Stormy (Space) Weather

 "It is what it is" has become our mantra when traveling on vacation. No matter how much planning we do regarding modes of transportation or reservations for dinner or tickets to events, we can only do so much. After that, fate will do with us what it will. And in the interest of trying to enjoy the experience, we try not to get too caught up when things don't go as planned. 

That meant that on our most recent trip to Andalusia we rolled with a closed restaurant where we had a confirmed reservation, as well as a cancelled train we had to reschedule, both with a minimum of fuss. Admittedly we (and read that as "me") are not always so sanguine. When both foot entrances we tried to the Alhambra palace in Granada were closed due to high winds, and we had to summon an Uber and race to another lest we lose our tour slot procured 3 months in advance, I stood on the sidewalk howling at the universe. It was not pretty.

Nowhere is this mantra more appropriate than with the weather. For most of us, we plan vacation or holiday trips fairly far in advance, As such we have only a general sense of what the weather might be when we finally arrive: it's summer or winter, the rainy season or dry. But regardless of what the historical record might be, the story might be totally different when we finally step off the plane. In southern Spain at this time of year it was supposed to be mid 50's and 60's with a little rain mixed in. It was our misfortune for it be a bit colder and wetter, so much so that the locals were as surprised as us. Thankfully we were prepared, with rain jackets, umbrellas and waterproof shoes. The result is that we didn't need to change any of our plans in a major way, other than to sit out a short cloudburst with an extra glass of wine. It is what it is. 

Turns out, however, there was another storm happening we didn't even know about. The weather we're all familiar with is of the terrestrial variety, i.e. the stuff happening on the surface of this is planet. It seems that there was another whole system scrolling far above our heads, which was in some respects more potentially disruptive than the rain we tried to dodge. According to a post by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, on January 18 an X1.9-class solar flare erupted, sending a burst of X-rays toward Earth, which was followed by an S4 Severe Solar Radiation Storm, the most intense radiation storm since 2003. The result was that just as we got on the plane to head to Seville a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field much faster than expected, traveling at roughly 1,700 km/s. This triggered a G4 Severe Geomagnetic Storm.  Talk about a headwind.

While that didn't soak our shoes or turn our umbrellas inside or out, it might have had other effects that we didn't even realize. These include rerouting flights to avoid high radiation levels for travelers, and satellite noise creating mapping and GPS disruptions. We landed in Seville on time, so have to assume that the airline was able to compensate for it. Indeed, in a similar storm back in November there was a blackout for about an hour on certain radio frequencies, and the Starlink system suffered increased losses as the orbits decayed on some satellites causing them to burn up in the atmosphere. So I guess arriving on time and in the right place was not a given.

All this heavenly activity is on the downside of the so called "Solar Maximum."  This 11-year cycle of solar activity peaked in mid-2025. However, scientists say that the two to three years following the maximum are often when the most complex and damaging solar storms occur, as the Sun's magnetic field is currently in the messy process of settling down.

As our world is ever more dependent on electronics, the internet and connectivity, it would seem that going forward we should all take this cycle into account in the same way we check whether we need to take an umbrella. The years 2029-2032 look to be quiet years, while the next peak is projected to be around 2035. So get your heavy ChatGPT usage in now while it's calm, and aim to curl up inside with a good book next decade. The analog kind.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford hates to let rain slow him down. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

Win, Win, Win

If you're a sports fan you're in heaven these weeks. We've just wrapped up the Australian Open in tennis and the Super Bowl in American football. Depending on when you read this maybe you're settling in for the NBA All Star Game in basketball, not to mention the mother lode of winter sports that is the Winter Olympics. If you want to root for a team or individual to win a crown by hitting, hooping, running or sliding, you're in luck.

While there is certainly crossover if you watch more than one event, you're hardly alone: we're talking a huge amount of eyeballs. The Olympics alone garners some 2 billion viewers globally, with the Australian Open close behind. While the Super Bowl dominates in the US, its global reach is a good bit smaller though still sizable. And were it in any other playing field the NBA's 5 million viewers would be significant, though it's tiny in this context. Still, add them all up, and across the globe we're talking a rough total of 4.1 billion people cheering someone or something on.

That doesn't mean that all the other championships in other contests are standing on the sidelines. It's just there are only so many minutes of airtime and column inches in the sports report or section. And so you have to dig a little deeper to find out the exploits of England's Judd Trump (snooker) or the Dragons of Wales (rugby) or Philippines OG's (esports) as they compete with the best in the world for their respective cups.

Let's start on the other side of the globe at the Badminton Asia Team Championships. This is not your backyard version of the sport, with pros routinely smashing the shuttlecock (you called it a birdie as a kid) at speeds over 200 miles per hour; the record is 351 mph. In the finals last weekend Japan won their first men's title stunning last year's winner China, while the South Korea women shutout their Chinese counterparts by three to zip.

Meanwhile, the ICC men's T20 Cricket World Cup is in it's first week, with matches being hosted by India and Sri Lanka. Twenty teams are playing a total of 55 matches, including Italy making its tournament debut. All eyes are on Group A, the so called "Group of Death" featuring heavyweights India and Pakistan alongside the Netherlands, USA, and Namibia. India enters as the #1 ranked team, having won 33 of their last 41 T20 matches, and features Abhishek Sharma as the tournament's top-ranked batter, with a 2025 season average of 42.95 and a strike rate near 200. (My good friend Nana, a cricket fanatic, may be one of the few reading this who understands just how good that really is.)

And in Paris they are heading into the finals this weekend for the Rainbow Six Siege World Championship. RSS is one of the games in the world of esports, this one developed by Ubisoft. A tactical first-person shooter game, it's described as different from "run-and-gun" games like Call of Duty, being much more of a "chess match with guns." In these 5 vs. 5 matches one team defends an objective (like a bomb or a hostage) inside a building, and the other team tries to infiltrate and neutralize them. Top contenders include the FaZe Clan team which is based in Brazil. They are looking to repeat as winners and take home the $1 million prize. 

To be sure congratulations are due to Carlos Alcaraz, the Seattle Seahawks and Swiss skier Franjo von Allmen for taking the first gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina. But let's not forget to offer kudos to Switzerland's Lisa Bauman for capturing the cup in Châtel, France at the UCI Snow Bike World Championships. Bauman beat out France's Vicky Clavel in the Women's Elite Super G, a sort of downhill ski race on a bike, with a time of 1:58.270. And while the aforementioned Judd Trump got snookered this time by getting knocked out in the first round, Zhao Xintong of China triumphed over his countryman Zhang Anda by 10 to 6 at the 2026 World Grand Prix of snooker in Hong Kong. As for the T20, Nana, just keep cheering that Team Blue will be in the finals come March 8: "Jeetega Bhai Jeetega, India Jeetega!" 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford doesn't' follow any particular sport. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

Know Me? Know You!

Not a day goes by that I don't have a suspect phishing email in my inbox. While most get snagged by the built in filters and wind up in the Junk folder, invariably one or two make their way through. Usually it's because sometime in the past I had interaction with a site or service, but gave up on them long ago. Subsequently they were hacked, their client info hit the dark web, and my identity fell into the hands of a scam center in Cambodia.

The approach from them is usually in the form of a ham-handed strong arm. It might threaten to delete all my photos if I don't contact them to update my account. Or freeze my credit card if I don't confirm my phone number. Maybe cancel my auto insurance if I won't verify my bank information. The tells that these are bogus are numerous: weird fonts, misspellings and old email addresses are the most obvious. That, plus the fact that the return email from PicturePerfect.com is bradxx720467@rus.ex Not suspicious at all. They all get deleted without a second thought.

Experts tell us that that level of suspicion and caution is good, the correct way to view any email that we have concerns about. But it raises the question: if we view everything as a potential fake, how do we know if it's real? That was the issue I encountered when I got an email from my bank.

Or was it? It had a real-looking header and logo, along with a reference to the last four digits of one account. It said that they needed to talk with me to clear up some information, and provided a long reference code that started with "KYC, " as well as a phone number. I had two weeks to call, or else they'd have to restrict my account. Couldn't sound more scammy if it tried, so I deleted it without a second thought.

A week later a strange number popped up on my phone and I let it go to voicemail. The message in a foreign sounding voice reiterated the same request and provided the same information. Hmmmmm. A single scammer by email or phone is hardly unusual, but twice with the same info? Might it be real? Some online research was hardly conclusive, with half the people saying it was a scam, half saying it was legit. Even our vaunted AI helpers said the same: "It is highly recommended that you treat this as a potential phishing attempt, even if the number appears to be from your bank. Scammers can make their caller ID show any number, including official bank lines, and a 'KYC update' is a common pretext for scammers to ask for sensitive data."

Still. I decided to check by calling not the number provided, but the one on the back of my ATM card. The person on the other end asked how he could help. I told him I had no idea, they had reached out to me. He said he would check, but needed to verify my info. But now we had a sort of "Mexican standoff." Even though I was the one who had called, I was leery of giving him anything, and he couldn't help me until I did. I told him that they had my email, my phone and the last four digits of the account in question, so work with that. He suggested he text me a code, and if I read that back he could verify me. That worked, and so we were "in."

There was nothing flagged on my account, and so he transferred me to another department for more help. That associate also saw nothing. But when I read out the reference code, she jumped in: "You said KYC, correct?" Turns out that means "Know Your Customer," a regulatory framework whereby financial institutions need to verify account info to guard against money laundering and the like. Eventually I got to those folks, who reviewed my info, found no major issues, and bid me good day.

It all begs the question: how do we know anybody? What proof is there that we are we, and they are them? In 1993 The New Yorker published Peter Steiner's famous cartoon with the caption "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." Turns out that these days it's not so easy to know if you're a bank either.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to keep his info safe. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.