We just got back from Vandenberg (spent time wine tasting up there before coming back to LA). Elon has posted a sped-up video of the landing. Amazing how fast things happen at the end.
Thermostats
Our Honeywell died, so I’m looking at thermostat reviews, and holy moly can you spend a lot of money for a thermostat that does things I have no use for. I guess if I lived in an area of weather extremes, and had both air and heat, I might care about having a vacation option that would heat or cool the house before we got back from a trip, or the ability to control it from my phone, but I really really don’t want my house to be part of the Internet of things. We don’t have A/C, and it never goes below freezing here, so I can’t see any reason to not simply go to Home Depot and replace it with another cheap ($40) digital 7-day programmable thermostat.
The Alexandria Shooting
Showed the Left’s cultural bullying at its worst. Mary Katherine Hamm is en fuego:
Finally, to cap the week, the FBI offered a bizarre assessment of the shooting that ignored the plain significance of all of the established facts of the case to declare it a “spontaneous” attack with “no target.” What perverse standards. A Republican congressman is fighting for his life in a hospital thanks to a partisan attacker, but let’s examine on national TV several times over how he kind of had it coming because of his politics.
Republicans literally had guns held to their heads, so they should renounce their rights to armed self-defense?
Republicans were victims of a multiple assassination attempt, and it warrants half the coverage of the assassination attempt on a Democrat six years earlier?
Republicans were shot by a partisan political adversary, so they should be careful how much they celebrate electoral wins?
It all revealed once again the overweening cultural hubris of the American Left, which has been in control of so many institutions and the prevailing political narrative for so long, it can’t conceive of Republicans as victims even when they’re being shot. Many of them are cultural bullies convinced of their righteousness, and as Reid did, they’ll kick you when you’re down after being shot on a baseball field. Why, it’s enough to drive you to hire a giant, coarse, shameless bully of your own and make him president.
Want more Trump? This is how you get more Trump.
Meanwhile, my neighbor Kurt Schichter says spare me the principles lecture.
The Senate Health-Care Plan
Andrew Klavan says to eat the crap sandwich.
It probably is the best we’re going to get with the current Senate, particularly given, as he points out, that when it comes to health care (as in much else), Trump is no small-government conservative.
Another Successful Reflight, And Relanding
Eric Berger has the story. As he says, reusability isn’t a fad, we’ve finally gotten to the point at which it’s clearly the future.
There is a little tension because Elon announced shortly before the launch that this would be the most challenging entry yet (probably to downplay expectations). It landed, but not quite on the bullseye. But close enough. This was the first rocket to land on both the east- and west-coast ASDSs. We’re planning to go up to Vandenberg Sunday for the Iridium launch. It should be better weather than the last time, in January. If successful, it will be two launches for the company almost within forty-eight hours. They’re finally getting to the launch tempo they need to work down their backlog.
Seventy
…is the new sixty.
I’m glad that I don’t feel my age. I was having some new lower-back pain, probably sciatica, in the spring, that I was afraid was going to be a permanent feature of life, but it seems to have healed.
A 3-D Laser Printer
GE is building the world’s largest one:
The prototype Atlas printer, announced on Wednesday, can print objects up to one meter long using titanium, aluminum, and other metals instead of the plastics, resins, and filaments that many commercial and consumer 3D printers use. That means it could print an entire engine block for a car or truck, for example, replacing the specialized machines and tooling that are currently required to make those types of products in a factory.
GE said it plans to unveil the Atlas in November. The prototype can only print objects up to one meter in two directions, such as length and width, but once the production version is ready next year, it will be able to print objects up to one meter in any direction.
Seems like just the thing for cheap rocket engines.
The FBI Briefing On The Congressional Shooter
The FBI admits that Hodgkinson:
•vociferously raged against Republicans in online forums,
•had a piece of paper bearing the names of six members of Congress,
•was reported for doing target practice outside his home in recent months before moving to Alexandria,
•had mapped out a trip to the DC area,
•took multiple photos of the baseball field he would later shoot up, three days after the New York Times mentioned that Republicans practiced baseball at an Alexandria baseball field with little security,
•lived out of his van at the YMCA directly next door to the baseball field he shot up,
•legally purchased a rifle in March 2003 and 9 mm handgun “in November 2016,”
•modified the rifle at some point to accept a detachable magazine and replaced the original stock with a folding stock,
•rented a storage facility to hide hundreds of rounds of ammunition and additional rifle components,
asked “Is this the Republican or Democrat baseball team?” before firing on the Republicans,
ran a Google search for information on the “2017 Republican Convention” hours before the shooting,
and took photos at high-profile Washington locations, including the east front plaza of the U.S. Capitol and the Dirksen Senate Office.
•We know from other reporting that the list was of six Republican Freedom Caucus members, including Rep. Mo Brooks, who was present at the practice.So what does the FBI decide this information means? Well, the takeaway of the briefing was characterized well by the Associated Press headline about it: “FBI: Gunman who shot congressman had no target in mind.”
If they don’t want to call it terrorism because it was an attempted political assassination, then fine, but this is insane. If they want to continue to drain away the last vestiges of confidence in their competence, this is the way to do it.
[Update Friday morning]
There’s no reason to beat around the bush here: what the FBI is claiming is mind-boggling when they claim the shooter had no target in mind. Consider the number of accidents of circumstance you would have to believe were going on here to not have the shooter doing what seems obvious from every piece of evidence we have: researching and planning for an attack on Republicans of some kind, particularly looking for an opportunity when security will be low and vulnerability will be high. This was an attack, not an “anger management” problem.
Step back, though, and think on the institutional conclusions here. Considering how ludicrous the FBI’s conclusions are as it relates to an attack on the third ranking member of the House of Representatives, you might reconsider whether to trust the FBI’s conclusions in other areas, as well. And this is how our faith in institutions is degraded: steadily, gradually, with incident after incident where men in suits stand in front of microphones and make claims we know are not the whole truth.
This is how you get more Trump. Despite the fact that Trump doesn’t seem inclined to do anything about it.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Related: Hey, Trump, how about firing Avner Shapiro? Your administration is full of people sabotaging your agenda. What are you going to do about it?
Gwynneth Paltrow’s Latest Nuttiness
This is pretty funny. NASA calls BS on it.
Heroism
The sailor who chose to “save his kids” by dying. In my book, I point out that in the Navy, saving the ship, not “safety,” is the highest priority. There will be stories like this in the future about spaceflight.