Bitchin Dave's Newsletter - February 4



At the end of the year, drones made their way into the news several times, and not in a good way.

You had what appeared to be random drones flying over parts of New Jersey, and that started a whirlwind of political puffery and conspiracy theories. You had a few drone shows that had issues - especially one in Orlando where a 7 year old boy was severely injured by a falling drone and was listed in critical condition.  And, you had a few instances of drones being flown too close to airplanes.

These drones are becoming a nuisance.  They are affordable and no doubt fun.  But they are unregulated and it turns out that they are kind of dangerous.  

You have to wonder a bit if we might start taking them seriously before there is a bigger incident of some kind....
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Who needs clean water anyway?


Thanks flori-duh. By a recent law, only the government itself has control over the water.  

As I've noted in the past, the state consolidated all of the water management districts (which used to be independent) under the purveyance of the governor. I realized no good could come from this, and here we are.

https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/12/27/floridians-have-no-right-to-bodies-of-water-free-of-pollution-appeals-court-rules/


Book banning and public libraries


As many states do, Idaho has a law that allows for anyone to object to any book in a library because it's offensive. 

There's a process by which the book will be reviewed and removed from the shelves. But that book can be put into a section of the library that children can't access. Call it "the adults only section"…

Here's the twist. There's a small town with a tiny library, which doesn't have space for a separate room. So they simply made the whole library 21+. 

They did and do have story time for kids, but it's held outside. And kids can only enter the library with their parents, and only if the parents sign a waiver. 

What sort of dystopian nonsense is this?


Weirdness in booking a Disney trip


As most of you know, I host a Disney world history YouTube series. I've been going to the parks for most of my life and have enjoyed being a local. 

Pre-pandemic, I knew what was what. I knew the tricks. I understood the ins and outs of making a visit. And everything could be done as a spur of the moment type of thing…

Then came the pandemic and the rules started to change. Of course you had the evolution of fastpass which complicated everything. But it was more than that. 

Now I have to make a reservation - subject to availability - to go to the parks. And oddly, most of the knowledge about how to manage the parks became irrelevant. 

I had promised my son a trip to Disney world when he graduated high school….but he graduated during the pandemic, and then went off to college. So we had to wait. 

Finally, we had an opportunity to go. I had to get him a ticket … which was complicated and maybe a little stressful - because the ticket prices vary wildly depending on when you want to go. And it is way more expensive than it was 5 years ago. 

Of course, there was still the matter of proving he is a Florida resident, which didn't work online, meaning we had to go to a guest relations window just to activate his ticket.  

And nevermind that I had to book a reservation to visit a park using my annual pass.

You have to spend time and effort and work through it, and figure it out. I can only imagine for a newbie how hard this is...

And on that note, I happened to see a video from a guy who had never been.  He outlined his confusion and the challenges he faced.  He ended with his thought that its not really worth it.  That intrigued me.

And then when my son and I went, we encountered some interesting folks.  One guy had some pretty serious complaints about attractions and wait times (and lightning lane), dining availability, and assorted confusion.  I heard "if only I had known" and "this shouldn't be this hard."

And that sums up the current experience at Disney World.  



More lunar missions!


Recently, SpaceX launched a ride share mission with two separate lunar landers on board. 

The launch was cool because the trajectory took it to a high orbit, then the second stage had three separate burns to move into low-earth orbit, higher earth orbit, and on a path toward the moon, out of earths orbit. 

The missions were described thusly:

Blue Ghost is a commercial lunar lander developed by Firefly Aerospace for NASA's CLPS program. Blue Ghost is designed to bring up to 155kg of payload to the lunar surface. It will land at Mare Crisium in the Crisium Basin and is designed to last 14 days before freezing in the lunar night.

Resilience is the second mission of the Hakuto-R commercial lunar lander developed by private Japanese company ispace. The lander will carry a small rover developed by ispace to perform studies on the moon's surface. The rover is also expected to collect lunar regolith as part of a contract with NASA signed in 2020, in which companies will collect materials on the moon and then transfer ownership "in situ" to the agency.



DEI in the news


The term "woke" was so 2024.  Now we're on to talking about "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" with the same derision.  

One of the early actions T-rump took was to talk about how DEI programs need to stop, because they are... something.  I don't know what, its just word soup (like woke was before it).

Many companies decided to just go along with it, and just dropped their initiatives.  Which shows that these companies and their leadership never took the programs seriously, it was just done for appearances.  I mean, if you just flow with the politics that quickly, and move on to curry favor with "dear leader," then we have to assume you never expected anything from it anyway.

Then we had the plane crash in DC, which caused T-rump to blame DEI for it! Which is both a not-so-subtle way of saying that he wants white men in charge, and also would suggest he's trying to pull a magicians trick, and shift focus away from something else by getting people lathered up about DEI. 

Oh but it doesn't end there.  Costco said they planned to continue their program, and would wait for shareholders to weigh in on how it should evolve.  Which led to 19 attorneys general (need I mention that they're all from GOP-led states?) to band together  and send a letter to Costco telling them that T-rumps executive order made clear they needed to do away with the program, and they will pursue legal action if Costco doesn't listen.

Bad enough that they're bullying a private company for its own hiring practices that conform with the law.  But worse was this line in said letter: "Costco should not have policies that discriminate in hiring based on race or gender," 

Oh the irony!




Glad we have these protections. For now.


Scaling back regulations and gutting departments like the FTC will mean that companies can do whatever they want, without any repercussions. 

Marriott turned a blind eye to its handling of data, and said "what's the worst that can happen?" And then was ordered to better secure their (well OUR) data. 



Bonus item! A few newsletters ago, I wondered whether Elon Musk would play nice with the FAA, or if he would exert authority over them because he wants SpaceX to do as they please. 

We got our answer, and it's not the outcome we might hope for. 

He urged T-rump to replace the FAA administrator, and the orange man complied. 

But here's the thing: in October of 2023, Biden nominated Michael Whitaker to serve as the administrator. He was *unanimously* confirmed (the total was 98-0, and for those of you keeping score at home that is all the republicans). And at every turn, he got glowing reviews for how things were being run. 

But Elon made it personal. 

And while the crash that happened in DC a few days after the firing wasn't a direct result of this decision, surely it didn't help. Nor did Elons review of staffing in the FAA and the freeze on hiring he suggested to T-rump. 

There are always consequences. And this is the beginning of something that may very well turn out to be dangerous. 



Bitchin' Dave's newsletter is published weekly.  Please feel free to forward it around. If you want to subscribe or unsubscribe, send an email to geezergamer92@gmail.com

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