I feel this. I help where I can and it feels like an infinitely deep abyss of need unfillable by what resources I can provide. In times past I’ve been able to come up with $1000 to help someone and before its been the difference between life success and failure. Now $1000 may only fix a single problem for the person and they have 3 to 4 other problems of equal weight with equal consequences. So fixing the one still causes their lives to go off the rails from the other remaining problems.

It makes me feel helpless to not be able to do anything meaningful.

I was asking about the song. Thats it. If you want to listen to a 3+ minute song to get a better understanding of the poster, you’re welcome to. I’m not. If you want to accept the poster’s points without the song, you’re welcome to. I was interested in the poster’s viewpoint. They included a song which appeared to hold a large part of their viewpoint with respect to an experience with a teacher. I still have no idea what they’re talking about with the song. They communicated they aren’t interested in explaining more. I’ve accepted that. If you really want to wrap yourself around the axle on this feel free. I won’t be responding to you anymore.

Thats fair.

Those two examples are not evidence, they are suppositions. They may be fine suppositions, but the poster provided a link that appears, by context, to be actual evidence. I respected the poster enough to ask what they meant by the song instead of just dismissing it.

I was also absolutely told this by at least one teacher, and in my case they weren’t wrong.

Can you provide evidence to your point without having to listen to a 3+ minute song?

I had something similar in elementary school. There was an assignment given and something like 2 hours to do it. The reward was extra recess time. I saw the exercise knew I could do it quickly so I screwed around for about 1 hour and 50 minutes. The teacher saw this and commented on it. In the last 10 minutes I blasted out the assignment, handing it in when everyone else did. I received a passing grade on the assignment. The teacher stopped me anyway from getting the extra recess time because she didn’t like that I spent so little time on the assignment even though I completed it sufficiently.

I stopped trusting teachers for years because of that and so no reason to put in full effort when arbitrarily applied rules would take away the rewards anyway. That didn’t mean I didn’t put effort into learning, it just didn’t really care about scoring well or doing assignments. I’d do well on tests, but had low grades from simply not completing or not turning in homework. Occasionally I’d even do the homework if I was working on grasping the concept being taught, but I didn’t see a point of even turning those in many times even though they were complete.

Well, I’m running Asahi Linux on a Macbook which can’t boot from USB even if I wanted to.

However, if you’re really worried about state-level threat actors, like FBI or CIA, I don’t believe there is much you could do to protect yourself anyway. They likely have entire catalogs of unpublished and undisclosed side-band attack exploits they could draw from to gain access to your machine and execute a privilege escalation to install whatever they want.

SpaceX gets away with it and I honestly don’t know why

For the same reason all private spaceflight companies (like Firefly, Rocketlab, and Blue Origin) “get away with it”. Blown up rockets aren’t paid for by tax dollars. Private spaceflight customers, and yes, the government, only pays for successful launches.

bcz their contracts have been all government until pretty recently.

The contracts are for successful flights. If a SpaceX rocket blows up that was paid for by the government, the government (taxpayers) don’t pay for that launch.

Commercial spaceflight launches are much MUCH better finanical deal for taxpayers than the traditional NASA “cost-plus” contracts, SLS being the most recent example.

Blowing up rockets gets people really upset when they think it’s their tax dollars.

I love spaceflight and what the Artemis II accomplished, but it came with an absolutely staggering price tag. It cost a bit more than $50 Billion to design including both the rocket and the Orion capsule. It costs $1Billion each time it launches too. We only bought enough parts for 4 flights of the rocket, and we’ve now used 2 of those.

artemis (boeing)

Just for the clarity of the record:

• the 1st stage tank of the SLS rocket is Boeing
• the 2nd stage is ULA (a joint Boeing/Lockheed company)
• the 1st and 2nd stage engines are Aerojet Rockdyne (which is now a subsidiary of L3Harris Technologies)
• the solid rocket boosters on the side are Northrop Grumman
• the service module is Airbus Defense and Space along with Thales
• the capsule is Lockheed

So you’ve got four giant American defense contractors, and two European defense contractors owned by French, German, Spain, and Italy.

Maybe the communal part is the community of western defense contractors.

The best name I’ve heard for the 2000s is “the noughties”, as in the plural of nought, zero.

Shuttle was always a Low Earth Orbit craft. It was never designed or capable of even a flight to the moon, much less another planet.

infinite resources for capitalism to exploit.

That is potentially still alive with robotic missions for orbital asteroid capture and mining.

I walked outside last night looking up at the sky and knew for the first time in my life there were people circling the Moon right then. It was a profound feeling.

The narrative of space colonization just doesn’t sell to me.

For me one of the most important parts of human spaceflight is working as a constant reminder of how hard it is to keep humans alive outside of Earth. It should work to underscore that we only have one Earth and there is no realistic “plan B”. Without human spaceflight we could get complacent and just think we can find another home for humanity. When we see live on video feeds how much it takes for just 4 humans for a week or so to live off Earth and close to the moon the illusion of an alternative to Earth shatters.

Carbon-free energy.

We had a small wedding with just the bride and groom. We spend $1700 CAD ($1,275 USD) for ours and that included the photographer and his assistant. The agreed time was only 60 minutes. However our wonderful photographer spent probably 2 hours with us. He kept taking us other places at the venue for more pictures on his own. He took amazing pictures!

If you have a larger wedding party, or are planning on having travel time necessary between pictures, your $3000 sounds reasonable to me. There is likely a large regional pricing variation though.

This is what we did and we really liked the outcome.

What I hadn’t considered was that photographer that normally works that venue knows all the best places for photos, and for any time of day that your event happens. You have a limited amount of time with the photographer on the day of the event so you can’t spend time on a new photographer learning whats available or where the best light is. A photographer that normally works the venue also usually has a good relationship with the staff there. We got access to places for pictures in the venue normally off limits to the public because of the photographer and who he knew.

Our venue had 3 different photographers they recommended and we asked those photographers for examples from their portfolios at the venue. It was great to see the different styles of each one and be able to pick what style matched our preference for photos.

We knew we picked right when the photographer show up not only with his assistant, but brought his own sled for pulling all his camera and lighting gear through the snow at the venue. If your photographer can get some shots of the married couple at dusk while it is gently snowing with a backdrop of frost capped mountains and a river in the valley below, I recommend doing so.

I appreciate the reply with your experience and the context. Can I ask what your opinion is on electric paramotors? Do you think they are mature enought yet?

Every 5 years go so I think about getting into powered paragliding. It looks amazing! Inevitably each time I find youtube videos talking about how much progress has occurred in the industry…and a heartfelt eulogy about a wildly experienced paraglider pilot that died recently while paragliding. I always turn away with the same thought: “If the very experienced people are dying like this, it is far riskier form me to try.”

$0.21 isn’t going to get you a piece of one. However, if you can come up with another 4 cents and you go down to the bodega on 2nd there’s a slice of avocado toast they’ll let you get a nibble off of for 25 cents. They also sell loosie cigarettes.