Eric Nevala

JD Vance reveals the problem with building a colony on Mars & space travel JD: "One of the things I've talked with Elon about—and Elon is obviously a super smart dude—is that I've never heard a super satisfying answer to this. One of the things that worries me is that I want humans to be a multiplanetary species. I want us to go to Mars and set up a colony. I love humanity, and I want it to continue. The problem with space travel that I have, and again, I've not heard a satisfactory solution to it, is that when we're outside of the Earth's gravity, our genes—our actual DNA—seems to not function as well when it's not in Earth-style gravity. Which makes sense, right? We developed in these conditions with this gravity. Whenever you have somebody who goes to the International Space Station for three months or six months, they come back and they are totally jacked up because, literally, the cells in their body are starting to discombobulate in response to a low-gravity environment. We have to figure out a solution to that problem. That, to me, is sort of the most interesting part of space travel, of going to Mars or setting up a colony on another planet. If you set up a colony on Mars, and it takes you two years to get there and two years to get back, in that time, you've gone from a functioning, healthy adult to dead if you're in space for four years. That part of space travel is very fascinating to me, and I don't know that I've heard any satisfactory solution to it yet."

Gen Z when they see sex scenes in a movie.

The greatest warrior who ever lived was told, after his death, that he should be happy. His answer is one of the most devastating things ever written... Achilles had been given a choice while alive: a long, quiet, forgotten life at home, or a short one at Troy that would make his name immortal. He chose glory. He chose to die young and be remembered forever. In the Odyssey, Odysseus goes down into the land of the dead, and Achilles comes to meet him. Odysseus tries to comfort him. He tells him he has nothing to mourn: "For of old, when thou wast alive, we Argives honored thee even as the gods, and now that thou art here, thou rulest mightily among the dead. Wherefore grieve not at all that thou art dead, Achilles." You are the most blessed man who ever lived, he says. You were worshipped in life, and now you are a king among the dead. What is there to grieve? Achilles answers immediately: "Nay, seek not to speak soothingly to me of death, glorious Odysseus. I should choose, so I might live on earth, to serve as the hireling of another, of some portionless man whose livelihood was but small, rather than to be lord over all the dead that have perished." He would rather be a day labourer, working someone else's field, for a master so poor he can barely feed him. He would take that life over ruling every soul that ever died... Achilles chose to die young so that his name would live forever. And then, in the Odyssey, Homer let him speak from the other side of that choice. And this is his answer, to Odysseus and to us: being remembered is not the same as being alive. And the ordinary day you are living right now is the thing the greatest hero in the world would trade eternity to have back.