Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
I was going to write about Labour cutting disability benefits over here, but glancing over the last few posts, I think this is more what we need for a bit:
He doesn’t care about Keir Starmer or federal judges. He just wants to know where the treats are.
Open thread.
…or How moving fast and breaking things…breaks more than just things
(Crossposted with Inverse Square)
So…it turns out that among his many other sins, Elon Musk, with a boost from the now-unmentionable fact of climate changes, is turning low earth orbit into an overgrazed commons…to the impoverishment of us all. That’s the message of this study, published last week in Nature Sustainability. That work explores the effects of injecting anthropogenic (AKA us) greenhouse gases on the thermosphere—the bit of the upper atmosphere that extends all the way into Low Earth Orbit (LEO, up to 2000 kilometers above the planet).
The TL:DR is that climate change heats the earth’s surface, but cools and shrinks the higher-up regions of the atmosphere. That in turn means satellites in low earth orbit experience less atmospheric drag. Which leads to the following problem: without such drag bits of space junk don’t get slowed down…which means their orbits don’t decay (as fast) and they don’t burn up. As the corresponding author of this work, MIT graduate student William Parker put it in an interview with the MIT news office, “The sky is quite literally falling — just at a rate that’s on the scale of decades…And we can see this by how the drag on our satellites is changing.”
More dead satellites and orbital debris boosts the risk of collisions that knock out still-useful spacecraft. Such wrecks generate more debris, which makes crashes yet more likely, until it becomes too dangerous to try to park a satellite in some patches of space. And when that happens, a global commons will have been tragically exhausted.
Bit of backstory here: the idea of a common is an old one. In practice, it probably dates back to the beginnings of anything resembling hominid society, and as an explicit term in property law (in England, at least) it extends back to the feudal manorial system.
The basic concept is simple, and kind of evident in the name. A common is (in its first incarnation) some bit of land on which the people who live on or around could do something—the ability to use the property for one or more purposes, usually up to some defined limit. For example, someone could hold the right to graze five sheep, or gather some amount of wood, or some similar privilege.
Note the idea of limits—constraints on an individual’s use of a common resource. Our commoner (!) could put five sheep out to nibble…not six or seven or any number they chose. And if it turned out that the already granted rights of pasturage were too much in a bad year, existing rights could be reduced. All of which is to say that on a lasting, well run common property, its use was tightly regulated. If that weren’t so…well that’s where the tragedy comes in. If any member of commons can run as many ewes as they want on a field of grass then the endgame comes fast: the meadow gets munched down to the roots and its carrying capacity drops. Fewer animals can graze and everyone grows poorer.
Historically, lots of commons have avoided this outcome. They have been actively managed and the commoners involved in any given set of rights have policed potentially cheats with great assiduity.
But, beginning perhaps in the 19th century, certainly by the 20th, new kinds of commons have emerged that have proved much more difficult to police. Think the oceans and overfishing, or of the use of air, land, and water as depositories for pollution, or (my current focus) a way of thinking that sees the effectiveness of antibiotics as a kind of commons that can be destroyed by uses that promote antibiotic resistance. And, of course, there is the most common commons of them all: the earth’s atmosphere, in which the tragedy of billions of individual decisions (and national and multi-national corporate choices) is producing profound physical and chemical changes on a planetary scale.
Back to the cooling thermosphere and the rise of space junk. In the study authors’ analysis, less drag leading to longer decay times for debris will reduce the carrying capacity of some or all of the LEO region. As they write, “the worst-case scenario capacity carries many fewer satellites across broad swaths of LEO by the year 2100.”
2100 is a bit of ways out. But the problem is already here. Why? Because of Musk and a handful of other overgrazers of this space-commons. Here’s what’s happening, again, as told to the MIT news office:
Their predictions forecast out to the year 2100, but the team says that certain shells in the atmosphere today are already crowding up with satellites, particularly from recent “megaconstellations” such as SpaceX’s Starlink, which comprises fleets of thousands of small internet satellites.
“The megaconstellation is a new trend, and we’re showing that because of climate change, we’re going to have a reduced capacity in orbit,” [MIT associate professor Richard] Linares says. “And in local regions, we’re close to approaching this capacity value today.”
In other words: as Musk and his minions are attacking the US federal gov’t efforts to combat climate change, he’s running his space-grab as fast as he can, to the point where we may lose access to the territory currently used by everything from earth sensing satellites, the Hubble Space Telescope, both the International Space Station and China’s Tiangong sation, not to mention a wealth of communications satellite (including Starlink, of course).
The response is obvious, previewed in the history of the commons. Resources that belong to/are valuable to society (or societies) as a whole need to be closely regulated. We have to make sure that the asshole in the third cottage down doesn’t ruin it for everyone by grabbing the temporary advantage of running some extra livestock on the pasture. In other words: we have to tell Musk and his ilk that a common resource like low earth orbit—is not one in which they can do whatever they want.
Of course, the idea of regulating global commons is exactly the antithesis to the Silicon Valley “move fast and break things” credo, the one Musk embodies, of course. But as that techno-capitalist view takes hold it’s important to recognize how unsustainably extractive it is in many domains—and how much can be broken.
I have little hope of anything moving to protect LEO as a resource under the current regime, nor any of the other crucial modern commons. But here’s the thing: nature, the material world we inhabit, gets its vote too. It doesn’t care if MAGAts think climate change is a hoax (or rather, that elite MAGAts are happy to suggest it’s a hoax to squeeze the next dollar out of a declining resource). Elementary physics tells us that if we go on as we are now, the troposphere will shrink and satellites will crash. That’s reality. I hope that we can minimize the cost of our education at the hands of this most explicit of teachers. But pay we will.
And in the meantime…open thread.
Image: Thomas Sidney Cooper, Shepherd with Sheep, 1868
As y’all know, there’s no one weird trick to get us out of the authoritarian jam we’re in right now. But there is one weird oligarch whose wealth we need to keep targeting.
We talked about this last week when Trump’s corrupt AG threatened Tesla Takedown protesters. “We’re coming after you,” she said. It was the kind of “tough talk” Bondi has been practicing in front of a mirror since she was an assistant state attorney/spokeswoman in Tampa in the aughties.
But while Bondi’s hissing and frantic flapping is supposed to scare us, what it signifies is that the angry goose is keen to protect something. In this case, that something is Trump’s top campaign donor’s primary source of wealth.
Jason Sattler (@LOLGOP on Bluesky) shared some thoughts on that in his Last Billionaires newsletter here. An excerpt:
Elon Musk’s flagship operation’s inflated and entirely suspect value must go down because he has left us no other choice. We are obligated by our history as Americans to do our very best to destroy his companies and him through them until he wisely decides to leave us the fuck alone. Our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor depend on it.
No one elected Musk Emperor of America to threaten our Social Security, cancer research, and personal data. Given the strategically broken manner in which our government now operates, the people have no other recourse for checking a private citizen determined to act as our eternal overlord and, through him, the wannabe tyrant he installed.
Yep. The Republican Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” decision put a FOR SALE sign on our democracy. There’s not a damn thing we can do about that right now except make the current owner — and other greedy fuck-sticks with similar designs — understand that there’s a hidden cost they didn’t consider when striking the original corrupt deal.
Anyhoo, go read the whole thing — it’s good.
Open thread!
Yes this is blatant "We Have Always been A War With Eurasia' scale propaganda to defend Trump's economic record after four years of constant attacks on Biden's economic record but don't worry ya'll the guys who spend 21 hours a day online have assured me they're not influenced by media narratives
— Weedle (@weedle.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 7:17 PM
I am too Savvy to believe in *anything*, say the Deeply Savvy, except for mocking whatever you less refined sensibilities might think you unironically enjoy. Oooh, a superior viewpoint! It’s the perfect worldview for an angsty teenager, but making this one’s personality after the age of 25 is detrimental not just to the individual, but to Living in A Society.
My ultimate pretentious philosophy take on the Trump era is that it's more or less the final form of the "I'm far too mature and intelligent to dirty myself by *believing* in anything" mindset that's been spreading across American culture in various forms for the past ~60 years.
— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 6:22 PM
And I think once we survive this and win (yes we're going to win), the ultimate takeaway will need to be a full embrace of cringey stuff like "belief" because now we'll know the alternative is extinction.
— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 6:23 PM
"Believing in the virtue of your country" feels very eyeroll-worthy and it makes you a lot of cool friends to say you think your country has no virtue (derogatory). But eventually what happens is that someone declares your country has no virtue (laudatory) and then things get bad.
— politiburb (@politiburb.bsky.social) March 16, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Terry Pratchett was a wise man as well as an excellent wrier, and Death is one of his best recurring characters (Susan is Death’s granddaughter, by adoption.) A quote from HOGFATHER, his alternate-world Christmas / Winter solstice story, to get us through the next few months & years:
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
We (collective we!) are the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. Let us honor both halves of our heritage.
Grey Dawn Open Thread: ‘Savvy’ Is A CursePost + Comments (90)
Thanks to everyone for the well wishes last night. Again, it was just a sinus headache, I’m not dying. But thank you all again.
It was a busy day today, so I’m going to just stick the basics for the most part so I can go rack out.
It is very, very hard to make policy, develop strategies to achieve the policy objectives, or do anything else in the national security and foreign policy world if you’re not dealing with reality.
Create an imaginary encirclement.
> Save imaginary soldiers from the imaginary encirclement.
> Gain reputation points. Profit.✅️— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) March 17, 2025 at 4:57 PM
This is also not based in a lot of reality either:
What???
— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) March 17, 2025 at 2:47 PM
At one level it will be exceedingly hard for Ukraine to militarily reclaim Crimea. It’s not impossible and a lot of the constraints on Ukraine were actually imposed by US so as not to aggravate Putin by crossing one of his red lines. Leaving aside Putin’s control of US foreign, defense, and natsec policy for the better part of the past decade, preemptively ceding Crimea to Russia rewards Putin and condemns the Crimeans to the horror that is life under Russian rule.
Leniie Umerova, a Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar activist, recounted her nearly two-year imprisonment in Russia after being abducted by Russian security forces while attempting to visit her sick father in Crimea. She went through physical and psychological abuse, interrogations and solitary confinement
— Anton Gerashchenko (@antongerashchenko.bsky.social) March 17, 2025 at 5:03 PM
Around 14,000 Ukrainian civilians are currently behind held in Russian prisons
“This is more than a war for territory.This is the battle between light&darkness… Between democracy and tyranny. And #Ukraine is still fighting. And we are fighting for the win,” Leniie told the European parliament.
— Anton Gerashchenko (@antongerashchenko.bsky.social) March 17, 2025 at 5:07 PM
It also sends another message that the US under Trump and his owner/employer Musk is perfectly okay with states grabbing and keeping the territory of other states. What this communicates is that there is no such thing as a fixed border, nor territorial integrity. That will be a huge problem and I doubt Trump, Musk, or anyone else in his administration have thought through the implication.
The cost:
During a recent drone attack on Kharkiv, one of the drones was shot down near my brother’s home.
His youngest child, just six years old, has grown accustomed to the sound of explosions since it was his reality for half his life. But the deafening, ground-shaking blast of the drone exploding …
— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) March 17, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Just outside their home still terrified him.He leapt into bed, covered his head with a blanket, and whispered, “exploding.” Even after it was all over, he refused to come out for some time.
What have our children ever done to deserve this?
— Kate from Kharkiv (@kateinkharkiv.bsky.social) March 17, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.
War for Ukraine Day 1,117: Fantasy Land Foreign PolicyPost + Comments (23)
Walz: There’s nothing conservative about an unelected South African nepo baby firing people at the VA.
There’s a saying: Sometimes courage is saying ‘I will try again, tomorrow’. However excited the NYTimes lathers itself over the chances of a crowded Democratic primary in 2028 (gosh, who would’ve thought they’d be hungering for Dems in disarray! stories when the Oval Office Occupant is serving them such a buffet of Watch the GOP wheels fall off! tales?), what the country needs *right now* is a reliable, relatable Democrat with a national profile to speak up for our much-beleaguered party. You go, Gov. Walz!
Tim Walz is our guy!
— @Boom-WhatsGoingOn.bsky.social (@boom-whatsgoingon.bsky.social) March 15, 2025 at 10:43 PM
BREAKING: The turnout for Gov. Tim Walz in Des Moines, Iowa, in a Republican district, is incredible. This is huge. pic.twitter.com/krV4HjpkuU
— Democratic Wins Media (@DemocraticWins) March 14, 2025
?? Hey @governorwalz.mn.gov was in my hometown Omaha Nebraska! This is what Dem leaders need to do! Love it! ?????? Thank you Tim Walz!
— BostonCatherine (@banner19.bsky.social) March 15, 2025 at 8:27 PM
Monday Evening Open Thread: Tim Walz, Putting in the WorkPost + Comments (98)
Filmed this Wood Stork couple the other day. I see a dancer-like grace in their movements.
I also find that species beautiful, scaley, vulture-like heads and all. Possibly I’m nuts.
Open thread.