Today is May 5th, when modern Americans assuming this is the day of Mexican independence (it isn't) consume Mexican stuff like burritos and margaritas (those aren't Mexican) but what we should be celebrating is Mercury astronaut Alan Shepard going into space.

On this day in 1961, 60 years ago, Alan Shepard let himself be strapped into a capsule sitting on top of a skyscraper of rocket fuel using parts all selected because they were the lowest bidder on a government contract - and set off for the unknown.

Seriously, this was a risk only test pilots would happily have taken. If you look at the spec that NASA gave to all the corporations that actually put us into space, it reads like aspirational quotes more than engineering:

Epicurious, a food website owned by the billion-dollar Condé Nast group, has stated it will no longer carry recipes that use beef. Because of the environment.

When 23andMe was in its most ridiculous phase of existence, the co-founder was telling FDA to talk to the hand while she assumed campaign donations to members of Congress would exempt them from being told to stop lying about their tests allowing consumers to “take steps toward mitigating serious diseases” like breast cancer.

The Six Foot Rule is only a rule in a 'rule of thumb' way; it's okay for an estimate but you use a real ruler to build a house. 

Analyses instead show that the most important things are a mix of masks and ventilation. What about outdoors where ventilation is terrific? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  has now relaxed its guidelines and are in line with what the science says; namely that unless you're in a protest unmasked, you'll be fine. And the Biden administration wants to use that to promote vaccines as well.

About 23,000,000 years ago, something hit the giant Asteroid 4 Vesta(1) some 120,000,000 miles away and the impact sent huge rocks into space. In 2018, one such meteorite from that time hit Botswana.

It was not unique. Over 30 percent of such Howardite-Eucrite-Diogenites (HED) meteorites that hit Earth year come from just the impact that formed the Antonia crater on Vesta. And then there is everything else happening outside our atmosphere piling on.

There were a lot of rules introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic that originated during late 2019 in Wuhan, China. Some were pretty Draconian. China welded the homes of people shut and destroyed 16,000 coronavirus samples at the world's largest coronavirus lab nearby.  Some were pointless, like everyone carrying Clorox wipes around.  Most were less intrusive and at least somewhat helpful; wear a mask, stay six feet apart.