I always was fond of the joke about the solar probe that only flew at night to protect it against the sun.

I looked it up and there is only about 20% overhead from the error correction in the signal. For a signal that weak I would have expected a lot more.

Or only let it fly during the day.

During the cold war there was MAD and it was taken seriously.
Now the Russians still take it seriously but our side has become extremely smug. "we survived that long, we clearly know what we are doing" , "the russians are bluffing, we can keep pushing and they'll never dare go nuclear" "those russian nukes are in such a bad state they won't even launch", I've heard every stupid argument.
Meanwhile we have bombed Valdai while Putin was there, we bombed early warning radars and nuclear bombers, and we keep going longer distance with our drones.
There was always the fear that MAD wouldn't work against real crazies. Well, the real crazies are us.
Certainly not the Iranians, they're completely at the other end of the spectrum. Capability ok but actually building nukes, woah, won't go there.

Yes. But not as precise as the numbers suggest. It's more like Drake's equation: you don't really know but you fill in different numbers that look reasonable and each time you end up with the same conclusion. In this case, it becomes hard to see how human civilization makes it into the 22nd century.

I can see that even if a nuclear war and winter reduces humanity by 99% you still have 80 million people left. But if you get cascade effects then this can keep declining. Too many birth defects for instance.

That is more or less the explanation which is going around. Official (hence all the lights on it)emergency HPGe drones flying in arrags to detect nuclear radiation from dirty bombs. This time it's a drill but accompanied with psyop, preparing the population.

Probably related with intention to attack Iran.

We have two elementary ways to perceive our interactions with 'alien chemicals'
- the War of the Worlds way: When the Spanish landed in South America they brought diseases the people in South America had no defense against and they all died.
- The separate worlds way: two specialized mechanisms exist next to each other , they have not adapted to each other and therefore they can barely interact and they mostly act as if the other does not exist.

with mirror chemistry we know a lot of stuff won't fit so the separate worlds hypothesis gets the preference. But you can't possibly predict what will happen without going into the details, which will mostly mean trying it out..

I leave the fridge door open.

The main risk right now is from the gain of function research.
You don't have to be convinced of the covid-lab leak thesis in order to come to that conclusion , even before covid.
The awful thing is that once people manage to slap the 'conspiracy thinking ' label on is everybody's thinking just shuts down. Not only about this instance but about the general risk.

Seriously, not only are there a lot of conspiracies going on at any time, how is a lab leak even a conspiracy? Conspiracy to cover it up , sure. But how often is there not such a conspiracy going on...

A wheel like that would be a niche thing, like when Michelin reinvented the wheel eg see here https://www.designboom.com/tec...

It's very nice to reinvent basic things, like the wheel or warm water, but it doesn't mean it will revolutionize what is out there. It will likely become a niche thing which means most of the market is unaffected.

I'm guessing stuck in zipper.

I imagine the first AI equipped lander screaming and uttering a stream of invective, then going quiet.
And then suddenly "That was great , can I do it again?"

This is why I mounted an ice cream machine on my John Deere tractor.

I can identify with the screming into the atmosphere bit, less so with the graceful landing.