Heap o' Links Sat May 8, 2021

Top U.S. fuel pipeline operator Colonial Pipeline shut its entire network, the source of nearly half of the U.S. East Coast’s fuel supply, after a cyber attack that involved ransomware.… "This is as close as you can get to the jugular of infrastructure in the United States," said Amy Myers Jaffe, research professor and managing director of the Climate Policy Lab. "It's not a major pipeline. It's the pipeline."…

Did people or nature open Pandora’s box at Wuhan?
In what follows I will sort through the available scientific facts, which hold many clues as to what happened, and provide readers with the evidence to make their own judgments. I will then try to assess the complex issue of blame, which starts with, but extends far beyond, the government of China.

By the end of this article, you may have learned a lot about the molecular biology of viruses. I will try to keep this process as painless as possible. But the science cannot be avoided because for now, and probably for a long time hence, it offers the only sure thread through the maze.

Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world’s worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. “It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit,” says Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield. Now, Ukrainian scientists are scrambling to determine whether the reactions will wink out on their own—or require extraordinary interventions to avert another accident.

T'other day I was talking to a friend of mine, and a black friend of his came up and greeted him. After a minute or two he said something along the lines of how they liked my friend "down in the hood". I laughed a little and asked "The hoods of Tyler Tx?" The black guy said "Hey, we got hoods here". Straight faced i deadpan said "I'm from Baltimore" and he goes "Oh, no, we don't have hoods like THAT!". Then he laughed and clapped me on the back.