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Posted (edited)
On 9/15/2025 at 3:10 PM, utee94 said:

Questions for medical experts?

Does taking ketamine help give you grandiose ideas? 
 

Asking for a friend. 
 

Not sure why UTEE quote is there. 

Edited by Shaddie
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Posted
4 minutes ago, Shaddie said:

Questions for medical experts?

Does taking ketamine help give you grandiose ideas? 
 

Asking for a friend. 

Ketamin GIFs - Find & Share on GIPHY

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Posted

You know spacex is failing when NASA insiders are leaking to the NYT about how far behind the program is. Apparently <gasp> Elmo has over-promised and under-delivered.

https://archive.ph/5iIrb

Screenshot2025-09-20at9_20_45AM.thumb.png.148ccb949e716abdad80aadd237412eb.png

Screenshot2025-09-20at9_17_07AM.thumb.png.381e1a2bbf0a64f505a2eac1896cc285.png

 

The former reality tv dude who's now head of NASA among other roles for which he's highly unqualified (FAA, USDOT) says there's nothing to see.

Quote

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, the acting NASA administrator, said in a statement to The Times that he was standing by the current SpaceX plan.

 

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Posted
9 minutes ago, Chopper said:

You know spacex is failing when NASA insiders are leaking to the NYT about how far behind the program is. Apparently <gasp> Elmo has over-promised and under-delivered.

https://archive.ph/5iIrb

Screenshot2025-09-20at9_20_45AM.thumb.png.148ccb949e716abdad80aadd237412eb.png

Screenshot2025-09-20at9_17_07AM.thumb.png.381e1a2bbf0a64f505a2eac1896cc285.png

 

The former reality tv dude who's now head of NASA among other roles for which he's highly unqualified (FAA, USDOT) says there's nothing to see.

 

Smarter Every Day has an excellent video about the current "moon mission" and it's planning shortcomings. After his talk (over a year ago now) NASA even amended their mission plan to address unaccounted orbital refuelings from Starship to Starship. 18 refuelings PER MOON TRIP, and they haven't even successfully demonstrated orbital flight, much less orbital cryogenic refueling 

 

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Posted
8 minutes ago, Captainant said:

NASA even amended their mission plan to address unaccounted orbital refuelings from Starship to Starship. 18 refuelings PER MOON TRIP, and they haven't even successfully demonstrated orbital flight, much less orbital cryogenic refueling 

Ricky Gervais Lol GIF

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Posted
4 hours ago, Captainant said:

NASA even amended their mission plan to address unaccounted orbital refuelings from Starship to Starship. 18 refuelings PER MOON TRIP

hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEmCOADEOgC8quKqQ

“As the seasons change, the refueling continues.”

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Posted
8 hours ago, tbone_ said:

It’s truly bizarre. For the first 53 or so years of my life I was able to pretty much have a normal conversation with just about anyone. The last 2-3, all bets are off. Many otherwise seemingly normal and intelligent people have just completely lost their minds. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen and I did not see this coming. 

Covid broke everyone's brain. 

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Posted
25 minutes ago, immamac said:

Covid broke everyone's brain. 

Do you really think it’s just covid? I mean certainly that was a big influence.

 

But I think the media machinery we’ve developed to relentlessly pound never ending messaging into people’s brains is the bigger culprit. We’re not wired to handle that well as a species imo. And yes , I know, water is wet.

 

I always thought big brother would force himself on us. Never dreamed we’d willingly invite him in.

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Posted
15 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

Do you really think it’s just covid? I mean certainly that was a big influence.

 

But I think the media machinery we’ve developed to relentlessly pound never ending messaging into people’s brains is the bigger culprit. We’re not wired to handle that well as a species imo. And yes , I know, water is wet.

 

I always thought big brother would force himself on us. Never dreamed we’d willingly invite him in.

It was definitely covid. It changed everything for nearly everyone and the new normal is the problem. Covid in america exposed a lot of bullshit and the level of grift and reward system for pure grift has been elevated to be not only acceptable, but mandatory for success. Its all bullshit all the time with a complete breakdown in trust everywhere. 

Part of what you are talking about is in large part due to covid. 

This is a uniquely american problem. If you travel much to other countries it's significantly less fucked up. 

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Posted (edited)
10 hours ago, F250 said:

Least week, I was at a happy hour with some software vendors we have a partnership with. There was one guy who I had previously interacted with a lot and is very smart and talented so I started a conversation with him. 

We are having some drinks and discussing some potential projects regarding agentic AI and DFIR. The discussion was great and then xAI and Grok come up. This guy starts criticizing OpenAI and Altman, I was agreement with his criticism. Then the conversation pivots back to Grok/xAI.

This guy explains only Elon can be trusted with AI, then praises Grok switches to Tesla and how great Robotaxi will be. Then starts talking about the future with Optimus. His eyes are lit up like someone talking about Jesus and heaven. Fucking talking about living on Mars and Elon making sure everyone will have UBI because Elon has a vision for our future. 

I brought up Waymo and all the Zoox robotaxis we were seeing in Vegas. Mentioned all of the robot companies already ahead of Tesla and circled back to the xAI issues. The dude just waved it off and said Elon's vision is coming together and nobody can scale like Elon.

That was my first time interacting with an Elon fanboi in real life and towards the end of the conversation I just sat there like Walter Googins in The White Lotus. 

excuse-me-what-surprise.gif

 

 

 

TL;DR: 

Jennifer Lawrence Thumbs Up GIF

 

I would be interested in the criticism of OpenAI and Altman. I certainly agree they deserve some, just wondering that these were.

I will say that no single person can be trusted with AI. I question that companies can because they are at a major level held by a single leader. And Elon has demonstrated that he absolutely can't be.

Optimus, Mars, UBI - oh ok sure.

Waymo/Zoox/Robotaxi - This is great talk, but until Tesla is doing ANY autonomous rides, they aren't just behind in the race, they still haven't gotten out of the workshop to get on the track.

I will admit - they can scale, and I agree he is poised to be ready to get going, but they are still way behind and not ready to take advantage. And - nobody? There is this small country he might have heard about - China - that has that all down in spades.

I say that guy needs to take off the blinders, because there is a lot that he is missing.

Also - what software company does he work for? Sounds like I need to cross them off the list with this kind of stupidity that their engineers run around with.

 

51 minutes ago, immamac said:

Covid broke everyone's brain. 

 

20 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

Do you really think it’s just covid? I mean certainly that was a big influence.

 

But I think the media machinery we’ve developed to relentlessly pound never ending messaging into people’s brains is the bigger culprit. We’re not wired to handle that well as a species imo. And yes , I know, water is wet.

 

I always thought big brother would force himself on us. Never dreamed we’d willingly invite him in.

 

Social media * Covid

 

You throw everyone in a bubble and let social media just pound in their heads day in, day out. It breaks people. We were already heading down a bad path with social media alone*, but throw in the isolation that a once in a lifetime pandemic and you have a really bad mix for society as a whole.

Hell, social media in the hands of just a few is proof enough that no single person should be in control of any AI. Zuck is basically showing us he doesn't give a damn about anything. He would hook his own mom, wife, kids on heroin if he would result in another $0.10 a share on Meta's stock price.

 

 

Edited by Captain Ron
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Posted
27 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

I always thought big brother would force himself on us. Never dreamed we’d willingly invite him in.

Our dystopia is closer to Brave New World than it is 1984

7 minutes ago, immamac said:

Social media exists outside of America and its not as big of an issue. Americans are fucked up. 

America is fucked up because we don't protect people from companies and corporations. Europe has the GDPR and meaningful punishments for violating people's data sovereignty. Here in the US, that sort of shit is table stakes for basically all of the Mag7, which put more effort into advertising and data harvesting than they do their products and outcomes.

See also: enshittification thread

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Posted
3 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Our dystopia is closer to Brave New World than it is 1984

America is fucked up because we don't protect people from companies and corporations. Europe has the GDPR and meaningful punishments for violating people's data sovereignty. Here in the US, that sort of shit is table stakes for basically all of the Mag7, which put more effort into advertising and data harvesting than they do their products and outcomes.

See also: enshittification thread

America is fucked up because of Americans. 

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Posted
14 minutes ago, immamac said:

America is fucked up because of Americans. 

Americans have been conditioned to value the success of corporations and billionaires over themselves and the other common person.  

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Posted
7 minutes ago, Longhornfan1024 said:

Americans have been conditioned to value the success of corporations and billionaires over themselves and the other common person.  

Its because boomers and gen x failed as parents and the government has largely been in a freefall collapse since citizens united 

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Posted
20 minutes ago, immamac said:

Its because boomers and gen x failed as parents and the government has largely been in a freefall collapse since citizens united 

I do think the growth of the farcical "rugged individualism" mindset has also led to a massive rot and decay in civics in general. There's a whooooole bunch of "fuck you I got mine" in baiscally every aspect of life now, and it's exceedingly rare to see someone doing the right thing just because it's the right thing. 

Everything boils down to a P/L statement - even fucking schools are holding poor children to account for not being able to pay for food at a place the government makes them be. 

Because if he do anything with social benefit, it's SOCIALISM(!!!!) and we're gonna train people to be helpless, or some bullshit like that

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Captainant said:

I do think the growth of the farcical "rugged individualism" mindset has also led to a massive rot and decay in civics in general. There's a whooooole bunch of "fuck you I got mine" in baiscally every aspect of life now, and it's exceedingly rare to see someone doing the right thing just because it's the right thing. 

Everything boils down to a P/L statement - even fucking schools are holding poor children to account for not being able to pay for food at a place the government makes them be. 

Because if he do anything with social benefit, it's SOCIALISM(!!!!) and we're gonna train people to be helpless, or some bullshit like that

Its impossible to truly understand how massive the revenue numbers for the top tech companies are. Everything is a scam. 

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Posted
12 minutes ago, immamac said:

Its impossible to truly understand how massive the revenue numbers for the top tech companies are. Everything is a scam. 

There's a hideous degree of mark-to-market accounting going on in the tech space too right now. For just one example, Oracle building their HUGE fuck-off datacenter in Abiline has led to massive stock value growth, but they don't have nearly enough capital to actually build the thing on time and start getting the revenue out of it that they've already marked down as "definitely going to happen".

It's the same shell game of hypecycle pump and dump that led to the dotcom and housing bubbles.

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Posted
20 minutes ago, Captainant said:

There's a hideous degree of mark-to-market accounting going on in the tech space too right now. For just one example, Oracle building their HUGE fuck-off datacenter in Abiline has led to massive stock value growth, but they don't have nearly enough capital to actually build the thing on time and start getting the revenue out of it that they've already marked down as "definitely going to happen".

It's the same shell game of hypecycle pump and dump that led to the dotcom and housing bubbles.

Preach GIF

Posted
29 minutes ago, Captainant said:

There's a hideous degree of mark-to-market accounting going on in the tech space too right now. For just one example, Oracle building their HUGE fuck-off datacenter in Abiline has led to massive stock value growth, but they don't have nearly enough capital to actually build the thing on time and start getting the revenue out of it that they've already marked down as "definitely going to happen".

It's the same shell game of hypecycle pump and dump that led to the dotcom and housing bubbles.

 

2 minutes ago, F250 said:

Preach GIF

Remember how in those previous bubbles, anyone who dared call out the fact that it was all pump-and-dump/shell game shit built on vapor and/or irrational assumptions was decried as a combination of "too dumb to understand sophisticated business transactions/accounting," were "anti-capitalist," etc. etc.?

Pepperidge Farm remembers.

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Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Some believe Elmo isn't stupid enough to believe his own Mars bs and that he has a different goal in mind.

He’s been obsessed with Mars for forever.  If it was all about Starlink, he wouldn’t shut the fuck op about Starlink. There’s no need to bury it or try to divert attention away from it.  In fact, he’d be using that to raise funds.  

And if all of the stuff with NASA and the moon and Mars was all about him just trying to get more Starlink satellites up there and it gets exposed, government contracts will dry up real fast. They’ll get investigated.  Probably heavily penalized probably problems with the FAA and NASA going forward for launches.

 

Edited by atomheartbevo
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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Captainant said:

There's a hideous degree of mark-to-market accounting going on in the tech space too right now. For just one example, Oracle building their HUGE fuck-off datacenter in Abiline has led to massive stock value growth, but they don't have nearly enough capital to actually build the thing on time and start getting the revenue out of it that they've already marked down as "definitely going to happen".

It's the same shell game of hypecycle pump and dump that led to the dotcom and housing bubbles.

 

Let's also not ignore the fact that the Oracle-OpenAI deal is basically made up numbers predicated on a big hopes and dreams. Just to catch you all up

https://www.wsj.com/business/openai-oracle-sign-300-billion-computing-deal-among-biggest-in-history-ff27c8fe

image.png.008f5560fa032b65cbd3e41c67ef76f4.png

 

This deal drove Oracle to the moon, it made Larry Ellison the richest man in the world.

When you look at the deal:
A. It's really $30 Billion a year for 10 years
B. OpenAI doesn't just have that money  laying around.

In the end, its also smoke and mirrors based on OpenAI constantly growing. Maybe they will, but maybe they won't. Then what?

That said, Oracle will have the datacenter and make bank selling compute to anyone else. But still, those deals aren't yet made.

 

BTW - If you didn't know Oracle is really an acronym. It should be O.R.A.C.L.E. - "One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison"

Edited by Captain Ron
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Posted
42 minutes ago, Chopper said:

Some believe Elmo isn't stupid enough to believe his own Mars bs and that he has a different goal in mind.

 

 

I don't understand the fascination with Starlink as the end all be all. Don't get me wrong - they are a very solid ISP. But that's it - they are an ISP. If I have any real terrestrial high-speed alternative, I will use that instead of Starlink. Sure they are going to dominate a lot of the market for airlines etc. But the way everyone talks , they make it sound as if they are going to be used by everyone and that just won't be the case.

Plus he is going to face competition in this market. I just see them as one among many.

Posted
3 hours ago, immamac said:

Social media exists outside of America and its not as big of an issue. Americans are fucked up. 

 

I might note that Covid came at a very bad time for the US. Society was already fracturing as "us vs them" and Covid amplified that (hence multiplication not addition in my equation above). We were fucked up due to social, political and racial issues, Covid drove us further into our silos and the results are where we are now.

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Posted
3 hours ago, immamac said:

Social media exists outside of America and its not as big of an issue. Americans are fucked up. 

yeah-nailed-it.gif.b2c4dba36055d52204bae1c951ae1c58.gif

3 hours ago, Captainant said:

Our dystopia is closer to Brave New World than it is to 1984.

WELL MY SOMA IS NOT WORKING. 😒

Posted

https://electrek.co/2025/09/21/tesla-influencers-tried-elon-musk-coast-to-coast-self-driving-crashed-before-60-miles/

 

Tesla influencers tried Elon Musk’s coast-to-coast self-driving, crashed before 60 miles
 

 

Quote

A duo of Tesla shareholder-influencers tried to complete Elon Musk’s coast-to-coast self-driving ride that he claimed Tesla would be able to do in 2017 and they crashed before making it about 60 miles.

In 2016, Elon Musk infamously said that Tesla would complete a fully self-driving coast-to-coast drive between Los Angeles and New York by the end of 2017.

The idea was to livestream or film a full unedited drive coast-to-coast with the vehicle driving itself at all times.

 

Quote

We are in 2025 and Tesla never made that drive.

Despite the many missed autonomous driving goals, many Tesla shareholders believe that the company is on the verge of delivering unsupervised self-driving following the rollout of its ‘Robotaxi’ fleet in Austin, which requires supervision from Tesla employees inside the vehicles, and improvements to its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) systems inside consumer vehicles, which is still only a level 2 driver assist system that requires driver attention at all times as per Tesla.

Two of these Tesla shareholders and online influencers attempted to undertake a coast-to-coast drive between San Diego, CA, and Jacksonville, FL, in a Tesla Model Y equipped with the latest FSD software update.

They didn’t make it out of California without crashing into easily avoidable road debris that badly damaged the Tesla Model Y:

 

Spoiler

In the video, you can see that the driver doesn’t have his hands on the steering wheel. The passenger spots the debris way ahead of time. There was plenty of time to react, but the driver didn’t get his hands on the steering wheel until the last second.

Tesla-coast-to-coast-crash.gif?w=1024

 

 

In a follow-up video, the two Tesla influencers confirmed that the Model Y had a broken sway bar bracket and damaged suspension components. The vehicle is also throwing out a lot of warnings.

They made it about 2.5% of the planned trip on Tesla FSD v13.9 before crashing the vehicle.

Electrek’s Take
Tesla shareholders used to discuss this somewhat rationally back in the day, but now that Tesla’s EV business is in decline and the stock price depends entirely on the self-driving and robot promises, they no longer do.

I recall when Musk himself used to say that when you reach 99% self-driving, it is when the “march of the 9s” begins, and you must achieve 99.999999999% autonomy to have a truly useful self-driving system. He admitted that this is the most challenging part as the real-world is unpredictable and hard to simulate – throwing a lot of challenging scenario at you, such as debris on the road.

That’s where Tesla is right now. The hard part has just started. And there’s no telling how long it will take to get there. If someone is telling you that they know, they are lying. I don’t know. My best estimate is approximately 2-3 years and a new hardware suite.

However, competition, mainly Waymo, began its own “march of the 9s” about five years ago.

Tesla is still years behind, and something like this drive by these two Tesla influencers proves it.

 

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Posted
22 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

https://electrek.co/2025/09/21/tesla-influencers-tried-elon-musk-coast-to-coast-self-driving-crashed-before-60-miles/

 

Tesla influencers tried Elon Musk’s coast-to-coast self-driving, crashed before 60 miles
 

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

In the video, you can see that the driver doesn’t have his hands on the steering wheel. The passenger spots the debris way ahead of time. There was plenty of time to react, but the driver didn’t get his hands on the steering wheel until the last second.

Tesla-coast-to-coast-crash.gif?w=1024

 

 

In a follow-up video, the two Tesla influencers confirmed that the Model Y had a broken sway bar bracket and damaged suspension components. The vehicle is also throwing out a lot of warnings.

They made it about 2.5% of the planned trip on Tesla FSD v13.9 before crashing the vehicle.

Electrek’s Take
Tesla shareholders used to discuss this somewhat rationally back in the day, but now that Tesla’s EV business is in decline and the stock price depends entirely on the self-driving and robot promises, they no longer do.

I recall when Musk himself used to say that when you reach 99% self-driving, it is when the “march of the 9s” begins, and you must achieve 99.999999999% autonomy to have a truly useful self-driving system. He admitted that this is the most challenging part as the real-world is unpredictable and hard to simulate – throwing a lot of challenging scenario at you, such as debris on the road.

That’s where Tesla is right now. The hard part has just started. And there’s no telling how long it will take to get there. If someone is telling you that they know, they are lying. I don’t know. My best estimate is approximately 2-3 years and a new hardware suite.

However, competition, mainly Waymo, began its own “march of the 9s” about five years ago.

Tesla is still years behind, and something like this drive by these two Tesla influencers proves it.

 

 

Who could have seen that coming?

 

Everyone - except the Tesla.

21 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

So will Optimus be able to drive a taxi before the Tesla self drive can do it?

They're The Same Picture: A Favorite 'The Office' Meme

Posted
24 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Tesla-coast-to-coast-crash.gif?w=1024

Nah, this needs to be out in the open- THIS IS GOLD.

  Hide contents

In the video, you can see that the driver doesn’t have his hands on the steering wheel. The passenger spots the debris way ahead of time. There was plenty of time to react, but the driver didn’t get his hands on the steering wheel until the last second.

 

 

In a follow-up video, the two Tesla influencers confirmed that the Model Y had a broken sway bar bracket and damaged suspension components. The vehicle is also throwing out a lot of warnings.

They made it about 2.5% of the planned trip on Tesla FSD v13.9 before crashing the vehicle.

Electrek’s Take
Tesla shareholders used to discuss this somewhat rationally back in the day, but now that Tesla’s EV business is in decline and the stock price depends entirely on the self-driving and robot promises, they no longer do.

I recall when Musk himself used to say that when you reach 99% self-driving, it is when the “march of the 9s” begins, and you must achieve 99.999999999% autonomy to have a truly useful self-driving system. He admitted that this is the most challenging part as the real-world is unpredictable and hard to simulate – throwing a lot of challenging scenario at you, such as debris on the road.

That’s where Tesla is right now. The hard part has just started. And there’s no telling how long it will take to get there. If someone is telling you that they know, they are lying. I don’t know. My best estimate is approximately 2-3 years and a new hardware suite.

However, competition, mainly Waymo, began its own “march of the 9s” about five years ago.

Tesla is still years behind, and something like this drive by these two Tesla influencers proves it.

 

Posted
19 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

I might note that Covid came at a very bad time for the US. Society was already fracturing as "us vs them" and Covid amplified that (hence multiplication not addition in my equation above). We were fucked up due to social, political and racial issues, Covid drove us further into our silos and the results are where we are now.

I've said this before, having followed the conspiracy stuff for a long time (got into JFK stuff before the Stone movie). There's always been a group of people who bought into conspiracy theories, and it seemed like early on many were pretty "damaged" in some way - a lot of the early JFK conspiracy believers were personally vested in the mythos of JFK in some way or another (America would have turned out better/life would have turned out better if JFK had lived).  The UFO folks, yeah, many needed their own baggage terminal to follow them around.  And there were some who just needed excitement in their lives and conspiracy theories made them feel special and "in the know".

Up through the 90s, their reach extended to a small section at bookstore if they were lucky (my first exposure to the JFK stuff was to Garrison's book at a B. Dalton in the 80s) buried with the astrology stuff. Their reach outside of somebody seeing one of the few "mainstream" books was normally the backrooms of independent bookstores and student unions, found by flyers tacked up on telephone poles or bulletin boards in said bookstores or student unions, as well as physical mailing lists (which were expensive at the time unless your followers were paying you). They were mocked/ridiculed by normal society and the media.  There was a barrier to entry if you wanted to peddle theories/scam people. It was hard to reach a significant number of your fellow conspiracy theorists unless you really worked at it by way of snail mail mailing lists.

Fast-forward to the mid/late-2000s and the barrier entry is down to almost nothing - email lists and websites were easy to create.  Search engines put your stuff out there. There was the potential for a lot of mini-Art Bells to crop up.  And then YouTube ramped it up. All of the sudden "normal" people could be exposed to this stuff, and some took the bait. Jump ahead 10 years and some of it was creeping into Fox News (and eventually we'd have News Max, OAN, etc. that loved to peddle this stuff). Social media platforms that reached hundreds of millions and even billions were dumping this stuff in the lap of your semi-crazy Aunt Edna, who could, with the click of a button, forward it to hundreds of "friends". Magnify that by millions of Aunt Edna's doing the same thing.

Jump ahead a little more and we get a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that we should have been prepared for - for fuck's sake, the very people who bought hook-line-and-sinker into these theories had been screaming about pandemics and being prepared, and it turns out the preppers couldn't handle staying away from Applebee's or Chili's or Supercuts. It wasn't the idea of the Chinese invading or the government putting them in concentration camps that scared these people, it was the idea they couldn't get a decent appetizer or cheap haircut.

And then the icing on the cake - after we elect a President who was helped by conspiracy theories spread by the largest social media platform, we re-elect him, after he ran on conspiracy theories, including that a known pedophile and child trafficker had files on all the Hollyweird Eleet. The Attorney General of the United States of America tells us publicly that she has the client list on her desk.  Our President attends a 9/11 memorial with a fucking 9/11 truther.  The largest podcaster with a reach of tens of millions constantly pushes whatever conspiracy theories his guests are pushing. The world's richest man constantly pushes conspiracy theories and the 15th or so largest social media platform that he owns allows that stuff to go unchecked. And then our AG and President say there was no list and the party in power votes to keep the list(s) away from the American public. And our former heroin-addict/bushmeat-eating/brainworm-infected lawyer who runs Health and Human Services and the CDC is telling us we don't need vaccines and that Tylenol causes autism. And we have state legislatures banning condensation trails from aircraft because those contrails are secretly brain control chemicals.

TLRD: 30 years ago, people with minimal critical thinking skills could get by in life just fine, without being bombarded by bullshit conspiracy theories.  Now batshit stuff is dropped in their lap every day, and authority figures reinforce it.

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Posted
15 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

TLRD: 30 years ago, people with minimal critical thinking skills could get by in life just fine, without being bombarded by bullshit conspiracy theories.  Now batshit stuff is dropped in their lap every day, and authority figures reinforce it.

Yep, the TLDR is a strong takeaway.

Used to be wackadoos in their basement.  It was literally a pop-culture gag:

i-dont-think-ill-ever-get-over-how-dirty

I mostly encountered those types in the mid-late 80s, set up mostly outside (but sometimes inside) gun shows.  Gun shows, which used to be MOSTLY sporting and collectors firearms and such....but always had some angle for the paramilitary/militia/survivalist nutbars.  There would be a guy with a van and a table and flyers about how Lyndon Larouche and Elvis who wasn't really dead were gonna save us from the mole people set up out in the parking lot.  Sometimes I'd grab a flyer because I like having something entertaining to read while I take a dump.  But "something to read while I shit" was as far as I ever went.  Their message just couldn't get a wide or deep broadcast.

Now?  The satirical conspiracy of "birds aren't real" -- a conspiracy theory that was purposefully designed to be so absurd that nobody could actually believe it -- has thousands of actual believers.  Today, you could start a "football was invented by aliens" conspiracy, and within a year, it would be a topic of discussion on Fox news.

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Posted

NASA safety panel warns Starship lunar lander could be delayed by years - SpaceNews

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NASA safety advisers say they doubt the lunar lander version of SpaceX’s Starship will be ready to support the Artemis 3 mission as planned in 2027. At a Sept. 19 public meeting, members of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel said they believed the Human Landing System, or HLS, version of Starship could be “years late.”

That conclusion, panelist Paul Hill said, followed a visit last month to SpaceX’s Starbase facility and meetings with company executives. Hill attended with fellow panelists and former astronauts Charlie Precourt and Kent Rominger.

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“The HLS schedule is significantly challenged and, in our estimation, could be years late for a 2027 Artemis 3 moon landing,” Hill said.

A major issue, he said, is demonstrating cryogenic propellant transfer, needed to refuel Starship in low Earth orbit before heading to the moon. That work has been slowed by delays in version 3 of Starship — the first capable of such transfers — and by ongoing improvements to the version 3 Raptor engine.

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Hill did not detail the problems or their impact. But SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, speaking Sept. 16 at World Space Business Week, said propellant transfer worried her more than docking Starships in orbit. “Hopefully it’s not as hard as some of my engineers think it could be,” she said.

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