{"id":5607,"date":"2026-04-11T19:06:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T02:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5607"},"modified":"2026-04-11T19:11:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T02:11:49","slug":"odd-lots-367","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=5607","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Artemis II is home safe! And showed off a little by going farther from Earth than any of the Apollo missions. It was cislunar (orbit around both Earth and Moon) so that there was no chance of getting stuck in Lunar orbit due to possible failure of the spacecraft\u2019s thrusters. No, their only problem was with the bathroom plumbing. I flashed on the scene from <em>2001: A Space Odyssey<\/em>, in which <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Swz3ArGFAu4\" target=\"_blank\">Dr. Heywood Floyd is shown reading the instructions for a zero-G toilet<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>I saw this too: <a href=\"https:\/\/chicagoboyz.net\/archives\/76493.html\" target=\"_blank\">Many big-name news outlets reporting on Artemis talking about \u201cthe dark side of the Moon.\u201d<\/a> There is a side we don\u2019t see from Earth, but it gets as much light as the side we do see. This makes me glad I didn\u2019t go into news journalism. (Yes, I considered it\u202650 years ago.)<\/li>\n<li>In the transition from Old English to Middle English, the language lost a fair number of pronouns, especially pronouns referring to two people only, not one, not more than two. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20260408-the-extinct-english-words-for-just-the-two-of-us\" target=\"_blank\">Interesting story about how this came about over time<\/a>, but we really don\u2019t know why.<\/li>\n<li>New \u201csmart\u201d TV sets are very good at reporting on the habits of their users. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.popsci.com\/diy\/how-to-stop-your-smart-tv-from-tracking-you\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here\u2019s a reasonable article on how to minimize that.<\/a> Our big-screen flat TV is now 15 years old and isn\u2019t especially smart. We\u2019re probably going to keep it until it croaks.<\/li>\n<li>I don\u2019t do social media as much as I used to\u2014the novelty\u2019s long since worn off\u2014but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/lifestyle\/articles\/detox-may-erase-10-years-100000315.html\" target=\"_blank\">there\u2019s new research about how cutting down on social media time can help mental health in a variety of ways<\/a>. I\u2019ve got another Contra entry in the cooker about \u201cslow dopamine\u201d and how I experienced it, which is another factor in the social media takeover we see in modern life.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/how-amazing-stories-served-as-the-blueprint-for-american-science-fiction\/\" target=\"_blank\">Here\u2019s an interesting piece about the history of SF<\/a>, beginning with Hugo Gernsback\u2019s <em>Amazing Stories<\/em> and stopping at\u2026the New Wave? Well, it\u2019s supposedly about how the SF genre was born and raised. The New Wave faded away in the 1970s, though there are still some holdouts. Indie SF is now changing the shape of the game, and the author doesn\u2019t mention the long, slow death-throes of print publishing.<\/li>\n<li>I miss Radio Shack, sure, but earlier today I was assembling a kit that uses two CR2032 coin cells, and one of the battery holders was defective. I shrugged, took a deep breath, and then ordered a bag of six from Amazon. They\u2019ll be here tomorrow afternoon. The kit is cool and celebrates an anniversary that I\u2019ll describe here in an upcoming Contra entry.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Artemis II is home safe! And showed off a little by going farther from Earth than any of the Apollo missions. It was cislunar (orbit around both Earth and Moon) so that there was no chance of getting stuck in Lunar orbit due to possible failure of the spacecraft\u2019s thrusters. No, their only problem was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[73,46,18,184],"class_list":["post-5607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots","tag-language","tag-psychology","tag-sf","tag-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5608,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5607\/revisions\/5608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}