nudge

1000 miles of Sebring starting in a few moments... 8 hours of endurance racing and then F1 Australian GP after it ends. A sleepless night for me

You'd be surprised how much of it actually comes from ignorance and fear of the unknown. The latter is part of human nature and also one of the main reasons why people resist change so I get that. What I personally struggle to understand is how some people seem to have absolutely no interest in expanding their horizons and appear to have no curiosity whatsoever.

I both agree and disagree haha. There's definitely plenty of cultural (and visual) differences between European countries; there's actually more than enough differences within each country depending on the city or region you visit. It's just that with all the globalisation the modern way of live is understandably very similar in most of the big cities within the western sphere of influence nowadays and for me personally it's a turn off too as I find it boring but then I'm not a fan of big cities altogether. Other than that, I really enjoy travelling Europe and there are so many places there that I absolutely adore. That said, I definitely agree that travelling to developing countries is great and it's something that's really close to my heart. The unknown, unfamiliar, less predictable "wilder" places and "culture shock" that challenges your world view, a certain degree of "risk" which gives you adrenaline rush, a sense of adventure, more "freedom" is something that I look for and I'm more likely to find it in the so-called third world countries so that's a natural choice for me. It's not for everyone though, and I know there are loads of people who don't get the appeal of it and would never be able to understand my reasoning. Personally I think that they are missing out on a lot of things as they never really step out of their comfort zone, but we're all wired differently and want different things in life so let's all just do that I say.

I can see your point, but I'd personally say that driving a bad car which is being a few seconds a lap slower than everyone else without any hope of improvement throughout the season is extremely frustrating and no racing driver would be happy with it whatsoever... The only thing that would be worth it is getting picked up by some other team next season but it's going to be hard to impress anyone in a car which once again seems to be undrivable. Russell at least has an opportunity to impress by performing better than Kubica. Yeah, that's definitely a concern. The only thing that might play into his cards is the fact that there are no real extraordinary supertalents (compared to the likes of Leclerc, Verstappen, Russell, etc. in recent years) in F2/F3 at the moment so even with the inevitably poor season with Williams he should be alright I think. Even more so if he manages to keep up with or even outperform Kubica.

Happy for Eggestein as it's a well deserved call-up. Too bad Löw can't pronounce his name properly. Twice

Expedition 59 has arrived and docked to the ISS successfully!

At least he kept it out of the wall

T-13 minutes until launch... Love all the little rituals that they've been doing for years before every launch; like still playing that Трава у дома song, planting trees, etc. We might one day conquer space but we'll never stop being human

Season 1 was amazing and I'm looking forward to the new one but I'm kind of getting the vibe that it's going back to Johnny being a villain and Daniel being a saint... Hope not as both of them being shown as highly nuanced and flawed characters was exactly what made Season 1 so great. Wonder where Kreese will fit into the story as well!

Didn't have any pets back then...

I don't know I thought it was quite cool...

The weirdest one for me was experiencing an earthquake in 2004; not that strong (5 in Richter scale I think) but enough for things to visibly shake and fall down etc. Very surreal when you're living in the area which is pretty much sheltered from natural disasters and has close to none seismic activity; you certainly don't expect an earthquake to happen

A good opportunity for incredible photo footage though ...

The Soyuz MS-12 launch that will bring three astronauts for the Expedition 59 to the ISS will take place today at 8 PM ECT and will be broadcast live on NASA TV.

What kind of animal ist that?

Insects are also animals

I always preferred Airbus as well but wouldn't have declined a flight just because it's a Boeing... That has definitely changed now.

Really hope that Honda delivers this year and Red Bull manages to at least properly challenge both Ferrari and Mercedes... Things are looking good with the car performing well in testing without any significant issues, a new update being introduced in Australia already instead of China (Newey seems to be really into it and extremely motivated again). All good signs; and I have a good feeling about this. Come on Max! Also hoping for Alex Albon to perform well

Now they are making it look like it's their own decision to ground the planes out of concern for safety and are even trying to take credit for it... Can hardly get any lower than that.

Canada too!

That's what actually bothers me most - they are very obviously putting money before safety despite the rest of the world having serious concerns (and I'm not talking about media "scaremongering" or lay persons delving into it; I mean if the majority of aviation experts worldwide is concerned enough to disrupt the entire global air traffic then it's probably safe to say that those concerns are not unfounded...). What I've been hearing is that Boeing's main selling point for those planes was the fact that it didn’t require additional training for someone who was already certified to fly a 737 (otherwise the pilots need to undergo weeks of additional training both in the aircraft and the simulator to get certified to fly it; all that costs airlines a lot of time and money). It wasn't very honest though as due to the changes in the plane design (larger and more powerful engines were moved forward and higher up and the nose was extended), the handling of the jet in certain situations also changed slightly so Boeing added the MCAS (the anti-stall system) to counter those changes. In order to really enforce this sales pitch that flying the new Max doesn't require new pilot certification, they neglected to mention the new MCAS (and the way it can be disabled) in the flight crew operation manual and so a lot of pilots were caught completely off-guard. It is speculated to be the reason behind the previous Indonesian crash as allegedly the MCAS was getting incorrect data from a sensor and kept "correcting" the pitch (i.e. bringing the plane's nose down) so much that the pilots couldn't overcome it with manual controls (and couldn't disable the MCAS as they were not informed of its existence/weren't trained to), leading to complete loss of control and a crash. The Ethiopian crash seems to have happened under very similar conditions and there was a number of similar incidents previously were the pilots were able to correct the issue mid-air. It all makes Boeing look very bad; along with the fact that even after those incidents they still keep on denying any potential safety issues instead of suggesting to ground and investigate the fleet thoroughly. I mean that's 1% of the fleet lost in less than 6 months with over 300 human lives lost; I just can't grasp it.