedition 65 — including the four SpaceX Crew-1 astronauts who arrived at the ISS in November — met the new station residents, helping them aboard. With the new crew arrival, there will be 11 astronauts on the station for a few days, until the Crew-1 astronauts return to Earth in their Crew Dragon, named “,” on Wednesday (April 28).
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The Crew-1 astronauts prepared for the handoff period and for the arrival of Crew-2 by relocating their Crew Dragon to a different docking port, making room for the incoming spacecraft. This followed a similar maneuver on March 19, when astronauts on the space station relocated the Russian Soyuz MS-17 spacecraft, which also made room for new crewmembers.
The station residents also prepared for the new arrivals by building extra beds, making sure that the astronauts arriving at the station have a place to sleep. Typically only three to six astronauts inhabit the ISS at a time, so some makeshift crew quarters were needed to support the unusually large group of residents.
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The Crew-2 Crew Dragon is seen docked at the front end of NASA’s Harmony module of the International Space Station after docking on April 24, 2021. (Image credit: NASA TV)“Our friends on the @Space_Station are expecting us to show up and we don’t want to be late. They even installed my bedroom recently and literally made my bed. Such nice hosts!” Pesquet tweeted along with images of the space station crew preparing for Crew-2’s arrival.
Still, with so many astronauts living on the station, two astronauts (the two Crew Dragon commanders, NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Kimbrough) will sleep in their respective Crew Dragon capsules. This temporary “camping” situation, as it has been described, will end when the Crew-1 astronauts climb back aboard their Crew Dragon and return to Earth on April 28.
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Of the 11 people on board, nine are in the U.S. segment of the space station, which has four sleeping quarters for astronauts. With the two commanders out in their Dragons, that leaves three people needing a place to sleep: Crew-1 astronauts Soichi Noguchi of JAXA, and Shannon Walker and Victor Glover of NASA. “They’ll be in the gym, the Columbus [module] and the airlock, respectively,” NASA Public Affairs Officer Marie Lewis said during the live launch broadcast. “So, you could say it’s quite a full house. They’ll be camping out rolling out sleeping bags on rack fronts.”
The four new residents of the orbiting outpost will spend the next six months working and living in space. They will work on more than 200 science experiments, conduct spacewalks and more during their time at the station, which orbits about 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth.
SpaceX’s next crewed mission to the space station will be Crew-3, which is currently set to lift off Oct. 23. However, if SpaceX stays on schedule, the Crew-3 launch will be preceded by Inspiration4, the first-ever all-civilian crewed space mission, which is set to launch four space tourists on a three-day orbital mission on a Crew Dragon spacecraft no earlier than Sept. 15.
Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her on Twitter @chelsea_gohd. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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