Pretty Winter Sunset But I’m Stuck Inside 🌅 Just Cleaned My Room Though So I Don’t Mind That Much.

long study day at the library! there was a lot of snacks since it’s finals week but getting a spot was so impossible 😦 my friend and I saw three people leaving from behind some bookshelves and it was like the hunger games trying to grab our stuff and get seats before anybody else could take them

the library closed kind of early so now I’m back home and I have a long night ahead of me

- analysis study sheets (5/5)

- extra credit poem

- email people back 😭

- comp sci practice tests

- chem study sheets???

physics feels so inaccessible.

like what do you mean the only information on this topic is a power point presentation from ten years ago with only half of the information on it?

or you tell me there's three ways to download the software i need for the calculations, but only one of the ways actually works and you don't even tell me how to do it!!!

never mind the sheer amount of prerequisites. i never struggled with math too much, but i also never took the opportunity to skip a level in math. when i was starting out, you can't do anything without trig. so then i went and learned trig on my own, but then i needed matrices. so i went and i learned matrices and vectors on my own, but now i need calculus. and holy shit is there a lot of stuff within calculus.

half the important papers are hidden behind paywalls and the diagrams are so confusing they take me forever to figure out. maybe i'm just inexperienced, but isn't the whole point of diagrams for the information to be more accessible?????

i might be wrong since i'm young and inexperienced, but it seems as if there's this tone of exclusivity in physics. why is it so hard to find mentors, and when i do, they have such trouble believing in me? i might be young, but i can still understand and help with something. why would you ignore all my emails and just tell me to take the easy way out? i'm in it for the long run.

elon musk did a nazi salute twice at the inauguration, and republicans are defending him.

trump revoked executive order 11246, which prohibited discrimination.

trump put all dei employees on leave to be fired.

trump blamed the dc plane crash on dei.

trump banned all lgbtq+ flags from being hung in government buildings.

trump ordered the pentagon to cancel celebration of mlk jr. day, black history month, women's history month, holocaust remembrance day, asian american pacific islander heritage month, lgbtq+ pride month, juneteenth, women's equality day, national hispanic heritage month, national disability employment awarenessmonth, and national american indian heritage month.

trump proposed removing all palestinians from gaza, turning the area into a vacation resort called “riviera of the middle east”.

trump posted an ai generated video showing what he hopes to turn palestine into, with a large golden statue of himself in the middle of it.

trump rolled back biden’s executive order to lower prescription drug costs for people using medicare and medicaid.

trump rescinded the $35 cap on insulin, and prices are expected to rise to $1500 a month.

trump ordered the national institutes of health to cancel their review panels on cancer research.

trump ended the guidelines to prevent ai misuse. the guidelines prevent many things, but notably it prevents production of ai child pornography.

when sean hannity asked trump about the economy, he said “i don’t care”, after campaigning with the economy as his main talking point.

trump has withdrawn the us from the world health organization.

trump is ordering health agencies to stop reporting on bird flu and halt publications of scientific reports.

trump has pardoned over 1500 people who stormed the capitol on january 6th.

trump changed denali back to mount mckinley.

trump signed an executive order to rename the gulf of mexico to gulf of america.

trump shut down cbp one, an app which granted legal entry to 1 million+ immigrants.

trump has discussed introducing a “gold card”, which would allow the wealthiest people to buy us citizenship for $5 million usd.

trump is allowing ice raids at churches and elementary schools.

trump announced plans to declare a national emergency at the us-mexico border.

trump signed an executive order to expand the use of the death penalty.

trump disbanded the school safety board that works to prevent school shootings. it was comprised of survivors, educators, and gun violence prevention advocates and formed after the school shooting in parkland.

trump has threatened to invade panama to claim the panama canal.

trump withdrew from the paris climate act.

trump revoked all protections for transgender troops in the us military.

trump rescinded executive orders made by biden that benefited and protected women, lgbtq+ people, black americans, hispanic americans, asian americans, native hawaiians, and pacific islanders.

trump is attempting to make it legal to refuse to hire or fire pregnant women.

multiple state legislators are drafting bills to allow the punishment for abortion to be the death penalty.

trump pardoned 23 individuals convicted under the freedom of access to clinic entrances (FACE) act for their anti-abortion activism, including oftentimes violent protests at abortion clinics.

trump signed an executive order allowing deportation of foreign students who they believe express support for hamas or hezbollah.

trump announced that the us government will from here on out only recognize male and female as sexes. intersex is not legally recognized anymore.

trump has told all schools and universities that they have two weeks to end all diversity initiatives, or he will cut federal funding. (as of feb 19, 2025)

trump fired the staff of the federal aviation association after a deadly plane crash in dc.

trump has fired the heads of the tsa and coast guard, and gutted a key aviation safety advisory committee.

the supreme court weakened the clean water act's limitations on raw sewage discharge into our water in a 5-4 ruling.

the official white house twitter account posted an “illegal alien deportation” asmr video where they did closeups of chains and the sound of ankle chains hitting the metal stairs of the airplanes deportees were being loaded onto.

on truth social, trump posted, “LONG LIVE THE KING!”.

at CPAC, a republican group called the “third term project” held a rally to support changing the constitution so trump can run for a third term. on their posters, they’re photoshopping his face onto julius caesar’s, seemingly forgetting what happened to julius caesar.

the trump administration paused health communications to prevent the fda from announcing food recalls.

republicans on tiktok are recreating elon’s salute to prove that it “wasn’t a nazi salute”, and they’re either doing it completely wrong because they know if they replicate it then it will actually be a salute, or they’re doing the proper salute and posting it online.

google and apple maps now display the gulf of mexico as “gulf of america”.

rfk jr. wants to ban SSRIs and put everyone on them into labor camps.

andy ogles drafted a constitutional amendment to allow trump to be president for a third term.

the us senate confirmed russell vought, one of the main authors of project 2025, will lead the white house budget office.

nancy mace repeatedly used the t-slur during a congressional meeting, three times were out of spite.

andy biggs introduced a bill to abolish osha and completely eliminate federal workplace safety protections.

georgia republican congressman mike collins called for the deportation of new jersey born mariann budde, the bishop who urged trump to “have mercy” on the lgbtq+ community and immigrants during a service at the national cathedral.

florida republican anna paulina luna has introduced a bill to add trump to mount rushmore.

new york republican claudia tenney introduced a bill to make trump’s birthday a federal holiday.

west virginia republican delegate lisa white has introduced house bill 2712, which would remove rape and incest as exceptions for abortion, even for minors. you can call her at (304) 340- 3274 or email her at lisa.white@wvhouse.gov and let her know your opinion on that.

there is a bill named the SAVE act which would require americans to provide their birth certificate, passport, or other citizenship documents every time they vote, and would require the last name on their driver’s license to match that of their birth certificate. this would prevent married women who have changed their last name from voting.

bill h.r.1161, which is available publicly on congress.gov, would authorize trump to enter into negotiations to acquire greenland and to rename it to "red, white, and blueland".

six states (arizona, idaho, iowa, kansas, mississippi, and north dakota) are planning on challenging obergefell v. hodges, which would end same-sex marriage nationwide. about a dozen more states have representatives are also considering filing similar resolutions.

a bill to ban the mRNA vaccine has passed out of the house committee.

amazon revoked protections for lgbtq+ and black employees.

the cdc has removed their hiv prevention page.

the united states state department has officially changed its “travelers with special conditions” page which previously said “lgbtqi+ travelers” to “lgb travelers”, completely getting rid of the tqi+.

every single republican told us we were overreacting. trump swore he had nothing to do with project 2025 yet continues implementing details outlined in it. not a single person has the right to tell us we’re being dramatic anymore.

hope “cheaper eggs and gas” was worth it.

EDIT: i removed the “trump refused to swear on the bible” point because it was being taken as me being an offended christian. i’m not christian, im agnostic. the reason i included it in the first place is because he’s the first president in history to ever refuse to swear on ANYTHING. meanwhile his “conservative christian” followers had no issue with this, and decided to continue to scramble for excuses instead of admitting he may not be as religious as he claims he is. i figured taking that point out entirely is probably better than filling this with an explanation in the middle of the other important issues.

Star Trails taken by Rob on February 24 2024

Star trails are photographs taken over long exposures, where the rotation of the Earth causes the stars to appear as arcs in the sky instead of points. The Earth rotates around its axis every 23 hours and 56 minutes.

Typically, star trails are focused on Polaris in the northern hemisphere, but I found this photo unique because it opted for a different composition. It also really highlights how dense the sky is with stars.

It begs the question, why isn't the sky infinitely bright with infinite stars? This is actually the observation that helped cosmologists find theories for the age of the universe. For a young universe, not enough time has passed for the light from incredibly distant stars to reach us, leading to the dark sky we see when we look up at night.

Flame Nebula taken by Hubble Space Telescope

This nebula is an emission nebula— a star forming region in the Orion constellation. The nebula is filled with young stars; however, dense gas obscures the majority of the cluster.

In this cluster, it contains at least one O-type star that emits light, exciting the gas around it.

O-type stars are huge blue stars that are easily seen from Earth, even from farther distances. They have extremely high surface temperatures, causing them to lose energy at a much faster rate than other stars. These massive stars live for much smaller lifetimes, before resulting in supernova explosions and eventually forming a neutron star or black hole.

AAAAAAHHHH I HAVE A MATH TEST TMRW

Normally, I’m not so stressed, but I missed class this week (I was skipping shame on me 😭) and I have no clue what’s going on… Me and the math teacher are besties because he’s the coach of the golf team, so I’m scared of disappointing him with my bad test scores.

I also had a long lab in chem this week. It’s really sad because we got bad results even though we ran our trial for over and hour lol. I think it’s my lab partner’s fault because he keeps on putting his crusty fingers all over the cuvettes which is messing up the spectrophotometer. Hopefully he actually writes his part so it’s not another repeat of last year.

- Practice midterms for matrices

- Grade practice midterms

- Write lab report

- Debug binary system simulation

- Work on astro research paper

- Work on program applications

- Finish new deal research

- Finish college assessment

- Email people back 😬

Don’t ask me why we have a midterm in January… I have no clue.

there's nothing more satisfying than the program finally working!! i went through multiple breaks of despair only for the stupidest line in the code to be the issue

Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse © © © ©

The Soul Nebula taken by Kurt Wallberg on Februrary 1 2024

This image depicts The Soul Nebula (IC 1848) on the left and Westhout 5 (IC 1848) on the right. Westhout 5 is part of the bigger Soul Nebula. It’s an emission nebula— consisting of the star forming regions with ionized hydrogen gas and dark nebula. Dark nebulas are when the stellar medium is so dense that the light from objects behind it cannot pass through.

As you can see in the image, there are cavities in the gas. These were carved out by stars due to radiation and stellar winds. There is a theory of triggered star formation, which describes that these cavities compress the gas around it to trigger star formation. Images such as these have been used to help prove this theory, showing that the closer the star is to the cavity, the younger it is.