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South Korea got a little younger. Also, the Supreme Court reminds us how garbage they are, a man tried living on a rock in the ocean, science gets a bit wavy, and the Pinkertons are at it again.

Endeavorance

Jun 30, 2023 — 4 min read

South Korea reverses aging

Kinda.

Not really.

So up until like, this week, South Korea used the "Korean age system" which starts you off at age 1 the moment you pop out, then you're considered one year older at the start of each year.

Turns out most of the people there would prefer to not do that anymore, and so the country is undergoing a change to use the international standard of counting age. The result? Most people in South Korea are about to be a year younger.

We've had the technology to reverse aging this whole time. Simply pass legislation that says, "nah, you're actually young now."

Supreme court almost had a good week, then decided to just take a big ol' dookie on racial inequity in America

The Supreme Court has gutted Affirmative Action, saying that colleges and universities may not consider race when admitting students to help with representation for otherwise under-represented demographics.

Clarence Thomas, who benefited from such policies, voted to overturn it. Because why leave doors open for others when you can simply shut them?

This is one of those cases where its so super duper easy to just throw your hands up and say "but race shouldn't matter anyway! Blah blah merit blah blah colorblind! I don't see race!" etc etc etc.

To do that is to ignore centuries of history which has resulted in a need to policy to help promote equity. A reminder: people are still alive today—barely entering their elder years—who lived in segregated America. I think it can stand to reason that we should have some fucking policy to help get people affordances they deserve to have access to.

Dude tried to live on a rock in the ocean. It didn't work. But like, props I guess?

Chris Cameron (who goes by "Cam") wanted to break the world record for time spent living on a tiny rock outcrop in the north Atlantic. He set out to chill on the rock for 60 days, but had to call for an evac at the 30 day mark because he was on a rock in the north Atlantic.

He was planning to spend the 60 days on a tiny spot on the rock (like, 5x13 feet) but by day 30, his stuff was washed away and the weather was trending so bad that he was risking just being swept away.

I will say, however, that spending 60 days on a rock in the middle of the ocean sounds nicer than having to live in a country in which Clarence Thomas is allowed to make decisions about things.

Getting wavy

Scientists did some pretty excellent science, this time by taking a good long gander at the sky and saying "yep, looks wavy to me."

More specifically, scientists have used what are called "Pulsar Timing Arrays" to detect "Background Gravitational Waves" — those are real words.

"Pulsar Timing Arrays" essentially means "a lot of stars that reliably twinkle at a given speed so we can measure the time between twinkles and look for changes".

Meanwhile, "Background Gravitational Waves" boils down to "ripples in spacetime that are like the choppy surface of a pond after someone threw a bunch of rocks into it".

Does that help? Anyway, the long and short of it is we are ever closer to the release of Science 2. Seriously, this is a big deal. We may soon be able to read these waves all the way back to moments after the Big Bang.

On this day…

On this day in 1892, the Homestead Strike (also known as the Battle of Homestead) began in Pennsylvania.

Unionized Laborers at Homestead Steel Works were locked out of their place of employment before negotiations could be completed with Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, who Carnegie had put in charge of the factory. The union noted this as a breach of contract. The laborers began a strike, which was in response met with barricades, literal watch towers, and high powered water cannons.

Eventually, Frick brought in Pinkerton agents (as in, the bad guys from Red Dead Redemption 2, otherwise known as the people you call to retrieve trading cards) as "security forces," at which point the strike became a domestic battle between the workers and the owners.

The workers ultimately won the battle, at which point the media helped portray the Pinkertons and factory owners in a sympathetic light. The state sent in the state militia, who promptly broke past the strike lines and brought in scabs to work in the factory.

Because the state would rather send in the military to quell the coordinated effort of thousands of workers rather than ask an oligarch to pay their workers a bit better.