Salpun

[TheSpaceEngineer @mcrs987]

GO Australis and S40 are now equidistant between Australia and Indonesia at 1,036km in both directions. Christmas island is the nearest landmass at 693km away. Both assets are still moving northwest at pace with the wind and currents

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

The long, long journey Artemis II will take:

[Everyday Astronaut @Erdayastronaut]

NEW VIDEO!!! "A Complete Guide To Artemis II" goes over everything you need to know!!! We go over the crew, the rocket & spacecraft, we compare them to the Apollo era hardware, then explain the mission profile & a full mission timeline too! Enjoy! https://t.co/voqlWHvuKg

[John Ʌ Konrad V @johnkonrad]

We had a good thing, Britain.

A really good thing.

You taught us this game. Mahan studied you. We just wrote bigger checks.

The deal was simple. We spend the trillions. Fight the hard wars. We even let you sit out Vietnam. And you? You hold the chokepoints you already own. You run Lloyd’s. Ships in the narrows, insurance on the hulls.

That’s all you had to do and we would back your interests with the strongest military and financial markets in the world.

That was the deal.

Now look at you.

You gave up Aden. Fine. You kept Diego Garcia so we could reach it with bombers. Now you’re giving that away too. To a Chinese client state.

You built Israel to guard Suez. Now your Foreign Secretary threatens to arrest their PM.

You built a base nearby to back it up. Iran hit your base in Cyprus. You didn’t have one warship in the Mediterranean. Spain got there first. Spain.

You gave up Hong Kong but backed Taiwan. Now you’re letting China build the largest embassy in Europe on top of London’s fiber-optic cables. We gave you Five Eyes. You gave Beijing a SIGINT platform in the heart of the City.

Gibraltar. Three hundred years. Actual sieges. Now the Spanish run your border checks.

You lost South Africa but kept the Falklands so we can overfly the Magellan Strait. Argentina could probably take that with rowboats today.

Your king kept ownership of the Canadian, Australian and New Zealand navies to fill the gaps. Those navies are now a laughing stock.

Your warships and bombers patrolled the GIUK gap. Now you don’t have enough but you also don’t want us buying Greenland. Fine. You do it. With what?

We gave London the @IMOHQ to regulate shipping, you backed the EU agenda to carbon tax every ship to build woke UN slush fund.

Iran closed Hormuz. In the ‘80s, 540 ships got hit. Lloyd’s never blinked. Because your navy was there. Now Lloyd’s cancels. Because it isn’t.

You scrapped your only amphibious ships. Sold them. To Brazil. You have more admirals than warships.

You built two light carriers but they keep springing leaks and you don’t have enough escort ships to support them.

The English Channel. Stopped Napoleon. Stopped Hitler. Now you can’t stop rubber dinghies.

You had one job.

Have the warships, diplomatic backbone and insurance to support shipping through the straits.

That’s it. That’s all we asked.

And you blew it. Chokepoint by chokepoint. Called it progress.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Now hundreds of ships are stuck in the Persian Gulf and the world is blaming us.

But that’s ok. All those solar panels you bought from China will keep you warm in that dreary weather I guess.

[The Launch Pad @TheLaunchPadX]

L-24 days and counting till launch of Artemis II
NASA is targeting February 6, 2026 between 9:41pm and 11:41pm ET for the historic launch of Artemis II from historic LC-39B which will see SLS launch the astronauts around the Moon in over 50 years!!

Follow us for the latest Artemis II updates!

#ArtemisII #WeAreGoingBack #Moon
#Orion #SLS #NASA #CSA

[S Tominaga (Aka Dr Craig Wright) @CsTominaga]

This book is an indictment of an institution that long ago forgot its purpose and then built an entire moral theatre to hide the fact. The stated purpose of education is simple: to cultivate the mind—to train a human being to perceive reality, to think, to judge, to make distinctions, to master knowledge, and to use it. The purpose is not to confer certificates, to distribute self-esteem, to manage social guilt, or to flatter the fashionable superstitions of the age. Thomas Sowell writes as if that difference still matters. That is why the book bites.

It is also why the book will be hated by the professional caretakers of mediocrity.

Sowell’s central achievement is that he refuses the modern fraud that treats outcomes as mystical products of “systems” rather than consequences of choices, incentives, and ideas. He does not treat schooling as a holy shrine where intentions redeem results. He treats it like any other human enterprise: it can be corrupted, it can be captured, it can be insulated from accountability, and it can be run for the benefit of those inside it rather than those it claims to serve. That is not cynicism. That is realism. And realism is the first virtue of any serious mind.

The real target: the moral alibi

Most writing about education is sentimental. It begins with children, dreams, “opportunity,” and the claim that anyone who questions the system must hate the poor. This is a cheap trick: a moral blackmail that grants bureaucrats immunity by borrowing the innocence of their victims.

Sowell cuts through it. He focuses on the adult machinery—the administrators, the theorists, the accreditation cartel, the ideological gatekeepers, the internal incentives that reward what looks compassionate and punish what works. He understands that the modern education industry has learned to survive by telling the public what it wants to hear: that failure is always caused by someone else; that standards are “exclusion”; that discipline is “oppression”; that merit is “privilege”; that knowledge is “power” in the crude, political sense, rather than the power to live.

The book’s moral premise is that the mind is sovereign and that education exists to strengthen it. Everything in the system that substitutes slogans for knowledge is not merely mistaken; it is an assault on the learner’s independence. When a school teaches a student to recite approved sentiments instead of to reason, it is training obedience, not intelligence. When it lowers standards to avoid “hurting feelings,” it does not protect the student—it cripples him. It tells him that reality will be adjusted to fit his wishes. That is the first lesson in helplessness.

Standards and the hatred of measurement

A healthy mind welcomes measurement. It wants to know where it stands, what it knows, what it does not know, and what it must do to improve. A corrupt institution hates measurement because measurement exposes results, and results expose lies.

Sowell is at his strongest when he explores how modern education elites treat standards as a moral problem. The language matters. “Rigor” becomes “gatekeeping.” Clear grading becomes “harm.” Competitive selection becomes “inequity.” The entire vocabulary is designed to make excellence sound cruel and to make mediocrity sound humane.

But the cruelty is in the opposite direction. Standards are not punishments. They are information. They are reality made legible. Remove them and you do not create equality; you create fog. And in fog, the only people who navigate well are those with private maps—family resources, social connections, cultural knowledge, money. That is the obscene irony: the system that claims to fight inequality often protects it, because it destroys the public pathways of merit and replaces them with hidden pathways of influence.

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[The Redheaded libertarian @TRHLofficial]

Incredible speech addressing The Woke Mind Virus in youth and how their performative displays of outrage mean nothing to those starving in the poor countries creating the most CO2. He also offers a solution that isn’t throwing soup on art. @elonmusk

[RGV Aerial Photography @RGVaerialphotos]

Aerial view of the full stack!

🔗: https://t.co/dGpvgoDEmt

[Salpun @salhany]

@BoringPrufrock Covid second shots are being administered inside the convention center. Nothing to do with the Boring Company.

[Salpun @salhany]

@brendan2908 What about the new test tank 7.2 that has just been confirmed via photo?https://t.co/hyCW01L95L

[Salpun @salhany]

@InfographicTony Original source is https://t.co/7QvZV9I9zq

[Salpun @salhany]

@InfographicTony @Erdayastronaut @MarcusHouseGame @FelixSchlang @NASASpaceflight @BocaChicaGal @LabPadre Source?

[Salpun @salhany]

@brendan2908 @BocaChicaGal @NASASpaceflight I really think that aft dome/skirt is for SN10. SN11's might be inside but not stacked

[Salpun @salhany]

@brendan2908 SN11 Common Dome was identified this morning. https://t.co/erBRN4sBy4

[Ken Kremer🇺🇦🇩🇪🇺🇸🚀🧪 @ken_kremer]

With all legs retracted recovered #SpaceX #Falcon9 B1060.1 capped 1st stage from #GPSSV03 launch lowered horizontal and all work stopped @PortCanaveral-due to same atrocious weather that scrubbed todays planned noontime launch of next @SpaceX #Starlink from @NASAKennedy pad#39A

[Mary @BocaChicaGal]

Super Heavy High Bay walls are starting to go up at SpaceX Boca Chica. 🤩🚀
@NASASpaceflight

https://t.co/9sTD7p0vVz

[RGV Aerial Photography @RGVaerialphotos]

First ever aerial photo showing the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch and Build Site in the same shot!!!
.@elonmusk
#SpaceX #RGV #Bocachica
visit https://t.co/dGpvgoDEmt for the full 40+photo online gallery. 07/06 Flyover🛩️📷🚀

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

Falcon 9 lands on Just Read the Instructions after delivering GPS III Space Vehicle 03 to orbit for the @SpaceForceDoD

[SpaceGal @_SpaceGal_]

@SpaceX GPS3 SV03 being transported to KSC

[SpaceX @SpaceX]

Starlink fairing deploy sequence