“Some may focus on the lows, but behind the efforts of Starship – and other programs like New Glenn, Neutron, Vulcan, Terran, Stoke, etc – is a massive space economy taking shape: tens of thousands of jobs, billions in private investment, all aimed at truly opening the last great frontier.

When these capabilities arrive, they will spearhead a new era of exploration and discovery – and the lows will become a chapter in a much longer story.”

– Jared Isaacman, Trump NASA Administrator Nominee,
05.28.2025

I saw the news of the latest SpaceX Starship explosion with a complete lack of surprise a few days ago, and it had me somehow flashing back to Musk’s performance at that post-Inaugural shindig, and his bluster about putting boots on Mars… and a joyful, iconic moment on the Moon, waaayyyy back when I was an awestruck kid of 15.

(continue reading…)

Continue reading "Making Life Multiplanetary" »

Though actually quite grim and cringe as hell, I found this news sickeningly funny somehow, in ways reminiscent of the big-ups drum beating Sept 2005 BLS jobs report the month after Hurricane Katrina. Y’think Microsoft was hoping Mickey D’s would pick up some of that layoff headcount?

Then, of course, is the cringingly upbeat economic hard-sell in the Mickey D’s announcement featuring the new Labor Secretary, and the obvious clumsy-ass tap-dancing they’re going to have to do around our new quack-ass Health & Human Services Secretary – especially seeing as Big Mac’s is one of El Presidente’s favorite brands.

You deserve a break today!

11 x 15.75 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 790kb

Continue reading "Donald’s Drive-Thru" »

“Not a single Roman work of art — sculpture, coinage, or painting — displays a salute of the kind that is found in Fascism, Nazism, and related ideologies… It is also unknown to Roman literature and is never mentioned by ancient historians of either republican or imperial Rome. The gesture of the raised right arm or hand in Roman and other ancient cultures that is attested in surviving art and literature had a significantly different function and is never identical with the modern straight-arm salute.”
— Martin Winkler, in “The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology”

…just in case you run into any fashy apologists or Musk symps trying to explain it away by saying it’s a “Roman Salute”.

So just cut the crap already, ‘cos all the wide-open fash are wide-open loving it and — like the original — the Early 21st sequel also features craven-ass collaborators, in the form of the Democratic Party.

11 x 16.5 inch high-res color .jpg image, 777kb

Continue reading "Fashionably Fashy" »

Yeah, yeah, I know… but the only way to properly express the mood of this piece was to set it in a dark, grim mid-20th dive, with a permanently-circulating ceiling haze and ashtrays you could cave someone’s head in with.

Dude should know by now that that old wives’ cure never works. He’s heading for a king-size Trumpover.
It’s a quarter to three.

11 x 14 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 543kb.

Continue reading "Hair Of The Dog" »