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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Any trip to Mars is going to involve massive amounts of personal suffering and privation.

    Minimum mission duration of 3 years. Living space no larger than a small RV. All the food is freeze dried. Can you imagine the smell that will develop? If anything breaks, it’s on you to fix it, and there is no trip down to the hardware store, and no United Rentals to bail you out. Any medical complication? There’s no ER, just whatever you’ve got in the kit.

    And that’s not even starting on the chronic radiation hazard for which there is no viable option to deploy shielding. And a freak solar flare can cook you with acute radiation that will kill you at any time.

    Seriously, we’re talking about an adventure that would be way more epic than Shackleton.













  • It’s really racism. But if you want the legalistic explanation, here it is…

    The United States started out with 13 states that were all ex-British territories on the Eastern seaboard of North America. There are now 50 states. Every state after the first 13 got its statehood by first being a territory, adopting a state Constitution at a constitutional convention, and then getting that Constitution approved by US Congress, and so being “admitted to the Union.”

    Under the Constitution, only states (and Washington DC) participate in the electoral college. The concept of non-state “territory” did not necessarily exist when that part was written, because there were only the original 13, and the Louisiana purchase wasn’t done until later.

    [Washington DC is a very special “district” that is not a state and not a territory.]

    Puerto Rico has stayed at the territory stage since it was acquired in the Spanish-American war (started 1898). Why? Well, mostly racism. There have also been some popular votes in Puerto Rico, with very mixed results. In the currently evenly split political climate, getting any new state admitted is probably impossible (as it was before the civil war).

    There’s also some undercurrent that maybe the US is kinda uncomfortable holding on to these overseas islands (which are mostly connected to the same Spanish-American war). Philippines became an independent country. On the other hand, Hawaii got statehood in 1959 (but there was a whole racist history there of white colonization).


  • The Constitution says that each state shall send electors to the electoral college. So Puerto Rico’s status as an unorganized territory is a bit of a blocker.

    The District of Columbia is also not a part of any state, as specified in the Constitution. However, DC explicitly got some electors in the 23rd amendment, so they can vote for President.

    Really, the idea that the United States might have overseas territories that are not on track to statehood is itself an invention of the twentieth century. (Owing to the 1898 Spanish-American war, which caused the US to take over several parts of the ex-Spanish empire).





  • 802.11ax, clients just… (essentially) wait for a random amount of time, listen for a break in the signal, and take a leap of faith.

    Ethernet originally worked the same way, back when it competed directly against token ring. Ethernet won by being as reliable in real world scenarios while being cheaper to build out. Gigabit Ethernet was the first standard that insisted on full duplex only.

    Half duplex mode with the collision avoidance is still actively supported for 10/100, but it is becoming very hard to find an unswitched hub. So you may have to write up your own twisted pair cables.