Amid the pantheon of Greek gods, few are more revered than Artemis, Goddess of the hunt, chastity, and the moon; Mistress of Animals, Daughter of Zeus and twin sister to Apollo. Famed for her pledge to never marry, feared from that time she turned the peeping Acteon into a stag and set his own hunting dogs upon him, Artemis has stood as a feminist icon for millenia. It seems only fitting then that NASA names after her a trailblazing mission that will see both the first woman and first person of color set foot on the moon, ahead of humanity’s first off-planet colony.

In fact, NASA has been naming its missions after Zeus’ progeny since the advent of spaceflight. There was the Mercury Program (the Roman spelling of Hermes) in 1958, then Gemini in ‘68 followed by Apollo in ‘73. NASA took a quick break on the naming convention during the Shuttle era but revived it when it formally established the Artemis program in 2017. Working with the European Space Agency (ESA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and a slew of private corporations, NASA’s goal for Artemis is simple: to re-establish a human foothold on the moon for the first time since 1972, and stay there.

NASA is building a coalition of partnerships with industry, nations and academia that will help us get to the moon quickly and sustainably, together,” then-NASA director Jim Bridenstine said in 2020. “Our work to catalyze the US space economy with public-private partnerships has made it possible to accomplish more than ever before. The budget we need to achieve everything laid out in this plan represents bipartisan support from the Congress.”

“Under the Artemis program, humanity will explore regions of the moon never visited before, uniting people around the unknown, the never seen, and the once impossible,” he continued. “We will return to the moon robotically beginning next year, send astronauts to the surface within four years, and build a long-term presence on the Moon by the end of the decade.”

Red Huber via Getty Images

Just as Artemis the Goddess grew out of earlier pre-Hellenistic mythology, Artemis the Program was born from the ashes of the earlier Constellation program from the early 2000s which sought to land on the moon by 2020 — specifically the Ares I, Ares V, and Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle that were developed as part of that effort. In 2010, then-President Barack Obama announced that the non-Orion bits of Constellation were being axed and simultaneously called for $6 billion in additional funding as well as the development of a new heavy lift rocket program with a goal of putting humans on Mars by the mid-2030s. This became the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and formally kicked off development of the Space Launch System, the most powerful rocket NASA has built to date.

The Artemis program was helped further in December of 2017 when former President Donald Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1 (SPD 1). That policy change, “provides for a US-led, integrated program with private sector partners for a human return to the moon, followed by missions to Mars and beyond” and authorized the campaign that would become Artemis two years later. In 2019, then-Vice President Mike Pence announced that the program’s goals were accelerating, the moon landing goal pushed up four years to 2024 though its original goal of Mars in the 2030s remained unchanged.

“The directive I am signing today will refocus America’s space program on human exploration and discovery,” Trump said at the time. “It marks a first step in returning American astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972, for long-term exploration and use. This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprints — we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and perhaps someday, to many worlds beyond.”

Bang, zoom, straight to the moon

NASA

Now, we know NASA can put people on the moon — it’s the keeping them there, alive, that’s the issue. The moon, for all its tide-inducing benefits here on Earth, is generally inhospitable to life, what with its general lack of breathable atmosphere and liquid water, weak gravity, massive temperature swings and razor-sharp, statically-charged dust. The first colonists will need power, heat, atmosphere, potable water — all of which will have to either be brought from Earth or extracted locally from the surrounding regolith.

Complicating matters, the Moon, at 230,000 miles away, is about a thousand times farther than the International Space Station, and getting a crew with everything they need to survive for more than a few days is going to require multiple trips — not just from Earth orbit to the moon but also from lunar orbit down to the surface and back. But high-risk, high-reward logistical nightmares are kind of NASA’s whole deal.

As such, the Artemis program is split between the SLS missions, which will eventually bring the human crew to the moon, and the support missions, which will bring everything else. That includes robotic rovers, the Human Landing System, as well as moonbase and Gateway components along with all of the logistical support and infrastructure that they will require.

Artemis SLS missions

The SLS missions are built around NASA’s new Deep Space Exploration System, which comprises the SLS super heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Orion Spacecraft and the Exploration Ground Systems at Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

NASA

NASA’s deep space exploration system

The Space Launch System is the single most powerful rocket humanity has built and, given its modular, evolvable design, will likely continue to be for the foreseeable future. Its initial configuration, dubbed Block 1, consists of just the core stage with four RS-25 engines and two, five-segment solid rocket boosters. Once the SLS breaks atmosphere, its Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage takes over for in-space propulsion.

Those RS-25’s are the same engines that flew on the Space Shuttle. Aerojet Rocketdyne of Sacramento, California is updating and upgrading 16 of them for use in the modern era — bringing them up to standard for use with the SLS — with a new engine controller, new nozzle insulation, and 512,000 pounds of thrust. Altogether, the core stage will produce 8.8 million pounds of thrust and be capable of pushing 27 metric tons (22,000 sqft) of cargo out to the moon at speeds in excess of 24,500 miles per hour. The Artemis 1 mission that launched in November, as well as the next two Artemis missions, are slash will be powered by Block 1 rockets.

NASA

Block 1B rockets will include an Exploration Upper Stage (EUS) built by Boeing and composed of “four RL10C-3 engines that produce almost four times more thrust than the one RL10B-2 engine that powers the ICPS,” per NASA. That additional engine will enable the space agency to haul 38 tons of cargo out of Earth’s gravity well. This updated block will provide NASA a bit more flexibility in its launches. A 1B rocket can be configured to lift the Orion spacecraft or cargo loads into deep space as easily as it can be for hauling large cargoes to the moon or Mars. NASA plans to lift unwieldy portions of the moonbase and Gateway into space with it.

The SLS’ final form (for now) will be Block 2. Standing more than 30 stories tall, weighing the equivalent of 10 fully-loaded 747’s, the block 2 blasting 9.2 million pounds of thrust (20 percent more than the Saturn V) to push 46 metric tons of stuff (taking up as much as 54,000 square feet) into deep space. Once that configuration comes online, NASA expects it to take on much of the heavy lifting (sorry not sorry) in delivering crews and cargo to the moon.

Orion spacecraft

Riding atop the SLS’s multi-ton controlled explosions is the Orion Spacecraft, the first crew capsule designed for deep space exploration in more than a generation. Designed and built with help from the ESA, the Orion sandwiches a four-person crew cabin in between a services module that holds all of the important life support, navigation and propulsion systems, and a Launch Abort System (LAS) that will forcibly eject the crew capsule from the larger launch vehicle if a catastrophic failure occurs during takeoff.

The 50-foot tall LAS weighs 16,000 pounds and is designed to engage within milliseconds of a launch going sideways, lifting the crew cabin away from the rest of the SLS at Mach 1.2 using the 400,000 pounds of thrust produced by the abort motor. Its attitude control motor provides another 7,000 pounds of thrust to keep the capsule upright during escape while the jettison motor will separate the LAS from the cabin once clear, the latter deploying a parachute ahead of its upcoming water landing.

The LAS actually predates Orion by four years. The LAS was first integrated into a Delta IV and flown at the White Sands test facility in New Mexico in 2010 while the (uncrewed) Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 didn’t take off for its four-hour, two orbit jaunt until 2014.

The Orion main cabin is just under 16 feet tall and just over 16 feet in diameter. Its four wing solar array produces 11kW of power and the attached service module holds enough air and water to keep the crew alive, if a bit panicked and sir-crazy, for up to three weeks.

Exploration ground systems

Handout via Getty Images

Located at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Artemis program’s Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) is tasked with developing and enacting the facilities and operations necessary to conduct SLS missions. That includes the Vehicle Assembly Building, the Launch Control Center, the Firing Rooms, Mobile Launchers 1 and 2, the Crawlers that haul rockets out to the launchpads, and also the launchpads — specifically Launch Pad 39B. Teams have been working to modernize many of those facilities and NASA notes that it, “has successfully upgraded its processes, facilities, and ground support equipment to safely handle rockets and spacecraft during assembly, transport, and launch.”

NASA already has five main Artemis launches scheduled. The uncrewed Artemis I, again, successfully launched in November. Artemis II, which will carry four live astronauts for the first time but only loop around the moon, launches in 2024. Artemis III will go up in 2025 and is expected to be the first to actually set down on the moon. Artemis IV is slated for 2027 and will deliver half of the lunar Gateway (as well as debut the EUS) while Artemis V is set to deliver the other half of the Gateway in 2028. From there, NASA has some thoughts on Artemis missions VI (2029) through X (2033) but has not finalized any details as of yet.

Artemis support missions

“We need several years in orbit and on the surface of the moon to build operational confidence for conducting long-term work and supporting life away from Earth before we can embark on the first multi-year human mission to Mars,” Bridenstine said in 2020. “The sooner we get to the moon, the sooner we get American astronauts to Mars.”

NASA

But before we can build confidence in our ability to survive on Mars, we need to build confidence in our ability to survive on the moon. The Artemis support missions will do just that. The Capstone Mission ("Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment"), for example, successfully launched a 55-pound cubesat in June to confirm NASA’s math for the much larger Gateway’s future orbital path. While in orbit, the Capstone will communicate and coordinate some of its maneuvers with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which has been circling the moon since 2009.

In 2023, NASA also plans to launch the VIPER robotic rover to the moon’s South Pole where it will search the lowest, darkest, coldest craters for accessible water ice. Finding a source for H2O is of paramount importance to the long-term viability of the colony. In space, water isn’t just for drinking and bathing — it can be split into its component atoms and used to fuel our oxidizing rockets, potentially turning the Moon into an orbital gas station as we push farther out from Earth. The rover, and others like it, will be delivered to the surface as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.

It wasn’t until the mid 1990s that NASA even confirmed the presence of water ice on the moon and only two years ago did they discovered ice accessible from the moon’s surface. “We had indications that H2O – the familiar water we know – might be present on the sunlit side of the moon,” Paul Hertz, director of the Astrophysics Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, said at the time. “Now we know it is there. This discovery challenges our understanding of the lunar surface and raises intriguing questions about resources relevant for deep space exploration.”

Similarly, any habitat established on the surface will need an ample supply of electricity to remain online. Solar charging is one obvious choice (that lack of atmosphere is finally coming in handy) but NASA has never been one to underprepare and has already selected three aerospace companies to develop nuclear power sources for potential deployment.

Gateway

NASA

In addition to a surface installation, NASA plans on putting a full-fledged space station, dubbed the Lunar Gateway, into orbit around the moon where it will serve much the same purpose as the ISS does today. Visiting researchers will stay aboard the pressurized Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module where they’ll have access to research facilities, remote rover controls and docking for both Orion capsules from Earth and HLS (Human Landing System) landers to the moon’s surface. A 60kW solar plant will provide power to the station, which also serves as a communications relay hub with the planet. The station’s position around the moon will also provide a unique astronomical perspective for future research.

The Gateway will very much be an international operation. As NASA points out, Canada’s CSA is providing “advanced robotics” for use upon the station, the ESA is supplying a second living module called the International Habitat (IHab) as well as the ESPRIT communications module and an array of research cubesats. Japan’s JAXA will kick in additional habitat components and assist with resupply logistics.

Human Landing System and rovers

From the Gateway, astronauts and researchers will ferry down to the moon’s surface to collect samples, run experiments and conduct observations aboard the Human Landing System, a reusable lunar lander program currently being operated out of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

NASA selected SpaceX’s Starship for its initial landing system in April 2021, awarding the company $2.9 billion to further the vehicle’s development. The agency then awarded SpaceX with another $1.15 billion this past November as part of the Option B contract modification. The extra money will help fund planned upgrades to the spacecraft, which is being modified from the base Starship design for use on and around the moon’s surface.

“Continuing our collaborative efforts with SpaceX through Option B furthers our resilient plans for regular crewed transportation to the lunar surface and establishing a long-term human presence under Artemis,” Lisa Watson-Morgan, NASA HLS program manager, said in November. “This critical work will help us focus on the development of sustainable, service-based lunar landers anchored to NASA’s requirements for regularly recurring missions to the lunar surface.”

Researchers, however, will not be content to travel nearly a quarter million miles just to set down on the moon and look out the lander’s windows. Instead, they’ll be free to wander around the surface safely ensconced in spacewalk equipment supplied by Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace.

“With these awards, NASA and our partners will develop advanced, reliable spacesuits that allow humans to explore the cosmos unlike ever before,” said Vanessa Wyche, director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in June. “By partnering with industry, we are efficiently advancing the necessary technology to keep Americans on a path of successful discovery on the International Space Station and as we set our sights on exploring the lunar surface.”

Those researchers won’t be on foot either. Just as the Apollo astronauts famously bounced around on NASA’s first-gen lunar rovers, the Artemis missions will use new Lunar Terrain Vehicles. The unpressurized buggies are currently still in development but NASA expects to have a finalized proposal ready by next year and have the LTVs ready for surface service by 2028.

The Artemis Base Camp

When not in use, the LTVs will be parked at NASA’s Artemis Base Camp at the lunar South Pole, alongside a pressurized version designed for longer-duration expeditions. The surface habitat itself will be able to support up to four residents at a time and provide communications, equipment storage, power and, most importantly, robust radiation shielding (and there’s the downside of not having an atmosphere). A site hasn’t yet been officially selected, though mission planners are looking for areas near the region’s permanently shadowed craters where water ice is expected to be most easily accessible (aside from the negative 280 degree temperatures and perpetual darkness).

“On each new trip, astronauts are going to have an increasing level of comfort with the capabilities to explore and study more of the moon than ever before,” Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for human spaceflight at NASA Headquarters, said in 2020. “With more demand for access to the moon, we are developing the technologies to achieve an unprecedented human and robotic presence 240,000 miles from home. Our experience on the moon this decade will prepare us for an even greater adventure in the universe — human exploration of Mars.”

Looks like embattled FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried won't be testifying (virtually) before Congress after all. The Bahamas Attorney General's Office announced Monday that Bankman-Fried has been arrested there and is likely to be extradited in short measure back to the US to stand trial. The AG's office noted that his arrest came after, "receipt of formal notification from the United States that it has filed criminal charges against SBF and is likely to request his extradition."  

The news of SBF's arrest should come as little surprise given that last Friday the Department of Justice came out and said that it was building a fraud case against him. Justice Department officials made those statements while meeting with the crypto exchange's bankruptcy team to discuss whether FTX had improperly moved hundreds of millions of dollars just ahead of its declared bankruptcy last November.

Developing...

The Covid pandemic wasn't the first time that America has found itself split along ideological seams over infectious disease, nor was the Spanish Flu in 1919. Even when America was still a collection of colonies, we held bitter disagreements on public health policy. 

During the run-up to the Revolutionary War, the 13 colonies found themselves besieged by a widespread and deadly outbreak of smallpox, carried here aboard a recently arrived slave ship. With that disease also arrived our best defense against it — inoculation techniques practiced by the slaves themselves. However, getting the wider, whiter public on board with these lifesaving treatments — even with the vigorous backing by Benjamin Franklin, who lost a cherished son to the disease after refusing to inoculate the boy — was anything but easy. 

But it damn well proved to be necessary. As historian Andrew Wehrman explains in The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution, our downright violent resistance to, and demand for freedom from, the disease was also precisely what helped galvanize our mobilization of independence from England. 

JHU Press

Excerpted from The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution by Andrew M. Wehrman. Copyright 2022. Published with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.

Creating a Critical Mass

On December 15, 1774, Reverend Samuel Williams of Bradford, Massachusetts, was invited to Salem by Reverend Asa Dunbar to deliver a Thanksgiving sermon before the congregation of the First Church. Williams titled his sermon “A Discourse on the Love of Our Country,” and it was preached and then published in the tense months between the announcement of Britain’s Coercive Acts in the summer of 1774 and the first shots at Lexington and Concord in April 1775. Williams, from the pulpit, touted America’s achievements in civil government, religion, and the military, but surprisingly also highlighted America’s scientific prowess. As an infant state, Williams argued, America could not be expected “to have the numbers, wealth, or literary establishments of ancient states,” but even with these disadvantages, Williams boasted that Americans had already made “two capital discoveries.” The first of these was Benjamin Franklin’s discovery of electricity, and the second was the discovery of inoculation against smallpox. These two breakthroughs indicated that America had “strong tendencies towards a state of greater perfection and happiness than mankind has yet seen.”

Popular mobilization for the war of independence required Americans in thirteen distinct colonies, possessing “different forms of government, different laws, different interests, and some of them different religious persuasions and different manners,” to imagine a shared culture that needed defending. By midcentury ordinary colonists had developed a great fondness for royal political culture and fashionable imported British consumer goods like tea, which created a shared and increasingly British identity across the colonies. The Revolution, then, was not inevitable but instead was the result of a sudden break in the 1770s over British grievances rather than a slow tear over decades of developing American values. By looking at how colonists viewed inoculation, however, we can see that Americans developed a particular sense of national pride while still maintaining their overall Britishness, and how suddenly such feelings could burst into jealous fury when unacknowledged. The discovery and implementation of smallpox inoculation from a folk practice to the medical triumph of the eighteenth century was certainly a global and transatlantic process, but Americans in the 1760s and 1770s cobbled together a shared history about the discovery of mankind’s greatest medical procedure, turning it into an all-American cure. Although they did not always agree on the details, they had no doubt that they did it without the help of anyone in Great Britain. As Williams did in his sermon, Americans used their claim to have invented inoculation to celebrate American achievement and ultimately to rationalize a revolution.

Throughout his sermon in Salem, Williams toyed with his audience about which country he was professing to love, Britain or America. He was speaking the day before the anniversary of the Destruction of the Tea in Boston Harbor. In retaliation for that destruction, Parliament had closed Boston Harbor with the Boston Port Act and altered how Massachusetts communities could conduct their own affairs and town meetings in the Massachusetts Government Act. The people of Massachusetts, angry over what they saw as tyrannical overreach, ended royal authority in much of the countryside, as communities were forming revolutionary committees of safety, closing county courts, demanding allegiance, arming themselves, and training their “minutemen.” Still, many hoped for a speedy reconciliation and a de-escalation of violence. Few were calling for outright independence.

Williams understood that his words mattered in this moment, as the people of Salem, which had been regarded — often derisively — as a center of loyalism in Massachusetts, considered how they would react to the inevitable crisis in the months to come. The minister established that people should love all mankind as they love God, but that there was a particular love that people should have for their own country. Not until the middle of the sermon did he begin to reveal that he had rhetorically separated the mother country from the united colonies and was encouraging the congregation to love the latter.

Williams understood his audience and the local context as well. Over the course of the last year, Essex Hospital and the Salem jail had been destroyed by mobs angry over inoculations. While not as violent as the controversy in Marblehead, in Salem, a civic debate about how best to protect their community from the smallpox epidemic had exploded into an issue of national pride over the claims of a flamboyant British doctor named James Latham, which split the town into Whigs and Tories on the eve of the Revolution. Williams, who would go on to become “Hollis Professor of Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy” at Harvard University five years after this sermon, used science to make his case. He compared the love of one’s country to a gravitational pull, which “will ever draw to a common centre.”

While the mother country had much to admire, Americans had created their own critical mass through population growth, drawing themselves together with asylum seekers from other lands: “From the weak beginnings of private adventurers, so amazingly rapid has been our growth and progress, that in a century and an half, we are become more than three millions of inhabitants.” And, Williams maintained, the process was accelerating. The discoveries of electricity and inoculation were bound to be only the beginning of America’s “improvements in commerce, philosophy, and the medicinal art.” Based on these achievements and this potential, Williams made it clear at the end of his speech that “the cause of America seems indeed to be much the better cause. It is not the cause of a mob, of a party, or a faction that America means to plead . . . Nor is it the cause of independency which we have in view. It is the cause of Self-Defense, of Public Faith, and of the Liberties of Mankind that America is engaged."

The holiday travel season is once again upon us! It's the magical time of the year that combines standing in airport security lines with incrementally losing your mind as the hands of your watch perpetually tick closer to a boarding time that magically moved up 45 minutes since you left the house and the goober in front of you is in the year of our lord 2022 still somehow confused about why we have to take our shoes off in security and goddamit dude stop arguing with the TSA and untie your laces already these tickets are nonrefundable.

Ai can help fix this. It can perhaps even give regular folks a taste of the effortless airport experience that more well-heeled travelers enjoy — the private jet set who don't ever have to worry about departure times or security lines like the rest of us schmucks stuck flying Spirit. 

In their latest book POWER AND PREDICTION: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence, University of Toronto economists and professors Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb examine the foundational impact that AI/ML systems have on human decision making as we increasingly rely on automation and big data predictions. In the excerpt below, they posit what the airports of tomorrow might look like if AI eliminates traffic congestion and security delays. 

Harvard Business Review Press

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review Press. Excerpted from POWER AND PREDICTION: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb. Copyright 2022 Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb. All rights reserved.

Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, economists and professors at University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. Their previous book is PREDICTION MACHINES: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence.

The Alternative Airport Universe

Before considering the threat AI prediction may pose to airports, as with everything, there is an alternative system that can show us what the other side looks like. One example is the alternative universe of the very, very wealthy. They don’t fly commercial and so have no occasion to deal with either the old or newly designed public airport terminals. Instead, they fly privately and go through private terminals. Normally, glitz, glamour, nice restaurants, and art galleries are going to be where the very rich are. But in the world of airports, private terminals are positively spartan.

The reason there is no investment in making private terminals better places is that the very uncertainty that plagues the rest of us doesn’t plague the rich. With a commercial plane, you are tied to a schedule, and those planes will leave late passengers behind. With a private plane, the schedule is more flexible or even nonexistent. If the passengers aren’t there, the plane doesn’t leave until they arrive. If the passengers are there earlier, the plane leaves then. The whole system is designed so there is no waiting—at least, on the part of the passengers. No waiting means no need to invest in making waiting more pleasant. At the same time, the rich don’t have rules about when they need to leave for the airport. They leave when they want. If more people could have that experience, then surely the optimal terminal would be more spartan than cathedral.

You don’t have to be rich, however, to see this alternative universe. Instead, just compare the world on the other side of the arrival gates to those at departure. When arrival areas are separated from departure areas, they are spartan. You might find some light food outlets, but everything else is designed to get you out of the airport. The critical issue is how close the taxi and parking facilities are, even though you may not be in a stressful rush. Do you even remember any details of arrivals at your regular airport, other than how best to get out?

The AI Airport Threat

Airports are no strangers to AI. Air traffic control has adopted AI-based systems to better predict aircraft arrivals and congestion. At Eindhoven Airport, a new AI baggage-handling system is being piloted whereby passengers simply photograph their bags, drop them off, and pick them up at their destination—no labels required. Subject to privacy requirements, it hopes to do the same with people. All this will help you get to your flight more quickly.

None of these things, however, hit at the key drivers of uncertainty in your travel to your flight — traffic and security. Change, however, is already here with regard to traffic. Navigational apps such as Waze account for traffic conditions and can reasonably estimate how long it takes to get to any airport based on the time of day. The apps aren’t perfect, but they keep getting better.

The apps free passengers from having rules that tell them how early they need to leave for the airport. Instead, they can add that flight time to their calendar, and an app tells them the best time to depart and schedule their time accordingly. Even better, in the near future, the uncertainty in the actual time a flight leaves will be taken into account. Rather than just telling you when you need to leave based on a scheduled departure, the app will tell you when to leave depending on the flight’s predicted actual departure. Again, there is residual uncertainty, but the leap from having no information to having more precise information could save hours of waiting time. Similarly, many Uber riders who previously thought they wouldn’t care about knowing the predicted arrival time of their taxi now cite that information as one of the most valuable features of the service. Uber uses AI to make that prediction. AI could also predict security line wait times. Put it all together, and you can use the AI to decide when to leave for the airport rather than rely on rules. As with everything, there will be some who leap at this possibility ahead of others. At Incheon and many other airports, waiting isn’t bad anymore, so maybe you don’t need to make an informed decision.

Those developing an AI-driven navigation app or flight departure predictor have no direct interest in the earnings of in-terminal airport activities. However, the value of their AI applications depends critically on how many people do not want to wait at airports. Thus, if airports are currently less costly to wait in, the value of those apps is diminished. The security line prediction is another matter. Airports claim that they want to improve security times and reduce uncertainty. But as economists, we don’t think their incentives are aligned with passengers. Yes, improving security times leaves more time to spend at the facilities past security. But, at the same time, it will reduce uncertainty and cause people to tighten their airport arrival times. Combined with AI that solves the other uncertainty for passengers in getting to the terminal, will the airports want to eliminate the uncertainty under their own control?

Accommodating Rules

Our broader point is not about airports but about rules. Rules arise because it is costly to embrace uncertainty, but they create their own set of problems. The so-called Shirky Principle, put forth by technology writer Clay Shirky, states that “institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.” The same can be said of businesses. If your business is to provide a way to help people when they wait for a plane, what’s the chance you are going to ensure they don’t have to wait for planes?

If you want to find opportunities by creating new AI-enabled decisions, you need to look beyond the guardrails that protect rules from the consequences of uncertainty and target activities that make bearing those costs easier or to reduce the likelihood of bad outcomes that the rules would otherwise have to tolerate.

We can see this in the long-standing protection farmers employ in England — building hedgerows. A hedgerow is a carefully planned set of robust trees and plants that serve as a wall between fields. It is extremely useful if your field is full of farm animals, and you do not want to employ a person to ensure they do not wander off. It is also useful if you do not want heavy rainfall to erode soil too quickly or if you want to protect crops from strong winds. Given all this protection against risky events, we are not surprised that this practice was the origin of the term “hedging,” which evolved to have a broader insurance meaning.

But hedgerows come at a cost. By dividing farmland, they make it impossible to use certain farming techniques — including mechanization — that are only efficient for large swathes of land. After World War II, the British government actually subsidized the removal of hedgerows, although in some cases, that removal was excessive, given their role in risk management. Today, there is a movement to restore hedgerows, led most prominently by the Prince of Wales. In many situations, costly investments are made to cover or shelter a would-be decision-maker from risk. Miles of highways are cocooned with guardrails to prevent cars from going down embankments, hills, or into oncoming traffic. Most are, fortunately, never used, but each allows a road to be built in a way that might have otherwise not been sufficiently safe, given the fallibility of human drivers.

More generally, building codes precisely specify various measures to protect those inside buildings from uncertain events. These include fire, but also damage from weather, weak building foundations, and other natural phenomena like earthquakes.

What these protection measures have in common is that they typically generate what looks like over-engineered solutions. They are designed for a certain set of events — the once-in-a-lifetime storm or the once-in-a-century flood. When those events occur, the engineering seems worthwhile. But, in their absence, there is cause to wonder. For many years, Freakonomics authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner pointed out how life vests and rafts on aircraft — not to mention the safety demonstrations of each — appeared wasteful, given that no aircraft had successfully landed on water. Then, in 2009, Captain Sullenberger landed a US Airways plane with no working engines on the Hudson River. Does that one example of a low-probability event make the precautionary life vests worth it? It is hard to know. But we cannot conclude that the absence of a possible outcome causes us to assess the probability of that outcome at zero.

Levitt and Dubner’s main point, however, is that while it is often possible when protection measures are employed to assess the likelihood or change in the likelihood of underlying uncertainty over time, it is not possible to measure whether the investments made to reduce the probability of a consequence are excessive, as the very risk management strategy employed takes away that information. It is entirely possible that too much is wasted on something that, for other reasons, is no longer high risk at all.

Five years after CEO Elon Musk officially unveiled his Semi, Tesla’s electrified tractor trailer, the company delivered its first official production vehicle to Pepsi on Thursday during its "Semi Delivery Event" held at Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory. The beverage maker has ordered 100 of the vehicles in total.

First shown off in 2017, the Tesla Semi originally was set to retail for $150,000 and $180,000 for the 300- and 500-mile versions, respectively. Those prices are significantly higher than the $60k a standard diesel cab runs but Tesla estimates that its vehicles can operate 20 percent more efficiently (2kWh per mile, Musk revealed Thursday), and save up to $250,000 over the million-mile life of the Semi.

Each rig is “designed like a bullet,” Musk said at the vehicle’s unveiling, and would come equipped with a massive 1MW battery pack. This reportedly offers a 20-second 0-60, which is impressive given that these vehicles are towing up to 80,000 pounds at a time, and a spent-to-80 percent charge time of just 30 minutes. The Semis are also outfitted with Enhanced Autopilot capabilities, as well as jackknife-mitigation systems, blind-spot sensors and data-logging for fleet management.

As reservations opened in 2017, Musk said at the time, deliveries would begin two short years later, in 2019. By April 2020, Tesla had officially pushed that delivery date back to 2021, citing production delays and supply chain issues brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, just two months after that, in May of 2020, Musk sent a company-wide email reading, “It’s time to go all out and bring the Tesla Semi to volume production. It’s been in limited production so far, which has allowed us to improve many aspects of the design,” as seen by CNBC. In the same email he confirmed that production would take place in Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory.

Cut to July, 2021, and the new delivery date has been pushed again, this time to 2022, citing both the ongoing global processor shortage and its own pandemic-limited battery production capability for the new 4680 style cells as contributing factors.

“We believe we remain on track to build our first Model Y vehicles in Berlin and Austin in 2021,” Musk said during the company’s Q2, 2021 investor call. “The pace of the respective production ramps will be influenced by the successful introduction of many new product and manufacturing technologies, ongoing supply-chain-related challenges and regional permitting.”

“To better focus on these factories, and due to the limited availability of battery cells and global supply chain challenges, we have shifted the launch of the Semi truck program to 2022,” he continued. Beginning in May of this year, Tesla started actively taking reservations again for a $20,000 deposit. "And first deliveries are now," Musk said on Thursday before welcoming Kirk Tanner, CEO PepsiCo Beverages North America, and Steven Williams, CEO PepsiCo Foods North America, on stage for high fives and handshakes.

It’s been six years since Tesla, SpaceX (and now Twitter) CEO Elon Musk co-founded brain-control interfaces (BCI) startup, Neuralink. It’s been three years since the company first demonstrated its “sewing machine-like” implantation robot, two years since the company stuck its technology into the heads of pigs — and just over 19 months since they did the same to primates, an effort that allegedly killed 15 out of 23 test subjects. After a month-long delay in October, Neuralink held its third “show and tell” event on Wednesday where CEO Elon Musk announced, "we think probably in about six months, we should be able to have a Neuralink installed in a human."

Neuralink has seen tumultuous times in the previous April 2021 status update: The company’s co-founder, Max Hodak, quietly quit just after that event, though he said was still a “huge cheerleader” for Neuralink’s success. That show of confidence was subsequently shattered this past August after Musk reportedly approached Neuralink’s main rival, Synchron, as an investment opportunity. 

Earlier in February, Neuralink confirmed that monkeys had died during prototype testing of its BCI implants at the ​​University of California, Davis Primate Center but rejected accusations by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine of animal cruelty. In July, Synchron beat Neuralink to market when doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York successfully installed the company's inch-and-a-half long device into a person living with ALS. The patient, who has lost their ability to move and communicated independently, should be able to surf the web and send text messages using the device to translate their thoughts into computer commands. That same month, an affair Musk had with a Neuralink executive, who is now pregnant with his twins, also came to light. 

Neuralink is still working towards gaining FDA approval for its implant, though the company was awarded the agency's Breakthrough Device Designation in July 2020. This program allows patients and caregivers more "timely access" to promising treatments and medical devices by fast tracking their development and regulatory testing. As of September, 2022 the FDA has granted that designation to 728 medical devices. 

The FDA has also updated its best practices guidance regarding clinical and nonclinical BCI testing in 2021. "The field of implanted BCI devices is progressing rapidly from fundamental neuroscience discoveries to translational applications and market access," the agency asserted in its May guidance. "Implanted BCI devices have the potential to bring benefit to people with severe disabilities by increasing their ability to interact with their environment, and consequently, providing new independence in daily life."

“In many ways it’s like a Fitbit in your skull, with tiny wires,” Musk said of Neuralink's device during the 2021 livestream event. The device relies on as many as 1,024, 5-micron diameter leads "sewn" into a patient's grey matter to form connections with the surrounding neurons, providing high-resolution sampling of the brain's electrical emissions and translating between analog electrical impulses and digital computer code. Theoretically, at least. So far, all Neuralink has accomplished is getting a monkey to play Pong without a joystick.

“We hope to have this in our first humans, which will be people that have severe spinal cord injuries like tetraplegics, quadriplegics, next year, pending FDA [Food and Drug Administration] approval,” Musk told the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council summit in January. 

Developing...

Honda's Sensing level 2 driver assist system (AcuraWatch, if you bought upscale) will be growing more capable in the coming years, the automaker revealed on Wednesday. This decision comes as part of the company's efforts to advance its Safety for Everyone tennant and create a "collision-free society." These advancements are debuting this year in China under the Honda Sensing 360 and Sensing Elite monikers and will begin filtering to the US market in the second half of the decade, Honda has announced.  

The original Sensing system first appeared on the 2015 CR-V Touring trim package but became a standard feature in 2019. It offers an array of assists with a focus on collision avoidance and mitigation, such as pedestrian detection, automatic braking, and driver attention monitoring. The original Sensing relied on a single monocular camera. Sensing 360, which debuted this year in China, adds 5 millimeter-wave sensors to that camera to provide (you guessed it) 360-degree coverage of the vehicle, while Sensing Elite is the premier version of the ADAS suite and includes extra features like hands-free active lane-change. These two packages will begin matriculating to the US market over the next few years and become standard equipment by the end of the decade, just like the current gen Honda Sensing is today.

Honda

What's more, Honda plans to expand Sensing 360's capabilities in 2024 to "further reduce driver burden by detecting abnormal conditions occurring to the driver and the vehicle’s surroundings and reducing the risk of collisions." The company didn't clarify what "abnormal conditions might entail, it could be in-cabin monitoring a la Volvo's EX 90 backseat baby detector, an evolution of its existing driver attention camera, or simply smarter headlights.

Honda

Sensing Elite will also receive new features in the near term. That reportedly includes, "technologies to assist the driver on non-expressways including a hands-off function while driving through a traffic jam on arterial roads; to enable hands-off functions during merging onto and exiting from an expressway at a road junction; to assist the driver by automatically parking in and driving out of a home garage," according to a Wednesday press release. All versions of the Sensing system are slated to receive motorcycle detection capabilities by 2030 as well.

More than 120 volcanic eruptions have occurred in the United States in the 42 years since Mount St. Helens erupted over Washington in 1980, killing 57 and inflicting over a billion dollars in property damage. While none have been nearly as destructive, their mere presence can impact human activities and even economies hundreds of miles away. Altogether the US Geological Survey (USGS) has identified 161 geologically active volcanoes in 14 states and territories, a third of which constitute “high” or “very high” threats to their surrounding communities, and another 58 volcanoes nationwide classified as being undermonitored. The agency operates five volcano monitoring stations along the west coast to keep an eye on all but the least dangerous as part of the Survey’s Volcano Hazards Program. On average, around 60 volcanoes erupt annually, as Hawaii’s Mauna Loa is doing right now.

Mauna Loa, which had stood dormant for the past 38 years, reawakened late Sunday night for the eighth time since 1843. “Lava flows are not threatening any downslope communities and all indications are that the eruption will remain in the Northeast Rift Zone,” reads Monday’s red alert update from the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO). “Volcanic gas and possibly fine ash and Pele's Hair may be carried downwind. Residents at risk from Mauna Loa lava flows should review preparedness and refer to Hawai‘i County Civil Defense information for further guidance.” This week’s eruption is decidedly mild compared to 2018’s Kīlauea Volcano event that destroyed 700 homes and launched ash 3,000 meters into the atmosphere, where it disrupted air traffic patterns.

While lava receives a majority of the public attention, volcanoes have myriad methods for ruining your week with fire and (literal) brimstone. Volcanic ash can travel miles into the stratosphere before raining back down where it exacerbates chronic lung diseases like asthma and emphysema; carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide collect in low-lying areas to suffocate the unwary and seismic shifts resulting from the initial explosion can trigger landslides, tsunamis, floods, and large-scale power outages.

“Unlike many other natural disasters … volcanic eruptions can be predicted well in advance of their occurrence if adequate in-ground instrumentation is in place that allows earliest detection of unrest, providing the time needed to mitigate the worst of their effects,” David Applegate, USGS associate director for natural hazards, told a House subcommittee in 2017.

As Eos magazine points out, nobody died as a result of the 2018 Kīlauea eruption, in large part due to the efforts of monitors at the HVO. But, a 2018 threat assessment found that, out of the 18 volcanoes listed as “very high” threat, only three — Mauna Loa, St Helens and the Long Valley Caldera — were rated as “well monitored” when that eruption was happening.

On the same day that Kīlauea blew its top, the US Senate unanimously passed S.346, establishing the National Volcano Early Warning and Monitoring System (NVEWS). The following March, the House of Representatives passed its version, PL 116-9/S.47, dubbed the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act. Not unlike California’s new ShakeAlert early earthquake warning scheme, the NVEWS works to combine and standardize the existing hodgepodge of (often outdated) volcano monitoring hardware operated by both government agencies and academic organizations into a unified system, “to ensure that the most hazardous volcanoes will be properly monitored well in advance of the onset of activity.”

USGS

“Improvements to volcano monitoring networks allow the USGS to detect volcanic unrest at the earliest possible stage,” Tom Murray, USGS Volcano Science Center director, said in a 2018 USGS release. “This provides more time to issue forecasts and warnings of hazardous volcanic activity and gives at-risk communities more time to prepare.”

The NVEWS Act, which was sponsored by Senator Lisa Murkowski (R - AK), earmarks $55 million annually between 2019 and 2023 to provide more accurate and timely eruption forecasts by increasing partnerships with local governments and proactively sharing data with the volcano science community. It also seeks to increase staffing and systems — from broadband seismometers, infrasound arrays, and real-time continuous GPS receivers, to streaming webcams, satellite overwatch and volcanic gas sensors — for 24/7 volcano monitoring and establishes a grant system for furthering volcanology research.

USGS

The USGS ranks volcanic threats based on the risk they pose to public health and property — essentially how potentially destructive the volcano itself is in relation to how many people and things might be impacted when it does erupt. The USGS assigns numerical values to the 24 various hazard and exposure factors for each volcano, then combined to calculate the overall threat score which is divided into five levels (like DEFCONs!). High and Very High get the most detailed monitoring coverage because duh, Moderate threat volcanoes still receive real-time monitoring but don’t have Tommy Lee Jones standing by to intercede, and Low (and Very Low) get checked on as needed. As of May 2022, when the USGS submitted its second annual NVEWS report to Congress, the USGS had spent just under half of the money appropriated for FY 2021 with the funds going to activities like installing a net-gen lahar detection system on Mount Rainier, upgrading the telemetry for more than two dozen observation posts throughout Alaska, Oregon, Washington, California and Hawaii.

Winter is objectively the least wonderful time of the year, especially for anyone who has to brave black ice and whiteout driving conditions on top of the normal jackholery of their morning commute. The gifts listed here may not be enough to keep your vehicle out of the river to grandmother’s house, but they will bring a smile to any daily driver on your holiday shopping list with dependable snow tools, handy heated accessories and rugged cold weather gear.

Motor Trend 923-BK Black FlexTough Contour Liners

Motor Trend

It’s bad enough that the underside of your vehicle is going to be regularly soaked with ice slush and road salt for the next few months, your vehicle’s interior shouldn’t suffer the same. Instead, swap out your fancy factory-installed floor mats this winter for some ruggedized weather-resistant rubber mats from Motor Trend (no, not that one, the other one). They’re $40, come presized to fit most makes and models — and can easily be trimmed down to a more precise fit with a set of regular scissors.

Gorla Gear Universal Fit Waterproof Car Seat Cover

Gorla Gear

If only we tracked snow around on our boots — no, it’s on our pant cuffs, jacket shoulders, gloves and caps, which is why we can’t count solely on rubberized floor mats to collect the bits of outside we bring into the car with us. If you’re looking for a seasonal seat cover solution, the Gorla Gear Black Premium Universal Fit Waterproof Stain Resistant Car Seat Cover Neoprene Non-Slip Bucket Seat Dog & Kid Auto Protector Save Your Leather & Cloth Seats, Automotive, Van, Truck, SUV is basically an extra sturdy towel that you drape from the headrest of your front seats to catch and collect frozen detritus before it gets ground into your upholstery.

AstroAI Ice Scraper

Engadget

Driving around with accumulations of snow on your front or rear windshield isn’t just a great way to get into a wreck, it’s also a highly ticketable offense. So take a minute before starting your commute to swipe some snow from your window. With the Astro AI 47.2-inch ice scraper in hand, you won’t even have to lean over the hood to clear all the way across.The handle extends from just over three feet in length to just under four. It’s got a snow brush on one side, a squeegee on the other so it’ll be useful in the warmer, wetter months ahead as well.

FrostGuard Plus Windshield Cover

FrostGuard

You know how you can put a sun shield on the inside of your windshield to keep the hot summertime sun out of your car while it’s parked? The FrostGuard Plus Winter Windshield Cover is the exact opposite. It sits on the outside of your windshield to catch and slough off snow that would otherwise have to be chiseled off with a 47.2-inch ice scraper (just for example). It’s designed to cover the front window, wipers and side view mirrors while a pair of sturdy pvc tubes sewn into flaps along the edge can be shut in the doors to prevent wind, or thieves, from removing the cover.

Voile Telepack Mini Avalanche Shovel

Engadget

Everybody wants a White Christmas until the next morning when you have to dig your car out of a brand new snow bank. With a collapsed length of 24 inches, Voile’s Telepack Mini Avalanche shovel is compact enough to fit inside a backpack and sturdy enough for all sorts of emergency digging — whether that’s freeing a buried snowboarder or untombing your sedan to get home from the office is up to you. The aluminum handle extends out to nearly 36 inches while the foot-wide shovel blade will make quick work of the snow around your tires and doors. Just remember to lift with your legs and don’t hinge your back.

UCO Stormproof Match Kit

Engadget

These are perfect stocking stuffers for anyone on your shopping list. Well, anyone except for your one nephew whom everybody’s rightfully concerned about — I mean, there’s no way that many cats just “go missing” all at once. The UCO Stormproof Match Kit is small enough to fit in a glovebox, emergency roadside kit or door bin, holds 25 storm-proof matches capable of igniting even underwater and three strikers. Think of it as a $10 insurance policy against potentially freezing to death in a blizzard. Take it from me, a guy who owns one.

Orion 20-minute flare

Engadget

Use them to warn oncoming traffic of a hazard in the road or defend yourself from a pack of ravenous wolves with a taste for human blood (like Liam Neeson!) — either way, you’ll have a full third of an hour to extricate yourself from the situation before having to light up another of these high-visibility road flares. Good thing they come in six-packs.

Tire Traction Mat

Jojomark

A longtime staple of the offroading community, rubber tire traction mats are a great way to free a car from snow as well as mud, sand and ice, and a heck of a lot easier to store in your trunk than a 35-pound bag of kitty litter. Just snuggle one up close to each of your drive wheels to give your vehicle enough grip to get out of wherever it is you are and you on the way to wherever it is you’re going.

ThruNite TC15 V2 2531 flashlight

Engadget

Like the UCO matches, the ThruNite TC15 flashlight is the perfect tool to forget that you have until you need it. USB rechargeable and outputting more than 2500 lumen with six brightness options, the TC15 can illuminate under the hood and flag down passing motorists for help with equal ease. Plus its power button is designed for use with gloves on so your fingers won’t get cold when turning it on.

USB-C Hand Warmers

Engadget

During these cold winter months, it is essential that we keep our vulnerable extremities sufficiently warm so as to prevent spoilage once the spring thaw and decomposition set in. OCOOPA’s pocket-sized reusable hand warmers will keep your fingers toasty 95 to 131 degrees fahrenheit, heat up in seconds and run for however long it takes to fully discharge its 5200 mAH USB battery.

Woobie blanket

Engadget

As an Army brat I can personally attest to the superior heat-keeping qualities of a mil-spec Woobie blanket — the constant sheen of sweat that doesn’t ever wick away necessitating the use of a “leg towel” that your older brother rolls up into a rat tail and snap you with until he “accidentally” pops you right in the fucking eye and then hey, it’s a trip to the emergency room like 1994 all over again lets you know it’s working. These sold by USGI Industries (despite the misleading company name) may not be actual army issue but they’re constructed from the same polyester-fill quilted nylon I remember from a youth spent bundled underneath them in search of protection from San Francisco’s “summers.” Available in eight colors, the 62 by 82 inch poncho liner can serve a variety of uses, from basic blanket or groundcover, to windscreen, sunscreen and cargo sling — even an impromptu sleeping bag.

Outin Portable Espresso Machine

Engadget

Most of the products discussed in this guide are meant to help keep you alive during an automotive snow emergency. The Outin mobile espresso maker is here to help maintain your will to live through the promise of sweet, sweet caffeination. The $129 battery-powered brewer can make both hot and cold brew from either a Nespresso-compatible pod or ground espresso, and do so in under 5 minutes. Just don’t use it while actively driving, please.

From the moment that people started getting nasty with Johannes Gutenberg's newfangled printing press, sexually explicit content has led the way towards wide-scale adoption of mass communication technologies. But with every advance in methodology has invariably come a backlash — a moral panic here, a book burning there, the constant uncut threat of mass gun violence — aiming to suppress that expression. Now, given the things I saw Googling "sexually explicit printing press," dear reader, I can assure you that their efforts will ultimately be in vain. 

But it hasn't stopped social media corporations, advertisers, government regulators and the people you most dread seeing in your building's elevator from working to erase sexuality-related content from the world wide web. In the excerpt below from her most excellent new book, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: An Unexpected History, Motherboard Senior Editor Samantha Cole discusses the how and why to Facebook, Instagram and Google's slow strangling of online sexual speech over the past 15 years.

Workman Publishing

Excerpted from How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: An Unexpected History by Samantha Cole. Workman Publishing © 2022

How Sex Is Repressed Online

Human and algorithmic censorship has completely changed the power structure of who gets to post what types of adult content online. This has played out as independent sex workers struggling to avoid getting kicked off of sites like Instagram or Twitter just for existing as people—while big companies like Brazzers, displaying full nudity, have no problem keeping their accounts up.

Despite Facebook’s origins as Mark Zuckerberg’s Hot-or-Not rating system for women on his Harvard campus, the social network’s policies on sexuality and nudity are incredibly strict. Over the years, it’s gone through several evolutions and overhauls, but in 2022 forbidden content includes (but isn’t limited to) “real nude adults,” “sexual intercourse” and a wide range of things that could imply intercourse “even when the contact is not directly visible,” or “presence of by-products of sexual activity.” Nudity in art is supposedly allowed, but artists and illustrators still fight against bans and rejected posts all the time.

That’s not to mention “sexual solicitation,” which Facebook will not tolerate. That includes any and all porn, discussions of states of sexual arousal, and anything that both asks or offers sex “directly or indirectly” and also includes sexual emojis like peaches and eggplants, sexual slang, and depictions or poses of sexual activity.

These rules also apply on Instagram, the photo-sharing app owned by Facebook. As the number one and two biggest social networks in the US, these dictate how much of the internet sees and interacts with sexual content.

In the earliest archived versions of Facebook’s terms of use, sex was never mentioned—but its member conduct guidelines did ban “any content that we deem to be harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, vulgar, obscene, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.” This vagueness gives Facebook legal wiggle room to ban whatever it wants.

The platform took a more welcoming approach to sexual speech as recently as 2007, with Sexuality listed as one of the areas of interest users could choose from, and more than five hundred user-created groups for various discussions around the topic. But the platform’s early liberality with sex drew scrutiny. In 2007, then–New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo led a sting operation on Facebook where an investigator posed as teens and caught child predators.

As early as 2008, it started banning female breasts—specifically, nipples. The areola violated its policy on “obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit” material. In December 2008, a handful of women gathered outside the company’s Palo Alto office to breastfeed in front of the building in protest (it was a Saturday; no executives were working).

As of 2018, Facebook lumped sex work under banned content that depicts “sexual exploitation,” stating that all references and depictions of “sexual services” were forbidden, “includ[ing] prostitution, escort services, sexual massages, and filmed sexual activity.”

A lot of this banned content is health and wellness education.

In 2018, sexuality educator Dr. Timaree Schmit logged in to Facebook and checked her page for SEXx Interactive, which runs an annual sex ed conference she’d held the day before. A notification from Facebook appeared: She and several other admins for the page were banned from the entire platform for thirty days, and the page was taken down, because an “offending image” had violated the platform’s community standards. The image in question was the word SEXx in block letters on a red background.

The examples of this sort of thing are endless and not limited to Facebook. Google AdWords banned “graphic sexual acts with intent to arouse including sex acts such as masturbation” in 2014. Android keyboards’ predictive text banned anything remotely sexual, including the words “panty,” “braless,” “Tampax,” “lactation,” “preggers, “uterus,” and “STI” from its autocomplete dictionary. Chromecast and Google Play forbid porn. You can’t navigate to adult sites using Starbucks Wi-Fi. For a while in 2018, Google Drive seemed to be blocking users from downloading documents and files that contained adult content. The crowdfunding site Patreon forbids porn depicting real people, and in 2018 blamed its payment processor, Stripe, for not being sex-friendly. Much of this followed FOSTA/SESTA.

This is far from a complete list. There are countless stories like this, where sex educators, sex workers, artists, and journalists are censored or pushed off platforms completely for crossing these imaginary lines that are constantly moving.

Over the years, as these policies have evolved, they’ve been applied inconsistently and often with vague reasoning for the users themselves. There is one way platforms have been consistent, however: Images and content of Black and Indigenous women, as well as queer and trans people, sex workers, and fat women, experience the brunt of platform discrimination. This can lead to serious self-esteem issues, isolation, and in some cases, suicidal thoughts for people who are pushed off platforms or labeled “sexually explicit” because of their body shape or skin color.

“I’m just sick of feeling like something is wrong with my body. That it’s not OK to look how I do,” Anna Konstantopoulos, a fat Instagram influencer, said after her account was shut down and posts were deleted multiple times. Her photos in bikinis or lingerie were deleted by Instagram moderators, while other influencers’ posts stayed up and raked in the likes. “It starts to make you feel like crap about yourself.”

In spite of all of this, people project their full selves, or at least a version of themselves, onto Facebook accounts. Censorship of our sexual sides doesn’t stop people from living and working on the internet—unless that is your life and work.