David Burbach 🇺🇸🌹

So finally at Midway. Got up at 4:30a Eastern Thur, depending on the late night Uber wait in Portland, likely to hit my parents guest room at about 6:00a Eastern Friday. I am officially Too Old For This

How about NO. Also, NO

Second, our Constitution and laws do not make America a 'Christian nation'. I do what I do because I believe in our democracy and our freedoms, the security of Americans of all faiths. Peter Hegseth may see himself battling for Christendom but it should not be the Secretary's fight. Its not mine.

Oh I have no doubt

First, a bit odd to be fighting a war where our main ally is Israel and the others are Muslim and imply we are fighting to stay "Christian nations under God" 🤨

The military hegemon in a relatively high trust, open world can no doubt make out quite well for a while, but ultimately the world adjusts to predation

Marshall and his legs napping

I guess it would be " politically correct" to not lay waste to millions of civilians, civilians we were encouraging to rise up for freedom a few weeks ago.

The President of the US is casually advocating causing a literal world war and congress is 🦗🦗🦗🦗

Wars of choice rarely run out to be good choices

That my typical PhD cohort peer's grandfathers had graduate degrees in the 1940s (maybe even a few grandmothers I think), whereas I'm more or less first generation to even go to college, was helpful for perspective.

Not you!

One owned a metal shop, specialized in stainless steel. One owned a gas station and a garbage route.

This Q came up with PhD student peers about WW2: their anwers mostly: Dow Chemist, OSS Translator, State Dept, Surgeon (x several), Disney animator, Tuskegee Airman

The author of those posts talks about a future where most journal articles will be mostly be read by LLMs (and encourages adoption already of Markdown as the standard for writing and distributing articles since it's more easily machine-read)

We do not have a MEU in theater. Though we do have one near Venezuela.

There will *not* be a 10 megaton explosion on the Moon in 2032.

Well, not from this asteroid at least. Given everything, I make no predictions of what humans get up to by then.

I don't know much about investing but a price:EBITDA multiple of 200 is on the large side, right?

There is just so much deadweight loss in a low-trust society. Very sad we're headed that way.

DoD official: I would say our organization is one of the leaders in congressional engagement

GOP congressman: We see that completely differently. It's been like pulling teeth

To elaborate on Cheryl's justified tiredness, the dangerously radioactive substances are fission products of uranium that are created in an operating reactor. Before it is used, the HEU is not very radioactive at all

More than 100 flights canceled amid Chicago dense fog advisory, with 'dangerous' driving conditions Early Thursday, traffic cameras from across the entire Chicago showed just how low visibility was, with blurry scenes under street lights.

More than 100 flights canceled amid Chicago dense fog advisory, with ‘dangerous' driving conditions

For anyone to whom this is relevant, most flights into Chicago Midway cancelled this morning. Fog?

Sadly it is relevant to me but at least I live near the airport. Try again tonight 😵‍💫😴

I know that the people who need to read this aren’t here, but here goes:

Rules of engagement aren’t for the enemy. They’re for you. They’re for your soldiers when they’re captured or wounded. They’re for your civilians when they’re in range of the enemy. They’re for your allies, to reassure.

Province of Iran

Nancy Youssef, ..guil @ X.com @nancyayoussef The preliminary Pentagon cost estimate of the war in Iran is $1 billion a day, a congressional official told me. 12:20 PM • 3/4/26 • 44K Views

Preliminary Pentagon cost estimate of the war in Iran is $1 BILLION a day. So far.

Historical perspective, starting out with disaprove > approve is extremely unusual for a major U.S. military action. Though it does look like since Sat-Sun, "not sure" has broken more towards approve than disapprove, which is something.

Remains to be seen whether the budget numbers can bck this up. But does seem like Isaacman is being given a lot of running room to try to make a 2028 landing work (and pretty clear blame now if it fails).

I was skeptical about Isaacman getting OMB / OPM approval on all this, particularly beefing up NASA's workforce given all the WH pressure last year was to fire *lots* of NASA employees. But OPM giving Isaacman authority to hire 2 year term technical people from industry

The new language grants NASA considerably flexiblity to adjust program elements as needed to facilitate timely Moon landings, flex that Congress -- and notably Cruz -- had been reluctant to grant in the past. That also includes room to cancel Gateway, it seems

Some critics or general observers had noted that there was specific Congressional direction re EUS and ML-2, eg @derek.space and given that Isaacman's announcement seemed to surprise everyone, didn't think it was obvious he could do that, or that Congress would approve.