When I Get Older, Losing My Hair

what a wonderful world. https://t.co/isgV5dLmH1

— NTodd - Antifa IT Support 🇺🇦🐸 (@ntoddpax) May 23, 2026

First, I just wanna note:

Don's one of my favorite (and currently oldest) active astronauts, so that's nice.  Anywayz...in a glibly related vein, today marks the 64th anniversary of Mercury-Atlas 7, with Scott Carpenter piloting Aurora 7 for a modest three orbits:

The original pilot selected for Mercury Atlas-7 was to have been Deke Slayton, with Wally Schirra as his backup. However Slayton was removed from flight status after the discovery of idiopathic paroxysmal atrial fibrillation during a training run in the g-loading centrifuge. Slayton had chosen the name Delta 7 for the spacecraft, as this would have been the fourth crewed flight and Delta (Δ) is the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet. 

Instead of using Schirra, who was backup, it was decided to give the mission to Carpenter, who was the backup crew for Mercury-Atlas 6, had trained with John Glenn, and was considered the best-prepared astronaut. When Carpenter was given the mission, he renamed it Aurora 7 for the open sky and the dawn, symbolizing the dawn of the new age. The number Seven was also chosen for the Mercury 7 astronauts. 

In addition, Carpenter's home address in his childhood was the corner of Aurora Ave. and Seventh St. in Boulder, Colorado, although at a talk he gave at the Boulder Theater in 2003, Carpenter admitted that he never made the connection between the Aurora 7 spacecraft and the address of his youth until friends pointed it out to him after he made the flight... 

The performance of the Mercury spacecraft and Atlas launch vehicle was excellent in nearly every respect. All primary mission objectives were achieved. The single mission-critical malfunction which occurred involved a failure in the spacecraft pitch horizon scanner, a component of the automatic control system. This anomaly was adequately compensated for by the pilot in subsequent in-flight operations so that the success of the mission was not compromised. 

A modification of the spacecraft control-system thrust units was effective. Cabin and pressure-suit temperatures were high but not intolerable. Some uncertainties in the data telemetered from the bioinstrumentation prevailed at times during the flight; however, associated information was available which indicated continued well-being of the astronaut... 

Other than slight exhaustion, Carpenter was in good health and spirits and post-flight medical exams did not find any significant physical changes or anomalies. Kraft, however, was unhappy with the astronaut's performance due to his needlessly high expenditure of attitude control fuel, which resulted in reentry and landing taking place well off-course. As a result, Carpenter was sidelined for future missions. He left the space program in 1964 to participate in the Navy's SEALAB program. Aurora 7 is displayed at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Illinois.

A little more about Chris Kraft's attitude:

Kraft did not hesitate to assign blame to Carpenter, and continued to speak out about the mission for decades afterwards. His autobiography, written in 2001, reopened the issue; the chapter that dealt with the flight of Mercury-Atlas 7 was titled "The Man Malfunctioned". In a letter to The New York Times, Carpenter called the book "vindictive and skewed", and offered a different assessment of the reasons for Kraft's frustration: "in space things happen so fast that only the pilot knows what to do, and even ground control can't help. Maybe that's why he is still fuming after all these years."

Kraft was critical to the birth of our space program, and I generally like him, but I think he was being a dick here.  From This New Ocean: A History of Project Mercury:

In [the] postflight sessions the astronaut insisted that he knew what he wanted to do at all times, but that every task took a little longer than the time allotted by the flight plan. Some of the equipment, he said, was not easy to handle, particularly the special films that he had to load into a camera...

Moreover, the flight plan that had been available during training was only a tentative one, and the final plan had been completed only a short while before he suited up for the launch. Carpenter felt that the completed plan should be in the astronaut's hands at least two months before a scheduled flight and that the flight agenda should allow more time for the pilot to observe, evaluate, and record... 

Talking with newsmen after the flight, Carpenter assumed full responsibility for his high fuel consumption. He pointed out, however, that what he had learned would be valuable for longer Mercury missions.

That issue about time is particularly important, as that was a theme throughout the early days of our space endeavors.  Everything people on the ground thought would be easy ended up being much more complicated and time-consuming in orbit.  A point that I think Kraft didn't seem to internalize.

But whatever.  We've certainly learned a lot more since then thanks to workhorses like Don Pettit and his 590 days (approx 9,440 orbits) in space.

<exits singing, I could be handy mending a fuse when your lights have gone>

Overbearing and Perhaps Even Irrelevant

Happy Shining Premiere Day to all who celebrate!

Crepuscular

Let Evening Come:

Let the light of late afternoon

shine through chinks in the barn, moving   

up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing   

as a woman takes up her needles   

and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned   

in long grass. Let the stars appear

and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.   

Let the wind die down. Let the shed   

go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop   

in the oats, to air in the lung   

let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t   

be afraid. God does not leave us   

comfortless, so let evening come.

Jane Kenyon.

We’re Going to Put a Happy Little Bush Right Down over Here in the Corner There and That’ll Just Be Our Little Secret

Bob Ross specifically made his work accessible for people to begin creating art by demonstrating techniques and tools that were simple to build upon. AI erodes people's ability to even begin creating art. https://t.co/2KXCYAzxQV

— John Pickles (@IGdolljunk) May 23, 2026

I admit that I excitedly played around with Midjourney when it was released four years ago.  But after a couple months, I walked away from it because it was not generating art, nor enabling my creativity.  It was a slop machine, and even as AI tools' output has "improved", it still ain't art or creativity.

I think this is the best encapsulation:

"AI is data, and data can only look backward. Creativity looks forward"  
A profound statement on the level I want to frame and hang on the wall

I do fancy myself as creative, but expression of such lies elsewhere.  Yet I enjoy art despite my artistic ineptitude, or perhaps because of it, and long-time readers and family members know I adore Bob Ross for myriad reasons.  

It is not impressive to me, beyond maybe the technical aspects (I am a geek, after all), that a computer can put a bunch of pixels together in a plausibly cohesive way at scale based on large sets of stolen data.  Without consciousness, feelings, and a soul, it's all just soulless shit, and I do not see the fucking point of it.  Rather than democratizing anything, it merely dilutes our perceptions of the world we uniquely engage with as human beings.

In conclusion: if you tell anyone that AI can create art, I will come to your house and I will cut you.

PS - I do think there are legit use cases for Pseudo Intelligence, which include coding, data analytics, and even learning augmentation.  But an AI tool could never feed Peapod the squirrel with joy in its heart.

Ladies and Gentlemen, You Can’t Dance in Here! This Is the War Room!

Well, maybe in Drunky McSecdef's war room you can.

What I’m Doing at Work, Actually

We're Building the Ship as We Sail It:

The first fear
being drowning, the
ship's first shape
was a raft, which
was hard to unflatten
after that didn't
happen. It's awkward
to have to do one's
planning in extremis
in the early years —
so hard to hide later:
sleekening the hull,
making things
more gracious.

Kay Ryan. 

This is it, the apocalypse

One of Lou's greatest roles.

I’m Waking up to Ash and Dust

Ode on Solitude:

Happy the man, whose wish and care

   A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

                            In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

   Whose flocks supply him with attire,

Whose trees in summer yield him shade,

                            In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find

   Hours, days, and years slide soft away,

In health of body, peace of mind,

                            Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,

   Together mixed; sweet recreation;

And innocence, which most does please,

                            With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

   Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

                            Tell where I lie.

Alexander Pope.

#throwbackthursday

Bubsy eleven years ago.

Got to concentrate

Don't be distractive.

雲、あるいは蜘蛛

Cloud of Feelings:

I want to hold a cloud but it’s made of  air

a smog of   tweets makes a world go round,

the confusion of  clouds predicting a storm

think nothing of  it, bombs are natural now,

explosives wrapped in their hollowed brows

exploiting crisis and pushing the inevitable,

bluebirds know it’s a new day, they whistle

without confusion, listen, how do we speak

to light at the end of  the holographic tunnel,

my first smoking question of a new season

to begrudge feelings we once had, released,

the future reading books and understanding

tweeting, unbreathable air, and the confusion

of  so much suffering and sovereign comfort,

exploring the rites of  violence, an old feeling

publicized and burning, cyclones, heilstorms

slapping the drafts, think nothing of it, birds—

get out of  their way, the powerful are talking,

don’t breathe the confusion, sideswiped in

holographic traffic, a question for bluebirds:

if  you, dear birdsong, took away our clouds

of  feelings would anyone notice send tweet

Nikki Wallschlaeger.