Huh, good point, I never thought about that. Makes sense. I only ever heard about options to get shares when the company becomes publicly traded. Of course, publicly traded is what I meant.

Do the owners also get money based on the shares?

Which shareholders do you mean? SpaceX is private company, no shares.

Launch vehicle development by NASA is by their own admission slower and more expensive. It’s no coincidence that the whole industry started moving forward much faster when a driven private company with financial interests at heart and without strong dependence on politicians started their own serious development.

As for the tax money paid to SpaceX, NASA simply bought services. They also helped with development. But whatever the expenses were, they were much lower than they would be if NASA did it the old way. By the way, the old way is similar, but instead of SpaceX, the money went to Boeing, Lockheed Martin etc. and there wasn’t a limit on how much money it will be in advance. Now you know that if the costs exceed the agreed sum, it won’t be paid by public money, but by the company. As seen with Starliner, which went so badly that Boeing said they are never doing fixed-price contracts ever again. They are used to the excess money paid from the public budget. In exchange for these advantages to the public, SpaceX can use the vehcle developed unther the contract on their own, without NASA. Therefore you can get missions such as Polaris, Inspiration4 or Axiom. Your opinion on these may be different, but I think private missions and influx of private money into spaceflight is good for spaceflight in general. It makes it more financially sustainable and more efficient.

The reason for the 50 years of oil, as I heard it explained, is that this is how far ahead the oil companies plan. They look for enough oil to cover the timeframe they plan for. When they have that covered, they don’t look, until they need more. When they need more, they go and find it.

I use Pocketbook. It opens just about anything - epub, mobi, pdf, pdb, and many more formats. Just get a book anywhere and copy it via USB. Or send it as an email attachment to your special address and it will download automatically. You can even replace the reading app with another relatively easily, if you want.

Tell me more!

Are we looking at the same pictures? Spain is less dense, but Poland seems mostly denser than rural France and Balkan roughly the same.

Is it, though? Is Spain, Poland and Balkan so much less populated than Germany or France?

Cool, thanks for the info!

How does Plantnet fare in tropics?

That didn’t sound right, my experience that depending on luck and season, somewhere between 50 and 90 % of big mushrooms I come across in a forest are poisonous or at least disgusting. I admit it’s a very wild estimate and I’m very far from knowing all the mushroom I come across, but still, that seems like a big contradiction. So I followed your link to the primary article.

I suspected that they might only count potentially lethal mushrooms, but no, it indeed seems they count even those that only make you nauseous. The problem is in the other number. The 100 000 means all funghi, it includes for example all yeasts. Most funghi don’t create mushrooms that anyone would consider picking. So the ratio you calculated below is WAY off.

I would also like to note that the number 100 seems to come from a very simple PubMed search. Basically, if nobody wrote a paper about someone being sick after eating a mushroom, they wouldn’t find it. I don’t think that would mean that many foraged mushrooms would be missed, but it is a limitation worth knowing about.

Rubroboletus satanas is definitely poisonous. On the other hand, Imleria badia is very good. Bruising blue doesn’t really say anything about edibility.

I’m not an expert, though.

Not so much Amanita phalloides as Amanita pantherina, that one looks much more similar. But I agree, if you know what you’re doing and don’t pick mushrooms with which you don’t have experience with and aren’t sure about, you’re good.

I used to pick up even Amanita rubescens, an acual (although edible and tasty) Amanita, so even more similar to poisonous ones. But I didn’t have an opportunity for quite a few years and now I wouldn’t dare, until I got an opportunity to verify with someone experienced and trustworthy.

Well, if you want to head that way, there’s Etruscan shrew. Less than 2 grams of weight and 4 cm of length.

There are also wimps. They might be dark matter.

I really like RING - really interesting new gene.

And his wife’s was Smith. They combined their names when they married.

It should be said that this is from Science Abridged Beyond the Point of Usefulness by Zach Wienersmith.

Photons have zero rest mass, right? They have mass while moving, don’t they?

Not as far s I know. Motivating people to go into debt often is not a common policy. At least not in Europe, but I think it’s very unusual worldwide.

I would like just to thank you for writing to title that it’s US-specific. I mean, it was clear by the time I finished the title, but that’s not always the case and I was really glad that you put it there.