The Tiger Lillies

I can attest to this.

言霊 (koto-dama) “word-spirit”

Koto-dama 言霊 is a traditional belief that mystical powers dwell in words and names. 

Just like martial arts practitioners giving out a shout when they make a strike (“ki-ai!” - literally “meeting of spirit”) it is believed that sounds can affect our body, mind and soul.

Of the many things she can do: custom stickers, tags, pendants, much more...

So, I've watched the entire X-Files series over a dozen times, & can at best conclude that the Smoking Man is the father of every character in that show... including Chris Carter...🤔

Watcher Thingy

Sometimes they speak in whole sentences!

STARLINK INCIDENT IS NOT WHAT WE THOUGHT: It never made sense. On Feb. 3rd, 2022, SpaceX launched a batch of 49 Starlinks to low-Earth orbit--something they had done many times before. This time was different, though. Almost immediately, dozens of the new satellites began to fall out of the sky.

At the time, SpaceX offered this explanation: "Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday (Feb. 3rd) were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday, (Feb. 4th)."

A more accurate statement might have read "...impacted by a very minor geomagnetic storm." The satellites flew into a storm that barely registered on NOAA scales: It was a G1, the weakest possible, unlikely to cause a mass decay of satellites. Something about "The Starlink Incident" was not adding up.

Space scientists Scott McIntosh and Robert Leamon of Lynker Space, Inc., have a new and different idea: "The Terminator did it," says McIntosh.

Not to be confused with the killer robot, McIntosh's Terminator is an event on the sun that helps explain the mysterious progression of solar cycles. Four centuries after Galileo discovered sunspots, researchers still cannot accurately predict the timing and strength of the sun's 11-year solar cycle. Even "11 years" isn't real; observed cycles vary from less than 9 years to more than 14 years long.

Above: Oppositely charged bands of magnetism march toward the sun's equator where they "terminate" one another, kickstarting the next solar cycle. [more]

McIntosh and Leamon realized that forecasters had been overlooking something. There is a moment that happens every 11 years or so when opposing magnetic fields from the sun's previous and upcoming solar cycles collide. They called this moment, which signals the death of the old cycle, "The Termination Event."

After a Termination Event, the sun roars to life–"like a hot stove where someone suddenly turns the burner on," McIntosh likes to say. Solar ultraviolet radiation abruptly jumps to a higher level, heating the upper atmosphere and dramatically increasing aerodynamic drag on satellites.

This plot supports what McIntosh and Leamon are saying:

The histogram shows the number of objects falling out of Earth orbit each year since 1975. Vertical dashed lines mark Termination Events. There's an uptick in satellite decay around the time of every Terminator, none bigger than 2022.

As SpaceX was assembling the doomed Starlinks of Group 4-7 in early 2022, they had no idea that the Terminator Event had, in fact, just happened. Unwittingly, they launched the satellites into a radically altered near-space environment. "Some of our satellite partners said it was just pea soup up there," says Leamon.

SpaceX wasn't the only company hit hard. Capella Space also struggled in 2022 to keep its constellation of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites in orbit.

“The atmospheric density in low Earth orbit was 2 to 3 times more than expected,” wrote Capella Space's Scott Shambaugh in a paper entitled Doing Battle With the Sun. “This increase in drag threatened to prematurely de-orbit some of our spacecraft." Indeed, many did deorbit earlier than their 3-year design lifetimes.

The Terminator did it? It makes more sense than a tiny storm.

Dagon

Healer, Rythmic Storm

STRONG SOLAR ACTIVITY (UPDATED): After weeks of calm, solar activity is suddenly high again. The action started on May 13th with an X1.2-class solar flare from the sun's western limb, followed on May 14th by an even stronger X2.7-flare from new sunspot 4087. Earth-orbiting satellites have detected four significant explosions so far:

Radiation from the flares has caused a series of shortwave radio blackouts around the world--first over the Americas, followed by southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Ham radio operators may have noticed unusual propagation effects from stations in all directions since May 13th.

Most of this activity has come from sunspot 4087, which has an unstable 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field. It could explode again today. NOAA forecasters estimate a 75% chance of M-class solar flares and a 30% chance of X-flares on May 15th. 

Fearsome most tiniest beetle thingie...