Category: Science and Technology
Mini-Throughput: Rockets Rockets Everywhere
It’s been crazy week or two for space. But it was also a crazy week for rockets, with no less than three major launches in the span of a week.
Port Strikes and Tariff Wars
Even if the longshoremen get their wishes and freeze out automated systems in the short term, automation will be implemented eventually.
Throughput: Migrant Stats Edition
Unfortunately, it takes me a thousand words to explain a lie that can get hundreds of thousands of retweets before I’ve had breakfast.
Gormless in the Machine: On Running AI and Meat Avatars For Elective Office
“Meat avatars to the AI system” just doesn’t have the same je ne sais quoi as “Land of the free, and home of the brave,”
Throughput: MPox Redux Edition
So, are we about to go into COVID-style lockdowns? Is MPox going to be The Big One? Not necessarily.
Throughput: The Kids Are All Right but the Surgeon General Isn’t Edition
To the extent that social media is a problem, it is because they amplify efforts to instill young people with a constant sense of dread.
Throughput: Fireball Edition
Last week, a spectacular fireball lit up the skies over Europe. Behold a few videos:
Throughput: Superintendent Chalmers Edition
What happened with last week’s massive solar storm, why the Sun gets active, the danger such activity represents and whether or not Superintendent Chalmers minored in astronomy.
Apple Ad Misses the Mark
I mean … it’s just an ad. But it also represents how, under Tim Cook, Apple has really lost the narrative.
Thursday Thoughput: Fixing Spacecraft Edition
Fixing spacecraft is astonishing work: debugging a fifty-year-old computer at a distance of 15 billion miles.
Thursday Throughput: Collapsing Bridge Edition
[ThTh1] In 1993, Amtrack’s Sunrise Unlimited train derailed at the Big Bayou Canot Bridge, killing 47 people. Investigation showed that a heavy barge had turned up the wrong branch of the Mobile River and...
Music Monday: The Roland S-1 Tweak Synth
Yes, they were tacky. Yes, they attempted to grant unto the venerable keyboard the rock star charisma of the guitar. But hear me out…
Throughput: Excited Delirium Edition
There’s been a concerted effort to pressure medical examiners to diagnose excited delirium when the real cause of death was positional asphyxia.
A Few Thoughts on Gemini-gate
Gemini was ill-prepared for a second generation of internet trolls that have platforms on Fox News and the New York Post.
Throughput: Oydsseus Edition
I was six months old the last time an American spacecraft soft-landed on a moon. And I’m getting a routine colonoscopy next month.
Throughput: Zoozve Edition
Pseudo-moons, or more accurately quasi-satellites, are fascinating objects and we now suspect that basically every planet in the Solar System has them.
Thursday Throughput: Boeing Edition
Various grifters have rushed to blame this on “DEI” policies at Boeing. But the problems are more conventional: corporate greed, regulatory capture and a culture of cutting corners.
Mini-Throughput: The Moon Is Further Away This Week
If they keep going like this, I fear the Artemis program will be cancelled before anyone touches lunar soil
Thursday Throughput: Schooling Edition
A bevy of results have emerged that have shown, pretty conclusively, that the last few years saw the biggest drop in learning ever measured
