Scientists at the MIT have created a plane which flies without propellers or jet engines. Electrons are removed from the air in front of the wing and added behind it, the flow of ions over the wing creating lift. It’s basically what powered the TiE (twin ion engines) in Star Wars.
A man posing as the owner of a building in Peoria commissioned an artist to paint a huge mural of the cookie monster styled after late-Soviet propaganda on a wall over the Thanksgiving holiday, then disappeared. “What the hell are you painting this weird-ass shit on my wall for?” said the real owner to the bewildered artist when he returned from the holidays.
The mayor of Austin apologized for imploring his constituents to stay at home and resist the urge to travel over the holidays in a video message delivered while he was on Thanksgiving vacation, in Cabo.
The Ohio High School Athletic Association published its guidance to prevent the spread of the virus during the wrestling season. Student-athletes are permitted to wrestle, but must refrain from handshakes before and after the match. The Ohio State – Michigan football game was cancelled due to Covid.
Australia, hard at work on their version of a Covid-19 vaccine, were forced to scrap the $750 million program after some trial participants falsely test positive for HIV.
The Yes Men issued a very real looking press-release which forced the Bank of England to correct the record and say that they were actually not going to stop buying fossil fuel-linked bonds. The next day, (inspired?) the $226 billion New York State pension fund announced that it would liquidate its fossil fuel holdings.
China has built a computer so fast that it can calculate reality on the fly. The photonic quantum computer is so fast, it produced results on a calculation in minutes that the world’s fastest supercomputer would take nearly 2.5 billion years to finish.
The People’s Liberation Army is apparently playing around with gene-editing CRISPER technology in hopes of developing soldiers with “biologically enhanced capabilities”
China is planning to expand its experimental weather modification program to cover an area greater than the size of India with artificial rainfall.
Even Everest, the world’s tallest mountain, on the border to China, grew a couple of feet.
A Chinese submarine dove into the Mariana Trench to a depth exceeding the height of Mount Everest.
Finally, to round out the week, the Chinese space program put a flag on the moon.
But my cousin has done the research and concludes China sucks at building aircraft. They certainly have no TiE fighter in the works.
Hanukkah Sameach y’all. Chin up and masks on. Just a few more months and we can beat this Covid thing!
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