Follow Your Blixt — April 17, 2024

I am married to a newshound. Jan binges podcasts and news broadcasts while she goes about her day, texting me with everything she finds interesting. I have long told her to make these public. She just started, via her Threads account (@janblixt — give her a follow!). Here’s her rundown from yesterday:

April 17, 2024

Parts of the Arabian Peninsula received 10 inches of rain in 24 hours — an area of the world that averages 3.5 inches of rain PER YEAR.

The PM of the UK, Rishi Sunak (think if Vivek Ramaswami actually got elected to something) lost a major vote in Parliament’s upper chamber when they rejected his plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. Seriously, the MAGA (MUKGA?) wing of the Tory party wants to load UK asylum seekers on to planes and fly them to RWANDA.

France isn’t sure they can get the Seine clean enough for water sports for this summer’s Paris Olympic Games. I’m bummed about that.

Astronomers are calling the most massive known stellar black hole in the Milky Way galaxy a “sleeping giant,” after detecting an unusual wobble in space. Gaia BH3, has a mass that is nearly 33 times that of our sun, located 1,926 light-years away in the Aquila constellation. My question: considering the nickname, do they think it’s going to wake up?

NASA is saying the chunk of space garbage the ISS jettisoned was expected to disintegrate completely upon reentry. Apparently not and bits of it hit Florida. Mmm-hmmm.