The foundational premise was that 'stuff's blown about by the Martian wind'.
https://www.quora.com/Are-ther... is a long thread.

Unfortunately, they still have to launch from Earth which is seething with them.
Wasn't that why Juno didn't use RTG? (that and the shortage of Pu238)

This is why I don't use Windows at home.

After W7 I went to Linux and haven't looked back. It's bad enough I have to put up with Microsoft's excuses and incompetence at work, I definitely don't want to deal with that at home.

You can become a paramedic in 1-2 years, why does it take that long to learn how to safely cut and dye hair?

For the very reasion you stated. Safety. Do you really want someone hacking away at your hair with a sharp pair of scissors? You have ears, don't you? And that doesn't get into the issue of HOW to cut hair so it looks decent. How do you properly cut a bob? Layering? What do you do with different types of hair (straight, curly, African American, thick, thin, etc)? How do you cut a man's hair compared to a woman (not every guy gets a buzzcut)?

And those chemicals used to dye hair can cause burns to the scalp (and skin if spilled) if not properly applied. Do you want your pre-teen daughter wailing in your ear for weeks and months that her head burns and now she can't have good looking hair because the colorists burned her?

I know it seems silly to have to go through all of this, but there are valid reasons to be certified/licensed/whatever. This also gives you legal rights if something goes wrong.

Go do a parallel search for something political on Google and Yandex.

The reason is two fold. First, with Yandex being Russian, they want every political story about the West out there for people to read. They probably even promote the stories to higher rankings so they are seen. However, try putting in a query about the thoudands of Russian losses in Ukraine or Russian ships being sunk or the oil refineries in Russia being attacked or the Belgorod region being shelled by Russian forces and see what happens. I would be willing to bet you only get a few stories with little substance.

The second reason is as we all know, Google is flooded with SEO crap (like this story) and their software is unable, or unwilling, to filter the wheat from the chaff. They make money regardless of the quality of the search.

I've started reading a lot more non-fiction, mainly history.

Oddly enough, so have I. Right now I'm on a book about Aaron Burr. Before that was Andrew Jackson and before that was James Madison. Then there was the book about how the Pilgrims and Puritans screwed over the Native Americans in New England (wonderful title: God, War, and Providence) despite Roger Williams' best efforts. And who couldn't read history without delving into World War II and the German army, Panzer Battles.

That last two chapters of the book should be required reading for anyone in the Ukrainian military. Literally, in the truest sense of the word, nothing has changed in Russian tactics and actions in the past 80 years. The words written sound like they were written last year.

And there we have it. Thank you for those who marked my comment down. You proved my point admirably.

Ofc I don't mean LITERALLY nobody. There are niches of readers here and there.

But my kids are all in their 20s and 30s, and they have many friends who say things like "you know, I haven't read a single actual book since college".

To me it's incomprehensible, and I sort of take it as evidence of the collapse but...is it really all that different than say, the 1950s? 1930s? Sure, intellectuals of all eras read but I don't believe the % of intellectuals by nature has particularly swung one way or another since then.

Right now the vast majority of the sci-fi/fantasy books are all Game of Thrones type, set in some medieval-style world where evil lurks around every corner.

Then you have the Kim Harrison types (which usually have fantastic cover art), followed by sci-fi itself which generally revolves around some Earth/Solar System/Universe threat which only one man (it's almost always a man) can solve.

I've tried reading various books at random, but either I've lost my ability to immerse myself in the story or the stories aren't well written to hold my interest.

I'm not sure what the answer is, and maybe my situation is unique, but perhaps publishers should take more chances on new or fledgling authors so different styles of storytelling can get out.

but when activists are actively against Israel policies then it's NOT OK.

For the simple reason any criticism of Israel is not allowed. Nothing. Any criticism of any kind for any reason immediately brands you as anti-semitic. No exceptions. Even when Israel does to others which was done to them you are not allowed to say a single word. If you do, you're an anti-semite. Full stop.

I'm curious what they're going to use up power dragonfly?

  Sure the atmo density should make flying easier* but that distance and air density combine to make solar basically impossible.

*I'm not sure that's as "given" as they make it sound. Low air pressure on Mars meant that even hurricane-speed winds aren't that forceful. At 1.5bar, I'd assume the force of even a gentle breeze will be significant.

Ingenuity leveraged daily solar charging to avoid having to lug hefty batteries around; certainly that won't be an option for dragonfly.

It's about time we gave free money to someone other than oil companies and coal miners.

Isn't it funny how people conveniently forget the decades we've been giving money to these two? How many billions (trillions?) of dollars have we the taxpayers been forced to hand over to these companies? Shall we include all that free money handed over to corn famers for their ethanol subsidies?

At least if people would be consistent in their "outrage" they might be heard more.

Don't blame people for problems that corporations cause.

How is it a "corporate" cause if people are too lazy to move around, stare at their 3 inch screen all day, eat bags of chips each day, don't bother to drink water, and don't make healthy lifestyle choices? Does personal responsiblity not enter into the equation?

There was an article on here a while back which discussed how fake credentials were being used by North Korea to allow its people to work on remote projects. They were given a fake name, fake skills, fake education, etc, which was then passed to a hiring company who then "vetted" the person without even seeing or talking to them.

So yes, it is possible the companies didn't know.

Those terrorists went to the Capitol to deliberately and knowingly disrupt the official proceeding of Congress. They weren't there on a field trip to look at the sights.

If you're claiming those people shouldn't be jailed because they were non-violent, then the same applies to all the people at Columbia who did nothing more than exercise their First Amendment right to criticize Israel's deliberate targetting of civilians, medical personnel, and journalists, such as the almost 300 bodies found buried in a mass grave at the Nasser Medical Complex, some who had their hands tied. This was the same hospital Israel besieged for days, cutting off power and letting babies on ventilators die.