"What I'm Thinking About" Wednesdays - 8.9.23

Look out, we’re trying to figure out a viable schedule! The mix of news and commentary will be married with memes and other Tea-worthy reading. And of course music, art, and other miscellaneous content types that you have come to expect. The hope is to combine this with the two dispatches a month, possibly more if there’s enough interest in subscriptions. But now, back to our show!

Watersports, Foreign & Domestic

China & Russia did a buddy comedy sailing thing near Alaska, with China also using water cannons on a Filipino craft that was grounded in disputed waters. But, that’s not the only aquatic insanity in Alaska this week, as the video below shows.

How do you say “Another One” in Farsi?

So, we sent troops to the Middle East again? We’re “debating” whether to station real troops on commercial ships to “deter” Iran from…stuff. Is there a particular reason we need to send 3000 of our bravest on boat patrol in a region we were supposed to be leaving? I’m probably just overthinking it.

Cosmocapitalism

Private jackasses want to turn space exploration into a resource extraction exercise, to the point where some are hoping to mess with market prices by shipping commodity resources across the solar system. Do we know that helping billionaires do that will benefit the planet more than giving everyone a chance to be an engineer? I’m not quite sure. I am sure that we have been here before though. Just ask Gil Scott Heron, the guy who wrote Revolution Will Not Be Televised, that song you quote in marketing meetings.

Shark Week in Queens

First shark bite since the 50s, but it’s Far Rockaway. so you have to assume the number of humans who have bitten other humans has to be at least triple.

Conducting Fusion 

Good news is important, and good technology news is critical these days. We’re potentially at an energetic precipice, with “net gain” energy having been experimentally achieved during a second fusion ignition. This might not be warp drive stuff, but if we could replace fossil with fusion, our planet would be so much better off we can’t even imagine what it would look like. Pairing it with the news about room temperature superconductor materials is enough to give a cynic like myself hope for the future.

Keep your head up,T