Monday morning... let's get after it!
NASA IS HIRING FOR A MOON BASE
NASA started taking applications Saturday for its next astronaut class, and you apply on USAJobs, the same federal site people use to find GS-9 contracting jobs. The window closes at 11:59 p.m. EST on Dec. 3. This is the 25th class since the Mercury Seven in 1959, and the agency needs the help: the entire active astronaut corps is 32 people. Administrator Jared Isaacman announced it at a Kennedy Space Center air show. Requirements: U.S. citizenship, a master's in a STEM field, and three years of professional experience after the degree. Pilots can swap in flight hours, such as 750 hours of pilot-in-command time in high-performance jets. Then you pass the long-duration astronaut flight physical. Last round, more than 8,000 people applied and 10 made it. Selections come in late 2027, then two years of mandatory training starting by early 2028, then possibly several more years before you fly anything. Artemis III commander Randy Bresnik said NASA has far more work than it has astronauts and told applicants not to delay, since there will be people on the moon by the time this class is picked. His own Artemis III flight next summer stays close to Earth to practice docking with the SpaceX and Blue Origin landers. The south pole landing attempt is Artemis IV, the year after. Officials also noted the moon is about 1% of the experience. The other 99% is Houston.
NVIDIA BOARD OPENS A SPY INVESTIGATION INTO CEO JENSEN HUANG
Nvidia's board did two incompatible things in one Sunday statement. It announced an independent investigation into reports that its founder and CEO was the target of a foreign intelligence effort, and it announced that it "has confidence in Jensen and his leadership team." Both sentences, same press release, no visible shame. The reason the probe exists is Jensen Huang's own memo to staff, where he admitted an affair with Alice Huang, no relation, a former executive at Nvidia customer Megaspeed. "I owe my family and all of you an apology," he wrote. U.S. intelligence believes China's Ministry of State Security recruited her to gather information on him, according to New York Times and Financial Times reporting on a classified memo that circulated through the administration last spring. None of it is proven. The board's statement skipped the affair entirely, which is a bold editorial choice when your CEO already confessed it in writing. Megaspeed is a Singapore data center outfit spun out of a Chinese gaming company in 2023, lined up to buy roughly $2 billion of Nvidia gear, renting compute to Alibaba. Last month Jensen told Bloomberg the relationship was "related to Megaspeed, and it was all completely normal and not unusual." Sunday's memo revised that. Congress smells blood from both directions. House Republicans want answers by November 18. Democrats want testimony and want to know what the Trump administration knew, since Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the memo.
Who Dis?
One famous face. Three guesses.
Who dis?
SNL GAVE DRUSKI TWO RULES AND HE BROKE BOTH IN ONE SKETCH
SNL handed the keys to a guy from your Explore page. Druski, born Drew Desbordes, hosted the Nov. 7 episode and became the first digital content creator to front the show in 52 seasons. Production gave him two rules going in: no cussing and no whiteface. In the monologue he said he couldn't promise the second one. He finished the night 0 for 2. The payoff was "Dru Can See Everything," a pretaped spoof of Nathan Fielder's Theranos documentary. Druski played Fielder first, then flipped and played Elizabeth Holmes himself, blond wig, black turtleneck, the voice, with an f-bomb on the way through. Jane Wickline and Ben Marshall played Holmes and her partner Billy Evans. Pajiba called it the best sketch of the night. Emma Stone turned up in the monologue because the two just shot a rom-com called "The Catch." Druski announced he plays her love interest. Stone corrected him live on NBC, then noted it explained how he'd been looking at her for the entire shoot. Critics were less charitable. The A.V. Club filed the night as "a classic middling-to-bad episode of SNL" while allowing that Druski was "almost immediately likable." LateNighter called it the worst episode of the season so far. Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock and Michael B. Jordan all showed up anyway, and The Strokes played their fifth time out.
MELANIA TRUMP BROKERED A CEASEFIRE AND THE PRESIDENT DIDN'T BOTHER TO SHOW UP
For six days in late October the shooting stopped around Oleshky, a Russian-occupied city in Kherson, and by the First Lady's count nearly 800 people got out. The person who set that up was Melania Trump, who says she personally went through demining plans, aerial images, roadways and hospital access. Her husband said in October that she "does better than our professionals," a sentence the State Department now has to live with. Thursday she put Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev and Ukrainian party leader Davyd Arakhamia in the same room at the White House. Dmitriev handed her a child's drawing reading "I love Melania," then mentioned the girl chose to live with her family in Russia, which is a hell of a thing to slip into a thank-you card. Zelenskyy sent over the Order of Princess Olha. The President skipped the whole thing, met Dmitriev privately instead, and said flatly that he did not meet the Ukrainians. The numbers depend entirely on who's holding the microphone. Melania says nearly 800. Russia's Yana Lantratova said 750 had the chance to leave and far fewer actually did. Both sides agreed not to disclose who went where. And Ukraine's General Staff says Russia spent the quiet week rotating troops and hauling in ammunition.
Sources (3)
- npr.org - Melania Trump touts rare agreement she brokered between Russia and Ukraine
- nbcnews.com - Melania Trump calls for 'enduring' Russia-Ukraine peace as she hosts top officials at the White House
- theglobeandmail.com - Melania Trump joins Russia, Ukraine officials at White House event to mark Oleshky ceasefire
CHARLESTON DAD LEFT HIS SLEEPING 6-YEAR-OLD IN THE POKEMON LINE AND WENT HOME
Charleston police say John-Michael Dooley, 35, of Johns Island decided a 6-year-old counts as a placeholder. Sometime after 1 a.m. on Nov. 6, witnesses say he gave his daughter a pillow and a blanket, left her asleep on the sidewalk outside a closed Target in West Ashley, and went home. Her job was to hold his spot in the overnight line for the new Pokemon trading card release. The rest of that line was grown adults sitting in a parking lot in the dark waiting on cardboard, and every one of them had a better read on the situation than her dad did. After about an hour with no sign of him, they called police. Officers got there around 2:30 a.m. Dooley eventually came strolling back, the other campers pointed him out, and he got cuffed in front of the exact queue he was trying so hard to stay in. Then he explained himself to detectives, which did not help. Police say he admitted he went home and left her there so he would not miss his shot at the cards. He is charged with unlawful conduct toward a child. The girl was unharmed and placed in emergency protective custody with South Carolina DSS. Target noted that the store was closed at the time, the corporate way of saying none of this happened on our watch.
Sources (3)
- abcnews.com - South Carolina dad arrested after allegedly leaving daughter in line for Pokémon cards: Police
- nbcnews.com - South Carolina man arrested after leaving sleeping 6-year-old daughter in line for Pokémon card release, police say
- live5news.com - Police: Man left daughter sleeping outside Target to hold spot for Pokémon cards
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