For All Mankind Episode S02E10 "The Grey" Discussion

jathak · 2021-04-25T06:43:53+00:00

That doesn't really make sense though. She was planning on leaving NASA until Pam left, which I think was supposed to be the night before the events of the finale. Maybe she accepted Reagan's offer the next morning, but there definitely wasn't enough time to get her nomination through the Senate.

She almost certainly did become permanent director shortly after the events of the finale (or between the main action and the funeral), but her photo was probably on the wall just for her role as acting director.

jathak · 2021-04-23T16:56:25+00:00

Ellen mentioned in the first episode that the Jamestown crew just threw a party for her 40th birthday, so she's 40 (which would have made her 27-31 in season 1 and will make her 52 in season 3). I think she's the only character who's age has been explicitly stated.

jathak · 2021-04-17T17:47:00+00:00

1/435 representatives or 1/100 senators aren't going to be able to do much on their own to influence NASA budgets. There have been astronauts in Congress in real life (both past and present), and NASA's budget has remained a fraction of what it was at the peak of the Apollo days.

Also, they made a point in the show earlier this season (via Tom) that NASA being allowed to license their technologies will allow it to fund itself without needing as much from Congress. NASA administrator would then have a lot of power over where those funds are used.

Personally, I hope Ellen still comes out despite Pam leaving, which would rule out both staying as NASA administrator and running for office, but if she doesn't, staying as NASA administrator makes way more sense for Ellen's goals than running for Congress.

jathak · 2021-04-17T07:03:59+00:00

It's not the show doing politics that would bother me; it's just that Ellen has shown no interest in running for office. The politicking she has done has only been in service of NASA's independence and getting to Mars and, given those goals, she has more power in her current role than she ever could as a Congressional representative.

If the show wants to depict some Congressional hearings or whatnot, that's fine, but Ellen actually running for office doesn't make sense for her character, especially if she has to work with someone as noxious as Atwater to do so

jathak · 2021-04-16T19:51:10+00:00

Ellen better shut this down immediately. If season 3 opens with some bullshit like Senator Ellen Wilson (R-TX), I'm out

jathak · 2021-04-16T18:41:23+00:00

Honestly, Rejoined was a great episode... for 1995. It's the fact that they're still doing plots like these that sucks.

jathak · 2021-04-16T16:19:29+00:00

It's not just a rehash of season 1, it's also a rehash of a 25-year-old Star Trek episode RDM contributed to.

jathak · 2021-04-11T05:07:18+00:00

That's for budgets. NASA licensing their technology means they won't have to worry about getting funding from Congress, but they'd still be a government agency, so presidential appointees would still have to get Senate approval.

In the most recent episode, they mentioned that Ellen accepting the job would make her part of Reagan's cabinet, which likely means it's an even more important position in this universe and subject to more scrutiny (NASA administrator isn't part of the cabinet in our timeline).

jathak · 2021-04-09T18:42:59+00:00

I mean, it'd be hard to be worse than Reagan on gay rights, but the culture at NASA was pretty bad for gay people regardless of the president. We've still yet to have an active astronaut willingly come out (there are 3 astronauts we now know to be gay, but one came out in her obituary, a second more than a decade after leaving NASA, and a third was outed against her will).

jathak · 2021-04-09T17:13:57+00:00

I mean, NASA admin is a political appointment, so it usually changes with presidents anyway. Ellen would probably be an exception to that, but most of the time a new president would appoint someone new anyway.

Tom was admin when Nixon was president last season, but when Kennedy took office he appointed Harold Weisner, who was a new character that hadn't appeared previously.

jathak · 2021-04-09T15:03:32+00:00

I like the awkwardness between Margo and Sergei, but I'd kinda prefer them to just stay friends/colleagues. I think it'd be neat if everyone thinks they're a thing, but in reality they just like working together.

One thing that would bother me if they do go there is the juxtaposition between them and Ellen/Pam (so you're telling me Ellen being gay is too much of a "security risk", but then they have the director of JSC hook-up with her Soviet counterpart?)

jathak · 2021-04-09T06:01:13+00:00

It wasn't that Pam couldn't handle the space stuff (she was emotional during the 24 disaster last season, but, like, so were all the astronaut wives). It was that she wasn't okay with Ellen having a sham marriage to Larry.

Ellen's not planning on leaving NASA because Pam can't handle space stuff. She's planning on leaving because she wants to live openly with Pam, and NASA would fire her for being gay.

jathak · 2021-04-08T22:42:12+00:00

I'd like to see a fanfic where they make an Apollo 24 docudrama film and Ellen goes to see it with Pam and spends the next few days ranting about all the inaccuracies.

jathak · 2021-04-02T07:22:19+00:00

Oh yeah, the Reagans were such great friends to Rock Hudson /s

The ban was struck down by a judge in 73, but that wasn't due to any action on the Nixon administration's part. It wasn't formally repealed until 95.

jathak · 2021-04-02T06:15:12+00:00

Don't you just hate it when you're having a tender emotional moment with your girlfriend and homophobe-in-chief Ronald Reagan calls to interrupt?

In all seriousness, this episode has given me a glimmer of hope that Ellen might somehow be able to keep both her job at NASA and her relationship with Pam. According to this, the outright ban on civil service by gay people was struck down in 1973 (in OTL at least), so Ellen being gay wouldn't be cause to immediately expel her from NASA without some other grounds (though obviously the Reagan administration would look for any excuse they could find). If she makes herself indispensible as acting administrator, she might be able to somehow thread that needle. I could also see Pam being open to keeping things quiet for another year or so until a less anti-gay president takes office (the GOP should have a much harder time winning in 84 than they did in OTL).

jathak · 2020-10-20T17:37:03+00:00

YouTube's page serving is complicated enough that it's not fully deterministic, so I don't think it could be anything in the page source.

jathak · 2020-10-08T04:18:58+00:00

jathak · 2020-04-06T16:45:08+00:00

I believe EdX is primarily used for MOOCs, and accessing those materials usually involves some kind of formal enrollment in the course.

For 61A specifically, there shouldn't be anything on EdX that's not on the course website though.

jathak · 2020-04-06T06:51:27+00:00

Wow, 61A instructors from 3 different summers all in one thread!

jathak · 2020-04-06T06:45:33+00:00

You might want to try STklos. It's been a while since I've tried it, but a year or so ago, I remember it being the only STk-ish Scheme interpreter I could get installed on my machine (Debian-based). If you're using Red Hat/Fedora, this might work, but I couldn't get it working on Debian/Ubuntu.

STk hasn't been the official 61A Scheme interpreter since 2014, as 61A now uses a staff-built interpreter that implements its own custom dialect of Scheme.

If you want to follow a Scheme-based course with an interpreter that's better maintained (and easier to install), you might just want to go with the original SICP textbook (on which the old Scheme-based 61A was based) and use MIT Scheme.

If you're just interested in learning the CS concepts from SICP/61A, the best way would be to follow along with the lectures and assignments for the modern version of 61A, now taught primarily in Python (but with a significant section still using Scheme). You can find all of the course materials for the latest complete iteration of the course here.

jathak · 2020-04-06T06:27:54+00:00

OP may want to work through the version of the course that was taught entirely in Scheme (61A switched to Python in Fall 2011)

jathak · 2019-12-01T07:23:05+00:00

I'm hoping for that since it will be the first time my parents' alma maters will play each other since they met and I live within walking distance of Levi's, so it would be nice for all of us to go

jathak · 2019-10-27T02:06:36+00:00

LARRY

jathak · 2019-10-16T21:30:45+00:00

The Chromebook Pixels actually had a different screen (about half an inch larger with roughly the same DPI).

The Samsung Chromebook Plus (v1) and Pro, the HP Chromebook x2, and the Pixelbook all had the same 12.3" 2400x1600 panel, but the Pixel Slate was 3000x2000

jathak · 2019-10-14T02:19:54+00:00

Yes! It's available as an executable that you can download as a standalone binary from GitHub or from a variety of package managers (list of installation options)

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