Civilian space walks!

SpaceX continues to do some surprising things.  They are, of course, in the money making business, with an eye on the future. They have starlink satellites that provide service. They launch satellites for companies, nations, and even small groups of people.  And they have contracts with NASA to go beyond that.

And sometimes, they act like their competitors, and launch people into space for civilian space travel.  

This past week, they launched a Polaris mission with a few paying customers, and they gave one of them - and a SpaceX engineer - an opportunity to open the Dragon capsule and step out into space.

On September 12th, they successfully did just that. Each of them was in space for a few minutes.  It was remarkably cool.  But more than that, SpaceX has been working on a lighter weight space suit that allows for more mobility than what NASA has ever had.  And on this space walk, they got to test them out.

In effect, someone was paying to field test all of their R&D work.

This

Eloquently put. 😍

Steve Jobs told Bob Iger to plan for his retirement … back in 2011

This is an interesting tale. Steve Jobs told

Bob Iger to retire and enjoy life. 

And 13 years later, we're still pretty much where we were. Iger is still in charge and there's still no succession plan at Disney. 

https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-bob-iger-not-to-stay-too-long-disney-2024-9

Russian influence

One of the more intriguing stories this election season has to do with Russian influence.  

At the end of the week, the DOJ announced charges against a group of US-based, and fairly prominent bloggers/podcasters/youtubers/influencers.  They are charged with accepting money from Russian agents to produce content that is, essentially, Russian propaganda.  

Of course, there was some content that was specific to the Ukraine war. But there also was a large amount of MAGA-related content.

The influencers all are pleading ignorance.  They didn't know where the money was coming from, and that stories were merely suggested, and it was more about the quantity of stories.  They're innocent!

But as you dig deeper, you see that the money was significant.  They claim its not out of the ordinary for what they take in from advertisers and whatnot, but that is simply not true; it was more than they'd make in several years of doing their work. And it also turns out that the same general stories were told by each of them, effectively nullifying their claim that stories were just suggestions

Of course the orange menace had to chime in on this.  He railed about it being DOJ overreach, and people were falsely accused,  Then added that Putin really wants "Comrade Kamala" elected and not him, so it can't possibly be true! 

Yeah, this is where we are...

Compare and contrast: school shooting responses

Kamala broke down during her speech.  That is Presidential.

Tim Walz says 'there's work to be done' which in the context of his whole talk strikes the right balance. I'll buy that as vice presidential

https://www.the-independent.com/tv/news/georgia-school-shooting-tim-walz-b2607131.html

meanwhile, on the other side....

JD Vance just accepts it as a 'fact of life' which is not very vice-presidential. In fact, its idiotic. Is he even human?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/06/georgia-school-shooting-trump-vance-harris

And of course, the dumpster fire of an orange person completely missed the mark and has no empathy.  He said: 

"It's a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we're going to make it better. We're going to heal our world. We're going to get rid of all these wars that are starting all over the place because of incompetence,"

Now which candidates do you think actually care about people?

Haters gonna hate, hate, hate....

....Shake it off. shake it off...

Taylor Swift may very well be the single most popular and influential person in society at present.

The hype machine was in full force late in the last NFL season as she started dating the Chief's Travis Kelce, and attending his games and the Superbowl.  It brought new fans to the sport, though not to the game itself.  Only to catch glimpses of her and speculation about what she would do.

The right went CRAZY about this because she generated more headlines than anything they could muster. There was a ridiculous notion that her relationship with Kelce was fake, and was used for the sole purpose of helping Biden's re-election somehow.

And then came this election cycle.  Her endorsement of a candidate has value due to her influence. In 2020, she simply tweeted a picture of her baking cookies endorsing Biden, and voter registrations surged and Swifties turned out to vote for him.

The orange menace tried to leverage this by first telling everyone that of course she would support his candidacy because he somehow helped her career and she owed him.   Then he used social media to post a fake picture of her endorsing him, and also had some pics of fake Swifties endorsing him.

She sued of course. And herself posted some things that real Swifties saw as endorsing Harris.

Swifties held a fundraiser for Harris that was (to quote the menace) huuuuuuuuge. And while she has not specifically endorsed Kamala, its clear where she stands...

Flash forward to the beginning of the football season. Someone posts a "leaked memo" that Swift is not allowed at Chiefs games this year.  It gets picked up by Fox News, and other conservative outlets, and they run with it.  Only, its a fake.

Then, there's buzz about a "dissolution agreement" between her and Kelce that likewise gets posted to social media.  Surely they are going to break up!  And by extension, the relationship was not real, and was just to help the democrats. And (as you probably guessed) it too, was a fake.

I suppose for both it was some effort to make her seem less genuine or besmirch her  and maybe to somehow make her endorsement for Kamala a little less impactful?

There are pictures of Swift in Kelce in public in various locations.  They sure put a lot of effort into faking it, with no return on that for them, didn't they? 

And naturally, there she was at the opening game for the Chiefs.

The whole thing is just silly.  But worth noting.