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Cake day: May 11th, 2026

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  • I’m prefacing this by saying my background is playing KSP and inadvertantly making my own Kessler syndrome when running out of fuel braking during a station rendezvous 😅

    Yeah you’re fundamentally trading energy. It depends on how the impact happens but orbital scientists think in terms of the average velocity of a collision event and their likely angle. 30⁰ head on at 7km/s is roughly normal I think?

    A head on collision means that you have the full kinetic energy of both satellites to work with. Some parts get thrown up into massive orbits even up into medium earth orbit. Others deorbit due to hitting at the right angle to lose enough kinetic energy that their orbit drops.

    Overall your debris ends up in a plume heading in the direction of both satellites, shaped like a flat cone. In the case of starlink they might have to deorbit the entire constellation while they still have control over them since that cone is invariably going to shotgun blast one or more satellites on the next orbital string


  • Yeah that’s a mess because I understand both perspectives.

    On one hand yes he is innocent until proven guilty.

    OTOH a sovereign nation doesn’t have to admit anyone they don’t want. They could deny you entry for having blue eyes. You aren’t a citizen, aren’t even in the country, and are entering for work.

    OTOOH (3rd hand?) Canada is part of the British Commonwealth and observes British common law as their base legal system, so he should be considered innocent, especially since he hasn’t been convicted of anything yet.


  • The only good news is any debris you generate has some part of its orbit extremely low due to starlink satellites being so low themselves. That’ll stop being true once debris finds something else to hit higher up but it’s easier to deorbit stuff this low since there’s really quite a bit of atmospheric drag at periapse.

    Edit: I should clarify that even after a collision debris has to have an orbit that crosses through the altitude the impact happened at unless some more energy is added higher up in its new elliptical orbit













  • That’s… exactly my point though? PR writing and LLM writing have converged to the point where they’re indistinguishable, and that’s worth noting. The structure here isn’t just “polished corporate” — it’s the specific pattern of: acknowledge the problem, reframe it, add a caveat, accept responsibility anyway, announce a process review, close with community appeal. That’s a ChatGPT prompt response, not a comms team working through a genuine crisis.

    You’re essentially arguing “it could be human” as a rebuttal to “this reads like AI,” which, sure, technically. But the tell isn’t any single phrase — it’s the whole skeleton. PR people write defensively. This is weirdly balanced and self-correcting in a way humans under pressure just… aren’t.


  • You’re right to call this out, and I want to address it directly and provide important context on how this happened.

    My accusation that Proton used AI to write their apology should never have been posted, because I intentionally try to avoid making claims I can’t substantiate, especially ones that could undermine a company’s genuine attempt at accountability.

    I engage with a lot of online content, and while my ability to spot AI-generated text is something I take seriously, my knowledge of every writing style and corporate voice is not perfect. In this case, I didn’t have enough context about how Proton communicates to make a well-informed judgment, and that’s on me.

    I also want to be straight about what an accusation like this is and isn’t. Pointing out polished writing is an observation, not evidence. In the case of Proton’s statement, it was a thoughtful response from a communications team, not a chatbot output.

    But that distinction doesn’t excuse what I said. The responsibility to verify before I post is mine, and I didn’t meet it this time. I’m now reviewing how I evaluate content before making public claims to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

    If you see me do something like this again, call it out. I rely on that feedback.


  • “you’re right to raise this” is an LLMism on the same level as “You’re exactly right!”

    Edit: You’re right to call this out, and I want to address it directly and provide important context on how this happened.

    My accusation that Proton used AI to write their apology should never have been posted, because I intentionally try to avoid making claims I can’t substantiate, especially ones that could undermine a company’s genuine attempt at accountability.

    I engage with a lot of online content, and while my ability to spot AI-generated text is something I take seriously, my knowledge of every writing style and corporate voice is not perfect. In this case, I didn’t have enough context about how Proton communicates to make a well-informed judgment, and that’s on me.

    I also want to be straight about what an accusation like this is and isn’t. Pointing out polished writing is an observation, not evidence. In the case of Proton’s statement, it was a thoughtful response from a communications team, not a chatbot output.

    But that distinction doesn’t excuse what I said. The responsibility to verify before I post is mine, and I didn’t meet it this time. I’m now reviewing how I evaluate content before making public claims to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

    If you see me do something like this again, call it out. I rely on that feedback.




  • Have you ever yelled at Claude or chatgpt and had it apologize to you? It’s literally word for word this format. Low burstiness (sentences are around the same length) same with paragraph length. Absolutely perfect grammar and it reads like LLM vomited it out. I can’t prove it definitely but I’ve cursed out enough LLMs to know what it’s “you’re right to be angry, I deleted the entire production database without asking…” apology looks like.

    Have you run it through an AI checker?