Remains to be seen: "On May 20th, the Port of Brownsville Navigation District Board of Commissioners unanimously approved authority to negotiate an easement and right-of-way for a SpaceX planned 16-inch natural gas pipeline ... This does not grant final construction approval; additional engineering, environmental, and regulatory steps remain pending."

SpaceX hasn't yet even acquired the land to start construction: "Starpipe would begin on an 83-acre (34-hectare) piece of land at the Port of Brownsville that SpaceX is in talks to lease from the city for 50 years, a port official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are private."

Reuters may be paywalled, so here's another link.

The plan is for this pipeline to carry natural gas to be liquified on site: Reuters: "SpaceX wants to build a liquefaction facility at Starbase to process the piped-in natural gas into liquid methane."

Wouldn't this be a normal stage on the process of condensation from "cloud of particulates" into a solar system? If this cloud is spinning and will ultimately segregate into distinct planets, presumably at some point in that process those protoplanetary bodies are reasonably discrete but not yet condensed. What am I missing?

Fwiw Jupiter is the largest a body can be before it becomes a brown dwarf; that is, adding mass doesn't increase the diameter any longer it just increases in density due to electron degeneracy.

I remember selling my hoard of Bitcoin at $4500 thinking how absurdly high it was and that it was just a fluke and how stupid it all seemed. Look who's stupid now. I still retired, but "if I'd just HODLed" I'd be a retired philanthropist instead of just retired and comfortable.

Woah... Dumb question, but would a wing spar be repairable or replaceable?

Just slap on some Cylon organic resin. Eventually it will infuse itself into the spar and act like cartilage.

"From each according to his means, to each according to their need" is that ... pretty much what you're talking about?

What's your "fair share" of taxes, btw? Do you think someone earning $3/day in Mogadishu would agree that you're paying your "fair share"? Should we tax those unrealized 401k benefits you have sitting in an account somewhere? They're just as tangible 'wealth' as (most) of the $billion/$trillion class's 'wealth' you know? 20%? 25%? that should clean you out of that 'excess unjustifiable wealth' in a few years yeah?

And are we allowed to collectively decide on our priorities any more? My understanding that a fair number of things that are democratically unpopular have become law/reality "for our own good" per our betters in Washington DC? (Both GOP and Dems, to be clear)

"And as bad as the cold and flu can be, there are kids who are going into debt with their school over getting breakfast." The US govt spent something like $4.6trn on COVID. You're saying that should have been spent on school lunch programs instead? It certainly would be enough to feed those kids!

Indeed, solar and wind have taken great strides.

I'm not happy about much of that being driven by tax breaks and subsidies BUT I'd also very much like those tax breaks & subsidies to be pulled from fossil fuels as well (including the indirect subsidies they both get).
Let the systems genuinely compete.

Anyway: Solar and wind may be growing hugely but that's largely a factor of a tiny starting point. To see the IMPACT, we have to look at it the other direction:
In 1995, 77.1% of global energy was provided by fossil fuels.
The latest year I could find solid numbers for, 2024, that's down to....76.4%.

0.7 in three decades isn't meaningful; it's practically a rounding error.
I would be happy to embrace new nuke techs as it feels like it would be faster than waiting on solar/wind+batteries.

... I'm sure the executive that championed it has certainly been fired just as promptly without any sort of golden goodbye package.

Obviously?

No problem here. Nothing about cookies or anything else. The problem must be on your end.

Almost got plowed into by one of these oversized trucks a few days ago. I was walking in the driving lane between rows and a guy in one of these oversized pickups drove through the parking spots into the lane. He stopped only a few feet from me, then admitted he didn't see me.

Aside from the oversized truck, this is why you don't drive through parking spots.

Why not? If they can get a better deal using one provider or source than another, why not take it? Or do you want them to just spend their money like a drunk sailor like most Americans do?

At least it isn't the Nancy Grace Space Telescope, which would see nothing but victims everywhere.

I actually don't understand how the name is "woke". Wikipedia says it's also known as the "Roman Space Telescope". Is that better?

Good catch! That does make more sense, and Wikipedia confirms that the telescope has a coronagraph, formally called the Coronagraph Instrument (CGI), which presumably will not be creating computer-generated imagery. (Computer-enhanced, very likely.)

It probably does also have one or more chronographs for precise timing.

If an LLM attorney is smart enough to actually check that the cases they reference actually exist, we can be confident than they're better than a certain percent of human lawyers.