Featured Links - March 17, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Swan on the ice

• Anonymous sources: Starship will need a major rebuild after two consecutive failures. That much is obvious. The question is how long it will take. 
• The Magical Humanism of Sir Terry Pratchett. "Ten years mourning the loss of a great human". I have not read any of Pratchett's books, something which I may remedy one of these days.
• The Discworld on TV/Film,—Live-Action. I have seen three of the series mentioned in this article and enjoyed all of them. 
• How Worried Should We Be About the Economy? "A conversation with Neil Dutta." Two economists discuss the odds of a recession. 
• Blame Canada. An article from historian Timothy Snyder in which he talks about Trump's Big Lies about Canada. (Trump being Trump, there's more than one.) Snyder is always worth reading and this is especially so.
• Earth’s Orbit Is Filling Up With Junk. Greenhouse Gases Are Making the Problem Worse. "By the end of the century, a shrinking atmosphere could create a minefield for satellites."
• Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’. "Musk’s loyalists at DOGE have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies, pushed out tens of thousands of workers, and siphoned millions of people’s most sensitive data. The next step: Unleash the AI." A major investigation by Wired. 
• Pocket Casts is Now Free on Windows, Mac, and Web. The best podcast app has gotten even better and the price is right.
• Unraveling the mystery of high-temperature superconductors from first principles. "The mysteries of high-temperature superconductivity have not been fully solved—but we are now closer than ever to understanding them at their most fundamental level. This journey is just beginning, and I'm excited to see where it takes us next."
• Mapping the U.S.-Canada Energy Relationship. "The United States and Canada are each other’s largest energy trading partners as measured by the value of energy commodity trade, which in 2017 stood at U.S.$95 billion. The energy relationship between the two countries extends beyond just the trade of commodities, encompassing a variety of common, though not always identical, economic, security, and environmental priorities."