Archive for 2024
August 27, 2024
POLARIS DAWN: One of the most adventurous human spaceflights since Apollo may launch tonight.
During the initial hours of the spaceflight, the crew will seek to fly in a highly elliptical orbit, reaching an altitude as high as 1,400 km (870 miles) above the planet’s surface. This will be the highest Earth-orbit mission ever flown by humans and the farthest any person has flown from Earth since the Apollo Moon landings more than half a century ago. This will expose the crew to a not insignificant amount of radiation, and they will collect biological data to assess harms.
The Resilience spacecraft will then descend toward a more circular orbit about 700 km above the Earth’s surface. Assuming a launch on Tuesday, the crew will don four spacesuits on Friday and open the hatch to the vacuum of space. Then Isaacman, followed by mission specialist Sarah Gillis, will each briefly climb out of the spacecraft into space.
Isaacman’s interest in performing the first private spacewalk accelerated, by years, SpaceX’s development of these spacesuits. This really is just the first generation of the suit, and SpaceX is likely to continue iterating toward a spacesuit that has its own portable life support system (PLSS). This is the “backpack” on a traditional spacesuit that allows NASA astronauts to perform spacewalks untethered to the International Space Station.
The general idea is that, as the Starship vehicle makes the surface of the Moon and eventually Mars more accessible to more people, future generations of these lower-cost spacesuits will enable exploration and settlement. That journey, in some sense, begins with this mission’s brief spacewalks, with Isaacman and Gillis tethered to the Dragon vehicle for life support.
Godspeed…
WILL COLLEGES HANDLE THE ISRAEL-HAMAS PROTESTS BETTER THIS YEAR? Define “better,” I guess. The obvious solution would be to have sensible rules and enforce them evenhandedly. Does anyone think that’s likely to happen?
LIMITED TIME DEAL: Levi’s Men’s 501 Original Fit Jeans. #CommissionEarned
DECLINE IS A CHOICE: Germany’s business climate hits crisis-like levels as the DAX falters.
This decline was driven by deteriorating current business conditions and increasingly pessimistic future outlooks.
“The German economy is increasingly falling into crisis,” remarked Clemens Fuest, President of the ifo Institute.
Manufacturers reported significantly lower satisfaction with the present situation, while service-oriented businesses expressed growing scepticism about the future. Manufacturing sentiment fell to its lowest since early 2020, and the services sector hit its lowest point since February 2024.
Recent private sector surveys also indicated a downturn in August, with employment shrinking at the fastest rate in four years.
While that Euronews report didn’t mention energy prices, this story from like week put them front and center: High energy prices are forcing German manufacturers to consider cutting production.
CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVA: Oasis announce major reunion tour 15 years after warring Gallagher brothers split.
I BELIEVE THEM:
These images were reportedly taken inside @MMSDschools in Wisconsin.
This school is trying to destroy "heteronormative thinking" and replace it with a "queer affirming network?"
When they say they're coming for your kids, believe them. pic.twitter.com/gbrluI1v4J
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 26, 2024
The French arrest and detention of Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov on poorly specified charges related to failures of content moderation and compliance with law enforcement is an outrage—and a reminder that, at least on the surface, Europe and the United States have fundamentally different approaches to unregulated speech that go back centuries.
Recall that John Milton’s world-changing defense of an unlicensed press, Areopagitica, pointedly excluded Catholics while his former Cambridge classmate Roger Williams was living in what would become Rhode Island and defending “soul liberty” for all people, “paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-Christian.” Bringing charges against, say, Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk for failure to moderate content? Maybe. But actually putting them in jail, however momentarily, seems unthinkable.
Unthinkable? I see this as prep for going after Elon Musk. Zuck they can control. Though he’s growing a bit more restive lately:
Mark Zuckerberg just admitted three things:
1. Biden-Harris Admin "pressured" Facebook to censor Americans.
2. Facebook censored Americans.
3. Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.
Big win for free speech. pic.twitter.com/ALlbZd9l6K
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) August 26, 2024
THEY’RE NOT DOING JOURNALISM, THEY’RE DOING CHEERLEADING: The liberal media’s gushing over Kamala Harris is an embarrassment to journalism.
Donald Trump and his allies are missing the point. Yes, of course liberal media outlets in the US are biased towards Kamala Harris. They’re always biased towards the Democrats’ candidate. Nothing new there.
What makes their behaviour right now so remarkable is not that they’re being partisan. It’s that they’re willing to be partisan even though the object of their adulation has been giving them absolutely nothing in return. They’re cheerleading for someone who won’t even speak to them.
But at least she isn’t publicly insulting them and locking them in closets, so Vice President Harris is certainly a step up in that regard from the (p)resident. What we’re seeing from the DNC-MSM is what they’ve been doing in election cycles since arguably 2004:
At least in 2008 and 2012 they had a candidate who had much better skills as a politician, and was unknown enough so that the rock star treatment could seem warranted to the uninitiated.
Exit quote:
Even if liberal US media outlets no longer care about journalistic scrutiny, surely they should, at bare minimum, be motivated by their own commercial interests. Interviews with the woman of the moment would cause clicks and sales to surge. So they might at least have demanded she offer them something in exchange for their gurgling sycophancy. Yet here they are, giving it away free of charge.
Still, I suppose they deserve some credit. Nowadays it’s fairly common for journalists to quit the media for PR. Yet some, impressively, have the energy to fill both jobs at once.
Oh they’re definitely doing PR. They just like having the J-word on their business cards, for legacy reasons.
UPDATE: Seven Theories of Press Complicity with the Harris Campaign.
By dumping their unpopular incumbent nominee midstream, a coup apparently masterminded by the aged former speaker of the House, and seamlessly substituting a new nominee and then unifying their party behind her and subduing the press into prostration, Democratic power brokers have indeed played the inside-the-Beltway game very well the past month. If your concept of political journalism is simply to cheer those who wield the knife well, that yields good coverage. But it’s not what a free press is for in a free and democratic republic.
I miss the idea of a “free press…in a free and democratic republic” — but that notion died 50 years ago during the Watergate hearings.
MORE: Kamala Harris’s media gambit is working. “[T]here is an extensive record, much of it on video, of Harris making her views clear on issues like taxes, healthcare, immigration, energy, and others. Since she has never renounced or changed those statements, don’t they remain her views, at least until she says otherwise? As far as many of the nation’s top journalists are concerned, though, there’s no need to hear it from the candidate herself. For Kamala Harris and her admirers in the media, saying nothing is enough.”
WELL, HE’S RIGHT: Trump Honors Kabul Victims, Blames Biden-Harris.
WAS CHICAGO A RADICAL BUST? Folks who expected or hoped for violence to mark those pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention were sorely disappointed. Organizers predictions of hordes of demonstrators were belied by the fact they only ordered six outdoor potties before the action began, according to Richard Pollock.
Pollock goes on to note that: “the low turnout was especially interesting because Cook County, which includes Chicago, has more Palestinian residents than any other county in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More than 23,000 live in the Chicago metropolitan area, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
“Only about a dozen miles away from downtown Chicago is one of the largest Palestinian communities called Bridgeview, Illinois. It is an enclave popularly known as “Little Palestine.” Its downtown includes hookahs, Muslim restaurants and many Palestinian-owned local shops as well as a major mosque.
“It seems as if organizers could have bussed in local residents to supplement their rallies. But clearly, few local Palestinians and Muslims were interested in traveling to nearby Chicago.”
Alternative explanation: Why demonstrate and risk getting injured when you know the Democrats were sufficiently cowed before the the DNC ever convened?
WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER USE FINGERPRINT ID: Struggling to Unlock Your Phone? You Might Have Lost Your Fingerprints.
Also, police can open your phone without a warrant by scanning your fingerprint if you use fingerprint ID or face if you use face ID. For a passcode, on the other hand, they have to see a judge.
“ESCALATION MANAGEMENT” IS BUREAUCRATESE FOR “LOSE ANOTHER WAR”:
According to the "escalation managers" in Washington and Berlin, allowing Ukraine to strike the airfields that launched this attack with Western weapons would be considered "unacceptable escalation", but allowing Russia to destroy this dam and flood millions of people is not. https://t.co/t3mt5JvInJ
— Jimmy Rushton (@JimmySecUK) August 26, 2024
JEFF DUNETZ IS GOING TO NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: Israel-Hamas War: Facts Cable News Ignores or Twists.
THE LONELY LIVES OF SCIENTISTS: Science explores where love is found in the brain.
GOODER AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: “A California beach town is banning residents from smoking inside their own homes, saying the health benefits outweigh concerns over government overreach.”
UPDATE: Smoking outside is apparently still permitted in California:
This is what Kamal would do to America https://t.co/LT1hfDEaEG
— Daniel Greenfield – "Hang Together or Separately" (@Sultanknish) August 27, 2024
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS: Starbucks Has a Problem but I Can Deliver the Solution in 30 Minutes or It’s Free.
MY LATEST SUBSTACK ESSAY: Out: Soccer Moms and Security Moms. In: Health Moms. Is RFK Jr. the secret to suburban women?
And as always, if you like these essays, please consider a paid subscription. (Bumped).
WHEN I WAS A KID, YOU GAVE THEM DEXEDRINE OR BENZEDRINE, BUT SCIENCE HAS ADVANCED: Most Americans unsure how to help opioid overdose victim.
Or strong coffee if that was all that was around.
CARING: Biden and Harris ‘Never Once Reached Out’ to Relatives of Soldiers Killed in Bungled Afghanistan Withdrawal, Families Say. “They just want to pretend it didn’t happen.”
DON SURBER: “As I watch the flamboyant antics of the marvelous Tampon Tim Walz skipping across the world stage to the seal-clapping applause of an idiot media, I recall how the media covered Dan Quayle, whose only crime was misspelling potato.”
MULTIPLE FORMER HITLERS EMERGE FROM BUNKER, REHABILITATED, GIVEN SHINY NEW SUITS:
I already want Trump to win. You don’t have to sell me on it. https://t.co/JbQftE4WmC pic.twitter.com/RQ4mzy7Jq6
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) August 27, 2024
IT’S ALREADY HERE, ASK ANDY NGO: Mark Simon: Partisan Violence Against MainStream Journalists is Coming to the United States: Violence Against the Press is Seen as Taking the Fight to Political Enemies. Sadly, What’s Driving it is Profitable.
Related: Maduro’s Communist Thugs Help Him Bully His Way to Power.