You would think that geeks would spend their time and effort on geeking out.
But when it comes to Trump Derangement Syndrome, even the geeks get distracted by their need to virtue signal, get political, and spin things.
I used to read a lot of tech blogs, but over the past few years I have cut more and more of them out of my regular reading rotation. The first reason was that I would go to read up on the latest neat stuff and suddenly be treated to glowing reviews of sex toys and masturbation aids, and I was afraid that soon enough, I would be given top 10 lists of tentacle porn videos.
After seeing 5 think pieces on “teledildonics,” I gave up. It was too gross, and now even The Wirecutter is featuring reviews of these fine instruments of pleasure. Imagine the reviewers.
Make it stop, please.
But I still get tempted by stories about actual geeky things, so I stupidly followed a link to a story on just how desperate the situation was on the Boeing Starliner was on its trip to the ISS. Perfect fodder for my curiosity.
The harrowing story of what flying Starliner was like when its thrusters failed https://t.co/P4u3l2GD1V
— Ars Technica (@arstechnica) April 1, 2025
There are, indeed, many fascinating details about the trip, but the author couldn’t stop there. He just HAD to call Trump a liar, misrepresent what the astronauts said, and get his digs in at Republicans because…well, just because.
A story that should have been an expose of the Starliner, a human interest story about astronauts nearly killed by their spacecraft, and insights into what being stranded in space was like instead just had to include unnecessary and largely dishonest swipes at Trump because the author has monomania.
Damn. Can I not read about space without TDS showing up?
On Monday, for the first time since they returned to Earth on a Crew Dragon vehicle two weeks ago, Wilmore and Williams participated in a news conference at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Afterward, they spent hours conducting short, 10-minute interviews with reporters from around the world, describing their mission. I spoke with both of them.
Many of the questions concerned the politically messy end of the mission, in which the Trump White House claimed it had rescued the astronauts after they were stranded by the Biden administration. This was not true, but it is also not a question that active astronauts are going to answer. They have too much respect for the agency and the White House that appoints its leadership. They are trained not to speak out of school. As Wilmore said repeatedly on Monday, “I can’t speak to any of that. Nor would I.”
It was true, though. We know that.
HOLY SHLIT. Astronaut who’s stranded in space says it’s true that Elon offered to rescue them earlier.
Biden didn’t accept for political purposes.
Straight up evil. pic.twitter.com/BYE3TTt3eb
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 6, 2025
Biden left the astronauts up in space to prevent the image of Elon Musk rescuing them from being seen before the 2024 elections. This isn’t in dispute any longer, but that hurts the Narrative™.
As proof that he is right, the author, Eric Berger, points to an earlier article he wrote about the astronauts NOT being stranded in space. And it, too, shades the truth for political reasons.
For those of us who have closely followed the story of Wilmore and Williams over the last nine months—and Ars Technica has had its share of exclusive stories about this long and strange saga—the final weeks before the landing have seen it take a disturbing turn.
In February, President Trump and the chief executive of SpaceX, Elon Musk, began to say that the two astronauts were “stranded” in space because the Biden administration did not want to bring them home. “They got left in space,” Trump said.
“They were left up there for political reasons,” Musk concluded.
Just what those political reasons were was never specified. But the basic message was clear: Biden, bad; Trump, good.
The reality is that NASA set a plan for the return of Wilmore and Williams last August. The spacecraft that brought them back to Earth on Tuesday safely docked to the space station in September. They could have come home at any time since. NASA—not the Biden administration, which all of my reporting indicates was not involved in any decision-making—decided the best and safest option was to keep Wilmore and Williams in orbit until early this year. Musk knew this plan. He had to sign off on it. Senior NASA officials earlier this month confirmed, publicly and on the record, that the decision was made by the space agency in the best interests of the International Space Station Program. Not for political reasons.
And still, the lies came.
Hmm. What would you call that quote from the article? Hmmm. Let me think.
A lie. A bald-face lie. Don’t trust me. Trust the astronauts that Berger claimed never spoke to the issue. Again:
HOLY SHLIT. Astronaut who’s stranded in space says it’s true that Elon offered to rescue them earlier.
Biden didn’t accept for political purposes.
Straight up evil. pic.twitter.com/BYE3TTt3eb
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 6, 2025
Eric Berger may come up with some complicated bull excrement to claim that his version of the story is right and everybody else, including the very people involved, are all lying, but Occam’s Razor says that he is a lying dog-faced pony soldier who just hates Donald Trump.
In Berger’s words, that’s why we can’t have nice things.
Suni and Butch have gushed over Trump and Musk, but Berger would have you know that all their positive comments are not real, and that Trump is an Orange meanie who is ruining the world, and Elon–the man who got them down when Boeing could not–is South African Hitler.
ICYMI: The rescued astronauts’ message to Trump and Musk: pic.twitter.com/MTFPytl7fo
— Sharyl Attkisson 🕵️♂️💼🥋 (@SharylAttkisson) March 31, 2025
To be clear, I don’t care what Berger’s politics are. He can spend all his time raging about Donald Trump for all I care, and if he wants to write for The Nation I wish him well.
But I went to Ars Technica to read about Boeing’s failures, the near-death experience faced by our astronauts, and instead got a rant filled with lies and half-truths because Berger can’t think straight in a world where Joe Biden can’t be a sharp-as-a-tack president.
I long for the days when my big frustration was the sex toy reviews.
