Mike Brown funnies

Still watching his Coursera. He's often funny.

Asteroids are the rubber duckies of the Solar System.

Many acronyms are "lame!" As a Caltech professor, I wonder what he thinks about SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship.)

He's shameless about "eight planets", and how Pluto is the second biggest Kuiper Belt object. (Would be third if Neptune hadn't captured Triton.)

Bunch more, but I have a poor memory for funny moments, my own or other people's.

some news and links

Macron's out of nowhere party seems set to win legislative landslide in France. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/06/11/macron_wins_landslide_in_french_legislative_elections_ends_french_party.html

Meanwhile, in US elections, hacking can't change votes (yet) but could screw with turnout: https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/6/6/15745888/russia-election-hacking-leak

Puerto Rico had another referendum, with a whopping 97% voting to become a US state -- but with 20-something% turnout.

Someone's roadd trip through Trump America https://qz.com/1000690/im-a-minority-my-son-is-disabled-its-an-unsettling-time-for-people-like-us-in-trump-country/

School buses 8x safer for kids than being driven by their parents. https://one.nhtsa.gov/Research/Crashworthiness/School-Bus-Crashworthiness-Research
This is roughly consistent with http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/risks_of_travel.htm but https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CE42rp_XIAAfhao.jpg has more extreme risk ratios. Both agree that motorcycling is deadly. But speaking for that: risk gaps: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/7/14/texting-in-your-risk-gap.html

"End traffic stops!" https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/7/24/the-routine-traffic-stop

Interactive vote simulation. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again: IRV sucks." http://ncase.me/ballot/ Cool fireflies simulation from the same source: http://ncase.me/fireflies/

UberPool kind of reinventing fixed route buses: http://humantransit.org/2017/05/the-receding-fantasy-of-affordable-urban-transit-to-your-door.html

Conservatives despise fact-checkers. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/06/09/study-conservatives-despise-the-fact-checking-industry/?utm_term=.ac97e946288b