troyunrau

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Pro que no los dos

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Easy. If you can afford to be a space tourist, you can afford to put $5M in escrow for your future medical expenses.

Let’s take risks people!

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Not bells either ;)

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Good.

Raises an interesting question though: how does one become a weapon maker in Canada. Without, you know, already being a weapon maker. Like, are the only companies that can participate those that made weapons since WW2? Or are they going to put out tenders that machinists could potentially bid on? Interesting stuff, trying to ramp up production, but how…

troyunrau, 2 months ago

A half dozen years ago, or thereabouts, I entered the Canadian version of this competition, just to see how I’d fare, and to look at the process. Made it through the first couple levels of screening (from 3200 applicants, I was still in the hunt at 300 remaining) but then got filtered.

Some interesting bullet points if you’re thinking of applying, assuming the NASA questions are similar to the CSA ones:

(1) ham radio, morse code, or other amateur radio operator experience is an asset.

(2) Anything aviation or amateur rocketry is an asset, but in particular a pilot’s license. Anything aviation adjacent is still useful.

(3) Russian language (this might be changing in the current political environment)

(4) Experience in an “operational environment” – I suspect this is military jargon, but if you’d don’t field research as a scientist out of wilderness camps, or anything like that where you’re in a small group for work/adventure might apply here.

(5) Medical degrees, or advanced science degrees.

(6) Physical fitness and perfect vision

When I applied, my Russian sucked, my aviation experience was tangential (but copious), and I was a grad school dropout (from a planetary science program), so I didn’t float to the top. But it was enough to make it through the first layers.

There person who ended up winning was a medical-degree air force pilot. Hard to compete haha.

troyunrau, 2 months ago

I love it when people do things “just because” 😄

True fans

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Fire control is going to be a major engineering challenge on a civilization scale in the upcoming centuries if we want to preserve our carbon sink forests. Should be an interesting challenge, politically, to direct money into it. It’s large scale geoengineering…

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Hopefully not too depressing of a take, but:

On the scale of the planet as a whole system (looking at the forest, and not the trees): humans are commodity – there are billions upon billions of humans. But there is only one planet, with one atmosphere. If we wait for every human life to have unlimited value in every jurisdiction on earth – we will wait forever. And then it will be too late and we’re all going to fry in our utopian hell on earth.

In whatever jurisdiction you’re in, you should be pushing for large scale planet-affecting changes to how the civilization behaves with regard to our stewardship of the planet.

And yes, you can do both at the same time.

(I’m a huge fan of Iain M Banks’s Culture series. There is a Utopian future that is possible, where everything is simultaneously carefully managed, but individual freedom and prosperity coexists.)

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Tangent: I lived in the north for many years, including two summers in Thompson.

Getting people to stay in the north is pretty much impossible. It doesn’t matter how much you pay someone – aside from early career (big fish in small pond) opportunities, nearly everyone will inevitably return south.

And it isn’t the cold weather or the mosquitoes or the lack of sunlight in winter (although these are factors). It is rather the constant poverty, crime, and hopelessness. If you’re in any job that has to fight against these things (teacher, nurse, firefighter), you are exposed to it even more so than most. And it chews at your soul.

Sadly, any solution that stands a chance in the long term, is entirely unpalatable in the short term, politically. So we will have to cope with this status quo.

troyunrau, 2 months ago

So, basically, it’s mad to be outdoors collecting data and not in the lab. Got it ;)

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Context?

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Embedded Spotify link? Bleh

troyunrau, 2 months ago

I don’t think my instrance is even federated with them, so it is harder to get banned there ;)

troyunrau, 2 months ago

I’m not saying it makes sense…

troyunrau, 2 months ago

There is a realistic scenario where Mali starts reclaiming domains who are using their TLD to mean Marxist-Leninist.

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Mali had a ten year period where they were allowing free registration. That doesn’t exist anymore.

They also keep getting classified documents due to typos in army.mil email addresses and similar ;)

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Yeah, that’s how I found out I was banned. Tried to reply to a reply.

troyunrau, 2 months ago

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy

Western world, western democracy, is largely a term referencing a style of government, not physical location.

“contrasted with illiberal democracies and with dictatorships”

troyunrau, 2 months ago

You use these words, but you don’t know what they mean…

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Yes. And Australia. And often South Korea, although one can debate their inclusion in this group.

troyunrau, 2 months ago

Based on your tone here, I checked the modlog for your username (Lemmy is great for this! How did we ever survive on Reddit) and my suspicions were confirmed…

troyunrau, 2 months ago

I mean, it’s right in the wikipedia article. Wikipedia didn’t make it up. This is largely the consensus use for this term in political circles.

Other potential candidates for inclusion might be Indonesia or Mongolia, but they are not usually included for economic reasons.

troyunrau, 2 months ago

This is a fair take. Those marine drones are doing amazing work.

Somewhere in a timeline with an alternative timeline in Imperial Japan, there’s a guy going “what if we didn’t have to put pilots in our flying bombs…”. And a bean counter is figuring out if that’ll save money.