THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX Gears Up for Starship Flight Test 4 with Unprecedented Upgrades and Preparations.

The technological advances and rigorous testing at Boca Chica are at the heart of SpaceX’s preparation for Starship Flight Test 4. This phase of development is not only about refining the spacecraft but also about validating a host of new technologies that will be crucial for the success of future missions. As Marcus House pointed out, “SpaceX is conducting the fastest tower arm tests ever seen, suggesting that the company is on the brink of mastering the booster catch mechanism, which could revolutionize rocket reusability.”

The tower arms, crucial for the innovative booster catch technique, are being tested under extreme conditions to ensure they can handle the dynamic stresses of catching a booster as it returns from space. If successful, this method will eliminate the need for traditional landing legs on the booster, reducing weight and complexity and potentially allowing for quicker turnaround times between launches. “These arms need to move with precision and speed, and the recent tests show that SpaceX is making significant strides towards achieving these goals,” House explained.

Would it be rude to ask, “Faster, please?”

JOHN LUCAS: An Immigrant’s View of Our Current Mess.

CRAZED CAMPUS GARBAGE BABIES DESTROYING LEFTIST INDOCTRINATION CENTERS: Columbia University Cancels Main Commencement Ceremony After Protests. “The ceremony, which was scheduled for May 15, has taken place outdoors on its New York City campus where students had set up a pro-Palestinian encampment that was taken down by police last week. The protests over the Israel-Hamas war that have swept campuses nationwide have prompted university administrators to rethink commencement plans with a goal of protecting students and guests from potentially ugly and violent political disputes.”

Crazy idea: Stop making “commitment to social justice” an admissions factor. Or, you know, just stick with the current approach. It’s changing the higher education world much faster than reformers like me ever could.

READER FAVORITE: Gildan Men’s Crew T-Shirts, Multipack. #CommissionEarned

ASTROTURF: Activist Groups Trained Students for Months Prior to Protests.

HMM: Judge mulls sanctions over Google’s “shocking” destruction of internal chats. “According to the DOJ, Google destroyed potentially hundreds of thousands of chat sessions not just during their investigation but also during litigation. Google only stopped the practice after the DOJ discovered the policy. DOJ’s attorney Kenneth Dintzer told Mehta Friday that the DOJ believed the court should ‘conclude that communicating with history off shows anti-competitive intent to hide information because they knew they were violating antitrust law.'”

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: This year’s Harvard commencement speaker compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

Everyone’s a Nazi, except for the people actually calling for the eradication of Jews.

AMERICA’S RED GUARDS: George Washington Students Hold ‘People’s Tribunal,’ Call for Faculty’s Deaths.

CHAOS AT FORDHAM: Woman speaks out after protester rips Israeli flag from her hands, says it’s ‘Baffling.’

It’s only baffling if you close your eyes to the truth of what’s going on.

YOU’VE HEARD OF ATHEISM, AGNOSTICISM: But what about Apatheism? That’s when you just really don’t care one way or the other about the “God question.” Apologetics Professor Maryjo Sharp, a former Apatheist, explains on HillFaith this morning.

ETHNIC CLEANSING: Egypt: Islamist Mobs Attack Christians, Set Fire to Homes.

Videos circulating on Twitter apparently show angry Egyptian rioters chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and burning homes with joyful Arabic music in the background.

“The attack occurred after word spread that residents of the village, which is home to 3,000 Christian families, had obtained a permit to construct a church building,” the watchdog International Christian Concern (ICC) reported. According to Islamic Sharia law, non-Muslims, or ‘dhimmis,’ living under the Muslim-rule are not allowed to repair their places of worship, let alone build new ones.

Muslim rioters reportedly had tacit backing from the Egyptian security services. “Despite promises of safety from security forces, the cries of help from the archbishop and the local Coptic community went unanswered as the attack unfolded. Security forces arrived only after the attack, leaving a yet unknown number of Christians to perish in their burning homes,” the ICC added.

Previously: Persecution of Christians ‘coming close to genocide’ in Middle East.

And right now in Great Britain:

Muslim men go wild as they celebrate another local election win in Bradford, UK.

“We did it.”

The English city of Bradford has a 30.5% Muslim population while Christian’s make up 33.4%.

pic.twitter.com/fWKCDH0Bfj

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) May 4, 2024

Holy shit. Meet the new City Councillor of Leeds, UK who just won their Election. pic.twitter.com/W5JaTMjcIg

— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) May 4, 2024

If you were looking for examples of genocide and settler-colonialism…

RFK’S FOUR ‘EXISTENTIAL ISSUES:’ Robert Kennedy Jr. sits down with Epoch TV’s Jan Jekielek to discuss the four “existential issues” facing America that Kennedy claims both Biden and Trump are ignoring. Issue one, for instance, is the national debt:

According to RFK Jr., “our country is facing a series of existential issues and neither of them even has an opinion on them, and neither of them can do anything about them.

One of those is the debt. We have a $34 trillion debt. We’ve added a trillion dollars in the last hundred days and it’s growing exponentially.

“The cost of servicing that debt now exceeds our defense budget. Within five years, the cost of servicing this debt will be 50 cents out of every dollar that the federal government collects in taxes.

“Within 10 years, it will be 100 percent, so this is existential for our country. It means defaulting on the debt or taking some other radical course that will be devastating to the middle class, to private ownership, and to everything that we believe in.

“Yet, President Trump and President Biden have no capacity to deal with this issue. Why is that, and why do they never discuss it? Because those presidents ran up a bigger portion of that debt than any other presidents in history.”

I don’t agree with everything RFK Jr. says, but there are more than a few folks who think he’s absolutely right that the debt issue can no longer be ignored, it must be addressed and the American people have a right to know how anybody who claims to be qualified for the Oval Office will deal with it.

IT’S NOT ‘PUBLIC’ HOUSING: It’s “Social Housing,” according to a growing number of Lefty advocates, according to Issues & Insights and Pacific Research Institute. We live in an age in which the meaning of words is as pliable as the value of an unborn life.

100% AWESOME: Fund a mariachi band to play next to Penn’s encampment 24/ 7

“Over the past week a merry batch of campers has struck fear into the heart of Israel by having a sleepover on Penn’s College Green. As Tel Aviv waits in horror to see their next move, I believe these protestors should be serenaded for their efforts, just as they have constantly serenaded my efforts to study for finals with a megaphone and drum set.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Yeah, President Joe Is Getting Dumber. “The man’s cognitive decline is painful for anyone to watch. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have long-lived families are aware of how things change with older relatives even in the best of circumstances. We love our elders, and we do all we can to accommodate the aging process.”

THE “EMERGING DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY” REPLACEMENT THEORY ISN’T WORKING OUT AS PLANNED: Survey: Texas Hispanics Support Abbott’s Border Crackdown, Jumping on the Trump Train.

MICHAEL WALSH: On Abortion, Take The Win and Move On. “Conservatives need to understand that handing the abortion club back to the Left is political suicide. They should instead be celebrating their Dobbs win, the partial restoration of the Tenth Amendment, and the option to put their morals where their mouths are and fight for their beliefs at the state level, as the Constitution intends — especially in a fraught national election year. To lose the White House over an issue that’s already been constitutionally decided is lunacy. So take the win and move on to the next battlefield. There’s no shortage of them.”

Related: On abortion, Trump gets what many conservatives don’t.

ENGINEERED TO FAIL: ‘Equity’ Grading Is the Latest Educational Fad Destined To Fail.

Always eager to embrace easy-button solutions rather than, say, ideas that promote competitiveness and excellence, our school bureaucracies are on to some “innovative” ideas that have a ballpark-zero chance of improving educational outcomes. The new ones are based around the concept of equity. As with every education reform fad, they sound OK in the elevator pitch. Who doesn’t support equity? But they will create a mess that further impedes student progress.

For instance, some Bay Area schools have approved “equity grading.” It’s strange to focus on grading rather than teaching, but the details are even stranger. The Mercury News reports that one district removed “the practice of awarding zero points for assignments as long as they were ‘reasonably attempted.'” It also eliminated extra credit for class participation. EG offers students “multiple chances to make up missed or failed assignments and minimize homework’s impact on a student’s grade.” Now it will be almost impossible to get an A or an F.

It brings to mind Garrison Keilor’s Lake Wobegon, the fictional Minnesota town “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.” Parents rightly worry that the new grading system will promote slacking. Why work extra hard when you won’t be able to get an A? Why try to improve when you won’t get worse than a C?

If you think of it as training for our glorious socialist future — “So long as they pretend to pay us, we’ll pretend to work” — it all makes sense.