FAUCI MADE FAUCI MORE MOCKABLE THAN EVER:

I’ll have much more on Fauci’s mockability in tomorrow’s Thursday Essay.

HEH:

Alternate headline: Leftism as a Cult, Exhibit #1,000,006.

SPACE: NASA’s new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is about to launch. Here’s why it’s so cool.

After more than a decade in development, the Roman Space Telescope will launch at 7:20 a.m. on Aug. 30 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida — eight months ahead of schedule. Its mission? To study how the universe began, what it’s made of and how it has evolved over time — while (hopefully) helping scientists solve some of modern astronomy’s biggest mysteries in the process.

NASA will preview that mission at a virtual news conference today at 2 p.m. ET.

“We’re going to find one-in-a-million things over and over and over again,” Jeremy Perkins, a Roman Telescope scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, recently predicted.

What kinds of things? Habitable planets in our own galaxy, perhaps. And dark energy. And primordial black holes.

Bring ’em on.

JUST THINK OF IT AS A SPECIES OF REPARATIONS:

THIS IS ONE OF THOSE “NEVER AGAIN” MOMENTS:

CAN SCIENCE DO THAT?

As always, America’s Newspaper of Record™ nails it.

And something a little more serious on the subject from John Nolte:

I suppose nobody understands the risks to Fauci better than Fauci, and he decided accordingly.

LOL, CHRIS CILLIZZA:

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): To be fair, that’s what they pay him for.

UPDATE (FROM STEVE VIA GLENN):

And he’s been a willing (and well-paid) servant for a long time.

SOCIALISM IN ONE SENTENCE: Austin’s Secret Amazon Land Grab. “All Austin City Council members are lefty Democrats these days, and nothing says ‘service to the downtrodden’ like bulldozing some peon’s house to satisfy an international megacorporation.”

SORRY, BUT “INFAMOUS” IS THE BEST WE CAN DO:

YES, BUT…: China’s reported chip breakthrough comes with some big caveats.

“Any machine built by an unknown state-backed company are starting from a much worse spot. Reliability takes years of iteration in the field, which ASML has [and] China still has yet to achieve,” Patience added.

Another challenge for China is scaling these machines. The Information reported that the Chinese firm developing the DUV tool is aiming to produce five units this year and around 20 in 2027.

In comparison, ASML said it plans for a capacity of around 130 DUV immersion machines in 2026, and is planning to add 30% in 2027.

“Tool performance, scaling production of the machine itself, fleet performance, surrounding ecosystem and poor economics against fully depreciated ASML machines all stack up against China DUV,” a team of analysts at SemiAnalysis told CNBC.

“Scaling production of the machine itself [is] the most underestimated part.”

Yes, but if there’s one thing China does well, it’s scale up.

WAIT, IT’S STILL AFLOAT?

It’s a spaceship and a ship-ship.

But you haven’t really seen the soft splashdown until you’ve seen this just-released drone footage of the soft splashdown:

Impressive. Most impressive.