Re:A rundown of the new Gmail
by lmm on Wednesday April 25, 2018 @09:38AM
(#16921387)
It's substantially true. The pen was developed by a private company rather than the government, but "the US spent" is fair if we consider it to refer to the country as a whole. Using pencils in space did cause genuine issues, but the Russian space programme did live with those issues until the space pen was developed.
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>but "the US spent" is fair if we consider it to refer to the country as a whole.
Of course, that's not what anyone means when they repeat this nonsense, and the entire point of the story is to create a narrative that the US government is bloated, wasteful, and stupid.
I've seen it more used to create a narrative about US culture as being overly technology-focused and lacking a sense of making do / good-enough. Shrug.