Project Orion

Imagine a ship full of nuclear bombs. The ship has a blast shield at its back end. The ship poops out a series of bombs, each of which explode and push the craft forward.

This was a seriously funded research project. They launched functional (non-nuclear) prototypes and penciled out a Mars mission using this technology. The project was thankfully cancelled due to the signing of the 1963 partial nuclear test ban treaty. Because maybe detonating a bunch of nukes in the atmosphere isn’t such a good idea, when most of us still need that atmosphere after the rocket is gone.

Just the cost of doing business.

Edit: The settlement will be paid out over 10 years. If Meta pays a steady $1.8B every year that’s <1% of annual revenue. Damnit!

Cycling: Get a bicycle and start exploring your area. It doesn’t need to be a nice bike; check garage sales and Craigslist and get whatever fits comfortably. Wander off your usual routes and you will encounter new corners of your town that you never knew existed.

Music: Pick up a used acoustic guitar, electric keyboard, banjo, or whatever you can find. The world is full of inexpensive books and free YouTube videos to teach new students.

Drawing: Make doodles, little comics, or sketches of whatever is around you. A pencil and paper are all you need. Look up YouTube videos for daily sketching practice exercises.

Amateur radio: An entry-level license involves a basic quiz and a nominal fee. Cheap radios can be had for less than US$100. If you meet an old timer with a garage full of gear they might hand you a pile of old equipment for free.

Of course, any of these can become expensive and time-consuming hobbies if you go down the rabbit hole. But that just means you have found something you love.

The risk of harm to my kids.

Most common fear by far.

I mean, it saved them from famine at the time. But today I’m thinking it’s about time to change direction and return to the old homeland.

My Norwegian great-great-great-grandparents saw this and said, “Let’s move to North Dakota and live in a sod hut.”

Well put.

No military background here. But through family and friends I have had a lot of interactions with military folks, and I’m loosely interested in military stuff.

My username is due to living near water my whole life, and enjoying being in and around it. I love fishing, paddling, swimming, skipping stones from shore, watching osprey catch fish, all of it.

Ballpark numbers: USS Abraham Lincoln has about 5,000 people on board. And it is part of a larger carrier strike group that totals maybe 7,500 personnel. You need a long, strong global supply chain to serve that many people for months on end as they travel halfway around the world. Iran has apparently broken the chain in some key places.

Mental health is a separate problem. The Abraham Lincoln’s planned 6-month deployment is now at almost 9 months and counting, with no publicly announced return date. Wikipedia says the ship has only stopped at port twice in that time. So the sailors on board have been stuck in close quarters, away from their homes or loved ones, getting shot at in a war zone, for 3 months longer than expected, and with only two brief breaks. It’s not hard to understand that they might be exhausted and strained. Multiple sailors have tried to jump overboard and at least one sailor actually did it without being stopped. That’s not a supply chain problem; it’s a top-down organizational fiasco.

Nobody speaks up in public. But if you watch the top brass you can catch glimpses of their disdain for Trump and the GOP’s culture war bullshit.

One of my favorite examples is the video of Admiral Gilday sticking up for a non-binary sailor (and the Navy in general) when Tommy Tuberville tried to grill him in a senate hearing. Another time, previous Secretary of Defense James Mattis visited troops abroad and let a line slip about trouble back home.

I hereby declare that the proper scientific name for a black hole sun is a Cornell.

Black hole sun

You’ll find a new honey someday.

This woman is an AT legend.

When Gatewood set out, she brought with her just a homemade denim bag with a blanket, a shower curtain, a cup, a canteen and bottle for water, a small pot, a spoon, a Swiss Army knife, a first-aid kit, pins, a flashlight, a piece of rope, a raincoat, a warm coat, a change of clothes, and her trusty Keds sneakers. She wore out seven pairs of Keds during the entirety of her trip. Remarkably, Gatewood did not bring a sleeping bag, a tent, a compass, or a map. Instead, she relied on the hospitality and kindness of strangers who lived along the trail for food and shelter. This was rather easy to do, because Gatewood became something of a local celebrity in the neighboring towns.
Media coverage of her trip was extensive with local reporters stopping to interview her. Her own children found out about her trip because a newspaper clipping had made its way to her hometown in Ohio. Despite this hospitality, the trip was not entirely comfortable. Gatewood often slept on front porch swings, under picnic benches, or on a bed of leaves. She ate canned Vienna sausages, raisins, nuts, chicken bouillon cubes, or greens she found on the trail. Gatewood was particularly resourceful and had learned which plants were edible before her trip.

https://www.outdoors.org/resources/amc-outdoors/history/grandma-gatewood-the-first-woman-to-solo-hike-the-entire-appalachian-trail/

Those are coveted by the noncredibledefense crowd. You can get copies on AliExpress, but they just aren’t the same.

Didn’t you hear? Lockheed is “extremely woke” according to the right-wing culture warriors:

https://buywokefree.com/brand-profile/lockheed-martin

When my Waterpik broke after years of use I was happily surprised to learn they still had replacement parts available.

I like this representation a lot.

Every day is STFU Friday.

actor Matt Damon, who plays Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s interpretation of Homer’s epic tale, had said in an interview that she had “the greatest arms I have ever seen.”

Damon had been discussing one of the film’s pivotal scenes when he gently corrected his interlocutor, who had mistakenly assumed the biceps in the shot were his own: They belonged to Dalton, who some might be surprised to learn is his stunt double.

A shot of Dalton from behind in the scene, holding a sword and ready to pounce at the giants, is used in one of the posters for the movie.

Confirmed. That’s a damn fine arm.