Dirty Dingus McGee

Today’s Artemis II launch is brought to you by the Biden Administration. You know Donald Trump wasn't going to send a woman and a Black man into space.

In 1930, rural Virginia, a Black girl born into sharecropping poverty wasn't supposed to leave the tobacco fields. But Gladys Mae Brown had other plans.... Her hands picked crops. Her mind solved equations no one asked her to solve. Her parents, despite barely scraping by, made a choice that defied every expectation placed on them. They kept her in school. She became valedictorian at a segregated high school with torn textbooks and broken windows. She earned a scholarship to Virginia State College in an era when being Black, female, and intellectually brilliant meant the world tried to crush you three different ways. In 1956, she walked through the doors of the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren as the second Black woman they'd ever hired. Four Black employees. Hundreds of white men. Most didn't think she'd survive the week. They were catastrophically wrong. Gladys calculated weapons trajectories by hand. Complex differential equations that consumed hours of meticulous work. Her accuracy became legendary. When computers arrived, she didn't resist the future. She learned Fortran. She mastered programming languages. She transformed weeks of calculations into hours. Then came Seasat in the 1970s. The first satellite studying Earth's oceans from orbit. She became project manager. But her true contribution remained hidden in the mathematics. For GPS to function, you need Earth's exact shape. Not close. Exact. Earth isn't a smooth sphere. It's an asymmetrical, gravity-distorted, irregular mass of mountains and ocean trenches. Gladys spent years constructing mathematical models describing every deviation, every curve, every gravitational anomaly of our planet's true form. She analyzed satellite data. She built geoid models. Tedious, invisible, revolutionary work. That mathematics became the foundation of GPS. Every navigation app. Every emergency rescue. Every autonomous vehicle. Every precision farming system. Her equations make it possible. Forty-two years at Dahlgren. Retirement in 1998. GPS fully operational worldwide. Billions of users. Almost nobody knew her name. She raised three children. Earned her PhD at seventy after surviving a stroke. Lived quietly. Until 2018, when someone at a sorority event read her biography aloud. The room went silent. The story exploded. At eighty-eight, Gladys West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. The world finally learned her name. She mapped the entire planet. Then everyone forgot. Until they remembered. Gladys West worked alongside her husband Ira West, who was also a mathematician at the Naval Proving Ground. They met at Dahlgren and built both a family and parallel careers in an environment that actively discriminated against them. After retirement, she didn't stop. She earned her PhD from Virginia Tech at age 70, proving that intellectual curiosity doesn't have an expiration date. The GPS system relies on something called the geoid, a mathematical model of Earth's shape that accounts for gravitational variations. Gladys West's calculations helped create these models by analyzing millions of data points from satellite altimetry. Without accurate geoid models, GPS coordinates would be off by hundreds of meters, making the technology essentially useless. Her story remained hidden partly because classified military work doesn't generate headlines. Many pioneers of satellite and navigation technology worked in obscurity for national security reasons. The sorority member who recognized her contribution was reading through Alpha Kappa Alpha biographies when she noticed the GPS connection and brought it to public attention. © Women Stories #drthehistories

@GeraldoRivera Geraldo, you can’t be this naïve. Trump has always handled failure the same way. Move the goalposts, make excuses, and count on people not noticing.

@GeraldoRivera Trump talks about the war he started with Iran like he is describing a cheap all-you-can-eat buffet or a bag of Bridge Mix candy. If you keep eating, eventually you'll find something you'll like. There is no plan. No goal.

Say what? As of this afternoon, President Trump says he “doesn’t care” about Iran’s enriched uranium as long as it stays buried. Wasn’t this about them getting the bomb secretly using that buried uranium? Isn’t that still the single most important reason we went to war?

@iamufohunter There is so much irony being floated by the @GOP the world just might start to wobble on its axis.

🚨 The guy on the left was arrested and convicted for illegally selling missiles to Iran during the Reagan Administration. The guy on the right is a Fox News "military analyst” who thinks Iran shouldn't have missiles. They're the same guy.

Trump: “Birthright citizenship is a scam and should not be allowed.” Grok: “Tiffany Trump is the only one of Trump’s kids who is not a beneficiary of birthright citizenship. All the other kids were born before his wives became U.S. citizens.”

Just to recap: Russia is currently helping Iranian forces try to kill US troops. In response, Trump is… lifting sanctions on Russia and threatening to pull out of NATO, which are the #1 and #2 items on Putin’s wishlist

“I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth."  - Joe Biden👇👇

@jaketapper @lewis_goodall Did @realDonaldTrump also say something about flying pigs 🐷 Or am I mishearing?

@Perrspectives @jaketapper Actually, Trump has been as clear as a scum covered pond. He talks about the war he started with Iran like he is describing a cheap all-you-can-eat buffet or a bag of Bridge Mix candy. If you keep eating, eventually you'll find something you'll like. There is no plan. No goal.

@jaketapper Trump is admitting that he has lost his war against #Iran. He was clear about his war aims: ❌1. Liberate the Iranian people ❌2. Topple the regime in Tehran ❌3. Permanently prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons Bonus defeat: Strait remains closed. perrspectives.com/by-his-own-def…

Speaking to reporters in Oval Office, President Trump suggests US will be done with the war in Iran in 2-3 weeks, that freeing the Strait of Hormuz from Iranian control will not be necessary before the war ends. Says new regime is “much more accessible.”

@jaketapper This admin talks about the war with Iran like they are describing a cheap all-you-can-eat buffet or a bag of Bridge Mix candy. Just keep eating and eventually you'll find something you'll like. There is no plan.

@Acyn "He changes his mind a lot, he’s always in the mirror, he’s crossing his legs."

@Acyn Donald Trump has ZERO constitutional or legal authority over how states conduct elections This EO is legally and constitutionally meaningless

@mtjoymadman @greendragonhq Hey Jerry, spit out that Kool-Aid Trump has been serving.

@greendragonhq NATO IS A GIANT HOLE THAT WE HAVE CONSTANTLY THROWN MONEY INTO WITH 0 RESULTS. NOW WE HAVE TO GO CLEAN UP WHAT THEY HAVE SUPPOSEDLY KEPT UNDER CONTROL.

Should we be concerned that the Secretary of Defense does not understand that NATO is a defensive alliance and not an attack coalition?

@greendragonhq FUCHS News Idiots. Incompetence throughout the whole circus. Robert Kennedy as Health Secretary…🙈 admitting to snorting Cocaine from a toilet seat…. This is also a total joke. The less qualified you appear to be the higher the job you get.

@greendragonhq @ohohyeah Major Hegseth knows he and his ridiculous war efforts are failing so he is blaming others. This is what a child does. He needs to be fired. @SenateGOP @SenateDems

🚨HOLY COW: In footage Republicans don’t want you to see, Jack Smith confirms Donald Trump was the CAUSE of January 6. They released it on New Year’s Eve to bury it. Let’s get it everywhere.

Biden and Carter were two of the genuinely nicest human beings to serve as President of the United States and we treated them like shit. America doesn’t deserve good leaders.

Ok, Jamie: Let me clear things up for you. If my 5% wealth tax on billionaires was enacted you’d owe $135 million more in taxes & a family of 4 making $150,000 or less would receive a $12,000 payment. Oh, and you’d still be worth more than $2.5 billion. Seems pretty fair to me.