And for the people in the back: autism isn’t a disease. It’s who a person is. There is nothing wrong with my son or anyone else on the spectrum. He reminds me about the importance of humanity and compassion absolutely every single day, and I marvel at what he can do with his mind.

Same (except father rather than brother). Even more furious at the level of guilt now being leveled at women if they take doctor-recommended steps to manage high fevers or pain during pregnancy.

Governor Pritzker straight up quoting Andor.

That's right. What's more alarming is ~97% of the current highway storm drains in the United States were designed using rainfall information that was published in *1961* using 1930s-1950s data. We're using infrastructure built for the rainfall of nearly a century ago. engrxiv.org/preprint/vie....

For KPop Demon Hunters, we finally got there as a family. My wife and I are both huge Mira stans, but Zoey is growing on me.

Doesn’t apply to existing, apparently, but there’s that whole “if we like you you don’t have to get charged for this”

I think the takeaway about all this is that it’s possible, as a country, to lose technical capacity if you don’t maintain investments in the talent, infrastructure, etc. Starship will be cheaper, but it’s going to be a while before it can do what SLS already did (return a craft from 🌖orbit safely).

This is stupid. Like, the level of error correction required for cosmics, alone, would be insane.

Chief of War is probably best described as Game of Thrones meets The Northman with more of the vibes of the latter, by Hawaiians about Hawaii. I can’t speak to its authenticity, but its creators look like they had a blast while making it. 9.5/10.

In my career I’ve seen the United States go from a country that leads international coalitions to one that other countries build coalitions to try to contain/manage. Both Trump and Biden admins deserve a share of the blame, but this year has really, really made things worse.

The wild part of the Fallon/antifa thing is that Disney JUST WON AN EMMY for writing in the most angrily anti-fascist TV hour of television in the United States in decades (Andor, Welcome to the Rebellion) Linked to a mashup that’s not the official Disney account here:

Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.

Every public dollar invested in agricultural R&D generates $20 in returns, yet the Trump admin is planning on slashing budgets and overhauling USDA for the worst. Congress can fight for food science. We have some ideas on how. fas.org/publication/...

Just to warn folks, if I ask you a question, it could become a paper I write like a 10-15 years later because there is something very wrong with me.

I’m generally in agreement with this take, though I’m not going to characterize left/right until we know more. I think we have enough to show he’s deeply absorbed in the cringeworthy layers of irony and social media/gamer culture appropriated and re-appropriated memes and that’s about it.

It blows my mind that a Star Wars property won best writing (and deserved it tbh). “Welcome to the Rebellion” is probably my most rewatched episode of any show this year.

Agree, and major question should be what set of circumstances might be necessary to convince a regime defined by its opacity to become transparent. We do have positive examples.

I believe we can convert to a 100% Thinking About Boats economy by 2027 Going west, bit by bit the oceans change

I mean one of the main characters is literally based entirely on late 19th century queer poetry about the agony of being closeted, and several of the villains are named or based on Margaret Thatcher. Lots of invocation s of 80s British labor movements.

Weird how all these people you fired might know how to do things

Strongly agree that civil debate is needed, but good faith political engagement requires that a person’s circumstances of birth and identity should NOT determine whether or not they get to participate in those debates. This isn’t a hot take, it’s literally embedded in the Constitution.

For folks on economic security: this kind of thing is exactly what’s going to make it more difficult for the United States to act unilaterally on things like export controls. Foreign governments didn’t appreciate the chips controls and oil tariffs, so they’re actively building tools to weaken them.

This is who we are now: A country where people get detained because of identities ICE forces on them and people die because they’re denied access to medication in their possession. This is not something a people can atone for by merely electing someone else. Time to snap out of it.

This is good news, but I’m terrified of where this ends.

JUST IN: A judge quashed the subpoena to Boston Children's Hospital by the DoJ that sought the records of trans patients. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

When you’re a poor kid who could only afford to eat quesadillas and hard pretzels in high school grows up in a family that serves the fabulously wealthy, the cynicism and seething you develop about double standards never really goes away. The Epstein release is triggering that all over again.

I maintain this might be the single worst episode of Trek ever produced.

Oh yes I will be writing an essay about how the SNW episode “Four and a Half Vulcans” is wildly offensive and normalizing race science that was mainstream and popular in United States in the 1850s Like Disco called this shit terrorism What the fuck is this regressive bullshit

At the U.S.-EU Commercial Space Dialogue Track 1.5. EU talking about the issues associated with space congestion

Saying this doesn’t resemble the prevailing viewpoints at the conference that happened last week would be a massive understatement.

While we’re at it: the shade being thrown at NASA is largely not the result of NASA’s own internal failures (and TBF there have been failures…), but rather primarily being subjected to decades of third party quarterbacking, arbitrarily cancelled projects, recent mass firings, mission loss, etc.

Just to be clear—the reason for NASA’s safety culture is that support for the space program is historically tied to astronaut safety. Increasingly, spaceflight safety is also about your house getting hit by random garbage that someone dumped while in orbit, uncontrolled debris growth, etc.

Senator Slotkin, as someone who’s worked in inherited roles from the Manhattan Project for more than a decade, would be happy to help bring your staff up to speed on that history. Alternatively, I highly recommend “Freedom’s Laboratory” by Audra Wolfe. audrajwolfe.com/freedoms-lab...

Well. Shit.

Fundamentally in agreement with the central diagnosis from a lot of the folks in the Abundance movement—processes are broken and harming our ability to get things done. I have a slightly different view of the root causes, which have to do with the incentives in government to not make decisions.

Same

Governments and industry should care a lot about protecting astronomy. The proper reason, of course, is to unlock the secrets of the cosmos. The more cynical and pragmatic reason is because new physics has a history of unleashing weird, wonderful, and sometimes terrifying technologies of abundance.

I mean I’m a philosopher of science, not a scientist, but I’ll roll with it. payloadspace.com/scientists-c...

If space is there, and if we are going to climb it, then regulatory reform must be a challenge that we are willing to accept, something that we are unwilling to postpone, for a competition that we intend to win. My (hopefully nuanced) contribution to the Abundance conversation.

Just to be clear: this is still all about him. Operation Warp Speed was a genuine success, powered by decades of basic research and discovery, that he takes credit for. Kennedy risks undermining a big part of his legacy, and he knows it, so he’s more likely to say he was right all along.

The only message our president is going to receive is that the Army gave him a parade that made him feel bad so we’re gonna do even more boats now

That episode of Strange New Worlds was some of the worst Trek ever produced. That’s an ACCOMPLISHMENT.

Reading Breakneck, and I can’t help but feel like the book creates a bit of a false dichotomy between the United States and China (as do many foreign affairs pieces). Yes, the United States is procedural, but so is Europe with extremely powerful unions and auditors. And yet they still build faster.

Not only will they not pay off--they'll foist enormous costs on local communities with very few, if any substantial benefits.

Europe’s rules are far from perfect, but they’re self-determined and focused on their citizens. That’s good. My biggest fear is that after all this, US policymakers (both left and right) will have learned little and go back to exceptionalist-type behaviors that continue to undermine our standing.

If you read one thing today, let it be Dr. Daskalakis' resignation letter from CDC. This administration is now shattering the public trust and scientific truth it has taken the nation decades to build in public health. Devastated to think of the unnecessary deaths that will come from this HHS.

Right now there is nothing more traumatic in my child’s life than sleeping through the cats being automatically fed by the cat feeders (we use it for portion control, because all the adults in the house believe Baby Kitty when he acts like he’s never eaten). The child records every meal. Lucky kid

This is pretty shameful, but there are some things that can be learned from successful peaceful protests. In Tahrir Square and the Balkans people showed affection and appreciation toward troops (while protesting their leaders). This helped drive a wedge between troops and their commanders.

Come to Bluesky, where you can read people like me bloviate about science policy stuff that no one has any business trying to describe with words.