Anyway I'm off to listen to the 50th anniversary Dark Side of the Moon remaster. Wait, is "dark" an okay word? I didn't get a master's degree in English

* Parallel ATA on the other hand, yeah, yikes

The mere fact that the outcome was successful does not inherently indicate that the decision-making was safe: the O-rings "worked" for 24 missions and the foam/tiles "worked" for 111. Nevertheless there were ample warnings and close calls.

Reentry from the Moon is not routine. Re-entry speed was about 40% faster than from low earth orbit, and kinetic energy goes up by the square, so about double.

I have been excited for Artemis--yes it's big and expensive and late, but look how it has brought out the best of what humans can be--but, despite all that, the heat shield situation was textbook "normalization of deviance." Just as the O-rings were not designed to have any damage but they retroactively justified it was okay, just as there was not supposed to be any foam or tile damage but they retroactively justified it was okay, so too was the Artemis I heat shield not supposed to come back with damage, but they...

I'm not trying to be negative, and risks are inevitable, but the resemblance to me was uncanny. The lesson with normalization of deviance is that a successful result does not inherently mean a safe decision. After all, most of the time that you play Russian Roulette you will escape unharmed.

Good luck in your quest of persuasion-by-bludgeon

This was a critical part of the danger:

> Temperature Effects

> The record of the ... meetings ... on January 27th, the night before the launch of flight 51-L, shows ... limited consideration was given to the past history of O-ring damage in terms of temperature. The managers compared as a function of temperature the flights for which thermal distress of O-rings had been observed--not the frequency of occurrence based on all flights (Figure 6).

> In such a comparison, there is nothing irregular in the distribution of O-ring "distress" ... between 53 degrees Fahrenheit and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. When the entire history of flight experience is considered, including "normal" flights with no erosion or blow-by, the comparison is substantially different (Figure 7).

> This comparison of flight history indicates that only three incidents of O-ring thermal distress occurred out of twenty flights with O-ring temperatures at 66 degrees Fahrenheit or above, whereas, all four flights with O-ring temperatures at 63 degrees Fahrenheit or below experienced O-ring thermal distress.

> Consideration of the entire launch temperature history indicates that the probability of O-ring distress is increased to almost a certainty if the temperature of the joint is less than 65.

https://www.nasa.gov/history/rogersrep/v1ch6.htm#:~:text=Thi...

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In fact it is also a case study in data visualization: https://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/tufte-ch... (more briefly: https://www.residentmar.io/2016/02/07/space-shuttle-challeng...)

For completeness: the engineers' rebuttal: https://people.rit.edu/wlrgsh/FINRobison.pdf but I don't think the back-and-forth takes away from the larger point that there are more- and less-effective ways to visually convey data

Is Dennis the Menace a treatise on corporeal punishment?

If we want to treat Idiocracy as a policy paper, why not take away as a lesson to think beyond merely themselves when the well-educated decide whether to raise children?

Similarly, buildings will probably not topple over and be tethered together with oversized packaging tape

Meanwhile although there's no monster trucks on the White House lawn yet, get ready for UFC Freedom 250

If you tell the nuanced truth and lose, and your opponent tells simplified untruths and wins, where does that leave you?

As I understand it (obviously a gross simplification), Jimmy Carter attempted to treat Americans like adults, but Americans did not want to inconvenience themselves by wearing sweaters

This guy, supposedly:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40133976

Kind of mirrors "it's expensive to be poor"

Freeze Your Data - The Work Number https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze

As I understand it, payroll whores your salary out to Equifax*, who then pimps it to others

* Yeah, that one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach

This one sounds like "...and this is precisely why we started using wireframes"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_humor#Incongruity_...

(That being said, I can't believe they cut to people on the ground during SRB separation!)

edit: here's better footage from Everyday Astronaut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOsSRRBMNoc&t=24512s

And what does the customer do if the vendor has discontinued it? Or charges for an upgrade? Or has gone out of business?

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20031224-00/?p=41...

I'm pretty sure another one was "what if you're wrong/have a false positive detection, and slander another company, one with lawyers?"