Links for you. Science:
Whitey on Mars: Elon Musk and the rise of Silicon Valley’s strange trickle-down science
The Chesapeake Bay is thriving. Trump’s proposal to slash funding would bring a dramatic backslide, experts say.
A New Discovery Upends What We Know About Viruses
Beekeepers have trained dogs to sniff out diseased larva and save entire hives.
Older Americans Are Awash in Antibiotics
Other:
Ground Rules for Politics Nerds (very good)
Ilhan Omar: We must apply our universal values to all nations. Only then will we achieve peace.
Andrew Yang is not ready to be president
All the Crime, All the Time: How Citizen Works
Beto Versus The Barrio
How Parents Are Robbing Their Children of Adulthood
Global Mass Surveillance And How Facebook’s Private Army Is Militarizing Our Data
The D.C. Council has devolved into a club — and it’s protecting one of its own
Ilhan Omar: We must apply our universal values to all nations. Only then will we achieve peace.
Congestion Pricing Is New York’s Green New Deal
What the Hell Actually Happens to Money You Put in A Flexible Spending Account?
Can Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Be Trusted To Turn Facebook into a “Privacy-Focused Communications Platform?”
Neighbors Of Landmark Flintstone House Want It Sent Back To The Stone Age
Trump is right. Daylight saving time should be permanent.
Smithsonian shrinks this summer’s Folklife Festival from 10 days to two (thanks shutdown!)
Puzzling number of men tied to Ferguson protests have died
Texas Refuses to Use Voting Machines With a Paper Trail
Just watched the Jon Oliver interview with Monica Lewinsky over breakfast, and… it’s quite good.
The Hidden Billionaires
mikethemadbiologist
That Aeon article is a short-sighted hit piece. Musk is taking a shotgun approach; Mars is part of a larger plan that includes revolutionizing electric vehicles (both passenger and cargo) and pushing the spread of renewable energy sources here on Earth. Even his Boring Company side project stands a fair chance of accelerating low-carbon mass transit.
The primary benefits of Mars as a colonization target may end up being people inspired into STEM jobs, innovative recycling tech (derived from colony bioregenerative life support systems) reducing our dependence on groundwater and renewables plus battery backups (efficient enough for Mars, deployed cheaply on Earth) displacing carbon power.
Money spent on space does not magically vanish; it pays salaries of people working in various industries here on Earth and in the USA. The protests against NASA had at least some merit in that government should be responsible for the well-being of citizens and answerable to their concerns. Similar protests against SpaceX would be completely unfounded; aside from taxes, the public has no moral basis to order SpaceX to spend their private capital in any particular way. A better use of an activist’s time would be lobbying their representatives to vote for initiatives like the green new deal, higher taxes on the wealthy and social safety net spending.