If the US thinks it can charge Ukraine $500 billion for some unspecified future support in their war, how much should we retrospectively charge the Yanks for our support for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Note the 30 mile jump cut towards the end of the film.
Having denounced PB as irredeemably boring, that is actually rather interesting
Thankyou
I had no idea about that whole seacoal into the sea thingy (I’ve never watched Get Carter, I know, I know)
When John Merrill walked the coast in ?1977?, he described the long conveyor belts dropping the coal waste in the sea, creating new land. When Spud Talbot-Ponsonby walked it in the mid-1990s, she described desolation. When I walked it in 2002, the 'new' cliffs were eroding, and people were fishing for 'coalies' off the beach. A beach that had lurid coloured puddles of water from all the chemicals in the waste.
As an aside, in that area I met some men in a paddock who were looking after what was apparently one of the last pit-ponies in Britain.
If the US thinks it can charge Ukraine $500 billion for some unspecified future support in their war, how much should we retrospectively charge the Yanks for our support for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
The Europeans should under-cut Trump.
"We'll take $200 billion for our contribution. And nothing for the first five years."
If the US thinks it can charge Ukraine $500 billion for some unspecified future support in their war, how much should we retrospectively charge the Yanks for our support for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Which is why America trashing its allies is so shortsighted, contrary to what some on this board believe. Even top dog countries rely on others as they can't do everything themselves. This will become even more acute when Trump starts hacking away at the US defence budget.
If the US thinks it can charge Ukraine $500 billion for some unspecified future support in their war, how much should we retrospectively charge the Yanks for our support for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Which is why America trashing its allies is so shortsighted, contrary to what some on this board believe. Even top dog countries rely on others as they can't do everything themselves. This will become even more acute when Trump starts hacking away at the US defence budget.
Having allied support was probably a liability in the GWOT because it pushed them towards treating it as a mission civilisatrice rather than just smiting their enemies.
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Cancelling the VAT rebate for historic churches is disgusting.
It will lead to hundreds of historic churches hundreds of years old falling into disrepair or being knocked down.
Nasty government.
Indeed, historic churches, farmers, small business owners, private school parents, pensioners all being hit by this dreadful government.
Though at least the C of E Synod last week voted for commissioners to give more of their funds for Parishes in poorer areas which should help Parishes in less wealthy areas with historic churches maintain them despite the VAT cap of £25k for church relief
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Cancelling the VAT rebate for historic churches is disgusting.
It will lead to hundreds of historic churches hundreds of years old falling into disrepair or being knocked down.
Nasty government.
Indeed, historic churches, farmers, small business owners, private school parents, pensioners all being hit by this dreadful government.
Though at least the C of E Synod last week voted for commissioners to give more of their funds for Parishes in poorer areas which should help Parishes in less wealthy areas with historic churches maintain them despite the VAT cap of £25k for church relief
If the US thinks it can charge Ukraine $500 billion for some unspecified future support in their war, how much should we retrospectively charge the Yanks for our support for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
There's also 'The Intelligence Trap' - in that very clever people can convince themselves of or do stupid or malign things by overindexing their own genius.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
SpaceX is not a punt on Musk, not anymore. It completely dominates space flights
Of course it will live and die like all companies, things, countries, empires, people, but right now it is phenomenally successful
It is at what it's doing now in terms of launches into Earth's orbit. But it's betting a lot on Starship and a design that's much more complicated and unproven - because it's got such a huge payload that Musk wants to eventually use for his Mars-shot. But it's already behind schedule and missed some important milestones in proving its capabilities if it's to be used on Artemis. Forget the exploding 'rapid unscheduled assembly' it's still not clear if its lander has some of the failsafes you'd need as a lander.
Bezos' Blue Moon lander by comparison could work with existing rockets, and is pencilled in for a 2030 Artemis mission.
So if Starship doesn't work as intended - and there are plenty of scientists who are sceptical about the claims made for it in the time schedule - then it may be a big blow, especially when will face more competition in its core business of launches. It is very profitable now as can pretty much name its price for launches, but that won't always be true.
A similar point may apply to Tesla, in terms of getting way ahead of the game by making a technologically advanced product that fulfils a genuine need pretty damn well, becoming a successful company in the process. But its 'genius' CEO having bigger dreams whose timelines keep slipping, amid greater scepticism over whether they can be delivered upon.
If the US thinks it can charge Ukraine $500 billion for some unspecified future support in their war, how much should we retrospectively charge the Yanks for our support for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Bollocks to that. Think big.
How much do we charge the former British Empire for our efforts? And others
“Here’s a VAT bill. Yes, 10,000 tons of finest Bengal opium. Yes, it’s a bit late… WTF are you whining about? Yes, the sales pitch was a tad aggressive, but you bought the goods.”
Any predictions for the German election? I think it could be closer for 1st place than expected.
Especially if you count the CDU and CSU separately.
I predicted yesterday this would be your line. Of course it's misleading to count them separately, but misleading is a step up from your usual lies.
It's not meaningless to separate them because we could end up with a scenario where the Union parties have to vote against their own Chancellor candidate to avoid the spectre of a minority government on AfD votes. Will the CDU and CSU necessaritly see eye-to-eye on this?
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
There's also 'The Intelligence Trap' - in that very clever people can convince themselves of or do stupid or malign things by overindexing their own genius.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
SpaceX is not a punt on Musk, not anymore. It completely dominates space flights
Of course it will live and die like all companies, things, countries, empires, people, but right now it is phenomenally successful
It is at what it's doing now in terms of launches into Earth's orbit. But it's betting a lot on Starship and a design that's much more complicated and unproven - because it's got such a huge payload that Musk wants to eventually use for his Mars-shot. But it's already behind schedule and missed some important milestones in proving its capabilities if it's to be used on Artemis. Forget the exploding 'rapid unscheduled assembly' it's still not clear if its lander has some of the failsafes you'd need as a lander.
Bezos' Blue Moon lander by comparison could work with existing rockets, and is pencilled in for a 2030 Artemis mission.
So if Starship doesn't work as intended - and there are plenty of scientists who are sceptical about the claims made for it in the time schedule - then it may be a big blow, especially when will face more competition in its core business of launches. It is very profitable now as can pretty much name its price for launches, but that won't always be true.
A similar point may apply to Tesla, in terms of getting way ahead of the game by making a technologically advanced product that fulfils a genuine need pretty damn well, becoming a successful company in the process. But its 'genius' CEO having bigger dreams whose timelines keep slipping, amid greater scepticism over whether they can be delivered upon.
From memory, both SS's and Blue Origin's New Glenn have not exactly met their mass-to-orbit targets. Instead of the claimed 100-150 tons, current iterations of SS is believed to be at half that. (1)
Yes, they can optimise. But the Raptor engines are already highly optimised, and as you add safety and other systems, there will be weight gains.
BO's New Glenn is also believed to be at 25 tonnes to orbit, instead of the planned 45 tonnes. But I'd expect their system to be much less optimised.
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
Any predictions for the German election? I think it could be closer for 1st place than expected.
Especially if you count the CDU and CSU separately.
I predicted yesterday this would be your line. Of course it's misleading to count them separately, but misleading is a step up from your usual lies.
It's not meaningless to separate them because we could end up with a scenario where the Union parties have to vote against their own Chancellor candidate to avoid the spectre of a minority government on AfD votes. Will the CDU and CSU necessaritly see eye-to-eye on this?
Cute. Another narrative to push - a moderate government dependent on tacit support from neo-Nazis
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
Maybe Vance has a point then.
And, yes, that story seems to be true as the lady had it recorded on her RING.
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
I think the problem is the police are measured based on complaints investigated and resolved.
So this was an easy win for them “don’t be silly” and that counts as a resolution.
The issue is that a politician chose to waste police time.
And the police need to be more discerning about resource allocation. The issue is that if you incentivise someone to behave in a given way then the chances are they will behave like that
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
Have you got a link to the story?
It goes without saying that the left-wing press aren't reporting on it, so you have to read about it in the Daily Mail or on GB News.
I always chuckle when @Luckyguy1983 calls other posters naive, stupid, or obsessive.
You must be pretty starved of chuckling material then because I don't make a habit of calling other posters anything. I usually attack people's arguments.
Hadn't realised I'd hurt your feelings ducks. Try to be more open about things when they happen - cattiness after the fact is so un-British.
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
Have you got a link to the story?
Of course we only know the posts that the mail chose to report. There may have been others.
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
I think the problem is the police are measured based on complaints investigated and resolved.
So this was an easy win for them “don’t be silly” and that counts as a resolution.
The issue is that a politician chose to waste police time.
And the police need to be more discerning about resource allocation. The issue is that if you incentivise someone to behave in a given way then the chances are they will behave like that
They could have investigated and resolved it by reading that post and then telling that politician who complained to piss off and stop wasting police time. Quicker than paying someone a visit.
Any predictions for the German election? I think it could be closer for 1st place than expected.
Especially if you count the CDU and CSU separately.
I predicted yesterday this would be your line. Of course it's misleading to count them separately, but misleading is a step up from your usual lies.
It's not meaningless to separate them because we could end up with a scenario where the Union parties have to vote against their own Chancellor candidate to avoid the spectre of a minority government on AfD votes. Will the CDU and CSU necessaritly see eye-to-eye on this?
It's misleading in judging who won etc because none of the 13.4 million people in Bavaria are able to vote for the CDU.
Any predictions for the German election? I think it could be closer for 1st place than expected.
Especially if you count the CDU and CSU separately.
I predicted yesterday this would be your line. Of course it's misleading to count them separately, but misleading is a step up from your usual lies.
It's not meaningless to separate them because we could end up with a scenario where the Union parties have to vote against their own Chancellor candidate to avoid the spectre of a minority government on AfD votes. Will the CDU and CSU necessaritly see eye-to-eye on this?
Cute. Another narrative to push - a moderate government dependent on tacit support from neo-Nazis
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
Maybe Vance has a point then.
And, yes, that story seems to be true as the lady had it recorded on her RING.
Certainly Vance had a point.
However he made his point while lying about the broader and more vital subject, and shitting on the carpet.
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
Maybe Vance has a point then.
And, yes, that story seems to be true as the lady had it recorded on her RING.
Certainly Vance had a point.
However he made his point while lying about the broader and more vital subject, and shitting on the carpet.
I never saw the whole speech only the edited highlights, or lowlights, depending on your view.
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
There's also 'The Intelligence Trap' - in that very clever people can convince themselves of or do stupid or malign things by overindexing their own genius.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
SpaceX is not a punt on Musk, not anymore. It completely dominates space flights
Of course it will live and die like all companies, things, countries, empires, people, but right now it is phenomenally successful
It is at what it's doing now in terms of launches into Earth's orbit. But it's betting a lot on Starship and a design that's much more complicated and unproven - because it's got such a huge payload that Musk wants to eventually use for his Mars-shot. But it's already behind schedule and missed some important milestones in proving its capabilities if it's to be used on Artemis. Forget the exploding 'rapid unscheduled assembly' it's still not clear if its lander has some of the failsafes you'd need as a lander.
Bezos' Blue Moon lander by comparison could work with existing rockets, and is pencilled in for a 2030 Artemis mission.
So if Starship doesn't work as intended - and there are plenty of scientists who are sceptical about the claims made for it in the time schedule - then it may be a big blow, especially when will face more competition in its core business of launches. It is very profitable now as can pretty much name its price for launches, but that won't always be true.
A similar point may apply to Tesla, in terms of getting way ahead of the game by making a technologically advanced product that fulfils a genuine need pretty damn well, becoming a successful company in the process. But its 'genius' CEO having bigger dreams whose timelines keep slipping, amid greater scepticism over whether they can be delivered upon.
From memory, both SS's and Blue Origin's New Glenn have not exactly met their mass-to-orbit targets. Instead of the claimed 100-150 tons, current iterations of SS is believed to be at half that. (1)
Yes, they can optimise. But the Raptor engines are already highly optimised, and as you add safety and other systems, there will be weight gains.
BO's New Glenn is also believed to be at 25 tonnes to orbit, instead of the planned 45 tonnes. But I'd expect their system to be much less optimised.
The current guesstimates from nasaspaceflight.com (based around the rocket equation) are that both will meet their payload goals.
New Glenn seems to have been launched with heavily throttled engines. The guess there is that they had reliability concerns. Quite possibly paranoia, rather than actual underperformance issues. Both stages are reported to have been early model “battleship” stages. It’s also been reported that both stages were only partially fueled for the initial flight. This would make sense if they were, indeed, running the engines at a low throttle setting.
Starship and Superheavy haven’t transitioned to Raptor 3, along with the associated tank stretches. This combined with the coming changes to structure - seen by the long lens types at Boca Chica - will probably get them there. Same deal - more thrust, more fuel, weight reduction.
This is fairly standard for new rockets. Vulcan is widely believed to have had its performance sandbagged for its initial flight as well. Which is how it dealt so well with a nozzle breaking off on a solid booster.
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
Have you got a link to the story?
Is this one of those “While setting immigrants on fire, the person in question was arrested for posting on Facebook” things?
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
There's also 'The Intelligence Trap' - in that very clever people can convince themselves of or do stupid or malign things by overindexing their own genius.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
SpaceX is not a punt on Musk, not anymore. It completely dominates space flights
Of course it will live and die like all companies, things, countries, empires, people, but right now it is phenomenally successful
It is at what it's doing now in terms of launches into Earth's orbit. But it's betting a lot on Starship and a design that's much more complicated and unproven - because it's got such a huge payload that Musk wants to eventually use for his Mars-shot. But it's already behind schedule and missed some important milestones in proving its capabilities if it's to be used on Artemis. Forget the exploding 'rapid unscheduled assembly' it's still not clear if its lander has some of the failsafes you'd need as a lander.
Bezos' Blue Moon lander by comparison could work with existing rockets, and is pencilled in for a 2030 Artemis mission.
So if Starship doesn't work as intended - and there are plenty of scientists who are sceptical about the claims made for it in the time schedule - then it may be a big blow, especially when will face more competition in its core business of launches. It is very profitable now as can pretty much name its price for launches, but that won't always be true.
A similar point may apply to Tesla, in terms of getting way ahead of the game by making a technologically advanced product that fulfils a genuine need pretty damn well, becoming a successful company in the process. But its 'genius' CEO having bigger dreams whose timelines keep slipping, amid greater scepticism over whether they can be delivered upon.
From memory, both SS's and Blue Origin's New Glenn have not exactly met their mass-to-orbit targets. Instead of the claimed 100-150 tons, current iterations of SS is believed to be at half that. (1)
Yes, they can optimise. But the Raptor engines are already highly optimised, and as you add safety and other systems, there will be weight gains.
BO's New Glenn is also believed to be at 25 tonnes to orbit, instead of the planned 45 tonnes. But I'd expect their system to be much less optimised.
The current guesstimates from nasaspaceflight.com (based around the rocket equation) are that both will meet their payload goals.
New Glenn seems to have been launched with heavily throttled engines. The guess there is that they had reliability concerns. Quite possibly paranoia, rather than actual underperformance issues. Both stages are reported to have been early model “battleship” stages. It’s also been reported that both stages were only partially fueled for the initial flight. This would make sense if they were, indeed, running the engines at a low throttle setting.
Starship and Superheavy haven’t transitioned to Raptor 3, along with the associated tank stretches. This combined with the coming changes to structure - seen by the long lens types at Boca Chica - will probably get them there. Same deal - more thrust, more fuel, weight reduction.
This is fairly standard for new rockets. Vulcan is widely believed to have had its performance sandbagged for its initial flight as well. Which is how it dealt so well with a nozzle breaking off on a solid booster.
"guesstimates from nasaspaceflight.com"
Enough said. A bunch of people with barely-educated WAGs.
"...along with the associated tank stretches"
Yes, of course, if you radically change the size of the rocket, you may get more payload to orbit. But they're still missing the target for the original design. And you can only stretch a rocket so far before you start hitting other problems.
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
I think the problem is the police are measured based on complaints investigated and resolved.
So this was an easy win for them “don’t be silly” and that counts as a resolution.
The issue is that a politician chose to waste police time.
And the police need to be more discerning about resource allocation. The issue is that if you incentivise someone to behave in a given way then the chances are they will behave like that
They could have investigated and resolved it by reading that post and then telling that politician who complained to piss off and stop wasting police time. Quicker than paying someone a visit.
Problem is the politician would phone up the police commissioner and complain in person which would then result in a complaint coming down via the chief constable.
So you can see why the police go for the easy solution of an hour visiting someone rather than the correct reaction of F*** off before we charge you with wasting police time.
I note that I am an outliers in US Q3 growth at -1%, the next nearest being +0.8%.
It seems that I am the only one forecasting a Trumpist recession.
Here you maybe but someone was discussing a trump crash on the Mail thisismoney site today.
I am predicting a stock market crash (how defined?) and higher inflation. Not sure about an outright recession.
Yeah, how do you define a crash ? A 10% fall from peak, a 20% fall from peak ? Markets never go up in a straight line and earnings will surely drive whatever happens.
Inflation is inching up anyway and I don’t think anything this nutcase is doing is going to mitigate that. Didn’t help that the Biden admin increased the money supply before going but I doubt trump has a clue what to do.
I don’t know if there will be a crash but I agree with your general sentiment on the market and inflation.
1. Reeves is quite politically stupid 2. The Treasury is full of horrible little gradgrinds 3. Labour just don’t have the impulse to give a shit about British culture and heritage.
ZDF might be geoblocked but hopefully some of the TV links will work!
Please post any good links especially live result maps.
First seat results should be in within 2 hours or so of poll close, final results could be midnight or later.
Expecting AfD to win all states in the east except Berlin, CSU obviously wins Bavaria, SPD may hold Bremen, Berlin and Hamburg could be tight, while CDU should win all the other Lander.
Will be looking to see whether FDP and BSW clear the 5% threshold, recent polls suggest Linke should be comfortably over. Will the 8-9 or so point polling gap between the Union and AfD hold in the exit poll or will the AfD have underpolled and the CDU/CSU overpolled?
The more parties in the new Bundestag, the more complex coalition building becomes. Given that tonight will be the SPD's worst postwar result, Scholz should resign as leader tonight if he has any sense/dignity but will stay as caretaker Chancellor while Merz forms a new government.
Depends on the numbers but new government should be either GroKo (Union + SPD, as per 3/4 of the Merkel govts), Kiwi (Union + Green) or quite possibly a Kenya (all three).
However, given that what leaders say before election day and what they say once the results are in can often be different things, so if all of the above options collapse (Austria is now on its 3rd attempt to form a new government), I think there's an outside chance of a CDU/CSU government with AfD confidence and supply, would be a last resort, but if all other options have been tried and failed, I don't think it can be completely ruled out.
Having read the story it’s bullshit chaff thrown up by the Mirror with a misleading headline. They are playing games to try and protect Labour.
This wasn’t on his CV. It was on his website bio. And it wasn’t a claim about a job or a qualification - it was a statement that he was the “youngest ever Cabinet Minister”.
Of course he’s a boastful idiot but it’s not in the same league as claiming to be a solicitor when you are not.
The complaint about Reeves was about her website bio too, not an actual CV.
Just bullshit chaff, then. Good to sort that out.
If Reeves isn't to be fired for doing a crap job, then this stuff is irrelevant.
Serious question is Reeves doing a crap job? Specifically is she doing a worse job than other Chancellors of the Exchequer? I don't think she is even nearly Kwarteng bad. The comparisons I think are Hunt and Sunak.
She’s made a number of really important fuck ups*
- talking the economy down and destroying confidence - Increasing the cost of employment - undermining the case for tax rises by making up a “black hole” while being perceived to throw money at her pet projects - Messing up the politics of cancelling the winter fuel allowance
And the latest I heard this morning - cancelling the VAT rebate for repairs to churches under the listed places of worship scheme with an immediate cap of £25,000 for outstanding claims. While it’s reasonable (although I would disagree) to not want to spend money it is unfair to not allow an exemption for projects *that have already started work*. For example Radio 4 had a case this morning - Wilberforce’s church in Clapham - where they had been fundraising for a £7m rebuild and expansion for 5 years, have just torn down and started the foundations and have suddenly been told they need to find another £1m in taxes…
* Amusingly autocorrect changed this to “fuck iOS”
Cancelling the VAT rebate for historic churches is disgusting.
It will lead to hundreds of historic churches hundreds of years old falling into disrepair or being knocked down.
Nasty government.
Indeed, historic churches, farmers, small business owners, private school parents, pensioners all being hit by this dreadful government.
Though at least the C of E Synod last week voted for commissioners to give more of their funds for Parishes in poorer areas which should help Parishes in less wealthy areas with historic churches maintain them despite the VAT cap of £25k for church relief
Any predictions for the German election? I think it could be closer for 1st place than expected.
Especially if you count the CDU and CSU separately.
I predicted yesterday this would be your line. Of course it's misleading to count them separately, but misleading is a step up from your usual lies.
It's not meaningless to separate them because we could end up with a scenario where the Union parties have to vote against their own Chancellor candidate to avoid the spectre of a minority government on AfD votes. Will the CDU and CSU necessaritly see eye-to-eye on this?
It's misleading in judging who won etc because none of the 13.4 million people in Bavaria are able to vote for the CDU.
Just to repeat this because afd supporter williamglenn will try to come up with bullshit reasons to subtract the CSU from the Union total when reporting the results.
The results have never been reported in that way. Check this "Full report and analysis from 2021" from the Guardian who are sympathetic to the SPD so would have reason to compare SPD with CDU minus CSU to make the SPD's margin of victory look bigger. The CDU CSU results aren't even once separated
On government jobs in the US: Political machines in the US often give "no show" jobs to supporters whose real work is political, mostly getting out the party vote. The best such workers -- from the machine's point of view -- may not show up in their city (or county) offices very often, but they do work hard, especially around election time.
This is less common than it once was, of course, but still happens.
Are there some similar workers in federal jobs? Sure. Not very many in my semi-informed opinion, but there are some.
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
Have you got a link to the story?
Of course we only know the posts that the mail chose to report. There may have been others.
It may be police overreach but as the Mail doesn't choose to quote what this woman actually said, it's hard to say. And the fact they do quote extensively from other sources maybe suggests this woman's comments weren't as anodyne as implied.
What’s with this story about the police sending two officers to the house of some woman who posted on Facebook that her local councillor should resign.
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
The police will go for the low hanging fruit.
What they care about is their end-of-year-assessment, which has a strong EDI/progressive bent, and a high rate of clearing up "crime", which can be selected and categorised however they like.
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
There's also 'The Intelligence Trap' - in that very clever people can convince themselves of or do stupid or malign things by overindexing their own genius.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
SpaceX is not a punt on Musk, not anymore. It completely dominates space flights
Of course it will live and die like all companies, things, countries, empires, people, but right now it is phenomenally successful
It is at what it's doing now in terms of launches into Earth's orbit. But it's betting a lot on Starship and a design that's much more complicated and unproven - because it's got such a huge payload that Musk wants to eventually use for his Mars-shot. But it's already behind schedule and missed some important milestones in proving its capabilities if it's to be used on Artemis. Forget the exploding 'rapid unscheduled assembly' it's still not clear if its lander has some of the failsafes you'd need as a lander.
Bezos' Blue Moon lander by comparison could work with existing rockets, and is pencilled in for a 2030 Artemis mission.
So if Starship doesn't work as intended - and there are plenty of scientists who are sceptical about the claims made for it in the time schedule - then it may be a big blow, especially when will face more competition in its core business of launches. It is very profitable now as can pretty much name its price for launches, but that won't always be true.
A similar point may apply to Tesla, in terms of getting way ahead of the game by making a technologically advanced product that fulfils a genuine need pretty damn well, becoming a successful company in the process. But its 'genius' CEO having bigger dreams whose timelines keep slipping, amid greater scepticism over whether they can be delivered upon.
From memory, both SS's and Blue Origin's New Glenn have not exactly met their mass-to-orbit targets. Instead of the claimed 100-150 tons, current iterations of SS is believed to be at half that. (1)
Yes, they can optimise. But the Raptor engines are already highly optimised, and as you add safety and other systems, there will be weight gains.
BO's New Glenn is also believed to be at 25 tonnes to orbit, instead of the planned 45 tonnes. But I'd expect their system to be much less optimised.
The current guesstimates from nasaspaceflight.com (based around the rocket equation) are that both will meet their payload goals.
New Glenn seems to have been launched with heavily throttled engines. The guess there is that they had reliability concerns. Quite possibly paranoia, rather than actual underperformance issues. Both stages are reported to have been early model “battleship” stages. It’s also been reported that both stages were only partially fueled for the initial flight. This would make sense if they were, indeed, running the engines at a low throttle setting.
Starship and Superheavy haven’t transitioned to Raptor 3, along with the associated tank stretches. This combined with the coming changes to structure - seen by the long lens types at Boca Chica - will probably get them there. Same deal - more thrust, more fuel, weight reduction.
This is fairly standard for new rockets. Vulcan is widely believed to have had its performance sandbagged for its initial flight as well. Which is how it dealt so well with a nozzle breaking off on a solid booster.
"guesstimates from nasaspaceflight.com"
Enough said. A bunch of people with barely-educated WAGs.
"...along with the associated tank stretches"
Yes, of course, if you radically change the size of the rocket, you may get more payload to orbit. But they're still missing the target for the original design. And you can only stretch a rocket so far before you start hitting other problems.
The people on nasaspaceflight.com include a number of very expert people in the industry. L2 is basically the industry hanging out and talking to each other.
The chap who posted the most recent analysis on New Glenn, for example, designed the second stage on an orbital rocket that was used for quite a few years.
As to stretching rockets and evolving them, Atlas V and Delta IV come to mind.
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
There's also 'The Intelligence Trap' - in that very clever people can convince themselves of or do stupid or malign things by overindexing their own genius.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
SpaceX is not a punt on Musk, not anymore. It completely dominates space flights
Of course it will live and die like all companies, things, countries, empires, people, but right now it is phenomenally successful
It is at what it's doing now in terms of launches into Earth's orbit. But it's betting a lot on Starship and a design that's much more complicated and unproven - because it's got such a huge payload that Musk wants to eventually use for his Mars-shot. But it's already behind schedule and missed some important milestones in proving its capabilities if it's to be used on Artemis. Forget the exploding 'rapid unscheduled assembly' it's still not clear if its lander has some of the failsafes you'd need as a lander.
Bezos' Blue Moon lander by comparison could work with existing rockets, and is pencilled in for a 2030 Artemis mission.
So if Starship doesn't work as intended - and there are plenty of scientists who are sceptical about the claims made for it in the time schedule - then it may be a big blow, especially when will face more competition in its core business of launches. It is very profitable now as can pretty much name its price for launches, but that won't always be true.
A similar point may apply to Tesla, in terms of getting way ahead of the game by making a technologically advanced product that fulfils a genuine need pretty damn well, becoming a successful company in the process. But its 'genius' CEO having bigger dreams whose timelines keep slipping, amid greater scepticism over whether they can be delivered upon.
From memory, both SS's and Blue Origin's New Glenn have not exactly met their mass-to-orbit targets. Instead of the claimed 100-150 tons, current iterations of SS is believed to be at half that. (1)
Yes, they can optimise. But the Raptor engines are already highly optimised, and as you add safety and other systems, there will be weight gains.
BO's New Glenn is also believed to be at 25 tonnes to orbit, instead of the planned 45 tonnes. But I'd expect their system to be much less optimised.
Yup. But as I say. The advantage BO possibly has in the specific task of getting to The Moon is that it's pretty clear how it would all work safely once you get it away from Earth.
The same can't be said of Starship as there's all kinds of questions about its refuelling in space (and what happens if that goes wrong), how it would work as a safe base on the lunar surface, and what contingencies there are if certain things go wrong. It's a lot more complex/risky way of doing it because it's not ultimately designed just to do that but all sorts of other things too.
Which may pay off as a bet if you can get it to work, and safely, but maybe a costly mistake if you can't - and at the moment there are lots of unanswered questions that make timelines look very optimistic.
Any predictions for the German election? I think it could be closer for 1st place than expected.
Especially if you count the CDU and CSU separately.
I predicted yesterday this would be your line. Of course it's misleading to count them separately, but misleading is a step up from your usual lies.
It's not meaningless to separate them because we could end up with a scenario where the Union parties have to vote against their own Chancellor candidate to avoid the spectre of a minority government on AfD votes. Will the CDU and CSU necessaritly see eye-to-eye on this?
Cute. Another narrative to push - a moderate government dependent on tacit support from neo-Nazis
That's not going to happen.
I know. But you can see @williamglenn preparing the narrative
CDU not a majority CDU + CSU a majority CDU + AFD a majority
A CSU/CSU government suddenly becomes a minority government dependent on tacit support from the AFD.
The building blocks are correct even if the conclusion is erroneous. But that’s enough to support the narrative
A large tactical error committed by the Biden administration was not attempting to involve Musk in his net zero initiatives. More obvious in retrospect, but deliberately snubbing him seemed wrong at the time.
The guy is a massive arse, but that shouldn't have driven policy. And of course it's now the arse who is driving policy.
Again, I strongly recommend Walter Isaacson’s biography of Musk
To understand him (and we all need to understand him) you really need to read it
It is clear he can be a world class arsehole, it is also clear he has an incredible brain married to a frankly incredible work ethic
And BTW it is openly discussed by his friends and colleagues that he is very obviously Asperger’s, there is no dispute (or high functioning autistic if you don’t like the longer A word)
Who came up with the army typology where you want clever+lazy in charge, with clever+hardworking carrying out their orders?
On balance, I'd be much more comfortable with Musk making things happen than deciding what should happen. Trouble is, Musk and his mini Musks don't have the peace in themselves to do that.
(See also Churchill on boffins- on tap, not on top.)
There's also 'The Intelligence Trap' - in that very clever people can convince themselves of or do stupid or malign things by overindexing their own genius.
Musk may be a classic case in terms of having been very successful as a businessman, as is intelligent and as Leon says has a strong work ethic, but has seemingly convinced himself of his own messianic genius in a way that is deeply unhealthy and may have some very bad consequences.
DOGE and government stuff aside, to which the question is whether people who essentially have only a cursory idea of the systems they are 'reforming' should have such untrammeled power, especially given conflicts of interest.
If you look at both Tesla and SpaceX both have been very successful at certain things but whose astronomical valuations - the source of Musk's wealth and thus power - are essentially bets on a) Musk's own hype being true (when his record with wilder aspirations as opposed to more attainable ones is to put it politely, mixed) and/or b) him being able to rig governments' actions in his favour (not good for us).
SpaceX is not a punt on Musk, not anymore. It completely dominates space flights
Of course it will live and die like all companies, things, countries, empires, people, but right now it is phenomenally successful
It is at what it's doing now in terms of launches into Earth's orbit. But it's betting a lot on Starship and a design that's much more complicated and unproven - because it's got such a huge payload that Musk wants to eventually use for his Mars-shot. But it's already behind schedule and missed some important milestones in proving its capabilities if it's to be used on Artemis. Forget the exploding 'rapid unscheduled assembly' it's still not clear if its lander has some of the failsafes you'd need as a lander.
Bezos' Blue Moon lander by comparison could work with existing rockets, and is pencilled in for a 2030 Artemis mission.
So if Starship doesn't work as intended - and there are plenty of scientists who are sceptical about the claims made for it in the time schedule - then it may be a big blow, especially when will face more competition in its core business of launches. It is very profitable now as can pretty much name its price for launches, but that won't always be true.
A similar point may apply to Tesla, in terms of getting way ahead of the game by making a technologically advanced product that fulfils a genuine need pretty damn well, becoming a successful company in the process. But its 'genius' CEO having bigger dreams whose timelines keep slipping, amid greater scepticism over whether they can be delivered upon.
From memory, both SS's and Blue Origin's New Glenn have not exactly met their mass-to-orbit targets. Instead of the claimed 100-150 tons, current iterations of SS is believed to be at half that. (1)
Yes, they can optimise. But the Raptor engines are already highly optimised, and as you add safety and other systems, there will be weight gains.
BO's New Glenn is also believed to be at 25 tonnes to orbit, instead of the planned 45 tonnes. But I'd expect their system to be much less optimised.
The current guesstimates from nasaspaceflight.com (based around the rocket equation) are that both will meet their payload goals.
New Glenn seems to have been launched with heavily throttled engines. The guess there is that they had reliability concerns. Quite possibly paranoia, rather than actual underperformance issues. Both stages are reported to have been early model “battleship” stages. It’s also been reported that both stages were only partially fueled for the initial flight. This would make sense if they were, indeed, running the engines at a low throttle setting.
Starship and Superheavy haven’t transitioned to Raptor 3, along with the associated tank stretches. This combined with the coming changes to structure - seen by the long lens types at Boca Chica - will probably get them there. Same deal - more thrust, more fuel, weight reduction.
This is fairly standard for new rockets. Vulcan is widely believed to have had its performance sandbagged for its initial flight as well. Which is how it dealt so well with a nozzle breaking off on a solid booster.
"guesstimates from nasaspaceflight.com"
Enough said. A bunch of people with barely-educated WAGs.
"...along with the associated tank stretches"
Yes, of course, if you radically change the size of the rocket, you may get more payload to orbit. But they're still missing the target for the original design. And you can only stretch a rocket so far before you start hitting other problems.
The people on nasaspaceflight.com include a number of very expert people in the industry. L2 is basically the industry hanging out and talking to each other.
The chap who posted the most recent analysis on New Glenn, for example, designed the second stage on an orbital rocket that was used for quite a few years.
As to stretching rockets and evolving them, Atlas V and Delta IV come to mind.
L2 is majority b/s and wishcasting. Any genuine insiders giving out the 'secret' information would soon get themselves sacked. Sensible insiders would keep themselves well away. They can talk about other people's rockets, but then they're as much outsiders as anyone else.
Yes, rockets can get stretched. But on a new design, that's a failure. They've missed their target. And they won't be able to stretch it (much) in the future, meaning the rumoured plans to get to 200 tonnes or above by stretching is now impossible.
Any predictions for the German election? I think it could be closer for 1st place than expected.
Especially if you count the CDU and CSU separately.
I predicted yesterday this would be your line. Of course it's misleading to count them separately, but misleading is a step up from your usual lies.
It's not meaningless to separate them because we could end up with a scenario where the Union parties have to vote against their own Chancellor candidate to avoid the spectre of a minority government on AfD votes. Will the CDU and CSU necessaritly see eye-to-eye on this?
Cute. Another narrative to push - a moderate government dependent on tacit support from neo-Nazis
That's not going to happen.
I know. But you can see @williamglenn preparing the narrative
CDU not a majority CDU + CSU a majority CDU + AFD a majority
A CSU/CSU government suddenly becomes a minority government dependent on tacit support from the AFD.
The building blocks are correct even if the conclusion is erroneous. But that’s enough to support the narrative
I await work baited breath for William to note the Labour minority government of 2005, shorn of its Cooperative MPs.
Comments
Love to hear his thoughts.
As an aside, in that area I met some men in a paddock who were looking after what was apparently one of the last pit-ponies in Britain.
You are seriously quoting Liz Truss to support an argument...
ROFLMAO
"We'll take $200 billion for our contribution. And nothing for the first five years."
Art of the deal.
The loss of goodwill has a price.
I am on CDU/CSU at under 30.5 at evens and AfD on 15-20% at 14/5.
I think Linke will have a good night with better than 8%.
I think AfD will be adversely impacted by the Vance and Musk endorsements. No one likes to be told who to vote for by foreigners.
Bezos' Blue Moon lander by comparison could work with existing rockets, and is pencilled in for a 2030 Artemis mission.
So if Starship doesn't work as intended - and there are plenty of scientists who are sceptical about the claims made for it in the time schedule - then it may be a big blow, especially when will face more competition in its core business of launches. It is very profitable now as can pretty much name its price for launches, but that won't always be true.
A similar point may apply to Tesla, in terms of getting way ahead of the game by making a technologically advanced product that fulfils a genuine need pretty damn well, becoming a successful company in the process. But its 'genius' CEO having bigger dreams whose timelines keep slipping, amid greater scepticism over whether they can be delivered upon.
57 entries in all.
PB Prediction Competition 2025 – Entries
How much do we charge the former British Empire for our efforts? And others
“Here’s a VAT bill. Yes, 10,000 tons of finest Bengal opium. Yes, it’s a bit late… WTF are you whining about? Yes, the sales pitch was a tad aggressive, but you bought the goods.”
Yes, they can optimise. But the Raptor engines are already highly optimised, and as you add safety and other systems, there will be weight gains.
BO's New Glenn is also believed to be at 25 tonnes to orbit, instead of the planned 45 tonnes. But I'd expect their system to be much less optimised.
(1): https://www.americaspace.com/2024/04/20/starship-faces-performance-shortfall-for-lunar-missions/
Vance is a despicable hack, but Britain really needs to get its house in order on freedom of speech.
Which reminds me, we can’t even discuss certain subjects on here due to the chilling effect of British laws.
And, yes, that story seems to be true as the lady had it recorded on her RING.
Italia!!!
If the six nations was won on the anthem Italy would,win every year. Ireland would be bottom for that shit Irelands call
So this was an easy win for them “don’t be silly” and that counts as a resolution.
The issue is that a politician chose to waste police time.
And the police need to be more discerning about resource allocation. The issue is that if you incentivise someone to behave in a given way then the chances are they will behave like that
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14426753/Fury-Thought-Police-targeting-grandmother-criticised-Labour-Starmer-abuse-power.html
Hadn't realised I'd hurt your feelings ducks. Try to be more open about things when they happen - cattiness after the fact is so un-British.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14424959/amp/Knock-knock-Thought-Police-thousands-criminals-uninvestigated-detectives-call-grandmother-crime-went-Facebook-criticise-Labour-councillors-centre-Hope-Die-WhatsApp-scandal-exposed-MoS.html
It seems that I am the only one forecasting a Trumpist recession.
They are the only people that can be truly trusted to be forensically neutral
However he made his point while lying about the broader and more vital subject, and shitting on the carpet.
New Glenn seems to have been launched with heavily throttled engines. The guess there is that they had reliability concerns. Quite possibly paranoia, rather than actual underperformance issues. Both stages are reported to have been early model “battleship” stages. It’s also been reported that both stages were only partially fueled for the initial flight. This would make sense if they were, indeed, running the engines at a low throttle setting.
Starship and Superheavy haven’t transitioned to Raptor 3, along with the associated tank stretches. This combined with the coming changes to structure - seen by the long lens types at Boca Chica - will probably get them there. Same deal - more thrust, more fuel, weight reduction.
This is fairly standard for new rockets. Vulcan is widely believed to have had its performance sandbagged for its initial flight as well. Which is how it dealt so well with a nozzle breaking off on a solid booster.
Enough said. A bunch of people with barely-educated WAGs.
"...along with the associated tank stretches"
Yes, of course, if you radically change the size of the rocket, you may get more payload to orbit. But they're still missing the target for the original design. And you can only stretch a rocket so far before you start hitting other problems.
So you can see why the police go for the easy solution of an hour visiting someone rather than the correct reaction of F*** off before we charge you with wasting police time.
They won’t. But oooooh
Inflation is inching up anyway and I don’t think anything this nutcase is doing is going to mitigate that. Didn’t help that the Biden admin increased the money supply before going but I doubt trump has a clue what to do.
I don’t know if there will be a crash but I agree with your general sentiment on the market and inflation.
Polls close 5pm GMT
https://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/livestreams/livestream1
https://www.ardmediathek.de/live
https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten-sendungen/zdfspezial/bundestagswahl-2025-zdf-wahlstudio-1-100.html
https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/bundeswahlleiter.html
ZDF might be geoblocked but hopefully some of the TV links will work!
Please post any good links especially live result maps.
First seat results should be in within 2 hours or so of poll close, final results could be midnight or later.
Expecting AfD to win all states in the east except Berlin, CSU obviously wins Bavaria, SPD may hold Bremen, Berlin and Hamburg could be tight, while CDU should win all the other Lander.
Will be looking to see whether FDP and BSW clear the 5% threshold, recent polls suggest Linke should be comfortably over. Will the 8-9 or so point polling gap between the Union and AfD hold in the exit poll or will the AfD have underpolled and the CDU/CSU overpolled?
The more parties in the new Bundestag, the more complex coalition building becomes. Given that tonight will be the SPD's worst postwar result, Scholz should resign as leader tonight if he has any sense/dignity but will stay as caretaker Chancellor while Merz forms a new government.
Depends on the numbers but new government should be either GroKo (Union + SPD, as per 3/4 of the Merkel govts), Kiwi (Union + Green) or quite possibly a Kenya (all three).
However, given that what leaders say before election day and what they say once the results are in can often be different things, so if all of the above options collapse (Austria is now on its 3rd attempt to form a new government), I think there's an outside chance of a CDU/CSU government with AfD confidence and supply, would be a last resort, but if all other options have been tried and failed, I don't think it can be completely ruled out.
Many thanks,
DC
The rugby was fairly awful. Scotland were better than England but both teams were mediocre
It annoys the fuck out of me because England have oodles of talent but Borthwick kills it
The extent of their thinking is as sophisticated as yours.
The results have never been reported in that way. Check this "Full report and analysis from 2021" from the Guardian who are sympathetic to the SPD so would have reason to compare SPD with CDU minus CSU to make the SPD's margin of victory look bigger. The CDU CSU results aren't even once separated
This is less common than it once was, of course, but still happens.
Are there some similar workers in federal jobs? Sure. Not very many in my semi-informed opinion, but there are some.
What they care about is their end-of-year-assessment, which has a strong EDI/progressive bent, and a high rate of clearing up "crime", which can be selected and categorised however they like.
The chap who posted the most recent analysis on New Glenn, for example, designed the second stage on an orbital rocket that was used for quite a few years.
As to stretching rockets and evolving them, Atlas V and Delta IV come to mind.
Sometimes it is the simple things.
The same can't be said of Starship as there's all kinds of questions about its refuelling in space (and what happens if that goes wrong), how it would work as a safe base on the lunar surface, and what contingencies there are if certain things go wrong. It's a lot more complex/risky way of doing it because it's not ultimately designed just to do that but all sorts of other things too.
Which may pay off as a bet if you can get it to work, and safely, but maybe a costly mistake if you can't - and at the moment there are lots of unanswered questions that make timelines look very optimistic.
Suspect that's on the back of the higher turnout figures so far.
I expect to lose but £2-3 isn't a big deal.
NEW THREAD
CDU not a majority
CDU + CSU a majority
CDU + AFD a majority
A CSU/CSU government suddenly becomes a minority government dependent on tacit support from the AFD.
The building blocks are correct even if the conclusion is erroneous. But that’s enough to support the narrative
Yes, rockets can get stretched. But on a new design, that's a failure. They've missed their target. And they won't be able to stretch it (much) in the future, meaning the rumoured plans to get to 200 tonnes or above by stretching is now impossible.