I can’t immediately find a reference for this, but I would assume that all US forces deployed to support NATO in Europe can be commanded by the Supreme Allied Commander (SACEUR) who is always an American general. If the Russkies decide to invade, I’m sure that SACEUR has the authority to dictate response if he can’t immediately reach the President.

The only reason that NATO would need to urgently and immediately speak to POTUS is for nuclear weapons release, and fortunately that scenario has been wargamed to hell and back.

Really, I think rtfm culture predates Windows by a good bit.

FYI: I think the estimate is that humans can burn all of the fossil fuels that exist several times over and still not hit the critical tipping point that leads to Venus. So Venus is not really on the table as a worst case scenario.

Have you heard about Uvalde?

No it’s orange skin, from too much cheap spray-on tan. The engineered hair artifact is pretty blond.

Except the “emergency capsule” is all of them, including Starliner. Because Starliner is perfectly capable of returning to earth safely.

Because every thruster that has shut down has hot fired okay, and the known helium leaks still leave enough margin to cover several multiples of the 5 hours or so of RCS operation that you need to get to landing.

This paper should cite On Bullshit.

It was a successful test of the drive termination system.

This comes up on every one of these articles. The astronauts are in no way stranded.

There’s a common sense operating rule on the station: every person on board ISS must have a dedicated seat in a ride home that is ready to undock and leave within 30 minutes notice.

Right now, the Starliner capsule is certified and ready for that role for the two test pilots. The crew dragon and soyuz are docked to handle the rest of the station crew.

Earlier today there was an emergency shelter event on the station when some debris got unusually close. In this type of event all crew evacuate to the escape spacecraft and close hatches. So if something does hit the station, it’s less likely someone gets hurt during a depressurization.

Starliner served as an emergency shelter for this exercise, because it is certified for emergency reentry, and the five identified helium leaks are not close to preventing it from returning safely.

To get from ISS to a landing site requires no more than 5 hours of RCS operation. There is plenty of margin in the helium system to cover 5 hours.

My understanding is that the second Distance campaign is mostly recycled Nitronic Rush levels.

I mean, Adolf Hitler was a world leader with a predilection for speed, and look where he ended up. Makes sense to me.

The deal with LLMs is that it’s very difficult to say which piece of training material went into which output. Everything gets chopped up and mixed, and it’s computationally difficult to run backwards.

My understanding of the image generators is that they operate one pixel at a time too, looking only at neighboring pixels. So in that sense, it’s not correct to say they understand the context of anything.

Like, there’s lots of information about Bilbo Baggins in Lotr, that doesn’t mean it was written in the third age of Middle Earth homie

The conceit of the LOTR appendices is that Lord of the Rings, as published in English, is really just the Red Book that Bilbo writes at the end. Dr. Tolkien merely found the manuscript somewhere and has graciously translated it from Third Age common language into English for the benefit of us modern people.

Those pizzas look a lot better than the typical office pizza party I’ve seen.

They’re gonna spend some time in the therapy pattern buffer.

Yea ya can’t get any pancakes at the dang Waffle House.

In automotive at least, it’s pretty common to size the evaporator and condenser coils based on their expected operating temperatures and (therefore) pressures. Usually this means condenser is a lot bigger than evaporator.

If you reverse the flow with the right valves and compressor setup, then the heat exchangers will still be sized wrong for efficiency. I suppose you could design a bidirectional system from the start that trades off for middling efficiency in both modes.

I’m not at all convinced that there are a substantial number of such bidirectional-sized residential systems installed in North America. But it’s also possible that the residential folks don’t care much about HX efficiency.

<for those who are uninitiated in the black arts of HVAC, “reverse cycle heat pump” is a fancy way to say “air conditioner”. The headline makes no sense as written. A “heat pump” is just an air conditioner that you turned around so it cools down the outside and heats up your house.>

Here’s my recollection from civics class:

1. Each state makes their own laws about whether and when a dead candidate can be replaced on the ballot. It’s entirely possible that citizens in some states would vote for dead candidates, while citizens in other states are voting for different candidates.

2. Remember you’re actually voting for the electors that are listed underneath each (now presumed dead) presidential candidate. States make their own laws on how strictly the electors actually have to vote for the guy they pledged to. In many states, there’s no penalty for being a “faithless” elector, and so in this scenario I would imagine that many electors in this situation would exercise their prerogative to vote for a living person who is eligible to hold the office. Perhaps even a re-nominee from their party.

3. Electors meet in their state capitols to sign and transmit the real ballots to Congress. However they decide to vote based on the above, I think it’s important to the constitution that this happens by a deadline (December 18?), and if that is missed, we may be in real constitutional crisis territory.

4. After meeting, swearing in new members, and electing a house speaker (I really hope they can elect a speaker), Congress meets in a joint session to count the real ballots from step 3. This process is in the constitution. This is the process that was interrupted by a mob on Jan. 6, 2021. Under the constitution, Congress can only go against what the ballots say if there’s a tie, in which case the house votes for president on a one state, one vote basis.

4a. As seen in 2021, Congress could conceivably engage in a deliberative process to determine whether ballots that are presented are real, legitimate ballots or not. The constitution doesn’t actually allow them to do this. This is a real weakness in the system. If Congress isn’t allowed to adjudicate ballot legitimacy, then who is? Apparently no one.

4b. There’s also no alternate process if the majority of elector ballots have elected a dead person. Presumably Congress is required to declare that person President.

5. Constitution also says the next president’s term starts on Jan. 20, 2025, at noon eastern, period. No ifs, ands, or buts. If Biden dies in office, his VP Kamala Harris will assume the duties. But that term ends on this date, and the fact that she ascended would have no direct bearing on whether she appears on any presidential ballot.

5a. This turnover deadline literally has no exceptions. If it is missed for any reason, we’re probably in real serious constitutional crisis territory.

5b. If, per 4b, Congress declared that a dead person was elected president, I imagine that person would have a hard time showing up to inauguration on Jan 20. In this case I think that once the turnover has occurred, the normal line succession, which is 17 people deep*, can be used to swear in the next president.

5b1. In this scenario, next up would be the vice president-elect from the elector ballots, probably sworn into the vice presidency first. Third in line is the speaker of the house (I really, really hope they can elect a speaker). Then President Pro Tempore of the senate (the longest serving senator), then cabinet secretaries.

*Most of the 17 are cabinet secretaries. These do not expire automatically when the presidential term expires on Jan. 20. This means that all of the old president’s secretaries are still in the line of succession (unless they foolishly submitted resignation letters) until a president is sworn in and either fires them or makes them resign.

**The presidential term starts at a precise date and time, but a president must swear the oath of office. Both things are in the constitution, so what happens when the time arrives, but the new president isn’t sworn in?

Well, it’s a weightless chicken at least, because this model’s got no gravity.