I agree with almost all of this. But the dirty little secret of NASA projects is that they are all privatized, and have been ever since its predecessor organization NACA was founded. The US senate keeps an iron grip on NASA’s pursestrings. The reason for “space is expensive” is because the US senate writes literal laws requiring NASA to pay through the nose to defence contractors like Boeing (Delta rocket series, SLS rocket prime contractor, Space Shuttle prime contractor after buying Rockwell, Starliner crew vehicle), Lockheed-Martin (Orion crew vehicle, Atlas rocket series, SLS rocket subcontractor), Northrop Grumman (Space Shuttle boosters and SLS boosters), McDonnell Aircraft (Mercury and Gemini crew vehicles), North American Aviation (Apollo crew vehicle, company later sold to Rockwell, Rockwell later sold to Boeing), etc etc etc. Even most of their space probes are contracted out, often to Northrop Grumman, L3Harris, Ball Aerospace, etc.

NASA does not, and never has, built production rockets. Every single rocket ever put on a launch pad with a NASA logo has been by a private company - on the orders of the US senate, who make sure there’s fat profit margins for their defence contractor friends. Even their experimental vehicles like the X-series are almost always built by private companies and not by their own engineering teams. This actually goes back to WW2 when the US Army was capturing unflown V2 rockets. The US Army contracted with Chrysler (yes, the car company) to do the engineering analysis on them.

It pains me greatly to say, but SpaceX and other so-called “new space” companies are actually saving NASA quite a bit of money because they operate on fixed-price contracts, and not the “cost-plus” contracts legislated by the US senate for the benefit of the MIC. I made some posts awhile back on the details of NASA’s legislated subservience to the US defence industry..

Who pressed the “Yes, Minister” button on the simulation?

We’re living in Simcity, and some bored kid keeps pressing the Godzilla button.

It’s somehow strangely comforting that Washington establishment insiders are losing their minds in confusion and disbelief just as much as we are.

The only silver lining to this mess is that none of the government officials of the Palestinian-sympathetic countries involved are going to be under any illusions about the true intentions of Trump&co.

I would love to post it and scream into the internet abyss

There’s a longstanding tradition on this site to have a new “general megathread” every few days which is basically all about screaming into the void. Sometimes crying into the void, cheering into the void, laughing into the void too. The current one is here. If you scroll through it you can get a good feel for the types of comments people make. It’s probably the best way to get up to speed on the site’s culture. If you don’t see the general megathread on your front page, you can click “Local” in the “Subscribed / Local / All” boxes at the top of the home page and see it show up in the post list.

There’s also a news megathread roughly weekly, intended for more serious discussions of current events. The current one is here. It’s another good place to get used to the site culture.

One thing I love about this site is the incredible range of personal experiences and niche knowledge of the users. It’s definitely not a monoculture. I think that’s a sign of a healthy userbase.

I could offer some advice about FDM printers, the kind that use rolls of plastic filament. They don’t have the fume issues that resin printers do. I can’t help on the resin ones as I’ve never used one. I’ve heard that resin is better for small figures. Most of what I print are larger pieces for robotics projects, I’ve never really needed the fine detail that resin printers can provide.

I will say that regardless of type of printer, you want it on as stable a base as possible. A super-sturdy table with an entry-level printer is going to give you better and faster and more consistent results than an expensive printer on a wobbly table, because you won’t need to slow down the print not to wobble everything like crazy. This is more of a concern with FDM than resin, but it’s a good idea even for resin from what I’ve heard. I do a lot of FDM 3D printing in a fairly small apartment. I’m using a couple of older entry-level Creality printers (Ender 3 V2 and Ender-3 V3 SE) on a small ikea kitchen table with an all-metal frame and legs and it works great. I think I have the older version of this table but mine has square legs instead of round ones. But you get the idea.

If you do go with an FDM printer, don’t even bother with whatever slicing software is provided by the manufacturer. Just use Cura if your hypothetical FDM printer is supported (which it probably is). It’s open source, cross platform, has a great interface, and runs fast even on very limited hardware. I regularly use it on an older laptop with just 8GB RAM and an integrated intel GPU and it still works amazingly fast for preparing print files.

Another good idea for FDM printers is to use magnetic baseplates. My V3 came with that setup, but the V2 came with a glass plate that’s far more annoying to maintain and clean and use. I got one of these kits to retrofit the V2 and life has been a lot easier since then.

If you do get an FDM setup, please feel free to message me, I’d be happy to help!

The stock market is on fire.

That sounds like a good idea.

I’ve heard that the USSR (and subsequent Russia) approach to warplane design is not to mass-produce until they rigorously test for, and eliminate, design flaws from a very limited production run of prototypes. Would you say this is accurate or have I been misinformed?

For me it was hockey. I tried it one year in elementary school, and couldn’t figure out any of the things my teammates were doing, like crossovers and lifting the puck. I didn’t go back for a second year.

But I believe that hockey is a dying sport. Equipment and ice time fees at arenas are way too expensive for working families. And climate change no longer allows for outdoor rinks where kids can learn basic skills for free. There’s a good reason that basketball and soccer are picking up massively in popularity in Canada, they’re both sports that kids can play casually almost year-round with minimal and relatively cheap equipment.

Oh my god. My Wii will be old enough to vote in a few months. I got it a month or so after its release date.

I should set it up again and play some Metroid Prime Trilogy. The backported motion-control gun aiming makes the first two games a joy to play.

Well we do of course. We have to meet the right-wing halfway. To do otherwise would be uncivil.

Mexico? Not mentioned, because then they’d have to point out that incumbent parties that have actually done something to help people out of poverty tend to win reelection.

They’d also have to admit that latino men apparently have no problem with voting for a woman as head of state. She just needs to not run on a platform of fucking over the working class.

Well I can think of another soldier that made a positive contribution to this world. For example:

In the case of Julius Streicher, reporter Howard K. Smith wrote that the initial drop was not fatal, and that “witnesses could hear him groaning”, upon which “Woods came down from the platform and disappeared behind the black curtain that concealed the dying man. Abruptly the groans ceased and the rope stopped moving. Smith and the other witnesses were convinced that Woods had grabbed Streicher and pulled down hard, strangling him.”

That sounds like a proposal that we can reach across the aisle to accomplish!

Maybe it’s time for a centrist approach, neither left nor right, something we can all do to appeal to the moderates and bring them into our big tent party.

Maybe we ought to bring in some outside consultants to advise on how to go forward. I hear McKinsey is known for their consulting expertise.

Politico: “Donald Trump Jr. taunts Zelenskyy about ‘losing your allowance’”.

Of course the really insane thing about Deus Ex is that the most unrealistic thing about it is the idea that Americans would become terrorists to get access to a pandemic vaccine.

Bread with visible mold, a week before the best-before date.