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NASA Releases First Clear Images of Distant Kuiper Belt Object (engadget.com)
NASA's New Horizons team has released the promised first images from its history-making flyby of (486958) 2014 MU69. "The snapshots, captured from as close at 17,000 miles away, show that the 21-mile-long Kuiper Belt object is a 'contract binary' where two spheres slowly collided and fused with each other," reports Engadget. "The two may have linked up '99 percent of the way' to the start of the Solar System, Johns Hopkins University APL said." From the report: Capturing a true representation of 2014 MU69 is difficult, at least with the initial batch of pictures. There's a visible light camera onboard the New Horizons Probe (shown on the left), but the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (center) is much sharper. To create an accurate image (on the right), scientists had to produce a composite. Higher-resolution pictures and additional scientific data will keep flowing over the "next weeks and months," the New Horizons team said.
originally named it Ultima Thule because the term infers that it's "beyond the limits of the known world." In practice, though, it also carries racist connotations.
Where are the scientists who named the object and what shirts are they wearing?! It's time for another public shaming and apology, right? Good grief...
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Is this some sort of asteroid wedding, or business agreement, or something??!!!
From the Engadget article:
Scientists named originally named it Ultima Thule because the term infers that it's "beyond the limits of the known world." In practice, though, it also carries racist connotations. Nazis and other white supremacists use the term to refer to a mythological homeland for their culture. NASA and the New Horizons team told Newsweek that they'd kept the name because of its more innocent meaning, but it's hard to shake that stigma.
That's in your mind. Thule and Ultima Thule are names with mythological origin and have been used by explorers for centuries. Ultima doesn't mean "beyond" btw., just last, farthest, and that's how the name is usually used. Ultima Thule is "the edge of the world" or "the most distant land". If your first association is "Nazis use this name", then your mind has become tainted.
And the thing they talk about most in the linked article is how the current name of the object might be offensive to some people. I wonder how much further along we would be as a society if we were more concerned about science and real progress instead of spending so much time on useless shit like 'who might be offended'?
If you ask a random person what Thule means, you will find that the connotation is insider knowledge. Outside of Nazi and Antifa circles, the name is mostly unknown or known for its original meaning. The only people who are offended by this name are seeking to be offended. This is a teachable moment: The far left and the far right will gladly throw progress under the bus in order to fuel the fire. Fuck them all.
What they are implying, is that all of north-European pre-Christian mythology is racist by definition.
Which is funny, because
1. that makes *them* prejudiced and hateful against other cultures, and
2. racism was coined as the name for the ideology of thinking there is such a thing as races! (Biology has no such concept, dear Americans. And neither does the rest of the world, especially us Germans.)
It's simply their ancient mythological name for some nirvana/heaven-like place.
That the Nazis were nostalgically fascinated by that like hipsters are in ugly 50s furniture today, does not taint it, unless you really are deliberately looking for something to pull out of your ass to hate/shame/bully people with, and have a "guilty by association" mindset like the Nazis.
SJWs are actually the most prejudiced and hateful of all.
They are like Gestapo/DHS officers. Always "finding" something to terrorize you or deport you if they can.
Just that SJWs were powerless weakling losers before they realized they could simply command the masses, by triggering thought-terminating clichees that create peer pressure and shaming, and then act like they are *the victims*.
Is "reverse bullying" an already known term?