Except the “emergency capsule” is all of them, including Starliner. Because Starliner is perfectly capable of returning to earth safely.

Because every thruster that has shut down has hot fired okay, and the known helium leaks still leave enough margin to cover several multiples of the 5 hours or so of RCS operation that you need to get to landing.

My understanding is that the second Distance campaign is mostly recycled Nitronic Rush levels.

What the heck is that kitchen cabinet thing in the back?

Big Smoke, you make big mistake.

T stands for “terminal count”.

Fine? That sounds like a thirteenth amendment situation.

Edit: not US, no thirteenth amendment.

I wonder how much of this is just the Minuteman replacement.

To be fair to Airbus,

1. They probably chose the language for that call-out way before 2009. Airplanes can live for thirty years, and type designs can keep going several decades longer

2. The designers were also likely to be French, but they selected English call-outs. This seems to me like a case where they picked a word that’s technically in the OED l, but is actually much more common in French.

Is it anything like juche, the Korean-supremacist ideology of North Korea?

I think my mother played that star trek game on a time shared minicomputer.

Let us all remember that, at least back when it started, the establishment alternative to systemd was a product named after its original operating system, System V UNIX, which is a direct descendent of the original UNIX from AT&T. This sysvinit software used complicated shell scripts to manage daemons. Contrary to some opinions, these shell scripts were not “just working”; they were in fact a constant and major maintenance burden for Linux distributions. When I started on Linux at least, Debian had a suspiciously large fraction of bugs on init script breakages.

All this is to say that the new system, systemd, doesn’t have to be anywhere near perfect to be worth replacing sysvinit.

People argue that systemd is rejecting the “UNIX philosophy” of small tools that do one thing well. I argue that this UNIX philosophy is not some kind of universal good with no tradeoffs. It’s an engineering rule of thumb. There are always tradeoffs.

People argue that systemd is too much like Windows NT. I argue that Windows NT has at least a few good ideas in it. And if one of those ideas solves a problem that Linux has, Linux should use that idea.

I’ve met a lot of people who don’t seem to understand this important concept from epistemology, which is the philosophy of knowledge.

To demonstrate the concept of “non-falsifiability” I will now produce a short fictitious dialog between a made up Scientist, S, and a Religionist, R.

Topic: how old is the earth? Is it 6,000 years old or more than 4 billion years old?

S: The earth must be more than 4 billion years old, because I found these rocks. These rocks have isotopes in them and they definitely look like they’ve been around for more than 4 billion years. If the rocks are really old, then the earth must be really old too.

R: No. The is only 6,000 years old, because the holy Bible has a list of human descendants from Adam, the first man, to Jesus, who we know was born in 4 BC. If you count it all up, you can find the exact year that the earth was created, as described in Genesis 1, and it’s about 6,000 years.

S: But these rocks… They’re really old…

R: God must have created those rocks with the isotopes already set up in the correct ratios to look like they are 4 billion years old, when He separated the firmament from the heavens 6,000 years ago.

S: But how could God create rocks with different isotopes? When minerals solidify from molten lava, lead isotopes naturally form in this ratio. (I don’t actually know how initial lead composition was established for this)

R: God is omnipotent! Any miracle is within his grasp.

S: But why would God want to make the earth appear to be much older than it really is? What purpose does it serve?

R: I do not pretend to understand the ways of God.

Here’s my recollection from civics class:

1. Each state makes their own laws about whether and when a dead candidate can be replaced on the ballot. It’s entirely possible that citizens in some states would vote for dead candidates, while citizens in other states are voting for different candidates.

2. Remember you’re actually voting for the electors that are listed underneath each (now presumed dead) presidential candidate. States make their own laws on how strictly the electors actually have to vote for the guy they pledged to. In many states, there’s no penalty for being a “faithless” elector, and so in this scenario I would imagine that many electors in this situation would exercise their prerogative to vote for a living person who is eligible to hold the office. Perhaps even a re-nominee from their party.

3. Electors meet in their state capitols to sign and transmit the real ballots to Congress. However they decide to vote based on the above, I think it’s important to the constitution that this happens by a deadline (December 18?), and if that is missed, we may be in real constitutional crisis territory.

4. After meeting, swearing in new members, and electing a house speaker (I really hope they can elect a speaker), Congress meets in a joint session to count the real ballots from step 3. This process is in the constitution. This is the process that was interrupted by a mob on Jan. 6, 2021. Under the constitution, Congress can only go against what the ballots say if there’s a tie, in which case the house votes for president on a one state, one vote basis.

4a. As seen in 2021, Congress could conceivably engage in a deliberative process to determine whether ballots that are presented are real, legitimate ballots or not. The constitution doesn’t actually allow them to do this. This is a real weakness in the system. If Congress isn’t allowed to adjudicate ballot legitimacy, then who is? Apparently no one.

4b. There’s also no alternate process if the majority of elector ballots have elected a dead person. Presumably Congress is required to declare that person President.

5. Constitution also says the next president’s term starts on Jan. 20, 2025, at noon eastern, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. If Biden dies in office, his VP Kamala Harris will assume the duties. But that term ends on this date, and the fact that she ascended would have no direct bearing on whether she appears on any presidential ballot.

5a. This turnover deadline literally has no exceptions. If it is missed for any reason, we’re probably in real serious constitutional crisis territory.

5b. If, per 4b, Congress declared that a dead person was elected president, I imagine that person would have a hard time showing up to inauguration on Jan 20. In this case I think that once the turnover has occurred, the normal line succession, which is 17 people deep*, can be used to swear in the next president.

5b1. In this scenario, next up would be the vice president-elect from the elector ballots, probably sworn into the vice presidency first. Third in line is the speaker of the house (I really, really hope they can elect a speaker). Then President Pro Tempore of the senate (the longest serving senator), then cabinet secretaries.

*Most of the 17 are cabinet secretaries. These do not expire automatically when the presidential term expires on Jan. 20. This means that all of the old president’s secretaries are still in the line of succession (unless they foolishly submitted resignation letters) until a president is sworn in and either fires them or makes them resign.

**The presidential term starts at a precise date and time, but a president must swear the oath of office. Both things are in the constitution, so what happens when the time arrives, but the new president isn’t sworn in?

Well, it’s a weightless chicken at least, because this model’s got no gravity.

These are all general opinion statements. There aren’t any verifiable facts like, “on this date at a meeting with x we discussed how AI project y is myopic and non-user-centered.”

I believe the project in that episode was actually Atlantropa, a dam across the strait of Gibraltar to drain the entire Mediterranean sea.

The idea was proposed in the 1920s and somewhat entertained by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

To be fair it might actually be possible to find smut there.

Somebody who is less lazy than me should try to translate the glyphs.

A big part of WWI is that the web of treaties and alliances were all secret, as in classified information by each country.

NATO is not a secret. The membership roster and terms and conditions are known to all, including potential adversaries like Mr. Putin. This has a major effect on stabilizing international relations because nobody has to guess what NATO would do.

Despite his rhetoric, we know that Putin understands how NATO works, because he has been pulling materiel out of Kaliningrad. This leaves the Russian exclave extremely vulnerable to an invasion from NATO territory. But Putin is not worried about that, probably because he actually trusts NATO to follow the NATO charter.

Pay no attention to gconf, dconf, GSettings, or whatever else there is.