As I wrote in response to the not really view, I’m deeply pessimistic about the future, and the hope that I appreciate here is only for slightly extending agricultural yields so that I can keep eating cheap food for a few more years. Overall, we’re all fucked. I guess I’m not allowed to celebrate one bright spot in the enclosing darkness, thanks.
The one in 1957. Maybe it doesn’t deserve the definite article since the 1964 one was a bigger deal, but there have been several things called the civil rights act at the time.
The main reason I bought it up is to point out just how far apart he was from what currently calls itself the Republican Party. Neither one would approve of the other.
I like Ike.
I do love native plants and I will deeply mourn the mass extinction of the Anthropocene. You’re not wrong.
But I was choosing the bright side here. It’s a lovely contrast to the destruction of NASA, the NSF, and all the trickle down effects in the science world. This bee work is delightfully from the UK and will be harder to cancel. It will help agriculture keep up with exponential human growth amid climate change and water overuse for slightly longer than it would last otherwise. I’m deeply pessimistic, but the bee thing is a little hopeful, ok?
This is the most uplifting science article I’ve read in a while. The process they describe in the article sounds long and involved with many dependent steps. Great work!
Boy they sure are owning the libs. “…peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind” is such a pansy-ass mission. If we do great stuff and just share it with everyone, no billionaires get any richer!
NASA was created enthusiastically by Eisenhower, a Republican war hero who had governed American-occupied Germany during WWII and was the first supreme commander of NATO just prior to becoming president. He unleashed an era of American greatness, including the entire interstate highway system which unlocked decades of future commerce growth and is named after him. If you had to name a single president who embodied the Greatness of which one might want to Make America embody Again, there are many strong arguments to be made that Eisenhower is the man.
He also signed the civil rights act and enforced school desegregation, in addition to warning the public about the rise of the Military Industrial Complex on his way out of office. In fact, he’s not at all what the nazifascist cheerleaders behind the worst president in American history would ever have thought of as great, but the MAGA slogan was a lie from the very beginning. It’s a very sad time to be an American.
There’s nothing bad whatsoever about a breakthrough discovery allowing for essentially nutritionally-complete synthetic pollen. It’s all positive, full stop. The negatives you want to emphasize are that it doesn’t also solve other related problems. I never said that it did, only that it was the most uplifting science story in a long time. I read the whole dammed article, not just the headline, and I was very happy to have it get into a lot of details.
Feel free to have your middling reaction without celebration. I’m excited to have a positive science story I can discuss with my kids, and I’m sticking to that.