DDE

Progress MS-25 docked successfully but crew had to go to manual control at 217 m after Kurs went off-course. Also, two sources confirm that someone had dropped a wrench on its radiator during ground prep, and Roscosmos decided against returning it to the manufacturer to fix the "slight" damage. https://t.me/roscosmos_press/1687 (not Roscosmos)

This is where we arrive to the politically hairy topic of "how do seemingly incompetent people with utterly loony views are able to seize power in the piranha pond of a 'revolutionary situation'?" A lot of the bloodiest dictatorships in history rode the coattails of earlier coups (February 1917 in Russia, July 1932 in Germany) and somehow overtook far more established and pragmatic powers-that-be (the republican-socialist coalition of industrialists and generals in Russia; von Hindenburg, von Papen and the "cabinet of monocles" plotting to restore the monarchy in Germany).

There's always the cliched counterargument that misanthropy is a luxury, and deprivations quickly cure doubts in humanity. The overall decentralization (contrasting with internal centralization - comes with the territory when your leader is literally God, Christ or Adam) is actually likely the strength of small-g gnosticism. It's allowed for a mycelium of separate but related cults to endure and spread for almost a millennium and a half. And that's before it began to shed its religious mimicry and adopted the mantle of "scientific theories of societal transformation".

It could go both ways. A unified culture generally drowns out dissident cultures and thus could prevent the rise of some weird, isolated cult that needs to drift away from reality and marinate in its own juices. However, I would agree that, on the net, it's a problem - cultures tend to reach crisis and burn out, and a single global culture will crash and burn harder. (Which of course isn't an X-risk, and there is an argument to be made that the cycle of decline of cultures/civilizations Weber et al love to scry for is Western-centric) The SCP Foundation franchise calls these a 'memetic hazard'. I'd say the individual human's mind is different enough from others that there isn't a 'skeleton key' for controlling it.

"Maslov/Maslow" is a pretty generic Russian* surname deriving from the word maslo, butter. Because of this, and because the Anglicized version of the surname is pronounced in a bizarre, almost French (and therefore pompous) way, the concept of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs has been satirized in Russian as the Khleboux (Breadoux) - Maslow - Ikroux (Caviaroux) pyramid. Of course, this works in the concept's favor, because "having enough to butter one's bread" is an existing Russian phraseologism, while caviar/roe (we have language barrier trouble distinguishing the two) is a delicacy sometimes bordering on decadence. * the individual in question was the descendant of Kievan Jews; Wikipedia has advised me of Polish "Maslow" toponyms, but not the corresponding surname

There are questions that are best not asked, not the least because any answer wouldn't be helpful. Because the usual Sims player minmaxes character moods at all times, and the result looks awfully like this:

I think people tend to have a really low bar for what "end of the world" means because they consider any state of the world other than their familiar one to be, basically, death. Same with global warming - a runaway greenhouse effect is exceedingly unlikely, and the mass migrations and wars that the worst-case scenario could bring are not, on the net, an apocalypse. I don't see an ideological contagion as an X-risk unless it's some really weird, thoroughly rectified form of gnosticism that seeks to escape this false, cursed world by destroying all of it. Unlike a certain gameplay option in Stellaris, where this can be made the political programme of a Type 2 civilization, usually the holders of such beliefs are too messed up to be issued a driver's license and too slothful to even resort to low-level terrorism, and both of those are features of the worldview, not bugs.

Modeling St Petersburg's floods the hardcore way

After the planned expansion, Bhutan's sovereign cryptomining facility will consume more power than the rest of the country combined.

Hello, I'm a time-traveller and I've dropped a cigarette lighter in the Jurassic. Will there be any evidence? I know that fossils are the result of a convoluted process that requires specific circumstances and a whole lot of luck. What about other materials?

As of 2021, the 40-year-old TsF-18 centrifuge in Zvyozdny had logged 1761 hours of operation, including 14188 manned training sessions. https://t.me/space78125/2181

I was going to ask "under 25 or over 45", but I'm starting to suspect the former. Frankly, you're probably looking at excuses for learned helplessness rather than any sort of a biological issue. Nihilism had a sort of a political phase right at the moment people heard about it. Back here nihilism is typified by the fictional character of Evgeny Bazarov, an 1860s radical. Someone took "and the meek shall inherit the world" a little too seriously... I'm tempted to start poking whether the particular branch of Christianity is an issue, but I know my own expertise in the matter is hopelessly tainted with politics, and so I won't dig further.

This one's probably closest to the grasp of current technology, although asteroids are a far, far faster target than other missiles.

And I'll just let the whole presentation roll

SK-M547-55-U was the final use for Soviet intermediate-range transporter-erector-launchers scrapped under the late INF Treaty

"'Scramble', ye say?" Now you understand why trucks with jet engines are a proportionate response to snow.

Scientific Institute of the Baking Industry event on space bread. Baking masterclass included ) https://your-sector-of-space.timepad.ru/event/2693544/

A random XB-70 buzzing my feed

Someone down here called Starfield one big example of that aesthetic.

'shrooms growing out of one of the floor maintenance hatches.

Someone made the mistake of looking under the seats in the Moscow subway.

Plesetsk, Soyuz-2.1b. NSF are at a bit of a loss at what the payload could be, and off on the booster type as well.

This is the Centurion tank s/n 169041. You might not want to hang out near it for too long. The tank was placed less than 500 yards away from the tower for Britain's second nuclear blast. It survived with loss of simulated crew and external damage, and was decontaminated and declared salvageable, and drove halfway home before the engine broke down from sand ingestion. Now, here's the one part that isn't supported by the original reporting, but the on-site measurements had understated the radiation by a factor of 80. The tank was scrubbed again, given some time to decay in storage, and then had its turret swapped out and spent some time as a turretless tractor before being re-equipped with a new turret... and sent to Vietnam, where it fought and suffered battle damage. One of the crews and techies that worked on it in the 1950s claimed in 1990 that out of sixteen on his team, twelve were already dead from cancer and the rest were sick. They were also responsible for heavily cannibalizing 169041 while it was in storage, thus spreading radioactive parts out across the Centurion fleet. The old turret was left in the yard and used as a sunbathing platform... that gave people beta burns. https://archive.is/4MbJG#selection-2459.0-2475.9 1950s, maaaan.

Our team of four has been a freaking Petri dish. Two of us should be up again by Monday, the other two are still coming down.