Whitey on the moon

Turns out that an assload of private contractors (because natch...) put a lander on the Moon.

Apparently NASA was involved, but the primary was something called "Intuitive Machines" that designed and built the actual lander. The Reuters story says that "The NASA payload focuses on space weather interactions with the moon's surface, radio astronomy and other aspects of the lunar environment for future landing missions."

Which just reminds me of 1) how excited 12-year-old me was at the Apollo lunar landings, and 2) how silly that excitement looks with fifty years of perspective.

As adventure? Sure. It was pretty adventurous. The science (at least to my eyes, anyway) cooks down to some helpful planetary geology. Some useful tech emerged from the space program. The unmanned probes like Galileo have produced some immensely valuable knowledge of our solar system, and the various iterations of orbital telescopes some fascinating cosmology.

But Einstein's Wall still stands.

Human extra-atmospheric travel is still hugely impractical, and the notion of space-faring is and will be the realm of fiction.

All this farkling about on the Moon is a simple reminder that the thing is a cold dead rock.

The article goes on to say that this: 

"...marked the first "soft landing" on the moon ever by a commercially manufactured and operated vehicle and the first under NASA's Artemis lunar program, as the U.S. races to return astronauts to Earth's natural satellite before China lands its own crewed spacecraft there. NASA aims to land its first crewed Artemis in late 2026 as part of long-term, sustained lunar exploration and a stepping stone toward eventual human flights to Mars."

Which is just nuts.

There's no value in sending people back to the Moon, and even less to Mars. Like keeping a mistress, the pleasure is transient, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable. There's nothing on either celestial body that a drone or robotic probe can't examine.

FFS let the PRC waste time and money sending people to the Moon.

Right here we can't figure out how to get hoboes out of the fucking public streets. I don't see we're going to learn anything more to spend a ton of money to send someone back to the Sea of Tranquility to kick rocks.

Now if there was some Wensleydale, mind...

The Government in all its majesty...

 Spent a big part of yesterday here:

The reason was classical "DMV 101"; the Social Security Administration had somehow input the wrong birthdate in my daughter's SS data and as you know if you've ever dealt with...well, any bureaucracy anywhere, your birthdate is part of the golden ticket to get anything done.

The problem came to light when I contacted the SSA to arrange one of the oddest pieces of federal largess (and let's not forget that I worked for these rascals a loooooong time, so my N is pretty large for "odd pieces of federal largess") I've ever come across.

I started my retirement benefit application last month, and it turns out that if 1) you're receiving Social Security and 2) you have a minor kid who is either a) younger than 18, or b) still in high school, said kiddo gets some cash from her Uncle Sugar, too.

While I talking to the nice SSA person about that I insisted that her birthdate is X/XX/XX, and the SSA person said, no, it's X/YY/XX. And I looked at the paperwork in my hand and, when we agreed that we disagreed, committed to showing up with said daughter in tow to fix the problem.

So off we went, paid for parking, and entered into the maw of the SSA.

As someone who (see above) has spent a fair amount of time sitting in various US government facilities I have to give the SSA people their due.

The place was clean and well-maintained. The rent-a-cops running the security screening were professional and polite. And the process was orderly enough, given the wild quiltwork of humanity it had to deal with.

THAT was a real novelty to the kiddo. She's not sheltered, and I think she gets that there's a lot more to city life than our little patch of North Portland. But to spend several hours in the Greyhound-station confines of the downtown SSA waiting room? 

That brought those things pretty close.

Was it the dude having some sort of loudly prolonged attack of some sort of scary-sounding respiratory problem in the men's can? The family with multiple crying infants? The frankly-scary-looking dude with more metal in his clothing that I have in my legs?

No, I think it was the elderly lady who had a long, heart-rending breakdown at Window #2 because her landlord (I think) was demanding her Social Security card and she'd tried repeatedly to have one mailed to her but hadn't received it.

She was very forcefully desperate, the unseen bureaucrat behind the glass was subvocally unable to help her, and all this drama played out in front of The Girl, who is very tightly buttoned about drama in general (and especially for a Theater Kid, which is one of her personas...). I think she was a bit shaken about someone's hardships being played out right in front of her.

Plus the guy with the dog...well, you get the idea.

We finally got called to Window #2 nearly at the end of the day, laid out our documentation, got the birthdate corrected with little or no palaver, and celebrated with a stop at St. Honore for a pastry treat. Bureaucracy, hurrah!

Now I just need to go pick up the p-work from her high school.

But before I go I think it's worth noting this...

I have no idea who the hell "Jesse Kelly" is when he's at home. but my guess is he's some bog-standard "conservative" who gets wood dreaming of the social contract of the Gilded Age.

But the notion that the "country cannot be saved" unless We the People return to the pre-New Deal era of widespread common poverty and aristocratic plutocracy seems to have become one of the few actual "policies" of these people.

Which, BTW, is why I applied for these Social Security benefits now rather than waiting until 70 when the real fat paycheck comes due.

I don't trust these bloated hyenas not to pull this fast one when they and their Orange King get their dickbeaters on the levers of power. 

I want to - as best I can - lock in the paycheck I can get, not the bigger one that relies on the social engineering skills of the MAGAt Horde.

I know I keep beating this drum, but if the American Experiment has ANY value at all, it's as a test case for the promise of the Republic to be for all of "We the People" and not - as designed by the Framers - for "the rich, the well-born, and the able".

That promise is a hell of a big ask.

It relies on We the People to be true citizens, to work hard to understand our government, even down to the guy behind Window #2, and make informed, intelligent decisions about how that government works.

To not fall for the "conservative" bullshit about "government is the problem". To make that government work for Our best interests, not those of the wealthy, or the corporate "persons", or the various power-brokers and lobbyists for this and that.

One of the reasons those Framers wanted to restrict the franchise was because they doubted the ability of the mass of the People to do those things.

I can't help but wonder.

But for now, well, the pastries were good. And the Girl gets some college money.

Now you'll excuse me, but the goddamn drywall guy is supposed to be here and I need to let him in or we'll be another day behind schedule.

Remodel Army

 I just peeked into this joint and realized I've been a baaaaad blogger; over a month with no new content.

Frankly, it's mostly because of this:

That's the kitchen. Well, that's where the kitchen used to be. 

The Little House has always been, well, little. It's barely 1,000sf, and it's poorly designed, with small rooms and a cluttered floor plan. I wrote about it back in 2020; the original wasn't great and the remodel the 1970s-80s owners did didn't make it much better. We wanted to open the place up a bit.

Here's what we started with:

And here's where we're going with that:

That's still the plan. But as Clausewitz (drink!) reminds us, between plan and execution is friction. And there's been...a LOT of friction.

Subcontractors not showing up.

Subcontractors showing up and then FUCKING up.

Ice Storms.

It's all been very stressful. I hate not having a kitchen. Cooking on a hotplate on the old dining room table sucks major ass.

That's my excuse, but it doesn't excuse me. I'll try to be better.

In my defense, I'm plugging sway on the promised "Frontiers 1914" post. It's going to be complicated. I've got two major sources right now; Terence Zuber's Battle of the Frontiers Ardennes 1914, and Dennis Showalter's The German Failure in Belgium, August 1914.

Remember that to try and make the post less insanely huge I decided to focus on the reconnaissance/counter-reconnaissance part of the fight. Well, the two sources are diametrically opposed on the subject.

The Showalter book focuses on what the German Army termed "Higher Cavalry Commands" (Höhere Kavallerie-Kommando), HKK, strategic assets directly under the Imperial Army HQ but assigned (sorta) to the Army commanders of the right wing (1st and 2nd) armies.

Their task was more-or-less purely strategic; find the left end of the Allied forces so the big Schlieffen Sweep could turn it. As you can tell from the title, Showalter doesn't think the Germans succeeded there.

The Zuber book, on the other hand, is tightly focused on - also as the title makes clear- the fight between the German 4th and 5th Armies and the French 3rd and 4th Armies in the Ardennes.

The general tone of the two is utterly dissimilar.

Showalter is zoomed in on the failure of the German Oberste Heeresleitung, the overall German Army HQ, to appreciate the criticality of the strategic mission and the degree to which the top brass either permitted (or encouraged) the right-wing HKK to faff about rather then go do what they were supposed to and the utter lack of urgency in applying the air assets.

This was supercharged by the organizational and logistical arrangements made to set up the HKKs (as well as the aerial recon elements, both fixed-wing and lighter-than-air) which helped make them less responsive and thus less useful in the right-wing fight.

Zuber, on the other hand, luuuurves him some German Army tactical training. His thesis is, so far as I can tell, to debunk the post-war French narratives of why the Ardennes sector was such a completely nutty cluster of fuck. He seldom deals with reconnaissance other than to point out the vast superiority of German tactical recon/conter-recon. Zuber seldom, if ever, deals with strategic reconnaissance at all.

(As an aside, Zuber also throws in a - to my mind - highly questionable defense of the German Army reprisals against Belgian civilians. These executions appear in the Showalter text as well, and are largely condemned as excessive responses to German friendly-fire incidents. There's actually a good discussion on the degree of 1) Belgian irregular resistance and the 2) German reprisals for it in the Wikipedia page covering the "rape of Belgium" - loaded term, but that was the most common one used for it...)

It's been a fun research project, but it's rapidly becoming obvious that discussing the subject is too massive for a single post. I'm leaning towards dividing it into three parts; a "Frontiers 1" dealing with the largely-strategic recon/counter-recon of HKK1 and HKK2 and air assets on the German right, "Frontiers 2" discussing the German center and left (including HKK 3 and HKK4 but more closely examining the divisional tactical cavalry, since the lack of open maneuver space tightly constrained the HKK's (and the terrain and foliage greatly limited the aerial recon), and a final "Frontiers 3" summarizing the main concepts of the first two.

So that's the plan, anyway.

Hopefully it goes better than the kitchen.