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Education

Space Station Flyovers In Flyover Country Are Not All That They Could Be

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 1, 2017
https://media2.spaceref.com/news/2017/walmart-nation.jpg

Keith’s note: Several weeks ago I posted “Doing Something Again For The First Time” which focused on the sector of the U.S. population that was not alive when humans landed on the moon. I have had 3 publication requests to reuse my graphic. Tonight I came across another graphic on Facebook. You can see it here at visualcapitalist.com.
In 2016 people talked about “flyover country” without giving it too much thought as to what it meant other than that’s where Trump voters and/or Hillary haters lived. You’ve all heard me rant about how I think NASA needs to readjust its education and public outreach efforts so as to reach the large sectors of America that do not usually get NASA’s attention. In my mind there is some overlap between the flyover country meme and what I consider to be a chronically underserved portion of America’s population when it comes to NASA outreach.
I used to be on the board of Directors of the Challenger Center for Space Science Education. We were always trying to understand where the underserved education markets were. I used to amuse myself by using Google Earth and its street view function to roam the U.S. at random looking for towns in flyover country that might have foreclosed buildings that could become Challenger Centers. I always found them – and they were always near big Walmart box stores.
Households revolve around income – where it comes from – and where it ends up being spent. It goes without saying that more income usually means more opportunities for people. And certain skilled portions of the labor market pay better than others. Look at this map (click to enlarge). In many ways there are “Two Americas” but not the ones you normally think about. In one America (“non-Walmart America”) education, medical, and high-end manufacturing jobs lead the local economy. With that is a prerequisite focus on technical and scientific skills. In the the other “Walmart” America the focus is more on retail and service economy. Yet I would submit that while both Walmart and non-Walmart Americas have different business and educational mixes, their residents both share an equal capacity and desire to learn – and explore. And NASA is historically a prime magnet for such ambitions.
I’m not here to dump on Walmart. I shop there. But here in non-Walmart America when you ask someone to name the largest building in their city or town people talk about lots of universities, arenas, skyscrapers, factories, etc. Often in Walmart America the largest building is a Walmart – and you have to drive for many miles to reach it. But NASA focuses on communities where the big buildings are schools.
I am going to generalize and will get in trouble for doing so. In my 30 years of working for and/or watching NASA I feel that NASA aims virtually all of itself in terms of education and public outreach as if it is only talking to the the non-Walmart parts of the country – where people have a high technical expertise, easy Internet access, vote in urban trends, and have the income to pursue careers in exciting areas such as space exploration. It is always assumed that schools have the money to implement the stuff NASA posts on its websites.
That is not what you’d normally associate with flyover country. When Internet access is non-existent, school budgets are limited, and local job prospects lead young people away from (instead of toward) the chance to explore space, all of the fancy Internet stuff NASA blasts out online never makes contact. NASA has a website where you can find your town and get alerts by email when the space station is going to fly overhead. I go out every chance I get to watch it fly over my house. But what happens when your internet access requires a long bus ride – back and forth – every day – just to get those daily emails? The immediacy that non-Walmart America has to NASA falls flat in Walmart America. A space station flyover in flyover country is not all that it could be.
Oddly Johnson, Marshall, Kennedy, Langley, Wallops, Michoud, Stennis, and White Sands are all in Walmart America. Yet the interest within these field centers in engaging with surrounding Walmart America on themes and issues relevant to this sector of the population seems to fade after you drive out the center gates through a few county lines or zip codes.
The next time NASA crows in their #JourneyToMars tweets and SLS propaganda pieces about all the jobs that it has created in Texas, Alabama, Ohio, Florida etc. just remember that Walmart consistently does an even better job at employing more people than NASA does. Fact.
I’m not proposing any solutions. Let’s see what the new guy does. But maybe NASA should partner with Walmart on the whole spinoff thing and put up a booth or kiosk in every store. They have 4,600 stores in the U.S. and 140,000,000 customers walk in their doors every week.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

37 responses to “Space Station Flyovers In Flyover Country Are Not All That They Could Be”

  1. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Interesting analysis. But I am wondering if Internet connectivity at school is a valid metric anymore. FYI

    https://www.statista.com/st

    Percentage of students in the United States with wireless internet access at home and school as of March 2015, by education level

    I know the university I teach at, which is located in a small town in SW Texas, is debating if its worthwhile having a computer lab when the number of students using it is quickly declining since all of them have their own devices. The education folks told us the local High School is having the same debate about it. Basically it appears that school computer labs may be following the main frame school computers that gave birth to them to extinction.

    • Terry Stetler says:
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      Schools in our area are issuing tablets to students, the books being mostly ebooks, and saving desktop computers for the Business, IT and Robotics classes.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        Yes, that is the trend in many school districts reducing the cost of textbooks, another reason traditional computer labs are going the way of the mainframe.

    • muomega0 says:
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      Internet connectivity at school not a valid metric?!

      Most libraries have many folks inside and around the buildings with folks who *need* the wireless free connection to do their homework or surf for NASA like stuff, etc…. Kids at universities however likely can afford their own device…and want cloud computing to avoid the trip to the computer lab.

      net neutrality is likely to abandoned by the FCC for profit..so many will not have their own devices and/or ISPs will not be open and free to communicate and can block and discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      Our local school system has pretty much gotten rid of their computer labs in favor of providing every student a Chromebook (for a yearly fee, of course). So, most everything is WiFi based laptops today, not a hard-wired computer lab with desktops.

      The exceptions are the art labs (Macs running Adobe) and the CAD/CAM/drafting labs (PCs running Siemens PLM Solutions software). They still have dedicated desktop machines with Ethernet connections to the network. You really can’t run software like that on a Chromebook.

  2. Terry Stetler says:
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    The infographic is incorrect since the University of Michigan is not a private employer, it’s an arm of the state with an elected governing board and a president whose office is constitutional. Similar for the second largest employer in Michigan, Michigan State University.

    The largest private employer in Michigan is actually Meijer (#3 overall), a regional chain of hypermarkets which are giving Walmart (#6) all the competition they can handle and then some.

    University of Michigan
    Michigan State University
    Meijer
    General Motors
    Tata Consultancy Services
    Wal-Mart
    Wayne State University
    HTC
    Ford Motor Company
    Wipro Technologies

  3. brobof says:
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    Superb post Keith! More please. My tuppence: get Walmart to sponsor drop in centres: ‘computer creches/clubs’ give those w/o internet connections –or poor ones– access to Marks & Spencer speeds. (The latter is a British up-market supermarket for those that don’t have Harrods food hall as a ‘corner shop.’) Then it’s up to NASA and other institutions to cash in and sell STEM to ‘orbitally’ passed over America!

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      I am curious. Have you ever been to rural America?

      Livestock are produced by artificial insemination with careful review of their genetics. Tractors today have cockpits with built in GPS and computer systems for precision farming. The kids operating them would likely have no trouble operating a rover on Mars. Would that be true of urban kids? FYI

      http://www.pss-corp.com/blo

      High school students in Future Farmers of America or in 4H probably have stronger STEM and computer backgrounds than most city bred students who just read about science in their books. They need those STEM skills for modern farming practices, including livestock nutrition, breeding, soil chemistry, soil surveys. They need and use those STEM skills to grow the food you eat.

      I asked my students here in rural America how many had seen the ISS fly over. Many raised their hands because unlike urban areas you are actually able to see the stars and sky here. Farmers have always watched the skies for weather and most start their work before dawn and work into the night.

      Just because they are too busy working to feed you and don’t have time for topics you are passionate about like space or NASA doesn’t make them knuckle dragging illiterates. Indeed, you might look up how many astronauts were born and raised in rural America, it might surprise you.

      • Jeff2Space says:
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        True. When my cousin bought a used combine (harvester) a few years ago (it wan’t even that new), the first thing he did was go to the manufacturer’s website so he could download the latest software update for it.
        I never asked if the combine had a CD/DVD drive or a USB drive to do the update. And yes, it had GPS and a whole boatload of “high tech” features in it.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Yes, there is even a online simulator game for folks that want to try their hand at operating the latest farm tech 🙂

          https://www.farming-simulat

          NASA should promote its various Mars rovers simulators the same way with contests and awards.

      • kcowing says:
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        Wow you woke up this morning all ready to indict me as hating a lot of people. You also did not read what I wrote. Have a nice day. How much time have you spent in appalachia?

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Yes, I did read it, but I deal with economic statistics on a daily basis and so see the flaws in the website your referenced. BTW I never said you hated anyone, those are your words. But what you are doing is promoting stereotypes (“Walmart America”) the folks here are tired of hearing from Washington.

          In terms of time I spent in Appalachia, I taught for a year in the 1990’s as a visiting professor in Beckely, WV, which is in the middle of it. Does that count? I donated part of the time to help the IT department in building 386’s for the local High School. Now tell me, how much time have you spent on the Texas border? or in rural Nevada?

          Your theory is interesting, but simply doesn’t match what is going on here.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            I do not feel the division is geographic so much as economic. I worked in Rosebud SD, 135 miles from the nearest Walmart. There were dysfunctional poor communities not far from wealthy farmers with square miles of land. In Florida I see patients from the wealthy and poor sides of America. Here in Florida we have kids whose parents work at NASA and who have every chance of becoming successful, and we have homeless people begging on street corners and mentally ill clogging our jails. When you taught in West Virginia were you aware it would soon have the highest opiate death rate in the country?

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            No, because its only in the last 10 years its become a problem replacing other drugs. But as with most drug issues its the poverty and lack of opportunity that created the epidemic.

            Yes, economics does matter. Washington DC for example has some of the lowest performing schools in the country.

            https://wtop.com/dc/2015/07

            While the nearby Virginia and Maryland have good schools.

            In Uvalde where I live in flyover country the graduation rate is 83 percent compared to Washington DC’s rate of 59 percent.

          • Paul451 says:
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            But what you are doing is promoting stereotypes

            You did exactly the same thing. Keith was talking about states, but you responded as if the “non-Walmar states” consisted solely of cities and “Walmart states” solely of farmers.

            Whereas in reality, only a minority of people in all states are involved in farming. Even in rural areas, the majority of the population lives in or near towns. And, flip-side, “non-Walmart states” like California are major farming regions.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            The question is what drives the economy and politics. In places like California, farming interests take a back seat to the urban areas while in Texas and other “Walmart” states its still seen as an important industry.

      • brobof says:
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        Denton ???
        http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I
        Otherwise, sorry, but no ;’-((

  4. Brian_M2525 says:
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    While Keith you make good points, NASA managers are not paying any attention to what gets communicated or to whom.

    NASA managers; at least one is an AA at Headquarters today; decided
    to move ALL educational material from paper products to the internet; that was about 17 years ago. It was a tremendous cost savings not to have to worry about printing and distributing anything anymore. They did no analysis to determine who was on the internet, how information
    was used or whether they would continue to reach similar populations as in the past.

    As one of these managers told me, “we just assumed that everybody was like us, and they all had connected computers”. But fact is NASA people were making $125-150K a year, not the national average of $40-50K. Fact is, a large proportion of the population is not in or near the cities. Fact is a lot of people do not have their computers and laptops provided to them by their employers. Not to mention that many schools have few or no computers for their students and even those who do block the internet or at least a large portion of it. NASA took the easy way out. The managers in particular are always about saving a couple dollars even though they totally lose the ability to carry out their mission.

    As technology is moving quickly, the last 5 years have seen other changes. Instead of computers, smart phones have been proliferating. Instead of computer websites, social media has been the mechanism of choice for NASA information distribution. All of a sudden NASA was distributing everything by YouTube videos; they forgot to investigate whether anyone actually watches these videos – most people do not. Even when they do watch them, they do not listen to the sound. The NASA people always seems to be all over the latest wave of technology even though their taxpayers are years behind. In the meantime NASA does not get the job done because their focus became distributing information they were no longer producing.

    It was really a “cost savings” when NASA shut down the office; laid off 3 [relatively low wage] people; responsible for selecting, captioning, and distributing photos and videos. Why would anyone need that? ‘They can get it off the internet’. No they can’t if it is not organized and placed on the internet in the first place.

    NASA spends billions of dollars and then cannot figure out how to get the information they are creating into the hands of the people who own it.

    • NMBob_88 says:
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      The NASA outreach effort is scattered at best. Schools and residents around GSFC benefit greatly from their proximity to that NASA center. As Keith mentioned, at other centers its non-existent. As a former NASA contractor engineer, I volunteer doing science outreach in my ‘local’ (100 mile radius) area. Some missions provide great printed resources and materials (kudos to Chandra, Hubble, SDO), others (SLS, Curiosity, etc) have just an internet presence.

      I have traveled to schools in small cities and schools in the middle of nowhere (ie. Corona NM, pop 186), brought telescopes and NASA materials, done science demonstrations. sat down and talked to students about STEM careers – these were some of my most rewarding moments as these students (and parents) considered NASA, space and technology a million miles away.
      Showing them the Sun in a telescope, giving them a solar hologram (from SDO), demonstrating a chemistry reaction with an IR camera or gas discharge tubes and diffraction gratings, handing out lithographs from Chandra and Hubble goes a long way – you can see it in their faces. I have attempted to get materials from human space flight (SLS/Orion) and some JPL missions (Curiosity) – I’m always directed to go to the internet by these centers. How can I pass my enthusiasm for the NASA mission if I can’t even get materials?
      Most children in my area do not have access to high-speed internet, nor do teachers have resources or the background to present NASA-inspired science and technology.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        I am not sure where you are in NM, but if you go to the Astronomy Department at NMSU you will find they will be glad help you. They have had a good public out reach going back to the days when Clyde Tombaugh ran it.

        BTW some of NASA’s out reach does make it into rural America. Here is a recent program at the university I teach at.

        http://www.sulross.edu/arti

        “Earth from Space” on Exhibit in Eagle Pass”
        Posted on October 18, 2017 – 4:39pm

        “The poster exhibition was born of the popular an award-winning museum exhibition of the same title that premiered November 2006 at the National Air and Space Museum. In 2007, “Earth from Space” won a U.S. Geological Survey communications award for science content.”

        Ten years late, but it did make it here 🙂

        • Brian_M2525 says:
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          From the looks of it, that exhibit is not NASA at all but NASM and maybe USGS. Maybe they use some NASA data?

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            I will check and see, but I recall seeing the NASA logo on some of the prints.

            Update: The exhibit is from the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, but the pictures were generated by NASA for them.

    • mfwright says:
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      “move ALL educational material from paper products to the internet”

      I remember some years ago at Ames visitor center, a person asked for some photos and was told these can be downloaded. However this person wanted an actual hardcopy, official GPO publication as it has a certain appeal to it as in a “touchy/feely” quality that is hard to measure.

      • NArmstrong says:
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        If you research the subject you find that internet and social media sources, if someone actually pays attention and reads them religiously, provide something equivalent to newspaper article depth and reinforcement of prior beliefs. Its a bit fleeting and ethereal in terms of lasting communications effectiveness. It works best with people already interested in and knowledgeable about the subject. You’ve probably been hearing about this for the last year-since the 2016 election; people pay attention to and believe the sources they are already interested in and know about.

        So for space, in which a distinct minority have any knowledge or interest, NASA’s internet and social media communications is having little to no effect. Mainly it preaches to the choir. Sounds like NASA effectively went in the wrong direction years ago and dumped trying to gain support from most of the US public. If NASA is trying to use internet and social media for ‘educating’ students, STEM initiative, etc, most likely much of the effort is wasted.

    • djschultz3 says:
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      I see lots of paper materials at Goddard-sponsored outreach events. There are arm loads of Hubble photos available on paper and more wall posters than you can possibly put up, along with pamphlets, flyers and bookmarks. Are the other centers not doing this?

      • Brian_M2525 says:
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        Hubble and science mission directorate has done a better job, although not great and lacking coordination. Human spaceflight appears to no longer have a functioning communications group. Except for social media, they seem to have no products.

    • NArmstrong says:
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      That manager who saved a couple dollars by moving everything to the internet is probably the same one who is now an AA at Headquarters because he showed leadership and frugality. Of course he destroyed whatever success the program had been having and wiped out fifty years of established processes and those experienced people’s livelihoods who got laid off. Great job NASA! NOT!

    • Neal Aldin says:
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      NASA’s problem seems to be that a lot of their managers do not know what they do not know. When these people are arrogant and think they know it all, they make no effort to find out what they do not know. There are often people who are educated, trained, experienced and have been proven capable, whether in leadership, technical analysis or production. Maybe those individuals ought to be sought for their expertise?

  5. sunman42 says:
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    Apples and oranges. What’s the average NASA salary + benefits in, say, Alabama compared with those at Walmart in the same state? I’d bet there’s a least a factor of 2 difference, if not more. What you’ve linked is a map showing what happens in states that ignore their obligation to educate and train their citizens for middle-class or better jobs in the current century.

    Just as an aside, but as a warning to overinterpreting such statistics, Walmart would be the largest employer in Maine if most folks there could afford to spend money on more than groceries (which Walmart sells, too, of course) and Walmart had more stores (9 now) than Hannaford (83) in the state.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Also it ignores that most job creation, especially in manufacturing, is in much smaller firms than in the past. Also many of those firms subcontract the work, further impacting the figure. That is why a more accurate picture would come from looking at employment by industry by state than by firms.

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        The percentage of Americans who work for firms with over 1000 employees (i.e. Walmart) is increasing, not decreasing https://www.bls.gov/web/cew
        Walmart alone employs 2.1 million people, 1% of the working population.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Daniel,

          Interesting as the SBA reports that 67% of job creation is by small businesses. I wonder if your stats are including self-employed and part-time.

          https://www.sba.gov/sites/d

          Amazon has over 500,000 employees now.

          http://money.cnn.com/2017/1

          But they also have over 900,000 associates who perform promotional functions for them.

          https://affiliate-program.a

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            Small business leads in job creation but also in job elimination, which no one talks about. I have seen quite a few local small businesses collapse, including a couple I was involved with. A large percentage of these small businesses are creating low-wage jobs heand many are part time; property developers often create multiple small businesses that employ the same group of people, but each position counts as a new job. Similarly, the Amazon associates often are doing it as a part time sideline or as part of another business. I would not classify the “job creation” numbers as a lie, just openly deceptive lobbying by business people who want tax breaks. The actual number of people employed at any one time by small and large businesses and thier average salary is more incative of their importance in the economy. Walmart, on the other hand, is so big, as one economist said, that it faces little competition as an employer and can reduce labor costs simply by paying people less.

  6. Andrew Thielmann says:
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    To soften it a bit… Being many miles away from Walmart means being miles away from most prominent light pollution source… Which puts you in much more rewarding position when you actually step out of your house to watch the Station flyover when it happens 🙂 .

    But I agree with many reasonable points in the post. Thanks for your work!

  7. fcrary says:
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    You need to look at each university individually and carefully. Some (most?) “public” universities in the US are not part of the government. They are chartered by the state government, may have a special legal status (e.g. not subject to local city or county laws), have a board of regents appointed by the state legislature and receive some state funding. But they are technically not part of the state government.

    One way to tell is to follow the money. Do other sources of funding (e.g. tuition and research grants) go directly into the university’s bank account, or is it deposited in the state’s general fund? Is the university’s budget set year-by-year by the state legislature? And, when they pay employees, whose name is on the pay check? The state or the university?

  8. djschultz3 says:
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    Interesting that only one state (Washington) has a manufacturing company (Boeing) listed as its largest employer. Universities and Healthcare systems serve the residents of their own states but they don’t generate a lot of external income from sales outside of their states. Only Boeing and possibly MGM resorts in Nevada bring income into their states from external sources.

    The university systems that are listed as the largest employers in their states are primarily operating affiliated hospitals and health care systems, which are much bigger businesses than education and research are. So the 11 states that list universities are primarily in the healthcare business the same as the 12 that list healthcare providers. Part of this is due to the consolidation of doctors offices into larger conglomerates, while manufacturing is largely being done by smaller businesses today.

    • fcrary says:
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      The map shows Colorado’s largest (non-government) employer as Denver International Airport. That business definitely brings money into the state. Although, like the universities shown on that map, their status as “non-government” may be questionable: It is chartered by and responsible to the city government, although not technically a government agency.

      In any case, the largest employer doesn’t necessarily mean much. A quick check of the airport’s and the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s web pages tells me DIA employs 35,000 out of a total of 2,776,200 jobs in the state. That’s only 1.3%. At the same time, a Denver Post article says there are “163,000 aerospace workers” in Colorado and “only 14 percent of Colorado’s aerospace companies employ 250 or more people.” As someone else noted, the largest single employer isn’t necessarily representative of a states economy.

      (To be fair, I shouldn’t have said, “At the same time.” I just did a quick online search, and it turned up sourced dating from 2014 to 2016. But you get the idea.