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20 Jun, 4 tweets, 1 min read
I just read about the Lunar Gateway project and... oh my God. They're going to build a pointless ISS Jr. in a hipster lunar orbit and make everyone stop there on the way to the Moon, for no reason. When did NASA become space Amtrak? Why do they love these shitty space stations?
Hopefully relations with China deteriorate to the point where we start firing big rockets at stuff to see who can get there first. The international cooperation model leads to these awful bureaucratic Habitrails that accomplish the unthinkable—making space flight boring.
Rule of thumb for space exploration—nothing worth doing ever had a Canadarm attached to it
What's racist is how they never talk about the Mexileg

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Pinboard Profile picture
21 Jun
I'm taking an entirely remote course this summer, so naturally they're requiring me to take an extensive online training about sexual health. I've been letting it autoplay in the background, but this caught my eye. The "and/or" here raises more questions than it answers. Image
There didn't use to be such a heavy focus on rimming or microaggressions before one could enroll in a correspondence course in linear algebra, but the internet is a great canvas for the Michelangelos of academic bureaucracy to paint on.
My first trigger warning in the wild! I wish I had been prepared for this. Image
Read 4 tweets
Pinboard Profile picture
21 Jun
The shutdown of Apple Daily in Hong Kong is a big deal. The paper has ample money, but the banks in this notionally independent and free financial hub are refusing to do business with them. This was one of the red lines that Beijing was supposed to be afraid to cross.
A second red line crossed recently is Internet censorship. Hong Kong police got an Israeli ISP to take down a pro-democracy site; when the ISP later restored the site, it was blocked in the territory.
The operating theory (or hope) in 2019 was that either of these actions would be intolerable to expats and endanger the territory's status as a financial capital. And China needs Hong Kong as a conduit for corrupt gains in the PRC to connect with the world financial system.
Read 10 tweets
Pinboard Profile picture
20 Jun
This piece by Dan Rather is a good example of the motivated reasoning that has poisoned the discussion over covid origins, and ironically a very unscientific approach. Whether science is under attack or not should have zero bearing on investigating how the pandemic started.
If the pandemic was iatrogenic, then Stewart is in fact completely correct that certain avenues of scientific research pose a major threat to humanity. And scientists are not neutral arbiters in that discussion, but have an enormous interest in the exculpatory answer being right.
The answer to the covid origins question will help us decide whether we should be building new coronavirus research labs or tearing them down. Whether this answer helps the opponents of science, or helps Trump, or upsets China, or destroys public confidence is irrelevant.
Read 9 tweets
Pinboard Profile picture
17 Jun
I know this is satire, but having a few years of farewell-themed Arctic cruises is a legit fantastic idea. (The Antarctic has a more complicated response to climate change and we can save it for later) theonion.com/norwegian-crui…
There's a messaging problem here too, in that having zillions of square miles of frozen wasteland become more hospitable to life is a little off-brand for climate change. We'll all miss the polar bear but Canadian surf resorts with 21 hours of summer daylight are pretty exciting
The Debbie Downer approach to global warming is fatiguing and we deserve to enjoy some of the silver linings. People spent centuries searching for the Northwest Passage until we just finally created one. Cool!
Read 9 tweets
Pinboard Profile picture
17 Jun
Can't recommend this post highly enough for fans of cryptoabsurdity. Smart contracts locking out $232M because of a missing character, "stablecoins" that are neither, someone meekly asking on Reddit whether 30,000% annualized returns are sustainable. irony-97882.medium.com/the-melting-of…
My favorite is this screenshot of an exchange saying you can't get your money back, but it's cool because it's not a hack and they're going to write a "post-morterm". Someone would go to jail for every sentence of this post in the real economy, but crypto is the future.
The humor problem with the cryptocurrency world is the same one we had with Trump. There is no room for parody or caricature. If you can find a premise so stupid it doesn't exist yet (a tall order!) it will only get co-opted by memelord fans of the original, a la Dogecoin
Read 6 tweets
Pinboard Profile picture
16 Jun
This is a good review of the iMac that catches the fact that Apple's design isn't elegant at all once you add all the necessary dongles. Apple now is like the Sony Vaio used to be in the 2000's—gorgeous until you plug in all the stuff it needs to work washingtonpost.com/technology/202…
Every computer in Apple's current lineup would be massively improved by two USB-A ports, replaceable memory, and an SD card reader.
The designers at Apple should be forced to work on desks three inches deep and subsist on a diet of angel hair pasta until they get over the pointless fixation on thinness over functionality.
Read 6 tweets

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