"America will never give up the moon again.🤡"

What an embarrassing statement.🤦🏿‍♂️

What a scathing indictment of the childishness and futility of an anti-science nation being in a space race.

What does "give up the moon" even mean?

Other countries sending scientists while we angrily hug a moon flag.

Can we get back to not being such a weirdo country soon please?

I can't keep getting cooked in the group chat like this.

👩🏽👨🏼🧔🏿‍♂️"Mekka, are you getting out of the swimming pool soon? You've been in there for 4 hours. You're getting all pruney, and we're all going to dinner soon."

🧔🏿‍♂️"Never!"

👩🏽👨🏼🧔🏿‍♂️"Bro, get out."

🧔🏿‍♂️"No! Mekka will never give up the pool again!🤡"

👩🏽👨🏼🧔🏿‍♂️*Whispering* Why is he like this? Is this a US thing?

@mekkaokereke

It was quite a revelation when I learned why the USA has so few public swimming pools when compared to most European nations.

@juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke I don't know this - why don't they have swimming pools??

@Meznor @mekkaokereke

They do have swimming pools, but most of them are private.

Public swimming pools used to be more common in the USA. But after the end of Segregation, it was no longer legally possible to keep Black people out - so these were ever closed or handed over to "private clubs" that used other methods to keep Black people out.

In the USA, it's really racism all the way down.

@Meznor

I'm gonna take a wild guess, because it's the US, and say, racism.

Longer guess: Pool segregation.

Similar thing occurred in Australia re Indigenous Australians and municipal pools.

@juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke

@Meznor @juergen_hubert @mekkaokereke if we can't make it "whites only", we don't want it.

That's basically it.

@mekkaokereke Such a US thing. US points at UK, “I learned it from watching you!”
@mekkaokereke not to worry. you'll always have britain to deflect it onto

@mekkaokereke It's a long way from JFK for sure

"For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace."

@mekkaokereke would be less embarrassing as a rickroll. still embarrassing but
@mekkaokereke its an ice cold sandpit full of hideously sharp, fine dust with no immediate strategic advantage. It’s hideously impractical but symbolic, like a solid gold toilet.
@mekkaokereke At the rate things are going downhill in DC, I fully expect the “president loses his shit and wants to nuke the moon” scene from Austin Powers to become a documentary in my lifetime
@mekkaokereke From m the mouth of a bobble-headed Trump appointee. I couldn’t be less surprised. What a dipshit.

@mekkaokereke "Stir up resentment over imagined historical injuries" pretty much encompasses their whole political game. It's the Lost Cause, expanded to encompass anything and everything. From "Why should I have to wear a COVID mask" to "Why should I have to hear Spanish in the grocery store" and everything in between.

I wonder to what extent that sad mess actually resonates with people, and to what extent it's just signalling, showing everyone that this is the kind of pathetic Temu-grade patriotism the regime stands for.