Episode 440
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[00:00:00] 

This is the Space Shot episode 440 for July 4th, 2024. That's a lot of fours. I'm John Mulnix. 

john-mulnix_2_07-04-2024_103538: Um, It's been a minute since I have been able to catch up with everybody. It's amazing how time flies when you have a baby. But I just wanted to take a little bit of time today while she's napping to catch up.

Before we record a Skylab 45th Anniversary podcast tomorrow in my free time lately, I've been delving into the history of the X 15 over the past few months. I gave a presentation for the local EAA chapter here in Wichita. And I'll be giving a talk at the Cosmos sphere in a few months as well.

And that has actually inspired. What will be season seven of the podcast? It's gonna be a lot of X 15 related content. Originally I was [00:01:00] planning on doing some interview episodes with authors, but that's just not in the cards right now with a baby work. And some other big news potentially going back to school here.

I'm 99% sure that I will be getting some tuition reimbursement from my employer to start a master's program at Wichita State. Which will be cool. I'm gonna keep the podcast going. I'm really looking forward to it. I was able to take a class this last month on leadership development, which was a blast. So fingers crossed that program I'll be able to start it up this fall. So fingers crossed for that. As part of that class, we did some trainings and tests and reading.

And one of the things I'd never really thought about until that. But now that I know about it, it makes total sense. One of my strengths is looking at context and historical context is something that can be lost in the news coverage. If you've seen anything related to aviation or space lately, I mean, news outlets mess up a lot of historical [00:02:00] context.

And that's something I'm, I'm looking at trying to figure out how I can provide historical context for some space related news maybe. So let me know if this is something you'd be interested in. Send me an email, leave a comment. You know, as time allows, I think I want to try to do that. And speaking of.

History and context. I've been reading a lot this year as much as I can with a baby here. And Astrid's doing great. You may hear her. I'm trying to sneak this in during a nap, so fingers crossed we can get this done real quick without an interruption and hopefully she naps 'cause she needs it.

But I've been doing a good amount of reading. I'm a judge for the Space hipster's book prize this year. And that's been a blast. I'll talk about those books a little bit more in the future. And I want, just because I wanna change gears today you're probably gonna catch this episode after the fact, but I'm recording this podcast on July 4th, which is the big American holiday for my listeners overseas.

During this time of year, I make a point of reading history, political theory and I've been taking a brief [00:03:00] pause from reading the space history content that I normally do. I'm currently reading, hold it up here so everybody can see. It's probably backwards on the video, but this is the infidel and the professor David Hume, Adam Smith, and the friendship that shaped modern thought by Dennis Rasmussen.

Really good book. It looks at Smith's and Hues friendship which was really remarkable in the letters that they would write to each other and how their thought. You know, their thoughts influenced each other. I'll put a link to buy this book in the show notes. You've probably heard of Adam Smith before 'cause he wrote The Wealth of Nations.

Hume I think is probably a little bit less well known. But these two men are some of the most important and prominent figures in the Scottish Enlightenment. And their thinking really helped shape our modern world. One of Hume's works that's mentioned by Dennis Rasmussen in this book is of parties in general.

Hume writes and examines how factions quote, [00:04:00] subvert government render laws impotent and beget the fiercest animosities among men of the same nation who ought to give mutual assistance and protection to each other. As much as factions were a problem in the 17th and 18th centuries, I think it's an even bigger problem today.

Factions have expanded in ways that Hume could have never imagined. Social media always connected news services and the internet have amplified the steady application of rewards as he put it for demagogues, while diminishing the punishments that is ne, that are necessary to prevent these damaging factions from.

Becoming too powerful and really reshaping the, the conversation. Hume also notes that humans have a propensity to divide into personal factions, and even the smallest appearance of real difference will produce them, which is really kind of interesting. Like kind of in the space community how much infighting [00:05:00] factions there can be when we should all be on team space.

We want, you know, space exploration and it's just kind of sad how there's lots of petty disagreements that devolve into just kind of ridiculous name calling at times. But why I'm reading this now is I always like to read political theory around this time of year and I. This, this work really got me thinking especially of how, you know, how we're going into the 2024 election for those of us here in the States.

And I think even the Brits are having an election for they're choosing a new Prime Minister here soon. But this writing from Hume really got me thinking about a lot of what's going on. He uses a metaphor in this work. Of two men traveling on the highway in opposite directions, and he notes that we can easily pass each other if the way is broad enough.

And I think it's interesting how that road has essentially narrowed in the past decade or [00:06:00] two as social media continues to dominate so much of our lives. It prevents us to be, you know, from being able to easily pass each other on the road of life. There's a few more quotes I wanna read from this that are longer and I'll, I'll link to more of these in the show notes.

But one of the ones that really stuck out to me is quote, but such is the nature of the human mind, that it always lays, hold on, every mind that approaches it. And as it is wonderfully fortified by a uni unanimity of sentiments, say that 10 times fast. So it is shocked and disturbed by any contrarian.

Hence the eagerness, which most people discover in a dispute, and hence their impatience of opposition, even in the most speculative and indifferent opinions. And I don't think I could find a more perfect quote on the stupidity of many arguments on social media than, than what a Hu says writes on this.

Really, really interesting stuff. [00:07:00] I'll, I'll link to more of those quotes in the show notes, just 'cause I don't want to take up. Too much time reading quotes. But really, you know, his words coming to us from hundreds of years ago, I think are more appropriate than ever here in 2024. As we gear up to go into these elections, there's a world we're entering a world where social media.

Artificial intelligence deep fakes, misinformation and disinformation are deforming the public square in new, and I think yet to be fully understood ways. My advice to all of my listeners here is to learn to practice some cognitive security. If you see or read a piece of news or watch a video or see a picture, that's too good to be true.

It probably is. Investigate where it came from, and don't just believe it because a friend shared it on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, wherever it was. It's kind of shocking. Over the past few months, I've seen more and more people, especially on Facebook, share [00:08:00] pictures that were created by ai. And people think their actual photos some of the ones where it's like, you know, share and support our veterans, and it's clearly, you know, they, the guy's got extra digits on his hand just because ai.

When those, when those images are being created, AI hasn't exactly gotten the fact that we have five fingers. So it likes to add extra pinkies and stuff like that. I mean, it's getting better, so it's gonna be harder to tell those in the future apart from, you know, actual photos in the future. But people are sharing these fake images as if they're actually real. And these, these posts, you know, if they're too good to be true or if it's, you know, something that you think is great, just double check. Double check your sources. You know, the, these posts, they're designed to tickle the parts of our lizard brains. That part of our mind that is, you know.

Enables a lot of the worst of factions and it's up to us to demand [00:09:00] better both from ourselves, political officials, elected officials regardless of what party you vote for, I think we need to just demand a little bit better from our fellow citizens here. And I want to end on a lighter note just 'cause that was a little heavy for the 4th of July.

Just, if you follow the podcast for a while, you know I am a bit of a geek. That's an understatement. It's evidenced by all my nerdy stuff around here. I also like to dabble in building computers, that kind of stuff. And over the last weekend, I decided to restore an old iPod. So this was the old shell.

It was pretty busted up, scratched up and did something totally new. Got a cool color, cool face plate. And it's been interesting having to manually sync podcasts and music. Normally I would just go to my iPhone, which is the camera I'm using right now to record this. And I would just stream from there.

It was super convenient, [00:10:00] but I found myself getting pulled into a lot of the things on, you know, social media and wasting a ton of time. And it's been interesting going back to a device at this point, which is, I mean, the fifth Gen iPod I think came out in like 2005, so it's almost a 20-year-old piece of tech.

So the innards of this, like the motherboard, all that stuff is still the same, but like I put in a new battery 3000 milliamp hour versus 650 instead of 30 gigabytes of storage, I think is what the old one was. Yeah, 30. I don't know if you can see, this is probably blurry, but 30 gigabytes of storage and now this has 128 because I installed a little micro SD card for it, which is really cool.

Anyways, all the technical stuff aside having something that's not connected all the time but I can still listen to music and podcasts for, has been kind of refreshing 'cause I can't go through and scroll through endless news feeds of, frankly a lot of stupid stuff. Has been kind of a [00:11:00] nice week.

Also the fact that the battery life on this thing is insane with the new new battery. I've been listening to probably two to four hours a day of music and podcasts on here. And I'm still at roughly three quarters or 75% battery life on the iPod, which is great. Also really nice that I bought a lot of music back in the day, so I was able to fill it up with a lot of good stuff.

You know, and it's been, it's been kind of nice on that. Funny enough too is like when I started listening to podcasts way back in the day, you know, the podcast like this is the pod in podcast, like an actual iPod. So I'm kind of curious to see where all of you listen to podcasts from. Is it mobile?

Is it, you know, what app do you use? Is it Android, iPhone? iPod. I think I can count on probably one hand or one finger, the number of people that listen to podcasts on an iPod nowadays. But let me know where you listen from. And speaking of that the podcast is now available [00:12:00] via YouTube, which is where some videos will be posted as well.

The entire back catalog is available. I'll be putting new episodes on YouTube and other goodies as well. But yeah, send me a message, drop a comment. Let me know where you like to listen to podcasts. And that's it for this episode. So I'd love it if you could subscribe that way you'll never miss an episode.

If you're a new listener, go back and check out season one. I was single at the time and living in the middle of nowhere and decided to start a daily podcast on space history and. It was kind of a wild ride there for that first season. I'd love it. I'd love it if you could also leave a review apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, you know, like, and comment, all that good stuff that just help more people find out about the show.

If you've got questions or would like to leave a comment. You can call or text. The number is 7 2 0 7 7 2 7 9 8 8. Just leave a message there and I will be sure to get back to you. You can also connect [00:13:00] with the podcast online. All of the social media links will be below. I guess I have to start doing that now 'cause it's on YouTube too or in the show notes in a traditional podcast player.

And until next time, I'm John Mulnix and I'll catch you on the flip side.