I’d hate to live in a world where just because something isn’t immediately useful it shouldn’t be researched.

Being able to demonstrate the ability to suppress a sonic boom would be huge.

I would presume because their work insisted?

The depressing thing for me is that in my country access to COVID vaccines is now limited - you can only get a booster if you’re part of the “clinically vulnerable” group. And whilst I kinda get it that the logic is the same as the flu vaccine that it’s about reducing hospitalisations, at least with flu we have the option to get the vaccine privately… Which we don’t with COVID.

I think we can blame the education system. At some point it became solely about passing some arbitrary threshold of students with high exam scores rather than about teaching students how to get by in life.

End result was an education system that simply teaches kids how to pass exams rather than basic life skills like critical thinking.