Finally! I was going to comment that this thread was just a dick-swinging competition. Glad you brought the pics to prove it!

You didn’t really need to jog over to Marfa though.

The reporting I saw said the oil companies were the ones to pay his legal fees when he was broke during Biden’s administration.

Like the AI bros imagining AI will cure cancer, Space bros seem to think orbital garbage collection is a business model on the horizon. At least that was the response I got when I tried to talk to my friend at Blue Origin about Kessler Syndrome (which we’re pretty darn close to).

It almost seems like a ruse to justify creation of a monopoly. These companies are more like competitors for Lockheed and Boeing than SpaceX. Europe has fast-paced, dynamic space startups too, but these hulking behemoths aren’t them.

I don’t understand what Leonardo is bringing to this, as far as competition with SpaceX goes. Thales and Airbus cover some of the hardware, payload, and launch capabilities I guess, but none of them are satellite Internet/ communication providers…

It’s kind of going on the reverse. The US is kind of being subsumed into Musk Inc.

So you’re just dismissing the Reuters article I sent you? The DoD didn’t know Musk had cut off Ukrainian access to Starlink (there was no Starshield at that time):

Whatever the reason for Musk’s decision, the shutoff over Kherson and other regions surprised some involved with the Ukraine war – from troops on the ground to U.S. military and foreign policy officials, who after Russia’s full-scale invasion that February had worked to secure Starlink service for Ukrainian forces. Panicked calls by Ukrainian officials during the outage to seek information from Pentagon counterparts, five people familiar with the incident said, were met with few explanations for what could have caused it.

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/musk-ordered-shutdown-starlink-satellite-service-ukraine-retook-territory-russia-2025-07-25/

As Elon himself said in his recent tweeting, the USG controls Starshield, the military version of Starlink. SpaceX, and sometimes Elon himself, control Starlink.

Whether this occurrence is the USG restricting military comms or SpaceX restricting commercial comms, this is not a coincidence of restrictions on Russia being colocated with Ukraine-Russia battlefields.

Elon had already disabled Starlink access to them once, back at the start of the war when Biden was still president. I don’t understand why Ukraine hasn’t divested of SpaceX at this point. Hopefully they have diversified their sources of intel and comms, at least. Europe is starting to develop some nice alternatives like ICEYE, and have given multiple pledges? suggestions? to utilize it in support of Ukraine, I thought.

Edit: I guess Russia is considering stopping them too: https://www.axios.com/2026/10/17/russia-ukraine-satellite-space

Well, they’re also a bad option when the data centers hosting them get bombed

The US worships money. There is no higher moral calling than doing whatever the highest bidder wants.

This is the joke I came for.

So is flock putting them up?

Angie Nixon mentioned this case in South Florida on a recent interview: https://archive.is/my13H

It really opens the door for any other third party to put up cameras and surveil without anyone noticing it.

Yea, you can’t continue to defy them if you tell them you’re doing it.

No you see, only the hardware/ capital of the wealthy will have the same rights as humans. Poor Alabama man’s toaster can still be abused.

In the past week I learned that Southern hemisphere South America does not get tropical storms!

I could see your criteria there as a generalized filter for a second date, but nobody is making decisions about life partners based on that.

Yea, there was that Power to the People concert in my county this weekend. All the acts and seemingly most of the concert-goes were 40+. Same as the No Kings protest crowds.

I’m skeptical of this… I think it’s because vegan-ism is so puritanical, and everyone hates puritans.

It would be different if 1) it was necessitated by a health concern, or 2) they were just people who tried to eat as few products made from commercial farming as possible, but would eat animal products as circumstances necessitate. But they cut out all animal products, to the point that it can be really really difficult to prepare food for them. And I understand that usually vegans try to be accommodating and just bring their own food; they aren’t trying to be dicks to everyone. But they still forgo the aspect of social bonding created by preparing food for others and sharing food with others, which drives social distance between themselves and others on purely ideological grounds.