This blog is almost 22 years old, and in all that time I’ve been solid about posting regularly — until this recent dry spell.

I skipped the summer. Last post was in June. There was just one that month, and just one in May.

I have an explanation: while my health and physical circumstances are unchanged and, happily, fine, I have not felt the drive to write here that I always felt.

I never, in all these years, had to push myself. I’d get an idea and I would be compelled to write it up and publish it. It was always that simple.

But I haven’t felt that way in many months, and I’m not sure I will again.

Maybe this is temporary, and there will be hundreds more posts to come.

But I kind of think not, because there’s a bigger issue: I expect and hope that eventually I will no longer be a public person — no blog, no Twitter, no public online presence at all.

I have no plan. I’m feeling my way to that destination, which is years off, surely, and I just hope to manage it gracefully. (I don’t know of any role models with this.)

Anyway. In case I don’t write here again — in case these are the last words of this blog — thank you. I loved writing here, and you are why.

The all-civilian Inspiration4 crew is back on Earth after their three-day mission in orbit.

The big picture: The launch and landing of this fully amateur, private space crew marks a changing of the guard from spaceflight being a largely government-led venture to being under the purview of private companies.

What's happening: Inspiration4 launched on Wednesday and came back in for a splashdown within their SpaceX Dragon capsule in the Atlantic Ocean off the Florida coast on Saturday.

• "On behalf of SpaceX, welcome back to planet Earth," a SpaceX mission controller said after splashdown.
• "Thanks so much, SpaceX," commander of the mission Jared Isaacman said upon landing. "It was a heck of a ride for us."

Catch up quick: The mission was thought up by billionaire entrepreneur Isaacman.

• Chris Sembroski was chosen as part of a raffle that anyone could enter, while Hayley Arceneaux — a physician assistant at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital who was treated by the hospital as a child — was chosen by her employer to fly.
• Sian Proctor was selected as part of a reality TV-style competition for entrepreneurs and became the first Black woman to serve as the pilot of a spacecraft.
• During their time in space, the four crew members spoke to their families, some of the kids at St. Jude, Bono and Tom Cruise as well as performed science experiments and gazed out of the cupola, a huge bubble window flown for the first time on this mission.

The bottom line: Inspiration4's successful launch and landing mark a huge win for SpaceX as the company works to bring about a future where millions of people are living off-Earth.

🎧 Go deeper: Listen to the new season of Axios' How it Happened: The Next Astronauts going inside Inspiration4 here.

• A mission to space like no other
• Private companies are changing who gets to go to space
• What it takes to train for space
• Wrestling with the risks of private missions to space

Last month the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) released an Appropriate Language Mapping Table v6 document describing the changes to the Bluetooth 5.3 Specification.

From the introduction:

For more than 20 years, the Bluetooth SIG has brought together a global community of innovators to build a more connected world. We are committed to continuing to foster a global community characterized by inclusion and mutual respect.

In the pursuit of this, starting in August 2020, certain terms that were identified as inappropriate are now being replaced. The original terms may still exist in specifications that are already adopted. However, updates to adopted specifications and all new specifications use replacement terms. This document contains tables that map original and replacement terms.

To match the replaced term in a newer adopted specification with the original term in an older adopted specification, locate the mapping table that corresponds to the applicable Bluetooth technology.

“Our community was hit first. Asian restaurants were empty long before other restaurants. Even on the subway I could sense that racism was on the rise. On television one night there was a story about an elderly man who was collecting aluminum cans, just to survive. He was robbed and taunted. His bags were broken. His cans were strewn all over the street. And he didn’t speak English, so he couldn’t even ask for help. It broke me. Because in his face I could see the faces of all our grandparents. In our culture there is a tradition of: ‘Never speak out. Never ask for help.’ If our elders were suffering, would they even let us know? I decided to call a service organization focusing on Asian elderly, and I asked: ‘How many meals do you need?’ They replied: ‘As many as you can cook.’ We started preparing 200 meals per week in our little 300 square foot apartment. Moonlynn cooks beautifully and efficiently, so she lovingly banned me from the kitchen. But I still wanted to help in some way. So I found a black sharpie, and began to write on the plastic containers. Traditionally our elders are very reserved with their affection. I can still make my father blush just by kissing him on the cheek. But since I grew up in America, I have the privilege of being more direct. I found the traditional Chinese characters for ‘We are thinking of you’ and ‘We love you,’ and I wrote them on every container. I thought it was important to use the word ‘we.’ I never signed our own names. Because I wanted it to feel like a whole bunch of people, an entire community who cared. And before long that’s exactly what it was. We found ten restaurant partners within a half mile who helped us prepare culturally relevant foods. And over the past eighteen months Heart of Dinner has delivered 80,000 meals to our Asian elders. We weren’t able to personally write notes on each one. So we put out a call on Instagram, and 100,000 hand-written notes poured in from all over the world. We told people to go wild. Add as much character as you’d like. There were so many styles, and so many colors. But every note had two things, written in big, bold letters: ‘We are thinking of you.’ And ‘We love you.’”

Seek out the support you need to fulfill your responsibilities both at home and on the job.