There were some survivors. Some died willingly knowing what they were doing, a lot of them wound up being forced at gunpoint. The entire compound was being guarded by men with rifles, since they were rightly afraid the US was just going to come down and kill them because the cult had legitimately just murdered a US congressman.

Fun fact: the actor ad-libbed in “locked” instead of “encoded” originally, and it worked well enough that it became a thing right then, pretty much.

This mission especially brought the “space travel is fake” crowd out. The rocket launch explodes over a deserted area, nobody’s onboard, all the missions are faked, and the splashdowns are in restricted waters to sell the simulation.

Usually this is on top of “well you can’t survive the Van Allen radiation belts”, as if radiation safety and shielding is not a problem we understood and solved before we even lit off Mercury.

Ultimate reasoning for it is either a vague notion of “control”, bread and circuses, or “they do this to defy God”, because space isn’t real and the Firmament lies above the sky.

You’re not throwing propane bombs at libraries if you’re doing some sort of “precisely targeted attack”.

The issue is, this is a joint war involving Israel as well. As you may have noticed from the smoking pile of rubble that was Gaza City, Israel has a long history of “we’re just gonna violate that ceasefire real quick”.

Now Sultans of Swing is stuck in my head.

It’s so weird that he’s so homophobic. Ender’s Game is incredibly chock-full of homoeroticism.

Honestly, a lot of the Scully-focused episodes are great.

My work phone for my old job, lived at work. When I clocked off, unless management really wanted to go dragging my actual cell number out of my resume, I was unreachable. If it’s that much of an emergency, you can get someone else.

Yeah, I thought the larger body of evidence all but proves that it was a wet market source.

Nah, “conditional approval” is written into the regulation. You might know this wording better as “pay us a large sum and we’ll give you approval.”

The truth is those “career experts” are now long gone. The ones who needed to continue working have either gone into industry or left for greener shores. The ones who could retire, did (a good chunk of them also having left the country). It’s a billion times easier to stop doing science and turn off all the equipment, than it is to turn it back on. Even the agencies that are hiring again, are having trouble - my friend is a PhD physicist interviewing for Los Alamos right now, and normally, there would be HUNDREDS of applicants for these government positions.

They got 60 applications for two jobs, total.

Nobody wants to work for the government when we’ve just learned some billionaire friend of the President can fire you just because Grok told him you were worthless.

Not long. We’re already burning $1-2B per day on Iran, most of that being highly expensive and hard to replace munitions and fuel. Eventually the people we can borrow money from will stop lending (we’re already borrowing billions a month to keep things afloat as is).

Plus all the shock absorption for the lense. And the avionics if you don’t plan to just have this thing drop film into a predetermined area (like the old Keyhole sats or the U-2).

Legitimately nothing. I think this is MS looking for use cases, because they have sunk all their capacity into AI. They cannot detangle themselves from their AI, and they’re trying to course correct into SOMETHING that might be profitable and pull them out of their death spiral.

Legitimately the dude is a sociopathic teenager.

“Why would I wanna spend time with Grandma or the kids or my wife or my dog when I can sit and play video games and draw cool stuff in my notebooks.”

I don’t think any of these fucking weirdos know what “genuine human connection” IS. I don’t think any of them have actually internalized a genuine, caring relationship at any point. They know how the steps of the dance, they can do it on command, but it’s soulless.

Getting every episode of Dr Oz uploaded to your frontal lobes.

Nope, Corey is out of the house now too.

I think autocorrect made Gareth from Garak.

You would be extremely surprised. Car maintenance is expensive, and lack of inspection very often leads to people driving vehicles that should have been off the road years ago simply because a lot of states that axe it, axe inspections because they’re expensive for the driver (a lot of these states are in the former Steel Belt). In better-off areas or places where people have more time/money/equipment/space to wrench on cars, then yes, but here in my city, I definitely have seen cars where the entire frame is basically being held together by Bondo and prayer, cars where they’re running on 4 spares, cars where enormous sections of the body paneling are just gone. I’ve nearly been hit by people who clearly relied on yearly inspections to tell them “hey your brakes are failing” because they drive on autopilot and just adjust how they drive to accommodate failing/failed brakes.

In fact, I suspect maintenance costs are HIGHER in areas without inspection, because shops could rely on that regular-ish influx of cash even if it was only like $50-$100 a vehicle, AND you have the customer in the shop, so it’s easier to go “hey you really need brakes, it’ll cost you an extra $200 and take an extra hour or two”.