First, briefly: Another international levy that could be a win-win-win (for all except oligarchs... and a titan exporter) ... pushed by among others Emanuel Macron, would be a shipping emissions tax that could raise about $100 Billion while helping Biden to encourage the already underway resurrection of U.S. home-based manufacturing. Oh, and helping save the planet. (Also encouraging development of wind-assisted freighters!)
Somewhat related: a recent NYT article by David Leonhardt talks about "...the class inversion of American politics. "Most professionals now vote for Democrats, which is a stark change from past decades. Most working-class voters vote Republican, partly because they see Democrats as an elite party dominated by socially liberal and secular college graduates."
And yes, that reverses the Roosevelt-era social contract that Made America Great. The essence of today's MAGA movement is now hostility toward almost all professions that deal in 'facts' - toward nerds and "Hi-IQ stupid people" - now including even the FBI/intel/military officer corps and civil servants who won the Cold War and the War on Terror.
Hatred of nerds is a theme that's far more central to the movement than racism, fluxing openly and without let-up through every neo-confederate narrative about snooty-pushy-intellectual-elites...
== Threats and more ==
Regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine, I won't comment on today's sudden, active civil war between the Muscovy War Ministry and the Wagner mercenary army, except to note that is sounds a bit like 1917.
My main suggestion remains - as you might expect - polemical, to undermine support for this obscene war among the Russian people, the one constituency that could decisively end it.
I'd do that by demanding that a commission be formed to investigate all sides' claims and justifications. Including all the complete set of absurd cassus belli that Vlad used, to excuse his blatant aggression.
How to constitute such a thing, or make sure it has credibility?
I'd summon 500 Russians, randomly-chosen from old utility records. Offer a free, extensive and press-covered junket. To have them join 500 Ukrainians and Finns and 500 neutrals from all over the globe, in a go-anywhere, ask anything commission.
Okay, I can see you shaking your head, because obviously Putin would refuse...
... and that's the point! His refusal would penetrate, as an insult to average Russians! And yes, they'd hear of it. Today's version of despotic info-uniformity is not like the old days of hermetically-sealed iron curtains. It is imposed less by purely sealed censorship (though that exists somewhat) and more by masturbatory-circle-jerk rote-incantations (much like our own MAGA right and (yes) certain other U.S. non MAGA groups). Self-isolating Nuremberg rallies are terrible... and terribly effective. And yet... extremely simple news and memes do get through. And this one would be a doozy! And Vlad's cowardly refusal of such a simple Truth Commission Challenge would be harsh on him, revealing contempt for his own citizens.
But there is something even simpler. Dare Putin to create a video, making his case to the U.S. public for 30 minutes on Fox & MSNBC... in exchange for us getting to do the same with 30 minutes verifiably accessible to all RF citizens.
Again, he is guaranteed to refuse. And it is that refusal which will penetrate to Russians and smash the props from under him.
Though who knows if this suggestion is already rendered obsolete by fast-moving events.
== Actually notice the Dems' Very Good Year ==
Despite infighting, 2021-2022 was a surprisingly productive two years for Democrats.
Truly epic legislation shifted the U.S. from one utterly failed method of ‘economic stimulation’ - under the Bushes and Trump - to another method that blatantly worked. Shifting from roughly $10 trillions in “Supply Side” tax grifts for aristocracy (that never once delivered even a single promised benefit, across 30 years of experiments), to about $5 trillions that included tax reforms to pay for it all… including (at long last) infrastructure repairs and insourcing major manufacturing back to the U.S.
Let's reiterate that last bit. Manufacturing is moving back to U.S. shores, in a huge wave. And cause/effect is profoundly clear. Democrats did that.
The part of those Pelosi bills that the oligarchy hated most? $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service to hire new agents, modernize its technology, audit the wealthy and more. Crippling the IRS has been a top Republican priority for four decades, allowing not just American but world oligarchies to run wild. Visit any MAGA/Foxite site and you’ll find stoked-up fury at both the IRS and FBI, with screeches that agents will focus on the middle class.
Bets? Right now… let's do wagers with major stakes over who the zillionaire talking heads at Fox fear will be audited?
This is why House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and most of the Republicans in the House 'caved' to settle the recent debt limit crisis. They got a sop to show to the oligarch masters, cutting $10 billion from the IRS. Though that money over ten years can be made up by getting other agencies to help with the desperately-needed software upgrades, leaving those new agents still free to go after the Cayman accounts of cheater-traitors.
Note. Already metrics of IRS service to the public, including help line wait times, have improved hugely.
“Democrats hammer GOP plan to impose national sales tax, abolish IRS.” Oh they are back with this garbage. The Republican plan would do away with income, payroll, estate and gift taxes, and instead impose a 23 percent national sales tax. Across the board, there are no aspects to the GOP plan that don’t grovel before world oligarchy, the would-be feudal lords in the 0.001%, who Adam Smith, Tom Paine and the American Founders rebelled against, then Lincoln & Douglass, then the Greatest Generation who adored FDR for good reasons.
Nothing could better prove the IQ decline of world aristocracy, than their listening to sycophant flatterers and building prepper hidey-holes, and now this doubling-down on their war vs. a modernity that gave them everything.
Old Joe Kennedy supported the Rooseveltean Compact for a simple, obvious reason: “I’d rather half my wealth be taxed to raise up a contented middle class, than lose it all to revolution.”
Oligarchs should heed Old Joe, or learn the word “tumbrels.”
154 comments:
I don't think we have much to fear from deep web type AIs just yet. Even the latest ChatGPT iterations still have a LOT of human manpower going on behind the scenes pruning and selecting content to make their dialogue even remotely sensible.
A problem we should start working to future proof against? Sure. But deep web assassination-ordering AI aren't quite here yet, I think.
The current issues are the automated buy-sell AI stuff you've been talking about for years, and the total shakeup of every industry and learning standard that relies on monotonous, formulaic word generation.
I can't help but laugh at all the stir being made over ChatGPT being used to write formulaic high school and college papers that the teachers and professors themselves don't actually read ... Maybe there is a market for smart AI to help screen those papers?
On the Russian Civil War, the discord server I've got for my story community was following it pretty closely as it developed (and enjoying much popcorn ongoing the way). The suddenly negotiated end is just weird, but honestly no weirder than anything else involving the whole situation. We'll see if the negotiated end of Prigozhins coup stays ended, and if Prigozhin actually survives the aftermath.
It is hilarious, though, that Wagners thunder run to Moscow fit the exact narrative that the Russians claimed would happen in their original 3-day push to Kyiv at the start of the war, except Wagner did it in half the time.
Has anyone hear commented much on the Titan sub disaster? The more the details come out about it, the more I am struck by both the sheer hilarity if the whole mess, and utter horror at their total abhorrence of any kind of real safety standards.
I've got a course coming up next month where I'll be teaching prospective submarine Quality Assuance Officers (its a course they have to go thru to become a QAO), and I'm gathering up all the details I can to lay it all out at the beginning of the class to hammer home why we we do the things we do the way we do them when it comes to submarine Quality Assurance and the SUBSAFE program. The Titan submarine disaster is almost a textbook cartoon example of why those programs all exist.
Always a plaeasure when Ilithi Dragon drops by.
The tradition of quality control in the US military... including after-action criticism sessions that actually (against all cynical views of human nature) encourage NCOs and lieutenants to speak up... is a testament to my hero George Marshall - plus Ernest King - who locked it in... and then to 80 years (!) of subsequent devotion, much of it sustained by a much maligned Congress. Among the US heroes of our era, Adm. Mullen and Gen Milley certainly pushed to keep that cvulture alive.
We are seeing results in this war, as every weapons system thus procured appears to work as well or better than expected and we are getting our money's worth. In fact, the training/intel/systems info we are getting now is worth billions. (I feel just a little guilty benefiting from brave AFU guys' sacrifices. But only a little.) Certainly another major rivel to the east is daunted. Guam is more safe with every pinpoint HIMARS & Sorm Shadow hit.
But what do I know.
When Wagner was marching on Moscow, that parallel was less in mind than Russian troops coming home en masse from the German front in 1917. That terrified "ex" Leninist Putin, I promise.
Ilithi please email me. I'd like an update on your novel. Have any of the rest of you read it? Way cool.
John Sweeney (and doubtless others) noted that Prighozin drove from Rostov nearly to Moscow without *any* resistance. Even smoother than Napoleon's trip from Elba to Paris.
Meanwhile, Putin's jet went for a spin.
I think that shouts the same message as Putin not allowing a gathering.
Lukashenko also went flying, but does now have the look of a peace broker. We'll see how the 'defenestroika' plays out.
Subs: screwing your screen mounts directly into a no-tolerance hull!?
Were these guys part of a suicide cult?
A negotiated end makes Putin look weak, so I don’t see how it can end here. I really don’t.
Tea anyone?
Putin *is* looking weak, full stop.
Still, fire up the gramofon. There may be time for a slow defenestroika.
One would have to be incredibly naive in order to credit a new Russian Civil War & the recent exchanges between Putin, Prigozhin and Lukashenko at face value.
So, are we now supposed to believe that (1) former friends & allies Putin & Prigozhin are now the bitterest of enemies, but (2) Putin & Lukashenko remain great friends & allies, all while (3) Lukashenko offers friendly aid to his great friend Prigozhin & Putin's bitter enemy ?
As Sun Tzu said: All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away..
Aside from NATO & Ukraine, I suspect that Lukashenko is the main target of this deception, as Lukashenko has always been Putin's fair weather friend, elsewise he wouldn't dare offer sanctuary to Prigozhin, Putin's attack dog, bitter enemy & current trojan horse.
https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/89276#:~:text=Despite%20Belarus's%20newfound%20isolation%2C%20Russia,embattled%20and%20already%20indebted%20Lukashenko.
My predictions? Lukashenko is toast and Belarus will soon be part of the Russian Federation. Then, Ukraine will face a two-front war.
More on the inverted social contract later.
Best
I don't understand the deal that has been made. In effect it gets Prigozhin out of Wagner, puts Wagner under the Russian command - (which won't end well) and relocates Prigozhin to Minsk (WTF)? I have seen some speculation that Progozhin is actually a Putin loyalist and felt threatened by his own troops - well that threat surely remains. Who are the Wagner troops loyal to? And what is Progozhin going to do in Minsk? Is he going to take over in Minsk eventually?
The timing of this is not a coincidence. The coup attempt was planned well in advance with the assistance of western intelligence under the assumption that ukrainian counter attack would succeed. Then Prighozin would use this as the justification for his coup under the pretext of removing the generals responsible, gaining support from disaffected soldiers and officers.
If the Ukrainians had succeeded in their offensive, Prighozins seizure of Rostov would have severed the flow of supplies and rendered the whole southern front untenable. Regime change would have happened.
The counterattack ran into the realities of modern war with a resounding splat. It failed. Ukraine and their NATO advisors found out that you cant thunder run an enemy that is actually ready for you. By then it was too late..the wheels were already turning. So Prighozin made a bizarre video ranting about ukrainian advances that never happened and many other things, and then faked a rocket attack to justify his march.
But he gained no support. The Russian governments ordered most of their soldiers at the checkpoints to stand down, backed off most of the their aircraft and fortified Moscow. They wanted to avoid a bloodbath.
Prighozin saw he didnt have support and called it off. He would have reached moscow, where his forces would have been greeted with artillery and tanks.
Now he will be exiled and Wagner will be purged and probably broken up. But we will see.
Note, the evil Putler ended this with *negotiation*, when he could have ended it with glidebombs
@Dirtnapninja:
I don't know what you're talking about with the Ukraine counter-offensive going splat.
Ukraine has yet to commit the majority of their forces into the attack. They've mostly been making probing attacks as well as smaller-scale, company- to battalion-sized unit attacks against key points along the Russian defense line. They haven't been trying to thunder run, they've been making focused, precision attacks that are cutting a whole in the Russian lines and driving a wedge.
They have also been doing a LOT of work the last few weeks to shape the larger battlefield with strikes behind Russian lines, focusing on their logistics infrastructure. About a week ago, they wiped out a theater ammo dump near melitople (sp), which in combination with the attacks they've made against the bridges and lines of supply Russia has into the region, basically knocked the Russian artillery in the region between Zhaporizia (sp) and Mariople (sp) down to whatever rounds they have on hand.
Russian defense strategy has been relying very heavily on massed artillery fire on advancing Ukrainians, and massed artillery shelling of evacuated Russian positions to both keep Ukrainians from fully occupying them, and to cover the retreat of Russian forces to secondary defense lines. Without that theater ammo dump, their artillery doesn't have the munitions to dump rounds like they have been, and with severely restricted resupply vectors, they've basically got a week or two left, with reduced rate of fire, before they're out of ammo.
That also severely undermines the Russian defense plan, because Ukraine will see more success, and fewer Russian troops will escape to man deeper defense lines, which leaves them even weaker.
A lot of it is still speculation at this point, and Ukraine has kept their opsec very much on point through this offensive, but I'm seeing reliable sources say the Russians have about two weeks left before their defense collapses due to their extensive reliance on artillery, and the lack of artillery shells.
Combine that with the former lake bed around the dnipro drying up, and Ukraine has massive new front line that the Russians have not dug in along.
I don't expect to see another kharkiv/kherson bait-and-switch type thunder run, but when the Ukrainians finish shaping and setting the field and actually commit their full forces to the counter offensive, I expect to see a major collapse of the Russian defenses in southern Ukraine.
@IlithiDragon,
You may not know that DJN pops up regularly to troll us with pro-Putin, anti-US talking points which events of the next few hours/days handily disprove.
Have fun if you will, but...mud-wrestle...pig...
@llithidragon
Ukraine has yet to even reach the first line of defense. Russian defensive doctrine calls for a 10-20 km buffer zone between the first contiguous line and enemy lines. In this zone the Russians conduct a flexible defence. When they encounter a determined attack, they pull back to higher ground, hammer with artillery, then counterattack
This where the Ukrainians are stuck. They havent reached the Surovikin line.
The Ukrainians didnt use the sort of equipment you'd send on a probing attack, they sent their most modern leopards and their most westernised brigade. This was intended to break through, not probe. The initial attack was directed at a mobilised formation that had morale issues in the past. The assumption was this unit would break on contact, allowing Ukraine to pour in reserves.
Except that did not happen. The formation held tight.
Ironically, it may be the NATO training that's contributing to their issues. NATO doctrine and training assumes air dominance and is tuned to fight engagements on the company level. No NATO country has any experience now operating at brigade level and higher against a mechanised foe.
The result was the Ukrainians were sending a few companies at a time, in waves because they could not coordinate anything larger.
Lacking artillery and w/o aerial power to suppress enemy defenses, they ran into minefields and got smashed by artillery and drones.
Ukraine has no chance of breaking the southern defenses with what they have. Russia has 3-5 lines of contiguous fortifications, overwhelming artillery dominance and with the elimination of Ukraines SAMS, a growing aerial superiority.
In addition, Russia has 3 entirely new and fully equipped army corps that are nearly ready to commit. Thats in excess of 200,000 men.
It is almost funny to see these ruble whores spin their tales; in the end, there is a fact that none of these people can discount:
While the 2016 putsch in Turkey led to massive civilian resistance and support for the president, nothing likewise is to be seen in Russia. There have been even voices that supported Prighozhin in his stated attempt to clean up the Kremlin.
Yet, none of these factions had the support of the civilian society, because it is, essentially, crushed. And you cannot wage a civil war if not at least parts of your society declare themselves to a revolting camp or the state.
The majority of Russians have become apolitical, only looking for themselves to survive in a increasingly oppressive regime. Sure, some minds are still resisting, and some sincerely believe what state propaganda tells them, but the majority has withdrawn from any form of political discourse, averting the gaze, their spirits crushed, their citizen virtues suffocated by the iron grip of oppression.
All those soldiers that are pressed now into service, by draconian laws and at gun point, are from that exact population with a crushed spirit, with a broken fighting morale. Add in that they don't get any type of professional training, have a constantly incompetent, drunken and brutal leadership, which is probably likely to endure (though no one knows what agreements were made during the deal).
So, even if the numbers named above were even half true, they are meaningless, because broken morale, desastrous leadership, laughable tactics, ruineous strategies, lack of combat experience and training, supply problems, inferior tech all factor those numbers down.
It is just 200.000 additional young men led to the slaughterhouse, in addition to the 100K -200K people that already have lost their life, plus 500K-1 million Russians having fled The Motherland in fear of persecution or proscription.
In addition, now the whole world knows how you can deal with Vladimir Putin, how you "negotiate" with him: Aim a gun at his head, target himself (and not his cronies or the soldiers or his people he happily sacrifices) and his power base, and you get what you want.
He has commited the cardinal sin in Russia for any leader: He appeared weak. He let the musicians advance uncontested, he referenced 1917 (bad mistake!), he fled Moskov, he made a deal proposed by a vassal with a person he called a traitor hours ago, and he pardoned an armed rebel that cost him at least half a dozen aircrafts and much of his dignity.
I don't even try to imagine what effect THAT will have on civilian and military morale.
President Zelenskyy:
"I need ammunition, not a ride!"
Vladimir Putin:
"I hear St. Petersburg is nice this time of year."
'Prigozhin appears to have expected more forces to defect to Wager than happened. Some did. Most just pulled bavk out of his way and hunkered down. Psychologically it is similar to Putin’s expectation Urained would forld and Zelensky would flee, in those first 3 days. '
One of the greatest plagues of human nature – delusion – that manifests very often in despotic leaders (meaning 99% of human leaders for 6000 years) is to assume your enemies are cowards or fools. E.g. that the populace would fold in terror, if you bomb them. It didn’t happen in the London Blitz or bombing of Moscow, nor later in Berlin & Tokyo and Hanoi. Yet the Russian milbloggers and TV heads keep predicting it to result from the pinpricks they are giving Kiev.
There’s a lot of talk about Prigozhin’s ‘stunt’ being part of some convoluted maneuver FOR Putin.
Baloney.
Things he said about the war’s lie-pretexts, like Ukrainian ‘nazis’ and ‘Ukraine started it,’ cannot be unsaid. They undermine the very essence of ‘why are we here?’ And if there are later revolts, Prig has positioned himself well… if he survives windows and tea.
And yes, in order to survive, he may plan a bunch ofPotemkin attacks south through the Pripet Marshes from Belarus, to distract and to regain hero status and to live surrounded by his guys. That is VERY different than Lukashenko going all-in. If Luka does, Minsk will be taken in 36 hours by packs of Polish and Lithuanian girl scouts, assisted by revolting Belarussian officers.
Oh, an added Wagner factor. Apparently Wagner fighters are being offered either to be RF regulars or to go home. If thousands go home, even unarmed, they present real danger.
Ilithi, thanks for all the cogent observations.
Consider though that RF helicopters have been coming out with stronger tactics and causing much trouble. AFU guys need to sneak along their flight paths with stingers.
A couple of unknowns… will RF soldier defections take off? Ukraine has advertised widely their cushy prison camps.
The Lake bed is likely not dry yet for tanks but one wonders if there’ll be a race across with Max Max vehicles and choppers.
DNJN: “No NATO country has any experience now operating at brigade level and higher against a mechanised foe…”
Pleez tell tell that to Saddam.
As for the rest, please escrow wager stakes via a reliable law firm.
Der Oger, well said.
One factor I’ve seen only glancingly mentioned is the state of the RF junior officer corps. Junior cadets rushed to the front as lieutenants who soon realize they had better make friends with the grumpy men, fast. Very fast.
Yes! VP’s mention of 1917 was bizarre!
WHY would he do that???
Dr Brin:
Minsk will be taken in 36 hours by packs of Polish and Lithuanian girl scouts,
"A crippled newsie took it from him, but I made him give it back."
assisted by revolting Belarussian officers.
Damn, you make it hard not to swing at the easy ones. :)
Dr Brin:
As for the rest, please escrow wager stakes via a reliable law firm.
The assertions he's making will be disproven by reality (usually on a battlefield) before a lawyer could establish terms of the bet. I've often wondered--not just with this one guy--why trolls are often desperate to convince their audience that they--the audience--must be mistaken about something when the facts on the ground will all be known in weeks if not days or hours.
Yes! VP’s mention of 1917 was bizarre!
WHY would he do that???
My admittedly-amateur reading was that he was trying to say that he brokered a peaceful resolution so as not to repeat the carnage of their civil war.
Or, it might be something similar to Samuel Alito's statement in the Dobbs decision on the importance of respecting stare decisis.
David,
this is one of your best politically-oriented articles.
Yes! VP’s mention of 1917 was bizarre!
WHY would he do that???
Just a guess:
Maybe, with all this tsarist symbology he has wrapped himself in, he has really started to believe himself to be a neo-tsar; and used the symbology to remind the neo-boyars of his empire what would have happen to them if the rebellion succeeded and close the ranks.
Also, maybe he tried to create something of a "Stab-in-the-back-myth" to explain why the Invasion of Ukraine has failed and Russia might loose the War.
After all, from the tsarist perspective, it where those pesky ungrateful soldiers who rebelled and made this shameful Brest-Litovsk peace treaty.
Putin's prior reliance on falsehoods, disinformation & misinformation is so overt, blatant & egregious that only an intellectual could credit his sudden honesty and forthrightness about current circumstance.
"It's a Civil War, Insurrection, Rebellion", exclaims Putin, Prigozhin, Modern Pravda (RT) and a remarkably complicit Western Media, despite scant material evidence & the glaring absence of a single partisan casualty.
It's irrational, this temptation to always twist & interpret reality towards a desired goal or outcome, as it encourages the unwary to validate any falsehood which validates their preexisting belief system, even though the Liar's Paradox is irreducible.
This is also why discussions about Social Contract 'inversions' prove futile, as such arguments must always assume the continued existence of that which no longer exists in order to discuss its inversion or destruction.
I've absented myself from recent discussions here for the same reason, as no one... no matter how educated... is immune from such contagion.
Best
____
A War against the IRS, in the complete absence of material evidence or a single partisan casualty, is demonstrably imaginary & nonexistent, yet this falsehood is somehow 'true enough' to justify the recruitment of 87,000 new armed IRS agents to deal with this imaginary insurgency. I'll believe this whooper when a certain self-acknowledged 'tax insurgent' (who just plead guilty in federal court) is executed for treason.
Der Oger got it right (I think) when he answered...
>>>Yes! VP’s mention of 1917 was bizarre! WHY would he do that???
... with "Just a guess:
Maybe, with all this tsarist symbology he has wrapped himself in, he has really started to believe himself to be a neo-tsar;
Our patience with locumranch was stretched VERY thin... but we are also ever -returning to patience toward a prodigal son. In this case, with a sigh since he begins and persists with a strawman that ANYONE here credited VP with 'honesty"... um... are you on fentanyl man? But it goes on. STEP UP NOW fellah whether I can prove that the right has shrieked at the IRS and defunded it and - especially - passed coded directing it at middle class rather than rich cheats.
ARMED agents? OMG you said that?
Anyway, again, a standard long time bet is to compare ANY BUSINESS DAY of the Trump boys to Hunter B's entire life.
Oh the Rooseveltean Social Contract still exists and has always been the source of our greatness and strength. Despite savage efforts by oligarchs and their shills to costrate and lop off its limbs.
I have to be careful about watching old movies.
I just finished All the King's Men. At 1:31 into the movie, the narrator uttered these words about Willie Stark trying to save his governorship:
"He roared across the state, making speech after speech, and all of them adding up to the same thing: it's not me they're after, it's you."
The movie is from 1949, but the line sounded familiar, so I looked it up.
"I’m being indicted for you and I believe the "you" is more than 200 million people that love our country," Trump said.
I get this feeling he is using the movie as a blueprint for his Presidency. :D
AFR thanks. I'll share that.
I said:
I've often wondered--not just with this one guy--why trolls are often desperate to convince their audience that they--the audience--must be mistaken about something when the facts on the ground will all be known in weeks if not days or hours.
Maybe it's fortuitous that I've just recently begun a re-read of the Out of the Silent Planet trilogy. From the second chapter of Perelandra :
"By "they"--you mean the others? Our own eldila?"
"Of course. They've got wind of what's on hand..."
I interrupted him. "To tell you the truth, Ransom," I said, "I'm getting more worried every day about the whole business. It came into my head while I was on my way here--"
"Oh, they'll put all sorts of things into your head if you let them," said Ransom lightly. "The best plan is to take no notice and keep straight on. Don't try to answer them. They like drawing you into an interminable argument."
A.F. Rey:
I get this feeling he [Trump] is using the movie [ All the King's Men ] as a blueprint for his Presidency. :D
Movies, plural. He, along with Roger Stone and the late Saddam Hussein have all made clear at one time or another that they see The Godfather as a how-to manual.* Heck, Trump even had a video ad with himself in the role of Thanos, making Nancy Pelosi disappear with a snap of the fingers.
Cheetolini mistakenly believes that the lesson of The Godfather is that Don Corleone is an absoluter ruler who mercilessly enforces his will with an iron fist. In actuality, Don Vito rose to his power by trading loyalty for loyalty, a quality that the lord of Truth Social can't even begin to appreciate.
I've been reviving the punch line of a 1930s joke about FDR with the not-to-subtle implication of who I'm referring to:
"When the sonofabitch I'm looking for dies, it will be on the front page!"
Given recent events in a huge Eurasian country, it might well be true of a different antecedent first.
" I'm gathering up all the details I can to lay it all out at the beginning of the class to hammer home why we we do the things we do the way we do them when it comes to submarine Quality Assurance and the SUBSAFE program."
Hi Ilithi Dragon, I can speak to a bit more detail than the media has reported yet, as I'm connected to some of the folks involved in the situation. OceanGate had been warned by many people for years that they were on a dangerous path but the CEO Stockton Rush ignored these. The major, though not only, issue was that they had decided to make the hull of their submersible out of carbon fiber. Since carbon fiber doesn't deform in a predictable manner like metals do, no organization was going to class OceanGate's submersible. Stockton was fixated on using carbon fiber, as well as getting the vessel down to Titanic on a very fast, self-imposed time schedule. So he decided to completely ignore getting any classification, despite warnings from many others in the underwater expedition community.
@Larry Hart:
Ah, I see. Thanks. With your warning, and his hysterical response, I see what you're saying. If things were different, I might engage for fun, but I don't have the time nor energy to respond to that level of delusion.
@Mike Kelly:
Yeah, on the surface "carbon-fiber hull" sounds super cool and space-age, but applying more than five seconds of thought to it with even a rudimentary understanding of pressure physics, and the basic strengths and weakness of carbon fiber materials, it's easy to see why its a horrible material choice for that use case.
It also tracks with the core culture of "Safety Standards Interfere with Corporate Innovation" that he and his company maintained.
If there's any more details that you can provide, I'd be happy to have them. I can give you my email, if you'd prefer.
@Ilithi Dragon:
I believe Rush came from an aerospace background, so he was already enamored with carbon fiber. And he couldn't be dissuaded. And yeah, when someone is making vessels that will take people to over 4,000m depth says the industry is "obscenely" safe and that safety is stifling innovation, that's cause for concern.
The fact that in OceanGate's promotional material Rush brags about literally using Playstation controllers to pilot the subs would have already been enough for me to steer well clear of that company.
The specific details I know of are that he was rushing (excuse the pun...) too fast without adequate testing, and the use of carbon fiber for the hull, which everyone else knew was a terrible idea.
There was a letter signed by I think 30 people in the underwater exploration industry asking Rush to take the time to test properly and get classed/certified. This didn't convince him. Early on at the company an employee, a submersible pilot, warned about safety issue and was subsequently fired and then taken to court by OceanGate. I'm sure there will be litigation over this, and it's too bad Stockton Rush won't be there to face those who lost loved ones on that submersible.
Yeah, it is a classic case of ego and self-delusion overriding safety.
Here's the summary of issues I've got so far:
"Safety Standards interfere with Corporate Innovation."
CEO was obsessed with getting the Titan down to the Titanic on a very fast, self-imposed time schedule (false sense of urgency)
CEO fixated on using Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic composite material, despite engineering concerns.
CFRP composites great for tensile stress, not well suited to compression stress.
CFRP composites do not withstand cyclic stresses well.
CFRP composites do not deform in a predictable manner.
OceanGate used expired carbon fiber purchased from Boeing at cut pricing.
Refused to do testing/certification of the hull. Claimed testing of the composite hull "not possible" (DCV1 was tested to 16,500 PSI by PSU during design and construction before going to Challenger Deep)
Early on, an OceanGate submersible pilot warned about safety and was subsequently fired, then taken to court by OceanGate.
There was a letter signed by ~30 experts in the underwater exporation industry asking CEO to take the time to test properly and get classed/certified, and he ignored it.
Hull damaged on a previous operation.
Components inside mounted by bolts drilled into the pressure hull.
Viewing window not rated for depth. Only rated for 1300 meters. OceanGate refused to pay the money the supplier was asking for a viewing window rated to 4000 meters.
Frequent use of Commerical Off-The-Shelf (COTS) products and components for all systems.
No redundancy in critical systems.
Only way to drop ballast was to physically rock the boat to drop weighted pipes off hangars.
Sole communication system regularly failed.
That's a very good summary of all the issues, as far as I'm aware. And there was some additional correspondence over the years with Rush by folks in the industry warning him of the dangers of his path.
I do note that over the last couple days I've seen some folks connected to OceanGate angrily defending them, saying the issues being brought up were about the Titan prototype, not the version which just imploded. I don't know specifically about any of the other issues and whether they were addressed in the latest version, but definitely the rushing through things, lack of testing or getting classed, and using carbon fiber for the pressure hull all apply to every version of OceanGate's submersible.
I wonder if a sort of inverted design would have worked better with a CFRP material.
The tube design creates a lot of compression loading, which puts a lot of the strain on the bonding polymer, and is a big part of why CFRP is not great at handling compression forces (that and fibers don't typically have great compression resistance).
But what if the design was different, so that the strain put on the CFRP components was tensile, which is what they're really strong at?
Like, instead of a tube where all the force is compressive, what about a square shaped around a heavily reinforced metal frame, so that the strain on the CFRP panels would be more tensile in much the same way an aircraft wing is loaded?
Obviously, you'd still have all the other problems of CFRP material, but at least you'd be designing more to the material strength of CFRP.
They took a kid down in that thing.
Meanwhile, our kid Musk is demonstrating his ignorance of climate science on his new megaphone (unsurprising, considering who is underwriters are)
That's an interesting idea Ilithi Dragon, though I'm still not sure what would be driving the use of the carbon fiber components rather than a metal hull. It's not like these things need to be light and nimble through the water. If anything, being lighter with the same surface area should get the sub pushed around more by currents. I have much more experience with ROVs than submersibles, and the super light ones are impossible to control in a significant current.
But we're getting a bit above my head, as I'm not an engineer and don't know too much about actual sub design. I'm a marine geophysicist, and because I make maps of the seafloor and try to find things on the seafloor, I necessarily overlap with the submersibles crowd. There are only so many of us who go mucking about on the deep seafloor for non-commercial purposes, and so I know many of the players, including folks connected to OceanGate and their disagreements with the rest of that community. I'm currently on board a vessel with one of the guys who'd been warning Rush for a few years.
FWIW, 30 years ago I did a very short stint programming semi-autonomous ROV submersibles. The (sea) pressures, unknowns, and a scary NDA made me chicken out. Glad in retrospect.
DP quoting Tucker Carlson:
"Ask yourself this, he posited: “Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?"
That argument is as stupidly disingenuous as Samuel Alito denying that a seat on a private jet didn't constitute undue influence because the seat would have just been empty anyway.
Of course, Putin wouldn't call Tucker (or anyone) a racist. Neither would Hitler. That's not because the autocrats are more perceptive than we intolerant liberals. It's because they like racism, so they would never call it out as a bad thing. Jeffrey Epstein probably never called anyone a pedophile either.
The reason Putin hasn't threatened to get Carlson fired for disagreeing with him is that Carlson has never disagreed with him. What does he think Putin's reaction would be if Carlson did disagree with him?
@DP,
In case it's not clear, I was not taking issue with you--just with Tucker himself.
Logically equivalent to Carlson's inane questions:
“Has Hillary ever called me a deplorable? Has she threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with her? … Is she making fentanyl? Is she trying to snuff out democracy? Does she eat babies? These are fair questions – and the answer to all of them is no.”
Scott Manley mostly gives well-informed spaceflight updates. But he opines on the Titan mess. He calculates online that the implosion had the power of 50kg of TNT. He also weighed in on using carbon fiber in submersibles… that experts had warned CF strength declines amid repeated hi pressure cycles.
Now cue the conspiracy theories that they were sabotaged in order to stifle innovation. Or that the debris and ‘pop’ were to cover the sub’s kidnapping or swerve to another dimension.
“Only way to drop ballast was to physically rock the boat to drop weighted pipes off hangars.”
Of all the hugely stupid things you listed, this one takes the cake. Even though it was likely not the killer.
“it's too bad Stockton Rush won't be there to face those who lost loved ones on that submersible.”
Well, it’s arguable “too bad” or… not.
Mike Kelly glad you are here. This community has a wide range of expertise and elevated discussions (mostly!)
BTW do you have an opinion on manganese nodules and other ocean mining? Are they pervasive enough to be no big deal, environmentally? Would they solve our gap in elements needed for e-vehicles, rare earth, and other needs?
“People don't realized that the Russian economy IS organized crime and organized crime IS the Russian economy.”
Dick Cheney knew, when he & Bush Jr sent over ‘advisors’ to help Yeltsin ‘privatize’ the Soviet economy into the hands of “ex” commissars backed by Cheney-pals in the West.
Alas, you fail in matters of SCALE with silly:
“I mean, could the American financial system survive s week without laundering cartel drug money?The Russians use Wagner, we use Blackwater mercs for dirty deeds over seas.”
Nah. Those phenomena exist and are shameful... and minuscule re scale.
“In short, MAGA GOP loves and worships Putin because the want America to become just like Putin's Russia - racist, homophobic, misogynist, anti-Semitic, authoritarian dictatorship operating behind the façade of a sham democracy.”
It is true that maybe 10% of MAGAs want that… a vicious mob riled up by anti enlightenment oligarchs.
But you do us no service by lumping. A majority of regular republicans do not think of themselves as racist (though they have prejudices). Indeed, screaming “racist!” at them makes them dig in their heels. It is among the spectacular stupidity-tactics of our own side’s crazy 10%.
Dr. Brin, with all do respect, I believe that you underestimate the importance of cartel money laundering to the the American and International financial system.
Well it turns out that the American financial industry relies on Cartel drug money for its very existence.
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims
Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor
Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico-drug-gangs
How a big US bank laundered billions from Mexico's murderous drug gangs
As the violence spread, billions of dollars of cartel cash began to seep into the global financial system. But a special investigation by the Observer reveals how the increasingly frantic warnings of one London whistleblower were ignored
https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/03/20/291934724/awash-in-cash-drug-cartels-rely-on-big-banks-to-launder-profits
Awash In Cash, Drug Cartels Rely On Big Banks To Launder Profits
One key to the Sinaloa Cartel's success has been to use the global banking system to launder all this cash.
"It's very important for them to get that money into the banking system and do so with as little scrutiny as possible," says Jim Hayes, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations for the New York office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. He was lead agent in the 2012 case that revealed how Sinaloa money men used HSBC, one of the world's largest banks, as their private vault.
Dr. Brin:
re 10:30 AM yesterday:
<<
One of the greatest plagues of human nature – delusion – that manifests very often in despotic leaders (meaning 99% of human leaders for 6000 years) is to assume your enemies are cowards or fools.
>>
I reply:
If your dreams be of wealth and power
then just follow this simple rule:
you may think everyone is a coward
but don't think everyone is a fool!
Turning compression forces into tensile forces isn't difficult. We use a sandwich approach you've probably seen already with cardboard boxes... which also happen to be fiber layup tech.
Two fiber layers separated by a space that is difficult to crush turns compression on one side into tension on the other. Much like beams being bent having compression on one side and tension on the other.
This works as long as the layer between the layers doesn't crush. Everything fails catastrophically when the middle layer collapses.
My team used to build stuff from carbon fiber meant for high altitude operation, so our constructs looked like beams for those engineers around here who remember their statics homework problems.
[Our usual failure mode didn't involve crushed middle layers, though. Torsion on a beam will make the middle layer ineffective too, but you aren't likely to run into that with tube-like subs.]
Carbon fiber designs face similar problems as metal hulls when it comes to pressure cycling. Just ask the people who build airplanes about microfractures.
The main point I'd make is that all these structures change properties QUICKLY when their shape changes. It's all very, very nonlinear.
------
My own team made some pretty dumb mistakes regarding carbon composites that led to loss of our vehicles. We didn't get anyone killed, but there were a couple of hairy experiences and injuries.
Ultimately, our errors boiled down to designers believing their designs too much. It is a good idea to listen to criticism and face design reviews. However, there are times when reviewers are just stuck on the past. Sometimes you have to fly and test a design to figure out who is right and hope no one gets hurt.
Re: MAGAts (my term), non-MAGAt Republicans, and racism:
1) IMHO, most people who are racist wouldn't call themselves racists and would probably deny that they are.
2) I think President Lyndon Johnson said very accurately (if not using our contemporary terminology) for his time and ours,
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” This is similar what I recently read an author say about MAGAts; something to the effect of: "Though they had little themselves, they would gladly give some of that up so others might have less."
"Components inside mounted by bolts drilled into the pressure hull."
That's got to be a contender for stupidest mistake out of all the stupid mistakes that OceanGate made.
@David Brin
"DNJN: “No NATO country has any experience now operating at brigade level and higher against a mechanised foe…”
Pleez tell tell that to Saddam."
There is no comparison at all between Iraq and What is going on in Ukraine.
Firstly the armies that stormed Iraq no longer exist. The USA has restructured its military around the GWOT, and that means alot of battalion and company level actions with unlimited artillery and air support against what is basically light infantry.
Secondly, the 2 campaigns against iraq were the modern equivalent of Victorian redcoats mowing down tribesmen with maxim guns. They were conducted against an enemy with no ability to counter the overwhelming advantages of the US army.
Now imagine of the USA could not fly its aircraft close to the battlefront, had to contend with a deeply entrenched enemy that had excellent anti-tank rockets and strong morale....well, we can get an idea on what would happen, by looking at the Lebanon war in 2006 when Hezbollah fought the IDF to a standstill.
Mass mechanised combined arms assaults against a sophisticated foe are hard to do and the institutional expertise to do them in the west has dwindled considerably.
Heh. The old “That doesn’t apply here!” Incantation.
Jeez some of you...
1. "There is no comparison at all between Iraq and What is going on in Ukraine." Baloney! Both were and are utterly Soviet armed, trained and doctrined. In both cases the soldiers were confused what they were supposed to be fighting for. Yes, RF made some adjustments afterwards. But the chief differences are:
1a: Years of focus on counter terrorism let us de-emphasize (but not forget) brigade combat.
1b: Air power is severely limited now. AFU and RF forces lack our stealth and - frankly - we may need to re-evaluate, too. One reason why we+NATO have benefited immensely while brave Ukrainians carry the actual fighting.
But air power has been replaced by counter-battery fire and all I can see is RF artillery getting smashed in vast quantities by almost untouched Ukrainian batteries.
"Now imagine of the USA could not fly its aircraft close to the battlefront, had to contend with a deeply entrenched enemy that had excellent anti-tank rockets and strong morale...." Yes I can imagine that. But... when is that gonna happen? It certainly is not the case now. PLEASE ESCROW WAGER STAKES!
---
DP... $326 billion... riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Jesus. OMG you perfectly illustrate how our left destroys and then incinerates down to neutron ash all their credibility by exaggeration. Dig it, son, the things you denounce like racism and drug money and corrupt Wall Street are real and terrible. You are SERVING THE ENEMY by screeching exaggerations.
"In Greece
Several right-wing parties walked away with some surprising — and troubling — wins."
Likewise Poland, Hungary, Austria... Putin and Erdogan discovered the liberal -leftists could be destroyed politically by flooding those countries with refugeees. The MAGA-connected rulers of Guatemala+Honduras etc are doing it to us. And our left is SO damned stoopid they cannot bring themselves to see how purist dogma leads them to spring the trap.
If you want a better world, you must have political POWER! That means prioritizing and carefully adjusting tactics. AOC and Bernie know this. But too many of our lefties are simply flat-out morons who do our side no good at all. In effect, they are tools of the confederacy/oligarchy.
$326 billion my shiny metal....
Keith Halperin:
IMHO, most people who are racist wouldn't call themselves racists and would probably deny that they are.
Racists and sexists don't deny (among themselves) what they are. They deny that what they are deserves the negative connotations of the words. Thus, "I'm not a racist--I just believe that white people are a superior race." If you call them racist, they feel you are saying there is something arbitrary and capricious about their reasoning, which is the part that they are denying.
Same with "I'm not sexist. I just think men are superior to women." You and I might say that thinking men are superior to women is the very definition of sexist, but that's not what they're hearing. When you call them sexist, they perceive you saying that they are wrong about men being superior to women. And that wrongness is what they're denying.
My favorite is disgraced congressman Larry Craig's "I'm not gay. I just like having sex with other men."
DP I apologize for my language. I didn't mean you. These are positions many liberals feel they are required to exaggerate, in order to maintain cred. It does us harm.
LH alas,. I meant what I said. Most republicans GENUINELY don't 'feel' racist. They adore the blacks and vigorous women who are on their side and they are VASTLY less creeped-out by inter-racial marriage, now that Clarence Thomas etc...
. They ARE classist servants of oligarchy and they are biliously enraged toward nerds and yeah, they ARE racist in that bl;acks and vigorously political women need to press buttons in order to be 'good ones.' Absolutely!
But spewing at them as racists in general is simply not an effective tactic.
@ Larry: Thanks. I think there are many people who wouldn't even go that far (as being private racists). I'm thinking of the folks who say things like: "Haven't we done enough for THOSE PEOPLE?"
Also:
How Racist Are Republicans? Very
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/how-racist-are-republicans-very/
57 percent of Republicans believed that whites face “a lot of discrimination,” while just 52 percent believe that Blacks do. Among Democrats, 13 percent said whites encounter a lot of discrimination; 92 percent said Blacks do.
The euphemistic encapsulation of the above is that Republicans have consolidated the traditionalist vote. A somewhat clearer encapsulation is that the Republicans have become a rats’ nest of sexists and racists.
.................................
Just how racist is the MAGA movement? This survey measures it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/racism-survey-prri-maga-republicans/
It has long been understood that the MAGA movement is heavily dependent on White grievance and straight-up racism. (Hence Donald Trump’s refusal to disavow racist groups and his statement that there were “very fine people on both sides” in the violent clashes at the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville.)
Now, we have numbers to prove it.
................................
Also, let's talk about Republicns and "Christina Nationalism"
https://www.prri.org/research/a-christian-nation-understanding-the-threat-of-christian-nationalism-to-american-democracy-and-culture/
54% of Republicans identify either as as adherents (21%) or supporters (33%) of here defined as these statements:
* The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
* U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
* If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
* Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
* God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY: The majority of today's self-identified Republicans are NOT nice, polite, Mid-Western Eisenhauer Republicans that you could politely discuss politics at the neighborhood potluck.
Dr Brin:
But spewing at them as racists in general is simply not an effective tactic.
I'm not arguing against that. Sometimes, one can gently leave breadcrumbs to lead someone to conclude that he's been thinking wrongly, if the person is open to that. Haranguing rarely gets the job done, though. And for the out-and-proud deplorables, nothing will help.
Most republicans GENUINELY don't 'feel' racist. They adore the blacks and vigorous women who are on their side and they are VASTLY less creeped-out by inter-racial marriage, now that Clarence Thomas etc...
Here, though, I see the same dichotomy at work that allows them to count Jews on their team while at the same time agreeing with what they read in the Daily Stormer. They may not feel anti-Semitic (they love Israel, after all), but somehow, George Soros and international bankers and Hollywood are still the evil puppet masters behind all their problems.
Keith Halperin:
57 percent of Republicans believed that whites face “a lot of discrimination,” while just 52 percent believe that Blacks do. Among Democrats, 13 percent said whites encounter a lot of discrimination; 92 percent said Blacks do.
The Republicans who don't consider themselves racist would point to those same statistics and say, "Democrats think one group has been unfairly discriminated against, while we think a different group is being unfairly discriminated against. They're the real racists for favoring blacks over whites!"
Words like "racist" imply wrongdoing the same way that words like "rape" and "murder" do. You wouldn't call someone who kills in self-defense a murderer. Likewise, goes the reasoning, you shouldn't call someone who asserts true things to be racist, even if those true things make one race look better than others.
They equate "being treated as less than full citizens" with "no longer being treated as extra privileged citizens." The one was once done to blacks (two centuries ago and by Democrats at that) while the other is being done to whites even as we speak. So whites are the real victims. Since they hold that truth to be self-evident, they don't consider themselves to be doing anything wrong, and hence not racist.
Thanks, Larry. Someone may be sincere in their beliefs/delusions and still be wrong/deluded.
Also, it doesn't matter if they claim to be non-racist/sexist/homophobic/etc.- it's what would a person who is a member of those particular groups say about that person's words and/or actions...
Polls are taken with tons of salt. You can ask a series of questions that trigger answers to please the pollster or give a reflex hat sequentially come full circle. THe classic is age of the Earth... folks will answer BOTH 4 billion years and 6000.
Pollsters often mathify their findings with:
"Considered accurate to within 3%, 19 times out of 20"
Applying experience and common sense, people will then quickly nod and grant certainty to the findings. Neat trick.
Of course, that 20th time is where demons, unicorns, gamma ray bursts, bizarre FBI utterances, and tyrants lurk.
(No, I'm not trying to reinitiate a Boltzmann debate with Alfred Differ, or even Isaac Asimov for that matter.)
In the previous, Der Oger said...
Because every politician wants an additional term in office, and have a reflex that avoids them making decisions that could cost them votes
I think that one cannot necessarily fault them for this. Every politician - and every political party - wants to be elected, and wants to win votes. The question is always: where can they compromise in hopes of accomplishing things without compromising their values? This is not always an easy question to answer.
For example, polls in Germany show a majority in favor of a maximum speed limit. But the libertarians can and do block it, even if presented with the overwhelming strength of benefits that would provide.
I think that this is a different sort of problem. There are many examples of issues where the citizens of some state favour some policy (sometimes by a sizeable majority) without that policy being enacted. One can suggest that this has to do with corruption or some such (and it is perhaps not impossible that such is the case), but most commonly it is the result of the difference between strong and weak preferences.
That is, it can be the case that a majority of the population supports some policy - say: setting a maximum speed limit on motorways (in Germany), or setting some restrictions on firearms ownership (in the USA) - but that support is weak. The majority thinks it is a good idea, and will say so in public opinion surveys, but for the most part is not actively engaged in pushing for its enactment, and it will not play a large part in their voting decisions.
On the other hand, there may be opponents who are smaller in number, but whose support is strong. They are engaged in fighting that policy and a party's support or opposition to it will influence their vote.
The result is that parties (and politicians) end up much more attentive to the opinion of latter group than to the former.
Hi David, thanks for the welcome. I've been a lurker here for a number of years, so I do know that there is quite a varied group of knowledge and expertise here, and intelligent and civil discourse! It's actually the only place online where I read the comments. :)
As for ocean mining, like most things it's complicated and depends on how you choose to balance things. I've done two surveys for massive sulfides (the remnants of precipitate "chimneys" from hydrothermal vents) in the Bismarck Sea and one survey with test dredge operation for manganese (now called polymetallic) nodules in the CCZ (deep Pacific between Hawaii and Mexico). All three projects were for mining companies who at least claimed to want to collect metals/rare earths in a less destructive manner. The big advantage of both of these types of resources is that they both just sit at the seafloor surface, and so are relatively easy to just scoop up. No need for digging in and/or tunneling. So it's less destructive to the ecosystem as a whole. There is just no way to mine on terra firma non-destructively. So until we start mining asteroids, you'd be doing less damage on the whole with seafloor mining. And there is enough there to make a big difference for a while.
Now once you start mining the seafloor you're clearly going to disrupt some local ecosystems. And everyone knows now that there's lots we still don't know about the deep sea environment. But one thing I've been struck by in my career is just how much life there is in the deep ocean, where as a younger person I was taught it was a biological desert. I've seen lots of footage of the deep sea, and every single stationary item I've seen on the bottom has life on it. Sediment is mobile, so not much lives there. But if there's something solid on the bottom, whether rock or shipwreck or even garbage, there are critters living on it, and that brings others around. This is, I think, the major reason for a lot of the fauna in areas with manganese nodules. I'm not sure that the nodules themselves are a unique living space for most of those that live on or near them, though that's just my impression and I'm not a biologist. Most of the animals I've seen in the nodule patches of the CCZ look like typical deep sea denizens.
All of the mining interests that I know of so far are abiding by the Seabed Authority, who is granting specific plots in the CCZ to a number of different countries, but make them non-contiguous, in the attempt to allow the seafloor communities a place to survive while some patches get scooped up. Deep sea communities do seem to be quite adept at picking up shop and moving even long distances when resources dry up. We still don't know how (especially with hydrothermal vent communities), but they do it.
This is a super contentious issue, and I'm conflicted about it myself. There's more I could say, but I feel I've already been long-winded, and about a side topic.
Suffice it to say that I personally think we do need to be careful and continue to study the potential impacts, but deep sea mining should play a role in collecting resources.
@David Brin
"1. There is no comparison at all between Iraq and What is going on in Ukraine." Baloney! Both were and are utterly Soviet armed, trained and doctrined"
The Afghan army was also trained, equipped and doctrined by the USA and was quickly steamrolled by goatherders with rifles. Are you going to compare the two?
As for soviet training and doctrine?
The Arab army that had most thoroughly adopted and incorporated soviet training was the 1973 egyptian army that very nearly overran israel. The Soviets also trained the armies of North Korea that fought the west to a standstill in Korea and the armies of Cuba that performed well in Angola.
The armies of Iraq performed poorly for a variety of reasons and they had little to do with soviet doctrine and more to do with the fact that the sunni elite did not trust the shia majority and structured thier army accordingly.
"1a: Years of focus on counter terrorism let us de-emphasize (but not forget) brigade combat.
1b: Air power is severely limited now. AFU and RF forces lack our stealth and - frankly - we may need to re-evaluate, too. One reason why we+NATO have benefited immensely while brave Ukrainians carry the actual fighting."
The issue the Russians had at the beginning of the war was a poorly developed doctrine of air support. To the Russians, as long as the artillery can shoot, their air force is doing its job. The Russians have never grasped air power as thoroughly as we have and they lacked certain key systems as a result. One of those technologies was glide bombs kits, analogous to the American JDAM that can turn a very large dumb bomb into a guided missile that can be launched at great distances from the battlefront, allowing air support while inside your own SAM net.
That has been remedied.
"But air power has been replaced by counter-battery fire and all I can see is RF artillery getting smashed in vast quantities by almost untouched Ukrainian batteries."
Dont mistake carefully curated twitter videos for reality. The Russian advantage in artillery has *grown* during this conflict. Russian counterbattery is effective and they have far more of it.
In addition the Russians have built an entire counterbattery system around acoustic sensors that can calculate counterbattery fire by sound alone. There are no radar emissions for antiradition missiles to lock onto. (This same system is being adapted for AAM and passive radar systems that if they are perfected, will render conventional stealth obsolete.)
They also have the best ECM and EW systems in the world that have greatly reduced the efficiency of HIMARS as this war has gone on, giving them a growing advantage in rocket warfare.
Now Russia does have issues. The less centralised nature of NATO CinC means Ukrainian artillery commanders can respond much more rapidly, while Russian commanders are burdened with a more cumbersome chain of command. In moments of parity this can place Russians at a disadvantage in response times. But the Russians have far more artillery, artillery that is as accurate as its NATO counterparts and supported by immense quantities of drones.
"Now imagine of the USA could not fly its aircraft close to the battlefront, had to contend with a deeply entrenched enemy that had excellent anti-tank rockets and strong morale...." Yes I can imagine that. But... when is that gonna happen? It certainly is not the case now"
I am unsure what you mean. The Ukrainians taught the Russians this lesson, and now the Russians are teaching it to the Ukrainians. If NATO gets involved, they will find out as well.
Dr Brin redux:
I meant what I said. Most republicans GENUINELY don't 'feel' racist. They adore the blacks and vigorous women who are on their side and they are VASTLY less creeped-out by inter-racial marriage, now that Clarence Thomas etc...
They make exceptions for individuals on their side who give them credibility or who actually enact policies they like. That doesn't extend to the general case. I doubt most white Republicans who look the other way at Clarence Thomas's interracial marriage would do the same if their daughters were involved. And just because they forgive Trump any of his outrageous sins against women doesn't mean they'd be tolerant of that behavior in general. They still condemn "city folk" as evil for lesser crimes.
But spewing at them as racists in general is simply not an effective tactic.
I've already agreed. I wouldn't screech "Racist!" at them, because first of all, they'd beat me up. But beyond that, if they really are deplorable, they'd wear it as a badge of honor that a liberal doesn't like something about them. After all, it's water off a duck's back when they scream "Liberal!" at me.
@Mike K & Alfred D
I still think CFRP is a terrible choice for a submarine, especially one that will see those kinds of depths and pressure cycling and especially for a craft meant to be highly reusable.
But I can't help but wonder if a design that used CFRP but put the compression load on another material while the CFRP was arranged such that it mostly experienced tensile loading would have fared better...
Oh, and on the subject of US/NATO vs large scale national conflict, we have been shifting focus back to dealing with near-peer threats for over a decade.
The notion that the US had hyperfocused on insurgency for the last quarter century and has given up our capability of dealing with a first/second-world professional army is hilariously false.
We did partly fall into that trap, but US military officials recognized it a decade and a half ago, and we've been gearing ourselved and our allies back up for a big nation fight since.
Ukraine did highlight some areas in logistics, procurement, and supply that we need to improve on, but those are issues we identified very early on, almost a year and a half ago, and we've been working to correct those deficiencies since.
Woo-hoo! This makes it less likely that Trump cheats to win in 2024.
And who would have guessed from this supreme court?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/us/politics/supreme-court-state-legislature-elections.html
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a legal theory that would have radically reshaped how federal elections are conducted by giving state legislatures largely unchecked power to set all sorts of rules for federal elections and to draw congressional maps warped by partisan gerrymandering.
The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing the majority opinion. The Constitution, he said, “does not exempt state legislatures from the ordinary constraints imposed by state law.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.
...
Ok, that last sentence didn't surprise me. :)
@Ilithi Dragon,
Thank you for the informative antidote to the Mule's visi-sonor. Much appreciated.
James Cameron, Northern Ontario stock (like me) who made good (unlike me).
- 1st (AVATAR), 3rd (AVATAR2), 4th (TITANIC) all time highest grossing movies
- TITANIC (Best Picture, 1998) (I would have voted for THE POSTMAN)
- only ever solo dive to the Challenger Deep
- clearest argument against carbon fiber hulls I've heard
- I have a lot to say about TERMINATOR too, but it involves FORTH
@Larry Hart
Nice visi-sonor quip, sometimes your remind me of...
scidata:
Nice visi-sonor quip,
Trying to figure out the point of the gloom-and-doom predictions which never come true. All I can imagine is that we're supposed to become so dispirited that we just give up. Just like Terminus ahead of the Mule's invasion.
Not sure why it matters whether or not civilians posting on an obscure blog give up or not. Maybe they think we're influencers.
sometimes your remind me of...
While Asimov didn't drive my life's path the way it did for you, my first reading of the Foundation trilogy back in 1980 made an oversized impression. I can still remember where I was when reading certain sections of the books (including when I intuited the Mule's true identity).
Mike Kelly:
But one thing I've been struck by in my career is just how much life there is in the deep ocean, where as a younger person I was taught it was a biological desert. I've seen lots of footage of the deep sea, and every single stationary item I've seen on the bottom has life on it.
The realization of that is what changed my mind 180 degrees from thinking there is likely no life anywhere else in the universe to thinking that life--self-sustaining, reproducing systems anyway--are probably as common as hydrogen.
I don't think there are any other regulars here in the Chicago area, but the Canadian wildfire smoke has fully invaded down to the surface today. In the past few weeks, it has stayed in the upper atmosphere, but today, outside looks a lot like it did in Soylent Green.
Which might be fitting, as I believe the movie was set in 2022.
What Gregory Byshenk describes is called Minority Veto and at one level it is a GOOD thing. A pushy 51% should never dominate an outraged 49%. Better than “majority rule” is a sliding scale where that 51% must negotiate and modify the proposal - offering incentives to peel away 10% from an unhappy minority or 20% from an angry minority… or 40% from a truly pissed-off minority.
Today’s oligarchy pushes propaganda that the 60% liberal majority is a ‘mob’ that cannot be trusted (even though that better describes their MAGAs). And hence they are justified to cling to power through cheating.
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Mike Kelly great response! It makes me wonder though… might someone experiment with –
1 grabbing nodules individually/robotically for least disruption… and then…
2 SWAP IN a cage-like structure that provides far more habitat area than is taken away? A cheap iron frame made of old rebar in exchange for valuable polymetals that the locals don’t need or use. It shouldn’t take long to see if the locals like the deal.
-----
Ilithi is a guy who knows what’s up, militarily. What none of us sees is the likely HUNDREDS – possibly more – of NATO specialists and contractors scurrying about just outside of artillery range, in Ukraine, aiming instruments, taking readings, evaluating needed improvements, and examining the missiles Putin stupidly aims at civilians, in the dumb belief that his cruise missile pinpricks (the few that get through) will undermine their morale. (Tell that to the citizens of London, Hamburg, Moscow, Berlin, & Tokyo, during WWII… or Hanoi later…) Agressors always under-estimate human nature.
Drones and e-warfare methods are being updated rapidly… and NOT by the nation that sent most of its young engineers fleeing overseas. All that young talent is now working for us.
Alas dirtnapper keep serving up here falsehoods. I repeatedly demand he step up and backthem up with escrowed wager stakes! OMG these are screamers!
“The Afghan army was also trained, equipped and doctrined by the USA and was quickly steamrolled by goatherders with rifles. Are you going to compare the two?”
QUICKLY? We were there from 2002 to 2022…. 20 years during which several million girls and women got educations that they are now sharing with each other, in secret, while making plans. Staying there WAS stupid, in light of pure national self-interest, falling for a trap to expensively occupy the Land Empires go to die.” Only we (unlike the Soviets) did NOT die there. We simply (yawn) got tired of a poor allocation of resources. We now leave the task of fixing the men there in the hands of those women, when they feel ready.
“The Arab army that had most thoroughly adopted and incorporated soviet training was the 1973 egyptian army that very nearly overran israel.”
Seriously? The breaklthrough with water-hoses at the Suez Canal was actually brilliant and entirely Egyptian home made. They never told their Soviet ‘advisors. It won them respect. But within two days the Egyptian 2nd Army was surrounded and starving and sharon’s column was in sight of Cairo and Sadat was making panicky phone calls. It was on Washington’s demand that the Israelis backed off.
Criminy, the rest is jabbering ravings that this fellow would never back up for an outcomes-based wager.
The dirty nappy chappie does have a point about well entrenched militia with state of the art ant-tank missiles and high morale.
I wouldn't care to take on the UAF either.
@david Brin
"QUICKLY? We were there from 2002 to 2022…. 20 years during which several million girls and women got educations that they are now sharing with each other, in secret, while making plans. Staying there WAS stupid, in light of pure national self-interest, falling for a trap to expensively occupy the Land Empires go to die.” Only we (unlike the Soviets) did NOT die there. We simply (yawn) got tired of a poor allocation of resources. We now leave the task of fixing the men there in the hands of those women, when they feel ready."
This isnt about the Coalition vs the Taliban. This about the American trained Aghan Army vs the Taliban. That army lasted how long after the US pulled out? Thats right. Is this an indication of the weakness of US military doctrine? No. No more than the failures of the Iraqi military have much to do with Soviet Military doctrine. Or the failures of the American trained and equipped Saudis vs the Houthis for that matter.
(though I'd like to add that while the American trained Afghanistan army disintegrated within weeks after the pullout of the Americans, the Soviet trained Afghan army actually lasted three years)
"Seriously? The breakthrough with water-hoses at the Suez Canal was actually brilliant and entirely Egyptian home made. They never told their Soviet ‘advisors. It won them respect. But within two days the Egyptian 2nd Army was surrounded and starving and sharon’s column was in sight of Cairo and Sadat was making panicky phone calls. It was on Washington’s demand that the Israelis backed off."
You are confusing a strategem with operational doctrine.
I'm glad the court decided as they did, but really, how was this anything other than a "well, duh"? The supreme court by 6-3 agreed with me--that state legislatures don't have a mechanism for "deciding" anything other than the manner in which state constitutions interpreted by state courts establish them. The idea that they can somhow operate outside of their own state constitutional framework is absurd.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/opinion/scotus-saved-democracy.html
Or, to put it another way, the relevant provisions of the federal Constitution did not grant state legislatures independent powers that exempt them from the normal operations of state constitutional law. Justice Roberts cited previous Supreme Court authority rejecting the idea that the federal Constitution endows “the legislature of the state with power to enact laws in any manner other than that in which the Constitution of the state has provided that laws shall be enacted.”
I don't think there are any other regulars here in the Chicago area, but the Canadian wildfire smoke has fully invaded down to the surface today.
As someone who's spent three decades in southern Ontario, consider it revenge for the decades when most southern Ontario air pollution drifted in from American coal-fired power plants. :-)
“This about the American trained Aghan Army vs the Taliban. That army lasted how long after the US pulled out?”
pfeh. The “fall” of the Kabul regime a couple years ago was a tribal re-alignment, following standard Jirga patterns. Do you pay the slightest attention? The Taliban “victory” was overnight because the varied Afghan generals negotiated to become local warlords and grow beards, almost the very day that the US pulled out.
WHY do I engage this person who has NOT ONCE put forward an assertion that was true?
“You are confusing a strategem with operational doctrine.”
Soviet operational doctrine was exactly what the Israelis swiftly and easily crushed, starting ONE day after the Egyptians crossed the canal. You… know… nothing, sir.
Just in case you may have missed it, The Simpsons did a bit on putting the little baby Maggie in the Ayn Rand School for Tots for daycare. It makes references to a couple of old movies you'll recognize, but I think you'll enjoy the little asides about Ayn Rand scattered throughout the bit.
You can see it on YouTube here if you're curious:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wob10lOLWY
AFR yeah that one was fun.
Dr. Brin,
Re: people like DNN
Is there a market for posting this kind of stuff on web sites? Is there somewhere to submit examples of one's work in hopes of a contract? I could use some extra income, and this week I've decided the world is hell bound and handbasket carried anyway...
Pappenheimer
A.F. Rey:
The Simpsons did a bit on putting the little baby Maggie in the Ayn Rand School for Tots for daycare...
All that and the A Streetcar Named Desire musical. One of my favorites.
"I'm living in a cuckoo clock!"
Pappenheimer:
Is there a market for posting this kind of stuff on web sites?
There must be. What else makes sense?
Is there somewhere to submit examples of one's work in hopes of a contract? I could use some extra income,...
Jeez, any of us here including our host could probably match the style and really dive into character. I would pass along Kurt Vonnegut's warning from Mother Night
"You are who you pretend to be, so be careful what you pretend to be."
Ilithi Dragon,
I still think CFRP is a terrible choice for a submarine, especially one that will see those kinds of depths and pressure cycling and especially for a craft meant to be highly reusable.
I have to agree. I'd want to see it go through several pressure cycles and then be examined (likely destructively) for microfractures. I'd want to see inside and out for hull integrity and have lots of sensor data for each outing. THEN I'd build another using lessons learned and consider paying customers who had their affairs in order.
I've dealt with enough carbon fiber to strongly dislike the stuff even though it has fantastic properties. I've been stabbed by bits of it WAY too often and would probably want to keep my staff away from messing with it too. I've heard the special crunching and cracking it does as it begins to fail way to often as well. However, when it is used correctly the stuff is amazing.
Anyone thinking of using it for entrepreneurial efforts is advised to hire talent and do it right. It's like having a good machinist on the fabrication floor. They can save a team tons of wasted time and money if one listens to them. [My team did NOT do this. That's why I got stabbed so often.]
———
Oh, and on the subject of US/NATO vs large scale national conflict, we have been shifting focus back to dealing with near-peer threats for over a decade.
Heh. Yah. I'm not sure we have any actual peers, but we HAVE shifted back to nation-state threats capable of striking at real military assets. Mostly we've shifted back to a belief that some want to try their hand against us in the field.
Alfred, Ilithi Dragon is in the exact crosshairs of an utterly top US real asset. But I feel he is safer now that a certain would-be rival power sees how difficult it would be to cross a contested 90 mile strait.
--
Just after Putin launched his supposedly 'three day special military operation, Vladimir Sorokin - author of DAYOF THE OPRICHNIK - wrote a volcanically erudite denunciation in the Guardian: "If you listen to Putin’s speech announcing a “special operation”, America and Nato are mentioned more than Ukraine. Let us also recall his recent “ultimatum” to Nato. As such, his goal isn’t Ukraine, but western civilization, the hatred for which he lapped up in the black milk he drank from the KGB’s teat.
"Who’s to blame? Us. Russians. And we’ll now have to bear this guilt until Putin’s regime collapses. For it surely will collapse and the attack on a free Ukraine is the beginning of the end."
The younger Putin at least saw himself as part of a movement to end millennia of wretched rule by kings and feudal lords. Lenin and Stalin were utterly mistaken and ruthlessly rationalized so many horrors, but at least Putin saw himself as part of some kind of utopian project. The later version aims only to become the futurist Ivan-the-Terrible portrayed in Sorokin's novel. And, like so many other boringly banal/predictable tyrants, he rationalizes that we, in the Enlightenment Experiment, haven't the guts to stand up for humanity's future.
I will add a ref to Olaf Stapledon, whose LAST & FIRST MEN included riffs on a notion from the 1920s that was as much discussed then as Wells or Marx or the execrable Decline of the West. It was that nations/people had PERSONALITY TRAITS. And as far as that goes, I believe it. Certainly we Californians do!
Olaf relates that Brits and French folk were CYNICAL and that Germans and Russians were ROMANTIC. A notion borne out by their music(!) as well as their art and propensity for goose stepping marches. In Stapledon's tale, Brits and French wipe each other out and that leave no counterbalance for the romantics to fry most of the globe outside America, where the Religion of Energy thrives... till all the fossil fuels run out.
In our world, the romanticism of Germans appears to have been burned away, but that of the Japanese just went underground.
In America, our romantics tend to cluster and cause eruptions of Confederacy, a movement almost as romantic as Naziism.
--
Regarding the DNN types:
I have no specific knowledge of the local variant, but these types of people fall into 1 of 2 categories:
1. Russia propagandists who are specifically spewing Russian propaganda as part of the first or second phase of their standard propaganda strategy (Phase 1, Seeding; Phase 2, Harvesting; Phase 3, Amplification;)
2. They have been heavily duped by and completely bought into Russian propaganda.
Remember, Russia (and before it, the Soviet Union) successfully wielded global power by being a paper tiger that nobody dared directly question because they were backed by nuclear weapons. And they did it through global propaganda experts. They have a term for it, and I don't remember the Russian word (I'm sure Dr. Brin does, he's mentioned it before), but it basically means controlling your opponents by controlling the information available to them, and how they perceive that information.
You don't actually have to be a first-rate world power with unrivaled military strength if your enemy perceives you as such, or is willing to believe you are such.
And the requirements of what you actually maintain and what your opponents really perceive for you to wield global political power and influence go down even further if you've got a nuclear button that nobody wants to risk you pushing.
Russia has invested very heavily in the "Russia Stronk" meme that has been circulating for decades.
The idea of less sophisticated, but nearly as capable, and infinitely more rugged and reliable Russian equipment being far superior in an actual conflict to technologically sophisticated but technically complex, finnicky, and fragile Western equipment.
The idea of massed horde quantity being superior to technical and technological quality.
Etc. etc. etc.
The U.S. has spent the last 75 years taking Russia and the Soviet Union at face value and developing real, functional, and reliable counters to Russian claims about their equipment that meet or exceed them in capability and performance.
Russia has spent the last 75 years spitting out gimmicks to technically claim the biggest, fastest, largest, strongest, etc. of a specific thing at the cost of all practical combat capability, and while still only being able to do that specific thing once.
The U.S. has spent the last 75 years building and maintaining the largest and most powerful network of alliances in the history of the world.
Russia has spent the last 75 years strong-arming weaker nations under their thumb into a single conglomeration that already fell apart once.
The U.S. has spent the last 75 years pushing the bleeding edge of new technologies and capabilities, always managing to stay a step ahead of Russia's claimed capabilities.
Russia has spent the last 75 years desperately trying to catch up and copy U.S. technology, while shoehorning the same engine designed and built for the T-34 at the beginning of WWII into every tank they've built since.*
*The exception being the T-14 Armata, which they finally had to take a step forward from the old T-34 engine, and use a reverse-engineered engine they took from a captured Nazi prototype Tiger-I tank.
The U.S. has spent the last 75 years building a comprehensive, unified, and standardized system of training and doctrine that incorporates and shares lessons learned, best practices, and actively seeks improvements and recommendations from all levels, that is utilized across not just our entire armed forces, but also across the most powerful military alliance in the history of the world.
Russia has spent the last 75 years operating with no standardized doctrine or training command, with training standards and practices and operational doctrine left up to individual military districts, that don't just don't share lessons learned and best practices, but also actively compete against and undermine each other to save their own face and keep other military districts from looking better than them.
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The U.S. has spent the last 75+ years building the greatest global military logistical infrastructure and system, with standardized equipment and practices across dozens if not 100+ nations, in the history of the world, capable of projecting significant military power and resources anywhere in the world in a moment's notice.
Russia has spent the last 75+ years building a logistical system that relies entirely on their own internal rail network, and desperately struggles to supply a conflict 30 miles outside of their own borders.
Now, the U.S. is not perfect. We've made mistakes. And there are still things we could do better, that we should do better.
However, the amount of corruption, lower-level gaffing, general goofs, inefficiency, etc. in the U.S. military-industrial complex utterly pales in comparison to the systemic levels of corruption, nepotism, ineptitude, waste, fraud, abuse, and sheer Benny Hill styles of boondoggery that can be found in Russia.
The Nicholas Cage movie Lord of War is a goddamn documentary, and the only inaccuracies it has about corruption and fraud in the Russian military is that it significantly understates them.
The only reason the US hasn't already stepped in and slapped Russia down with total air dominance and airstriked every Russian military unit in Ukraine into the past tense is that big red nuclear button that nobody wants to risk being pushed. Even if 95% of their missiles probably wouldn't work.
David,
Yah. He's on the NUWC side of the shop if I recall right. I'm on the NSWC side as a contractor. I get to do mundane stuff so the other folks can train and prep for near-peer conflicts.
The sub folks are usually sticklers for prep and precision. One of my co-workers used to serve on a sub and could tell general stories about what it was like. Those stories helped me understand how the US Navy staffs equipment instead of equipping staff. It's an interesting distinction that helps make sense of a lot of Big Navy behaviors.
Alfred,
I'm active-duty Navy, qualified submarines. Currently on shore duty at a school house, doing instructor things.
} : = 8 )
Very nice run down, Ilithi Dragon. Since Putin kicked off his invasion of Ukraine I've been telling people that it was the biggest, stupidest mistake that he's ever made and that it will surely lead to his downfall, because in doing so he will be revealing to the whole world to see just how bad the Russian military is. With that one rash decision he has destroyed the image of a super power level military created by decades of Maskirovka. I think Russia will have trouble giving away their military equipment in the future, let alone selling it.
Russia hasn't had a government for quite awhile. They have a thugocracy that has been stealing the nations wealth, including military resources. Given that, and a GDP on par with Italy or New York, it really should be no surprise to anyone that the Russian military is a sham.
Agreed. This is why Biden was the only Democratic candidate who could have beaten Trump in 2020 and probably in 2024 as well.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Jun28-5.html
Why the Democrats Need Joe Biden
...
The upshot is that as Biden works hard to maintain his Joe Scranton image, and to steer a moderate, middle course, he is holding on to a constituency the Democrats badly need (i.e., noncollege whites), especially in the states of the upper Midwest and in the coastal South. At the same time, he is also striking a balance between the various factions of the party, and trying not to lean too far in any particular direction.
The result of the Biden approach, as we have seen, is that he does not excite a whole lot of people. Hence the anemic approval ratings and the desire by a sizable percentage of the Democratic base for some other—any other—candidate. But the flip side is that he also does not turn the stomach of too many potential Democratic voters. Compare that to Donald Trump, for whom nearly all voters are fanatically "in" or definitively "out." In such a circumstance, a Democrat who is "tolerable" is in a position to claim most of the anti-Trump vote. As we have written many times, an unenthusiastic vote counts just as much as one from someone who is fanatical about their candidate.
The time will presumably come when the current realignment of parties has advanced enough that noncollege whites are not essential to Democrats' chances on the national level. But that time isn't here yet, and the blue team does not seem to have another candidate who can keep all three of the key demos listed above on board. On some level, Biden is like the Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) of national politics—an artifact of a past era who is now sui generis. This may just be why potential challengers to Biden, like Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) took a pass on 2024—they see the same polls that Byler does
Hey, has anyone proposed the theory that the Wagner Group march on Moscow was a group of tourists who just wanted to visit Red Square and take selfies with Vladimir Putin?
As long as JB has those shades and that corvette, and he can walk down a ramp, drink a glass of water, and pronounce "United States" without dentures coming loose, he's unbeatable. A century hence, he may be called the savior of the American Experiment. History is a funny old duck.
Hey, has anyone proposed the theory that the Wagner Group march on Moscow was a group of tourists who just wanted to visit Red Square and take selfies with Vladimir Putin?
Snort.
Obviously not. Just as if the January 6 rioters had been protesting a Trump election they would have been hanging's-too-good-for-them traitors and seditionists, and your right-wing media would have been demanding mass executions.
Dr Brin:
THe classic is age of the Earth... folks will answer BOTH 4 billion years and 6000.
Likewise, the same people will lionize Osama Bin Laden for attacking the US while also asserting that the attack was orchestrated by 4000 Jews who stayed home that day.
Or they'll insist that the Jan 6 insurrectionists were just tourists visiting the Capitol, AND that they were BLM/Antifa rioters.
On that last subject...
Robert:
if the January 6 rioters had been protesting a Trump election they would have been hanging's-too-good-for-them traitors and seditionists, and your right-wing media would have been demanding mass executions.
If only there were a way to hypnotize the police and army and national guard into perceiving the insurrectionists as black. Our troubles would have been over rather quickly.
Ilithi Dragon referred to the institutionalized encouragement of critique in the US military, including after-action appraisal sessions wherein noncoms and lieutenants are encouraged to point out errors or flaws. IMHO this alone manifests a culture that defies one of the major traps of human nature, the tendency of authorities to crush critics saying things they don’t want to hear. I remain amazed that the method has worked for 80 years. With the (likely) exception of the moronically self-destructive era of the Vietnam War…
…which likely made the senior officer corps more determined than ever, to reinstate and amplify it.
Ilithi refers to logistics. The unsung heroes of the Ukraine War are the logistics folks. Certainly the cargo plane crews and mechanics but also those at the wharves and rails from Gdansk to the Ukrainian border.
All US officers on a career path are required to spend some time in procurement. And the quality of western gear has proved to be astonishingly high. This has to be daunting to a certain Rising Power.
I do believe Ilithi may under-rate the degree to which even Russian drone+electronic warfare plus anti-air techs have changed the battlefield, rendering air power at it’s lowest level of battlefield influence since before Guernica. (I have wondered why the AFU doesn’t use helicopters to leapfrng RF trenches in fog or rain, with solely instrument guidance. I suppose I was wrong about that.)
But the current warzone is crawling with western techs evaluating and testing revised tools & methods. And THAT fact, I believe, is what the RP finds most daunting, dashing all fantasies they had of a cross -strait invasion. And THAT is why I feel our Dragon friend may be relatively safe at his current, high-value asset billet.
Alfred I used to wonder about Seven Days In May scenarios – knowing that the Navy would always be on our side. I no longer have the slightest worry about the US Officer Corps. I do fret that Fox News plays all the time in the noncom ready rooms.
Darrell. The West’s nonlinearity leads despots to dangerous mistakes. If you aggress, you get “Munich” appeasements and tepid “sanctions”… until we get fed-up and shout “ENOUGH!” and then respond with overwhelming might. Putin’s problem is that he knows a little history… just enough to supply incantations… but only uses it to reinforce his prejudices.
Dr Brin:
Ilithi Dragon referred to the institutionalized encouragement of critique in the US military, including after-action appraisal sessions wherein noncoms and lieutenants are encouraged to point out errors or flaws. IMHO this alone manifests a culture that defies one of the major traps of human nature, the tendency of authorities to crush critics saying things they don’t want to hear.
When I first heard Malcolm Nance talk about the war in Ukraine, he mentioned a strategy session between US and Ukrainian military where the US people explained to the Ukrainians exactly what you described--the debriefing sessions where officers explain to each other and to their superiors what went wrong and how to correct it. The Ukrainians--who were still accustomed to Soviet methods--were dumfounded. They explained that "here", you keep information to yourself.
Sounds like they've learned since then.
@ Larry: "They explained that 'here', you keep information to yourself."
Not quite along these lines, but I recently heard a Russian proverb (which may or may not have been made-up): "The less you know, the better you sleep."
Keith,
There's a similar phrase I read in a book by a Kievan* - "Cheesemakers eat sausage and sausagemakers eat cheese".
Pappenheimer
*Anatoly Kuznetsov
I gather Ukrainians took to Western military training like ducks to water.
"I gather Ukrainians took to Western military training like ducks to water."
War can focus the mind. So can survival... and finally meeting adults.
A HUGE part of Russia's repeated failures is their complete and utter lack of standardized training and doctrine, or any method to share lessons learned, best practices, etc.
Each military district is responsible for setting training standards and doctrines for the units they provide. Those districts, and the units that come from them, also have strong incentives to not share information, intelligence, resources, tactics, techniques, procedures, lessons learned, best practices, etc. with other districts or units from other districts, because that could make the other district(s) look better than them, which affects funding, standing, etc. etc.
That's why Russian forces keep making the same, stupid mistakes over and over and over again, because Unit 1 will go in and do the stupid thing, and get eviscerated.
But they don't tell Unit 2, because if Unit 2 doesn't do the stupid thing, and does better, then Unit 1 will look bad.
So Unit 2 goes in and does the exact same stupid thing, and THEY get eviscerated. Sometimes even harder, because they're doing the same stupid thing over again.
And the process repeats for Unit 3, and Unit 4, and so-on.
The same thing applies if Unit 1 sees success. If they have a thing that works, they're not going to share it so that other units can do just as good or even better. So they keep that thing that works to themselves, and nobody else can capitalize on it before the Ukrainians adapt and counter it.
Then you have units that struggle to work together with each other, or coordinate with each other, because they don't have unit-level standardized doctrines, or tactics, or techniques, and none of the units are going to take the initiative and work together with each other to develop that stuff, because it might make the other guys look good.
There is SOME sharing, because boots on the ground talk and communicate with each other, and some stuff does get passed around on the grunt-level, but that only goes so far, especially in such a top-down organizational structure like the Russian armed forces.
In the US, we have massive command structures and hierarchies whose whole job is to establish standardized tactics, techniques, and procedures. Standardized doctrine and communication protocols, and standardized levels and standards of training so that everyone gets the same high-level and high-quality of training across the board. They also are responsible for collecting lessons learned and best practices from across the force, and distributing that knowledge, as well as incorporating it into new training.
The US Army has TRADOC, Training and Doctrine Command. The Air Force has AETC, Air Education Training Command. The Marines have TECOM, the Marine Corps Training and Education Command. The Navy has NETC, Naval Education and Training Center. These are HUGE commands, with a lot of subordinate commands. My schoolhouse is a detachment of a large schoolhouse, and that schoolhouse operates under the Submarine Learning Center, or SLC, which operates under NETC. There are separate learning centers/commands for surface ships, air commands, etc.
These are all very large institutions and commands whose sole job is to train their respective branches to the highest levels of knowledge, skill, and capability possible, and to distribute lessons learned and best practices to all levels, and to certify that deployable units meet required minimum standards of performance capability in order for them to deploy.
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Now, they're not perfect. Mistakes get made, things slip through the cracks, and you'll find idiots and assholes in these commands, just like in any group, but getting assigned to these commands is not random, and not just anyone can be given these billets. There are special, extra levels of screening required to be given an instructor billet, and performance in these billets is highly competitive, which means that the quality of individuals assigned to these commands, both in terms of knowledge and skills, and in terms of integrity, is well above average. You don't become an instructor unless you're a stand-out high-performer, and you don't return to instructor duty if you aren't a stand-out high-performer among other instructors.
Russia doesn't have anything like that, and that is a huge part of why they are wildly underperforming. Because the US and NATO have been training the Armed Forces of Ukraine since 2014.
I would even go so far as to say that it's a far greater disadvantage than any other technological or logistical disparity between Russia and the US/the West in general.
On the subject of the Titan submarine, here's a BBC News video that shows footage of some of the debris being craned off the recovery ship:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuPNh6NBhQM
So, I do want to correct myself from earlier on the Titan sub's ascent methods. They did have multiple redundant methods to return to the surface, one of which was physically rocking the sub to get weights to drop off of hooks, though that was not the primary method. They also had fusible links that would dissolve in seawater after so many hours that would automatically drop weight and return them to the surface after so many hours. They claimed 7, but in the video listing them all, I only counted 5.
That said, here is a new horrifying addition to the construction of the submarine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PUTbK5AqY8
THEY GLUED THE DAMN THING TOGETHER!!!
@#)!*$Y*#&YRE)E()!YR(&#$Y^#$Y^()!!*#)!*#&)!*&Y(&YE&)*@)
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
)(#!@#*&()#&()^((#^*)!#^*T*^%!~FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF
......
)(!@&#^!()^(%!^#(&#(!^@#(&!^(&#@^(&(((!@&#&^(
Wagers...
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02120-8?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
A 25-year science wager has come to an end. In 1998, neuroscientist Christof Koch bet philosopher David Chalmers that the mechanism by which the brain’s neurons produce consciousness would be discovered by 2023. Both scientists agreed publicly on 23 June, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in New York City, that it is an ongoing quest — and declared Chalmers the winner.
...
I wonder if the ASSC has anyone dabbling in really basic transistor behaviour. Nature created that mechanism at least once, and and quite possibly many more times. Also, neuroscientists are obsessed with brains (obviously). Neurons exist elsewhere too, the gut for example.
Ilithi, I have spoken several times at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. I know some of those trainers. The entire philosophy goes way back – though suppressed a bit, during Vietnam. It’s why our WWII fighter aces only reached the 30s in their scores…. Because guys like Bong got sent to the flight schools instead of staying at the front till they died, as done by the Germans and Japanese.
Re Titan, did they actually drill into the hull to mounts video screens?
Thing about neurons…. For every neuron there may be scores or even hundreds of flashy bits – synapses. And for every synapse there may be score or hundreds of tiny, murky, nonlinear ‘computational elements’ embedded in the cell or along the dendrites. It gets… big and complicated… real fast.
Hey, in my endless pursuit of "WWII porn", I was introduced to a 1942 movie I had never heard of before, Across The Pacific starring Humphrey Bogart. I believe it would have been made after Casablanca, and Bogart's character is also named Rick (though not Blaine) and at least in the trailer, he wears a hat and trench coat very similar to the iconic image from Casablanca. The movie also stars Mary Astor (from The Maltese Falcon) and Sydney Greenstreet (from both).
Haven't seen it yet, so I don't know how it compares to those other classics.
Speaking of electronics, neurons and the complexity of brains brings to mind two thoughts.
1) Many times researchers have discovered a behavior in an organism that seemed, as far as the best knowledge of the time, to require substantially more computation than the organism's brain could account for. This often lead to advances in hardware and software as it was eventually figured out, to one degree or another, how evolution had solved the problem with such limited resources. One of my favorite examples is the ability of jumping spiders to plan a complex route via visual observation and then to successfully traverse said route even when neither the route or the target are still in view.
2) Evolutionary design, a design process in which the design problem is set up in a virtual ecosystem that mimics biological evolution, has on occasion produced absurdly minimalist devices that do what they are supposed to do but that, at least initially, baffled the researchers. A good example of this is related in this article, On the Origin of Circuits.
A brief outline, a researcher wrote an evolutionary program to create a circuit that could distinguish between 1kHz and 10kHz tones, and gave it a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) comprised of just 100 gates to do it with. After 4K generations the FPGA reliably performed the task. They then upped the ante to distinguish between vocal “stop” and “go” commands. After a few hundred more generations it could reliably do so.
That's pretty cool, but the really cool part was figuring out how the device worked. I'll just quote from the article.
"Dr. Thompson peered inside his perfect offspring to gain insight into its methods, but what he found inside was baffling. The plucky chip was utilizing only thirty-seven of its one hundred logic gates, and most of them were arranged in a curious collection of feedback loops. Five individual logic cells were functionally disconnected from the rest— with no pathways that would allow them to influence the output— yet when the researcher disabled any one of them the chip lost its ability to discriminate the tones. Furthermore, the final program did not work reliably when it was loaded onto other FPGAs of the same type.
It seems that evolution had not merely selected the best code for the task, it had also advocated those programs which took advantage of the electromagnetic quirks of that specific microchip environment. The five separate logic cells were clearly crucial to the chip’s operation, but they were interacting with the main circuitry through some unorthodox method— most likely via the subtle magnetic fields that are created when electrons flow through circuitry, an effect known as magnetic flux. There was also evidence that the circuit was not relying solely on the transistors’ absolute ON and OFF positions like a typical chip; it was capitalizing upon analogue shades of gray along with the digital black and white."
There are still plenty of tricks for us to learn. Evolution is often (usually?) messy, wasteful and its designs are usually not optimal, but when it comes to "thinking outside the box" it's on a whole other level compared to humans. Of course the trick is that there isn't any thinking involved at all, just a few simple rules and lots of iterations.
Let me put this before you, gentlefolk:
The Titan implosion is real-life's answer to Ayn Rand's trainwreck of a trainwreck scene in "Atlas Shrugged". In both cases, the vehicle is doomed the moment it entered the tunnel or water. In both cases, those in charge were repeatedly warned of lethal danger by those in the know. In both cases, doom is wrought by one on board, a privileged idiot in deep denial. And in both cases, the doomed vehicle was filled with moochers.
Three differences. First, Rand sadistically gloated over the doom of the passengers, all of whom (she said) deserved to die; but Titan had a 19-year-old on board, there by accident. Second, the train was doomed due to collectivist buck-passing; but Titan was doomed due to libertarian cost-cutting. Third, the real-life disaster involved much cooler tech, and a much quicker death.
All the really interesting stuff happens during transitions between states. The exact moment that a pendulum changes direction. The virtual quarks popping in and out of existence inside a proton. The time between a transaction being committed and it being posted in a database. Phase changes of matter (eg melting and freezing). And my favourite, the vanishingly brief time when a transistor (usually a MOSFET) passes through the ohmic region (amplifier) into the saturation region (switch). Engineers strive to minimize, round off, or cancel out these transitions. Nature exploits them mindlessly. Poets exploit them intentionally (like Blake). Scientists seem ambivalent on the subject, and most other subjects too :)
Larry Hart
"You and I might say that thinking men are superior to women is the very definition of sexist, but that's not what they're hearing. When you call them sexist, they perceive you saying that they are wrong about men being superior to women. And that wrongness is what they're denying."
Larry, I think you are missing two things here:
1. When they say "superior" I hear immediately a question "at what"?
2. When they say "men are ... to women" I also hear a question "which men and which women"?
The problem is the generalization.
reason:
Larry, I think you are missing two things here:
I don't think I am missing anything. I'm trying to explain their position, not advocate it.
The problem is the generalization.
We see that as a problem--they do not. To quote a Monty Python sketch, "Llamas are larger than frogs." You don't have to ask which llamas and which frogs.
That's what we perceive as a problem. They do not.
scidata:
All the really interesting stuff happens during transitions between states.
Like between Russia and Ukraine, for example? :)
@Pappenheimer- thanks.
Re Titan, did they actually drill into the hull to mounts video screens?
That's what I read. Of course, there might have been an inner wall for such mounts, but I think there's now ample evidence that 1. narcissists don't think reality will ever bite them. 2. their confidence is contagious.
A metaphor for our times:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-03-17/this-tractor-runs-on-manure
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HEvo3e4jzU
Also a better use for methane.
@Tim: Re: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-03-17/this-tractor-runs-on-manurehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HEvo3e4jzU
Our apologies.
We're unable to find the
page you're looking for.
404. Page Not Found
@Keith Halperin,
Those are two separate links.
(Or am I missing a joke?)
Tony Fisk:
narcissists don't think reality will ever bite them
Remember Trump looking at the eclipse, just because no one tells him what not to do.
Paradoc. Among the several aspects of Rand that I point out here: https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/aynrand.html - that I am astonished to have seen nowhere else:
1. The absolutely amazing fact that human reproduction occurs - even implicitly - ONLY on two pages of Atlas Shrugged. The rest of her entire canon does not mention children or procreation at all.
2. The blatant fact that her entire 'philosophical arc' is Marxist to the bone. Sure, HERETICAL Marxism, in that she utterly rubs out the final proletarian phases and leaves things at the earlier phase of ultimate lordship of uber capitalists - and declares it to be good and permanent (without offspring or heirs.). But the rest is totally Marx.
3. ...many other things...
4. Trains. They were the top tech of her day making a connected world she despised. But above all she saw Railroads ruined by over-regulation that served the benefir of rich-fatass 'looters' and howled against them and especially vs the Interstate Commerce Commission ...
...and I do not recall EVER seeing a randian acknowledge that the ICC was canceled, erased by reformist legislation pushed by ... Democrats. They got what they were demanding above all else! And like hypocrites they could not even perceive the fact.
Ilithi Dragon,
Glue doesn't bother me. The stuff holding the fibers in place is an epoxy which a lot of people call 'glue' when trying to explain it to non-experts.
What matters is where the glue is. That determines what forces and stresses it sees. From the video it looks like it was a non-fiber bond between a titanium piece and the CF hull. There really isn't another way to bond to titanium.
I used to build truss structures for high altitude flights. The elements looked like the expensive poles you can buy for high performance kites, but getting them to come together in the truss involved aluminum 'tabs' glued to the ends of each pole.
1. A tab was a short piece of tube with one end mashed flat and then a hole was drilled through it. Aluminum was used because drilling on the pole shattered the fibers.
2. 'Gluing' the tabs on involved matching the inner diameters of the tubes to outer diameters of the poles with just enough clearance for the epoxy. Rough up the two surfaces and the epoxy essentially created a friction joint. The longer the non-mashed tube piece was the stronger the sheer strength was.
3. Aluminum tubing comes in a wide range of alloys. Some are really soft. Some are so brittle they crack almost as bad when mashed as the CF poles would. I played with different alloys in different parts of each truss to get them to bend where I wanted them to fail IF the vehicle was going to fail at all.
4. I also played with pole lengths and tab orientations to discourage certain modes of oscillation. These trusses flew on semi-rigid airships were the fundamental vibration periods were typically several seconds long while the load envelope's was about a minute long. I wasn't confident that the part of the team building the load envelope was thinking about perturbations, so I tried.
———
ALL of that was done with carbon fiber, various kinds of epoxy, and aluminum alloys. None of it had been tried the way we wanted to try it. NONE of it was ready to risk a person, though. It was dangerous enough trying to fill and launch it. 8)
------
The Coast Guard has convened a detailed inquiry, so this will eventually get sorted out. 8)
Dr. Brin,
Yes, they actually did drill holes into the pressure hull to mount screens and light bars. There are pictures and videos where you can see the mounting points that attach directly to the pressure hull via bolts. Two screens, each with a single mounting point, and two light bars, each with two mounting points.
I've been informed by a mechanical engineer friend of mine that gluing is the correct method of joining CFRP to metal, because drilling into it will drastically weaken the material (rofl ...), but I think this is just another reason why CFRP is a terrible choice for this application.
@Alfred:
Didn't see your post before I made mine.
I can understand why gluing is the way to go with bonding CFRP to metal, but that glue joint is going to see a lot of sheer stress perpendicular to the joint as the titanium end caps and the CFRP tube compress and flex in different ways, and to different degrees.
Add to that the cyclic stress of multiple dives, and you have a recipe for catastrophic joint failure.
Some glues are terrible under sheer (common super-glue shatters easily that way) while some are pretty decent. Some are even mildly flexible.
While I wouldn't be inclined to use CF for this application, I'd want to see the FEM analysis before saying it is a terrible idea in general. However, it's kinda obvious that one should not drill holes in a pressure vessel. Gluing stuff to it should also be done with care because the attachment point will have a different load on it. If one is pushing the limits of the material, even small imperfections in loads matter. My team lost a vehicle and endangered ourselves because we didn't respect these small things that can matter in extremes.
———
Take a simple, smooth balloon full of helium and let it go. It will wobble about as it rises though the air. If you have a long string attached to the tail of the balloon, it will still wobble and you'll see the string flick this way and that. Tiny air currents spill across the surface as it rises maybe creating lift and definitely changing drag at each small patch of area, but the currents aren't stable. Wobble, wobble. Try that with a small ribbed balloon and you get completely different behavior if the ribbing runs from head to tail.
One of our 'vehicles' involved a long truss with a few weather balloons attached. Not only did they wobble around, their wobbling became synchronized because the truss transferred energy between them. Before long the wobbling became pendulous, our truss experienced a LOT of torsion, and then it shattered at several locations… where we had small imperfections in load distribution. It was quite a sight to see. We gawked as it happened, but then had to run as large chunks of sharp, heavy stuff started falling out of the sky.
Nobody got hurt, but we were VERY motivated to apply our lessons learned to the next one.
———
Everyone seems to be beating up the builders of the sub right now, but I don't want to pile on. I'm too sympathetic. I sincerely hope they learn the lessons that must be learned when people get hurt or killed… and then continue to advance the field if they still have the courage to try.
Carbon Fiber - Glass Fiber Composites
I got involved in this sort of thing about 25 years ago
One of the surprising (to me) things I learned was just how very difficult it was to make a joint to Aluminium -a "good" joint would fail after a year or so
I you wanted a proper joint to aluminium you had to use some vey very specialized treatments of the Aluminium before making the joint
AeroSpace stuff
From my POV what that did was to encourage be to use steel parts bonded to the Aluminium - bit more weight but a much more reliable (and simpler) bonding process
Alfred Differ: but then had to run as large chunks of sharp, heavy stuff started falling out of the sky
Anyone here who never saw OCTOBER SKY (the Homer Hickam story) is missing out bigly. It was a 'prodiginous' peek at the rift-healing potential of amateur science.
https://www.manchin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/manchin-hosts-nasa-deputy-administrator-melroy-in-fairmont-west-virginia
Fun fact: I looked at the Wikipedia page for Fairmont State University (an outsider needs to do a wee bit of diligence before wading into American history). Turns out that one if its alumni was Herbert Morrison, the narrator of the famous Hindenburg disaster footage - "Oh the Humanity".
Alfred,
If OceanGate was just a company that had an experimental new product/material fail, I would regard this as a tragic loss of life that should be investigated so we can learn how to do better in the future, and nothing more.
However, comma, OceanGate is very much a laughing stock that deserves to be played as such at every turn.
I say that because of their systemic and deep-rooted cultural disregard for long-established safety principles and engineering practices, lessons that were very much learned the hard way, in blood.
And they didn't just disregard them, they openly mocked them and celebrated their own departure from them.
They noted that the vast majority of deaths in the submersible community were due to operator error, and used that as justification for skipping all of the stringent engineering practices and safety principles that made it that way.
"Safety standards interfere with corporate innovation" is a literal, direct quote from their website and from their late CEO. That was the core of their culture as a business, as engineers, and as submersible operators. Death is always a tragedy, but I have been steeped in the culture of the US Navy's QA and programs, and all of the lessons learned in blood that created them, and I have zero respect, and zero sympathy for them because of that.
They made the bed they are about to lie in, and they deserve every bit of it.
*QA and SUBSAFE programs
Ilithi Dragon:
And they didn't just disregard them, they openly mocked them and celebrated their own departure from them.
That's exactly what a lot of us hold against Elon Musk.
In case I'm too busy to remember tomorrow, Happy Canada Day to our Canadian friends.
I only know the day because 27 years ago tomorrow, my wife and I flew to Toronto for our honeymoon, and unintentionally found ourselves arriving on a major holiday.
I do not recall EVER seeing a randian acknowledge that the ICC was canceled, erased by reformist legislation pushed by ... Democrats. They got what they were demanding above all else! And like hypocrites they could not even perceive the fact.
Reminds me of the Beltline Protests in Calgary, which probably didn't hit the news south of the border. Weekly marches* to demand the lifting of vaccine mandates, more than a year after the vaccine mandates were lifted. It's like they aren't actually connected the same same world as the rest of us, and the outrage is just part of the fellowship they share with each other.
*Without permits. I find it a bit odd that left-wing protests without permits are disruptive and have the protesters charged, while right-wing protests without permits get police escorts. (Yes, sarcasm.)
And they didn't just disregard them, they openly mocked them and celebrated their own departure from them.
It's just "move fast and break things" in a more dangerous setting.
They noted that the vast majority of deaths in the submersible community were due to operator error, and used that as justification for skipping all of the stringent engineering practices and safety principles that made it that way.
The epidemiologists public health problem, all over again. Take measures to prevent an epidemic, and the lack of an epidemic is used by non-experts to claim that all the measures were an unnecessary expense.
Which logic is not used when arguing the necessity of business subsidies and bailouts. Gee, it's almost as if the business community has captured a chunk of our political system…
I'm not naive enough to think so, but I'd love to hear the legal reasoning as to why this decision doesn't also allow (say) Facebook or Twitter to refuse to host conservatives that they find offensive.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/30/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html
The Supreme Court on Friday sided with a web designer in Colorado who said she had a First Amendment right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages despite a state law that forbids discrimination against gay people.
In a 6 to 3 vote, split along ideological lines, the court held that the First Amendment prohibits Colorado from forcing a website designer to create expressive designs speaking messages with which the designer disagrees. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion.
@Tim: Re: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-03-17/this-tractor-runs-on-manurehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HEvo3e4jzU
I got an error message and was unable to open the link.
@Larry: Re: SCOTUS: The more out-of-touch with trending social opinion the Supreme Court becomes (and the more ethical scandals are revealed), the more it continues to delegitimizes itself in the eyes of the American people (which will hopefully allow for some meaningful reform before too long).
@Keith Halperin,
From what you're showing, you are treating two separate links as one. Try:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-03-17/this-tractor-runs-on-manure
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HEvo3e4jzU
The more out-of-touch with trending social opinion the Supreme Court becomes ...the more it continues to delegitimizes itself in the eyes of the American people...
You're more courteous than I am. I stopped capitalizing that institution's name long ago.
Larry Hart said...
""Ilithi Dragon:
And they didn't just disregard them, they openly mocked them and celebrated their own departure from them."
That's exactly what a lot of us hold against Elon Musk."
Do you mean the Twitter debacle?
Darrell E:
"That's exactly what a lot of us hold against Elon Musk."
Do you mean the Twitter debacle?
More generally, his attitude that instead of rewarding rule-followers, we should be rewarding rule-breakers, because they're the only ones who get things accomplished.
Okay, thanks.
@Darrell E,
This is what I meant. It's not about Musk, but it applies.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/opinion/titanic-titan-oceangate-innovation.html
...
In Mr. Rush’s telling, innovation was the province of maverick individuals, not stodgy legacy players and certainly not cumbersome government bureaucracies. Mr. Rush was perpetuating a myth — one that is particularly popular in Silicon Valley and among technology start-ups — that governments are just an obstacle and that innovation comes from bold trailblazers moving fast and breaking things.
That story is often wrong, and it was 100 percent wrong in this case.
...
moving fast and breaking things
I can understand the attitude that innovation requires risking the breaking of things on the way to a final product (though I would not included customers' lives as the things worth risking). That if you're too timid to risk anything going wrong, you will never accomplish anything.
But some people seem to have perverted that into a reverence for the breaking, as if breaking things was the desired result rather than a necessary step on the way.
I've got plenty of time to post today because someone thought doing a fail-over test on our development environment was a good idea. It's been down since yesterday afternoon. If "breaking things" was a goal, then mission: accomplished.
Oh, and unless one is really looking for it, it is impossible at reading speed to distinguish the American "aluminum" (al-LOO-muh-um) from the British/Canadian/Australian "aluminium" (al-you-MIN-ee-um).
Just sayin'
Bah. Elon only finalized the Twitter deal because if he didn't then the SEC was about to prosecute him. His oratory has fizzed out of control, sure. And he was 10 years premature with the silly self-driving feature. Still, his safety record and quality control are excellent.
Dr. Brin:
Some more about Ayn Rand's trainwreck scene:
What I found particularly wretched about that trainwreck of a scene was that she got this close to writing Literature, but at the last moment she whiffed and instead produced Propaganda.
The defining moment of failure was when the train entered the tunnel, and she switched from describing an infernal machine of incompetence, entitlement and buck-passing, to passing death sentences on human normality. To Rand, there were no Randian ubermenschen on that train, or even humans, only untermenschen meriting death by suffocation. Businessmen, weary travelers, a young mother and her child; kill them all, and God needn't sort them out, gimlet-eyed Judge Rand had already found them all wanting. Ultimately it was all to the good. How convenient!
No, no, no, that's not how to do writing! Hitchcock said that you've got to put the audience through it! Sure, the idiot bureaucrat doomed himself, and good riddance maybe, but evil does not just eradicate itself; it destroys the good as well. That's what makes it horrible. That's what makes it Literature! Horror tales aren't supposed to be comforting; they're supposed to be disturbing!
At the last moment, Rand flinched. She lacked a true artist's necessary ruthlessness. I, gimlet-eyed Judge Paradoctor, condemn Rand for her literary cowardice.
Dr. Brin,
Yeah. Since the original topic was the development of technology (OceanGate / Titan) I figured I'd ask Larry if that was also the context regarding his Musk comparison.
Larry,
If the context is SpaceX and Tesla, I think you probably haven't taken the time to verify the facts. I do think Musk suffers from a pretty serious case of "I'm so smart I know better than the experts even in fields in which I have little to no experience," which is pretty common among smart and successful people. But going by his record he is nothing at all like the delusional Titan sub owner when it comes to developing complex technology like subs, electric cars or rockets. Not remotely. Rather than spurn industry knowledge Musk finds the best industry experts he can to work for him. And he seems to take testing and safety quite seriously. Both statistically, i.e. actual real world data, and test results wise, government testing, Tesla cars are the safest cars made. If you are thinking about battery fires, definitely a bad thing, I recommend looking at rates of car fires among cars in general VS the rate of fires among Teslas. Hint, Tesla has a significantly lower rate. And SpaceX is the most reliable launch provider, both unmanned and manned, there is even though they are relatively new and have a launch cadence at least 10 times higher than anyone else.
Darrell E:
If the context is SpaceX and Tesla, I think you probably haven't taken the time to verify the facts.
No, I know very little about the origins of SpaceX and Tesla, and that wasn't what I had in mind. Mostly, I think, Elon's appearance on Bill Maher's show (which was the last one before the writers' strike hit). The way he seems to equate "Failure is how you learn," with "Failure is good, and the more the better."
Some of it was Maher's own sucking up, gushing over Musk as the only human being who is actually doing useful stuff.
Robert:
Reminds me of the Beltline Protests in Calgary, which probably didn't hit the news south of the border. Weekly marches* to demand the lifting of vaccine mandates, more than a year after the vaccine mandates were lifted.
That actually did make the news down here, as well as the fact the stated reasons for the protest made no sense. I'm guessing the rationale was not as much "We'll make life miserable until you do what we want," as "You once did something we didn't want, so we will make life miserable now in return." Maybe it works as a warning never to defy their wishes again.
Also, didn't it turn out that many of the "truckers" were actually Americans?
Paradoctor:
The defining moment of failure was when the train entered the tunnel, and she switched from describing an infernal machine of incompetence, entitlement and buck-passing, to passing death sentences on human normality. To Rand, there were no Randian ubermenschen on that train, or even humans, only untermenschen meriting death by suffocation.
I got the impression reading that scene that Rand was indicting the reader as well, authorsplaining that you--yes you reading this--are just as guilty as everyone else for sins like expecting a business devoted to moving passengers to accommodate its riders.
LH:
Take that, audience!
Larry Hart: Happy Canada Day to our Canadian friends
Thank you sir. Back in our heydays, my wife and I always had dinner on July 1 in the revolving restaurant high up in the CN Tower where we watched the fireworks from above. And we enjoyed annual World Series parades towards the end of those halcyon days.
scidata I once flew from Chicago to Indiana at 9pm on July 4. Wow! I got to see fireworks from above big cities, small towns and neighborhoods... all seemed to be trying to shoot us down!
onward
onward
@ Larry: Thanks- a "DOH" moment for me...
@ Darrell: Re:Tesla:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-placed-bottom-consumer-reports-reliability-rankings/"
Tesla was found to be one of the most unreliable brands in America, according to Consumer Reports’ annual reliability report.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/22/jd-power-initial-quality-study-2023-dodge-ram-top-tesla-volvo.html
Consumer Reports‘ annual reliability rankings have been released, and with data from 24 brands and over 300,000 vehicles, Tesla fell near the bottom (19/24) along with Mercedes-Benz, Jeep, Volkswagen, GMC, and Chevrolet. Electric vehicles overall also placed poorly, being the second least reliable category of vehicles. Hybrids/plugin hybrids, especially those from Toyota, were found to be the most reliable.
https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehicle-dependability-studyvds
Three Stellantis brands — Dodge, Ram and Alfa Romeo — topped this year’s quality rankings, while Volvo and EV makers Tesla and Polestar landed at the bottom of the list, with 257 and 313 problems per 100 vehicles, respectively.
(Fifth from the bottom- kh)
Tesla officially included for the first time: Tesla is included in the industry VDS calculation this year for the first time, with a score of 242 PP100. However, because Tesla does not allow J.D. Power access to owner information in the states where that permission is required by law, Tesla vehicles remain ineligible for awards.(So much for "transparency."
-kh)
This is the company of the same gentleman who plans to have 1M people on Mars by 2050.
"Bon voyage, folks!"
Duncan,
If I were doing it all again, I wouldn't use aluminum alloys at all. I was under time pressure to generate several hundred of the little tabs with only me as a source of regular labor. Tubes could be mashed flat in a vice or press, cut quickly with the band saw, and drilled quickly too. The longest part of the process involved waiting for the epoxy to set, so I built a few jigs to secure a dozen poles at a time. If I were doing it again, I'd wind a fitting on each end and skip bonding to metals completely, but that would require time and capital for the machines.
We spoke directly to the pole manufacturer in Mexico and got their factory rejects. They primarily sold to kite builders and golf club manufacturers, so cosmetics mattered. We told them we didn't care about appearances and a rough outer finish was quite all right. That choice cut our costs to about 25% because we took the reject they thought they'd never sell. I had to throw out about 2% of what they sent, but I got poles that didn't need a lot of work to provide a rough surface for the epoxy. No doubt if they'd figured out what we were actually doing, the asking price would have been a bit higher. 8)
———
scidata,
Bigly indeed. I get all warm and fuzzy with kids working amateur science and engineering projects. There is NOTHING like putting your hands on real stuff and turning into other stuff that performs. Even programming works when the pixel on the screen does what you told it to do. 8)
Ah… but it's even more fun when we do it without government and corporate oversight and money. There is a kind of freedom not found anywhere when we-do-things-ourselves. 8)
oops. Moving on.
One of the reasons that the Civil Service is distrusted is things like the EPA essentially banning ICE vehicles, gas stoves, and so on. The gas stove ban makes absolutely no sense. A typical gas stove is better than 80% efficient, burning natural gas in a combined cycle plant is the most efficient way to generate power and the very best of them about about 60% efficient. This is all part of https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-6-6-the-federal-war-against-your-lifestyle
Another reason is that they seem incapable of making reasonable trade-Offs https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2023-5-29-bureaucrats-completely-incapable-of-making-reasonable-trade-offs.
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