* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.
* THE WEEK THAT WAS: This has not been a good week for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Having implemented a large-scale mobilization program to shovel up Russian lads, then send them to Ukraine with little training or equipment, Putin has been suffering progressive defeats there. Russian casualties in Ukraine are now estimated at over 60,000. Putin's been talking big about going nuclear, but it seems mostly like theatrics. NATO hasn't changed its direction, and he's made no move to use nukes. He realizes that using nukes won't win him the war, and will likely make things much worse for him. Of course, so far his judgement has proven extremely bad, so there is doubt he can act with sense.
In the meantime, for lack of anything better, Putin ran a fake referendum in the occupied territories to validate their annexation by Russia. The YES vote for annexation was like 98%, which nobody believed. It was an unconvincing attempt to declare victory. On top of that, somebody blew up the North Stream pipeline pumping gas from Russia to Europe, resulting in a huge methane release.
The Russians denied responsibility and accused the USA of the sabotage. That was nonsense of course, but still left the question of why the Russians would have broken the pipeline instead of simply shutting it off. The answer is that shutting it off would have invoked contractual penalties, while sabotaging the pipeline would not. Everyone believes it was the Russians who did it, but proving that may be tricky.
* As discussed in an article from AP ("Finland, Sweden Offer NATO An Edge As Rivalry Warms Up North" by Ellen Knickmeyer, 20 August 2022), Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has had a wide range of follow-on effects, none of them good for Russia. One of the significant ones was the request of Finland and Sweden to join NATO.
The two nations -- which US President Joe Biden calls "our allies of the high north" -- are significant military powers, with well-led, well-trained, and well-equipped armed forces. The US Marines found that out in the spring of 2022, when they sent in a helicopter assault force during an Arctic exercise. They landed right next to a well-concealed Finnish command post, with exercise umpires saying the Marines were soundly beaten.
A NATO that includes Finland and Sweden would be a poke in the eye for Vladimir Putin, empowering the dalliance in a strategically important region, surrounding Russia in the Baltic Sea and Arctic Ocean, and extending NATO along Russia's western border for more than 1,300 additional kilometers (800 miles). Lord George Robertson, previously a NATO secretary-general, commented in the summer of 2022: "I spent four years, my term, trying to persuade Sweden and Finland to join NATO. Vladimir Putin managed it in four weeks."
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said recently that Russia in recent years has been "rearming up in the north, with advanced nuclear weapons, hypersonic missiles and multiple bases. Russia's threats, and Russia's military build-up, mean that NATO is strengthening its presence in the north." Biden has been part of bipartisan US and international cheerleading for the two countries' NATO candidacies. Reservations expressed by Turkey and Hungary keep NATO approval from being a lock.
Both Sweden and Finland downsized their militaries after the end of the Cold War. Five years ago, Sweden's entire tiny national defense force could fit into one of Stockholm's soccer stadiums, one critic noted. However, as Russia grew more confrontational, Sweden reinstated conscription and otherwise moved to rebuild its military. Sweden has a capable navy and a high-tech air force. Like Finland, Sweden has a valued homegrown defense industry; Sweden is one of the smallest countries in the world to build its own fighter jets.
Finland's defense force was not downsized so severely, and has a formidable history. In 1940, Finland confronted a Soviet invasion and mauled it savagely. The Finns were forced to cede some territory, but retained their independence.
Finland's constitution makes rallying to the national defense an obligation of every citizen. Finland says it can muster a 280,000-strong fighting force, built on near-universal male conscription and a large, well-trained reserve, equipped with modern artillery, warplanes and tanks, much of it of Western origin.
The USA and NATO are likely to increase their presence around the Baltic and Arctic once the two countries sign up. Zachary Selden -- a former director of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly's defense and security committee, now a national security expert at the University of Florida -- says: "Just looking at the map, if you add in Finland and Sweden, you essentially turn the entire Baltic Sea into a NATO lake," with just two smaller bits of Russia lining it,
Russia will become the only non-NATO member among countries with claims to Arctic territory, and the only non-NATO member of the Atlantic Council, an eight-member international forum created for Arctic issues. Selden foresees a greater NATO presence in the Baltics as a result, possibly with a new NATO regional command, along with US military rotations -- although probably not any permanent foreign base. It is likely that the disastrous failure of Putin's Ukraine adventure will destabilize Russia, and the NATO alliance will become more important than ever.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.org ("Coastal Cities Around the Globe are Sinking" by Katherine Kornei, 14 April 2022), it no longer possible to sensibly dispute that the oceans are rising due to climate change, putting coastal regions in danger of flooding. To make things worse, on the average the ground under coastal cities is sinking.
Matt Wei, an earth scientist at the University of Rhode Island in Narragansett, and colleagues studied 99 coastal cities on six continents, using two European radar satellites and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) techniques. With InSAR, they could track changes of as little as a millimeter on a cycle time of 12 days.
The researchers found that the worst subsidence rates, up to five centimeters per year are mostly in Asian cities like Tianjin, China; Karachi, Pakistan; and Manila, Philippines. 33 of the cities are sinking in some places by more than a centimeter a year. The researchers suspect that the subsidence is largely caused by people, being due to groundwater extraction. As water is pumped out of aquifers, the land tends to settle. However, there is some modest cause for optimism, in that cities such as Shanghai and Jakarta in Indonesia were sinking by more than 10 centimeters per year, on average. Now subsidence in those places has slowed, possibly due to recent governmental regulations limiting groundwater extraction.
* Not all coastal areas are sinking. As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("A Drop In The Ocean" by Ivana Kottasova and Temujin Doran, April 2022), inhabitants of the village of Hoefn -- pronounced "hup" -- is finding that access to the ocean is becoming more troublesome as coastal lagoons become shallower.
How does this make sense? Isn't climate change resulting in rising seas? Generally, yes, but it is also melting ice. Hoefn sits in the shadow of Iceland's largest ice cap, Vatnajoekull. For centuries, the vast weight of Vatnajoekull has compressed the ground underneath it -- but climate change means the ice is gradually disappearing. At the rate it's going, all of Iceland could be iceless by 2200.
As the ice melts, the ground underneath rises, and the water runs into the oceans. In addition, the ice masses exerted gravitational pull that drew seawater towards them, and that gravitational pull went away. The pull is not so much from Iceland, but from relatively nearby Greenland, with its huge and shrinking ice sheets. The net effect, in any case, is the sea recedes. It varies from place to place in Iceland, but it amounts to about 2 to 4 centimeters a year. The sea continues to rise in general, but much more noticeably on the other side of the world. The receding waters have to go someplace.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As discussed in an article from VANITYFAIR.com ("Trump's Mar-a-Lago Special Master Gambit Has Hilariously Backfired in Every Possible Way" by Bess Levin, 29 September 2022), on 8 August 2022, FBI agents raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, seizing a pile of classified documents he wasn't supposed to have.
In response, Trump did what he always does: raise legal obstacles, His lawyers demanded that a "special master" be appointed to oversee a review of the documents, in order to remove any supposedly covered by executive privilege. That was preposterous, effectively like saying the FBI needed to prove the classified documents really were classified. However, Federal Judge Aileen Cannon granted his special master request and temporarily blocked the Department of Justice from using the records taken from MAR as part of its criminal investigation.
It seemed for the moment that Trump's delaying tactics had worked, thanks to Judge Cannon's willingness to humor him -- with loud criticisms of the judge following, to which she seemed entirely indifferent. Her judgement promptly began to disintegrate, with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals saying that the review could continue, but the Department of Justice could still access the documents in the meantime. The appeals court judgement said: "For our part, we cannot discern why Plaintiff would have an individual interest in or need for any of the one-hundred documents with classification markings."
That wasn't even half of it, since the Federal judge appointed to play special master -- Raymond Dearie, a Reagan appointee -- demonstrated little inclination to humor Trump. At an initial hearing, Dearie made clear his impatience with Trump's lawyers, who would not give the court any information to show that the 100 documents obtained by the FBI were unclassified.
The judge -- a veteran of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which provides warrants for secret surveillance -- indicated that he was uncertain about what he was supposed to do if the government says certain documents are classified and Trump's side disagrees, but doesn't offer proof to challenge that. Dearie said his only criteria for classification of government documents was if they were marked as such: "What [else] am I looking for? ... As far as I am concerned, that's the end of it. What business is it of the court?"
Trump lawyer James Trusty told the judge: "We shouldn't have to be in a position to have to disclose declarations and witness statements." The expression on Dearie's face was not recorded, but he was clearly not happy with Trusty, telling him: "You can't have your cake and eat it, too."
A few days later, Dearie demanded that Trump's legal team back up the former president's claim that the Feds planted evidence during their search of his Palm Beach resort residence. Again, they could provide no evidence.
According to former FBI official Peter Strzok, Trump continues to put his attorneys at a disadvantage every time they face a judge and have to explain claims he keeps making. Strzok told an interviewer:
QUOTE:
At the end of the day, what's refreshing is that all this nonsense in this land of MAGA make-believe hits the judicial system of the United States, it crumbles immediately. That's what you have seen from Judge Dearie, the special master laying out an aggressive timeline, saying:
"We have heard you make the statements that you declassified them, we heard you make statements that evidence has been planted. Fine, by Friday, give details of exactly what you mean by that, and not only that but by next month, by mid-October, to have a complete review of a privilege log for anything you claim as executive privilege, client-attorney privilege."
I don't see any argument that Trump can make, and more importantly, any argument that attorneys representing Trump are going to be willing to put their name on the line for something that isn't supported by the law, that isn't supported by fact, and that might get them into a lot of trouble ethically and with their bar memberships. I don't expect to see much of anything of substance coming from Trump and his attorneys this week.
END_QUOTE
The story of the documents review is by no means over, but it appears the DOJ doesn't see it as anything but a nuisance, and it isn't likely to seriously delay the investigation of Trump. It is, after all, only a small part of the greater case against him.
* I've been struggling for the last number of years to adjust my work schedule so I can get everything done, and I finally managed to get a system that works. It's fascinating that I can get more done in the same amount of time just by rearranging the schedule.
One of the things I did was shift practicing on my Yamaha keyboard to early in the morning. Since I live in a duplex house and my neighbor's bedroom is only separated from mine by a wall, that meant I had to use headphones -- which was fine, except that I couldn't hear the metronome.
I got to tinkering with ideas about bluetooth connections that went nowhere, except to the extent that I started to think about using a smartphone as a metronome -- the main idea being that it could provide me with visual indicators to keep the beat. On considering the matter, I realized there had to be metronome apps for smartphones, it was just too easy to do; I quickly found an app named "Modern Metronome" and downloaded it.
It turned out to be very easy to use, and a big improvement over my ancient stand-alone metronome. I could sit it up next to the sheet music while I was practicing, and keep an eye on it. Later I found out I could store settings in files, so I didn't have to enter them all the time.
It was a bit tricky to read a score and keep track of the metronome, but I learned to merely take glances at it every now and then. I suddenly realized that metronomes were now obsolete; any old smartphone could do the job. Incidentally, there is a free version of the app, but I paid $1.99 USD for the "pro" version. It wasn't much different from the free version, but I didn't mind shelling out a trivial bit of money in appreciation.
* As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Russia Risks Speed Up Automakers' Switch From Palladium To Platinum" 15 May 2022), the Ukraine War has led to a global economic shift as materials sourced out of Russia have dried up. One facet of this shift that automakers are switching from palladium, a metal used as a catalyst in catalytic converters, are switching to platinum instead.
Russia is a major supplier of palladium, accounting for from 25% to 30% of the global supply -- but a much smaller player in platinum, accounting for from 8% to 10% of the global supply. Neither metal has been sanctioned since the start of the Ukraine War, but manufacturers are seeing the writing on the wall.
Platinum is expensive, at about $33,500 USD per kilogram, about half again as much as palladium. Automakers use over 70 tonnes of platinum and over three times that much palladium. However, platinum is now facing a glut on the market as purchases decline. Platinum was, early on, preferred for use in catalytic converters, but palladium proved more cost-effective. Now the tilt is back towards platinum. It would be nice if a catalyst could be found that wasn't a precious metal, but so far nobody has found one.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: This last week had the final public hearing of the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol Building. It was mostly just a summing up of things, but did end with the committee saying that Donald Trump would be subpoenaed to testify before Congress. He almost certainly won't and the committee knows it, so it appears they just want to make him squirm.
The hearing also had videos taken of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that day by her daughter Alexandra, a journalist, showing Pelosi and Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer desperately calling around to get help.
Earlier, as things were starting to heat up, Terri McCullough, told Pelosi that Trump had been dissuaded from coming to the Capitol Building: "They told him they don't have the resources to protect him here. So at the moment, he is not coming, but that could change."
Pelosi, clearly furious, replied: "I hope he comes. I want to punch him out. This is my moment. I've been waiting for this. For trespassing on the Capitol grounds. I want to punch him out, and I'm going to go to jail, and I'm going to be happy."
In other recent news, a jury passing judgement on conspirobot Alex Jones -- who was hit with a civil suit for telling incendiary lies about the parents of children murdered in a 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook School in Newton CT -- awarded the plaintiffs almost a billion dollars in damages. They'll never collect more than a fraction of that, but that's not the point: Jones is ruined for the rest of his life.
The Twitter buzz in response was: "Now take on Fox News." No worries, Fox is staring down the muzzle of a huge civil suit from Dominion Voting Machines for claiming their voting machines were rigged. More generally, the judgement against Jones suggests the day of mass-media trolling is coming to an end. The case against Jones created a legal infrastructure that can and will take on the big trolls, and make their lives very miserable.
* As discussed in an article from MIT's TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.com ("What's Up With All Of Biden's Executive Orders" by Zeyi Yang, 20 September 2022), the Biden Administration has proven entirely willing to continue Donald Trump's aggressive actions against China, with President Joe Biden signing a series of executive orders to target China -- without naming names. In recent weeks, there have been three such orders, with more expected to follow:
The first two promote US technology development and constrain Chinese access to it. The CFIUS order is a little less straightforward. CFIUS has been around for about 40 years. It is an interagency committee spanning 16 Federal departments, including Treasury and Defense, and is one of the major tools the Federal government has long used to stop Chinese companies from acquiring US companies and technologies.
Its official goal is to protect national security interests from all sources of foreign investment. It has stopped Chinese buyers from acquiring, or forced Chinese owners to sell: Grindr, MoneyGram, hard drive maker Western Digital, and several semiconductor companies. Under the Trump administration, it notably almost forced ByteDance to sell off TikTok in 2019. The Biden EO doesn't really change anything about CFIUS, in instead clarifies its mission, which has been frustratingly vague.
The new order is specific, listing a handful of industries that CFIUS should prioritize -- microelectronics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and biomanufacturing, quantum computing, advanced clean energy, and climate adaptation technologies -- and also singles out threats to personal data protection. These provisions could be used by the committee could use to justify blocking deals in consumer tech that aren?t traditionally seen as a national security risk.
The days when the USA was easy-going about Chinese trade. These new policies follow the same playbook that China has used for decades: generous industry subsidies, government funding for academic institutions, and entry barriers for foreign competitors to protect domestic companies. They are fundamentally protectionist measures, being labeled "economic nationalism". Protectionism has a long and bad history, but as of late it has become evident that economic interdependence on hostile foreign regimes is not a good thing. As the author concludes:
QUOTE:
... the best way to produce tech advancement is likely halfway between overreaching government interventions and an unregulated free market. It will be interesting to see how the US handles that balance as compared with its rival.
END_QUOTE
* The war in Ukraine grinds on. After an operational pause, Armed Forces Ukraine have ramped up their assault on Kherson again, and are making good progress. Many Russian soldiers are surrendering -- aided by a "surrender hotline" set up by the Ukrainians in September, which tells the Russians how to surrender and even, it seems, makes arrangements for them to do so. The line has got thousands of calls, many of them from wives trying to help their husbands surrender.
Following an attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge that connects Crimea to Russia, the Russians launched a mass wave of missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. It went on for several days, causing substantial if not critical damage and killing dozens of civilians. Russian President Vladimir Putin finally announced the attacks would relent, meaning they were running out of missiles. The attack on the bridge was supposedly by a huge truck bomb, but there was considerable skepticism, with suggestions that it was either a long-range missile or an AFU Special Operations Forces attack.
Anyway, one of the Russian missiles hit Shevchenko Park in Odesa. A reporter talked to nine-year old Askold, who had played there since he was a toddler and was appalled at the destruction there:
QUOTE:
ASKOLD: That hurt me a lot. I couldn't imagine this happening. I thought the old swing would be dismantled eventually -- but not that it would be blown up.
REPORTER: And you are still not afraid?
ASKOLD: No!
REPORTER: Why not?
ASKOLD (PAUSE): It is because I am Ukrainian. And Ukrainians aren't afraid of anything. And that's why I'm not afraid of anything. I've already seen a lot of things. When I went to Bucha, I saw destroyed houses ... I saw the bullet holes. There was a church that was also shot to pieces. That's how it is.
END_QUOTE
After running low on drones and missiles, the Russians are now turning to Iran as a supplier. Iranian Shahed kamikaze drones proved quite a nuisance for a time, but after one fell into Ukrainian hands, the loss rate of the drones to the AFU skyrocketed. Iranian ballistic missiles are expected to come into use soon.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The battle in Ukraine has taken a turn for the worse for the Ukrainians, thanks to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Russians made a deal with Iran for Shahed-136 kamikaze drones and tactical ballistic missiles, and have been using them to good effect to badly damage Ukraine's electric power grid and water systems.
Videos of the fighting are getting uglier, with imagery of Russian soldiers being bombed by drones and killed, or chased out of trenches and gunned down. One wishes the war was over, but it will be fought to the end. One Yuriy Gudymenko, a junior sergeant (corporal) in the Ukrainian Army, put it bluntly:
QUOTE:
My name is Yuriy Gudymenko. ... I want to appeal to each and every serviceman of the Belarusian Armed Forces. My address can be accessed in Russian and Belarusian in the Ukrainian media and on my FaceBook page.
I am not going to lecture you. I don't want to talk about brotherly nations, nor do I want to remind you of the fact that haven't ever fought against each other. I will be straightforward and simple: If you step on our land, you will die.
I don't know how exactly each of your deaths are going to occur. Maybe you'll die like that Russian paratrooper on whom I've tripped in Irpin, early spring of this year, while placing mines. I remember him, because I haven't seen dead Russian soldiers as close before, not looking into binoculars or a scope. He was fully burnt, his uniform baked together with his blackened skin, and one of his legs was eaten to the bone by dogs. Maybe you'll die exactly like him, betrayed by your command and comrades.
You also may get obliterated by our mines. We have a lot of them, enough for all of you. It's a quick death ? if it's gonna be an AT mine, that is. An anti-personnel mine will most likely leave you bleeding out, unable to survive without modern medical kits and evac systems.
Maybe your truck will get destroyed by a HIMARS rocket, and you'll be lucky to die with scattered legs and in horrible pain. Maybe your tank will get destroyed by a Stugna or a Javelin, and you'll burn alive, just like hundreds of Russian tank crews before you -- though you'll be counted as missing for a long time, because ammo detonation will certainly turn you into tiny flesh-bone dust. A trophy Solntsepyok HFS [thermobaric rocket launcher] might as well work out a fire mission on you. Or maybe a Grad MLRS. We will watch the video of your death, filmed from a drone, and share it with our friends.
However it will occur, you are going to die. Over 60 thousand Russian soldiers could have confirmed my words. But they can't. There's bad reception in Hell.
You haven't seen fighting for decades. We're fighting since 2014. Your weapons are old and obsolete. Our weapons are brand new, made by NATO. You're being pushed into a senseless war on foreign soil, while we're defending what's ours. We own the initiative, and your Russian allies are retreating month after month. You don't have a single chance. You will die here, near a village you've never heard of before.
I have some Belarusian blood in me. Maybe this causes me to warn you, instead of gloatingly observing your deaths. If you come to Ukraine, surrendering is your only way to survive and return home. If you don't do that, you will most certainly die.
END_QUOTE
The Russian blitz on Ukraine's cities is not going to win the war for Russia. It has little impact on the battlefield, where the Russians are clearly losing, at brutal cost to which Putin seems indifferent.
Ukraine is split between those whose first language is Russian -- incidentally, that includes Volodymir Zelenskiy -- and those whose first language is Ukrainian. However, Ukrainians are only becoming more unified in their resistance. The well-known Mal Nance, an American NCO in the UKR Foreign Legion, commented:
QUOTE:
I am in the Russia-speaking area of Ukraine ... these people hate Russia. Russia killed their children, they had their houses bombed ... They've seen their neighbors dead in the streets.
END_QUOTE
* Back in the USA, we're headed into the closing stretch of the midterm elections. The news media keeps claiming the race is very close, but one wonders. In Georgia, Raphael Warnock utterly crushed Herschel Walker in a debate, while in Ohio Tim Ryan humiliated JD Vance, and in Pennsylvania John Fetterman has similarly put down Dr. Mehmet Oz. Those are all Senate races, but it's hard to see the GOP is doing much better in the House races.
Still, there's no certainty in how the election will go. Polls don't mean much in unstable times; it's easier to predict the road ahead when the road behind is consistently straight, not so easy when it's crooked. However, most of the indicators, such as the Senate race debates, suggest the GOP is weak. President Joe Biden said: "The polls have been all over the place. I think we're going to see one more shift back to our side in the closing days."
The election may be disappointing for the Democrats, but that's not the way to bet. The GOP no longer stands for anything but Trump-MAGA, and that doesn't have a future. Trump is sinking slowly, and without Trump MAGA just becomes obnoxious noise with no sense of direction. Trump henchman Rudy Giuliani recently said that the USA is now a fascist country, adding:
QUOTE:
Why is Hillary Clinton not prosecuted? How is Joe Biden not prosecuted? What's Joe Biden doing sitting in the WH rather than prison? He?s a major criminal.
END_QUOTE
Giuliani has lost his mind, as has the rest of Trump-MAGA. They don't sound like winners. Nonetheless, we'll have to wait and see what happens.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Australia's Cockatoos Are Masters Of Dumpster Diving -- And Now They're Learning From Each Other" by Cathleen O'Grady, 22 July 2021), cockatoos are very smart birds, and inclined to the mischievous. As a case in point, sulfur-crested cockatoos living in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, have become expert "dumpster divers". They've figured out how to open up trash cans, where they can find lots of tasty things to eat.
The most interesting aspect of this habit is that cockatoos have been teaching it to each other. In addition, cockatoos in different locations use slightly different methods in opening the cans, as determined in a study led by behavioral ecologist Barbara Klump at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. The research team used social media and email lists to survey scientifically-inclined citizens of Sydney -- who were asked if they had seen such behavior.
They got 1300 responses. Before 2018, cockatoo dumpster diving had only been reported in three suburbs. By late 2019, it had spread to 44 out of nearly 500 in the survey. The spread had a clear and obvious pattern, working out from the three original suburbs, and fading off in suburbs that were more remote. Clearly, the cockatoos were propagating dumpster-diving by "word of mouth" -- though the behavior was also seen in one remote neighborhood, suggesting the cockatoos there had figured it out on their own. Klump says there are anecdotal reports of the behavior elsewhere in Australia.
To get a close-up of what the cockatoos were doing, the researchers caught and tagged 486 birds in some of the garbage can?opening hot spots. After filming 160 successful dives, they noted several common steps: First, a bird lifted the can's lid at the front corner with its bill; then held it slightly open while waddling back towards the hinges; and finally flipped it open. There were variations by locale: some held the handle of the can's lid, while others held onto the lid itself; some held it with both bill and claws, while others just used the bill. The variation increased with difference.
Local cultures, or "dialects," have been found in parrot calls, but this is the first time it has been found in parrot foraging. Further observations may reveal other "cultural" variations in cockatoo behaviors.
* In other news of animal behavior, as discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Dolphins Learn The Names Of Their Friends To Form Teams" by Virginia Morell, 22 April 2021), it is known that dolphins have, by animal standards, sophisticated vocal communications capabilities. As it turns out, male dolphins can call in other males to assist in tasks, such as collecting and defending females in heat, which is not so surprising; what is surprising is that they can call the "names", the signature whistles, of individual males.
Male dolphins usually cooperate as a pair or trio, in what researchers call a "first-order alliance." These small groups collaborate to find and corral a female in heat. Males will also cooperate in "second-order alliances" of as many as 14 dolphins, which defend against rival groups trying to steal the female. Sometimes second-order alliances join together in even bigger "third-order alliances".
Dolphins often change partners in their first-order alliances, but they maintain the structures of the second-order groups for decades, as known through long-term behavioral studies at Shark Bay in Western Australia. The second-order alliances are the core unit of the societies of males. Stephanie King, a behavioral biologist at the University of Bristol, says the males "stay together for their lifetimes," at least as long as 40 years.
Maintaining such groups requires the ability to identify individuals. Every dolphin learns a unique signature whistle from its mother, which it keeps for life; they are effectively names that dolphins recognize and remember. To investigate in detail, King and her colleagues turned to a population of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) living in Shark Bay, setting up an array of underwater microphones in 2016 to listen in on the voice traffic.
In 2018 and 2019, the researchers placed a speaker underwater and played back whistles of males to other males in their various alliances. The males ranged in age from 28 to 40 years old, and had been in their groups for all their lives. The researchers flew a drone to observe the reactions of the dolphins, Shark Bay having notably clear alliances.
The researchers expected that playing a whistle from a particular male would get a response from its first-order alliance partners -- but the response was stronger from partners in the long-term second-order alliances. King says: "It was so striking -- in 90% of experiments, dolphins who heard whistles of second-order alliance members turned immediately and directly toward the speaker."
She adds that, like humans, dolphins appear to have a "social concept of team membership, based on an individual's previous cooperative investment, rather than how good friends they are." However, researchers have a long way to go before they figure out the language of dolphins.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: At the beginning of the week, Representative Pramila Jayapal (D:WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, drove the release of a letter calling for the White House to push for negotiation with Vladimir Putin to avoid escalation of the war in Ukraine. The reaction among the Democrats was loud consternation and outrage, since it is obvious that Putin has no interest in diplomacy except as a smokescreen for aggression.
The letter had been signed by 30 Members of Congress -- but it had actually been written in July, and many of the signatories were appalled that it had been released so close to the November election. It was not at all clear why the letter was released, but it was immediately withdrawn. There was much talk that it cause the Democrats damage, though it appears it mostly damaged Jayapal, her stature in the House being diminished. Otherwise, it gave those willing to defend the war a good chance to make their case. Her House colleague Jamie Raskin (D-MD) gave a particularly articulate response:
QUOTE:
I am glad to learn of the withdrawal of the letter of October 24, 2022, which -- because of its unfortunate timing and other flaws -- led to the conflation of growing Republican opposition to support for Ukraine, as exemplified by recent statements of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, with the polar-opposite position of dozens of Democrats like me who have passionately supported every package of military, strategic and economic assistance to the Ukrainian people and are determined to see the Ukrainian people win victory over Vladimir Putin and expel his imperialist forces from their country.
In the eight months since Russia began its atrocity-filled and illegal war of aggression against the people of Ukraine, the Ukrainian people have given Americans not just the chance to defend the values of national sovereignty, democracy and pluralism but also great hope for the world's future. Had Ukrainians been quickly defeated by Putin's army, as so many people expected, had Volodymyr Zelenskyy fled the country, as so many people expected, then a dangerous tyranny would have destroyed a nascent democracy, and prospects for democratic causes everywhere in the world would have darkened. Large countries would have felt emboldened to attack small countries everywhere.
But today there is hope because of the strength of President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people, and the cause of democracy and freedom in Ukraine is the cause of the democratic world. We should unite around this just struggle and stay focused on it.
Ukraine has given the world a lesson in anti-imperialism and how to fight a just war of self-defense even amidst enormous civilian suffering. Putin has claimed, as European colonizers did for hundreds of years, that the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian nation do not exist. This obvious lie has been his rationale for an increasingly genocidal war of destruction, the openly avowed goal of which is the destruction of the Ukrainian people as such. These last weeks and days, Russian propagandists have repeatedly appeared on television to urge the murder of Ukrainian children and violence against the Ukrainian population.
It is a bad colonial habit to suppose that ultimately peace depends upon the wishes of the great powers and the great powers alone, and even progressive and liberal people can fall into this colonialist reflex.
Ukraine's struggle embodies a democratic future. Its civilian and military leadership is young and diverse, representing a post-Soviet generation that has learned to treasure freedom and value democracy. Its president, who is Jewish and thus belongs to a small national minority, was elected with 73% of the population, and now has even higher levels of support, thanks to his extraordinary wartime leadership. Thousands of Ukrainian women are fighting on the front, and a woman serves as deputy minister of defense. Sexual minorities are represented within the Ukrainian armed forces. Ukrainians soldiers routinely speak two languages. Ukraine has displayed a striking degree of toleration and decency during a war.
The Ukrainians also inspire democratic forces all over the world with their example of civil society. This war is fought and won on the Ukrainian side with the help of countless civilians, organized informally into small horizontal groups, who fill the gaps in logistics. An emblematic image of this war is of the vans driven to the front by civilians to supply soldiers. Where conscripted Russians destroy Ukrainian homes, neighbors come to help. Another common image of this war is the partially repaired house: in the regions from which Russia has been forced to retreat, Ukrainians do what they can to rebuild their neighbors' homes.
Moscow right now is a hub of corrupt tyranny, censorship, authoritarian repression, police violence, propaganda, government lies and disinformation, and planning for war crimes. It is a world center of anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-trans hatred, as well as the homeland of replacement theory for export. In supporting Ukraine, we are opposing these fascist views, and supporting the urgent principles of democratic pluralism. Ukraine is not perfect, of course, but its society is organized on the radically different principles of democracy and freedom, which is why Russia's oligarchical leaders seek to destroy it forever. I am proud to have been banned from Putin's Russia for my pro-Ukrainian legislative activism, and I look forward to visiting Ukraine.
Ukrainians provide us with an example of courage in defense of national sovereignty and democracy. They are defending their democratic right to choose their own leaders and live in freedom and peace, and they are doing so at great risk and staggering personal cost.
Ukrainians today give the democratic world a chance for a critical and historic victory, and we must rally to their side. It is important to be on the right side of a just war, and it is even more important to be on the right side and win. Just as Ukrainian resistance gives us hope, a Ukrainian victory would give us an opening to a much better future for all humanity. All champions of democracy over autocracy -- whether they call themselves progressives, conservatives or liberals -- should be doing whatever we can to ensure that Ukraine wins this just war as quickly as possible. Diplomacy by the Biden Administration will inevitably follow as sustained diplomacy always marks the conclusion of war -- even with tyrants and despots. But first Ukraine must win. Let us continue to unite as Americans and focus on that central and historic imperative.
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In late-breaking news, the Russians reported a drone attack on their Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, Crimea, apparently involving both air and sea drones. The Russians claim to have foiled the attack, but it appears to have inflicted significant damage. The Ukrainians had no comment.
* In the dark hours of the morning of 28 October, one David Depape broke into the San Francisco house of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, a businessman involved in venture capitalism and real estate. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington DC at the time; Paul Pelosi was injured by the intruder using a hammer, but managed to call 911.
Depape's social media was loaded with anti-Semitic memes, Holocaust denial, links to far-right websites, QAnon content, plus vaccine and election conspiracies. He kept asking: "Where's Nancy?" Paul Pelosi suffered a fractured skull and other injuries. Right-wing media responded to the attack by claiming it was a false-flag incident, a spat between gay lovers, and other preposterous lies. How the attack plays out against the election coming up soon remains to be seen.
* There's been considerable work on "loyal wingman" drones (LWD), intended to accompany and support piloted combat aircraft. As discussed in an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("US Air Force B-21 & NGAD Programs Spawn Autonomous Shadow Aircraft" by Steve Trimble & Brian Everstine, 18 March 2022), the USAF is seeking an ambitious LWD for the service's Northrop Grumman B-21 bomber and future Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) aircraft programs.
Most LWDs being introduced these days are intended to be relatively cheap and semi-expendable or "attritable". The B-21 / NGAD LWD proposal, however, calls back to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's "Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS)" effort, which was intended to provide a capable, sophisticated, and expensive combat drone -- before the program was canceled in 2006. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall says: "We're looking for [uncrewed] systems that cost nominally on the order of at least half as much as the manned systems that we're talking about for both NGAD and for [the] B-21,"
Given the expense of these aircraft, that implies an expensive drone. In the past few years, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has demonstrated a series of low-cost attritable aircraft platforms typified by the Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie, with a cost of $3 million to $4 million USD. The AFRL has defined an "attritable" drone as in the cost range of $2 million to $20 million USD. Given that the unit cost of a B-21 is expected to be over $600 million USD, a drone that cost half that much is not attritable. This is a conscious choice, Kendall saying: "The nominal 'one-half' is sort of an estimate of what we should shoot to achieve as a minimum at this point. I'd love it to be lower."
The concept is clearly to expand the forces available at reduced cost. Instead of sending multiple B-21s on a mission, a B-21 and LWDs could do the job instead. The USAF has indicated they want an aircraft with subsonic speed, a range of at least 2,775 kilometers (1,725 MI / 1,500 NMI), a minimum payload of 1,815 kilograms (4,000 pounds), and the ability to survive in an environment dense with adversary radars and other detection / tracking systems. The Air Force is waiting on responses from industry to see how realistic the idea is. There's talk of a formal program for an LWD to begin in FY 2024, but it may not be the same program.
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