Notices by Holly 🚀⚜️ (absolutspacegrl@mastodon.social)

“We cannot leave the security of Europe in the hands of voters in Wisconsin every 4 years" says France's Europe Minister.

https://x.com/davekeating/status/1849915556335407543?5=46

A bill called the ‘Stop Resistance Activities by Federal Employees Act’ was introduced in the House yesterday. It covers federal employees at or above GS-15 and would impose very serious penalties for “opposing, obstructing, or impeding lawful directives from the President, Vice President, or any other political appointee”.

The language is….well it’s fascism. And I’m not exaggerating. And maybe it won’t pass this time, but we all see the trend.

https://pfluger.house.gov/uploadedfiles/strafe_act.pdf

Like…don’t get me wrong. I’m pro-human space exploration. It’s what I do, it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. But like, fewer people having ~ 10 kids is not what’s preventing that.

It’s not a lack of *people*. Lots of people want to go! There was almost an entire reality show about it (okay that’s being generous, but whatever).

My point is, there are a lot of reasons we can’t just up and go to Mars. Fewer kids is not one of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One

#space #spacekaren #mars

This passage from the new book ‘Character Limit’ by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac about the Twitter deal a couple of years ago is…a thing, I guess.

“The world was suffering from a severe underpopulation crisis, Musk told the audience, and the only way to start a colony on Mars would be to have more children.”

I was browsing Bluesky and saw this post. I reacted with anger and sadness.

My husband asked if we could not discuss politics on a weekend night out.

I reacted with anger & sadness.

He said to look around, everyone else was enjoying themselves so I should too, and to ask their opinion on this.

I asked if he saw the number of Trump bumper stickers on the cars in the parking lot & said I do not give a fuck about these people’s opinions.

He asked if I had seen a therapist recently.

AITA?

#CatsOfMastodon #caturday #HarrisWalz2024

The series of devastating February firesburned more than 1.2 million acres. Electric lines for oilfield equipment were blamed for at least two of them, state records show.

#texas #fire

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/08/01/texas-oil-electricity-power-lines-fires-panhandle/

In 2006, eight fires merged to become the East Amarillo Complex Fire and blazed for nine days, setting a record for the biggest fire in the state’s history that stood until this year’s fires.

Three years later, Texas legislators passed a law that required oilfield operators to build and maintain their power lines according to the National Electrical Code. But the law did not specify a penalty or an agency to enforce it, so there were no consequences for violating it.

@liztai frog legs are popular in Cajun/Creole cuisine and can confirm…tastes like chicken. Fried alligator, too.

This article is terrible.

Starliner is not “stuck” - it is staying docked longer so that NASA has more time to troubleshoot and gather data. That part of the ship won’t come back to Earth, so they have to do it now.

NASA was doing some testing recently on just this issue while I was doing other work nearby. It’s a thing.

The crew is not in any additional danger because of this. They’re probably happy for the extra time in space. 🤓🚀

From: @quartz
https://flipboard.com/@quartz/business-news-gjbtjdrjz/-/a-rrV2Zt0ERNWGwqgOSCJamg%3Aa%3A7497286-%2F0

I will be at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) next week for meetings and training classes with some of the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) folks working on their “Lunar Cruiser” (lunar rover).

I’ve braved plenty of Houston summers…show me what you got, New Mexico! 😁🥵

https://gearjunkie.com/news/toyota-lunar-cruiser

The fact that some people I work with still have this guy’s comics up at their desks is very off-putting.

I used to, they were engineering-related and we kind of all did like 15 years ago. Then he went off the deep end and I threw that shit away.

Here’s a recent gem of a tweet 🙄

I do not know who the artist is but I’m crying ???

#starwars

“Research has found that this feeling of exclusion can have real, measurable effects. Studies by the National Institute of Mental Health in the 1970s, when NASA first began to recruit women astronauts, showed that women were significantly less likely to apply for jobs with titles that ended in man rather than person. A similar effect was found among men, who avoided professions with feminine-sounding names.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/manned-spaceflight-nasa/594835/

NASA Style Guide for reference:

“Gender-Specific Language (e.g., Manned Space Program vs. Human Space Program)

In general, all references to the space program should be non-gender-specific (e.g., human, piloted, unpiloted, robotic, as opposed to manned or unmanned).”

https://history.nasa.gov/styleguide.html

There are a lot of private space companies who still use “manned” instead of “human” or “crewed”.

#nasa hasn’t used “manned” in our official nomenclature for ~ 20 years. It may sound pedantic, but women are still only 20% of engineering graduates - the same percentage as when I graduated.

Language and representation - think of job postings - matter.

#space #engineering #WomenInSTEM

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/manned-spaceflight-nasa/594835/