Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share.

I was able to meet her a couple of times and she was one of the kindest and friendliest people I've ever met. She even had kind words for K1A. We tried to meet up in 2020 but it was the height of Covid and we couldn't make it work. Shortly after that...

Rather a broad brush you're using there, don't you think? Reminds me of Dayton when I criticized Zubrin's stated plans for colonizing Mars. Not because I don't think that we should colonize Mars, but because I don't think that Zubrin will be able to do it in the manner he says that he's going to do it. Dayton's response was along the lines of, "Did Zubrin kill your dog? Why do you hate him so?"

For some reason, he seemed to think that my pointing out flaws in Zubrin's plans meant that I hated Zubrin. It doesn't. It just means that there's flaws in Zubrin's plans, and if we want to successfully colonize Mars, those flaws have to be addressed.

Do some people hate Elon? Sure, but so what? Do they hate Twitter, and/or what he's done with it? Again, sure, but so what? It still remains a useful tool and one that there isn't an adequate replacement for as of yet. Lots of people, of all political stripes, are trying to get alternatives to Twitter off the ground. Some of it has to do with who Elon is, some of it has to do with the things he's done to the platform, and some of it is just simply the recognition that no one knows if the alternatives to Twitter will take off, and you'd better get in early to make sure that nobody snags your preferred username before you do.

I don't like Fox News, but that doesn't mean if that I see a news story that they've posted which is important, that I won't share it. Indeed, there are times when I will actively seek out a Fox News story, simply because if Fox is posting it, people can't accuse the story of having a "liberal bias."

As for Teslas, you'll note that many owners of them say things like they bought the car before they knew what an asshole that he was. Are they telling the truth? Some of them probably are. And it ain't just lefties who are bailing on Tesla's stock right now. Any investor worth their salt knows that when you've got an erratic CEO running your company, there's a good chance the company will wind up in big trouble.

Are Tesla owners saving the planet? To a degree. Even if you don't accept global warming, you have to recognize that cars do leak toxic fluids from time to time. The fewer instances we have of a car dripping oil all over the place, the cleaner our water and soil will be.

And I have to say that even if Musk weren't running Tesla right now, I wouldn't buy one of their cars. They have a disturbing amount of quality issues associated with them, they lack physical buttons for a lot of controls that should have them, and I don't particularly like all the data collection done by any car made after 2006.

As for why a leftist (assuming that person who posted that skeet is a leftist/liberal, I don't know) would use the platform to do things like calling people and asking them WTF they're thinking, well, there might be a couple of reasons for that. One is simply that they might be an asshole. Another is that they're pointing out how stupid the idea of allowing any wanker to call you in the 21st Century is really fucking stupid. After all, if you were a celebrity, would you want fans of yours calling you at all hours of the day to talk to you? Even if you liked nothing better than talking with your fans, you'd soon find it annoying as fuck to have your phone blowing up constantly.

What did SpaceX accomplish that NASA thought was impossible?

Being allowed to launch rockets near populated areas without a blast shield, for one.

Who knew Texans would put with that? OK, I guess it might have been obvious considering they put up with Ted Cruz, Greg Aboot, that AG paxton guy, Rick Perry, uvalde cops, and other texans.

Elon Musk Bought Twitter to Settle His Jet-Tracking Beef, New Book Claims

Two things that I changed my mind about due to discussions here is my stance on gay marriage and the death penalty. I used to against gay marriage and for the death penalty, I no longer hold those positions.

Reusable rockets.

From what I've googled, NASA didn't think it was impossible to do. It thought it was impractical. Also, SpaceX hasn't yet accomplished making a completely reusable rocket.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/...asa-develop-reusable-rockets/?sh=194186c74f34

We'll ignore the reusable SRBs on the shuttles, because they couldn't be launched independently of the shuttles. NASA's goal, with the shuttle program was to have the whole thing be reusable. They couldn't do that because Nixon fucked them. Hell, there was even talk of reusing the first stage of the Saturn V rockets during the Apollo program.

Musk's engineers at SpaceX couldn't do what they've done without all the work that NASA did. Not merely on launching rockets, but designing them as well. If you poke around on NASA's websites you'll find all kinds of engineering studies on reusable rocket designs and how they might work. The reason NASA didn't build them, was again, because Nixon fucked them.

Ehhh, I'll give SpaceX this one on the weight of things.

Yes engineers knew it was technically possible, but the retirement of the shuttle marked the end of it being seen as a desirable thing, with a move towards the idea of big dumb rockets being the cheapest and most practical solution.

Falcon 9 first stage reusability, despite the second stage being lost each time, has in some ways come closer to the dream of the shuttle than the shuttle itself actually did.

If Starship pulls off rapid reusability of both stages (still a big if) then it will upend what until a few years ago was the accepted wisdom.

Not quite. Shrub's head of NASA (think his name was Griffith), had close ties to a couple of contractors for NASA and going back to disposables was seen by many in the field as a way for him to help his buddies line their pockets. Note that the SLS system NASA's been foisted with, is merely a reworking of the Constellation (or whatever Shrub's idea for a replacement for the shuttle was called). Remember, both Constellation and the SLS are using recycled shuttle parts "to save money." That's not really true, because they had to be extensively modified (and IIRC, the SRBs are entirely new as the shuttle ones were too small) in order to work on the SLS.

Again, it goes back to Nixon. He hated Kennedy, and because NASA was so closely tied to JFK's memory, he wanted to put his stamp on it so that people would forget about JFK. To that end, he overrode what NASA wanted to do (which was continue with the Apollo program, while developing a fully reusable shuttle for LEO operations, etc.), and made them scrap their plans entirely and do the shuttle. When NASA told him that they wouldn't be able to build a viable shuttle in a short period of time, and that they'd already paid for several more Saturn Vs, we wound up with Skylab, the Apollo-Soyuz mission, several Saturn Vs used as displays at museums around the country, and a compromised shuttle design that NASA was forced to oversell its capabilities, just in order to keep the crewed space program alive at all.

See this post and this post for more details on aspects of it. The lies that Nixon forced NASA to tell so damaged the agency's image that we have to have this discussion. It wasn't that NASA didn't think it could be done, it's that they simply weren't allowed to do it.

LBJ was probably the only President who understood NASA, and we not only have him to thank for ensuring that the Apollo program succeeded, but that NASA is still around 50+ years later. Do you know why NASA has facilities in almost every state? Because LBJ. There was a huge controversy about why NASA built Mission Control in Houston, and didn't simply have it at Kennedy. NASA's own people said that there really wasn't a need to do this from a technological standpoint. But from a political standpoint, like NASA's rocket testing facility in Utah, it made perfect sense. If NASA has operations spread out all over the country (as well as a few territories), it makes it harder to kill the program. Because few members of Congress want to say that killed jobs in their district.

So, NASA tests its rockets in Utah, and since it ships them via rail, the rockets either have to be small enough that they can fit through railroad tunnels (like the SRBs), or parts of them are tested there, while the fully assembled versions are tested in another state (thus creating more jobs and an unwillingness to kill NASA).

SpaceX doesn't have to worry so much about that (but you'll notice that they too, have facilities in multiple states to make it harder for their government contracts to get canceled). NASA became a political punching bag for politicians during the Vietnam War, with people asking why we're spending so much money on sending men to the Moon. Fucking Walter Mondale wanted to kill the entire crewed program of NASA when he was a Senator, and who knows what he might have done had he gotten elected in '84.

If Nixon had just left NASA alone, they might be well ahead of where they are today, simply because their reputation wouldn't be so tarnished. Everybody thinks that the shuttle program was behind schedule and over budget, when in reality, NASA had to cover up what the actual timetables and costs were, to get it through a Congress that didn't see the need for a space program at all. (I'll remind everyone that we're currently having this discussion using technologies that were made possible in no small part because of NASA's research.) Additionally, when you adjust for inflation, NASA's budget has been flat since Apollo. Or to put it another way, at the peak of the Apollo program, NASA was getting something like 4% of the Federal budget, today, it's getting 0.3%, and is tasked with doing far more things than it did during the Apollo era.

So, no, NASA didn't think that reusable rockets were impossible. They were essentially blocked from building them because of government figures who didn't see the value in a program that's essential for modern life.

Minor notes: the SLS SRBs are made of sections of STS SRBs as well as some new ones — they’re modular and the SLS uses 5-segment boosters while STS used 4-segment — as well as some new sections. Ditto the main engines. But unlike STS, it’s all disposed of. They don’t recover the boosters or the engines, though after some cost-related grilling in Congress there’s now an extremely vague plan to recover the main engines “eventually”. It’ll probably never happen.

Also NASA was very hesitant to develop a reusable rocket because they didn’t think there was a sufficient potential demand for rocket launches at the lower cost/kg that SpaceX enabled to warrant the R&D. That’s unquestionably something SpaceX got right that NASA was very shortsighted about.

Thanks. I knew that the SRBs had to be modified for the SLS, but I couldn't remember the exact details as I wasn't entirely certain that the thing would ever get off the ground, so I didn't pay too close attention to all of it.

Eh, do we really want NASA launching everything? Sure, we want NASA to launch things at a low cost, but having them handle all rocket launches is kinda like having the FAA run every airline, and the Navy run cruise ships.

I mean, even if you take an industry where it makes sense for a government to run part of it (say, mass transit in a city), you want that to be controlled by a different entity than the Department of Transportation.

The Navy running cruise ships could take care of some Karen situations

OMG I would so move my glory hole to the poop deck for that.

"Everybody clear the shuffleboard deck, we've got a fighter coming in."

https://bsky.app/profile/nytimes.com/post/3klfbf4ih5222

Says the guy who should have been a blowjob nutting in his mother's stomach acids.

Has this fucker looked at his beach photos?

I think he has Homer Simpson's magic Schwarzenegger mirror.

His statement is truish but neglects the need for hormonal BC as BC and medicine that fights cancers and problems with the female reproductive system hormonal levels.

It should be noted female BC raises the risks of certain cancers a lot, especially when in contact with carcinogens like smoking. People using it should be monitored for their potassium levels and problems with their pancreas because some forms of it will effect those things in dangerous levels. Yes, these hormones do effect mood and can possibly lead to suicidal thoughts.

There is not just one chemical available for BC and the doctor can give you a different form or adjust the levels of chemicals to help some people with them. I know Elon did this for the wrong reason because he is an absolute scumbag idiot, but it is a good statement because some women might not know there are cheap alternatives and they are not the problem because they have a bad reaction to a specific BC.
\
Again, I had the problem when I went on Yaz, and I did not want to quit because I thought it was my only way to transition. When I realized it was just the inconvenience of some time off to bring me back to baseline potassium levels and then go on to a different BC chemical which worked much better for me then I was more willing. My doctor was a bit of a problem in how he represented that too me.

Women should be aware that some of these things are not just women being hormonal women when they are adjusting their hormonal BC levels, and suicidal thoughts can sneak the fuck up on you. It certainly should not be represented as never do these substances because they may be very necessary. These things could happen and you do not have to just suck it up and live with it. There are things a doctor can help you with, but do not go to Elon for your medical advice.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mus...orithm-tweets-didnt-get-attention-book-2024-2

It's his website, if he wants to just pin all his ramblings to the top of everyone's X-line that's his right, and honestly it would be more honest and simpler than tinkering with algorithms.

Hard not to notice, though, that the techbro thinks the answer is to tinker with the tech. Couldn't be he needs to get better at tweeting, or that his audience just isn't interested in him.

https://bsky.app/profile/helenkennedy.bsky.social/post/3klq72ebghv2l

An if Dittman ain’t Elmo, it’s Elmo using an AI voice that sounds identical to him.

I see Matt Taibi is on Elon’s shit list now. I guess he’s no longer a right winger.

I don't think that works the way you think it works.

No...these assholes are a (metaphorical) bunch of cannibals who are just happy to eat other in their quest to prove their fealty to Fearless Leader.