The books are so, so good...best “hard” sci-fi in quite a while.  But dense, so very, very dense...

The cop (without looking it up, Da Shi is how I believe it is spelled) was pretty witty...but otherwise, yeah, very somber.

There are many applications for this admittedly trash product - I have a Keurig in my office because a coffee pot is just not a viable option (I only use the biodegradable options currently available, primarily from San Fransisco Bay company) - also, on the boat, camping, traveling...for some things a Keurig is much…

If you were concerned about mediocrity, you wouldn’t be at McDonalds...

No.

We already have this - Taco Bell, Olive Garden, and Applebees ALREADY have social media presence. 

That is precisely it - I’ve thoroughly enjoyed a good Whopper but cannot recall when that last occurred.

I don’t disagree but unless we want to re-fund NASA (which I would definitely advocate for) this is our horse.  Wish we could take it out behind the barn and put it out of it’s misery...but for TODAY this is what we have. 

The Quarter-Pounder is the only decent thing at McD’s, and probably the nationally available best fast-food burger. (Culvers crushes it though, as does other regional-only fast-food sandwiches and virtually ALL independent shops) I don’t remember when, but it feels like somewhere in the mid-90's the Whopper was the…

I cannot accept that. We can do the hard thing. The necessary thing. I don’t want to sentence humanity to the inevitable global catastrophic event that will end us - the galaxy is massive and at least the nearby systems seems to have no live advanced enough to produce radio waves so...let’s go. Nihilistic attitudes…

So build a basket from scratch WHILE AT THE SAME TIME mend the one we have.

Take Musk out of the equation.

What kool-aid? The one where I don’t want all of civilization to vanish if we get hit by a big (eventually inevitable) rock or decide to destroy ourselves? That kool-aid?

Because Mars is step one. Europa (or some other Jovian moon, likely) step two. We have to walk before we run, and right now we are barely rolling around in the crib. This is a multi-generational endeavor - you and I will not live to see it come to anything like fruition.

We blew up A LOT of rockets before getting to Saturn...

We went from man being believed to never being able to fly to landing on the moon in 69 years. If we funded the space program like we fund the military we would be well past a colony on Mars by now. 

Wow...you know the whole “eggs in one basket” analogy, right? It did not say keep your eggs in one basket and keep mending that basket.

You are not wrong, from what I have read. But like in much of industry today, somebody is better than nobody...and for better or worse Muskrat is what we’ve got, and who is making stuff happen.  I wish NASA was funded and given the mission to make it happen but I’ll take ANYTHING over nothing. 

Biologic imperative man - it’s the scientific Manifest Destiny!

I hope everyone can separate their (justifiable) disdain from Musk from the wishes for success for Space-X. While I wish NASA could be funded enough to be cutting-edge and handle the nation’s space needs, the reality of life in 2024 and our corporate overlords control of society leave it to industry.