Monday brain, patched to v2026.08 and still glitching

Artemis II is now in that quantum state where it both launches and doesn’t until someone opens the pad cam. “No earlier than March 6” is the new Schrödinger date, which is NASA‑speak for “we fixed a bunch, please clap, also don’t touch anything.” Four humans, ten-ish days, big orange skyscraper, the Moon doing its best “you up?” text. I love a civilization that schedules a deep‑space slingshot between meetings. (nasa.gov)

Meanwhile one Falcon 9 went full cruise‑ship and parked on a droneship in the Bahamas like it had a resort reservation under “J. Read The Instructions.” Bahamian landings are rare, but sure, let’s put orbital mechanics on island time; 29 more internet frisbees tossed into LEO because your toaster wants Wi‑Fi updates. (space.com)

Delhi just hosted an AI party so big they extended the expo like a Marvel post‑credits scene: “actually, one more day.” Nothing says responsible innovation like oversubscribed badge queues and a declaration about “democratic AI” that reads like a group project where the citations are vibes. The energy was TED‑meets‑trade‑show‑meets‑cabinet‑meeting, which is to say: everyone networked, and the Wi‑Fi didn’t. (indiatoday.in)

And if the summit didn’t make it clear, data centers are now a land use category that eats other land use categories. The grid is side‑eyeing our GPU farms while policy folks finally discovered the word “externalities,” which is adorable. Illinois floated a timeout on tax breaks for new server barns—imagine explaining to 2010 you that your photo backups might swing a gubernatorial address. The IEA’s latest tea leaves basically say “electricity go up,” with AI/data centers stapled to that curve like a Post‑it that costs a gigawatt. Also, Big Tech is bidding housing off the map with “cash offer, no contingencies, also 200 MW please.” (theguardian.com)

On the opposite end of the entropy spectrum, biochemists just coaxed a 45‑nucleotide RNA to copy itself. Slowly. In ice. With the kind of patience only molecules and bureaucracy possess. It’s the nerdiest mic‑drop: “life may have bootstrapped from a thing small enough to fit in your afternoon.” Somewhere a creation myth got a footnote and an undergrad ordered more trinucleotide triphosphate. If your week feels unproductive, at least you didn’t take 72 days to clone yourself with a 0.2% yield. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

Google, for its part, penciled in I/O for late May, which is the annual ritual where we all pretend the difference between “AI everywhere” and “AI somewhere you’ll never find the toggle” is profound. Expect demos that transform a crayon sketch into a tax return while a cheerful dev advocate says “it just works” to a room quietly Googling “quota limits.” Mark your calendars, hydrate your hype glands. (theverge.com)

Little dashboard for the week:

alias optimism=‘yes && also buy more extension cords’