Since you weren’t even born yet, I’m going to answer in good faith: 9/11 was America’s collective loss of innocence. In the decades prior, we’d won the Cold War by outspending the Soviets. We were the sole remaining superpower, and we were in a period of peace and economic prosperity. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, we suffered a suicide attack with a higher death toll than Pearl Harbor. It struck a city on the US mainland, the first attack of that scale to hit CONUS since the Civil War. In a violent flash, and on live television, our collective illusions of safety, security, and peace disappeared. For most Americans, it was the first time we ever had to contend with that scale of horror, and what it implied about the fragility of our way of life. It was simultaneously sobering and terrifying. The American response was to launch two wars, and to restructure domestic life around the Government’s presumed duty to spy on everyone, so nothing like it could ever happen again. I am not being hyperbolic when I say the America we grew up in—imagined or not—vanished on 9/11. What you’re calling a “worshipful attitude” is a mix of reverence for the dead, and mourning for the loss of what existed before.

xitter.cf/i/status/2039395527326… Big ups to nick for capturing the original moment that turned this kid into a viral success

Only one chance in this lifetime… Like watching sunset at the beach from the most foreign seat in the cosmos, I couldn’t resist a cell phone video of Earthset. You can hear the shutter on the Nikon as @Astro_Christina is hammering away on 3-shot brackets and capturing those exceptional Earthset photos through the 400mm lens. @AstroVicGlover was in window 3 watching with @Astro_Jeremy next to him. I could barely see the Moon through the docking hatch window but the iPhone was the perfect size to catch the view…this is uncropped, uncut with 8x zoom which is quite comparable to the view of the human eye. Enjoy.

The White House is proposing $18.8 billion for NASA in FY27, a 23% cut to NASA's 2026 enacted funding. Science, ISS, and education major targets of the proposed cuts. whitehouse.gov/wp-content/up…

“I’m the space plumber, I’m proud to call myself the space plumber.” Mission specialists like @Astro_Christina train for all roles so they can jump in wherever they’re needed. Sometimes that means fixing vital machinery, like the spacecraft toilet.

Oh this kid is definitely getting a bag of NASA gear.

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Kid just SMOKED a CNN reporter outside of Artemis II launch: CNN: "Why do you want to be here?... Why do you love being a part of history? Kid: "We're going back to the f*cking moon, that's why!" 🤣

Artemis II crew driving their mustang convertibles. Dang they are so cool.