DDE

"So what were you doing at work today?" "I thought you heard"

Of course. It messes with the seemingly unofficial narrative of COVID-19's US origins. A narrative that is already taking root and leading to... very vigorous social exclusion initiatives at citizen level.

A bit of harmless inforgraphics for Yuri Day. https://spacemen.tass.ru

Moscow is going into Papers, please mode. No driving around without one-time permits. Finally, this is weeks overdue. https://rg.ru/2020/04/11/moscow-ukaz43-reg-dok.html

As a rule, mobile telecom is adopted almost obscenely quickly in the developing world. Granted, the corruption in this system is a sight to behold. Remember the Uttar Pradesh embezzlements of the 2000s? My moderate conclusion is that, while India is not defenseless per se, it is going to have a hard time maintaining lockdowns, although, because it initiated restrictive measures relatively early it should be able to avoid mass graves.

Hence why no-one is proposing it.

I have a new social distancing plan now.

The youth bulge. India isn't the Global North, it's not full of old people. Ghoulish as that sounds, the developing world can shrug unmitigated COVID casualties off with ease. The real answer as to why it hasn't devastated India is because it hasn't hit India yet.

Well, the first, not entirely serious response is that they definitely have a strong immune system as a result. 7600-something infections vs 230 deaths does suggest an inadequate testing regimen. Plus they have serious issues enforcing the national lockdown - in fact, about a third of their infections originated from a single public event defying the lockdown. And giving people lip about that might get you shot. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/up-man-shot-dead-at-tea-shop-for-blaming-tablighi-jamaat-for-coronavirus-spread-1663552-2020-04-05

So I've tried Bannerlord. And I'm lost once the training wheels of the tutorial are lost. I mean, you have to have one copy of the sword for your battle kit and another for your civilian city dress. And the weapon sometimes given to you by default is not allowed with the civilian dress, but is stuck there anyway. And then there's the tutorial leading you to believe that cavalry is plentiful. How the heck am I supposed to use a cavalry-focused protagonist if everyone else follows them on foot? I'm gonna make a merchant character instead...

Do you see the guy in a suit with a nametag to the right of the ATMs?

I think you underestimate the logistics chain of the booster, the payload and the DSN. The savings are there, but, especially for Moon probes vs Moon ships, they aren't as overwhelming. The only big obstacle is the need for a much larger launch vehicle.

More like the Wrath of Gräf moment. They (Auchan) could have shuttered the Sberbank ATM in the middle to more or less maintain the distance, but then they'd lose about half of all clients. To be fair, the primary direction of breathing is straight ahead. Anyway,

Its time has passed, yeah - the floodgates are open now.

A treaty is a relative impediment rather than a showstopper. It's more likely that what little is known about Antarctic resources is not particularly attractive compared to the Arctic. And we all know the rhetoric around the Arctic in the last few decades. And, oh, look, an excellent example of a treaty being sidestepped into oblivion by those actually interested in breaking it. On that note,

They are an attempt to skip past the due to a general disappointment in government-led spaceflight - and hence to a large degree science-led spaceflight. The space buffs start with the desired conclusion of a sustainable Mars settlement, and chart what they think is the most efficient way towards it, while falling prey to the well-known 'final frontier' libertarian bias of Anglophone space buffs. For many in our merry band, a return to state domination in spaceflight is anathema.

Mars retaliates with a Red invasion of the Moon.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302011

Asymptomatic =/= no damage Chest CT Findings in Cases from the Cruise Ship “Diamond Princess” with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Still wanna bet on herd immunity?

Oh yee of little faith Press "H"!

This one is really, really bad. Lemme stop you right there. This guy is supposed to be an uberbuff with the National Space Society, but he's rolling out the usual overpopulation canard. TIL gold and silver aren't products. And, just like that, a vague appeal to Say's Law, and the remaining 80% of the article are a mire - a voluminous but generic description of a Mars colony. No business case made. You wouldn't even remember about the business case by the time you reach the end.

Rules for thee but not for me.

Russian trawler attacked by young Norwegian pirate.