Links are at the end, contemplating constructing a chain to escape their prison.
When I was a lad, one of the two dailies in our mid-sized city traditionally ran giant front page headlines on Easter, to the effect that HE IS RISEN. The publisher needed to come out of his cave.
“Earth is basically defenseless against impacts from space rocks. In September 2022, NASA’s DART mission successfully deflected a non-threatening asteroid, slightly altering its orbit using kinetic impact in a test of planetary defense.”
Not good enough! A University of California team has received a relatively small NASA grant to refine their design of what sounds very much like a rail gun, meant to shatter incoming asteroids into pieces small enough for earth’s atmosphere to digest. No word on where the asteroid buster would be stationed if it’s ever built, but it can’t be anywhere that will make other countries happy; if one can hit objects traveling tens of thousands of miles per hour, one can hit pretty much anything.1
Other grants were awarded to teams variously designing a pharmaceutical manufacturing process for astronauts and a very large radio telescope array to be built from local materials on the dark side of the moon. All of the projects qualify as cool.
“Some will say, “Isn’t the historic arraignment of a former United States President important as well?” And I say to you: No. It’s not. Not really.”
Hamilton Nolan at In These Times engaged in a bit of press criticism on Arraignment Day, not exempting himself.2
The park itself, which was ostensibly the site of a protest, was jammed with a crowd that was about 80% press, 15% police and 5% people who had come to protest or counterprotest on one side or the other. Any lunatic who wanted to don a MAGA hat or wave a “FUCK TRUMP” flag and make their way downtown was likely to be photographed and patiently interviewed by multiple power-suited TV newspeople who would nod and maintain a look of professionalism, no matter how stupid the words flowing from the person’s mouth were. One man wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and a rubber Trump mask told a reporter, with great seriousness, “I don’t really give interviews, because I don’t sound like him.” We, the press, were all here, and we needed content. There was no one to blame but ourselves.
Even the Proud Boys and antifa, usually reliable telegenic opponents on the field of pointless political battle, did not bother showing up to this event, leaving the desperate reporters crowding around a single guy with a Trump hat on his head and a small dog in a cart at his side.
In The New Republic, Alex Shepard described live, extensive coverage of Trump opening a door.3
On CNN, they kept talking about the doors. “There are many doors in this courtroom and many hallways to these doors,” said one on-air panelist shortly after former President Donald Trump entered a lower Manhattan court to plead not guilty to 34 counts relating to a hush-money payment paid to an adult film actress shortly before the 2016 election. “So there are many doors to choose from,” they added, prompting panelists to muse that Trump probably hadn’t had to open a door for himself in years—he has servants and secret service agents for that, after all—and was probably annoyed that an NYPD officer escorting him into the court failed to hold one open for him.
That shit is almost Rumsfeldesque. It’s borderline mystical, like Chance the Gardener or that Rumi guy everybody was quoting to make low-energy memes a few years ago. “Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open? Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. The entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.”
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking, DonJon, and you talkers too. Many doors may open.
Shepard and Nolan both think the arraignment frenzy bodes ill for the presidential primaries, whether or not Trump runs, which, obviously, it does and he will.
“For their experiment, researchers at Washington State University (WSU) dressed Barbies in makeshift spacesuits constructed of materials similar to what NASA uses.”
And then they blasted Barbie and her sisters with liquid nitrogen to see how well the process worked to remove moon dust from their suits.4
Next door neighbor Sid, whose character was based on Ernst Stavro Blofeld, did this kind of thing in Toy Story and everybody thought he was a psychopath. Context matters!
"The fact that this individual is over 30,000 years old makes it important for understanding human evolution," said Santos.
Even so, the guy looks really familiar.5
Music
Just the one today. I hadn’t listened to CocoRosie for many years, and I enjoyed this newish album.
CocoRosie, “Put the Shine On.”6
That, Comrades, is all there is
I’m gonna go resurrect myself. Be well, take care.