CxD# 190: 🚀+🚲

1.

This week 4 civilians rode a SpaceX rocket into orbit, circling the earth for three days at a distance further away from Earth than the international space station. This Netflix documentary shows their bios, how they were selected, and how they trained. Yesterday evening, they returned back to Earth. Check out SpaceX.com for details on the mission and the Netflix doc for the extended documentary.

When I watched this journey unfold, I got teary and fluttery and somewhat anxious at the wonder and vastness of both the mission and the idea of space and exploring beyond both our literal and imaginative horizons.

Some publications wrote criticism like “Netflix’s new documentary series sells the first all-civilian flight to space as an exercise in philanthropy, but it’s little more than a privilege-fuelled puff piece for the billionaire’s adventures.”

I prefer to nurture wonder and curiosity rather than peevish pessimism whenever I can.

If you’d like to know more about the company SpaceX, and how it’s trying to both put people on the moon for the first time since 1972, and to colonize Mars (!!!!), read this truly astounding and in-depth overview of why working to protect human consciousness is a noble goal.

How and Why SpaceX Will Colonize Mars

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2. When you think of humans colonizing Mars (within the next ten years no less), what do you experience? Fear? Skepticism? Wonder? The Sublime? Or something beyond the rational or emotional?

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3. By popular demand, here’s one more memory of Michael Williams, written by David Simon, creator of The Wire:

The second season of our fledgling HBO drama in Baltimore did not shoot its first frame of film before one key cast member was in the writers’ offices, scripts in hand, showing his disappointment.

“Why are we even doing this?” Michael K. Williams asked.

The initial season of “The Wire,” in which Mike had delivered his first magnificent turn as Omar Little, a freelance stickup artist and street warrior, had been largely set in Baltimore’s poorer Black neighborhoods. Now, with the new season, our story had shifted to the predominantly white working-class world of Baltimore’s port. Mike wasn’t the only actor of color distressed at the new scripts; he was simply the one with the gumption to walk into the show runner’s office.

At first, I misapprehended the depth of Mike’s complaint, assuming — as is often true — that an actor was simply counting his character’s lines and hoping for more screen time.

Now, in the writers’ offices, I was underestimating the man again, assuming the complaint was all about professional hunger. I began to explain that, yes, Omar would be losing some screen time this season, but as the story expanded …

Mike interrupted. “I’m not here about my screen time. I just want to know why we are doing this. Why is the show changing?”

He pressed the point: “I’m saying, there are all these shows on television, and we made the one that was about Black characters and written for a Black audience. And now, it’s like we’re walking away from that.”

To Mike, at that moment, we were the white custodians of a rare majority-Black drama in the majority-white world of American television, and we might well be walking away from that unique responsibility.

He was asking a big question. To answer, I had to pause and regroup, and reach for an honest answer — the one less likely to please a hungry actor. I told him that we had never imagined “The Wire” as a Black drama, or even as a drama with race as its central theme. We were writing about how power and money are routed in an American city, and being from Baltimore, a majority Black metropolis, we had simply depicted our hometown.

And a bigger truth, I argued, is that if we don’t now expand the show’s field of vision beyond what happens on the streets of West Baltimore, then we stay a cops-and-robbers drama, a police procedural. But if we build the rest of the city — its fragile working class, its political world, its schools, its media culture — then we get a chance to say something more.

“We want to have a bigger argument about what has gone wrong. Not just in Baltimore, but elsewhere, too.”

Read the rest of David Simon’s memory of Michael Willimas here.

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4.

My friend pictured here:

encouraged me to ride my bike more often and I took him up on the invitation.

The morning breeze while riding to work is delightful.

I didn’t need to pay $650 for a parking pass

My quads are getting more shapely.

I see more of my neighborhood up-close.

I get to work even sooner than when I drove my car, since I don’t have to deal with parking garage buffoonery.

I would rate riding a bike to work 5 out of 5 ⭐️.

Please send pictures of your bicicle and your favorite places to ride.

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5.

Advertisement for cancer as seen in my neighborhood.

Do I need to get a Cybertruck and print on its backside— RESPONSIBILITY: the capacity and maturity to take others into consideradation so that everyone can live freely?

Recommend your own slogan here:

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