Book Of Norm

 This is incredibly cool and would have been science fiction only a decade ago: Falcon 9 rocket launches its 550th satellite . With clearing skies and moderate winds, SpaceX's Transporter-3 rideshare mission safely launched into space on Thursday. The Falcon 9 rocket's first stage sent its upper stage and a payload with 105 small satellites on its way into low Earth orbit. Then, the Falcon 9 first stage made a smooth landing back near its launch site,  Ars reports . A well-traveled rocket  ... The first stage was making its 10th flight. Remarkably, this single Falcon 9 rocket first stage has now launched 550 satellites into orbit, as well as one Cargo Dragon and one Crew Dragon. It has flown, on average, every two months since its first launch. It would seem that rocket reuse is more than a fad. [ars_newsletter list="248910"]  

 Vail Corp sucks - we all know this. This year however has hit a new low. My own home mountain, The Canyons, is now being treated as a parking lot for the much smaller PCMR (Park City Mountain Resort). Very little terrain is open at the Canyons, the terrain that did open was slow to open, and the services are well below where they should be. At the same time, the lift lines are completely absurd.  For reference, at its best, this was The Canyons: Today, under Vail, with tons of snow, this is what is shut, gone, removed, or just not running: I would argue this is fraud. We were sold season passes to a mountain with 4,000+ skiable acres. Vail has now confidentially stated they are not planning on opening up at least 1,500 of those acres, 4 of the lifts, and some of the facilities.  The Epic pass should be considered financial fraud. Fuck Vail. 

The problem with democracy is that most people are stupid The problem with socialism is that most people won't work The problem with capitalism is that there are things which can't be valued with money

What if we had released a mild but highly infectious version of Covid-19 into the wild in Sept 2020 rather than the vaccine?  This is not SciFi, it is entirely possible. Under Western ethical standards of "Do No Harm" this is totally unethical. Under Chinese standards of "Greatest Common Good" or "Greatest Communist Good" this could an arguably should have been done.  Think through the implications. If we had engineered something like Omicron but milder (let's call it Omega) and released it into the wild in Sept 2020 - what would have happened? A huge number of people would have had a cold, and lived. A small number of people would likely still have died (making it impossible to do this under "Do No Harm") but compared to the number of people who instead died from Covid 'naturally' the outcome could have been far better - potentially millions of people and trillions of dollars better.  Who gets to make that decision? Certainly no one ...

Rich people aren't odd. People are odd. Rich people get to be themselves.

The title says it all. After seeing a 9-5 Wagon and a Discovery within a few minutes of each other I could not get over the comparison. With Saab dead, I guess you can borrow whatever you want. But in this case.. Why?

The worst car of all time. The butt of every auto journalist joke. The ugliest car ever. The 2001 Pontiac Aztec. But here is the funny thing - GM was right. Pontiac was right. Whoever designed this thing is laughing, crying, and yelling "I told you so!!!" into the void. I hear ya mystery car designer, I hear ya. The reason is, we all drive one now. We drive edgy looking crossovers which are actually cars. When the Pontiac came out, everyone made fun of it because it was "not a real SUV" but it tried to look like one with plastic and sharp lines. Journalists laughed as well all kept buying Ford Explorers, or actual cars like the Camry. Fast forward on your VCR to 2019. Pontiac is dead, the Aztec is reviled, the Camry is fading as 'cars' fall off the sales chart and the up and coming crown prince of units sold is the 2019 Rav4. Notice anything? It's a Pontiac Aztec!!!! It is based on a car. It has plastic body panels (2 tone!). It has a s...