We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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How a slice of cheese almost derailed Europe’s most important rocket test I just liked that headline, so here it is again as a link: “How a slice of cheese almost derailed Europe’s most important rocket test”. There is video.
As you might have guessed, the rocket concerned is small enough to almost spin out of control because of the weight of a slice of packaged cheese strapped to one of its legs. So perhaps Elon Musk need not lose sleep over his rivals, a group of students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, just yet – however the headline from Interesting Engineering describing this as “Europe’s most important rocket test” was more justifiable than one might think at first sight.
They ate the cheese after its flight. It was “slightly warm, but still quite tasty.”
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Elon Musk is not perfect, there are no perfect people, but he knows what he is doing – the government, and corporate (yes corporate as well) bureaucracies are radically dysfunctional.
In any project “there has to be a boss” and the boss has to understand the project – both government and corporate bureaucracies fail both these tests, no one person is clearly in overall charge (with the power to actually make decisions and appoint, and dismiss, key staff) and many of the people who “have influence” on projects in both government and corporate bureaucracies lack key knowledge of how things work.
Good effort, especially as Swiss cheese can be quite hazardous, I remember a few years’ back rushing round to a neighbour’s garden party after a fondue set exploded, injuring several guests, it was a gruyeresome sight.
Sorry Natalie; it was not the weight, it was the aerodynamic pressure.
Cheese flaps.
Appenzell cheese is a symbol of liberty – and has been for many centuries.
Appenzell (especially Appenzell Innerrhoden) has stood for liberty since the Appenzell wars – first against the taxes (taxes – not theology) of the Church, later against the centralizing forces of the Swiss state.