This week has been full of repeating projects that were once solved, but over time needed new solutions. Simple extended the pattern to today's OT.

Remember last month the headlines about the three Chinese Astronauts stranded in space.

Astronauts Are Stranded in Space Right Now: Here's What We Know Science Alert Nov 20, 2025

Imagine being trapped on a space station orbiting Earth with no available ride home. Three Chinese astronauts, or taikonauts, are facing that very scenario.

Since Friday, the trio has been stranded on board the Tiangong space station without a viable return craft.

The only craft available to them was hit by space junk in early November, cracking the vehicle's viewing port.
...
The recent mishap marks the second time in the last two years that astronauts have been stranded in orbit. In March, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived safely back on Earth after an eight-day mission turned into a nine-month-long orbit due to technical issues with the return craft.

Jan Osburg, a senior engineer for the RAND Corporation's engineering and applied sciences department, told Space.com that these events are "a massive wake-up call."

"It certainly is a bad situation," she said, in reference to the recent stranding. "Hopefully the astronauts can come safely back to Earth soon."

Remember reading reports the Chinese might have to call Musk to save them. Thought I would check on their progress. It turns out the drama was not as dramatic as the press reported. The three stranded were only 1 month into a 6 month rotation. No one had a force extended stay, just the ship for the ride back to earth in the event of an emergency was not available for less than 3 weeks.

China launches an emergency lifeboat to bring three astronauts back to Earth Nov 25, 2025 Arstechnica Nov 25, 2025

An unpiloted Chinese spacecraft launched late Monday and linked up with the country’s Tiangong space station a few hours later, providing a lifeboat for three astronauts stuck in orbit without a safe ride home.

A Long March 2F rocket fired its engines and lifted off with the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft, carrying cargo instead of a crew, at 11:11 pm EST Monday (04:11 UTC Tuesday). The spacecraft docked with the Tiangong station nearly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth about three-and-a-half hours later.
...
Now, 20 days after the saga began, the Tiangong outpost again has a lifeboat for its long-term residents. Astronauts Zhang Lu, Fu Wei, and Zhang Hongzhang will return to Earth on the Shenzhou 22 spacecraft next year, soon after the arrival of their three replacements.

The Tiangong astronauts will head outside the station on a spacewalk to inspect the damaged window on Shenzhou 20. Eventually, Shenzhou 20 will depart Tiangong and reenter the atmosphere with cargo. Assuming a smooth landing, Chinese engineers will have an opportunity to get a closer look at the damage on the ground to inform the design of future spacecraft.

The war on poverty beginning in the 1960's brought new measurments on how to evaluate poverty. A key measurement became rating poverty level related to annual income.

This article discusses what is the formula, how it is outdated and ways the system now traps people in poverty is worth a full read.

Part 1: My Life Is a Lie Yes, I give a fig... thoughts on markets from Substack Nov 23, 2023

This week, while trying to understand why the American middle class feels poorer each year despite healthy GDP growth and low unemployment, I came across a sentence buried in a research paper:

“The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation.”

I read it again. Three times the minimum food budget.

I felt sick.

The Measurement Failure

The formula was developed by Mollie Orshansky, an economist at the Social Security Administration. In 1963, she observed that families spent roughly one-third of their income on groceries. Since pricing data was hard to come by for many items, e.g. housing, if you could calculate a minimum adequate food budget at the grocery store, you could multiply by three and establish a poverty line.

Orshansky was careful about what she was measuring. In her January 1965 article, she presented the poverty thresholds as a measure of income inadequacy, not income adequacy—”if it is not possible to state unequivocally ‘how much is enough,’ it should be possible to assert with confidence how much, on average, is too little.”

She was drawing a floor. A line below which families were clearly in crisis.
...
The Real Math of Survival

The official poverty line for a family of four in 2024 is $31,200. The median household income is roughly $80,000. We have been told, implicitly, that a family earning $80,000 is doing fine—safely above poverty, solidly middle class, perhaps comfortable.

But if Orshansky’s crisis threshold were calculated today using her own methodology, that $80,000 family would be living in deep poverty.

I wanted to see what would happen if I ignored the official stats and simply calculated the cost of existing. I built a Basic Needs budget for a family of four (two earners, two kids). No vacations, no Netflix, no luxury. Just the “Participation Tickets” required to hold a job and raise kids in 2024.
...
This mathematical valley explains the rage we see in the American electorate, specifically the animosity the “working poor” (the middle class) feel toward the “actual poor” and immigrants.

Economists and politicians look at this anger and call it racism, or lack of empathy. They are missing the mechanism.

Altruism is a function of surplus. It is easy to be charitable when you have excess capacity. It is impossible to be charitable when you are fighting for the last bruised banana.

The family earning $65,000—the family that just lost their subsidies and is paying $32,000 for daycare and $12,000 for healthcare deductibles—is hyper-aware of the family earning $30,000 and getting subsidized food, rent, childcare, and healthcare.
...
They are not seeing “poverty.” They are seeing people getting for free the exact things that they are working 60 hours a week to barely afford. And even worse, even if THEY don’t see these things first hand… they are being shown them:
...
The anger isn’t about the goods. It’s about the breach of contract. The American Deal was that Effort ~ Security. Effort brought your Hope strike closer. But because the real poverty line is $140,000, effort no longer yields security or progress; it brings risk, exhaustion, and debt.

New research rediscovering humans are omnivores. I am not discounting each individual might due better at certain points of their life on narrow consumption diets. Specific situations due to health status and quality of food available would be the primary reasoning not human societal evolution.

Archaeological study challenges paleo diet, revealing humans have long eaten 'processed plant foods' University of Toronto Dec 2, 2025

Humans evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to be the ultimate flexible eaters—chasing carbohydrates and fats from plant and animal sources alike. A new study in the Journal of Archaeological Research by researchers at the Australian National University and the University of Toronto Mississauga reveals early humans were far from the Paleolithic meat-eaters sometimes portrayed, but rather relied heavily on a wide range of plant and animal foods.

"We often discuss plant use as if it only became important with the advent of agriculture," said Dr. Anna Florin, co-author of "The Broad Spectrum Species: Plant Use and Processing as Deep Time Adaptations."

"However, new archaeological discoveries from around the world are telling us our ancestors were grinding wild seeds, pounding and cooking starchy tubers, and detoxifying bitter nuts many thousands of years before this."

The study referenced in the article. The Broad Spectrum Species: Plant Use and Processing as Deep Time Adaptations Journal of Archaeological Research Nov 25, 2025