I'm at SpaceOps 2023 in Dubai, where I just gave two presentations (my colleague couldn't make it so I presented his paper as well since I was a coauthor).

The most amazing thing is that as I was wandering around the conference afterwards, meeting people, I'd go to introduce myself and they'd tell me they'd attended one of the two presentations and wanted to talk about it. Super crazy feeling.

here's a representative sample:

In my case, a satellite mission patch (image / physical embroidered patch / stickers / etc), representing a particular satellite mission that I've worked on / flown.

I knock on wood. and I don't pin a mission patch on anything until after first contact.

Several breakfast staples saw sharp price increases due to a perfect storm of bad weather and disease outbreaks—and continued effects from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Egg prices increased 8.5% in January from a month earlier and are up 70.1% over the past year, the highest annual rate since 1973. The deadliest avian-influenza outbreak on record has devastated poultry flocks across the U.S., leading the price of eggs to rise more than any other grocery item in 2022, according to Information Resources Inc. U.S. egg inventories were 29% lower in the final week of December 2022 than at the beginning of 2022, according to the USDA.

Frozen, noncarbonated juices and drinks—a category that includes frozen orange juice—rose by 1.5% in January from a month earlier, and the 12.4% annual increase is the highest in over a decade. Florida orange growers are harvesting their smallest crop in nearly 90 years, the result of a freeze, two hurricanes and a citrus disease that is laying waste to its groves.

Breakfast cereal increased more modestly in January from a month earlier—just 0.4%—but prices in the category were up 15% over a year, in part because of elevated global grain prices resulting from disruptions related to the war in Ukraine.

Breakfast lovers might be better off just having a cup of coffee—but go with roasted, not instant. Prices for roasted coffee declined by 0.1% last month, but instant coffee rose by a 3.6% monthly increase for instant coffee.

a piano tuner tuning 25 pianos a year? LOL

there's a noteworthy lack of... dynamic range that classical really needs.

Side question, will the loudness wars ever end?

Side side note, an ex was genuinely amazed at the sound a piano actually makes hearing me play on a grand piano--sympathetic resonance and all that. It's such a shame that so many people these days know nothing but shit audio fidelity and shitty compression--why?? Has technology truly regressed (not even talking vinyl--let's say the shift from CD to iTunes to Spotify) or are people just drawn to the least expensive thing and that's the driving factor?

And yeah I have Tidal but look at the subscriber comparisons between them and Spotify...

a Belgian bank account might be a good idea

nor on that one!

hey cool, there was no 502!

how is it already tuesday?

except literally this comment's parent comment, for some reason. right now i'm posting from a plane if that changes anything (massive ping)

Same with Firefox 106.0.5, MacOS 13.0

yes

is it weird that the X41 looks exactly like what I would expect "the first community-based manufacture movement" to look like?

you just reminded me that I have always wanted a Braun travel clock.

and there was an AB1 on ebay

one of the 'made in germany' ones

I like the Hermès one

the "planisphère d’un monde équestre" "map of the equestrian world" is hilarious. apparently if you travel to Samarkand you can hide the continent of Dressage.