Scott Maxwell

"Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?" -- from Huckleberry Finn

Europe’s venerable Ariane 5 rocket faces a bittersweet ending on Tuesday After nearly three decades, the Ariane 5 rocket reaches the end of the line.

Tomorrow is the final launch of the Ariane 5 rocket. It's a bittersweet moment for the European space industry.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/07/europes-venerable-ariane-5-rocket-faces-a-bittersweet-ending-on-tuesday/

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read." James Baldwin

We might have accidentally killed the only life we ever found on Mars nearly 50 years ago In one experiment, the Viking landers added water to Martian soil samples. That might have been a very bad idea.

I hope not! Because that would suck. :-( https://bigthink.com/hard-science/accidentally-killed-life-mars/

I'm sorry, but you all have to quit now: this is the greatest skeet of all time.

This is about as close to speaking ill of the dead as I would be comfortable getting, but yes, this.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg agree to hold cage fight Earlier this month, Meta showed staff plans for a text-based social network designed to compete with Twitter.

If Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg fight, who wins? We all do. We all do.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65981876

"I do desire we may be better strangers." -- As You Like It, III.2.

When he was a WHAT

captain ahab: *typing* I hope this email finds ye, whale

Watch people in the 1980s resisting laws against drinking and driving: "Pretty soon, it's gonna be a... In this local news segment from the 1980s, citizens voice their dissatisfaction with new laws restricting their freedom to drink alcohol while driving. One gentleman in a blue gimme cap, weary afte…

The same voices, in every age, complain about any change no matter how sensible. It was right to ignore them then & it's right to ignore them now.
https://boingboing.net/2023/06/14/watch-people-in-the-1980s-resisting-laws-against-drinking-and-driving-pretty-soon-its-gonna-be-a-communist-country.html

Megaplume of water vapor erupting on Enceladus caught by Webb Telescope Enceladus' rapid orbit and large geysers spread water widely near Saturn.

It's been fascinating to see, the last few decades of space exploration, how much water's been found in the seemingly unlikeliest places. Mars, the moon, asteroids -- and now, Enceladus.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/06/megaplume-of-water-vapor-erupting-on-enceladus-caught-by-webb-telescope/

Nobody: ...

Nobody: ...

Me: I would say that English badly needs a distinct second-person pronoun, except that it *has* one -- namely, "you," which was the plural/formal variant of the singular/informal "thou," which was a very useful distinction and now we've lost opportunities for subtle insults

"Y'all" is singular and "all y'all" is plural, except that "y'all" is also plural.

Rover's Tango Delta Nominal.

Holy shit, that is not possible.

SLS Could Launch a Sample Return Mission to Phobos and Deimos NASA’s next colossal rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS), recently had its first successful flight back in November after years of development. Much of that development was done by aerospace contr...

I want to put *humans* on Mars's moons. But if we can't do that, a sample return mission is the next best thing.
https://www.universetoday.com/161829/sls-could-launch-a-sample-return-mission-to-phobos-and-deimos/

"Tank Man" stares down a line of Chinese tanks and, at least for the moment, wins.

The Chinese Communist Party gets very upset if you share this picture of a spectacularly brave man from 35 years ago today. So definitely do not do that.

Fairytales have always reflected the morals of the age. It’s not a sin to rewrite them | Martha Gi... Nothing is being destroyed in adding diversity and sexual equality to old stories

Rewriting fairy tales to suit changing notions of morality isn't new; we've been doing it at least since the stories were first written down, centuries ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/04/contemporary-values-no-place-in-fairytales-you-must-be-living-in-a-fantasy-world

Just what I needed today since Jack Dorsey just backed whack job RFK Jr for President. I have up close and personal experience with RFK Jr having served on a Board with him. He’s a narcissist, seriously wrong about almost everything AND he doesn’t believe any rules apply to him. Sound familiar?

Well, so fuck this @jack guy, too, I guess.

Another childhood star lost to drugs...

Nice! Keep it up! :-)

The correct plural is "regexen." :-P

Let me see if I can sell you on C for temperatures. Consider this: 10C is cold, 20C is pleasant, 30C is hot. (You might want to move those reference points up or down 5C or so to taste.) Simple!

Full disclosure: I am pro-metric to the point that my custom license plate is a metric system joke. :-)

If you want your name to go as far as it might ever go, perhaps to be recovered and read someday by explorers whose grandparents are not yet born -- then you could do worse than to send it to Europa. Which you can do here: https://europa.nasa.gov/message-in-a-bottle/sign-on/

This handsome guy has been with us a year today. Thanks for making our house a home in the way only a good cat can, MewMew. <3

Among the advantages of such a mission: the moons have lower gravity, so it's easier to *return* the humans to Earth, but you can still control the robots almost interactively because you're so close.