His first instinct whenever he is challenged seems to be to lie and deflect all blame. He can never take responsibility for anything. It’s so reflexive with him sometimes the lies are not at all thought out, and so are incredibly obvious.

Biden did just that today when he was confronted by New York Post reporter Steve Nelson on the White House lawn.

Nelson asked about a report in Vanity Fair that Biden had been offered a plan in October by health experts to get 732 million test kits out to Americans before the holiday season hit so that could help reduce the crush of people wanting tests.

The 10-page plan, which Vanity Fair has obtained, would enable the U.S. to finally do what many other countries had already done: Put rapid at-home COVID-19 testing into the hands of average citizens, allowing them to screen themselves in real time and thereby help reduce transmission. The plan called for an estimated 732 million tests per month, a number that would require a major ramp-up of manufacturing capacity. It also recommended, right on the first page, a nationwide “Testing Surge to Prevent Holiday COVID Surge.” //

Steven Nelson
@stevennelson10
'We didn't reject it,' President Biden told me, responding to Vanity Fair report that his administration rejected a holiday #coronavirus testing surge https://vanityfair.com/news/2021/12/the-biden-administration-rejected-an-october-proposal-for-free-rapid-tests-for-the-holidays
12:25 PM · Dec 27, 2021

Um, so where were those 732 million tests for the holidays that just went by if you didn’t reject it? If you’re going to lie, at least make it a more manageable lie, like you were never offered it. With this lie, he just confirmed that there was a plan offered to him. It wasn’t put into play because nobody got the tests before the holidays. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki even acknowledged just before Christmas that they were just working out details now for something to go into effect weeks from now, that they hadn’t even signed contracts for it. But that was only after the media flipped out on them over the past couple of weeks that they even said that.

Biden just can’t stop lying. He can’t even keep track of what he’s saying anymore which is why none of it makes any sense.

“Blanket booster programs are likely to prolong the pandemic, rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news briefing.

Would love a detailed breakdown from Ars on the impact of these launches on the climate and environment. Thank you!

Everday Astronaut has an excellent article on this: https://everydayastronaut.com/rocket-pollution/

Summary: some exotics suck, but modern rockets are inconsequential at current volumes.

The impact of rocket pollution is mostly symbolic, especially tourist flights. They're seen as the most conspicuous consumption by much of the general public. Why should an average Joe who is struggling to get by sacrifice to combat climate change while billionaires are dumping hundreds of tons of carbon into the air to fly to space?

There are already good answers to that question, but they are nuanced, and the answer could be quite clear. Bezos' rocket already runs on Hydrogen, he should be paying a little extra for green Hydrogen, just for PR reasons. Musk has already committed to using synthetic methane on Starship. Branson doesn't have an easy answer, but he's mostly irrelevant in the symbolism arena. //

Would love a detailed breakdown from Ars on the impact of these launches on the climate and environment. Thank you!

~16.25 billion gallons of jet fuel burned per year.

One Falcon 9 launch, 25,000 gallons of Kerosene in the 1st stage (the 2nd stage is effectively burning it above the atmosphere, so not sure you can count that).

30 launches in 2021. 750,000 gallons of kerosene.

Total around the world launches of Rockets in 2021 was, what? 60 ish? Many smaller rockets. Let's just double that though and say 1.5 million gallons.

That is ~3.33% of all of the jet fuel burned...in one day. For an entire YEAR of launches at the current rate.

Metholox will produce somewhat lower emissions per joule of energy released to launch a rocket.

So basically, you are talking less than 1/10th of 1% of the entire aviation industry. It would be nice if it was zero emissions. Also of note, SpaceX is looking to do carbon capture and generate methane for launch at some point (though not soon, they will be using in situ wells at their launch facility for the methane).

Until such a point as rocket launching maybe approaches >1% of aviation emissions I think we can safely consider it a rounding error.

edit actually the above should be less than 1/100th of 1%. //

Would love a detailed breakdown from Ars on the impact of these launches on the climate and environment. Thank you!

A very large percentage of the information about those hurricanes comes from satellites. So there’s a pretty big impact from rocket launches.

Coffee is very chemically complex; its different components affect us in different ways.

You’ve probably heard it before: drinking coffee is good for your health. Studies have shown that drinking a moderate amount of coffee is associated with many health benefits, including a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But while these associations have been demonstrated many times, they don’t actually prove that coffee reduces disease risk. In fact, proving that coffee is good for your health is complicated.

While it’s suggested that consuming three to five cups of coffee a day will provide optimal health benefits, it’s not quite that straightforward. Coffee is chemically complex, containing many components that can affect your health in different ways.

These picks spotlight true stories and popcorn flicks that will inspire, challenge, and give you a good time at the movies.

The charge Didion brings against Woodward, that he only obtains insider information by protecting the interests of those insiders, she also levels against the entire industry.

“The genuflection toward ‘fairness’ is a familiar newsroom piety, in practice the excuse for a good deal of autopilot reporting and lazy thinking but in theory a benign ideal,” wrote Didion. “In Washington, however, a community in which the management of news has become the single overriding preoccupation of the core industry, what ‘fairness’ has often come to mean is a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured.”

In the book, that essay appeared under the headline, “Political Pornography.”

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) survey, “84% of Christians are satisfied with their life: 24% answered “very satisfied” and 60% were “satisfied”.”