

The Creepy, Kitschy and Geeky Patches of US Spy Satellites - tanglesome
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/creepy-kitschy-and-geeky-patches-us-spy-satellites-180953562/

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Animats
There's a whole cult of collecting military and police shoulder patches.

Machines for making those are now widely available. TechShop has CNC
embroidery machines.

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justcommenting
trevor paglen has written/spoken about this topic extensively, e.g.
[http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-
Destroyed/dp/193...](http://www.amazon.com/Could-Tell-Then-Would-
Destroyed/dp/1933633328) from 2007 and various talks on youtube, e.g. from
30c3:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTVgPw7TR_k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTVgPw7TR_k)

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trop
Indeed, Paglen's been great on this. See also his Cabinet article
[http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/24/paglen.php](http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/24/paglen.php)
which goes beyond NRO to other beloved organizations (e.g. "a secret Air Force
Base near Groom Lake).

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alexbecker
> Better the devil you know

That's a little chilling, even for the NRO.

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andrey-p
Quite a few of these are bordering on over-the-top evil villain territory.

The Great Bear one, and its caption, just made me giggle.

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gvb
My guess is that the bear is related to Ursa Major. That's a pretty obvious
guess, but _how_ it would be related to Ursa Major, I have no idea. :-/

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursa_Major#Mythology](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursa_Major#Mythology)

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at-fates-hands
My best friend's Dad was a Nasa Engineer and would always bring back packs of
NASA launch stickers for the neighborhood kids. This reminds me a lot of
those.

Some of those had some really cool designs like the ones in the story.

Here's a small sampling I found on ebay:

[http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sop=1&_nkw=nasa+sticker&_frs...](http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_sop=1&_nkw=nasa+sticker&_frs=1)

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PeterWhittaker
Oh, patches, as in insignia.

I was very confused when I got to the page....

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logfromblammo
I was confused, too. My default interpretation of "patch" is a file for
modifying an existing binary. Second place goes to the swatch of material used
to repair holes in fabric or plastic. The last time I thought of the kind of
patch the article was referencing, it was for my scout uniform.

To upgrade to version 1.1 of the repair material for the embroidered insignia,
you will need a patch patch patch.

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PeterWhittaker
In Canada, we called them badges, or at least that's what I remember: Scouts
and Venturers were a long time ago.

But, yeah, that was exactly my confusion too. I was expecting really bizarre
"diff -c" output....

