It’s been 47 years since the twin Voyager spacecraft started their historic mission. Having travelled through interstellar space, farther from Earth than any other human-made objects, their nuclear batteries are depleting — but NASA is taking measures to squeeze as much life out of the aging probes as possible.

The Voyagers’ radioisotope power system loses around 4 watts each year, so to preserve power, NASA engineers have been shutting down some of the science instruments carried by each probe. Voyager 1’s cosmic ray subsystem experiment was turned off on February 25th. When the low-energy charged particle instrument aboard Voyager 2 is shut down on March 24th, both spacecraft will have three out of the ten identical science instruments they launched with remaining operational.

“Electrical power is running low,” said Voyager project manager, Suzanne Dodd. “If we don’t turn off an instrument on each Voyager now, they would probably have only a few more months of power before we would need to declare end of mission. The Voyagers have been deep space rock stars since launch, and we want to keep it that way as long as possible.”

Instruments aboard the probes have been turned off for this purpose before. The only equipment that remained powered after both spacecraft had completed their final flyby of the solar system’s gas giants was prioritized to collect data about the heliosphere and interstellar space. With the latest shutdowns, NASA says the Voyager probes should have enough power to keep operating for another year.

The Voyagers have greatly surpassed the lifespan expected from their two-planet exploration mission. Both were only built to last five years, but the scientific data they’ve collected since is unique, motivating NASA to extend their chances of survival. The agency managed to fix Voyager 1 when it stopped transmitting viable data in 2023, 15 billion miles away from Earth, bringing it back online again in June last year.

Future energy saving plans include turning off the low-energy charged particle instrument aboard Voyager 1 next year, and Voyager 2’s cosmic ray subsystem in 2026. With these efforts, NASA engineers believe the two probes could continue operating with at least one science instrument into the 2030s — providing unforeseen challenges don’t arise.

“Every minute of every day, the Voyagers explore a region where no spacecraft has gone before,” said Voyager project scientist Linda Spilker. “That also means every day could be our last. But that day could also bring another interstellar revelation. So, we’re pulling out all the stops, doing what we can to make sure Voyagers 1 and 2 continue their trailblazing for the maximum time possible.”

« Well, that was the silliest tea party I ever went to! I am never going back there again! » — Lewis Carroll

One more item unearthed while rummaging through my unsorted boxes: a couple of back issues of The Funny Times, one from 2010, the other 2013. The former held a fascinating exercice by Herblock prize winning cartoonist Ward Sutton, skewering and subverting the conservative ‘mindset’ from within. Not an easy trick to pull off convincingly, I would think; yet it’s one of Sutton’s specialties, having honed it to perfection — of a sort — as The Onion‘s longtime political cartoonist (since 2006), fictive curmudgeon “Stan Kelly”. Here’s a trove of Kelly pieces, which The New Yorker deemed “brilliantly terrible”.

Given the recent rash of controversies — in a long row of such skirmishes — regarding cartoonists’ freedom of expression, this piece sadly remains pertinent.

Incidentally, “Tea Party Comics”, commissioned by The Boston Globe, hardly passed unnoticed: it reaped a gold medal from the Society of Publication Designers.

The feature was accompanied by this deadpan caveat: « EDITOR’S NOTE: Ward Sutton, an elitist who lives in the elitist New York area, is a cartoonist, illustrator, animator and painter who has recently been lurking about the back of Tea Party gatherings, stuffing his pockets with American flag cookies, and brochures for camouflage underwear and mail-order ammo. Superpatriot and regular guy cartoonist Joe Smith disavows any knowledge of Mr. Sutton and his ilk. Need I say more? »

-RG

In Super Mario Bros. 3, the levels using a green hills tileset (e.g. World 1-2, seen in the footage) do not assign solid collision to the bottommost dark green layer of the ground.

Using a P-Wing power-up, it is thus possible to fly underneath nearly the entirety of these levels in the manner depicted.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source: AndrewG

Updated: Thu Feb 27, 2025

Bizarre unused large bird character, found in development files for Super Mario World. It appears to be carrying something that was likely meant to be a handle or grip attached to another object.

One of the unused objects in the finished game is a cage that Mario would be trapped in, meant to be carried by four small birds; it is possible that this bird was meant to be carrying the same cage before being replaced by smaller birds and finally removed completely.

Main Blog | Patreon | Twitter | Bluesky | Small Findings | Source

As businesses in Japan continue to stay they’re too short-staffed to meet market demands, immigration to Japan is accelerating. Helped by the weak yen, more foreigners are now working here than ever before.

NHK reports that Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) reports that the country passed 2.3 million foreign workers last year. That’s the 12th straight year in a row that immigration to Japan has set a new record. The numbers come via Hello Work, a program for monitoring worker safety that requires mandatory reporting from all businesses that hire immigrants.

The majority of workers come from Vietnam (577,080), with Vietnamese representing one in every four workers. In second and third place are China (408,805) and the Philippines (245,565).

Myanmar, which is beset by a long civil war, saw the largest percentage increase of immigrants at 61%. Immigration from Indonesia also rose by 37%.

Overstays have dropped

Many commenters on Yahoo! News JP – which tends to lean right on such issues – expressed concerns about the number of immigrants, particularly from the “threat” posed by overstays. However, recent statistics from the government show the number of overstays dropping. As of July 2024, 77,935 people are projected to be in Japan illegally – a drop of 1.5% since January 2024.

Additionally, the majority of overstays aren’t workers. 48,383 people are projected to have overstayed short-term visitor visas. (Even that number dropped by 1,458 in July.) Only around 19,000 are people previously here on a work visa.

One of the largest causes of workers abandoning their jobs in Japan has been the technical trainee program, under which workers traditionally have few rights. Japan recently revised the program to make it somewhat easier for employees to leave and escape abusive situations.

As we’ve previously written, there is no evidence that foreign residents commit crimes in far greater numbers than native-born citizens.

The labor shortage, driven by the country’s declining population and stagnant wages, is driving employers to look for creative ways to fill the gap. Many combinis, for example, are relying on part-time work from foreign students.