This.
How is he not immediately disbarred?

Because they didn't want to "avoid MS" they wanted to flex.

As if that's different from any other "Sponsored Item" search results?

I really look forward to more widespread adoption of AI search in listings. I hate spending hours having to manually dig through listings to see if the product listed *actually* meets my needs or building up spreadsheets to compare feature sets. This should be automatable. We have the tech to do so now.

What a stupid, irrelevant post.

And I'd say you're deeply committed to your theology but whatever.

ANY long-lived species on this planet has - self evidently - survived multiple near extinction events.
What part of "repeatedly survived" is unclear for you?

10 people fall off a cliff, 9 die. 1 survives.
That one and 9 others fall off another cliff, 8 die. The original survivor and one other.
Those 2 and 8 others fall off another cliff, 4 die. The 6 survivors include the previous 2.
Those 6 and 4 more fall off a cliff, 9 die. The original survivor from the first cliff is still alive.

You "clearly this means he's going to die if he falls down a hill!"

"| Corals date from before the Cambrian explosion, about half a billion years ago.
No they don't. This is a flaw"

AFAIK Jung's study last year pushed coral/algae symbiosis back to the Devonian, no?
https://www.nature.com/article...
It's short of 500mya, but not meaningfully so to my point.

"98% of corals failed to survive the KT* extinction,"
At least from what I can see (summarized at) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ( but also from other sources ) it wasn't 98% of corals, it was 60% - the 98% is JUST warm water corals, which is basically already what I'm saying:
"Approximately 60% of late-Cretaceous scleractinian coral genera failed to cross the Kâ"Pg boundary into the Paleocene. Further analysis of the coral extinctions shows that approximately 98% of colonial species, ones that inhabit warm, shallow tropical waters, became extinct. The solitary corals, which generally do not form reefs and inhabit colder and deeper (below the photic zone) areas of the ocean were less impacted by the Kâ"Pg boundary. Colonial coral species rely upon symbiosis with photosynthetic algae, which collapsed due to the events surrounding the Kâ"Pg boundary,[71][72] but the use of data from coral fossils to support Kâ"Pg extinction and subsequent Paleocene recovery, must be weighed against the changes that occurred in coral ecosystems through the Kâ"Pg boundary.[35]"

One might argue that a 40% survival rate vs 24% (for all species collectively) in such a catastropphic event/span would strongly suggest that corals are particularly durable.

They WANT to know. I don't believe they NEED to know to do their job.

To be clear, I think a good employer WOULD make a good case to their staff that it's necessary, if it is.

But work isn't a democracy: they're saying "do x, I give you money" - that's it, that's the deal.

ESPECIALLY if that was the original deal when you were hired (ie anyone pre 2019, really). If you change the terms (well I want to work all the time from home now) they're free to ALSO change the terms (ok we're paying you 75%) and then you decide if you continue to be an employee.

I'd say *demanding* to stay home and work in your jammies sounds a lot like a 3 year old not wanting to go to school, too. So yeah, that's how it's treated.

Or, it could be that pretty nearly all government agencies were "fluffed" with nearly-worthless DEI hires, departments, and administrations over the past 4 years and nothing of value will be lost.
Let's check JPL levels historically, shall we?
| Year | Approximate Staff Level | Notes/Source Summary |
| 2010 | ~5,000 | Based on 2008 NASA budget planning for FY2009, committing to maintain 5,000 employees amid post-recession adjustments. |
| 2011 | ~5,000 | Stable from prior year; no major changes reported in mission-driven workforce. |
| 2012 | ~5,000 | Consistent with early 2010s growth in planetary missions (e.g., Curiosity rover). |
| 2013 | ~5,000 | Aligned with Near-Earth Object Program expansion; steady state. |
| 2014 | ~5,000 - 5,500 | Gradual increase tied to Earth science and outer planet missions. |
| 2015 | ~5,500 | Reflects ongoing investments in data science and workforce diversity initiatives. |
| 2016 | ~5,500 | Stable; focus on Spitzer Space Telescope management and Mars rovers. |
| 2017 | ~5,500 | HBCU/URM internship expansion signals sustained staffing. |
| 2018 | ~6,000 | Peak near-term level; $2.5B budget supports growth in robotic exploration. |
| 2019 | ~6,000 | Continued stability with Juno and Cassini mission support. |
| 2020 | ~6,000 | Pre-pandemic baseline; telework shifts but no net reduction. |
| 2021 | ~5,500 | FY2021 budget of $2.4B; includes on-site subcontractors, but core staff steady. |
| 2022 | ~6,000 | Slight rebound post-COVID; Zippia demographics report ~6,000 total. |
| 2023 | ~6,000 | End-of-year figure before 2024 cuts; shutdown impacts minimal. |
| 2024 | ~5,500 (end-of-year) | Major reductions: ~100 contractors (Jan), 530 employees + 40 contractors (Feb, ~8% cut), 325 employees (Nov, ~5% cut). Starts at ~6,000, ends at ~5,500. |
| 2025 | ~4,950 (as of Oct) | Additional 550 employees laid off (Oct, ~11% cut) as part of restructuring; figure post-layoff from ~5,500 baseline. |

So another less politically loaded but entirely accurate title might be "JPL staff returning to historically normal levels" mightn't it?

IMO

To get an SLS-equivalent payload to the lunar surface, it will take 8-16 Starship launches

You're extremely confused. SLS cannot land on the moon in the way that the (lunar variant) Starship can. It can only launch Orion to the moon. Orion is 8 meters tall and 5 meters in diameter. Starship is 52 meters tall and 9 meters in diameter. These are not the same thing.

SLS/Orion missions are expected to cost approximately $4,2B each. If you fully disposed of every Starship, the cost for 8-16 launches would be $720M-$1,44B. But of course the entire point is to not dispose of them; the goal is to get it down to where, like airplanes, most of the cost is propellant. The propellant for a single launch is $900k. Even if they don't get anywhere near propellant costs, you're still looking at orders of magnitude cheaper than a single SLS/Orion mission.

By far, most of SpaceX's launches are for Starlink, which is self-funded.
Nextmost is commercial launches. SpaceX does the lion's share of global commercial launches.
Government launches are a tiny piece of the pie. They don't "subsidize" anything, they're just yet another minor revenue stream.

The best you can say is that they charge more for government launches, but everyone charges more for government launches than commercial launches. You can argue over whether that's justified or not (launch providers have to do a lot of extra work for government launches - the DoD usually has a lot of special requirements, NASA usually demands extra safety precautions, government launches in general are more likely to want special trajectories, fully expended boosters, etc), but overall, the government is a bit player in terms of launch purchases.

Didn't "brick" used to mean "kill without any chance of recovery"? The key difference of "bricking" was the irrecersability , no?

I live in Utah... I wonder what effect this will have on my power prices.

Yet somewhere in history, someone did just that.
90% of new businesses today fail.
So someone stepped up, risked his own future and probably family, to build that business. So they get to set the rules.

Nobody in the businesses we're talking about is enslaved. They're trading their time and effort for $ according to a set of rules that business (presumably) offered them IN LIEU of putting their own ass on the line against that 9/10 failure rate. I get it. But the idea that someone bitches "this is toxic, I should QUIT" and then not do so means I simply won't be taking them seriously.

Honestly, I see it like the work from home argument. I expect most employed people today were hired precovid, where working from home was barely a discussion. They were hired on the premise that they work at an office, every workday, usually 8-5 or whatever.
When a pandemic comes along and the business spends resources to make it possible for people to work remotely successfully (we all knew it was POSSIBLE, to be clear), and then people whinge about coming back afterword that's just sour grapes. A lot like this. If you don't like that pointy-haired boss telling you to come back...QUIT.

It does matter.

If the government forgives $1mil in student loans, that's ANOTHER $1m they're going to have tax the taxpayers (eg the productive members of society) in the future.

I get it, we'd ALL love a free ride.