POD: 13 February 1493 the Niña and Pinta are smashed upon the rocks of the Azores by the roughest storm of their journey back to Europe... (1)
Like in OTL, the 39 survivors of the Columbus voyage at the colony of La Navidad eventually begin fighting amongst themselves and destroyed their own settlement. 28 survivors remained and became quasi-prisoners of the Cacique of Marién. (2)
The arms and artillery seized by the Cacique of Marién, along with the skills of their captured Europeans, to say nothing of their stock of the horses, pigs, chickens, goats, and cows, would change the world. (3)
Over the next 5 years, Marién would conquer the neighboring caciques of Jaragua, Maguana, Magua, and eventually Higuey, uniting OTL Hispanola under a single Taino dominion, the first Empire of Haiti. (4)
Haiti would experience a population boom and spread out to its neighboring islands using at first the same hollowed canoes they had used for centuries, and later their own breed of double hulled sailing canoe. (5)
In 1521, Ferdinand Magellan leads the second attempt to reach the East Indies, and like in OTL. For much of the 16th century, he is reported as the first European to reach the New World and maps depict a single continent in the southern hemisphere across the Atlantic. (6)
1540: Coronado confirms the existence of OTL North America. He is the first European to map the extent of the Haitian Empire, which now rules most of OTL Mexico and Central America, and has colonies in Florida as well. (7)
1542: Juan Cabrillo attempts to set up a mission in Haitian territory and is gunned down by imperial troops.
1564: Huguenot settlers are captured by Taino colonists during an attempt to settle Florida. (8)
1579: Sir Francis Drake establishes the New Albion colony roughly in OTL Philadelphia, just north of the Haitian frontier. Unlike the Spanish or Portuguese, Drake's colony does not make moves against the Haitians and merely trades with them. (9)
1585: The Mississippi War breaks out between the Haitian Empire and the Choctaw nation. The two states had co-existed and traded for years, facing only minor naval skirmishes. But now the Choctaw seek to drive the Taino out of the Mississippi river. (10)
1591: Haiti sacks Bulbancha (OTL New Orleans) and claims the Mississippi for themselves.
Over the coming decades and centuries, Haiti would explore and conquer all of the Great Plains. (11)
By the 19th century, the Taino ruled Haitian Empire controls the entire Caribbean north of the Guiana Highlands and the Northern Andes, and all of North America east of the Rockies and the east coast up to the Potomac river. (12)
The Empire is a constitutional monarchy of sorts, and shares a typically cordial-occasionally contentious relationship with the United States of Virginia (the descendent of Drake's New Albion colony). (13)
On the West Coast, the Portuguese speaking United States of Magellia rules almost everything west of the Rockies and has had a far more violent history with Haiti. (14)
Despite occasional border skirmishes, the Haitian Empire enjoys the world's largest economy and a military unrivalled by any European power. (15)
Skipping over the problematic historiography, I think Friedman is making a mistake a lot of people are making right now: he's assuming the collapse/crisis is immanent.
I think we have another 5 years and we're barely at the beginning of how bad things can get. (1/)
Simply put, most of us alive today were born in the Long Peace, and Americans in particular have a bad habit of failing to appreciate just how bad things can get. We are at most in the middle of a new Sectional Crisis. (2/)
Oversimplifying, the Sectional Crisis (1848-1861) was a period or American history following the end of the Mexican American war, and really the end of the Missouri Compromise with the Compromise of 1850. (3/)
1: Some industry buddies and I have been taking another crack at the Drake equation based on recent discoveries in astronomy and came away with an eerie conclusion:
There was less than a 50% chance for Earth to have developed an industrial civilization at this point (1) #space
2: For the unfamiliar, here's Carl Sagan running the Drake Equation in 1977.
3: Since Frank Drake came up with this thought experiment in 1961 we've learned quite a bit about the development of sentient life on our own planet, and more about exoplanets than can be summarized in a tweet.
Pitch: Bobby has been living in New York working on his standup routine and writing for SNL. He's coming home because he's got a Netflix special coming out. The series is very much an indictment of small town America, and Texas in particular.
In May of 1992, after a decade of spite-fueled lobbying, the final state to ratify the Congressional Apportionment Amendment... and all hell breaks loose.
Like in OTL, many Congressmen are livid that a new amendment has been imposed upon them, and try to block certification. (2)
On May 18, 1992, the Archivist of the United States, Don W. Wilson, certifies that the amendment's ratification had been completed, despite more legitimate calls that the wording of the amendment is unworkable. (3)
The National Ignition Facility uses Inertial Confinement to achieve nuclear fusion. What that means is that you shoot a 192 laser beams (2.1 megajoules combined) at a thimble full of Hydrogen-3 (Tritium) and Hydrogen-2 (Deuterium.) (1)
...In a fraction of a second these gasses become almost 100x denser than lead which initiates fusion, essentially creating an artificial star.
This test, lasted 3.14 femto-seconds. Or 3.14 quadrillionths of a second. In that time it produced 2.5 megajoules of energy. (2)
Now, there are some challenges that still need to be overcome. Firstly, the NIF isn't a powerplant, there's no way for them to actually harness the energy of a fusion reaction. That's partly why the reaction was so brief, the heat had nowhere to go. (3)
Since Artemis I has splashed down, I figured I'd give a no BS assessment from am aerospace industry insider (me) on what comes next for Cislunar exploration.
Either late this year or early next year, Astrobotic will attempt a landing on the moon under a NASA contract... (1)
A second landing was planned to deliver NASA's VIPER rover to the Lunar South Pole in November next year, but that mission required the XL-1 lander built by Masten, who went bankrupt this year. Even if Masten's assets are acquired, a completed XL-1 is unlikely in 2023. (2)
2023 will also not see the DearMoon mission fly. I really don't know anyone who takes that mid-2023 launch date seriously. Odds are Starship will complete an uncrewed orbital test flight sometime next year, but we're 2 years away from putting test pilots on board. (3)