Fact checking as a separate job is more for journalism than books. But editors have fact checking as part of their jobs. (It is not copy-editing, which is a different job.)
Many nonfiction authors will hire a fact checker separately. They don't want to look like they missed something. Errors still happen, of course.
It does nod in its direction, though. Or at least it used to. Mass production printing was high overhead, and publishers had reputations to protect. That wasn't perfect but they'd usually try to avoid the worst propaganda.
(Or at least shove it off onto an imprint with less of a reputation. Or into a category, like Self Help, where people know its shaky relationship to truth.)
It was far from perfect. But these days the publishing gatekeepers have largely lost the battle. People prefer the hot takes they get from tv and social media.
Because the edited title is incoherent and grammatically incorrect.
Until recently that would have marked it as likely done by simplistic automation. These days, it's hard to tell, because humans seem more likely to make simple errors of grammar.
AFAIK the actual cause for our high incarceration rate is that we have longer sentences. The conviction rate, for example, as compared to the UK is similar.
We will find out. But relying on AI is likely to cost the city of Fargo in one way or another. They say they have already stopped using AI and returned to good old fashioned human investigation.
We have done quite the opposite. We have insisted that the government allow, and even encourage, unreasonable outcomes, so long as they benefit the right people at the cost of... well, if you have to ask, it's you.
"Amateur hour" is basically their theme. They were swept in on a wave of distrust for people who know what they're talking about. They were elected to tear down Chesterton's fence, even (and especially) the parts holding in the face-eating leopards.
To mix the metaphors further, they (the politicians and their supporters) fancy themselves the kind to dream of things that never were and ask why not. Why not have a war in Iran? You won't know until you give it a try.
Meatbags are versatile but really, really expensive. They require a really vast support system, and it has to be highly redundant because the cost of a loss is so high.
You can send up a lot of less versatile bots for the price of one meatbag.
I don't think Starship has gotten to orbit yet. It's gotten to altitude but not speed. That's a very big deal, because slowing down from that speed is a massive challenge unto itself.
Orbit is scheduled for the test after next, if all goes well.
They don't really need Starship just for orbit. They've already got ships that get to the ISS and back. They really do need to get Starship to orbit or their plans really will be hosed.
>I don't think Starship has gotten to orbit yet. It's gotten to altitude but not speed.
I'm honestly kinda curious how you came to this thinking after watching the launches, like the last Flight 11 [0]? They have the velocity listed at all times right there in the bottom corner. It's peaking over 7.4 km/s, seems pretty clear they were stopping just barely short and maintaining a ballistic path on purpose exactly as they said they would in the flight plan they filed ahead of time with the FAA for deorbit safety purposes, not because they couldn't have technically squeezed out another few hundred m/s and different trajectory if that was the goal. It's a hardware rich program, and their testing sequence has been reasonably careful about controlling the space of out of bounds scenarios (on the scale of rocketry). What has lead you to believe that they can do 7.4+ km/s with Raptor 2 and Block 2 but v3 won't be able to do ~7.8 (or that they couldn't have done it with v2 for that matter)?
They've pretty clearly demonstrated the ability to get to orbit but have, quite reasonably, not actually put the thing into orbit. Given the size of the rocket they've been needing to demonstrate things like the relight for control after achieving orbit and have prioritized other issues like figuring out reentry.
So yes, you are literally correct in that they haven't put one in orbit, but it's more out of caution than capability. What they've only demonstrated in the most recent tests is that they have good reason to believe to believe that they can deorbit in a controlled fashion. But... now they've upgraded everything: raptor 3, booster v3, starship v3. Those need to prove out those capabilities again.
So I wouldn't be surprised if they continue the suborbital program for the next 3 or 4 tests. Given all the redesign, they aren't exactly at the beginning, but they have to show that they haven't broken what they previously fixed.
AFAIK they are just cutting the engines off some seconds before they would achieve full orbit, and they have already demonstrated deorbut burns. So I don't think a proper orbit will be a big hurdle for SpaceX.
Many nonfiction authors will hire a fact checker separately. They don't want to look like they missed something. Errors still happen, of course.
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