Satire, right?

Parents Allow 6-Year-Old Son To Begin Transitioning Into A Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Per His Wishes

X-15

This was fun: What it was like to fly the baddest airplane the world has ever known

The US Air Force and NASA developed the X-15 to better understand flight under extreme conditions, including reentry through the Earth’s atmosphere. Yet more than half a century later, the exceptional plane still holds the world record for speed by a piloted, powered aircraft after William Knight flew the vehicle at Mach 6.70 in 1967.

The X-15 program also boasts an exclusive club of pilots—only a dozen aviators can claim to have flown the aircraft, which made 199 flights in total. (They were all men, given the era.) Before he landed on the Moon, Neil Armstrong flew seven X-15 missions between 1960 and 1962. The movie First Man vividly depicts one of these flights.

Another X-15 pilot, Joe Engle, also went on to a remarkable career at NASA. Slated to land on the Moon during Apollo 17 alongside Eugene Cernan, Engle got booted from that mission for largely political reasons so that a scientist, Harrison Schmitt, could be added to the final Apollo mission. Later, Engle would command the second space shuttle mission.

Engle is also the last of the X-15 pilots still alive. So to mark the 60th anniversary of the X-15’s first powered flight, during which Scott Crossfield took the plane up to 52,000 feet on September 17, 1959, Ars spoke with Engle about flying the baddest airplane the world has ever known. Spoiler alert: It was thrilling.

One of the minor disappointments of my life is how little space exploration has progressed since my childhood and youth. I’m glad that private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are now moving things forward at a quicker pace.

Archie Bunker is a fictional character

When I read some things people on the left write about “conservatives” or “Republicans” it seems clear they don’t actually know the people they’re talking about.

For example, one tech blogger I subscribe to, who when not talking about JavaScript or OPML or such is going on about how important it is to impeach Trump, recently suggested countering MAGA hats with MLK buttons. He seems to believe that conservatives will respond to MLK buttons the way he and his friends respond to MAGA hats, but personally I can’t imagine very many Americans getting “triggered” by an MLK button. After all, as far as I know no one’s been beat up for wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt, and Che was a psychopathic mass murderer. On the other hand, while we may not agree with everything he did, I think most real conservatives (today, any way) are cool with Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work for racial equality.

A lot of liberals are fighting against a conservative boogey-man that only exists in their imaginations.

2019 Ig Nobel prizes

Yes folks, it’s that time of year again: The 2019 Ig Nobel prize winners.

CHEMISTRY PRIZE [JAPAN]
Shigeru Watanabe, Mineko Ohnishi, Kaori Imai, Eiji Kawano, and Seiji Igarashi, for estimating the total saliva volume produced per day by a typical five-year-old child

…

ENGINEERING PRIZE [IRAN]
Iman Farahbakhsh, for inventing a diaper-changing machine for use on human infants.

#NotAllDumpsterFires

Nation’s Raging Dumpster Fires Ask People To Stop Comparing Them To American Politics

The raging dumpster fires of the nation held a press conference Monday at which they politely asked people to stop comparing them to American politics.

“We are being unfairly maligned here,” said one garbage dumpster with huge flames bursting from its lid. “We dumpsters don’t try to mess with your lives or anything.”

 

Let’s do it

Be the America Hong Kong thinks you are