leicsmac

Oooof.

https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-fourth-test-flight-static-fire-move-photos SpaceX is still analyzing data from last week's flight, but it's also looking ahead to mission number four. Indeed, the company has moved the coming flight's Ship out to the launch pad at Starbase "for upcoming static fires," SpaceX said in a post on X on Friday afternoon (March 22). Static fires are coming prelaunch tests, in which engines are fired briefly while a vehicle is anchored to the launch pad. If the impending static fires and other trials go well — and if the Federal Aviation Administration grants a launch license in time — Starship could fly again as soon as early May, SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said earlier this week. Definitely reducing the turnaround time, another sign of the continual improvement. If they do get a half dozen more tests between now and the end of the year, I'm going to bet at least the last two or three will be pretty much entirely successful in terms of recovering both Super Heavy and Starship. Bodes well for the Artemis program too because that needs to get moving without much more schedule slip.

On another note, did anyone else notice how much Brazil decided to kick Bellingham up in the air? Must have targeted him as the main threat.

It's quite possibly glib, yes, but it's also a way to demonstrate that such critics might not actually be able to categorically prove what they say and should perhaps qualify their remarks as opinion rather than stating them as fact. But then you see examples of that all the time. The fact is that we have no way of knowing whether or not another manager would do better than Southgate right now beyond a hunch, because no other England manager has been in the same situation with all other variables equal.

Given how complex modern cars are, I think the amount of people who can learn to repair their car by themselves in their own time (and do it) would be rather small these days. Particularly the electrical engineering, that's the biggest change.

A lot more reports about flooding in various areas of the UK these days.

... who were driven by the sentiment that their national symbols and culture were better and wanted to keep them alive. Has such sentiment done good? Yeah. Does it make up for the horrible stuff that's been done because of it? No and I don't think it's even close. But then that's just my take and I can't quantify it, and I know a lot of others clearly think differently. I'll leave my own thoughts at that because I don't want to clog up the thread further.

And I would agree. Sadly, history shows there's rather a lot of both people and examples of taking things like national symbolism and what it means and running rather too far with it.

I think the 90's and early 00's ones are decent too.

It is a bit grim in there, isn't it?

They are damned important to people, yeah. Especially what they represent. A rather large amount of warfare and associated death and suffering over the last few hundred years is testament to that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68575271 Heat pumps are still too expensive and too few people know about them, the government has been warned. Despite its target, only 55,000 heat pumps were sold in the UK in 2022. Sales must increase dramatically, said the UK's spending watchdog. To meet UK climate change targets, the government wants to install 600,000 low-carbon heat pumps annually by 2028. The government told the BBC it was "helping rather than forcing families to install heat pumps". The National Audit Office (NAO) said ministers were optimistic to think that target could be reached by 2028. It urged the government to increase public awareness of the green technology and work to reduce costs. [.....] In its report, the NAO said that the main reasons for the low uptake are: limited public awareness of the technology the higher costs relative to gas boilers the lack of long-term financial support for households Well, yeah. Not everyone has the ability or inclination to see the long game here, so it really should be the job of central government to step in and provide the necessary information and support. That's what they're for; to ensure what needs to get done gets done when the individual or small group can't. And this is most definitely at least part of what needs to get done.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68576735 Greenpeace could be thrown out of the UN body overseeing controversial plans to begin deep-sea mining. One mining company claims the campaign group disrupted a research expedition in the remote Pacific. Member states of the UN's International Seabed Association could choose to strip Greenpeace of its observer status within the group. Greenpeace says the incident in question was a peaceful protest aimed at protecting a pristine ecosystem. Difficult to say who is in the right long term here - there's still no hard numbers to be sure either way. Perhaps something in between.

The majority of talking heads on in the Anglosphere talking about the ridiculous nature of the Russian election (or life in China) would accept such systems with next to zero complaint if they lived and/or grew up in either of those countries. Talk is cheap. Action is a lot more costly and very few people are cut out for suffering and dying to change things to a "freer" society. So perhaps the ordinary people in those places shouldn't be judged too harshly.

A godsend while working on my thesis.

Centering football - in the same way as centering any other passion that has elements beyond your control - at the expense of other pastimes is always going to have a serious possibility of affecting mental health negatively. Again, same goes for anyone with a singular focus on "something" that they can't control entirely. As per above, best to have other outlets too and not get roped in too much.

...and people see the Loch Ness Monster. Still, you have to take it on faith that even with decisions of that amount of criticality to a game that the officials know what they're doing, I guess. But it would have been nice to see what he saw confirmed.

Apparently not. Apparent "no hands tackle" that only the ref saw. Apparently.

Needed that one.

Not with this SH reffing team.

Well, the only other thing that could have gone wrong in that 30 seconds for England was a red card. Very much back and forth this.

England outFrancing France. Interesting.

And cut out the poor discipline and mistakes at speed.

England need to weather the storm here.

Right, and even if that were true about the volcanoes (and it isn't), the rapidly rising carbon dioxide and commensurate temperature increases should concern anyone sane and want to at least sort mitigation and resilience measures rather than dismissing the problem out of hand.