SpaceCrazedOptimist

You can get equivalent resolution with a 1 meter aperture at 86km as you can with a *10 meter* aperture at 860km.

I ❤️ our comms team. Our society has become hyper obsessed with process and litigation. The same rules that were designed to protect us, threaten our democracy and our freedoms if we can’t move fast enough to stay ahead. So often we fail to see the forest through the trees.

A glimpse into the economic world of Audible vs. authors. Audible has no trouble with the idea of giving your book away for free, because your book doesn't cost Audible anything. All costs of production are borne by you, the author, typically 5-15K per book. Your business model, as an author, goes like this: 1. Spend 6-12 months writing and producing a book, paying editors, cover artists, layout designers, proofreaders, etc. 2. Pay audio engineers and voice actors to make an audiobook. 3. Try to make your money back with your royalties off sales. Audible's business model, however, is different. 1. Get audiobooks produced by authors for no cost to you. 2. Sign a deal with authors whereby you get to set the sale price of their audiobook to whatever you want, and then keep 80% of it. 3. Get people to subscribe by giving them audiobooks for free, or at a steep discount. 4. Make a fixed income of (subscription price) x (number of subscribers) every month, paying none of this to authors. 5. Only pay authors when people actually buy something over and above the freebies, and then only pay authors 20%. Consumers like "Boston Matthew" probably think that authors are somehow getting paid out of his subscription fees. Nope. His subscription fees pay Audible, not authors. Authors get 20%, but only if he pays with money, for the individual purchase. If he pays with a "credit", well, no. Their business model is to steal from authors like me, and to sabotage our business model. The reason Audible is such a great deal for Matthew is that it allows him all the benefits of stealing, without having to do any of the actual stealing himself... someone has already done it for him, and he doesn't even have to know. His conscience is clean unless he does a bunch of research he has no incentive to do. And why would he look into it? He doesn't even know there's anything to look into. Well, I can't be angry at Matthew for enjoying his free stories. He knows not what he does. And I can't stop other authors from having such crippling self-esteem problems that they sign deals with a bunch of soulless communists. But I can ensure that Matthew will never listen to any Devon Eriksen novels, by not signing that deal. Because I am just the sort of dangerous anarcho-capitalist revolutionary who entertains the radical belief that if someone consumes something I produced, that somehow gives me the right to get paid.