Generally agree with the sentiment, just they're probably worried about the 2026 proposal, that talked about $18.8 billion for FY 2026. Both the Senate the House did not agree with the White House proposal, yet the threat that $6 billion was going to vanish causes a lot of issues. Now they're in limbo with shutdown. And FY 2025 was a full-year CR. So not a lot of belief in a functioning House / Senate.
Difficult to plan the usual when the White House is proposing -$6B and the House / Senate are not functioning. And they all got emails paraphrased as "get out while you can."
Minor nitpick, the budget amount really seems to depend where you look. Per USASpending.gov, supposedly "the official open data source of federal spending information", FY 2025 Obligated is $9.4 trillion as of August 30th. FY 2024 was $9.7 trillion. FY 2019 was when it was $6.6B. [1]
However, your numbers are closer to the numbers from the Treasury that say $7 trillion was spent so far this year. [2] Treasury actually mentions USASpending by name and notes "Values displayed are outlays, which is money that is actually paid out by the government. Other sources, such as USAspending, may display spending as obligations, which is money that is promised to be paid, but may not yet be delivered."
Differences between them:
Social Security 23% 16.30%
Medicare 14% 18.30%
Health 14% 11.60%
Net Interest 14% 12.30%
National Defense 13% 15.90%
Income Security 10% 6.70%
Veterans Benefits and Services 5% 4%
Transportation 2% 1.70%
Natural Resources and Environment 1% 1.20%
Administration of Justice 1% 1%
General Government 4.2%
Education, Employment, Training 1.9%
and Social Services
Other 2% 4.90%
SUM 99% 100.00%
Social Security looks like way larger percent paid than percent promised. Total dollars on Treasury is $100 billion higher than USAspending. Medicare looks like a lot has been promised, yet to be delivered. National Defense looks quite a bit more promised than delivered. Income Security is also more paid than promised (~another $100 billion) General Government and EETSS was not included in Treasury (?). They're at 99%, no room for another 6%.
I commiserate, yet it's way more than $850B. Current spending for fiscal year 2025 was $1.5T (Trillion). It's the Unreported Data* tab. Clearer if you click one month back on 10.
Why is it written BP? These archaeology people / Phys.org really need to cease with that confusing nonsense. BP is supposedly "Before Present" or "Before Physics" modern referring to practical radiocarbon dating with a cutoff date of January 1, 1950. [1] Way too easy to transpose BCE / BC / BP.
It's written like these people were supposedly cave people, yet based on this story's confusing usage, these people were caring for each other after the Spanish and Portuguese colonization of South America up to the 1700's. 4000 BP is the "really Late Holocene" 2050 BCE, 250 BP is 1700 AD. Also, the "late Holocene" goes all the way to Y2K (2000 AD). [2] The Meghalayan is the "the current age or latest geologic age." [3]
From a GPS software update... [1] "This is a telematics box module update" Telematics is primarily GPS and on-board diagnostics for location, speed, and fuel usage.
A GPS update kills your entire powertrain. Appears to also engage parking for some users, super dangerous. Catbones, "Almost died on the thruway today ... with an 18-wheeler behind me. ... Jeep died, locked its hand brake and jolted so hard my face almost ended up in the steering wheel at 70mph." [1]
Story rises fast, makes it to number 2, then suddenly begins a rapid fall with no halting all the way down to 299, where it's no longer being tracked. (HN Rankings only tracks to 300)
There's no mark of a [Dead] story. No comments that the story is not appropriate. Comments appear reasonable and polite. The graph looks like vote manipulation and story burying.
And it would just show you the input value. Maybe with a "type" specifier like talked about. Maybe the ::before or ::after css and it would allow content: updates or something.
Bunch of <input> types that there's a reasonable case for. Especially if it allowed for formatting. Did you put in the type="tel" the way you believed? It prints it out formatted.
'checkbox, color, date, datetime-local, file, month, number, radio, range, tel, time, url, week' might all have possible uses. Some of the text cases might have uses in specific conditions. 'email, text, url'
Also be nice if the for="" attribute actually did very much. The attachment seems mostly irrelevant in the examples seen. Most example just use a variation on:
At least on the part about the Nootka lupine (Lupinus nootkatensis), seems they're edible in seed and root form [1][2][3] as long as they're leeched properly beforehand to get rid of bitter (possibly toxic) alkaloids. Grizzly bears apparently also relish the roots. Some butterflies feed off the lupine. Medicinally, with less references, used for digestive disorders, skin conditions, and infections.[4]
Can probably just farm them, or harvest the fields that exist, and then store the seeds / roots or make flour out of them. Seems like a possible farm crop personally. Go out with a harvester designed for beans / peas. There's not that much that grows in Iceland anyways.
Annual lupin (L. angustifolius and L. albus) have been bred for better yields and low alkaloids. There are some existing commercial varieties. Australia is a large producer.
From an economic perspective, the yields on perennial lupin are just too low. Something that plant breeding could hopefully address long term.
Apparently the Land Institute already investigated it (https://landinstitute.org/our-work/perennial-crops/legumes/) and decided on sainfoin instead of lupin. I reached out some time back to ask why, because I was curious if their research found yield or alkaloid content too difficult to control for. Never got a reply.
In terms of commercial farming, it's probably desirable to have the better varieties. Maybe get some of those seeds from Australia then for Iceland. Have variety.
Mostly just a suggestion for the issue of "lots of a plants, that we don't especially want." At least it's edible. According to a quick search, it cost apparently $30 to $40 dollars per acre to harvest an existing field (Purdue custom rates survey for combines, obviously no input costs considered, Iceland's maybe different).[1] Maybe add a bit further for cutting, raking, windrowing, and threshing parts.
Either way, with an existing field you just want to get rid of, hiring a combine and running it over the field is not that expensive (based on the available prices). Throw it all in a pond, pool, or barrel and let it soak until they're safe to eat. Not horribly expensive.
On the sainfoin thing, probably just easier and less work for their objectives. WP says sainfoin's already "highly nutritious plants" used for a long time for forage and nectar production.
Frankly, they seem like a trade-off personally, since Lupin varieties grow rapidly in horrible climates and terrain. Sainfoin is apparently finicky. "difficult to establish as pasture, not persistent in grassland, do not recover well from overgrazing." Lupin is probably a better choice for anything in the artic, sub-arctic, tundra, and taiga biomes (which is most of Iceland).
60 admirals got investigated. One, Admiral Gilbeau, got the first felony on active duty in modern history = 1.5 year prison, and continue collecting your $10,000 monthly pension (while in prison). There were admittedly some punishments, there was also a lot of community service, misdemeanor, $100.
Not actually critiquing the comment, just somewhat for my own memory and ref, there's several other "verbs" attached to a lot of those systems.
B / L / S - Browse / List / Summarize, M / T - Move / Transfer, C / R - Copy / Replicate, A / E - Append / Expand, T / S - Trim / Subtract, P - Process, possibly V / G / D - Visualize / Graph / Display
There's probably others that vary from just a Create (POST, PUT), Read (GET), Update (PATCH), Delete (DELETE) the way they're interpreted in something like REST APIs.
Cool paper. No propulsion, stable, cyclic orbits between the moon and Earth, with times of 45 days (1,1), 84 days (2,1), 64 days (3,1), and 74 days (3,2). Also, (3,3) were identified with no findable timeframes shown.
All the orbits are also somewhat relaxed, with relatively large windows of acceptable trajectories and distances for the later families. Perilune altitudes ranging from 750 km to over 6,000 km. The (1,1) and (2,1) are somewhat restrictive (0.1 km).
Makes a lot of interactions with the moon, exploration, resupply much less severe. It looks like you can leave Earth, at ~0.4 or ~0.6 moon orbit radius, doing some relatively low velocity, and hit a stable resonance orbit. You just have to stay out of GEO satellite orbit window where Earth is the dominant gravitation.
Also, may imply that such orbits exist with pretty much every single moon around every single planet. Implies there's a Sun-Earth orbit family group that's very similar. Probably some multi-moon orbits with places like Mars and Jupiter.
Also, implies that there may also be a bunch of objects (rocks, meteoroids, dust, asteroids, comet remains, ect...) already orbiting in these types of cyclers, since they're relatively accepting of variations on a basic theme. (3,1) is a ~250 km window, (3,3) is a 2000+ km window.
I was just about to add that last point you raise, must be some great stuff floating around in one of these that we haven't yet discovered. I wonder if there's a rich horde of dust all in a narrower place.
Good summary, by the way. This paper could lead to an eternal reference to their name! We have Lagrange orbits, like L2, now we will have RRT orbits.
I really don't understand why you'd use these instead of direct ascent. The practical orbits here are in the scale of months, while the moon is 3 days away if you just go there directly.
Unless you have a massive space habitat to hang out in, a cycler is worse for logistics than just direct ascent. For interplanetary transits cyclers might some day make sense if you want to move a lot of people around and want to make a huge artificial gravity habitat for the journey. But the moon is just 3 days away, you can just go direct.
Resupply is a common case. Large amounts of material that you "only" need to take out to 0.4 radius. Or that you can "park" at 0.4 radius and then pick up later.
Persistent shuttle / subway / bus that you can meet somewhere with lower fuel and then tag along for the rest of the ride is another. Sure, its faster to drive somewhere direct with your car, yet its convenient if there's already a known cycling bus / subway route. Go to a known location, tag along. Like a bus / subway, it's also enabling. Maybe you don't want to / can't pay for a Saturn V project.
Cyclic activities that require more than just a one-way or a single round trip. Trash / waste, and similar activities on Earth are an example. Put your trash at some known meeting spot, it gets picked up and taken away.
The entire satellite economy is another, since it's a completely different orbital regime with completely different coverage, vantage points, and observational characteristics. Example, long term telescope that does a constant Earth-Moon cycle every 64 days and has baseline coverage star pattern footprint of ~500,000 miles in a relatively short time frame for observations (along with observations over the entire yearly orbit)
You can also add slowly and keep adding, cause it won't fall out of orbit.
Also works with stuff like slow LEO to GEO transfers using high ISP engines and long orbit raising spirals. (You have to go to 100,000 vs 22,000 miles, yet similar idea).
Speed's not the only metric. No fuel / no propulsion is rather compelling. Low energy, low cost, long term stability.
You can't just deliver stuff to the path of a cycler and magically have it pick it up with a velocity difference of kilometers/s. You need to match orbit with it, which in fuel terms is no cheaper than flying the entire path. And this orbit matching is generally more expensive than flying directly. (Especially because you need to raise and then lower your perigee, so a "shuttle" flying between the ground and the cycler earth end would have to burn much more delta-v than a direct ascent stage that can always keep it's perigee down and just raise apogee until it intersects with the moon.)
Again, cyclers make sense when you have something heavy you want to perpetually travel between the endpoints, and do relatively light transfers at the ends. But you don't need anything like that for the moon. For the moon, you can just take the stage that would have matched orbits with the cycler and fly to the moon with it, it's just 3 days, you can pack people like sardines for 3 days.
Difficult to plan the usual when the White House is proposing -$6B and the House / Senate are not functioning. And they all got emails paraphrased as "get out while you can."
Minor nitpick, the budget amount really seems to depend where you look. Per USASpending.gov, supposedly "the official open data source of federal spending information", FY 2025 Obligated is $9.4 trillion as of August 30th. FY 2024 was $9.7 trillion. FY 2019 was when it was $6.6B. [1]
However, your numbers are closer to the numbers from the Treasury that say $7 trillion was spent so far this year. [2] Treasury actually mentions USASpending by name and notes "Values displayed are outlays, which is money that is actually paid out by the government. Other sources, such as USAspending, may display spending as obligations, which is money that is promised to be paid, but may not yet be delivered."
Differences between them:
Social Security looks like way larger percent paid than percent promised. Total dollars on Treasury is $100 billion higher than USAspending. Medicare looks like a lot has been promised, yet to be delivered. National Defense looks quite a bit more promised than delivered. Income Security is also more paid than promised (~another $100 billion) General Government and EETSS was not included in Treasury (?). They're at 99%, no room for another 6%.[1] https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function
[2] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
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