"While other space programs get to romp and play with technologies like reusable stages and exotic alloys, NASA is stuck for years wasting a massive, skilled workforce on a dead-end design." => I think this is the real damage being done. After being through with the SLS no engineer skilled in (or even willing to skill up to) modern designs will be left at NASA.
I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that the extremist settler movement in Israel is rooted in the USA and culturally has a lot in common with US white supremacist/settler ideology—there's a reason Netanyahu is so comfortable with Republicans who dine at the Christian Nationalist table. https://mastodon.social/@cmonagle/112462865808610948
@ravenonthill The time frame fits—from the Russo-Japanese war of 1905-06 to the WW1 carve-up of the Middle East was just over a decade, and the RN war experimenting with oil-burning steam turbines from the turn of the century on.
@cstross My neighbor is some kind of food engineer who was on the team that made this flavor! (For another brand I think.) I asked if they were just tasting random chemicals and naming them based on what they reminded them of. He said it was entirely the other way! The marketing team made a campaign about farm life and wanted related flavors. So they intentionally made this taste like fried eggs. 🤯
#WordWeavers 18: What kind of dragon would your MC be?
The kind who studies for their PPL and instrument flight rating, never flies without an airband scanner, GPS, and transponder, and stays well out of controlled airspace. Also spends a lot of time looking over their shoulder nervously and tries not to fly through clouds in air traffic corridors.
Remember: there are old dragons, and bold dragons, but in the age of 250 ton jet airliners flying at 500 mph there are no old, bold dragons!
@cstross they’d be extinct it wasn’t for the volunteers of ATC Sans Frontières helping to maintain safe predation environment.
“Emerald 457 Scaley you are clear for predation in paddock 27 West. Be advised of helicopter mustering operations to your north. BSE and FMD status of this flock is confirmed green”
@glitzersachen@melanie@BashStKid@HighlandLawyer@cstross it's not democratic at all. The Council of Ministers do not really have any democratic accountability, and in any case meets behind closed doors. The Commission, although in principle a civil service function, acts more politically than most civil services do, and has no accountability. The parliament, while a good thing in itself, has little real power.
The HoL actually works very well in controlling the actions of an omnipotent government elected by a minority of the electorate, whose MPs are often whipped to abide the wishes of the executive, not their constituents.
The only folks for whom house arrest isn't a punishment are those who live in palaces with attached infinity pools and golf courses.
(Silvio Berlusconi fought off the inevitable guilty verdict until he aged past Italy's 70 year old limit for prison: then he served two years under house arrest—in his bunga-bunga mansion.)
Surely I can't be the only person whose first reaction to seeing a company is named "Hugging Face" is to wonder if they sell Alien xenomorphs bloodily bursting out of human abdominal cavities as a service?
@cstross I've heard they did it because they thought "hugging" sounded friendly and human. They're a French company, so I guesss this was a case of not having heard the "facehugger" reference.
The Guardian earlier today had a small piece about a Labour front-bench minister saying they were going all out to get Tory voters to support them during the election.
@Cadbury_Moose I'm lucky: I can vote SNP with a clear conscience. (Maybe even vote Scottish Greens as a safe protest vote—would need to check the up-to-the-minute polling in my constituency first, though, if Tories are in second place then forget it.)
This is pointless: Scotland is already self-sufficient on renewables. What we need is a new grid interconnect between Scotland and England so we can export our surplus energy to the south!
It's all about the lobbyists, of course:
"Its ambitions for up to a quarter of all electricity to come from nuclear power by 2050 are being led by government-backed body Great British Nuclear." (Who?)
@cstross So you think its less about Scotland than lobbyists. Might there be other aspects? For example, browse a casual map of undersea power links with Ireland and mainland. Could the site be connected to planned or existing DC-linkage infrastructure?
@elmadagdale They haven't announced a site yet, just a proposal to run rough-shod over the wishes of the predominantly-anti-nuclear Scots. (Alister Jack hates devolution and this is another political stick to bash Holyrood with, while paying off lobbyists down south.)
Hint: if the USA decided to site its new nuclear reactors in Canada, without the consent of the Canadian government, you might smell a rat. This is much the same.
"Even at the amounts described, you will want an excellent and well-maintained vacuum line, access to noncommon nonhousehold reagents like the aforementioned bromine pentafluoride, a willingness to do things like redistill anhydrous HF, and you will at all times want to be suited up like you're going to go spay a velociraptor." https://mathstodon.xyz/@johncarlosbaez/112449468655576791
@cstross I absolutely - and I must make this very clear - absolutely fucking hate anything Google do where they haven't bothered to read the basics of HCI.
I'm half expecting them to replace the Save Disk icon with something like "💪" because they think they are saving the world