1000% agree. I don't know if you expected I'd disagree, but absolutely: the idea of a $100 million plane (and what they don't tell you is that the quote to allies is +$400 million in life costs for the plane's operational span - this is a $half BILLION plane).

You could FILL THE SKY with crazy awesome drones and deploy a "can't miss" directed-energy weapon AA defense system for the cost of 1 stupid F35.

DoD exactly like NASA: the government needs to aggressively prune these programs.
We are $37 BILLION in debt.

Is that with all this solar, wind, etc.... China *still* must build more coal plants even tho we are finding out their population is smaller than we thought.

In time, it will destroy demand for coal but for now, the projections are still for more coal plant by 2045.

I'm hoping they are wrong and solar/wind comes online faster. It's cheaper than coal but they simply can't produce and build it out fast enough globally.

And it's not just kids (won't someone think of the children)...

In Texas, we can get a half dozen "watch" alerts a day when storm systems are moving through.

That's *POINTLESS*. If your alert system is sending more than one message a day, you probably didn't set it up well.

And worse, the watches usually mean "stay at home, avoid getting caught in deep flood waters" and not "leave your home because floodwaters over your roof will be there in under 90 minutes."

And it's not even just amber alerts. You can get a half dozen "watch" alerts from a fast moving system *per day*.

At that level, "watch" alerts are useless. Especially since in most of texas they mean, "don't leave home or your car may be flooded out" and not "leave home- your home will be flooded out".

And the short staffing of the service in the U.S. due to Ham-handed layoffs this year did not help.

There will be a wave of posts about how these Brave Senators are fighting the Nasty Orange Fascist Tyrant and his anti-Science agenda(tm).

When in fact, let's be clear:
- SLS is an hilariously borderline disaster. Behind by years, $billions beyond budget, tests constantly fail. And it basically doesn't work.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcaseyhandmer.wordpress...
- Should we talk about how their original mandate was more or less just to REbuild the Saturn V/Apollo a little bigger with modern materials? You know, that system that had 17 launches with only one launch system (sort of) failure (Apollo 13) MORE THAN 50 years ago? The system that was largely designed by engineers, whose "computers" were 6-7 orders of magnitude less capable than the smartphone in your pocket? Does it help the argument to point out that NASA is basically trying to rebuild something their fathers built, this time with astonishing developments in CAD/CAM, design, and almost-magical accomplishments in material science...and we still haven't even gotten a working fucking SPACESUIT yet?
- Destin @ SmarterEveryDay is about as proNASA as they can be, it's in his blood, and he *tried* in the most polite way possible to tell them "look, we all know this is a mess, nobody's even done the basic math on some CRITICAL program items for Artemis and...nobody's talking about it" It's a good video, and a good talk from someone who is genuinely sympathetic to the engineers in that room.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3F... ...(crickets)
- Yes, some of these senators (mostly the Democrats, but there are neverTrumper GOPs that will pretend righteousness) will themselves claim this as a Pro Science Crusade. Maybe it is, sure, whatever. But what these senators are MOSTLY fighting for is their piece of the $50 BILLION spent in their states that's been spent so far with no real sign of completion. That's serious gravy-train money even in Senatorial scales.

NASA (& JPL) is an amazing organization. It really IS rocket science. They have made some astonishing accomplishments, even in recent years, such as JWST and Martian probes that run nearly forever. They are, bar none, the pre-eminent space exploration organization on earth.
To be clear, I'm not peddling an alternative - there is no easy answer now.
I'm fine with Musk constantly blowing up spaceships, it's his $, but NASA is supposed to be good at this. Frankly, I'd rather we have a government space program *AND* private-industry space programs, both!

Nevertheless, at some point *someone* in charge has to have the nuts to confront NASA when a program is a mess and DEMAND they either fix it or kill it. It can't just go on hemorrhaging money for nothing in return.

This is statism, writ large.

You get paid for work you PERFORM, but not work you RECORD. Copyright is anti-individual rights and liberties.

I'll be glad when Ai truly replaces all of these artists.

Yes, if you'd been following along I was identifying a SPECIFIC PERSON'S hypocrisy.
If I'm calling out one person as a tendentious hypocrite, what relevance would be articles by some Washington weekly, Vox*, or the "Bipartisan policy center"**?

*oops:
"Initially effective at increasing deportations, the Secure Communities program was short-lived. It faced blowback from primarily liberal jurisdictions, driving a revival of the movement to offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants in the 2010s.
The concern among progressives was that it would reduce trust in law enforcement among immigrant communities and make everyone less safe because fewer people would report crimes. It also led to the deportation of people who had only committed minor offenses or had no criminal convictions.
In 2014, Obama rescinded the program in response."

** to their main question: why isn't Trump prioritizing the worst criminals? Well....they don't appear to really know, "it appears" "it seems" - when a quick perusal of the WH's own official statement repeatedly mentions prioritizing public safety. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.whitehouse.gov%2Fpre...
FWIW, honestly, I don't care how they prioritize them. If they're caught, send them home, full stop. Bird in the hand is one that doesn't get to fly to some shitty "sanctuary city" and rob/rape/kill some innocent person there.

Is "inability to act like a functioning adult" really an excuse, though?

Yes, because certainly nobody did science (tm) before governments drove it?

Maybe we could check in with Mr Eisenhower, from his famous "beware the military-industrial complex" speech:
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.archives.gov%2Fmiles...

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

...it's funny nobody remembers this bit, ain't it?

... But it seems to me that being able to deploy a "fueling" station that requires no grid connection, not that much space (and what you're using for the panels is still technically available ground, if shaded) is a rather good thing.

I mean... If you're doing a video call and someone undresses (and you didn't want them to), are you unable to simply hang up?

Of course, I've never in 57 years had someone undress in a phone call, so what do I know?

rat and roach, I see. what are the others?

yeah, don't do that.

I find most food too disgusting eat even a second time, let alone every day. At best, it would be wilted. Probably at least soggy, and, well . . .

cats & dogs have a different notion of how many times to eat the same food, though.

That's bold, considering the last flu vaccine round had a NEGATIVE 26.9% efficacy.
#followthescience

Yes, you read it right, if you were vaccinated you had a 27% HIGHER chance of getting the flu.
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.medrxiv.org%2Fconten...

Now, a host of slashdot leftists are ALREADY TYPING THEIR RAGE_REPLY because I must be an antivaxxer.

Actually, I'm not. I just don't participate in the "with us or against us" bullshit binary that's accreted around the COVID vaccines. (So that probably does make me an "enemy" in their book.)

I consider vaccines to be one of the greatest achievements of modern technology. I'm vaccinated. All our kids are vaccinated, and I haven't a single qualm about recommending MMR and the slate of childhood vaccines for every little kid.

THAT SAID, I also think that
- COVID panic was largely bullshit. It was a highly communicable but otherwise not-very-virulent corona virus strain that mainly affected older and vulnerable people. Thus the term..."vulnerable". At the end, the IFR for COVID19 was basically a bad flu*. Cry all you want, argue the actual data.
- the COVID vaccines were rushed, not nearly tested enough, and have resulted in some very questionable ongoing heart and other issues in younger people that had NOTHING to fear from COVID. Given the high effort in deliberately confounding the outcomes during the Biden administration, it's unlikely we'll ever know the truth.
- I'd have had much more confidence in the entire COVID event had one side not made all the decisions for everyone and insisted no debate was allowed. OPENLY discussing the causes, the treatments, and what we did/didn't know would have been preferable to the "STFU we know what's good for you" nearly-totalitarian approach. Hell, here in MN there was an almost-palpable disappointment we didn't get to use the corpse-storage-buildings the state rushed to rent.

Do you take issue with my tone? Tough shit. Anyone daring to question the Holy COVID doctrine was aggressively silenced for YEARS while the mandarins in charge RUINED lives flexing their emergency doctrines and now will evade any consequence for their awful decision making. Yeah, that bothers me.

* https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fa...
The median IFR (COVID19)was
0.0003% at 0-19 years
0.002% at 20-29 years
0.011% at 30-39 years
0.035% at 40-49 years
0.123% at 50-59 years
0.506% at 60-69 years
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.medrxiv.org%2Fconten... median IFR for flu you'll have to look as the graph isn't postable in (the ancient shit-code of) /. comments but sits at about 125/100k or 0.125%
Yes, lots more people got COVID. It was highly communicable. But nobody under 30 should have been even faintly discomfited, even people under 50 really shouldn't have given much of a shit.
Quarantining sick people in elderly homes was a catastrophically stupid idea and we knew it by March/April 2020.