Tim Meade retweeted
A retired NASA engineer who had worked on the Space Shuttle program for 25 years was hired by SpaceX at age 62. He described the first week as the most disorienting experience of his professional life.
At NASA, a design change required 3 meetings, 2 committees, a review board, and 6 to 18 months of documentation. At SpaceX, his new supervisor said "if it works, build it. If it doesn't, change it by Friday."
He sat at his desk after the first day and called his wife. He told her he felt like a man who had been swimming with ankle weights for 25 years and someone just cut them off. He could move. He could decide. He could build something in the morning and test it in the afternoon. The constraint that he had accepted as the nature of aerospace engineering turned out to be the nature of bureaucracy.
Within 6 months he had contributed to more design iterations than he had completed in his last 5 years at NASA. Not because he was working harder. Because the time between having an idea and testing the idea collapsed from months to hours. The same brain. The same knowledge. A different operating system.
He described a specific moment where he proposed a modification to a Raptor engine component. At NASA, the proposal would have entered a queue. At SpaceX, the modification was machined by the end of the day and tested by the following morning. He watched his idea become a physical object in 18 hours. At NASA, 18 hours would not have been enough to schedule the first meeting to discuss whether to schedule a meeting.
He told an interviewer: "I didn't get smarter when I went to SpaceX. I got faster. The intelligence was always there. The system was in the way."
The difference between SpaceX and NASA is not talent. NASA has extraordinary talent. The difference is the time between a thought and a test. SpaceX compresses it. NASA elongates it. The same engineer produces 10x more at SpaceX than at NASA because the bottleneck was never the engineer. It was the meetings about the meetings about the work.
Tim Meade retweeted
Feels like gameday 🥹
#GoBucks
Tim Meade retweeted
The data center discourse is funny because trade unions obviously like them and the jobs they provide, but Dems like hating technology more than they like the actual working class so here we are:
Tim Meade retweeted
HISTORIC MOMENT TODAY! 🙌🏼🏈
After a decade of being shut out for his Christian conservative views, my friend @JackBrewerBSI was finally welcomed BACK into the Minnesota Vikings stadium!
What a powerful moment of redemption!
GOD IS GOOD!! 🙌🏼🔥
Tim Meade retweeted
Today we are incredibly grateful for the courage and quick action by pilot Cpt. Smit Machchhar who was stabbed by his copilot on FZ1073, yet still managed to open the cockpit door and call for help before collapsing. His heroism in the moment of crisis saved over 170 lives today.
Israelis are all wishing him a full recovery and are thankful for his leadership. 🙏🏽 🇮🇱 🤝 🇮🇳
Tim Meade retweeted
NO FUCKING WAY 😭😭😭
openai announces Dots. meanwhile SpaceXAI owns dot.com
AND THEY REDIRECTED IT TO THE GROK BOT PAGE
this industry is run by children and i fucking love it
Tim Meade retweeted
In 2005, Oneida shut the flatware factory in Sherrill, New York.
A town that had made silverware for MORE THAN 100 YEARS was supposed to be finished.
Two men refused to let that happen.
Their names are Matt Roberts and Greg Owens.
Roberts had managed that factory. Owens was another former Oneida manufacturing manager. When the company ended U.S. production, they bought the plant and the equipment and reopened it the NEXT DAY as Sherrill Manufacturing.
They did not have a giant rescue fund.
They did not have a Hollywood ending waiting.
They had a building, some machines, and a workforce that knew how to make forks, knives, and spoons.
At first they kept making product for Oneida.
Then Oneida pulled the remaining American work and sent it overseas.
That should have been the end.
It wasn’t.
They took government flatware contracts to keep the lights on. In 2010 they filed Chapter 11. They sold unused equipment. They sold space they could no longer fill. They leased back only the part of the factory they could still run.
They came out of bankruptcy in 2013.
Then they did the thing that saved the company.
They built their own brand: Liberty Tabletop.
They sold 18/10 stainless flatware straight to customers who wanted tableware MADE IN THE UNITED STATES.
Not through a department store that could drop them overnight.
Direct.
Today Liberty Tabletop is the only company still manufacturing stainless steel flatware in America.
Same town.
Same trade.
U.S. steel.
About 70 jobs.
They did not bring back 2,000 workers. Nobody did.
What they saved was the last line.
If you want American-made forks and spoons, this is the factory that still makes them.
Support Liberty Tabletop.
THIS is what keeping manufacturing in America actually looks like. 🇺🇸
Tim Meade retweeted
On paper, I’m in my 50’s & it’s really confusing…
In my head, I’m 35.
At a concert, I’m 25
After 10pm, I’m 72.
Getting up off the floor, I’m 93.
When someone makes me mad, I’m 2
BUT-
When an 80’s song comes on,
I’m 17, drunk in a field, & my mom thinks I’m at a sleepover
🤪
Tim Meade retweeted
Proud to announce a statewide effort to land the United States Space Academy in Dayton, Ohio.
This is where aviation began. Where two bicycle mechanics left the ground at Huffman Prairie and changed the world. Where Ohioans like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn taught America to look up. Where more than two dozen astronauts have called home. Where America’s first astronauts — the Mercury Seven — were put through their final testing in 1959. To this day, America’s astronauts come to @WrightPattAFB for training at the 711th Human Performance Wing, home of the School of Aerospace Medicine and the military’s only human-rated centrifuge.
Today, Ohio unites to make our case to bring President Trump’s vision for the Space Academy to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and @wrightstate — the only site with the people, the mission, and the history to secure his legacy.
Thank you to @matthuffman1, @Rob_McColley, @SenJonHusted, @Jim_Jordan, @RepMikeTurner, and @GovMikeDeWine for uniting to make this happen. No politics. Just Ohio. Just America.
From Huffman Prairie to the stars.
Tim Meade retweeted
It's important to spot AI fakes. Here is how you can tell this video is AI:
1. The cat should be saluting with his right paw, not his left paw
2. Cockpit instrumentation is facing the wrong direction
3. Headphone placement on the cat's ears is off
Watch out for AI fakes!
🤖 Made with AI
Tim Meade retweeted
Buckeyes win. On to the next one!
#GoBucks
Tim Meade retweeted
A couple years ago, Mikala Sposito applied for a work ethic scholarship from my foundation. She asked for $2,700.00 to help realize her dream of becoming a welder. (Actually, her first dream was to become an Olympian. As a kid, she excelled at horseback riding, dance, soccer, and track, but not quite at the Olympic level. So, Mikala adjusted her dream and focused on something within her reach. Precisely the kind of commonsense approach to making a living we try to encourage.) Toward that end, Mikala filled out the application, jumped through all the necessary hoops, and signed the S.W.E.A.T. Pledge, as all applicants must.
According to our internal ranking system, which is inherently subjective and relative to each batch of new applicants, Mikala scored a 94, and was awarded $2,100.00, or roughly 80% of what she asked for. This is typical of the average percentage awarded to an excellent applicant. As a rule, we almost never award the entire amount requested. We want our recipients to have some skin in the game, and we encourage all applicants to apply for additional scholarship funds elsewhere, which Mikala did. But in this case, if I had it to do over again, I think I’d have awarded Mikala the full $2,700.00. Why? Because this woman is precisely why I award work ethic scholarships in the first place, as recent headlines prove. Headlines all over the country that identify Mikala Sposito as the sole welder to represent Team USA in the upcoming @WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai.
This is a very big deal. The World Skills competition is often referred to as the Olympics of the skilled trades, so it looks like Mikala’s dream is coming true after all. And it seems to me her journey is worth a brief encapsulation. Before she applied for a scholarship from mikeroweWORKS, Mikala demonstrated an affinity for welding in SkillsUSA. As a senior at Dexter High School, she won 1st Place at the SkillsUSA Michigan high school competition and went on to place 14th nationally. Then, as a freshman at Washtenaw Community College, she repeated her success by taking 1st Place in the Michigan college division. She then advanced to nationals, where she finished 8th in the country. That earned her an invitation to the Team USA pre-trials, which whittled the nation's top 16 young welders down to three. At the final USA Weld Trials at the Robotics Technology Park in Huntsville, Alabama, each competitor was evaluated on precision, safety, technical execution, craftsmanship, and multi-process capabilities under extreme time constraints. Mikala Sposito took the Gold, officially becoming the first woman to represent the United States in welding at WorldSkills. Next week, she’ll face off against the absolute best of the best from all over the world.
I should point out that Mikala would prefer it if the press didn’t make a big deal of her gender, and I completely understand. (She’s a welder – not a “weld-her.”) But today, the industry is in desperate need of proof that women can and do excel in the trades. Nationally, just 4.3% of tradespeople are female. At mikeroweWORKS, our female applicants are closer to 20%, but I assure you that percentage could be much higher. Companies are anxious to recruit talented welders of any gender, and women need to understand and believe the opportunities are real. Mikala prove that in spades, and I want to offer her my sincere congratulations, and invite all of you to do the same. Because Mikala Sposito is exactly what our country needs a lot more of. People who understand that talent is never enough to compensate for laziness.
In her application, she wrote, “Hard work beats talent any day of the week, and nobody is going to outwork me. Period.”
She also connected with every point of the S.W.E.A.T. Pledge but said the final tenet resonated with her the most. “Some people choose to be lazy. Some people choose to sleep in. I choose to work my butt off.”
My favorite quote, however, is Mikala’s response to seasoned professionals who see her wield a torch and call her a “natural.”
“I’m not a natural,” she says. Far from it. And none of this came easy. I worked and trained 60-80 hours a week for two years to get here.”
Regardless of what happens in Shanghai, the job offers are already piling up, including the most recent from SpaceX. She hasn’t graduated yet, but the future looks bright, and I for one would not bet against her.
PS. I never do this, but since my name is in the title of the foundation, I suppose I can. Mikala – please accept the additional $600 you requested from mikeroweWORKS two years ago. Shanghai is expensive, and since you’re representing all of us, we’d like to provide you with a little walking around money. The check is in the mail.
Now…go get the gold!
Tim Meade retweeted
Chills! The Marines Silent Drill Platoon performing for this Honor Flight at the Lincoln Memorial.
I’ll edit the video next.
Tim Meade retweeted
This is the exact stance we took at 37signals back in 2021, and it's still the correct one. Work is a terrible place to litigate societal/political questions unrelated to the business with coworkers. "Do it outside" is also the Omarchy way now. Love that Jensen is affirming it 🤘
Tim Meade retweeted
I need to make a very PUBLIC announcement on behalf of younger GenXers and older Millennials.
If you see someone in their 40s or 50s who seems a little boring now, I need you to understand something...
We already got it in.
Like...GOT. IT. IN.
We are not sitting home on a Friday night because we never knew how to have fun.
We are sitting home on a Friday night because we have seen enough.
We went to parties in houses that should have been condemned and were almost certainly owned by the local drug dealer.
We saw police lights and RAN and not across a nice, flat field.
INTO THE WOODS.
Do you understand the athleticism required to hurdle uprooted tree roots in platform shoes while simultaneously trying to keep your low-rise jeans from sliding completely off your ass?
And somehow...we never spilled the Zima. We never spilled the Boone’s Farm.
That was TALENT.
We slept on floors in strange houses because the designated driver either never showed up or, in a shocking turn of events, was drunker than everybody else.
There was no Uber, Life360 or Find My Friends.
There was just somebody named Mike saying, “I know a shortcut.”
And we FOLLOWED MIKE.
We closed down bars and then decided the night was still young, so we drove to Atlantic City, where we somehow managed to get drunk, sober up, get drunk again, sober up again and then get drunk a THIRD TIME before breakfast.
And according to our parents? We were at Michelle’s house.
Eating pizza and watching movies.
Michelle’s mother unknowingly covered for approximately 17 people every weekend. If there even was a Michelle.
We drank things called Purple Passion, Mad Dog 20/20 and whatever somebody mixed inside a giant plastic garbage can. Nobody asked what was in it. You grabbed a red Solo cup and trusted the process.
We went to clubs until the lights came on. Do you know the psychological damage of seeing a nightclub with the LIGHTS ON? Nothing good happens after those lights come on.
We danced for four straight hours in shoes that permanently altered the structure of our feet.
We made entire plans without cell phones...no texts, dropped pins or group chats...just an extremely questionable sense of direction.
We rode in cars with 11 people when the vehicle legally seated five. Someone was always sitting on someone. Someone was always in the hatchback.
And there was always one friend yelling, “DUCK!” when we passed a cop.
So yes...now we like being home.
We like sweatpants.
We like cancelling plans.
We like saying, “That sounds fun!” with absolutely no intention of attending.
We like restaurants at 5:30 because we can get a good table.
We like being home by 8:17.
And if someone texts at 9:30 PM and says, “What are you doing?”
Sleeping...we are sleeping.
Because this is not boring my friends...this is retirement.
We already played, partied and danced on the bar.
We already ran from the cops through a wooded area dressed like a Spice Girl.
We have stories that cannot be posted because there are still people with careers, marriages and reputations to protect. And thank GOD there were no camera phones.
So kids, when you look at your Gen X and older Millennial parents sitting peacefully on the couch watching Dateline at 8 PM and think:
“God, you guys are boring.”
Sweetheart...oh sweetheart.
You are looking at retired legends.
Put some respect on our names. We're probably the reason Life360 was invented.
xoxoxo (posted from someone else on FakeBook) 🤣 #genx #oldandtired
