Former science reporter at The Washington Post and elsewhere. Disabled by complex chronic post-viral illness. Living on #Kauai#Hawaii. Grew up in Wisconsin. Occasional SCUBA diver.
The contract #Boeing got for a new spaceship was fixed-price, and worth much more than SpaceX got for the same job. Boeing has for decades gotten fat off of cost-plus contracts, meaning they could bloat the project until shareholders were fat & happy & DOD just kept paying them.
One fixed-price contract & they turn into helpless marshmallows.
@mrcompletely Yes I heard...turns out Billy and I share a doctor here on Kauai, a PA who is also a keyboardist who used to warm up Bill before he hit the road, so whenever I went in for a doc appt I'd get the Dead & Company update. Kauai is a small island.
Informative interview with Svetlana Blitshteyn, a pioneering MD in treating #dysautonomia (autonomic dysfunction), which has exploded with #LongCovid by @erictopol
Sometimes, all you have is the lesser of two evils. White people, please join the club and now rise to the occasion. The occasion is your own fucking life. That’s what you’re voting for.
I would like a $12,000 EV that would be perfect for the small island where I live but Biden admin is putting a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs and American EVs cost $10,000,0000.
"The Contestant" on Hulu, about the guy who spent a over a year in an empty room surviving on only what he could win in magazine contests, is quite good.
Has actually a few turns I wasn't expecting, which is lovely, because it could be a complete downer.
Welp the last little pocket of #covid sanity has collapsed. The infusion center I go to regularly just eliminated mandatory masking. One nurse out of eight I can see is wearing one. And I'm the only patient of four masking.
I kinda thought it'd be a permanent policy in a roomful of cancer patients and other sick people. Nope.
I watched a bunch of "Super 70mm Panavision 50s-Style" AI-generated highly stylized movie trailers of films like Dune, Star Wars, LOTR etc. The first four or so were mesmerizing. Then it felt like I had eaten a bag of Cheetos and I got a little nauseous & I never need to see them again.
Conservative policies kill. The longest study comparing death rates during liberal vs conservative rule, in the UK and Australia, looked at a century of data. Same holds in the US.
My friend told me her #cat recently died. It was TWENTY-EIGHT (28) YEARS OLD. I asked if she called the Guinness Book people and she said she didn't want to sully her pet's memory with such tacky commercialism.
Well shit. I didn't hear about this when it happened. New affordable #housing complex on Kauai - which we desperately need - burned just two months before move-in dates. Arson a possibility and there was lots of grumbling about this project from NIMBYs. Now a bunch of families looking forward to new apartments have nowhere to go.
