It’s not that joining the military lends you discipline, which it does to some extent, but that it allows you to learn to be resolute, which is a different thing. It teaches resolve, that is, in the face of difficulty, obstinance, threat and failure. That’s not the same as discipline, though it’s adjacent to it.

Of course in some ways, this is also self-selection. Those who lack all resolve don’t make it! But being in the service certainly heightened my ability to tolerate intransigence of personnel or materiel until I could prevail over it or, as a paratrooper does, regroup, reorient, and attack from another angle.

That’s something that can’t be taught, but can be learned in the right situations; and the military tends to create those situations.

Her energy and mannerisms remind me a lot of my dead friend from long ago. They look not much alike, really, but wow they sure do feel alike.

I told my friend that she could come over to my house anytime, back in those days, no need to call or schedule. Just show up. And sometimes she did and would just drag often-reluctant me out the door to some adventure. Who can say no to a person with that much enthusiasm and energy? I certainly could not.

I have no idea if Sigrid is really like that. But they both move and act so brashly (in a good way) and so similarly it’s all my brain allows me to conclude.

Out of Work in America.

That is some good, worthwhile journalism and I think it’s important to read these stories. Also, it shows that so many of the liberal pieties and platitudes are just so much pish-posh. (Including the “stay inside forever” one, but not only that.)

So much joblessness and pain in this country; the depression is very much still upon us.

Allen Dulles, working as a spy in Switzerland during WWI, got a call from Lenin the day before he went back to Russia. He blew him off for a date with "two blonde and spectacularly buxom Swiss twin sisters." pic.twitter.com/7IBeN0RW79

— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) October 14, 2020

Hmm, let’s see.

1) Call with Lenin.

2) Weekend with Swiss blonde twins.

I know, difficult choice. How could one ever decide what to do? I would have to spend literally femtoseconds before I made my decision (and it would not be stodgy-ass Lenin).

When I'm trying to make art of space there's a constant tension between literal interpretation and, for lack of a better word, evocation. Representation that makes you feel a truth rather than think it.

— Lady Lakdawalla of Baltis Vallis (@elakdawalla) October 23, 2020

One of the reasons I like Emily and her science writing is that she’s not a “quant is all that matters” writer and doesn’t think feelings of awe, wonder and joy are the Devil’s Temptations, as many in the science and science-adjacent communities do.

I’m not an Excel spreadsheet. No one is. But some people seem to wish they were.