It’s been a crazy week, at Space Tech Expo in Anaheim on Wednesday and Thursday, then a red eye to DC on Thursday night, and no sleep until last night. On top of that, I failed to pack my keyboard with my laptop, which in addition to being a laptop, has several wonky keys, including “e,” so it’s quite tedious to type on it. So between that and busy at ISDC, probably not much posting until I’m back in the office on Tuesday.
Category Archives: General
Project Hail Mary
Peter Suderman likes it.
[Afternoon update]
You're watching a $248 million film and not a single green or blue screen was used. The alien is a handmade puppet. The cockpit physically rotates to simulate gravity. I looked at the production tech behind this 95% score, and the engineering is wild.
— Anish Moonka (@AnishA_Moonka) March 20, 2026
Phil Lord and Chris Miller,… https://t.co/dNqGFCikE3
[Late-afternoon update]
Most movies, I leave going “yes, but.”
— Stephen Fleming (@StephenFleming) March 20, 2026
“Yes, but the lighting was too dim.”
“Yes, but the sound mix was terrible.”
“Yes, but they skipped this major plot point.” (If based on a book.)
“Yes, but they completely miscast this character.”
Not “Project Hail Mary.” It hits all the…
Is Artemis Flirting With Disaster?
Thoughts from Glenn Reynolds.
I think it’s unlikely that they’ll lose astronauts, but it’s not a good look. But then, nothing about this program has been a good look.
Brian Doherty
This is a shocking loss. Matt Welch remembers him. I wouldn’t say he was a friend, but we talked occasionally at Reason events.
Back On The Air
We got back from the funeral in Michigan yesterday morning, and I’m slowly getting my computer functional again. I had to reinstall the OS, and I’m still not sure I’ve solved the problem that I installed a new graphics card for. I’m slowly/painfully restoring the functionality in terms of software, and configuration of things like Thunderbird, Brave, Chrome, which lost all their settings after I reinstalled the OS, despite the fact that /home is on a separate drive that I mount after boot. Anyway, I’ll start posting again soon. There’ve been a lot of interesting developments in space policy…
[Thursday-morning update]
For those curious, I was having difficulty in that the machine was running like molasses, and it was initially diagnosed by Grok as an incompatibility between Wayland and my old GPU. So I replaced the GPU (a hundred-buck RX500 card), but it didn’t solve the problem. I couldn’t get it to boot with Xorg, and long story short, I finally solved it by switching from Gnome to KDE…
[Thursday-morning update]
I’ve finally run down the issue. It wasn’t software; it was hardware. My /home drive is failing. Out to get a new one.
[Friday-the-13th update]
Drove down to Irvine to Microcenter and bought a new Seagate 4T drive. I disconnected the old one, connected it the new one, formatted it ext4, reconnected the old one, mounted both, and I’m doing rsync from the old to the new.
Light Posting
I’m still having computer issues. I had to reinstall the OS, so it will take a while to get everything back up and working. Beyond that, we’re flying to Michigan tomorrow for a funeral of a relative on Friday (a first cousin once removed, but the relationship was more like an aunt — she was 98). Plus, we have a sick cat, and Patricia may have to stay home with him. Anyway, I’ll have the laptop, but probably not much time to post until Monday. I’ll be back Sunday night. Open thread in comments.
Celebration
I watched both of her gold-winning performances, but I hadn’t seen her at the gala afterward. She is such a bundle of pure joy.
If you ever see me scroll past this video call the ambulance because something is wrong with me pic.twitter.com/4rNKXLg83F
— beccie 🪩 (@nothowyouhoped) February 26, 2026
Hiatus
Sorry for the light posting, I had to replace the graphics card in my computer, and it turned out to be a more onerous ordeal than I expected. Hopefully the desktop will be back on the air today. Carry on in comments.
Ice Dancing
This is an age-old controversy, but while it (and figure skating in general) is entertaining, it is not a sport. It’s ballet on ice, except that ballet has no judges, biased or otherwise. The American team was clearly robbed. I have no problem keeping it in the Olympics, and it’s athletics in the sense that it requires training and practice, but stop pretending that it’s a sport. Sports scores should be objective, not whimsical.
Catherine O’Hara
There will never be another Moira Rose.
I thought she was great in the Christopher Guest flicks as well.