Artemis I, the first in a series of increasingly complex NASA missions aimed at making human exploration of the moon and Mars possible, is not ready to shoot for the stars just yet.
The mission was scheduled for a “wet dress rehearsal” this weekend to allow NASA teams to simulate launch procedures without actually igniting the rocket and sending it into space.
On Sunday, NASA announced that the 5.75-million-pound craft was struggling to pressurize its mobile launcher. That process is crucial to keeping hazardous gases from disturbing the rocket as it is pumped full of 700,000 gallons of cryogenic fuel.
In a media briefing Sunday evening, Launch Director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and Mission Manager Michael Serafin said they were confident that a fix could be implemented in time to resume tanking operations Monday morning, April 4.
“The team is prepared for this,” assured Artemis Mission Manager Michael Serafin, “They’ve demonstrated incredible discipline and toughness and I’m confident we’re going to get there soon. [We] just need to get the time to do that.”
Despite four confirmed lightning strikes, things were looking good for the mission as of Sunday morning. Though running an hour behind schedule, teams were approved to begin tanking the rocket once meteorologists confirmed that there were no weather violations.
Blackwell-Thompson and Serafin confirmed that the lightning strikes had no connection to the malfunctioning of the fans used to pressurize the mobile launcher.
An official launch date for Artemis I has not been scheduled and is dependent on the success of this dress rehearsal. A lot is riding on this mission, as the rocket is reportedly the most expensive ever built.
There are no astronauts aboard Artemis I, but its launch will prepare NASA to send a human crew into space on the more complex follow-up mission Artemis II.
A new Saturday Night Live video praised “short-ass movies,” the types of films appreciated by those of us too tired to stay awake for a 3-hour epic.
The pre-taped video — featuring musical guest Gunna, actor Simon Rex, and cast members Pete Davidson and Chris Redd — sang the praises of films with a run-time under two hours for “a simple man with no attention span.”
The surprise appearance by Rex, who plays a rapping alter ego named Dirt Nasty, is a funny twist, which results in the actor suggesting folks watch the Ernest movies for their tiny runtimes alone.
And be sure to stick around for the end of the song, during which Davidson compares Sex and the City 2 and Jurassic Park — you’ll never guess which movie is longer.
Tesla delivered a record number of cars in the first quarter of 2022, absolutely dwarfing the number of vehicles it shipped during the same period last year.
The electric automaker announced it delivered 310,048 vehicles this quarter, while producing 305,407. Model 3 and Model Y Teslas accounted for 95 percent of those deliveries.
In the first quarter of 2021, Tesla delivered 184,800 vehicles and produced 180,338.
That’s the most cars the automaker has ever delivered in a quarter, edging out its Q4 2021 results by a couple thousand cars. Still, Tesla’s Q1 2022 results are mixed, when compared to analysts’ expectations.
The company produced 4,641 fewer cars than it delivered in the quarter, citing “ongoing supply chain challenges and factory shutdowns,” and, CNBC reported, analysts expected deliveries of 317,000 vehicles in the quarter. So despite breaking its previous record, there were some relative disappointments.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was not disappointed, however. He responded to a congratulatory tweet about the deliveries on Twitter.
Tweet may have been deleted
“This was an *exceptionally* difficult quarter due to supply chain interruptions & China zero Covid policy,” Musk wrote on Twitter. “Outstanding work by Tesla team & key suppliers saved the day.”
The increases in production track with Musk’s ultimate company for Tesla. Musk has indicated the next phase for the company includes “scaling to extreme size.” Selling and shipping a whole bunch of cars certainly helps toward that goal — and Tesla broke its own record last year with nearly a million delivered cars all up in 2021, well beyond analysts’ expectations.
SEE ALSO:
Elon Musk’s new master plan includes scaling Tesla to ‘extreme size’
It can’t hurt that Tesla’s $5.5 billion German gigafactory has also finally opened, where the company intends to produce 500,000 electric vehicles per year at this location alone.
Seinfeld star Jason Alexander posted a moving tribute to his “TV mama” Estelle Harris, who has died age 93.
The stage and screen actor, who starred as as George Costanza’s high-pitched, high-drama mother on the ’90s sitcom, passed away on Saturday in Palm Desert, California, her agent confirmed.
Harris starred alongside the late Jerry Stiller as George’s parents, Estelle and Frank, constantly throwing barbs at each other and giving unsolicited advice to their onscreen son. Estelle debuted in the 1992 Emmy Award-winning Seinfeld episode, “The Contest.”
“One of my favorite people has passed – my tv mama, Estelle Harris,” Alexander wrote on Twitter. “The joy of playing with her and relishing her glorious laughter was a treat.”
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In a moving moment for fans, Alexander used one of Seinfeld‘s famous and oft-quoted lines, which Frank Costanza originally roared, a phrase taken from his relaxation cassette: “Serenity now!”
“I adore you, Estelle. Love to your family,” he wrote. “Serenity now and always.”
“Serenity now and always.” Credit: NBCU Photo Bank / NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
Seinfeld star Julia Louis Dreyfus, who played Elaine Benes on the show, also tweeted a tribute to Harris.
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Harris was born in New York City on April 22, 1928, and grew up there and also in Pittsburgh. A longtime actor of stage, film, and TV, from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America to The Suite Life of Zack and Cody, she also famously played Mrs. Potato Head in the Toy Story franchise, bringing the same kind of hilariously chaotic energy of Estelle Costanza to the role.
During her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson has, as the New York Times put it, “weathered escalating Republican attacks on her record,” over multiple days of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
She’s been asked by Sen. Ted Cruz about critical race theory through the dramatic brandishing of children’s books. She’s been asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham about her religion “on a scale of 1–10.” And on Tuesday, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who has already misrepresented Jackson’s stance on abortion rights among other things, asked the nominee, to “provide a definition for the word ‘woman,” really in order to push anti-trans talking points.
On Saturday Night Live segment “Weekend Update,” Cecily Strong played Sen. Blackburn in a skit discussing her fellow Republicans questions to Judge Jackson, and Strong’s in-character responses are exactly the kind of baseless, misleading things Blackburn has been going in on during the hearings. Strong ends the whole thing with a face-melter that’s a joke but…remember, people really think (and legislate) like this.
“If you don’t know what a woman is, how the hell you gonna take her rights away? Can I get an amen?”
Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey lamented the centralization of the internet, but at least had the self-awareness to admit that’s something he had a major hand in creating.
“[The] days of usenet, irc, the web…even email (w PGP)…were amazing,” Dorsey tweeted on Saturday. “[Centralizing] discovery and identity into corporations really damaged the internet. I realize I’m partially to blame, and regret it.”
In other words, Dorsey tweeted a big old whoopsie.
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Dorsey, who stepped down as CEO of Twitter last year, obviously has played a significant role in centralizing information on the internet. While the social media giant might struggle to keep up with investors’ growth expectations, Twitter’s cultural impact is unquestioned. A large portion of what goes viral on other social sites like Instagram or TikTok — how trends start — begins on Twitter. It’s also a hub for media folks (full disclosure: like myself), which means it has an outsized impact on what makes the news.
SEE ALSO:
After Jack Dorsey, can Twitter stay less evil than Facebook?
Dorsey has spent a fair bit of time promoting the idea of decentralization on the internet, even pushing Twitter to get behind an open-source social network standard in 2019.
Tweet may have been deleted
When he stepped down from Twitter, Dorsey, still CEO of digital payments company Square, noted he’d have more time to focus on Bitcoin and crypto, which he likes, again, because of Square’s aim to create “decentralized financial services.”
Still, as much as he might want to decentralize the internet now, Dorsey remains worth billions of dollars on the back of the oopsie he tweeted out.
Saturday Night Live completely and utterly mocked Ginni Thomas and her text messages to Mark Meadows — yep, those “completely normal” ones.
The comedy show ran the skit following reports that Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, had traded text messages with then-White House chief of staff Meadows, urging an overturn of the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Portrayed with characteristic comedic flair by Kenan Thompson and Kate McKinnon, Clarence and Ginni Thomas appeared as just “two friends of ours handling their own little controversy this week” on the show’s cold open, a Fox and Friends skit. Mikey Day played Fox’s Brian Kilmeade, with Heidi Gardner as Ainsley Earhardt, and Alex Moffat as Steve Doocy.
“Ginni, the left is currently losing their minds over a couple of completely normal texts you sent to your pal Mark Meadows on Jan. 6. Is that right?” Day as Kilmeade asks. “It sure is,” McKinnon as Thomas replied.
“Now they want the honorable justice to recuse himself. You’re allowed to speak your mind,” asked Moffat as Doocy.
“I don’t want any trouble. I take my duty as the Yoko Ono of the Supreme Court very seriously,” McKinnon’s Thomas responded. “All I want is a tidal wave of biblical vengeance to wash away the Biden crime family all the way to Gitmo, and then we release the Kraken.” Yep, there’s that far right favored catchphrase for unfounded conspiracy theories.
“Six days. This happened a week ago. Doesn’t this feel like it happened years ago?” Saturday Night Live host Jerrod Carmichael asked the audience of That Moment at the Oscars on Sunday.
In his opening monologue on Saturday, Carmichael addressed the incident when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock onstage at the award ceremony, without directly saying any of those particular words or names.
“I’m not gonna talk about it,” he began his monologue. “I’ve talked about it enough. Kept talking about it. Kept thinking about it. I don’t wanna talk about it. You can’t make me talk about it…Aren’t you sick of talking about it?”
Carmichael said he’d been asked to address the moment by SNL head Lorne Michaels, who said “the nation needs to heal.”
“‘Heal the nation’? I’ve been gay for like 48 hours, bro,” he said of coming out as gay in his HBO special, Rothaniel. “There’s so much gay stuff I gotta do before I can ‘heal the nation’. I’ve got so many homophobic cousins — I can’t even heal my family.”
If you just want today’s answer, scroll to the bottom. But here’s a little more on Wordle if you’re (somehow) new to the game: It’s a daily word game created by Brooklyn-based software engineer Josh Wardle and purchased by the New York Times.
Every day, players are greeted with a fresh word puzzle that can only be solved — or not! — using a series of process-of-elimination clues.
If you’re the adventurous type and want to try other versions of the game, there’s Absurdle, Worldle, the 31-word Grand Slam (aka Untrigintordle) — or you might want to try embracing two kinds of nerdery by exploring Wordle clones for specific fandoms.
More on our favorite word game below, along with the answer that brought you here.
What’s the best Wordle starting word?
That depends, but we’ve got plenty of ideas for you to try.
Why are there two different Wordle answers some days?
There were two different Wordle answers again Wednesday. Here’s why.
Is Wordle getting harder?
In case you were wondering, no, it’s not getting harder. In fact, we’ve technically all been playing it on easy mode — here’s how to go to Hard Mode.
The Wordle archive: Dig in
Just one Wordle a day not doing it for you? Good news. You can also play the whole archive of past Wordles.
Yesterday’s Wordle: Here’s the April 2 Wordle in case you’re looking for it. We do this every day.
Here’s a hint for today’s Wordle answer:
It’s a comparative adjective.
Today’s Wordle is a 5-letter word that ends with…
It ends with the letter…R.
What’s the answer to Wordle today?
It is…
FEWER.
Mashable will be providing Wordle answers, along with more Wordle updates in the weeks ahead.
Reporting by Caitlin Welsh and Adam Rosenberg contributed to this article.
If there’s anywhere on the internet where rule 34 is likely to thrive, it’s Twitch, the streaming platform predominantly used by gamers.
Yet somehow, the Amazon-owned company seems to have been taken by surprise when its new Boost Train feature enabling the paid promotion of streams started recommending porn to its audience.
Launched in October 2021 to a select number of growing streamers, the now disabled experimental feature promised creators the potential to get their channel promoted to the top spot of Twitch’s main homepage.
The paid boosts were modeled after a similar yet more community-driven feature, which only allowed organic engagement from viewers to get a streamer’s broadcast pushed onto Twitch’s “Live channels we think you’ll like” section.
But by changing the barrier to entry from community activity to a pay-to-play model instead, Twitch allowed anyone with enough cash to get whatever content they wanted officially recommended.
Soon enough, NSFW screenshots began surfacing on Twitter and Reddit of live broadcasts with topless women and the “Promoted by streamer’s community” banner in the thumbnail.
“Looks like determined trolls are literally paying for accounts with access to the Boost Train… and then literally creating hype trains to get porn onto the front page,” streaming reporter Zach Bussey theorized on Twitter.
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Getting streams onto Twitch’s coveted recommendation slots through Boost Trains costs a hefty chunk of change. So Bussey speculates that these pornographic streams were likely a result of coordinated troll campaigns wanting to protest the company’s attempt at implementing paid promotions. The new feature essentially snuck paid ads into recommendation sections that used to exclusively highlight streamers who earned their spot through hard-won organic engagement.
Back in December, Bussey also called the benefits of these pricey paid promotions into question, after collecting data that suggested Boost Trains didn’t do much of anything to help streamers reach new audiences like the platform promised. Poor discoverability has been a longstanding issue for both users and aspiring creators on Twitch, which the company claimed this expensive new feature would help solve.
SEE ALSO:
Twitch’s new Suspicious User Detection tool aims to stop ban evasion
“[But Boost Trains were] deeply unpopular with the community,” Bussey told Kotaku. “It should’ve never been released. Monetizing front page discovery for a service that struggles to offer any discovery is a recipe for disaster — and so here we are.”
Before disabling Boost Trains altogether, the offending streams were at first being individually banned for violating Twitch’s Terms of Service.
“Sexually explicit content—including pornography—is not allowed on Twitch, per our community guidelines,” a Twitch representative clarified in a statement provided to several outlets. “We’ve decided to pause Boost Train due to some safety considerations that came up through the experiment… Our experiments help us learn and make even better tools for the community, and we’re using the feedback from this experiment to inform how we approach future launches.”
You’d think a platform as notoriously puritanical as Twitch would already be better equipped to filter out porn
You’d think a platform as notoriously puritanical as Twitch would already be better equipped to filter out porn by now, though. Users misappropriating a tool on the internet for porn is, well, one of the most predictable turn of events imaginable. This also isn’t the first time Twitch proved incapable of keeping pornography off its platform populated by an especially young demographic. It very likely won’t be the last, either.
This recent Boost Train snafu is only the latest headache to arise from the platform’s notoriously hypocritical stances around sexuality. Twitch’s community guidelines infamously include a conservative dress code widely criticized for disproportionately penalizing streamers who have the audacity to own breasts, along with other inexplicable double standards like banning fully clothed cosplayers yet providing bikinied streamers with a dedicated hot tub subcategory.
With a projected net worth of $6 billion in 2022, it’s clear Twitch remains dedicated to making the platform as profitable as possible, no matter what. But it remains unclear whether it will start to prioritize the users and creators who generate that profit in future monetization pursuits.
