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Mike does another good job explaining why dark matter hand waving is not needed when you have science.

http://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.ca

Bella Emberg, aka Blunder Woman (Cooperman's faithful sidekick), has died at the age of 80.

NASA, Partners Discuss Power for Future Space Exploration

NASA and its partners will host a news conference at noon EST (9 a.m. PST) Thursday, Jan. 18, at the National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, to discuss a recent experiment involving a new power source that could provide the safe, efficient and plentiful energy needed for future robotic and human space exploration missions.

Audio of the news conference and presentation slides will stream live on NASA’s website.

Representatives from NASA, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) Los Alamos National Laboratory and Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) will discuss and take questions on the Kilopower project, which aims to demonstrate space fission power systems technology that has the potential to enable future crewed surface missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Testing began in November 2017 and is expected to continue through March.

Previously: NASA's Kilopower Project Testing a Nuclear Stirling Engine

As part of his ongoing effort to prove he’s “a very stable genius” and “like, really smart” following the release of a book that portrays him as the exact opposite, on Tuesday afternoon President Trump held a televised meeting with members of Congress on the topic of immigration.

This did not go as planned. The most notable moment was when Trump responded with enthusiasm to Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein’s suggestion that they pass a “clean” bill making the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program permanent. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy quickly jumped in to remind Trump that Republicans don’t want to protect DACA recipients without getting some border-security measures (or maybe even a big, beautiful wall) in return.

But that’s not what one might take away from the exchange if, for some reason, they opted to read the transcript released by the White House. The Washington Post’s Ashley Parker noticed that the line where Trump agrees with Feinstein’s proposal — saying, “Yeah, I would like to do it” — is “curiously missing” from the document.

Guess Which Line Was Missing From the Transcript of Trump’s Immigration Meeting

Apparently this isn't the first time.

In rural China, calling someone a 'witch' has serious social consequences

Population structured by witchcraft beliefs (DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0271-6) (DX)

Anthropologists have long argued that fear of victimization through witchcraft accusations promotes cooperation in small-scale societies. Others have argued that witchcraft beliefs undermine trust and therefore reduce social cohesion. However, there are very few, if any, quantified empirical examples demonstrating how witchcraft labels can structure cooperation in real human communities. Here we show a case from a farming community in China where people labelled zhu were thought capable of supernatural activity, particularly poisoning food. The label was usually applied to adult women heads of household and often inherited down the female line. We found that those in zhu households were less likely to give or receive gifts or farm help to or from non-zhu households; nor did they have sexual partnerships or children with those in non-zhu households. However, those in zhu households did preferentially help and reproduce with each other. Although the tag is common knowledge to other villagers and used in cooperative and reproductive partner choice, we found no evidence that this assortment was based on cooperativeness or quality. We favour the explanation that stigmatization originally arose as a mechanism to harm female competitors. Once established, fear that the trait is transmissible may help explain the persistence of this deep-rooted cultural belief.

How 'wi-fi' connects human brains and explains why people have 'gut feelings'

vs.

What Is A Coffee Enema? Goop Is Facing Backlash For Linking To This Potentially Dangerous Cleanse

Fire at home of Moore accuser being investigated for arson

Roy Moore accuser's Gadsden home burns; arson investigation underway

Tina Johnson.

Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Be President (long excerpt)

Trump Bannon row: 11 explosive claims from new book

Trump Bannon row: Lawyers seek to halt book's release

Read the excerpt at New York Magazine. It seems entirely believable.

I saw a post on the PostgreSQL hackers mailing list that measured the performance impact of the Linux kernel page table isolation. https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20180102222354.qikjmf7dvnjgbkxe@alap3.anarazel.de

pti is the workaroud, page table isolation, which can be
enabled/disabled via boot parameters. nopcid disables the use of the
hardware feature that reduces the impact of workaround. PCID support

readonly pgbench (tpch-like), 16 clients, i7-6820HQ CPU (skylake):

pti=off:
tps = 236629.778328

pti=on:
tps = 220791.228297 (~0.93x)

pti=on, nopcid:
tps = 198959.801459 (~0.84x)

To get closer to the worst case, I've also measured:

pgbench SELECT 1, 16 clients, i7-6820HQ CPU (skylake):

pti=off:
tps = 420490.162391

pti=on:
tps = 350746.065039 (~0.83x)

pti=on, nopcid:
tps = 324269.903152 (~0.77x)

Note that real-world scenarios probably will see somewhat smaller
impact, as this was measured over a loopback unix sockets which'll have
smaller overhead itself than proper TCP sockets + actual network.

Donald Trump has spent 81 days on the golf course in his first year as President, racing past his predecessors.

Mr Trump, after a weekend at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida, has spent more time on the green than George W Bush did during eight years in office.

The President has also been on the golf course almost three times as much as Barack Obama did during his first year.

The American public spent at least $43 million in order to support President Donald Trump‘s considerable golf habit in 2017.

The American Public Reportedly Spent $43 Million Last Year So Trump Could Play Golf

Donald Trump plays golf almost three times as much as Barack Obama after one year in office