efaardvark
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Status Updates posted by efaardvark
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Oh no! Dame Maggie Smith has died!
One of my favorite quotes:
“Accept that you are a work in progress, both a revision and a draft: you are better and more complete than earlier versions of yourself, but you also have work to do. Be open to change. Allow yourself to be revised.”
― Maggie Smith. from her "Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change"
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As one FY rolls over into the next I'll just note that (assuming you're a US taxpayer) this last year our federal taxes went up by 6%. Last year's spending was $299B more than last year, which works out to about 6% compared to last year's spending. However they try to spin it, that's how much they've already spent, so that's how much will have to be repaid, somehow, someday via our taxes.Of course just like not paying off your credit card bill every month, the difference between what was spent and what we paid in taxes will have to be carried over to future years and finance charges will apply. The financing of the deficit will of course have to be added to the above amount so the overall tax increase will no doubt be higher once all is said and done. Probably much higher.
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Presidential assassination attempt. Global Windows outage. Rumors of a Xi stroke. Russia sending advanced anti-ship missiles to the Houthi. What a week. Who had all that on their bingo card? Who had any of that on their bingo card?
Anything else I should know about before I attempt the weekend?
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@Sakura I checked the space weather site and there's no civilization-ending solar mass ejections headed towards Earth at the moment. That would have been my first guess but that doesn't look likely atm.
However, I did hear on the news that China has sent PLA troops to Russian-allied Belarus for a series of combat drills. They're doing their "drills" near the city of Brest, which is just across the border from Poland and only about 17 miles from the Ukraine border. So my guess is that somebody does an "oops" during one of these "drills", fires a missile in the wrong direction, hitting either NATO troops lined up along the border in Poland or Ukrainian troops in the battle zone and starting WWIII. I could be wrong.
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Oh yeah great, ww3 is JUSTTTTT what we need right now lol ~ I don't understand what is all going on with Russia right now.. there is honestly so much with them I CAN'T keep up with it all and remain sane, but I was watching a video saying they were going to start using nuclear weapons or something and that it had the US all shook up? They seem to like to talk and run their mouth a lot but I really wouldn't put it as out of the question for them to do something crazy like try to launch nuclear weapons. It feels like Putin always has something he is trying to prove and is crazy enough to do it x.x
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Mostly Putin is getting older and is slowly losing his hold on power. Its usually why his opponents end up commuting suicide in a zipped up duffel bag with a gunshot to the back of their head. The Russians are also very keen on having a warm water port they can control to boost up their navy. The whole fleet is in bad shape and dire need of dry docking repairs. They have no way to do this at this point as their floating dry dock sank.
With sanctions on Russian export and imports their economy isn't in great shape too leading to some discontent within the power structure. If it gets bad enough I don't see Russia starting WW3 but just having Putin "die of old age" and replace him with another oligarch. Who that is will be a bit messy but we will see.
Also don't see China risking troops in Ukraine other than to train Russian conscripts on how to use China/N Korean supplied equipment. China and North Korea is starting to fire up their industries to ring out of Russia all the cash they can. That way when Russia fails at its task China will be in a stronger position to boss around Russia. China's goal is to beef up its power in the area and risking their troops won't do that. But firing up their industries and raking in Russian cash will get their economy back and firing like it was without having to rely on exports to the US and EU as much.
Russia isn't in a good position right now with a majority of their cash coming from oil exports which China is buying at a discount. If China starts supping them weapons on top of that they get that cash back and further weaken Russia if they continue to lose.
Russia also hasn't tapped into it's more well trained troops from Moscow. Putin has been holding them as it could weaken his political position in the country. They've been grabbing people from the countryside and ex soviet territories that are allied with Russia. If they do start pulling in more conscripts from Moscow and other major cities then that should be something we should worry about.
We are kind of still in a Cold war type of situation Russia having their underclass or foreign conscripts fight Ukraine while the USA funds the Ukrainians without actively taking part. Both countries don't want to fight each other but will boast and threaten each other. If anything the Russians might just withdraw like the did in Afghanistan and say they accomplished their goal back home in the papers. But that is too way off to call at this point.
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I hereby apologize to the rest of the world for the sorry state of US politics. I've tried my best. I have not voted for either the Dumbos or the Repugs for the last several decade now but I live in a republic and there's not much more I can do. Trying to vote rationally in the US is a lot like swimming against a tide of rabid lemmings determined to be the first over the edge.
Two takeaways from the "debate" from my point of view...- First, unless they really, really, really want Trump to win, the Deez need to find a new candidate immediately. At this point even they realize that. Probably. Of course knowing them they'll probably pick Clinton again.
- All Trump really needed to do for the win was to keep his mouth shut and let Biden speak whatever was on his mind. Amazingly, he actually managed to do it. (For the most part.) WTF?? Maybe he's had a lot of practice holding back in court recently and that has carried over into his political speaking in public outside the courtroom. Maybe the age of miracles is not over. Whatever. I still think he's beyond hope as a human being but after last night I'll allow that there's a real chance he could be reincarnated as a cicada instead of a bedbug in the next life.
Not that I'm endorsing either camp, just to be perfectly clear. Overall the "debate" didn't change my views on either the parties or the candidates. If anything the opposite in fact. I was sure going in that there was nothing good that would come of the event and it did not fail to fail to be something the nation could be proud of. At this point even if you held a gun to my head I'd pick the guy with the boot on his head over either of the candidates on stage last night. The most succinct post-commentary remark that I've seen online so far was: "The winner of yesterday's presidential debate was the Voyager probe, currently in interstellar space and headed away from Earth at 17 miles per second." I wholeheartedly agree. Personally I'm still hoping the Starship works out. And the sooner the better.
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Looking across from the other side of the pond I agree with @Sakura in having trouble believing that Trump and Biden are the best candidates that America has to offer for its top job. But then again I have the same problem with the candidates for the job of Prime Minister in our election this week. But at least both are under state retirement age.
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@Animedragon & @Sakura I'm absolutely sure that these are NOT the best candidates for office. No question in my mind. Going by the Constitution there are literally hundreds of millions of qualified candidates in the country. Two of them have GOT to be better that the ones the parties have picked for us to choose from. That's why I say at every opportunity that both the Democrat and the Republican parties are utter failures, and have been for years now.
Not that anyone listens. I'm sure I'll be throwing my vote away again at the next vote but at least I can claim it isn't my fault.
Looks like I'll be breaking out my "Jack" sticker again...
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I think a lot of people here in the UK won't bother to vote on Thursday, and I can't really blame them. Years ago at General Elections the three main parties told us all the good things they'd do for us if we voted for them, nowadays their message is more along the lines of telling us all the bad things that will happen to us if we don't vote for them.
It seems that the choice is no longer to vote for the party we think best, but to vote for the one we think is the least worse.
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Another Falcon Heavy launch. (This one for the GOES-U weather satellite) I love watching the two side boosters come back and land. That never gets old.
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Oh no! Ed Stone just died! Dr. Ed Stone was a former Jet Propulsion Lab director and chief scientist for the Voyager mission. He was the only scientist to have worked on both the spacecraft that flew closest to the sun and the spacecraft that is furthest from it. (The Parker Solar Probe occasionally flies so close to the sun that it flies through the upper part of the Sun's "atmosphere". The Voyager 2 spacecraft, one of two that the mission launched in the 1970s, has left the solar system and is now over 24 billion km / 15B mi from the Sun in interstellar space.)
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Been super busy this week but I finally got enough of a sit to watch the entire Starship reentry. Quite a show! But the vehicle held together and accomplished the mission perfectly. I'm sure they got plenty of extremely valuable data from the intense reentry portion of the flight envelope, which was pretty much the entire point of the test flight. Booster did it's thing quite well too. SpaceX says they might have up to 7 test flights this year, including a ~70-80% chance of an attempted booster catch with the "chopsticks" back at the launch tower!
I have to add that I am also (almost) equally amazed at the quality and continuity of the real-time video feed. I am old enough to remember the live video of the Apollo flights. 4k HD all the way through (well, most of the way.. it did cut out for a bit here and there) reentry was amazing.
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A moment of appreciation for the camera (circled in red in the X pic) and the starlink antennas that played a critical role in providing the video downlink. The two rectangles in the unshielded part of the main fuselage to the left of the flap are the starlink antennas. There's actually 4 of them, the two visible and two on the other side. (Maybe a thin sliver of one is just visible around the curve of the fuselage in the pic.)
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Apparently "Thermonator" is the trade name for the flamethrowing "dogs" in Fahrenheit 451. Available now for <$10k, free shipping included.
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TGIF!
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I considered making Frieren my new favorite kuudere, but I think she's beyond dere, kuu or otherwise. I'll keep Korone as my number one.. for now.
Frieren joke:
Q: What sort of dere is Frieren?
A: Legendere.
(I will accept no other answer!
)
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Saw the rocket trail from yesterdays F9/Starlink launch when I went to move my car. They’re doing a lot more Starlink launches from Vandenberg these days. Probably filling in the more polar orbit slots.
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It's that time of year when my car starts looking a bit like a Rose Parade reject. (Those white specks are flower petals from a nearby tree.)
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The question was posed by one of the younger crew at work today, "Why do they call it 'spam' anyway?".
To which I of course replied, "well, you know that Monty Python sketch? That's where it comes from."
To which he replied, "what's Monty Python?".
Oi.. don't they teach kids anything in school these days?!
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Still employed. Know of a couple people who aren't. Still working through it all but one thing I'm sure of at this point is the US Congress is made up of self-centered, irresponsible idiots.
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Seems the other shoe has dropped at work. Employees have been instructed that the Lab will be physically closed and everyone should plan to attend a virtual meeting with management where they'll discuss the (lack of a) federal budget and what that means for NASA centers like JPL. Afterwards around 600 employees will be let go. (That's ~10% of the Lab's total workforce.) This all according to an email from Lab management earlier today.
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I hope you're not affected by this sad news. It always amazes me the lengths employers will go to to avoid using the "R" word, they use terms like "let go" which makes one wonder if they've been holding on to people. Then there's the wonderful phrase one of my former employers used "we're offering you the opportunity to take early retirement".
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@Animedragon Thanks. We got an informal pep-talk from our "group soop" (group supervisor) after the official email from upper management came out. The soop said he said that he doesn't think that the DSN (deep space network) that I'm affiliated with will be hit too hard. We've taken cuts in previous years and we're already at our limits. Any more and we'd be cutting bone. We also have a lot of customers and commitments, including with high-profile ones like JAXA and ESA.
The counter argument to that is that a Mars sample return has been at or near the top of the planetary scientists' wish list in NASA's decadal survey for literally decades yet that has been one of the programs hit the hardest. This is all driven by DC politics too, so logic need not necessarily apply.
Well, I'll know later Wednesday afternoon. One way or another.
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I almost have to LOL whenever someone uses the term "based" these days. It's one of those overused words or phrases that swaps its slang meaning between generations. To my generation (graduated HS in the early 80s) the term "based" came from the term used for someone who was addicted to freebasing cocaine. These were typically wild, irrational people who would do anything for another hit and were typically about a half step from killing themselves with their addiction.
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I often have trouble understanding what teenagers are saying because they use words to mean different things to the meaning they had when I was their age. When I was a teenager saying someone was "sick" or "wicked" was a derogative insult or a negative comment about their attitude, now I'm led to believe it's a compliment.
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Had to go out to Studio City a while back & on the way back I saw the Warner Bros. tower. Which of course made me think of the Animaniacs.
I had to look it up but that was early 90s! 30 years ago! Now I feel old. 
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Got some (probably) bad news today at work. According to Laurie Leshin, JPL's director, next year's budget for NASA - and therefor the lab's - will be around 10% less than expected. One of NASA's flagship missions, the Mars Sample Return has had its budget for next year slashed to around $300M from $800M to $900M. Ouch. Other missions are in a similar predicament. "It is also becoming more likely that there will be JPL workforce impacts in the form of layoffs, and the way such JPL workforce actions are implemented means that the impact would not be limited to MSR", according to an email Leshin sent to the Lab's employees this afternoon.
I say "probably" because all this is due to the Fiscal Responsibility Act passed a few months ago by the US Congress and the management is still recalculating and rearranging the budgets for FY 2024 and 2025 based on the mandates contained therein. We don't know the details yet, but the broad outline is pretty clear. Some layoffs have already happened. Others are likely as the details are worked out.
Happy New Year!
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I found out today that the day after that email came out the lab did actually let about 100 contractors go. Very abruptly from the sound of things.
Meanwhile the "leaders" in Congress are complaining that NASA should have waited for... something. Waiting for Congress to deliver a final budget is a non-starter because they'll no doubt argue until the last minute. (Or later! And if they can't agree then across-the-board cuts automatically kick in that would be even deeper than what's been proposed.) When you're told next year's budget will be between 30 and 90% of what you had planned for then you need to get started NOW. The FRA passed in July. Since then all Congress has done is go on break for the holidays. What's NASA management supposed to do?
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Of course the first video played from space was a cat video.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-tech-demo-streams-first-video-from-deep-space-via-laser -
Best compilation I've seen so far. Gotta say, after the pretty wild first test this one went much, much better. Not perfect of course, but that's fine at this point. Gives me hope they might someday actually get 'Ship working as intended. That would make the next couple decades so amazing! It was only 13 years between the Wright Flyer @ Kitty Hawk and the first commercial cargo (mail) delivery after all, and only ~30 until the Boeing 247, the first commercial airliner.
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Yesterday was one of my twice-yearly trips to the middle of nowhere in the California desert.
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Got a short weekend this week, courtesy of OSIRIS-REx delivering pieces of Bennu to Earth. 24 hours on-call the day before then 10 or so hours on-site Saturday leading up to the reentry of the capsule containing the sample.
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100F temps lately means replacing the A/C air filter in the car gets top priority on today's todo list. Having to choose between breathing oven-temperature air or air that smells like moldy socks is not a choice one should have to make.
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@Bulleje76 Sunny Southern California. Only it wasn't so sunny today.
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