DayVectors

* 23 entries including: Joe Biden (series), generative AI arrives (series), heat pumps for Europe, ATACMS to Ukraine | end of no-compete clauses | Trump immunity, SpaceX Starship, evangelicals in decline | Ukraine funding passed, Palau OTH radar, pro-choice rules | FALLOUT video series | Feng Yujun on Putin's war, working e-scooter | rocket wrench | coal for hydrogen storage, US-Japan-China relations, Trump's bogus stock offering | ObamaCare is OK | Center has shifted Left, supernova & neutron star | extremophile anemones | cosmic dust on roofs, APPLE V USA, China & Russia banking issues | abortion-pill flap | bridge calamity.

[TUE 30 APR 24] HEAT PUMPS FOR EUROPE

* HEAT PUMPS FOR EUROPE: As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("France Wants To Replace Gas, Fuel Heaters With Heat Pumps", 26 September 2023) As part of a long-term environmental plan announced by President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, France plans to phase out its few remaining coal-fired power plants, encourage the French to ditch fossil-fuel vehicles for electric cars and promote heat pumps as the proper way to heat houses. French Environment Minister Christophe Bechu said in an interview: "Fighting climate change means first and foremost exiting from the use of fossil fuels, therefore we should have no more fuel heaters and much fewer gas heaters."

France is targeting a 55% reduction in net greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, baselined to 1990. Bechu said the government wants to boost national heat pump production so that France has the capacity to manufacture up to 1 million units per year, instead of importing heat pumps from Poland or China.

Bechu claimed that if the government could replace most of the nearly 3 million fuel heaters and about half of the 11 million gas heaters in France by 2030, it would be on track for a 55% reduction of its emissions. The government is not planning to ban fossil-fuel-fired heaters, instead focusing on incentives -- carrots not sticks. Heat pumps are more expensive than heaters, so the government plans to provide subsidies to ensure that the cost of a heat pump is not a burden for low-income families. France is heavily dependent on nuclear energy for generating electricity, meaning heat pumps would generate few emissions. France is also boosting renewable energy, notably geothermal energy.

* In the meantime, according to another article from REUTERS.com ("German Parliament Approves Plan To Replace Fossil-Fuel Heating Systems", 8 September 2023), the German Bundestag (parliament) has approved a comparable heating-systems plan. Getting there was difficult due to differences of opinion in the three-party ruling coalition under Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The legislation required that heating systems in new housing developments to be at least 65%-fuelled by renewable energy, starting in January 2024. It allows for existing heating systems to keep running and be repaired, with several-year transition periods before the new rules apply to older buildings. The plan as originally devised was more aggressive, leading to the controversy.

The bill provides government subsidies to help people update heating systems. By 2045, when Germany aims for net zero emissions of greenhouse gases, all heating systems must be switched to renewable energy sources. Katharina Droege, of the Green Party, told parliament that the bill is ...

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Alexander Dobrindt -- a member of the Center-Right Christian Social Union party -- was not so upbeat about the bill, saying it was unaffordable: "This bill is polarizing society." Dobrindt said the law should be junked. The unfortunate Scholz went public to apologize for the squabbling and said it would be toned down.

[ED: Clearly part of the rationale for the bill was the German effort to wean themselves from Russian gas. The three-party squabbling also reflects on Scholz's occasional waffling on supplying weapons to Ukraine.]

[MON 29 APR 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 17

DAYLOG MON 22 APR 24: The Senate is now going through the motions of passing the Ukraine / Israel / Taiwan funding bill, with arms about to flow to Ukraine again. One item that is being played up is the ATACMS missile, bigger than the GMLRS missiles that Ukraine has been using in quantity.

The ATACMS situation is clouded in ambiguity. The US has supplied some very early ATACMS to Ukraine; they have relatively short range and an inaccurate inertial guidance system, compensating for their lack of accuracy with a big cluster warhead. Later versions of the ATACMS missile add GPS guidance and have a smaller "unitary" warhead to considerably increase range. They have precision guidance and don't need the big cluster warhead. Older ATACMS have mostly been upgraded to this spec.

The first puzzle is: are there many old ATACMS with cluster warheads left that in good enough condition to be used? The second puzzle is that the Orcs are jamming GPS bigtime, and so the ATACMS with unitary warheads aren't accurate enough to be really dangerous any more. What could be the case is that the ATACMS being sent have been modernized with upgraded guidance systems of some sort -- which would help explain why it's taken so long to send them. OK, we will find out.

There is a race in progress now to get weapons, including many secret new weapons, to Ukraine. The Russians have been heavily committed to the battle, trying to get the advantage while the Ukrainians were weakened. If the Russians fail now, they won't get another chance.

DAYLOG TUE 23 APR 24: There's been talk for years of getting rid of "no-compete clauses (NCC)" in employment contracts, which block people leaving one company from being hired on by a competitor, at least for a time. Nothing much seemed to be happening, however.

It was therefore a bit of a surprise when it was announced the Federal Trade Commission had simply banned the practice. It was startling that it was so quick and easy. The FTC conceded to retaining NCCs for senior executives, but all other existing NCCs are null & void.

Joe Biden said early on in his term that "the Reagan Era is over", and has been proving he means it. He doesn't want to step on the bosses, but he wants them to know they need to play fair with their employees.

Actually, I'm a bit of a Reagan admirer; he had many good personal qualities. Alas, to rephrase what was said about FDR, Reagan had a "1st-rate temperament" but a "3rd-rate intellect". There was a falling line from Reagan to Trump; Ron must be spinning in his grave now.

DAYLOG WED 24 APR 24: ECONOMIST.com had an editorial, praising the USA for getting military aid to Ukraine, but then going on to pour gloom on Ukraine's prospects on the battlefield. The pessimism was hard to swallow.

1st, ECONOMIST observed that stabilizing the battle lines was good, but Ukraine was not in any position to drive the Russians back. The trick is that it is unlikely the Ukrainians will try to do any such thing. They will hold the line in the Donbas, then cut off Crimea, to start intensively hammering the Russians there with long-range precision fires (LRPF). Special operations can then capture an airfield, which is then used to bring in troops and gear. They expand the bridgehead and capture a harbor.

More forces are brought in by sea. In the meantime, the Ukrainians hammer Russian forces in the Donbas with LRPF, while striking targets in Russia proper with kamikaze drones and cruise missiles. This is all dependent on having large numbers of LRPF. This will be breathtakingly ambitious, but there is no other alternative half as good. Once Crimea falls, the Russians will be defeated.

2nd, ECONOMIST said that if Donald Trump were re-elected, Ukraine would be in big trouble again. That's true, but it is just not going to happen. Trump was on a roll in 2016; now he's disintegrating as we watch.

3rd, ECONOMIST raises the prospect of Ukraine giving up, though adds that there's no sign of it happening. It won't. Russia can go home, Ukraine has nowhere else to go. If the Russians win on the battlefield, they will still have a forever guerrilla war to fight.

DAYLOG THU 25 APR 24: Renard Foucart, an economist at Lancaster University in the UK, has an interesting read on the economics of Russia's war in Ukraine -- suggesting that Vladimir Putin is going broke, and will go broke even if (implausibly) he wins.

Russia's GDP has actually be growing from the start of the war, but that's only because the government has been pumping so much money into military production. Putin is getting funding from oil sales, taxation in overdrive, and an oil-derived "sovereign wealth fund."

The sovereign wealth fund is being steadily drained; Putin's war is not economically sustainable, with the crunch likely to become more obvious next year. If Ukraine starts to get the upper hand this summer, the Russians will have lost all hope of winning the war.

The military situation will become clearer by about 1 June. If things are going well for Ukraine then, production of more and newer weapons will be ramping up. Success breeds success. We'll wait and see what happens.

Of course, the massive destruction wreaked by Putin in Ukraine will take years and huge sums to repair; Ukraine will be dependent on foreign aid for at least a decade. However, the postwar destitution of Russia may be even greater.

DAYLOG FRI 26 APR 24: The US Supreme Court is now evaluating a case by Donald Trump that he has "presidential immunity" from prosecution for his attempt to steal the 2020 election. It's such a preposterous claim that it's surprising SCOTUS agreed to hear the case.

It seems SCOTUS does not intend to give Trump a PASS, instead wanting to clarify the bounds on what a president can be prosecuted for once out of office. Makes sense, really -- it's obvious the Republicans, as they are now, might well go after a Democratic ex-president.

However, there's been loud howling about SCOTUS hearing the case. Few think Trump will get off -- whatever bounds are set, he'll be outside of them -- but the decision is likely to put off Trump's trial for election robbery until after the November election.

That's not good, but at the same time, the reaction is: "So what?" Again, Trump is disintegrating, and the election is shaping up to be a disaster for the Republicans. The only question is: how big a disaster?

AND SO ON: A Spoutible user posted an article from THE SHOVEL, an Australian satire website, that took aim at erratic billionaire Elon Musk:

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I keep wondering when Musk will go into rehab.

[FRI 26 APR 24] JOE BIDEN (23)

* JOE BIDEN (23): The hearings for the Bork nomination to the Supreme Court were to begin on 15 September 1987. In the meantime, the complaints from the Right and the pressure from the Left intensified, with Right saying Joe was too prejudiced, the Left saying he wasn't prejudiced enough. There was a basis for believing the first accusation, less so for believing the second, Joe having said in an interview on C-SPAN:

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Joe took his case against Bork to the news media, while the Right bolstered their defense of Bork. Ronald Reagan himself gave a nationally-televised speech in August, calling Bork a "brilliant scholar" whose decisions had never been reversed by the Supreme Court, and would be "an important intellectual addition" to the bench.

* In the meantime, in the course of his primary campaigning, Joe Biden ended up creating a booby-trap for himself. It started when he obtained a videotape featuring British Labour Party politician Neil Kinnock, out of coal-mining country, wondering why he and his wife were the first in their families to ever go to a university. Kinnock asked:

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Neil Kinnock's assertion that his coal-mining ancestors failed to better their lives because they lived in a system that didn't grant them opportunities resonated with Joe -- after all, he was the first Biden to go to college. As he wrote:

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Joe started quoting Kinnock in his speeches at his campaign stops. On 23 August 1987, he did so in the primary debate at the Iowa State Fair. When the debate was over, one of his campaign staffers said to him: "You know you didn't mention Kinnock?" That was not a fatal mistake; there were plenty of reporters around, all Joe had to was get them together and issue a clarification. He didn't. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 25 APR 24] WINGS & WEAPONS

* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("Thanatos Advanced Stealth Drone Design Breaks Cover" by Joseph Trevithick, 3 November 2023), drone maker Kratos has now released an image of its "Thanatos" stealth drone.

The image showed a tailless uncrewed aircraft with a number of established stealthy elements, including a shovel nose, blended and recessed inlets, and a platypus-like trailing edge extension concealing a recessed exhaust. The drone also had diamond-shaped wings, which are aerodynamically efficient at high subsonic / supersonic speeds.

Kratos is known to have several classified programs in the works, hints about Thanatos having been dropped as far back as 2019. Not much has been revealed about the drone, with no mention of who wants to buy it -- but Kratos says a buyer is being lined up, and the drone was shown with US Air Force insignia, suggesting it might be envisioned as part of the USAF's "Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA)" program for "Loyal Wingman" aircraft.

CCA is still in definition, but the Air Force says it would like to obtain at least 1,000 Loyal Wingman drones for collaboration with piloted aircraft. USAF brass are talking about making a selection of a CCA design in 2024. The 1,000-drone is based on an operational that would see two CCAs paired with each of 200 new sixth-generation piloted stealth combat jets and 300 F-35A Joint Strike Fighters. The CCA effort and the sixth-generation stealth jet project are both part of the Air Force's larger Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) initiative.

* The Ukrainians have become enthusiastic about the use of drones. As discussed in an article from JANES.com "Ukraine Develops Unmanned Mine Detector" by Olivia Savage, 27 October 2023), one of the latest efforts is a flying mine detector from the BRAVE1 company of Ukraine. It's straightforward in appearance, being an ordinary mine detector with a quadcopter drone on top. It can be programmed to sweep an area on its own, working four times faster than a human.

* The Japanese have been interested in acquiring the ability to intercept ballistic missiles -- presumably launched by China or North Korea, having acquired the US Patriot PAC-3 system to that end. As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("First Rendering Of Japan's Ballistic Missile Defense Ship Concept Released" by Tyler Rogoway, 29 December 2023)", the Japanese are also interested in developing warships dedicated to the air-defense mission.

Japan has the Patriot PAC-3 surface-to-air missile (SAM) system that can handily intercept tactical ballistic missiles, but can't handle longer-ranged theater ballistic missiles. The eight Aegis destroyers of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) can launch SM-3 SAMs with that capability, and Japan was considering setting up two ground-based equivalent Aegis Ashore sites, but decided against it -- partly because of concerns over the high-energy radiation from the powerful AN/SPY radar of the Aegis system.

Now, Japan is moving forward on construction of two ballistic-missile defense (BMD) warships instead. The two BMD ships will have the Aegis system and be able to launch SM-3 missiles, as well as improved BMD interceptors when they become available. They will be defensive systems, releasing the JMSDF's Aegis destroyers for other duties. Details of the BMD ships have not been released yet; some say they will look like Aegis destroyers but simpler, while released concepts suggest something more along the lines of a heavy amphibious operations command ship, with relatively low sea performance -- fitted with the Aegis system and a large stock of missiles. The concepts show a vessel with 64 vertical launch system silos for the missiles. Schedule for introduction to service is unclear.

[WED 24 APR 24] GEN-AI ARRIVES (11)

* GEN-AI ARRIVES (11): As discussed in an article from FASTCOMPANY.com ("How AI Companies Are Trying To Solve The LLM Hallucination Problem" by Ryan McCarthy, 8 January 2024), we're in the midst of the generative AI revolution, with "large language models (LLM)" like ChatGPT, Claude, and Bard able to give articulated answers to difficult questions. However, anyone who's played with them much knows they can't be fully trusted: they can make up facts, even cite scientific studies that don't exist, and have occasionally been inclined to defamation. It is not surprising that a wave of companies is trying to fix the hallucination problem.

In November 2023, in an attempt to quantify the problem Vectara -- a startup that launched the year before -- released the "LLM Hallucination Leaderboard". The range was staggering. The most accurate LLMs were GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo, which Vectara found to hallucinate 3% of the time when asked to summarize a paragraph of text. The worst performer was Google's PALM 2 Chat, which had a 27% hallucination rate.

To measure hallucinations, Vectara asked LLMs to perform a very narrow task: "Summarize a news story." -- and then tallied how often the systems invented facts in their summaries. That's an ad-hoc approach, but it's hard to do better, and arguably not necessary. Vectara's hallucination index isn't definitive; another ranking from the startup Galileo uses a different methodology, but also finds ChatGPT-4 has the fewest hallucinations. Amin Ahmad, Vectara's chief technology officer and cofounder, says: "The first step to awareness is quantification." -- and the quantification doesn't need to be to three significant figures.

Nick Turley, the product lead of ChatGPT, says OpenAI has been making strong incremental progress in reducing down hallucinations. The latest versions of ChatGPT, for example, will admit it can't get a good answer when it can't, and will flatly refuse to answer questions that it finds dangerously controversial. However, by their nature LLMs can't give absolute answers; they make educated guesses, and their guesses can't be better than their education. The indeterminate nature of LLMs means they will hallucinate at times -- of course, humans do that too, some more than others -- and we're stuck with some degree of hallucinations.

Turley says: "The way I'm running ChatGPT is from the perspective that hallucinations will be a constraint for a while on the core model side, but that we can do a lot on the product layer to mitigate the issue." The product layer can filter what it gets from the core model and determine if it looks wrong, then take the appropriate action. It might be useful for LLMs to grade the reliability of their output, though that implies grading the reliability of their sources. There may come a time when internet search robots evaluate the credibility of sources, but that's a future.

There are two main approaches when it comes to hallucination mitigation. The direct approach is to refine the model -- the more it knows, the fewer mistakes it makes -- but that tends to be time-consuming and expensive. The preferred approach is called "Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)"; Vectara is one of the many companies that now offers a variant of RAG to their clients.

Putting it in a simplistic fashion, RAG works like a "fact checker" for AI. It compares an LLM's answer to a question with the known correct data, with the RAG system tweaking the LLM's answer to bring it into conformance. It can be thought of patching up the LLM's output. It's not really simple to do, and gets ever less simple as more is demanded of a chatbot. Vectara's Ahmad says the biggest mistake is companies trying to introduce custom generative AI products without reaching out for help. Vectara has been in demand from companies who need help building a chatbot or other question-and-answer style systems, but can't spend months or millions tweaking their own models. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 23 APR 24] SPACEX STARSHIP

* SPACEX STARSHIP: On 20 April 2023, a SpaceX Starship heavily-lift booster performed its first all-up test flight. It lost several Raptor engines, went out of control, and was destroyed by range safety. It's nothing new for boosters to fail during development, and the fact that the Starship got off the ground was seen as encouraging.

Flight tests of what would become the Starship began in August 2019, with the brief up-&-down flight of the "Starhopper" demonstrators. The design subsequently evolved and became more ambitious from that time. As of the April 2023 flight, Starship was 120 meters (390 feet) tall 9 meters (30 feet) wide, and had a launch mass of about 5,000 tonnes (5,500 tons). Its standard configuration will have a lift capacity of 150 tonnes (330,000 pounds), with the expanded configuration having a capacity of 250 tonnes (550,000 pounds). While the prototype versions of Starship were not re-usable, Starship is designed to be fully re-usable.

Starship is primarily made of stainless steel. The big booster consists of a "Super Heavy" first stage and a "Starship" second stage, powered by "Raptor" and "Raptor Vacuum" engines. Raptor is a family of rocket engines developed by SpaceX. The Raptor burns liquid oxygen and methane in a highly efficient full-flow staged combustion power cycle. The engine is built mostly aluminum, copper and steel; oxidizer-side turbopumps and manifolds, subject to corrosive oxygen-rich flames, are made of an Inconel-like SX500 superalloy.

Raptor operates with an oxygen-to-methane mixture ratio of about 3.6:1, lower than the mixture ratio of 4:1 necessary to completely burn all propellants. Operation at the 4:1 ratio provides better performance in theory, but in practice usually results in overheating and destruction of the engine. The propellants leave the pre-burners and are injected into the main combustion chamber as hot gases instead of liquid droplets, enabling much higher power density as propellants mix more rapidly. The methane and oxygen are at such high temperatures and pressures that they ignite on contact, eliminating the need for igniters in the main combustion chamber.

At sea level, the standard Raptor engine produces 2.3 MN (236,000 kgp / 520,000 lbf) at a specific impulse of 327 seconds, increasing to 350 seconds in vacuum. [ED: Specific impulse is an index of the speed of rocket exhaust flow and engine fuel efficiency.] Raptor Vacuum, used on the Starship upper stage, is modified with a regeneratively cooled nozzle extension made of brazed steel tubes, increasing its expansion ratio [ED: the ratio of engine throat area to engine exit nozzle] to about 90 and its specific impulse in vacuum to 380 seconds. Another engine variant, Raptor Boost, is exclusive to the Super Heavy booster; the engine variant lacks thrust vectoring and has limited throttle capability, in exchange for increased thrust.

The first stage "Super Heavy" booster is 70 meters (230 feet) tall, 9 meters (30 feet) wide, and contains thirty-three Raptor engines arranged in concentric rings.[79] The outermost ring of 20 engines are of the "Raptor Boost" configuration, with gimbal actuators removed to save weight and a modified injector with reduced throttle performance in exchange for greater thrust. At max power, all engines produce a collective 75.9 MN (7,755,000 kgp / 17,100,000 lbf) of thrust.

The booster's tanks can hold 3,600 tonnes (7,900,000 pounds) of propellant, consisting of 2,800 tonnes (6,200,000 pounds) of liquid oxygen and 800 tonnes (1,800,000 pounds) of liquid methane. The final design will have a dry mass between 160 tonnes (350,000 pounds) and 200 tonnes (440,000 pounds).

The booster is equipped with four electrically actuated grid fins, each with a mass of 3 tonnes (6,600 pounds). Adjacent pairs of grid fins are only spaced sixty degrees apart instead of being orthogonal, as is the case on Falcon 9, to provide more control authority in the pitch axis. Also unlike Falcon 9, the grid fins do not retract and remain extended during ascent. During unpowered flight in vacuum, control authority is provided by cold gas thrusters fed with residual ullage gas -- ullage meaning the space in the tank voided as the fuel drains out.

The Starship second stage is 50 meters (160 feet) tall, 9 meters (30 feet) in diameter, and is fitted with 3 Raptor and 3 Raptor Vacuum engines for increased thrust in the vacuum. The booster's payload bay, measuring 17 meters (56 feet) tall by 8 meters (26 feet) in diameter, is of unprecedented size, with an internal volume of 1,000 cubic meters (35,000 cubic feet), which is more than the pressurized volume of the International Space Station. SpaceX also plans a "stretched" Starship with a payload bay 22 meters (72 feet) long. Payloads are deployed through doors on top of the payload bay. A dispenser rack can be installed to deploy multiple satellites.

Starship has a total propellant capacity of 1,200 tonnes (2,600,000 pounds). A set of reaction control thrusters, mounted on the exterior, control attitude while in space. The spacecraft has four body flaps to control the spacecraft's orientation and help dissipate energy during atmospheric entry; there are two forward flaps and two aft flaps. There are hardpoints under the forward flaps for lifting or catching the booster.

Starship's heat shield is designed to be used many times without maintenance between flights. It is composed of thousands of hexagonal black tiles that can withstand temperatures of 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,600 degrees Fahrenheit). The tiles are made of silica and are attached with pins, not glued; they are spaced with small gaps to deal with heat expansion.

For crewed flights, Starship will feature a pressurized crew section, with a life-support system, instead of a cargo bay. For long-duration missions, such as crewed flights to Mars, SpaceX describes the interior as potentially including "private cabins, large communal areas, centralized storage, solar storm shelters, and a viewing gallery". Starship's life support system will recycle resources such as air and water from waste.

The "Starship Human Landing System (Starship HLS)" is a crewed lunar lander variant of the Starship vehicle that is extensively modified for landing, operation, and take-off from the lunar surface. It features modified landing legs, a body-mounted solar array, a set of thrusters mounted mid-body to assist with final landing and take-off, two airlocks, and an elevator to lower crew and cargo onto the lunar surface. Starship HLS will be able to land more than 100 tonnes (220,000 pounds) of cargo on the Moon per flight.

Starship can be refueled by docking with separately launched Starship propellant tanker spacecraft in orbit. That would allow it to reach high-energy targets, such as geosynchronous orbit, the Moon, and Mars. A Starship propellant depot could cache methane and oxygen on-orbit; it will be used by Starship HLS.

* There have been two more all-up test flights since the April launch. The second flight was on 18 November 2023. First-stage flight was satisfactory, with the second stage igniting and continuing on track, though the first stage then exploded during recovery maneuvers. The second stage managed to leave the atmosphere, but telemetry was lost, and the booster then auto-destructed.

The third all-up test flight was on 14 March 2024. The booster took the second stage to altitude and the second stage successfully ignited, but the first stage then exploded during recovery maneuvers. The second stage successfully reached orbit, to then be lost during re-entry. The test flights were all regarded as partial successes, demonstrating incremental improvements on each flight; nobody expected that such an ambitious launch vehicle would work right away.

[MON 22 APR 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 16

DAYLOG MON 15 APR 24: Here in Colorado, I had voted for my/our representative in the House, Joe Neguse, and was prepared to do it another time. However, Colorado went to a bipartisan redistricting commission a few years ago, and in 2021 there was some reshuffling.

It turns out Loveland is now in the 4th District, covering about the eastern third of the state. My/our representative had been Ken Buck, but he quit, with a special election coming up in June, with the Republicans favored to win.

That will be followed by the general election in November. It turns out the likely Republican candidate will be the obnoxious Lauren Boebert, being faced by Democrat Ike McCorkle, a rather solid-looking ex-Marine.

4th District definitely leans Republican, but Boebert couldn't have a more unsavory reputation; I will of course vote for McCorkle. I checked his campaign pledges, True Blue all the way. Marines in favor of LGBT rights? The world has changed.

Incidentally, I was curious just what percentage of the land area of Colorado District 4 took up, so I asked MS ChatGPT. It actually looked up the areas and then did the calculation: 30.8% Color me impressed. GAI chatbots are going to get even smarter than that.

However, I've taken to generating images with DeviantArt DreamUp, and poke around into other people's work. One account had glamour shots of somebody who looked familiar, and then I realized it was Lauren Boebert. "Oh no, I can't take that!" GAI gives and then takes away.

DAYLOG TUE 16 APR 24: Fareed Zakaria just released an op-ed video on the decline of religion in America and the corresponding rise of extreme Right politics. Once the USA was unusually religious compared to other developed countries, but from 2007 the numbers began to fall dramatically.

Now the USA ranks 12th in religosity among them. This decline has been paralleled by the political radicalization of religion, without exception in the Right direction. Donald Trump now runs his rallies as revival meetings. About 75% of voting evangelicals chose Trump in 2020.

That leads to the question of what will happen in the USA after Trump. Once Trump is taken off the game board, his influence will vanish abruptly and completely. Those who elevated him will instead try to forget him. How that will work out remains to be seen.

* I have a bigtime sweet tooth, and so it is alarming to find out that chocolate prices are inflating rapidly. There are several reasons why, but the biggest one appears to be climate change: it's hurting the cacao growers in West Africa badly.

So, I wonder, is anybody working to come up with another option? Yes they are, for example California Cultured of Davis, California. They grow cacao cells in culture, not cacao plants. They're doing the same with coffee.

Skeptics point to genetic modification work on the cacao genome to come up with cacao trees more resistant to climate change. That's interesting, but it takes five years for a cacao tree to mature. California Cultured and others think they can produce cheap chocolate in the near future.

DAYLOG WED 17 APR 24: Trump is now in the midst of his New York "hush money" trial. First item of interest out of that is the number of protesters who showed up outside the courtroom: a few dozens. Second item of interest is that Trump nodded off during the proceedings.

A lawyer friend of mine, of long acquaintance, suggested that Trump's sleep habits are not consistent with a courtroom schedule. Trump is said to be "short sleeper", only getting by with a few hours of sleep -- but whether that's true or not, he's not used to normal work hours.

A jury trial, as my friend pointed out, is very laborious for both lawyers and client, and they can't get a lot of sleep. That's not surprising; they can't prepare for everything the prosecution throws at them, and have to build a lot of their case on the fly.

Trump, as further pointed out, is not at all suited to standing trial. Although energetic -- at least he was at one time -- he's never done regular plodding work, and he's a loose cannon, "a control freak with no control". Worse, he's gone old and decrepit. Trump is, or at least was, a master of flim-flam, but the labor of even sleazy lawyering is beyond his grasp. He is the client from Pandaemonium, the capital of Hell. It is unlikely he will win this case. He might hope for a hung jury, but that's a long shot.

DAYLOG THU 18 APR 24: The House is (finally) moving (slowly) towards a Ukraine / Israel / Taiwan aid bill, or rather a set of bills. Florida Dem House Rep Jared Moskowitz couldn't pass up the opportunity to counter-troll House MAGA troll Marjorie Taylor Greene (MTG).

Moskowitz is pushing two amendments, the first to appoint MTG as "Vladimir Putin's Special Envoy to the US Congress." He references MTG's efforts to block Ukraine aid, and also hits her use of disinformation from the "Strategic Culture Foundation", a Kremlin loudspeaker.

Moskowitz also has an amendment to rename MTG's Capitol Building office the "Neville Chamberlain Room", after history's most famous appeaser. Moskowitz says: "We can just make it official."

MTG has been pushing amendments of her own, for example requiring that Ukraine close all (imaginary) bio-laboratories and provide incriminating information on Hunter Biden. She is also telling those who are pushing for Ukraine War funding to go fight there. One Rebekah Maciorowski replied online: "I did." -- sitting in AFU camo fatigues, wearing a trident patch.

* As far as Trump's court dates go, it appears President Biden has passed down the word: SAY NOTHING ABOUT THE MATTER. Trump really wants to play the "political interference" card; better not let him. Trump's generating all the bad publicity he deserves without any help.

DAYLOG FRI 19 APR 24: ECONOMIST.com had an essay: "Ukraine Is Ignoring US Warnings To End Drone Operations Inside Russia". With my reaction being: "Ridiculous. There's no evidence the USA has said any such thing."

It is true that the USA has a strictly hands-off attitude towards Ukrainian attacks on Russia proper, but it is obvious that destroying Russian infrastructure weakens the Russian war effort. As far as Russian retaliation goes, they're already throwing everything at Ukraine.

I can only think that this is propaganda being leaked to undermine Ukraine on the battlefield. However, it is also possible that these stories are intended to distance the Americans from Ukraine drone attacks. In any case, they're not for real.

* There was a buzz on Spout today about 20 April, elevated with the hashtag #420. Wot? OK, Google Is My Friend; it turns out 20 April is a stoner celebration day. Not being a stoner, I can readily admit ignorance. I guess "buzz" and "hashtag" are the right terms here.

DAYLOG SAT 20 APR 24: Regarding the comments about the USA criticizing Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure yesterday: I got a tipoff on BlueSky of SecDef Austin indeed saying the USGOV had some issues with that.

There is, in short, some basis for claims the USGOV has problems with Ukraine on Russia attacks. However, on going through the video of the SecDef talking about the matter, he said USGOV thinks it more effective for the AFU to hit Russian military targets -- airbases and such. Make sense. In any case, the USGOV has no problem in principle with AFU attacks on Russia.

Attacks on Russian oil infrastructure could make life more difficult for European NATO nations, making support of Ukraine more difficult. The "oil price cap" imposed by NATO already constrains Russian oil profits. India & China seem to be abiding by the cap ... of course, why pay more?

* Later on Saturday, the House of Representatives *finally* got around to passing the long-delayed assistance package for Ukraine / Israel / Taiwan. It still has to go through the Senate; Joe Biden says he'll sign it the moment he gets it from the Senate. High-profile Democratic House Member Eric Swalwell, of California, released a missive saying the Ukraine aid was the right thing all around:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Passing the supplemental funding bill is a win, but the situation in Ukraine is critical at this time. The Russians are engaged in a big push to score a significant win by 9 May, Victory Day, and it's going to be a race to get munitions to Ukraine fast enough. Three things are needed immediately:

• More long-range surface-to-air missiles to destroy Russian strike aircraft dropping devastating oversized KAB glide bombs.
  
  
• More anti-drone defenses to neutralize Russian drones, with interceptor drones hopefully arriving in numbers.
  
  
• Delivery of quantities of the Surface-Launched Small Diameter Bomb II, which will be able to defy countermeasures and destroy Russian assets all over the occupied region of eastern Ukraine.

If the Russian offensive is broken, it seems likely the Russians will have lost their last chance. Increasing production volume of new and superior weapons mean the scales will steadily tip against them. How long it will take to send them back home remains to be seen, however.

[FRI 19 APR 24] JOE BIDEN (22)

* JOE BIDEN (22): Joe Biden had his hands full, trying to fend off his critics, while studying up on constitutional law and Judge Bork's read on it, along with squeezing in campaigning for the presidential primary in the meantime -- Jill filling in at times. To prepare for the hearings on Bork, Joe dug into Bork's work, in particular talking to legal scholars about it. One Chris Schroeder, a professor of law at Duke University Law School in North Carolina, who had carefully read Bork and understood his legal thinking. As Joe said in his memoirs:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Put another way, according to Bork, the US Constitution did not reflect any underlying philosophy, or at least not any of interest to the judiciary. The Constitution had no soul. That rendered the open-ended elements of the Constitution legally meaningless -- the most relevant in this case being the 9th Amendment, which says that, while the Constitution specifies "certain rights" of the people, it did not rule out other rights of the people that weren't specified therein. Joe conceded that:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Some weeks after his nomination to the Supreme Court, Bork contacted Joe and asked to chat in private. Joe agreed, and the meeting took place. Joe had read up on Judge Bork's decisions and had already decided he would oppose Bork's nomination, but told Bork that he would be given a fair hearing; that his nomination would be given a straight vote and not be filibustered; and that Joe would not engage in personal attacks. Bork replied that he understood Joe was inclined to oppose him, but wanted to get the chance to change his mind. The meeting ended cordially. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 18 APR 24] SPACE NEWS

* Space launches for March included:

[03 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / SPACEX CREW DRAGON ISS 8 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0353 UTC (next day local time + 5). The crew consisted of commander Matthew Dominick of NASA, pilot Dr. Michael Barratt of NASA, mission specialist Jeanette Epps of NASA, and mission specialist Alexander Grebenkin of Roscosmos. Barrett was on his 3rd spaceflight; the other three were rookies.

[04 MAR 24] USA VB / FALCON 9 / TRANSPORTER 10 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 2205 UTC (local time + 8) on the "Transporter 10" mission -- a rideshare flight to low-Earth orbit, carrying 53 payloads. The dedicated Transporter rideshare missions feature a payload stack of several rings that each contain circular attachment points, or ports, with a defined volume around them that can be filled with one or many satellites depending on customer needs. Payloads included:

• Aerospacelab 1 to 4: Four 100-kilogram (220-pound) satellites from Aerospacelab of Belgium. Three had SIGINT payloads while the fourth had a high-resolution optical imaging payload.
  
  
• Optimus 2: A space tug from Space Machines Company of Australia. Payloads on board include an inertial navigation system from Advanced Navigation, a space domain awareness camera from HEO Robotics, a hyperspectral camera from Esper, an in-space image processor from Spiral Blue, a network processor from Dandelion, and an AI processor from ANT61.
  
  
• NuSat 44: A microsatellite from Argentina's Satellogic with high-resolution optical and hyperspectral payloads. It added to the company's constellation of about two dozen spacecraft.
  
  
• X-36/37/36: Three more synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) remote-sensing microsatellite from ICEYE of Finland, bringing their constellation up to around 30 spacecraft in orbit.
  
  
  
  
• Tower 5,6: Lynk Global has Tower 5 and Tower 6, a pair of 85-kilogram (185-pound) satellites for direct-to-device connectivity from Lynk Global, joining three Lynk spacecraft on orbit to provide messaging services for cell phones.
  
  
• Tiger 7,8: 6U CubeSats from OQ Technology of Luxembourg, part of a constellation to provide 5G Internet of Things communications.
  
  
• Mission 1: The first flight test of the Atmos-Space Quark orbital transfer vehicle. The Quark-LITE satellite "Meson 1" carried the "Gluon 1" satellite, which was to separate Quark and then serve as a target for rendezvous and proximity operations, docking, and refueling demonstrations. Each of the two spacecraft had a launch mass of about 100 kilograms (220 pounds).
  
  
• YAM 6: A microsatellite with a launch mass of 90 kilograms (200 pounds) from Loft Orbital, with hyperspectral and multi-spectral imagers. Developers could upload their apps to the satellite to make use of its capabilities.
  
  
• MethaneSat: A 366-kilogram (805-pound) from the Environmental Defense Fund, intended to map earthly methane emissions. It could collect data over a swath 200 kilometers (125 miles) wide, with a resolution of 100 x 400 meters (330 x 1,320 feet). Other methane detection satellites have been launched that have much higher resolution, but also a much narrower field of view. The government of New Zealand contributed to the project, and mission control was handled from that country after initial commissioning by Ball Aerospace, which had led spacecraft production.
  
  
  
  
• GHOST 4,5: Two more satellites from Orbital Sidekick, adding to the company's hyperspectral imaging constellation to map methane emissions with 8-meter (26-foot) resolution. They each had a launch mass of 90 kilograms (200 pounds).
  
  
• HORACIO: A 16U remote-sensing CubeSat from Spanish firm Satlantis, with a high-resolution multi-spectral imaging payload supporting missions such as detecting greenhouse gas emissions.
  
  
• ContecSat 1 / Oreum: A 16U CubeSat, built by NanoAvionics for CONTEC of Korea. It carried an optical remote-sensing payload.
  
  
• PYXIS: A 145-kilogram (320-pound) microsatellite from AxelSpace of Japan, to demonstrated the new satellite bus for their AxelLiner service, and next-generation sensors for their AxelGlobe imaging constellation. It also carried a satellite radio demonstration from SONY and is equipped with two D-SAIL drag membranes, to be deployed to speed up re-entry at end of mission.
  
  
• BRO 12,13: Two 8U CubeSats from Unseenlabs of France, two more in the company's radio frequency sensing/signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites, bringing the total of to 11. Earlier satellites were in 6U configuration.
  
  
• OrbAstro TR2: A 6U CubeSat from OrbAstro of the UK, to demonstrate radio frequency payloads.
  
  
• Hubble 1,2: Two 16U LEMUR-2 CubeSats built by Spire Global for Hubble, which is developing a satellite network to connect with Bluetooth devices on Earth. How they can connect a satellite to a short-range Bluetooth device is an interesting question.
  
  
• Spire also had two other LEMUR-2 CubeSats, apparently 3U in size, on the flight, carrying ADS-B and Myriota IoT payloads.
  
  
• Rapid Revisit Optical Cloud Imager (ROCCI) 2: A 12U CubeSat from Orion Space Solutions for the US Space Force, intended to provide cloud / weather data for the military. It replaced "ROCCI 1", which failed to deploy on the Transporter-6 mission in early 2023.
  
  
• MuSat 2: A 67-kilogram (148-pound) microsatellite from Muon Space, to demonstrate weather data collection for the Department of Defense. It carried GNSS occultation and reflectometry sensors among its payloads, to provide information such as ocean wind speed, soil moisture products, and ionospheric data.
  
  
• Jackal 1,2: Two 275-kilogram (605-pound) demonstrator satellites from Colorado Springs-based True Anomaly, satellites were designed to perform rendezvous and proximity operations while taking multi-spectral imagery of each other. True Anomaly is targeting the defense market for missions such as space domain awareness and space operations training.
  
  
• Sentry / Scout 1: A 6U CubeSat from Quantum Space, being a "space situational awareness" demonstrator with an optical payload to observe other objects in space.
  
  
• IOD 6 Hammer: A 6U CubeSat from UK firm Open Cosmos, with a hyperspectral imager, AI edge processor from Ubotica, and an inter-satellite link payload.
  
  
• LizzieSat 1: A 100-kilogram (220-pound) minisat from Sidus Space, based on the Florida Space Coast, hosting payloads optical and hyperspectral imaging, AIS, and edge computing.
  
  
• Aries 1: A 100-kilogram (220-pound) microsat from Los Angeles-based spacecraft manufacturer Apex, carrying payloads from Orbit Fab, Ubotica, and a defense contractor. It was Apex's first satellite launch.
  
  
• Pony Express 2: Two 12U CubeSats, including "PE2-SV1 / Tyvak 0261" and "PE2-SV2 / Tyvak 0262", from Lockheed Martin and Terran Orbital, intended to demonstrate payloads such as satellite RF crosslinks, ranging, synchronization, and AI processing while flying in formation several kilometers apart.
  
  
• PY4: Four identical 1.5U CubeSats from NASA to demonstrate spacecraft-to-spacecraft ranging, on-orbit relative navigation, and coordinated multi-point radiation measurements using low size, weight, power, and cost ("SWaP-C") satellites.
  
  
• CBAS-LCE: Two 6U CubeSats from the US Navy and Missile Defense Agency to evaluate optical laser communications in space and space-to-Earth network protocols.
  
  
• Aeros / MH-1: A 3U CubeSat from CEIIA of Portugal, being a pathfinder for ocean observation, carrying with RGB and hyperspectral imagers.
  
  
• SONATE 2: A 6U+ Cubesat from Germany's Julius Maximilian University of Wuerzburg, with imaging and AI payloads.
  
  
• IRIS-F1: A 3U CubeSat demonstrator from Taiwan's SATORO in partnership with National Cheng Kung University, payload including an AIS receiver.
  
  
• M3: A 3U CubeSat from Missouri University of Science and Technology, to test a propulsion system.
  
  
• Veery-0E / Ectobius: A 1U CubeSat from Care Weather, with a small radar payload and an amateur radio payload operated by the BYU Spacecraft Club.
  
  
• OWLSAT 1,2: Twin 0.5 CubeSat AMSATS from Mongolia.

This is not necessarily a complete list.

[04 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-41 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2356 UTC (local time + 5) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.

[10 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-43 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2305 UTC (local time + 5) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.

[11 MAR 24] USA VB / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 7-17 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 0411 UTC (previous day local time + 7) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.

[11 MAR 24] NZ / ELECTRON / STRIX 3 -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula at 1413 UTC (next day local time - 13) to put the "Strix 3" SAR satellite into orbit for Synspective, a Japanese Earth-imaging company. It had a launch weight of 100 kilograms (220 pounds) and carried an X-band SAR. Synspective is developing spacecraft for a planned constellation of more than 30 small radar observation satellites to collate data of metropolitan centers across Asia on a daily basis that can be used for urban development planning, construction and infrastructure monitoring, and disaster response.

[13 MAR 24] JP / KAIROS (FAILURE) -- A Kairos booster, from Space One of Japan, was sent on its first test flight, The 18-meter (59') tall rocket exploded five seconds after lifting off. Kairos carried an experimental government satellite intended as a stopgap to temporarily replace intelligence satellites in orbit if they fall offline.

[13 MAR 24] CN XC / LONG MARCH 2C / DRO A,B -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from the Chinese Xichang launch center at 1251 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "DRO A,B" satellites int orbit.

[14 MAR 24] USA SX-SB / STARSHIP / TEST FLIGHT 3 (FAILURE) -- A SpaceX Starship heavily-lift booster performed its third all-up test flight. It was to go into orbit but only achieved a suborbital trajectory, and was destroyed in the landing attempt.

[16 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-44 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0021 UTC (previous day local time + 4) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.

[19 MAR 24] USA VB / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 7-16 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg SFB at 0228 UTC (previous day local time + 7) to put 20 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The launch also included two "Starshield" satellites, including "USA 350,351".

[20 MAR 24] CN WC / LONG MARCH 8 / QUEQIAO 2, TIANDU 1,2 -- A Long March 8 booster was launched from the Chinese Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island at 1427 UTC (local time - 8) to send three Moon orbiters into space, including "Queqiao 2" and "Tiandu 1,2". Queqiao 2 had a launch mass of 1,200 kilograms (2,645 pounds); it was placed in a high-inclination elliptical orbit around the Moon to allow communications with landers on the lunar farside. It also carried a radio receiver for very long baseline interferometry, and a camera to observe ultraviolet sources.

Tiandu 1 & 2 were a pair of navigation technology experimental satellites from the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory. Named after the Huangshan Mountains' Tiandu Peak, the Tiandu 1 and Tiandu 2 satellites had a mass of 61 and 15 kilograms (134 and 33 pounds) respectively.

They were to fly in formation in a lunar orbit to verify the calibration of the navigation system for high-precision orbit determination, using inter-satellite ranging methods. They were also to perform other communications and signal routing activities, with the data informing the development and implementation of the planned Queqiao Communication & Remote Constellation System.

[21 MAR 24 CN JQ / LONG MARCH 2D / YUNHAI-2 x 6 -- A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 2D booster was launched from Juiquan at 0527 UTC (local time - 8) to put six "Yunhai-2" weather satellites into orbit.

[21 MAR 24] US WI / ELECTRON / NROL 123 -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from Wallops Island at 0725 UTC (local time - 4) on the "NROL 123" mission. This was the fifth and last launch under the NRO's "Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR)" program, the primary payload being "RASR 5" AKA "USA 352". Other payloads included "Aerocube 16A,B" from The Aerospace Corporation, and "Mola", from the US Naval Postgraduate School.

[21 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / SPACEX DRAGON CRS 30 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1547 UTC (local time + 4), carrying the 30th operational "Dragon" cargo capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) to provide supplies to the ISS Expedition 68 crew. It docked with the ISS Harmony module the next day.

A set of CubeSats were taken along, to be deployed from the ISS later, including (not a complete list):

• Big Red Sat 1: From University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
  
  
• BurstCube: From NASA Goddard, designed to observe gamma-ray bursts.
  
  
• HyTi: A studentsat from University of Hawaii at Manoa.
  
  
• Killick 1: From Memorial University in Canada, intended for oceanographic observations, using reflected navsat signals to measure sea ice and wave height.
  
  
• QMSat: A studentsat from Universite de Sherbrooke in Canada.
  
  
• SNoOPI: A studentsat from Purdue University.
  
  
• VIOLET: A studensat from the University of New Brunswick.

[23 MAR 22] RU BK / SOYUZ / SOYUZ ISS 71S (ISS) -- A Soyuz booster was launched from Baikonur at 1236 UTC (local time + 6) to put the "Soyuz ISS 71S" AKA "MS 25" crewed space capsule into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) mission. There were three crew, including commander Oleg Novitsky of Roscosmos, Tracy Caldwell Dyson of NASA, and Belarusian Marina Vasilevskaya. It docked with the ISS a few hours later.

[24 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-42 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0309 UTC (previous day local time + 4) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.

[25 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-46 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2342 UTC (local time + 4) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.

[26 MAR 24] CN TY / LONG MARCH 6A / YUNHAI-3 02 -- A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 6A booster was launched from Taiyuan at 2251 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Yunhai-3 02" weather satellite into orbit.

[30 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / EUTELSAT 36D -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2152 UTC (local time + 4) to put the "Eutelsat 36D" geostationary comsat into orbit.

[31 MAR 24] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-45 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0936 UTC (local time + 4) to put 23 SpaceX "Starlink v2 Mini" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit.

[31 MAR 24] RU BK / SOYUZ 2-1B / RESURS-P 4 -- A Soyuz 2-1b booster was launched from Baikonur at 0936 UTC (local time - 6) to put the "Resurs P 4" civil Earth resources observation satellite into Sun-synchronous orbit.

[WED 17 APR 24] GEN-AI ARRIVES (10)

* GEN-AI ARRIVES (10): As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Generative AI Could Radically Alter the Practice of Law", 6 June 2023), generative AI stands to have a substantial impact on the practice of law.

It didn't get off to a good start. Steven Schwartz, a personal-injury lawyer at the New York firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman, used ChatGPT to help him prepare a court filing. He relied a bit too heavily on ChatGPT, which blithely generated a motion full of made-up cases, rulings, and quotes, confidently assuring Schwartz that "cases I provided are real and can be found in reputable legal databases." He found out they weren't.

Some lawyers concluded that proved GAI was useless for the practice of law. In reality, anyone who tinkers with ChatGPT for a time learns that it's a "meta search engine", scouring the internet in response to a query, then generating a coherent summary of the results. Those results are no more valid than the source materials; ChatGPT provides links to the source materials, allowing the user to check, which Schwartz didn't do.

ChatGPT is a powerful tool, but like all powerful tools, it takes some knowledge to use it -- knowing how to ask the right questions, knowing how to sort out the answers. Anyone who understands the tool can make very good use of it. ChatGPT involves mass searching and analysis of texts, which is exactly what legal research is all about. According to a report from Goldman Sachs, a bank, 44% of legal tasks could be performed by AI, more than in any occupation surveyed except for clerical and administrative support.

Lawyers spend much of their time digging through piles of wordy documents, and are already using AI to help out, for example for due diligence, research, and data analytics. In the past, such activities have generally relied on "extractive" AI that can mine information from a text in response to a query. GAI tools like ChatGPT can do such things, but are far more powerful, able to improve legal research and document review.

As Pablo Arredondo -- creator of a generative-AI "legal assistant" called CoCounsel -- says, using his tool ...

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Allen & Overy, a London-based firm, has adopted a legal AI tool named "Harvey" using it for contract analysis, due diligence, and litigation prep. However, not all lawyers are excited about GAI. One survey found that 82% of them believe GAI can be used for legal work, but just 51% thought it should. There are concerns about "hallucinations" -- the inclination of GAI tools to make things up -- or feeding information supposedly covered by attorney-client privilege into algorithms.

In reality, the technology is improving, along with the education of users on how to use the tools. After Schwartz's epic fail went public, a Federal judge in Texas told attorneys appearing before him to provide a certificate attesting that they either did not use GAI, or if they did, they checked the final result. In the same way that it would make no sense to demand that lawyers do their research in libraries when they had access to extensive legal databases like Westlaw and LexisNexis, it makes no sense for courts to ban GAI tools.

GAI offers three big advantages to the legal profession:

• First, it could reduce big firms' manpower advantage. In large, complicated lawsuits, dozens of associates scour millions of pages of documents looking for answers to senior lawyers' questions and hunches. GAI reduces or even eliminates the need for the associates. Now a single lawyer or small firm will be able to upload these documents into a litigation-prep GAI and query them. As Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School says: "You can be a smaller, leaner specialized firm and have the capacity to process these sorts of cases."
  
  
• Second, GAI could change the billing model for law firms. If most of the legwork is automated, then instead of racking up time and billing the client -- which clients of course hate -- they can charge a set fee. A GAI system could even analyze a particular case and propose the appropriate fee up-front. GAI could cut legal fees and make them more affordable for small- and medium-sized businesses that can't afford them now.
  
  
• Third, it may mean a big cut in the number of lawyers. Lessig suggests that it is hard to see how AI "doesn't dramatically reduce the number of lawyers the world needs." Who needs associates? On the other side of that coin, law-school graduates could find that GAI provides a fast track to starting a solo practice. It is actually possible that GAI could lead to an increase in the overall number of lawyers. When the ATM was introduced, there were fears that it would mean a big cut in the numbers of bank employees. It didn't.

Is GAI honestly good news for lawyers? That's ambiguous. It is very likely good news for clients, who only want to hire lawyers to solve their problems. Increased automation of the law should make it cheaper and more efficient. Indeed, for routine legal matters, like drawing up wills, there may be no need for lawyers as such; people will be able to pay a set fee to use a GAI system to do all the work on its own, or for that matter the judiciary could provide one. When that will happen, nobody knows.

[TUE 16 APR 24] PALAU OTHR

* PALAU OTHR: As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("US Building Advanced Over-The-Horizon Radar On Palau" by Emma Helfrich & Tyler Rogoway, 30 December 2022), the US Air Force (USAF) is now installing a new "over-the-horizon radar (OTHR)" on the Pacific island of Palau. Named the "Tactical Mobile Over-the-Horizon Radar (TACMOR)", the installation will enhance air and maritime domain situational awareness for US and allied forces in the region.

A traditional "sky wave" or "backscatter" over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) typically consists of an array of big fixed fence-like antennas spread out over an area, with separated transmit and receive arrays. OTHRs can detect targets at extreme ranges beyond what is known as the "radar horizon", defined by radar range along a line of sight. OTHRs can't give a precise location for a target, but can see if something's here, as well as figure out its speed and bearing. Ranges are about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) or more.

OTHRs were deployed during the Cold War as part of early warning networks, but then fell into disuse. They have been revived as Cold War-like tensions have re-emerged, and the technology has been refined. Now there are also "surface wave" or "ground wave" OTHRs which use the conductive saltwater of the ocean and a radio wave's inclination to bend around curves as per the "Norton Principle". They have well shorter range than sky-wave OTHRs, but are more predictable in their operation; the two can be combined to give the advantages of both. It is not clear if TACMOR uses sky wave, surface wave, or both.

The TACMOR OTHR on Palau will support space-based and terrestrial-based sensor and weapon systems for the potential cueing and early warning of incoming hypersonic weapons, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, enemy aircraft, and ships. The radar will permit persistent monitoring of distant areas that would be otherwise hard to observe.

The overall TACMOR initiative began in July 2017 as a previously funded Joint Capability Technology Demonstration (JCTD) with the Air Force. JCTDs are meant to examine and assess the military utility of new technology, as well as determine its system integrity and appropriate application. TACMOR went through JCTD and has transitioned to a program of record.

The facilities being constructed to accommodate TACMOR equipment on Palau, according to official documentation, include "electrical utilities, reinforced concrete pads, and foundations, tie downs for equipment, water and wastewater, access roads, paved parking and turnaround areas, two levels of security fencing, and extensive site work."

Air Force documents more specifically describe a remote, unattended transmit site consisting of ten elements and high-power amplifiers transmitting high-frequency sky wave OTHR waveforms, along with a separate unattended receive site with 128 dual-monopole antennas. The receive site will also feature "secure facilities for signal processing of the received data and real-time target extraction information." It takes a fair amount of digital smarts to get OTHR to work right.

In addition, TACMOR will have a communications infrastructure. Documents don't say much about that, though they do mention that communications links will "enable the data flow from the transmit and receive sites to an off-site operations control center." The OCC will distribute the tracking and targeting information to US and allied forces.

Palau is an independent country with an established history with the USA under the 1994 Compacts of Free Association (COFA) agreement, which governs the military relationship between the two nations. The US military has been making significant use of Palau's islands for various military exercises over the years. The installation on Palau of TACMOR underscores the Pentagon's increased emphasis on providing a persistent US military presence in the Indo-Pacific as of late. Palau itself is becoming particularly strategic as the USA focuses on preparing for a potential high-end conflict with China, as well as addressing the threats posed by the missile arsenals of adversaries such as North Korea.

[MON 15 APR 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 15

DAYLOG MON 08 MAR 24: The "538" website ran the results of a poll of voter attitudes towards reproductive rights.

1: "Should abortion be legal?" 70% said YES, up > 10 points from 2015.

2: "Do you approve overturning ROE V WADE?" Only 36% said YES.

3: "Are reproductive rights important to your vote?" 51% said YES.

4: "Should IVF be legal?" 67% said YES.

5: "Should abortion pills be readily available?" 71% said YES.

In short, support for reproductive rights runs ~2:1 against opposition. It was a little surprising that only half the population said RR was a big deal to them; how exactly that slices out the other stats is not clear.

NPR also had a surprising statistic: only 14% of the US population are white evangelicals, down from 25% in the 1990s. I thought they had been still growing. I knew Trump was an inflection point towards decline; it looks like they're going down faster than I thought they were.

DAYLOG TUE 09 MAR 24: Congress is coming back in session after Spring Break, with the major item on the agenda being to pass a Ukraine aid package. House Speaker Mike Johnson seems inclined to do so, obtaining Democrat support to counter the obstruction of the House MAGA Caucus.

The question is being asked: "Why do the House MAGA want to block Ukraine aid?" Surely they must see that appeasing Putin is a bad idea in all respects. In reality, of course, they just don't care. Trump wants to sell out Ukraine, that's good enough for them.

So why does Trump want to sell out Ukraine? Easy, he's sending up a flare to Vladimir Putin. Trump is in big trouble, and Putin's tried to help him in the past. It's a Trump transaction: "Help me, I'll give you Ukraine." It won't work, but Trump is desperate.

There is nothing stranger in Trump's agenda than his kissing up to Putin. Partly Trump honestly like tyrants, but it seems more that Trump thinks the Russians will always help him. The pathetic part is that the GOP has, to a degree, gone along & bent over for Russia as well. The fact that the Russians only back Trump to tear down the USA is not an issue to Trump at all.

DAYLOG WED 10 MAR 24: I've got Amazon Prime, but I've never watched any Amazon video series for long. However, I'm seeing enthusiastic send-ups of a video series based on the FALLOUT games series. I've never played FALLOUT, but the videos do look like fun.

And "fun" is the operative word here. The series would be guaranteed to be bad if it pretended to be serious, but it seems to be over-the-top and darkly humorous. I can hang with that. I've been mildly curious about the HALO video series too -- but not gonna pay for rental yet, even though it's cheap.

Popular video series based on games appears to be a coming thing, overturning the stereotype of video-game movies as lame, and replacing super-hero movies in the top spot. Incidentally, there's a video from SNL floating around that re-imagines MARIO BROS as a grim post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama.

Yes, some of us geezers are into video games. Hey, we've been playing them since they were invented. I only have time to play short games, though. I really like racing games.

DAYLOG THU 11 MAR 24: GIZMODO had a review of music trax generated by the UDIO GAI music generator ... they were all weak, but some were fun. Case in point, a Garth Brooks sendup titled: "Wow I Didn't Know That", dedicated to ignorant rednecks everywhere:

   ! When they say drinking turpentine ain't where it's at,
   ! And insurance fraud is a Federal crime,
   ! Wow, I didn't know that,
   ! You're telling me now for the first time.
   ! Well look here, this is all news to me,
   ! What else do you think this could possibly be? 

I also liked the line: "And Twitter ain't a legitimate pastime?" Then there was the folk ballad "Netflix Nights Serenade":

   ! Under the spell of tales untold, 
   ! In every plot twist, bold and bold, 
   ! Together, our dreams unfold,
   ! Through highs and lows, it's you I adore, 
   ! On Netflix nights, it's love we explore. 

Finally, last and definitely least, is "Ding Dong Dang It's Taco Time!", easily one of the most inane commercial jingles ever made:

   ! Do you like tacos?
   ! Yeah, we like tacos!
   ! Do you like lettuce,
   ! Cheese, and salsa?
   ! Ding dong dang, it's taco time!
   ! Yeah, taco time!
   ! Ding dong dang, it's taco time!
   ! Tacos for you and me! 

I must admit that it made me think of thawing out the family-sized package of frozen enchiladas I have in the freezer. Give me a week or two. Udio is in open beta right now, I'll have to try to cook up some "Retro-Wave" -- electronic music in 1980s style.

DAYLOG FRI 12 MAR 24: As mentioned earlier this week, I was surprised to see that evangelical Christianity is in decline in the USA. I used MS Copilot to get a survey, with the following results:

1: The percentage of Americans identifying as Christians has fallen from 71% in 2014 to 65% in 2021, while the percentage of those with "no religious identity" has risen from 15% in 2016 to 21% in 2020. Notice the rapid decline more or less matches the rise of Trump.

2: As for white evangelicals, they are crashing, shrinking from 23% of Americans in 2006 to 14% in 2020, faster than the norm for religions in the USA. Their share of the population has decreased by 37% during this period.

Trump was elected exactly at the time when the demographics were tilting against Right extremism. Although not all white evangelicals supported Trump -- younger ones often didn't -- the majority did, which was their big mistake. Backing a criminal is accelerating their decline.

AND SO ON: ECONOMIST.com recently ran an essay by Feng Yujun, a professor of international relations and an expert on Russia, with the interesting title: "Russia Is Sure To Lose In Ukraine", the essay starting with:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

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Feng says four factors are determining the war:

• [1] The extraordinary level of resistance and national unity shown by Ukrainians. The war has, instead of weakening Ukrainian nationalism, strengthened it.
  
  
• [2] The broad international support for Ukraine. There has been some wavering in support, but that appears to be temporary.
  
  
• [3] The intensely technical and industrial nature of the war, which demonstrates Russia's weakness in those sectors.
  
  
• [4] The difficulties Russian President Vladimir Putin has in directing the war. He is diplomatically isolated, and as a tyrant is in an information cocoon, people being reluctant to give him unbiased intelligence -- just as he is reluctant to accept inconvenient realities. Fearing rivals, Putin also makes sure nobody in a position of authority has the stature to challenge him. Ukrainian leadership is more flexible and effective.

Feng says the consequence is clear:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

The comment about the US in Afghanistan brings up the similar defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Russians have suffered far worse in Ukraine than they did in Afghanistan -- and even if they prevail on the battlefield, they'll be fighting Ukrainian guerrillas indefinitely. As far as Russian nuclear threats go, nobody takes them seriously. The USA made some fuzzy-muddled statements about going nuclear in Korea, with such negative feedback from allies that it wasn't done again. There were no such threats from the Americans in their wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

Add to Putin's woes flowing from his invasion of Ukraine is that it has created political instability in Russia, and also suggested to post-Soviet states that had been agreeable to the Kremlin before the invasion that Russia presents a threat to them. They are now distancing themselves from Moscow in various ways. Putin has also managed to revitalize NATO, with the countries in the alliance raising their defense spending and bolstering Eastern Europe -- and, in a sharp rebuff to Putin's attempts to bully them, accepted Sweden and Finland as members.

Feng makes a particularly interesting comment about the UN:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Feng makes even more interesting comments about China:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

This is putting a very positive spin on Beijing -- China's desire to "resolve disputes peacefully" doesn't seem to apply to Taiwan and China's other neighbors -- but it isn't entirely propaganda either. China is holding all the cards in its dealings with Russia, and is not invested in Putin's war in Ukraine. Beijing can take a relatively impartial view of the matter.

Feng concludes, very correctly, that a cease-fire won't happen. That would simply allow Putin to refit and re-arm, encouraging to start new wars at his convenience. Ukraine and her allies know this; neither side is interested in a halt to the fighting. The war will continue until Russia accepts defeat and withdraws. That may take more years, but it will happen. Russia cannot win this war.

[FRI 12 APR 24] JOE BIDEN (21)

* JOE BIDEN (21): Joe Biden had worried about the difficulty of conducting a presidential campaign and running the Senate Judiciary Committee at the same time. Seventeen days after Joe declared his candidacy, the worries took form: Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell announced that, since he was about to turn 80, he was going to retire. Ronald Reagan, as was his right and responsibility, was going to nominate a replacement, who would have to be vetted by the Judiciary Committee.

The word came down that the nominee would be Judge Robert H. Bork of the DC Federal Court of Appeals. Bork was a solid conservative, with views similar to those of Antonin Scalia, and somewhat infamous for his role in the "Saturday Night Massacre" in 1973.

President Richard Nixon, worried about the investigation of the Watergate affair by Special Counsel Archibald Cox, had ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refused and immediately resigned. Nixon then went to Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus and told him to fire Cox. Ruckelshaus refused and immediately resigned. Bork, at the time, was third in command at the Department of Justice; Nixon told him to fire Cox, and Bork did so. The Massacre was a political disaster for Nixon, but that's another story; the important thing is that the event suggested that Bork wasn't to be trusted.

What specifically worried Joe was that liberal Justice Powell as essentially "the finger in the dam holding back the Supreme Court from ratifying the [Reagan] conservative social agenda." When Scalia took over Renhquist's empty seat, there had been no dramatic shift in the status quo; Bork replacing Powell meant a big shift. Joe released a public statement outlining his concerns:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

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The Reagan Administration went ahead and Bork. Once the news went public, conservatives lined up to back Bork, while liberals lined up to fight him. Ted Kennedy denounced Bork in the Senate:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

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Ted Kennedy was clearly not inclined to take any prisoners in the fight against Judge Bork. Joe was in a troublesome position in directing the Judiciary Committee hearings on the nomination, since what Joe had already said about the matter was enough for those on the Right to seize on to claim he was biased against Bork -- while his insistence that Bork be given a fair hearing suggested to those on the Left that Joe was going to roll over and accept Bork. The reality was that Joe always spoke his mind; it would be beneath him to conceal what he really felt. Nonetheless, as the saying goes, a Centrist goes to the middle of the road and gets hit by traffic going both ways. The hearings greatly complicated his campaigning for the presidential nomination. In the meantime, the headaches persisted. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 11 APR 24] GIMMICKS & GADGETS

* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Gogoro Unveils Battery-Swapping, Cargo-Hauling, All-Terrain E-Scooter" by Paul Ridden, 24 October 2023), electric scooter manufacturer Gogoro of Taiwan has now introduced the "CrossOver SmartScooter", an e-scooter built for work.

This "2-wheel SUV" has high clearance of 14.2 centimeters (5.6") and features a ruggedized frame, a 7.6-kW (10 HP) liquid-cooled motor and a low-maintenance Flo Drive carbon belt instead of a chain, driving 30-centimeter (12-inch) wheels. Battery units are estimated as good for up to 150 kilometers (93 miles) at 30 KPH (18.6 MPH). It also has a synchronized front-back braking system, a high-intensity LED headlight, plus electronics with bluetooth, LTE remote networking, and an app for the scooter. Traction and cruise control are options.

Most visibly, it features a multi-point mounting system for locking on storage options across four cargo areas. Users can strap a bag or box to the rigid platform above the headlight or install a front rack; drop some luggage in the extended board in front of the seat; and there's a cargo rack out back that can grow when the passenger seat is raised or removed. Additional rack gear can be added.

* A video of Ukrainians disarming a Russian bomb involved a surprising gadget: a "rocket wrench", used to unscrew the bomb fuze from a safe distance. The wrench is clamped onto the fuze, with two rocket cartridges on arms spinning it around after they are electrically ignited via wires. The video showed the wrench in action; it had a rope tied onto its front, presumably to ensure that the wrench didn't fly off and become a hazard.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Coal's Green Potential" by Michael Franco, 25 May 2023), nobody thinks of coal as being a clean fuel, but researchers at Pennsylvania State University have found out it could play a role in a clean energy future -- by being used as a hydrogen storage medium.

Storing hydrogen is problematic, with experiments focusing on powders, pastes, and cartridges to do the job. None are in commercial service yet, so the search continues. The Penn State researchers knew that that coal is good at storing methane gas, since it sticks to the material through adsorption, and wondered if coal could soak up hydrogen gas as well.

To test out the idea, the researchers built pressure-producing equipment to force the hydrogen into the coal. Using eight different types of coal from across the USA, they found that coal is very good at storing hydrogen. The best of the eight was low-volatile bituminous coal found in Virginia and anthracite coal from Pennsylvania.

Liu Shimin -- associate professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State -- says that people tend to think of coal as a kind of rock, but that's misleading: "It has high carbon content with a lot of small pores that can store much more gas. So coal is like a sponge that can hold many more hydrogen molecules compared to other non-carbon materials."

The research team is now digging deeper into the properties of coal, such as permeability and diffusivity, to determine how readily hydrogen could be pumped into and out of the material, with the goal being to create efficient coal-based hydrogen "batteries." Liu believes that an added benefit of a coal "battery" would be to help communities that have been economically devastated by the shift away from coal for energy production.

[WED 10 APR 24] GEN-AI ARRIVES (9)

* GEN-AI ARRIVES (9): As discussed in article from ECONOMIST.com ("Meet Ernie, China's answer to ChatGPT", 3 September 2023), China's Baidu has now introduced "Ernie Bot" -- their answer to the Microsoft-OpenAI ChatGpt generative-AI (GAI) chatbot.

A decade ago Baidu, as the operator of China's biggest search engine, was at the center of the country's internet. Together with Alibaba and Tencent, China's two most valuable internet businesses, it formed a triumvirate known as "BAT". With foreign search engines banned or heavily censored in China, it faced little competition in its core business.

Baidu still enjoys more than 90% of search traffic in the China, but due to shifting technology, it is much diminished. Chinese internet users now generally search the web using apps like Tencent's WeChat, while advertising dollars have shifted to apps like Douyin, the Chinese relative of TikTok. Meituan, a delivery platform, and Pinduoduo, an e-commerce firm, have surged past Baidu's market value. Baidu attempted to launch its own delivery and shopping offerings, plus other services such as payments and social media -- to see most of them flop. Baidu's market capitalization is now about an eighth of Tencent's, down from a fifth five years ago.

Baidu's Ernie, however, has reignited interest in the company, getting a million downloads in less than a day after it was introduced; it took ChatGPT five days. Baidu's share price got a fair bump; other Chinese GAI apps introduced at the same time didn't get nearly as much interest. Robin Li, Baidu's chief executive and co-founder, said that the roll-out of AI had been a "paradigm shift" for the company. It had taken time, the company having been pumping resources into AI for years; work on Ernie began in earnest in 2019.

Baidu has said little about how Ernie will actually affect the company's bottom line, but it is clear Ernie will drive more traffic to Baidu's search engine and other services, raising advertising revenues. Ernie has also enhanced Baidu's status as China's largest AI cloud provider, with Baidu also offering services for companies after AI models tailored to their specific needs.

There has been less enthusiasm for Baidu's other AI venture, an autonomous-taxi business, is more muted. The service has been launched in a few cities across China, allowing users to hail robotaxis via a mobile app. But trips must still be monitored remotely, and a wider roll-out could be years away. It's not likely to generate profits for some time, if ever.

Much of what comes next for Baidu will depend on policymaking in Beijing and Washington DC. Restrictions on the sale of advanced chips, particularly AI processing chips, is inflicting great pain on Baidu. China has not been able to produce effective AI processors in quantity; Baidu has designed its own "Kunlunxin" chip, but has had to outsource production to companies like TSMC, a Taiwanese contract manufacturer. Baidu appears to be distancing itself from Kunlunxin, suggesting the effort is not going well.

The Chinese government is attempting to promote the development of advanced AI processors, but nothing much has happened yet. The government is also taking a strong regulatory interest in AI, that interest tailored towards the government's efforts at social control. Companies offering generative-AI services are required to identify and report "illegal content". They must also adhere to China's vaguely-defined "core socialist values". After netizens spotted that a prompt for a "patriotic cat" in Ernie's drawing application produced a picture of a feline with an American flag, the words "patriotism" and "patriotic cat" were blocked in the tool.

Ernie claims that COVID-19 originated among American vape users in July 2019; later that year the virus was spread to the Chinese city of Wuhan, via American lobsters. On matters of politics, however, Ernie is quiet. The chatbot is confused by questions such as: "Who is China's president?" -- and will tell you the name of Xi Jinping's mother, but not those of his siblings. It draws a blank if asked about the drawbacks of socialism. It often attempts to redirect sensitive conversations by saying: "Let's talk about something else."

Users may be annoyed by what Chinese AI cannot say, or worried about being reported for asking the wrong questions. In other words, the Chinese government is not necessarily Baidu's friend, with companies knowing they operate on the sufferance of government bureaucrats -- who aren't comfortable with an open-ended source of information like Ernie. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 09 APR 24] US, JAPAN, & CHINA

* US, JAPAN, & CHINA: As discussed in an article from NBCNEWS.com ("In Countering China, US Sees A Growing Role For Japan" by Janis Mackey Frayer, Yamamoto Arata, and Jennifer Jett, 14 March 2024), the partnership between Japan and the USA has had its difficulties, but it has endured -- and, in the face of growing Chinese belligerence and North Korean provocations, has become stronger.

NBC News interviewed America's ambassador to Nippon, Rahm Emanuel -- previously President Obama's chief of staff and then mayor of Chicago -- says that China has "been more aggressive -- as we have, from purely a strategic standpoint of putting our roots down even deeper in the area at the behest of regional allies."

The US-Japan relationship, Emanuel adds, "is evolving from one that was always focused on alliance protection" to one focused on "alliance projection". That means asserting US and Japanese influence around the Asia-Pacific region, including through broader partnerships such as Washington's AUKUS security alliance with Australia and Britain, and the Quad, a security grouping made up of the US, Australia, India, and Japan.

The interview with Emanuel took place as US and Japanese Self-Defense Forces participated in joint exercises known as "Iron Fist," which have taken place annually since 2006 and moved to Japan from California last year. They underscore the urgency with which Washington is shoring up security partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region, where China, Russia, and North Korea pose growing threats.

The Biden Administration is banking on Japan become a stronger military power as China becomes more threatening. Emanuel says: "In the region, the United States and Japan are united -- politically, diplomatically, economically, strategically -- because they are an effective deterrent against an untethered China." That deterrence is effective, he adds, because it underscores "that we're the permanent Pacific power -- you can bet long on America."

Major General Kitajima Hajime -- commander of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force's Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, recently commented in a news conference that the country was "facing the most severe security environment since the end of World War II." Kitajima cited Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, saying one of the major lessons from the conflict was that "there are actual states that will invade another country if they are perceived as not having sufficient strength to defend itself."

Emanuel said other Asia-Pacific countries with worries about China are reassured by the US-Japan alliance. Japan hosts more US troops, about 54,000, than any other country in the world, roughly half stationed on the island of Okinawa.

In a sign of the importance of the US-Japan relationship, President Joe Biden invited Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio to Washington for a state visit in April. Kishida will also address a joint session of Congress.

Under a new security strategy adopted in 2022, Japan has moved to reinforce its military power, in a dramatic shift away from the purely-defensive posture that has guided modern Japan until now.

In December 2023, Japan's Cabinet approved a record $56 billion USD defense budget for fiscal 2024, part of a five-year program to build up the military. It also eased a postwar ban on the export of lethal weapons, starting with the shipment of Japanese-produced Patriot guided missiles to the US to help boost a depleted inventory. Emanuel says: "They've acquired counterstrike capability, things that everybody thought were third-rail politics."

In another big step, Japan has improved long-strained ties with South Korea. Biden will hosting Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol for a historic trilateral summit at Camp David, Maryland, in August. Emanuel says: "The trilateral between the United States, Japan and Korea is deterrence. Increased economic trade is deterrence. Political alliances, diplomatic alliances [are] deterrence. So we don't limit it to the military."

ED: It is somewhat strange that, the Japanese being noted for non-confrontation civility, anyone would think that Rahm Emanuel, who has a reputation for being highly confrontational and not civil at all, was a good fit for being ambassador there. Apparently he's mellowed.

[MON 08 APR 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 14

DAYLOG MON 01 APR 24: On 25 March, after some organizational gymnastics, Trump Media & Technology Group, the main product of which is the Truth Social messaging platform used by Donald Trump, went public on the NASDAQ stock -- with the symbol "DJT", after Trump's initials.

Trump is of course the majority shareholder in DJT, with the initial valuation of the stock giving his holdings a value of billions of dollars. He couldn't cash in right away, the rules saying he had to wait six months after the initial offering -- anti-dumping rules, it seems. There was skepticism that Trump was ever going to make big money out of a stock sale out of DJT, Truth Social having been bleeding red ink all along. Last week, DJT stock peaked, giving Trump's holdings a value of over $6 billion USD -- but now have declined, to less than $4 billion USD.

It is true that "meme stocks" like DJT's -- which trade on other factors besides assessed value -- do tend to fluctuate wildly, and Trump may end up making a bundle off of DJT. Then again, as Trump falls, so will the value of his holdings in DJT. He continues to fall.

DAYLOG TUE 02 APR 24: One Philip Elliot published an essay on TIME.com with the amusing title: "Trump Built His Brand Bashing Obamacare -- Now It's More Popular Than He Is." The Affordable Care Act (ACA or "ObamaCare") was passed in 2010, and did not take the USA by storm.

There were many technical problems with the ACA startup; it was just too big a thing to be done cleanly. The Right became obsessed with overturning the act, with Donald Trump establishing its extinction as a central plank of his 2016 presidential campaign. Having won the election, Trump tried to kill the ACA, and failed. He had to be satisfied with hobbling it. Trump kept talking about a "wonderful replacement" he would introduce for ObamaCare, but his "plan" was never more than thin smoke and mirrors.

Joe Biden, after taking the White House in 2020, worked on revitalizing the ACA -- doing so quietly, a piece at a time. Now resistance to the ACA has all but evaporated. Although the ACA still leaves something to be desired, it helps tens of million of Americans, and the resistance has faded out.

That is not so surprising; there was resistance on the Right to Medicare / Medicaid when they were introduced, but eventually they were normalized. Even Trump is now talking about reinforcing the ACA. Of course, as Elliot appears to realize, Trump says a lot of things. Pay them no mind.

DAYLOG WED 03 APR 24: There's been a lot of frustration over Russia's ability to circumvent sanctions imposed after Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. However, as discussed by CNBC, the sanctions do not and cannot cripple Russia -- they instead make life more difficult for Putin.

Case in point, although Europe has greatly reduced its imports of Russian gas and fuel, India and China continue to buy Russian oil. India, at least, is abiding by the "price cap" of $60 USD established by the US and its allies, limiting how much money Russia can make off exports. The USA understands that India can't just cut off importing Russian oil; India following the price cap is good enough. From India's point of view, why not? Like they want to pay more? Incidentally, diplomatic and trade arrangements between India and Ukraine appear to be agreeable. How China handles oil imports is another question -- but they don't want to pay more, either, and they're holding the good cards.

Not incidentally, there's also been Ukrainian complaints about the Western-source electronics found in dud Russian cruise missiles. It is in reality impossible to stop Russia from obtaining "commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)" electronics; the Russians can easily get them via intermediaries in friendly countries. It's like trying to control, say, pocket calculators. However, the Russians do end up paying a markup.

DAYLOG 04 APR 24: I'm something of a student of scams, and I was a bit surprised to discover one I hadn't heard of before: the "car wrap" scam. The scammers contact a mark, often a student, and offer big money to put ads on the mark's car.

If the mark bites, the scammers send a way too big, and bogus, check, getting money from the mark in the confusion of "correcting" the error. Apparently the scammers also will charge hidden "fees" to help rip off the mark. I'd be tempted to play along for fun -- but don't EVER talk to a scammer!

* In my efforts to learn Japanese, I liked to decipher anime clips downloaded from Youtube. It's not easy sometimes to make out what the characters are saying, & getting a transcription would help. There was a transcription plug-in for Firefox, but it doesn't work any more.

There are plenty of transcription services online, but all I found were for pay. I searched again today, and found "Notta" -- which is also a paid service, except it does offer 120 minutes of free transcription a month, which is like 4x more than I need.

I logged into Notta via Google and transcribed a video right away. Sometimes I win one. The transcription doesn't work perfectly; one issue is that Japanese is loaded with "homophones", or different words that are phonetically identical, giving opportunities for confusion. Not surprisingly, the transcriber may not get what was said phonetically right, though it will be close. In either case, I get clues, and the transcription is still a big leg up.

DAYLOG FRI 05 APR 24: Reports from the Ukraine War indicate that Ukrainian drones performed coordinated attacks on Russian airfields, with the Ukrainians claiming destruction of or substantial damage to a number of Russian major combat aircraft.

Of course, the "fog of war" applies, with conflicting reports from the two sides, and many unanswered questions about the attacks. How big were the drones, how much damage can they do? Were they "stealthy", to confound air-defense radars? Were jammer drones included? And then there's the question of whether the Russians have, like the Ukrainians, started to turn out good decoys in quantity. We should get OSINT (open-source intelligence) satellite imagery soon to clear some things up.

One thing is clear: it was obvious from reports of Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia from early in the year that the Ukrainians were only getting started, as this new wave of attacks demonstrates. By summer, the campaign should be in full swing.

Incidentally, videos are starting to show up of Ukrainian ground drones in action. One video showed a four-wheel drone with fat tires carrying two 120-millimeter mortar rounds to perform a kamikaze mission on a small bridge. Another video showed a smaller tracked drone creeping up to a Russian trenchline, dropping an explosive charge into it that went off with a fair bang, and creeping back to Ukrainian lines again.

AND SO ON: One of the number of inconsequential things that happened this last week was the disbandment of the "No Labels" movement. No Labels wanted to field a centrist candidate for the presidency to push back on the toxic "hyperpartisan" political environment currently existent in the USA -- but after sinking like $70 million USD into the effort, they announced they couldn't come up with a candidate, and were giving up. The death of ex-Senator Joe Lieberman, the most prominent No Labels backer, at the end of March appears to have been the last straw.

There were worries among Democrats that No Labels would only skim off votes for Joe Biden and help Donald Trump win the election, but No Labels never could get off the ground. First, the extremism in American politics is almost completely on the Republican side; there are some extreme Democrats, but they aren't the norm. Second and more importantly, No Labels didn't understand that, as I've said before, the Center has shifted Left in the 21st century -- with approval of DEI, LGBT and reproductive rights, climate-change action, and in general responsible government now being Centrist positions. No Labels had nowhere to go.

In the same vein, Disney Corporation has been noisily criticized by the Right as being too "woke", but in a recent interview Disney CEO Bob Iger commented:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

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I replied on Spoutible that Iger was saying, in effect: ~"If we have a message in a movie, it's just one that gratifies our target audience."

The MAGA Trolls scream: "PANDERING!!!" They don't understand: "The customer is always right." The Trolls don't realize, don't want to realize, how the Center has shifted Left.

One Ronald Alexander replied by listing the billions made by Disney's many hit movies, concluding: "Seems like the films the [MAGA Trolls] call WOKE have made Disney rich."

I answered back that I was reminded of the old story about a bank robber, who was asked: "Why do you rob banks?"

He explained: "Because that's where the money is."

[FRI 05 APR 24] JOE BIDEN (20)

* JOE BIDEN (20): As Joe Biden made waves as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he also made waves in the Foreign Relations Committee -- notably assailing George Schultz, Reagan's secretary of state, for a "soft" approach to sanctions on apartheid South Africa. Joe told Schultz: "I'm ashamed of this country that puts out a policy that says nothing, nothing ... I'm ashamed of the lack of moral backbone to this policy."

Schultz didn't like being browbeaten by Joe, at one point protesting that, as secretary of state, "you can't kick me around." Schultz defended the Reagan Administration's policies, saying: "What we want is a society is that they all can live in together. So I don't turn my back on the whites, and I would hope that you wouldn't."

Joe shot back: "I speak for the oppressed, wherever they are." The exchange made the news, with critics attacking Joe for his rough handling of the secretary of state. Some found his assertive righteousness as preliminary campaigning for the presidential nomination. Joe still didn't say he was running, but maintained the assertiveness.

However, in November 1986 the mid-term election complicated Joe's plans, since the Democrats regained control of the Senate. That was a good thing for Democrats in itself -- but the problem was that, as the senior Democrat member of the Judiciary Committee, Joe became chairman of the committee. The Judiciary Committee had a big budget and staff, making it a full-time job to run, and it would be hard to perform his duties as chairman and run a credible presidential campaign at the same time.

* In early 1987, Joe was still uncommitted to a presidential run. Jill was hesitant, but Joe suggested there was no harm in probing a race. For the moment, the electorate was ignoring him -- but he was encouraged when he delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Sacramento in late January 1987 that got a wild standing ovation. What Joe did not realize at the time was that a speechwriter had stolen a phrase used by Bobby Kennedy in 1967, and inserted it in the speech without attribution. It was a little thing that would have unfortunate consequences.

Joe was maintaining a frantic schedule, and the stress was starting to show on him. He started getting headaches, a new thing for him, and they were becoming gradually more severe; he was increasingly living on Tylenol, with an aide carrying a big bottle of the pills with him.

Joe became more encouraged in the spring. The front-runner for the Democratic nomination was Senator Gary Hart of Colorado -- but then allegations came up of an affair between Hart and a pretty young campaign worker named Donna Rice. Both denied any impropriety in their dealings with each other, but the circumstantial evidence seemed overwhelming. Later investigation of the matter hinted the "circumstances" had been set up by a Republican smear operation, but whatever the reality, Hart was forced to drop out in May.

Although Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis was then seen as the rising star in the Democratic race, the way still seemed open to Joe. He conducted a meeting of his personal and political family at his home in Wilmington to consider a run, with the consensus being a green light. On 9 June 1987, Joe announced his candidacy in the Wilmington train station; he gave a speech, with his entire clan -- including Joe SR, Jean, and their descendants -- then taking a special campaign train to Washington DC. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 04 APR 24] SCIENCE NOTES

* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEW.org ("WST Spies Hints Of A Neutron Star Left Behind By Supernova 1987A") by Adam Mann, 22 February 2024), on 23 February 1987, astronomers were excited to spot a supernova about 160,000 light-years away, in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. Supernovas mark the end of the lives of stars much larger than our Sun; such big stars burn through their nuclear fuel very quickly, by cosmic time standards, and then collapse in on themselves in a spectacular explosion. "Supernova 1987A", as it was designated, was bright enough to be seen with the naked eye at night for months after the explosion.

Supernovas are believed to often leave behind a small and superdense neutron star, and it suspected that Supernova 1987A had done so -- in part because one of the markers of the explosion was the detection of a burst of neutrino particle that was an expected symptom of the formation of a neutron star. However, supernovas unsurprisingly throw out a chaotic shell of gas and dust, creating a nebula that tends to block inspection of its interior.

The nebula can be penetrated in the infrared to an extent, and so could be inspected by the space-borne James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Astronomer Patrick Kavanagh -- of Maynooth University in Ireland -- and colleagues decided to use the JWST to probe the nebula and see what was inside.

These observations did not spot a neutron star, but found signatures of ionized argon and sulfur in the dusty central region. Claes Fransson, an astronomer at Stockholm University and a co-author in the study, says: "You need a source of high-energy [X-rays] in order to create these ions. The question is: What is giving rise to this ionization?" The team sees two possibilities:

• Supernova 1987A could have left behind a pulsar -- a highly magnetized neutron star that generates powerful beams of radiation, much like the one found in the much closer Crab Nebula, the remnant of a nearly 1,000-year-old supernova (SN: 5/23/22).
  
  
• The X-rays could be coming from an ordinary neutron star, whose newborn surface would blaze at a million degrees Celsius.

Either way, there's a neutron star in the nebula. It's not conclusive evidence, but the suggestion is supported by observations from other observatories, Atacama Large Millimeter-submillimeter Array. As the nebula expands, it thins out, and makes the interior easier to observe. Eventually, astronomers hope to inspect a young neutron star, obtaining insights into the structure of that class of objects.

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.org ("How Sea Anemones Living On Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents Avoid Metal Poisoning" by Darren Incorvaia, 20 October 2023), life has an ability to evolve to survive in environments that would kill organisms found in less stressful environments. One particularly tough environment is that around deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

Along with crushing pressures, total darkness, and high temperatures, poisonous plumes belch from beneath the Earth's surface. The plumes contain particles of heavy metals like iron and manganese, which are toxic at high concentrations. However, many animals enjoy life next to these vents and set up thriving communities.

One such "extremophile" is the sea anemone Alvinactis idsseensis, found in the Indian Ocean. Now researchers have found a clue as to how it survives extreme conditions: a set of 13 "mitochondrial permeability transition (MTP)" genes, which generate proteins that sequester metals, getting them out of the way in cells.

Many organisms have MTP genes for normal metal metabolism, but not many of them. For instance, a related sea anemone that lives in shallow waters has one MTP gene. The researchers, having sequenced A. idsseensis, determined the MTP genes were helping the anemone to survive by splicing two of them into yeast. The genes protected the yeast from toxic levels of iron and manganese, the most common metals in the vent environment.

The proliferation of MTP genes is a metal detoxification strategy also found in plants. The mustard plant Arabidopsis halleri, for example, thrives in soils rich with zinc and has more MTP genes than its relatives, which can't stand too much metal. How exactly the anemone MTP genes prevent metal poisoning is not yet known. In plants, MTPs sequester metals into cellular compartments called "vacuoles", but the anemone doesn't have those particular vacuoles. Research continues.

* As discussed in an article from BBC.com ("Canterbury: Scientists Search Cathedral Roof For Cosmic Dust" by Bob Dale, 4 September 2023) researchers of the School of Physics and Astronomy from the University of Kent in the UK are hoping to find micrometeorites in a somewhat unlikely place: the roof of Canterbury Cathedral.

Researchers had previously searched for cosmic dust, which mainly come from comets and asteroids, in remote locations such as Antarctica or ocean floors. The UK's cathedrals are now being examined because of their age, size and detailed records of construction and maintenance work. Canterbury Cathedral was founded by Saint Augustine in 597 AD, and cosmic dust has been gathering on the cathedral roof since it was built.

Dr. Penny Wozniakiewicz, one of the lead researchers, says: "You want the site as undisturbed as possible. The dust is coming in everywhere, but the rooftops offer an opportunity to collect the dust and not have people trampling all over it." The research team plan to extend their work to Rochester Cathedral in Kent, then on to other cathedrals around the UK.

[WED 03 APR 24] GEN-AI ARRIVES (8)

* GEN-AI ARRIVES (8): Trying to get generative AI to work with text is not as easy as it is with images. A key step forward took came in 2013 when Tomas Mikolov developed an efficient way to capturing "single word semantics" -- that is, the meanings of words -- in number form. The numbers representing words had the interesting property of being closer in meaning when they were closer in value. Since that time, through an enormous amount of research, successive researchers have slowly worked their way up the hierarchy of language characteristics until today they are able to capture the semantics of long sequences of text in number form. Deep learning-based language models use number representations of seen text to predict the probabilities of what the next words could be following that text, then selecting that next word based on these probabilities.

Generating high quality new text based on seen text requires a model with vast numbers of "tuning parameters" to capture the subtleties of language, plus vast loads of training data. For GPT-3, that was 175 billion tuning parameters and about half a trillion tokens -- encoded words or numbers or punctuation marks -- of training material.

As relatively crude as it was, GPT-3 had remarkable capabilities. A blogger named Gwern Branwen had GPT-3 write poetry, folktales, puns, job application letters, Dad jokes -- and notably literary parodies, such as "Harry Potter in the style of PG Wodehouse":

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Nonetheless, GPT-3 was limited. It could answer straightforward questions with direct answers, but tended to fall down on subtleties in questions, and questions that didn't have direct answers. It had little ability to perform reasonings to "fill in the blanks" when it was generating answers; it couldn't answer simple word-based arithmetic questions. OpenAI believes that scaling up ChatGPT with more data will overcome many of the problems, though critics are skeptical that "more training data" is really the answer.

[ED: As of late 2023, ChatGPT answers simple logic and arithmetic word problems. Another recent innovation is that, when it can't give an exact answer for the question posed, it gives a general answer and then apologizes for not doing better.]

In any case, GAI is going to evolve, becoming more intelligent in its operation, with long-term goals including:

• Learning knowledge and about the world and applying that knowledge to text -- for example, knowing how water sloshes in a jar when it's moved.
  
  
• Generating detailed, coherent, and accurate narratives from a brief "top-down" specification.
  
  
• Carrying on extended, articulate, and coherent conversations.
  
  
• Creating extended, production-quality video narratives.
  
  
• Creating multimedia narratives with text, sound, images, and video.

These things can be done at present to a degree, but the capabilities need to be greatly extended.

* In principle, GAI could lead to an explosion of "identity theft", with convincing interactive "deepfake" videos being used to pull off clever scams. That is a potential future, but a future that hasn't arrived yet. Over the shorter term, what about GAI and disinformation? Obviously, there's a potential for abuse there, with GAI providing easy generation of volumes of fakes -- sometimes in the form of completely fabricated deepfakes, or in the form of modifications of legitimate material through "deeptweaks".

In reality, we're already saturated with disinformation, and the people who accept it don't need a lot of convincing. Those with better judgement will be suspicious of obviously biased sources, in fact to the point of being suspicious of legitimate sources that are reporting valid news that merely sounds outrageous.

There is an enormous struggle against disinformation in progress, with work ongoing towards two solutions: AI systems to automate content moderation by identifying misinformation, and establishment of trusted sources of information. Efforts to develop robust online identification systems also will help a great deal, though robust ID is significant for all online transactions. Most generally, a cultural change is required, developing customs and procedures that downplay disinformation, as opposed to the current inclination to amplify it.

There is a subtler problem posed by GAI: what will happen to human creativity when a GAI system can devise literature, music, and videos for us? It may not be a bad thing at all. Most people won't bother to do it, while any hobbyist could be able to provide general specifications for a TV show episode to a GAI system, and then the GAI system will generate it. The hobbyist could then tweak the episode until it seemed satisfactory. The end result would be a staggering amount of junk, scattered with gems. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 02 APR 24] US V APPLE

* US V APPLE: As discussed in an article from THEVERGE.com ("DOJ's Sweeping Apple Lawsuit Draws Expert Praise" by Lauren Feiner, 22 March 2024), the Biden Administration has made it clear that "the gloves are off" when it comes to long-neglected antitrust actions -- as demonstrated by a lawsuit that has been slapped on tech giant Apple by the Department of Justice's antitrust division. This is the DOJ's third tech monopoly lawsuit in four years.

Antitrust actions are not easy to win in court, since big corporations have lots of money and have the best legal defense money can buy. However, legal experts who examined the DOJ's filing are impressed by its competence.

The DOJ described wide-ranging behaviors by Apple that, so the complaint argues, adds up to illegal monopoly maintenance. Instead of taking shots at a few illegal acts, the complaint alleges that Apple engages in a pattern of behaviors that entrench consumers into their ecosystem and make it harder to switch, even when prices increase and quality falls. Rebecca Haw Allensworth -- antitrust professor and associate dean for research at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville, Tennessee -- says:

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This lawsuit follows one placed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Amazon in September 2023 -- but according to Allensworth, the DOJ makes a better case for consumer arm, along with harm to developers, with Allensworth calling the DOJ effort "a stronger lawsuit".

Again, it's not going to be easy to go after Apple. The DOJ is making the case that Apple's 65% to 70% share of the smartphone market in the USA gives it monopolistic dominance, and will have to prove it. Even if the government does prove it, creating effective remedies for the alleged harms is another different big problem.

William Kovacic, a former FTC chair who teaches antitrust at George Washington University Law School, suggests that the DOJ paid close attention to the lawsuit pressed on Apple by Epic Games -- makers of the well-known FORTNITE MMO game -- over Apple Store rules, which demanded Apple control over in-app purchases. Epic lost most of its claims, and Apple has not been cooperative with Epic over resolution of the claims Epic won. Kovacic says:

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The DOJ lawsuit lists a set of examples of Apple's refusal to play fair, such as the lack of interoperability iPhones and Android phones, lack of compatibility with competitors' smartwatches, and restrictive policies around Apple Wallet. The complaint says:

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Allensworth finds the lack of interoperability with Android as particularly outrageous:

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Apple has responded to the DOJ lawsuit by pointing out that Apple isn't nearly as dominant in the global smartphone market as it is in the USA, and needs to maintain its own proprietary technology to maintain a competitive edge. The DOJ may find it difficult to convince the courts that, with 65% to 70% market share in the USA, it has a monopoly, and is able to short-change its users without losing them.

One big thing in the DOJ's favor in this case is that there's no apparent intent to break up Apple. Allensworth says:

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The European Digital Markets Act (DMA) requires designated "gatekeepers" like Apple to make changes to its products that the commission believes will create a more competitive environment. Behavioral remedies do come with their own set of problems; if rules are imposed on Apple, the company may well decide to frustrate them at every opportunity, rather than seek harmony with the regulators. This case will go on for years, and in the meantime the Feds will keep an eye on Europe and the DMA, to see what problems come up, to see what works and what doesn't. DOJ antitrust officials know they've got their work cut out for them -- but they're in it for the long haul.

[MON 01 APR 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 13

DAYLOG SUN 24 MAR 24: According to an article published last week in NEWSWEEK.com, during January 2024 9 Chinese banks stopped processing transactions with Russia, even if the transactions are in yuan. This seems anomalous, since China is doing a boom business with Russia, and relations otherwise have never been better.

The trick is that USA started implementing sanctions on Chinese banks doing business with Russia, with the banks then worried about having their financial connections with US and European banks severed. It is likely the Chinese government will figure out workarounds, for example setting up a bank that only does external transactions with Russia, and won't care about sanctions.

DAYLOG MON 25 MAR 24: Since Elon Musk took over microblogging environment Twitter, to rename it "X", it has become completely overloaded with bots and trolls, to the point of becoming unusable. Not surprisingly, advertisers have been dumping X/Twitter. In response, Musk has been going after organizations tracking and reporting on the bot invasion of X/Twitter, in one instance slapping a lawsuit on the Center for Counseling Digital Hate (CCDH) for Musk's loss of advertising revenue.

Today a California court dismissed Musk's lawsuit, saying that Musk -- who fancies himself a "free speech absolutist" -- was attempting to suppress free speech that wasn't convenient to him. Musk has similar lawsuits in progress against other critics; today's decision suggests they'll be dismissed as well.

There is much anger with Musk online, but I feel more sorry for him than anything: he is obviously not quite right in the head, and seems to be progressively getting worse. As far as X/Twitter goes, I dropped in every now and then for a while, but now I've completely given up. There's nothing there of interest that I can't get elsewhere, and the only readers are bots.

DAYLOG TUE 26 MAR 24: It seems unlikely that Joe Biden is sweating the election looming in November, Donald Trump's disintegration being obvious for all to see. However, that's not the same thing as saying Biden is complacent.

As discussed by Asawin Suebsaeng & Adam Rawnsley in ROLLING STONE, one big concern is that Trump will again scream: "ELECTION FRAUD!" -- and try to steal the election, because of course he will. It won't work, but it could cause a lot of trouble. As a result, the Biden Administration is leaving nothing to chance, "war-gaming" a close-election scenario, and setting up a legal infrastructure to make sure Trump doesn't get traction. Will it really be a close election? Doubtful, but no use taking chances.

* The TFUB (Trolls For the UnBorn) are determined to force a national abortion ban, with the latest exercise to that end being a lawsuit being pressed by TFUB doctors, focused on the "abortion pill" mifepristone. The doctors claimed that they didn't want to have to deal with the possible complications suffered by female patients.

In the first place, however, the rate of complications is very low; going through a pregnancy is much more hazardous. In the second place, the doctors were under no compulsion to prescribe mifepristone, and more to the point their hesitations about the drug were not and could not be a basis for proposing that it be banned everywhere.

Apparently, even most of the conservative SCOTUS justices take a dim view of this lawsuit, and the court is likely to reject it. However, mifepristone will remain banned in the dozen or so states with tough anti-abortion laws. One wonders if the conservative SCOTUS justices are having second thoughts about overturning ROE V WADE. It was obvious at the outset that doing so would lead to endless trouble -- but clearly not everyone sees that as obvious.

DAYLOG WED 27 MAR 24: Yesterday the container ship DALI, it seems suffering from a steering problem, slammed into a pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge across Baltimore Harbor, dropping a bridge span. Six workers who had been filling potholes on the bridge are missing & presumed dead.

The word went around on Spoutible that the Troglodyte Right would soon blame the Biden Administration for the accident, to which I added: "And then the conspiracy stories!" The trashflow started faster than I expected. FOX News tried to link the accident to immigration policies, while two Republicans running for office similarly linked it to diversity policies. Trolls Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon suggested a terrorist attack.

The Troglodyte Right -- these days, I wonder if there's any other sort of Right -- was guaranteed to exploit the accident for their smears. Fortunately, I don't think the trolling is getting much traction any more.

DAYLOG THU 28 MAR 24: Today, President Joe Biden went to New York City for a fund-raising event, also starring ex-presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. It brought in $26 million USD for the Biden presidential campaign, said to be the most ever for a single event.

That was $5 million more than Donald Trump raised in all of February -- and much of what Trump brings in goes to his legal bills. The polls showing Biden as struggling are misleading. I keep saying: "Add 5% to Joe and subtract 5% from Trump in the polls, and they're closer to reality."

* Earlier in March, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its annual "global threat assessment", with one interesting comment buried in the text: "Al-Qaida has reached an operational nadir in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

That was followed by commentaries on how US officials exaggerated the al-Qaida threat for decades, and to what end? Myself, that sounds like "hindsight thinking": nobody knew the future, and they had to go on what they knew. Maybe better to see it as one less problem to worry about.

DAYLOG FRI 29 MAR 24: Ukraine has been confronted with a headcount disparity relative to the Russians, but now the commander of Armed Forces Ukraine (AFU), Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi, says that defense reviews shows the shortfall in troops to be less significant than thought.

That presumably reflects the shift away from costly ground offensive operations, with ground forces digging in to block Russian advances, while the Russians are hit with air, sea, and ground drones. Indeed, Ukraine is setting up an independent robot combat arm. Presumably, special operations forces, working with Ukrainian guerrillas, will raise hell in the Russian rear. Increasing AFU frontline headcount is not workable: not only do frontline troops need support headcount, civilian headcount is needed just to keep Ukraine functioning.

There is also the question of whether Russia's troop superiority represents an overwhelming advantage. The USSR lost in Afghanistan even with troop superiority, and Russia is getting hurt far worse in Ukraine.

AND SO ON: It appears that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' war with Disney Corporation has finally come to an end. For those who need reminding, after Disney withdrew political support from DeSantis over his actions against LGBT rights and such, DeSantis retaliated by revoking -- at least in principle -- Disney's self-managed Florida administrative district, in which Disney controlled its own utilities, fire department, and so on, for Disney World.

Setting up Disney's Reedy Creek District had made perfect sense -- who else would want to do it? -- just as attempting to revoke Disney's rights there made no sense at all. DeSantis then went on to install an anti-Disney oversight board, but the outgoing oversight board worked with Disney, in full public view, to make sure the new board had no powers. Dueling legal actions followed.

Now the feud has been generally settled, though it appears the settlement gave DeSantis nothing. The title of a snarky article in the "Above The Law" blog by one Joe Patrice summed it up: "Ron DeSantis Claims Victory Over Disney And All He Had To Do Was Give Disney Everything They Wanted". It works like this:

• The oversight board is now being run by one Stephanie Kopelousos, who has been a Disney ally in the Florida government -- Patrice saying she is "almost certainly just warming her resume to become a Disney or Universal lobbyist down the road."
  
  
• The oversight board's authority has been reset to that it was before the war between DeSantis and Disney began. Furthermore ...
  
  
• The agreement doesn't give the board any control over the administration of the Reedy Creek District, but instead says that it will "rather assist" Disney in its efforts.
  
  
• To cap all that off, until everything gets settled out, Disney is keeping lawsuits against the State of Florida on the back burner, to be put on the front burner if things go south again.

MAGA trolls have of course proclaimed DeSantis won everything, one telling Patrice: "Hey Joe ... Did you see that Ron DeSantis just cleaned Disney's clock?" Oh, these silly trolls! Patrice replied in the essay:

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Not all that incidentally, it appears Disney lawyers pointed out to the State of Florida that unilaterally revoking the Reedy Creek District agreement violated the "Contracts Clause" of the US Constitution. Huh? What? I'm reasonably well-read on the Constitution, but that threw me. On investigation, Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution reads:

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Ah, I'd read that, but didn't follow the bit about "impairing the Obligation of Contracts". Yeah, I guess that is a show-stopper here. It's about as good as DeSantis trying to push gerrymandered redistricting -- when there's been an amendment in the Florida state constitution forbidding it for over a decade.

Even a few years back, when "Mo'Ron" seemed to be on a tear and driving towards a presidential nomination, I was thinking: "No way will DeSantis ever be president. The handy majority of the USA can't stand him." The humiliating failure of his primary race has now almost completely deflated him, with the previously-tame Florida legislature now less inclined to simply rubber-stamp his foolish culture-war initiatives. I knew he was going to implode, but I'm still surprised at how quick and drastic it happened. Alas, Florida is stuck with him until the 2026 mid-term elections. He's term-limited and can't run again.