* This is an archive of my own online blog and notes, with weekly entries collected by month.
* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As discussed in an article from MSNBC.com ("John Durham's Failed Investigation Comes With A Hefty Price Tag" by Steve Benen, 27 December 2022), the end of the year means "out with the old, in with the new." One item on the discard pile is an extended government investigation by special counsel John Durham, intended to probe into the investigations of the Trump campaign by the FBI.
Durham's "investigation of the investigation" was fall-out of the Trump campaign's Russia scandal, which led to an investigation by then-special counsel Robert Mueller. Mueller's work revealed that Trump's political operation in 2016 sought, embraced, capitalized on, and lied about Russian assistance -- with Trump then obstructing the investigation.
The Mueller investigation led to charges against 34 individuals and three companies, eight guilty pleas, and one conviction at trial. There was much frustration among Trump's critics that Mueller didn't follow the trail back to Trump himself -- but due to presidential immunity, he couldn't, and never intended to. All he could do was leave connections to Trump dangling in his report, and say the report gave Trump "no exoneration".
Trump, of course, said it exonerated him -- and just as predictably tried to discredit the investigation, with the Justice Department's inspector general conducting a lengthy probe of the Mueller investigation. To no surprise, the IG found nothing wrong. Trump didn't give up, with Bill Barr, Trump's attorney general, selecting US Attorney John Durham in 2019 to investigate, raising him to special counsel in 2020. That allowed Durham to continue the investigation after Trump left office.
Durham managed to bring three people to trial: FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, lawyer Michael Sussman, and a Russia analyst named Igor Danchenko. Clinesmith was accused of altering evidence: he had added a clarifying comment to an email. He was convicted and sentenced to a year's probation. Sussman and Danchenko were accused of lying to Federal agents, with both being found NOT GUILTY on all counts. In the Sussman case, one of the jurors publicly mocked Durham's team for having taken the case to trial. At no time, despite all his efforts, was Durham able to trace the Mueller investigation back to wrongdoing by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or anyone else. The final conclusion was that Durham wanted to use the investigation to promote flimsy conspiracy theories.
Durham has not yet given up his special counsel position, but his investigation has lasted three years -- twice as long as the Mueller investigation -- and cost taxpayers more than $6.5 million USD to date. Nobody knows what happens next, but it is unlikely to be consequential. The history books will say that the Russia scandal was for real, and say little or nothing about John Durham.
* As discussed in an editorial from MSNBC.com ("How Joe Biden Got His Groove Back In 2022" by Michael A. Cohen, 26 December 2022), in early 2022 Joe Biden's presidency seemed to be faltering; he was having difficulties passing his legislative agenda, inflation was on a roll, and his approval ratings were weak. Republicans were confident they would take full control of Congress in the mid-term elections -- not just because of Biden's problems, but because the party in power traditionally falters in the mid-terms.
Biden, characteristically, seemed undisturbed, focusing more intently on the job. When the dust settled from the mid-terms, the Republicans were dismayed: they lost a seat in the Senate, they scored a weak win in the House, and lost ground at the state level. Even before the mid-terms, Biden was moving towards passage of major components of his legislative agenda -- most notably in a major spending package that lowers prescription drug prices, reinforces former President Barack Obama's health care law, and pumps close to $370 billion USD into the fight against climate change. The grumbling against Biden in Democrat ranks has faded greatly, and there is no serious opposition to him running for re-election in 2024.
Why the turnaround? It was due to luck, Republican extremism, and the fact that Joe Biden is a highly experienced and skilled politician. It may not have seemed lucky when the Supreme Court decided in June to throw out 50 years of legal precedent and overturn the Constitutional protection for abortion rights -- but Democrats felt, with good reason, they had been handed a cause to fight for, with the decision driving women voters into Democrat ranks.
It was inevitable that the GOP would be heavily represented by MAGA extremists in the mid-terms, but what they ended up with was a list of losers: Kari Lake, Doug Mastriano, Blake Masters, Mehmet Oz, Don Bolduc, and Herschel Walker. The House Committee investigating the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot, now disbanded, did much to discredit Donald Trump with the American people, with only the hard-core Trump enthusiasts still backing him.
That leaves the Republicans in the difficult position of losing if they embrace MAGA and losing if they don't. MAGA GOP representatives believe they can use their majority in the House to pursue dubious investigations of Biden's son Hunter, perform government shutdowns to cut popular social insurance programs, and hold frivolous impeachment hearings on Democrats up to the president himself. Even if they are able to pursue this agenda -- it's not certain yet that they can -- they will simply discredit themselves and strengthen Biden's hand.
As far as political skills go, Biden has been able to appease, even please liberal Democrats, while neatly maintaining the public perception that he's steering a moderate course. Over the past two years, he has followed through on his pledge to work across the aisle with Republicans. First, there was 2021's infrastructure bill. His legislative agenda seemed to grind to a halt after that, but 2022 brought even more bipartisan achievements on gun control, same-sex marriage, veterans health care, and investments in the US semiconductor industry,
Items like same-sex marriage and gun control do seem like solidly liberal positions, but the trick is that they are broadly supported by the American public: they are now centrist positions. More specifically, Biden reached out to liberal Democrats with the decision in August to forgive tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. He has also aggressively moved to load Federal courts with judges, including the historic appointment of the Supreme Court's first black female justice -- and this fall issued a blanket pardon for thousands of people prosecuted for possessing marijuana.
Republican attempts to smear Biden as an "extremist" are going nowhere, only appealing to people who hate him anyway. Efforts by MAGA judges to derail the president's student debt forgiveness program are doing the GOP no favors with swing voters. The Republicans end up being the ones seen as extremists.
Finally, while Joe Biden defers to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the hero of Ukraine's struggle against Russian aggression, the Biden Administration has resolutely supplied the Ukrainians and done much to plan the war. Zelenskyy's triumphant visit, dressed in field fatigues, to the White House and Congress was a big win for Biden. In addition, Biden's diplomacy with NATO allies in support of the war has been deft. There is little doubt that Russia will lose the war, it's just a question of when -- and then Biden's stature will grow accordingly. Much can happen before the 2024 elections, but for now the forecasts are a strong wind behind Joe Biden.
* In less significant news, after Elon Musk took over Twitter, he began to bring back trolls who had been banned -- one of them being Andrew Tate, a British kickboxer who is fond of being a nuisance. Tate decided to troll young Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, saying he owned 33 impressive cars, and would like to email her his estimates of their emissions. He got the reply:
Yes, please do enlighten me. Email me at: smalldickenergy@getalife.com
There were loud howls of laughter all over Twitter, all the more so because Thunberg's native tongue is not English -- but it didn't stop there. Tate finally was able to come up with a reply so lame that it doesn't bear repeating -- and was then arrested by Romanian police, along with his brother Tristan, on a sex-trafficking rap. There was commentary on Twitter that he had given himself away with the reply, but the police were already closing in on him, and the exchange with Thunberg had nothing to do with his arrest.
Nonetheless, the sense of karma in operation was strong. That might be said of Musk's bungling at Twitter in general. Social media has long had a troll problem; by inflaming it in such a public way, Musk well may be driving its resolution. Social media is a state of transition, and may look very different a year from now.
* As discussed in an article from FORBES.com ("Shahed Catchers" by David Hambling, 2 November 2022), the Russians have taken to using Shahed-136 kamikaze drones against Iran. These k-drones are cheap, accurate, and destructive -- but they are also not very hard to shoot down. The problem is having interceptors that are as cheap as they are.
Ukrainian operators flying quadcopter drones have already intercepted a few Russian quadcopters with ramming attacks. Taking this idea a step further, US startup Anduril has developed an anti-drone system based on quadcopter interceptors. A ground station detects a threat and launches an interceptor from a box launcher, with the interceptor turning to face its rotors to the rear for speed, and then ramming the target to take it down. It can destroy both quadcopter and fixed-wing drones.
The MARSS company, headquartered in Monaco, offers a conceptually similar system, but its quadcopter interceptors are bigger and have ducted fans, making them more survivable after an impact. It is not clear if either company has fielded its systems, but the Ukrainians are saying they are acquiring a fleet of interceptor drones, possibly built by Ukrainian firms.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: This last week, the USA announced another military aid package for Ukraine, this one worth $2.85 billion USD. It included:
Among the particularly interesting items were the Sea Sparrow SAMs and Zuni rockets. The Sea Sparrow is generally obsolete in the US inventory, but it is still effective, and large numbers are stockpiled. The Ukrainians will use their Buk SAM launcher vehicles to carry them, presumably using Sea Sparrow box launchers mounted on the vehicles. That might possibly lead over the longer run to use of the much-improved Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile (ESSM), which is a new and more powerful missile with a Sparrow seeker head -- and then to the AMRAAM-ER, which is an ESSM with an AIM-120 AMRAAM active-radar seeker head.
The Zuni rockets are traditionally air-launched, so it appears they will be carried by Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 attack fighters, and possibly MiG-29 fighters as well. The Zuni can in principle be fitted with a laser seeker, but that option hasn't been fielded.
The most significant part of the deal was the M2 Bradley IFV. Retired US Army General Mark Hertling, mentioned here in the past, was familiar with the Bradley in combat service, and praises it highly:
QUOTE:
Giving Ukrainians Bradleys and other armored vehicles will transform the tactical capability of a technologically advanced maneuver force. More importantly -- from a commander's perspective -- it's also a solid approach to establishing the kind of advanced logistical, maintenance, and repair capability Ukraine needs for future deliveries of advanced vehicles.
As a tanker who fought in a Bradley during Operation Desert Storm, as an assistant division commander for support for a tank division during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and as an armored division commander in northern Iraq in 2007:2008, I can say that the fighting systems are important, but supporting them is critical. Without proper maintenance and supply, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle quickly becomes a useless rusting vehicle, wasting its combat capabilities, which are considerable.
In 1990, I joined the 1st Armored Division's Cavalry Squadron -- an organization of about 800 soldiers with the mission of conducting reconnaissance and security for a division of 18,000 soldiers. That unit, positioned on the old East-West German border, had just transitioned from the thin-skinned and boxy M113 personnel carriers from the Vietnam War era to the new M3 Bradley Cavalry Fighting Vehicles (CFVs). The M3 Bradleys were slightly different from the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles. The M2 infantry variant had a 3-soldier crew: a vehicle commander, a gunner, and a driver, plus six additional infantry soldiers -- called, appropriately, the "guys in back (GIB)". The M3 cavalry variant had the same crew, plus a scout, the junior-ranking soldier of the crew who was usually called "JAFO" -- meaning "Just A Friendly Observer" or something less polite.
The Bradley turret is awesomely powerful. The gun protruding from the center is officially designated M242, but soldiers call it a 25-millimeter Bushmaster chain gun, or autocannon. The barrel of the gun itself is about seven feet [2.1 meters] long and takes two people to clean and install. The rounds it fires -- up to 200 of them in a minute, thanks to an electrical drive system -- are about an inch [2.5 centimeters] in diameter and leave the muzzle at about 3600 feet per second. The ammunition comes in several types for several purposes, but two are particularly useful in combat: an armor-piercing fin-stabilizing discarding sabot, and a high-explosive incendiary with tracer known colloquially as "heat." The gun can hurl these projectiles beyond 3,000 meters. It has a dual-feed system so the gunner can change from one type of ammunition to the other with a flip of a switch.
For Ukrainian soldiers who are trying to dislodge the Russian military from positions it's been hardening for months or even years, the difference between advancing on foot with a rifle in hand or advancing with Bradleys over trenches and across fields is huge. In combat, our crew destroyed enemy trucks, Russian-built Iraqi infantry fighting vehicles, and even early-model Russian tanks -- and that doesn't even include the Bradley's main tank-killing weapon.
On the side of the turret is a rectangular box which holds two Tube-Launched, Optically Tracked, Wire Guided (TOW) anti-tank missiles. The name says it all: It's launched from a tube, the gunner or commander has to track the flight of the missile to the target, and the missile remains connected to the vehicle launcher with a spool of copper wire. The published "range" of these missiles is 3,750 meters -- after that, you're out of copper wire. [ED: Latest TOWs have wireless guidance; it isn't clear the AFU is getting them.]
The Ukrainian military has already been using TOW missiles from standalone launchers, It's unclear how many of these missiles the Ukrainians have already used, but restocking should be relatively straightforward: The TOW (in various versions and variations) has been around a long time and is plentiful. Several NATO members use the TOW, as do other countries like South Korea that have been eager to sell arms on the international market.
We launched several of these missiles during combat, and each hit their targets at very long range. By comparison, most Russian tanks have an effective range of between 1900:2500 meters -- this is for a well-trained tank crew, which I have yet to see in the Russian army -- so the TOW provides significant standoff.
In addition to the main gun and the TOWs, the Bradley's turret has a coaxially mounted 7.62-millimeter machine gun, which, like the cannon and the missiles, is also fired from the gunner or commander's station site system, which is like a video screen inside a set of binoculars. The rear of the vehicle has room for additional ammunition, including several TOW missiles.
Of course, shooting is only part of the Bradley's job. It needs to move, too, and move it does. The weight of the vehicle is between 30:40 tons (27:36 tonnes), depending on the variants and the application of new add-on armor, but it can still reach about 40 miles per hour (64 KPH). It's relatively easy to maintain the 600-horsepower [450-kW] Cummins diesel engine, the transmission is sturdy, it can go over 400 miles (640 kilometers) on a full tank, and it maintains an exceedingly smooth ride even over rough terrain (which helps with firing the weapons on the move). The space-laminate armor (steel and aluminum) isn't as thick as that of a Russian tank, or as strong as the Abrams main battle tank's Chobham armor, but it's enough for a vehicle that's designed to kill tanks from a distance.
In addition to punching through defenses with its armaments, mobility is the other great advantage the Bradley will give the Ukrainians. Even if 40 miles per hour isn't fast by the standards of road cars, it's well beyond what any soldier can do on foot. Moving fast is the key to avoiding stalemates, and decisive mechanized advances have featured in every major European war since World War I. The Russian army has no shortage of tanks, although their quality often leaves something to be desired. Giving Bradleys to the Ukrainians will help them move faster than the Russians can adjust, which will be key to victory.
Many will be adamant that giving Bradleys to the Ukrainians still isn't enough. They'll demand that Ukraine needs tanks, like the technologically advanced German Leopards or the American Abrams. Some will blast the United States and its allies for slow-rolling the delivery of advanced weapons systems, regardless of the reason.
Yes, the Abrams would be even more valuable to the Ukrainians than the Bradley -- but the Abrams is a more complicated machine. Each Bradley needs not only soldiers to operate it, but soldiers to repair it, fuel it, and deliver spare parts and tools and ammunition and fuel to where the Bradleys are, which, hopefully, is constantly moving. For the Abrams, the fuel requirements are greater, the ammunition is heavier, there are more parts, and the turbine engine is more complicated than the Bradley's diesel. Moreover, at up to 74 tons [67 tonnes], the beast itself is harder to transport.
The Ukrainians may well be capable of operating the logistics systems required to maintain a fleet of Abrams, and it helps that neighboring Poland also uses them -- but logistics networks don't happen overnight. Giving the Ukrainians Bradleys will give them experience in supporting US armor, taking a step towards support of bigger and more complex machines.
END_QUOTE
Along with the announcement of the delivery of the Bradleys, French President Macron's announced the transfer of its six-wheeled and highly mobile AMX-10RC anti-tank vehicles, while German Chancellor Scholz agreed to provide a number of their Marder Infantry Fighting Vehicles.
This big addition of weaponry has somewhat overshadowed the combat use of battlefield drones, which remain a mainstay of Ukraine's armed forces. A Ukrainian video showed they are now being used to take prisoners. Russian soldiers call in on the "surrender hotline" to the Ukrainians, who give them a time and a place to assemble, then send a quadcopter drone to walk them, presumably safely, to where they can be taken into custody.
* Back in the USA, the Republicans -- now a majority in the House of Representatives -- managed to elect Kevin McCarthy as the new House Speaker, taking 15 ballots to do it. McCarthy made so many concessions to the extremist House Freedom Caucus that it made him likely the most powerless House Speaker ever. The Freedom Caucus is planning to conduct a series of frivolous investigations and generally make a lot of noise.
The House Democrats under Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries steadfastly voted for Jeffries, but only six Republicans abstained from voting for McCarthy, and they couldn't put swing the vote against him. There was criticism of the Democrats for not cooking up a deal to install a moderate Republican, but it seems there was too little interest from Republicans to make it possible. Jeffries made a splash with his speech after the election, most significantly providing an "alphabet lesson" on Democrat values.
While most of the Freedom Caucus theatrics are unlikely to amount to much, they have threatened to perform a government shutdown if the Biden Administration doesn't make massive changes in its policies. That sounds troublesome, but the Freedom Caucus is not very bright, while the House Dems have plenty of brainpower, and very likely have already thought several moves ahead. Most significantly, the changes in rules the Freedom Caucus forced on McCarthy to ensure their control over him can also be used by the Democrats. McCarthy is in an impossible and unstable position, and may be quickly deposed. There is certainly going to be chaos, and it is unlikely that the Republicans will benefit from it.
* A popular Twitter poster named "Jojo from Jersey" -- an amusing and stereotypically foul-mouthed Jersey girl -- popped a surprise question on her followers: "(@JoJoFromJerz): If we had to choose one celebrity to negotiate peace with aliens, who would it be?"
I replied: "Patrick Stewart. He does it all the time." He was one of the more popular selections, but I think Dolly Parton beat him.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: US political news was full of noise and no real motion this last week, and stands to stay that way for a time. The war in Ukraine is similarly busy but largely immobile, as Russian troops throw themselves at the towns of Bakhmut and Soledar, inflicting harm on the Ukrainian defenders but suffering much more harm themselves. To the north, Ukrainian forces claim to be retaking the town of Kreminna, on the road to the city of Luhansk.
The Russian missile blitz against Ukraine continues. Many of the missiles are intercepted, but a few get through. On 14 January, Russian Tu-22m3 bombers launched five Kh-22 stand-off missiles against Ukraine -- the Kh-22 being an elderly and inaccurate weapon with a one-tonne (1.1-ton) warhead. One of them hit an apartment block in the city of Dnipro, all but demolishing it, with at least a dozen killed and many more injured. Videos from the scene recorded the cries for help of people buried in the ruins. A photo showed a little girl praying to a Ukrainian icon picture, asking for divine help.
Nonetheless, international public support for the war against the Russians continues. One Ukrainian posted on Twitter: "Ukrainian Front @front_ukrainian: My city Lviv is Western Ukraine. Where do you support Ukraine from?"
Of course, I replied: "Loveland, Colorado, USA." The other responses were from all over -- Sydney, Istanbul, Zurich, San Francisco, Brussels, Vienna, Nuremberg, Melbourne, Vancouver, London, Paris, Houston:
The scene reminded me of John Lennon's IMAGINE, which has become something of an anthem for the war:
Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too Imagine all the people Livin' life in peace You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the world will be as one
Getting back to the ugly realities of war, Turkey -- and it seems Pakistan -- are now shipping elderly M483 155-millimeter cluster munition shells to Ukraine. The M483 variant carries 88 grenades, in the form of little cans that throw out a cloth strip to stabilize them nose-first. The shell carries 64 M42 fragmentation / antipersonnel grenades, and 24 heavier hollow-charge / anti-armor grenades.
Cluster munitions of any sort are troublesome to deminers, since they are hard to find and clean up. They can dangerously linger for years, even decades. They are widely banned for that reason; the USA doesn't like them, but hasn't completely abandoned them. It seems the Turks are sending them in behalf of the USA to keep American hands clean. It also seems that they are a response to the "human wave" attacks by the Russians on the Bakhmut-Soledar line, and that the Ukrainians will only use them when they absolutely have to.
The war drags on, but there's little doubt that it will be won, and it won't take another year. The fall of Putin will lead to more war elsewhere, but we'll have to deal with that as it comes.
* I had a five-headed gooseneck floor lamp in my living room that was ugly, but it was useful. The base was poorly designed and broke. I had a triple-spotlight floor lamp that I could use as a replacement, but I didn't like the uneven lighting -- either not enough light or too much.
I thought of fixing the gooseneck lamp, but in the end I concluded that it would be cheaper to buy a new one. I got onto Amazon.com and examined options, to not feel comfortable with them. I started looking around for lamp alternatives, to eventually find a "Torchlet floor lamp" -- an LED lamp with a long tube shade, with the lamp able to change colors, or generate color patterns. It could be controlled by a smartphone app, or even by Alexa in my Amazon Fire TV Cube. The last item hooked me, since it would be nice to be able to say: "Hey Alexa, Lights!" -- and get lights. It was only $73 USD, so I ordered it.
It came in a few days. Assembly was easy, thanks to an instruction video on the Amazon product page, but then getting it to work was a bit trickier. It had a base controller and a little remote, but other than turning the thing on and off, they were tricky to use. One big problem was that the remote was infrared, and it wasn't easy to get a line of sight to the sensor on the base controller. I decided to try the smartphone app, fearing that I would have a hard learning curve.
I downloaded the recommended "Smart Life" app, by an outfit named "Tuya Smart", from Google Play and installed it. I brought it up, and set up an account name with password. There was a "+" symbol on the app's Home panel that brought up a long list of possible types of devices to control -- after puzzling out which to select, I settled on "String Lights / Bluetooth".
To get the lamp to pair, I had to hold down a button on its base controller for like a ten-count, with the lamp then blinking steadily. The app paired up with the lamp, and also asked me for my wi-fi network and password. I wasn't exactly sure why it needed wi-fi, but I entered them, and got an entry in the app for the lamp. I selected the entry, and immediately had full control over the lamp, allowing to turn it on or off, and select functions:
There was much more to the app than that, such as timer operation and music beat synchronization, but I didn't need more. I was expecting to have a lot more trouble getting it to work, and was entertained to find out how easy it was.
Of course, having to use the smartphone to control the lamp all the time was impractical, so I then jumped into setting up my Fire TV Cube to do the job. That looked like trouble, but I quickly figured out the app could do it all without having to tinker with the Cube. There was a "Me" menu on the app that led to "Third Party Services"; I selected "Alexa", gave the app my Amazon login and password, and that was that. I was astonished that I could then say: "Alexa, Lights!" -- and the lamp went on.
I got to playing with other commands: "Lights Off!", "Lights Red!", "Lights Blue", "Lights Dim", "Lights Bright", and so on. To no great surprise, Alexa couldn't handle any of the special modes. I found out later that Alexa would end with things like: "Have a nice evening!" I missed what she said one time -- then thought to say: "Alexa, say again!" She did.
Again, it was far easier to get the lamp to work with Alexa than I expected, thanks to the well-designed Smart Life app. I was very curious about Tuya Smart, wondering how the company did its business. Did they get payments from device makers to support their products? Did they operate as a standards organization, to make sure different manufacturers played by the same book? Home automation cannot work well without standards. The Tuya Smart website was not very informative, simply describing itself as an "international company", though it appears it's Chinese.
As it turned out, the Torchlet lamp wasn't bright enough for reading without eyestrain, which led to more tinkering. I first tried to stick the triple-spotlight lamp in a corner where it was out of the way, and then shine one of the spotlights on the white ceiling to get the illumination I needed. That worked better, but still wasn't bright enough. However, I'd just bought a new LED desk lamp, replacing one that left something to be desired; I found I could site the old LED lamp to give me optimum lighting. It was a tidy solution. The spotlight lamp stays in the corner until I can figure out what to do with it, one of these years.
I think I'll buy another Torchlet lamp and set it up in my front window to be a "beacon" to the neighborhood at night. I've long wanted to put up a lightshow in that window, but couldn't find anything that seemed a good fit. I can set the lamp to a mode with the Smart Life app as I like; if I turn off the lamp with the base controller and turn it back on later, it remembers and comes back up in the mode. Anyway, I haven't had this much fun in a while. I stayed up late tinkering with my new toy.
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Natilus Freight Drone's Blended Wing Design Packs In 60% More Cargo" by Nick Lavars, 31 January 2022), California aerospace startup Natilus (not "Nautilus") is now working on development of a series of drone air cargo transports.
Natilus is focusing on the "blended-wing body (BWB)" configuration for their drones -- the BWB amounting to a "flying wing", somewhat reminiscent of a manta ray. The pilot Natilus design is the "N3.8T", powered by twin pusher turboprops, capable of carrying loads of 3,850 kilograms (8,500 pounds) a distance of 1,665 kilometers (1,035 pounds). Company officials say it will be able to carry 60% more cargo than a traditional cargo aircraft of the same size, while cutting air freight costs and emissions in half.
The Natilus is targeted for small package delivery within a continent, with deliveries slated for 2025. If Natilus can make a go of it, the company will move on to more ambitious BWB drone designs, up to the giant "130T", designed for intercontinental service, with a range of 8,220 kilometers (5,110 miles).
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As discussed in an article from MSNBC.com ("Foolish Anti-Clinton Case Leads To Steep Penalty For Trump, Lawyers" by Steve Benen, 20 January 2023), Donald Trump has long been fond of frivolous lawsuits, pressing them at every opportunity to wear down his many enemies. The courts seem to be running out of patience with this game.
In March 2022, Trump decided to sue Hillary Clinton and several other Democrats, alleging they tried to rig the 2016 presidential election by bringing attention to his Russia scandal. The case alleged "racketeering" and a "conspiracy to commit injurious falsehood", among other things. Trump claimed the Russia scandal cost him more than $24 million USD, and he wanted his legal targets to pay far more than that. In September 2023, US District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks of Southern Florida dismissed the suit with prejudice, saying:
QUOTE:
... The pleadings in this case contained factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth.
... Plaintiff deliberately misrepresented public documents by selectively using some portions while omitting other information including findings and conclusions that contradicted his narrative.
... Every claim was frivolous, most barred by settled, well-established existing law. These were political grievances masquerading as legal claims. This cannot be attributed to incompetent lawyering. It was a deliberate use of the judicial system to pursue a political agenda.
END_QUOTE
Middlebrooks wrote that Trump's attorneys had a "cavalier attitude towards facts." He hit them with a $50,000 USD penalty and told them to pay $16,000 USD to cover legal fees of the defendants. Some of the defendants asked the judge for additional sanctions -- and he was agreeable, this last week issuing an order directing Trump, lead attorney Alina Habba, and Habba Madaio & Associates to pay $937,989 USD. Middlebrooks wrote:
QUOTE:
... This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start. No reasonable lawyer would have filed it. Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.
Thirty-one individuals and entities were needlessly harmed in order to dishonestly advance a political narrative. A continuing pattern of misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law, portrays judges as partisans, and diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm.
... Mr. Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries. He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and he cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer. He knew full well the impact of his actions. As such, I find that sanctions should be imposed upon Mr. Trump and his lead counsel, Ms. Habba.
END_QUOTE
The judge added that the actions taken by Trump's lawyers were so egregious that they might very well lead to attention from "the bar and disciplinary authorities." There has been much fuss about Trump running for the presidency in 2024 -- but can he get out of the big hole he's dug for hiself? [ED: Unfortunately, he could.]
* In a loosely related article from ECONOMIST.com ("America's Trustbusters Plan To Curtail The Use Of Non-Compete Clauses", 12 January 2023), "non-compete clauses (NCC)" in employment contracts, specifying restrictions on employees leaving a company to work for competitors, have been becoming more widespread in recent years, and are going out of control. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is now working with antitrust law to leash them in.
Of course, companies tend to like NCCs. They aren't happy to see star employees that the company has trained to leave and hire on with a competitor, taking clients and possibly trade secrets with them. On the other hand, why would an employee want to leave if the company if a competitor didn't offer a better deal? From that point of view, NCCs are an attempt to compensate for mismanagement. More generally, how does it help society to idle an ex-employee who could otherwise be keeping the economy in motion? As for trade secrets, they can be protected by intellectual-property law and non-disclosure agreements.
NCCs have also become increasingly petty. In 2014 Jimmy John's, a chain of sandwich shops, was found to have inserted a two-year NCC in its employees' contracts which barred them from seeking employment with any nearby rival business. Once the clause went public, Jimmy John's backtracked and dropped it. However, franchises often stop employees from going to work at other outlets of the same franchise, reducing their bargaining power. It appears that firms use non-compete clauses to drive down wages by lowering the value of workers in the job market.
About half of people with non-compete clauses in their contracts work in states where they cannot legally be enforced -- and employers only get away with it because low-paid workers do not usually know their rights. Washington State, home to Amazon and Microsoft, restricts non-compete clauses to the contracts of high-earners; California bans them completely. The FTC, which has become much stronger in the Biden era, may well follow California's example.
* With regards to the Torchlet smart LED lamp I bought last week, I had more fun with it. One issue was that the LED desktop lamp I used along with it for reading had too much glare -- so I bought a new one, twin LED strips in a flexible "vee / rabbit ears" configuration. I could set it to bright, not so bright, and yellow sun operation; it was much more satisfactory.
I also bought a second Torchlet lamp to broadcast to the neighborhood through my front window at night. I ordered it on a morning, Amazon.com said they could deliver by evening -- but I figured next day was fine, I wasn't in that much of a hurry. I got the lamp the next afternoon, assembled it, set it up, used the "Smart Life" smartphone app to set it to "Lightshow" mode, and let it run all night. In the morning, I turned it off with the power button on the lamp base controller. It would come back up in the same mode if I turned the power back on. I could use the app if I wanted to change the mode to "Rainbow" or "Confetti" or "Fire" or whatever.
One issue was that I needed to set the lamp on a short table so it would be fully seen through the front window. I nosed around at Walmart, looking for a little plastic table. I couldn't find one, but I found some stackable plastic drawer modules that looked like they could do the job, and also give me some extra storage space. I bought three modules, though I wasn't sure if three would be too tall; I figured the third drawer would come in handy elsewhere if it was.
Three did turn out to be too tall, but I was right that the third drawer module would still be handy: I used it to raise the height of the rabbit-ears LED lamp, obtaining optimum lighting for reading. The only problem was that the store labels on the drawers were glued on in a way that made them hard to pull off. I finally decided to take each drawer and soak the label in the kitchen sink for an hour, with the paper rubbing off easily if messily then. That left the glue, but I took a can of light household lubricating oil, smeared it over the glue patch, let it sit for a while -- then scratched up the glue with a fingernail, and cleaned it off with a throw-away rag along with paper towels. I might get some more of those drawers. Incidentally, it appears kitchen vegetable oil works on the glue, too. [ED: Some time later, I realized the smooth front of the drawers, which didn't provide a fingerhold, was inconvenient, but I bought a set of little stick-on knobs and fixed that.]
* The interesting part, however, was that I ended up learning more about the Amazon Alexa assistant app on my Fire TV Cube. I didn't try to set up the front-window Torchlet lamp with Alexa, but she still ended up recognizing it. Alexa didn't turn it on when I commanded: "Alexa, Lights!" -- but when I wanted to turn it off, she got confused, not able to choose between "Smart Lamp" and "Smart Lamp 2".
Okay, so I got into the Amazon Alexa page online -- it was more or less part of my Amazon account, with the same login -- and quickly deleted "Smart Lamp 2", restoring the status quo. Having got into the page, I poked around for what else it could offer. I found a "brief" mode that limited Alexa's replies, often to a simple chime, and enabled it, though I decided to change it back later. I then got to wondering if I could change the "wake word" -- that is, the word that Alexa uses to wake up when she's addressed.
That led to complications, since it turned out that the Alexa webpage was deprecated and had limited functionality. This was the first of petty obstacles that Amazon presented me with while I was trying to get Alexa to sit up and bark. Very well, I downloaded the Alexa app to my smartphone ... after first finding out it didn't work on my old but favored smartphone, a second obstacle. Once I downloaded it to a newer smartphone, I then had some problems figuring out how to get it to work -- but it did, no show-stoppers, nothing very painful. It could do everything I wanted.
Roughly in parallel, I thought of configuring Alexa through my Fire TV Cube, which was complicated by the fact that instructions I found on the Cube told me to download the Alexa app. After fumbling around, the Amazon.com product page for the app flatly told me I couldn't download it to the Cube. It turned out that the Cube's Alexa configuration pages were all that I could get on it for Alexa -- another obstacle. Later, I decided to try to download the Windows Alexa app for my Windows PC to perform configuration on the Cube -- but, after some hassles installing it, I found that, unlike the smartphone app, the Windows app couldn't control other Alexa nodes. Dead end, I uninstalled it. It's the smartphone app or nothing, or at least not enough.
Anyway, while trying to dope out the app, I found out that I could indeed change the wake word -- though only to three other options. I decided to use "Computer" instead of "Alexa", partly as a tribute to STAR TREK: "Computer, Lights!" That was the smart thing to do, since the Cube often didn't recognize "Alexa", requiring me to repeat myself, while it seemed to recognize "Computer" much more easily.
Along with figuring out the wake word, I also found that I could make phone calls with Alexa on the Cube. That wasn't surprising after I realized it, but I'd never thought of it before. First problem was to give Alexa my Google Voice number; investigation suggested Alexa was biased towards Skype, indeed some online commenters saying that Google Voice wouldn't work. That was ridiculous, Amazon would get into antitrust hot water if they didn't support Google Voice, and eventually I found that all I had to do was give the Alexa app whatever phone number I wanted. In fact, it turned out the right number was already there. "Well DUH."
Next problem was getting Alexa to read my Google contacts list, but in the end that was no problem either, I fumbled around a bit and it was there. I was ready to go, with the problem then being to navigate the Cube voice menus. I finally made a test call to my niece Jordy in Spokane -- "Hey, I'm talking to you with my TV set!" She was much amused.
I did find two little loose ends to tie up, one being hanging up the phone; I poked around and found out that I just had to say: "Computer, Hang Up!" -- and it did. The other was that I was getting some feedback distortion talking to Jordy, so I took a pair of cheap chunky-earbud bluetooth earphones that had been gathering dust, and hooked them up to the Fire TV Cube. That should fix that problem. Incidentally, the TV set is shared by the Cube and my Windows gamebox, so I'm going to buy a second set of earphones for the gamebox next month.
* I shot away much of the morning tinkering with Alexa, but no worries -- I had to shovel a lot of snow, so it was shot away in the first place. I got to thinking, on looking over other functions offered by Alexa, that she might be useful for keeping reminders and alerts. That implied having something running Alexa at hand all day long; after considerable puzzling around, I decided to use one of my old smartphones to do the job. Alas, the Alexa app won't install under older versions of Android. What about the Microsoft Cortana assistant? Nope, won't work either.
That led to a search for alternatives, and I finally found a free app named "Databot" that will download to almost anything, with a fun sci-fi TRON-style interface. I haven't played with it yet, and it is said to be limited in functionality. That's okay, I just wanted it for reminders, it should do the job. The fact that it's ad-supported may prove an obstacle, but I'll see.
* As discussed in an article from ELECTREK.org ("France To Require All Large Parking Lots To Be Covered By Solar Panels" by Jennifer Mossalgue, 8 November 2022) the French government is now heavily investing in renewable energy, in a program to increase the amount of solar energy power generation by a factor of 10, and double the power produced by land-based wind farms.
Accordingly, the government has directed that from July 2023, smaller carparks that have between 80 and 400 spaces will have five years to install solar panels. Carparks with more than 400 spaces will need to comply with the new measure in three years, with at least half the area of a lot covered with solar panels. The mandate targets large parking areas around commercial centers and train stations. Parking lots for trucks carrying heavy goods or parking areas in historic or protected areas are exempt. Projections are that the lots could generate up to 11 gigawatts, the equivalent of 10 nuclear reactors, powering millions of homes. Funding and other details haven't been determined yet.
One of the pioneers in the effort has been Disneyland Paris, which is covering their parking with over 67,000 solar panels. France's national rail service SNCF also plans to install some 190,000 square meters of solar panels in 156 stations throughout the country by 2025 and 1.1 million square meters by 2030. The government also plans to build around 50 additional wind farms like the one offshore Saint-Nazaire by 2050 in France. Measures are in place to accelerate implementation of offshore wind farms to build them in six years, and large solar farms in three years. French President Emmanuel Macron has said that any bill passed would need to guarantee money that ensures local communities directly benefit from the energy shift.
BACK_TO_TOP* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The big news for the Ukraine war this last week was that Germany, after prolonged argument, decided to authorize shipment of Leopard II tanks to Ukraine. This was predicated on the USA deciding to ship Ukraine M1A2 Abrams tanks, which they had been reluctant to do, since it was a pain to support. It appears the gifting of the Abrams was mostly symbolic, since they won't be sent for some time.
There was a puzzle as to why the Germans were so reluctant to allow other European countries to send Leopard IIs to Ukraine, with much talk about a German tilt towards Russia. On consideration, that seems to be an extreme read on the issue. World War II crushed German militarism, and comments by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz indicated that the main concern was the Germans didn't want to be seen as too militarily assertive -- which is why they pressured the USA to take the lead.
The impatience with the Germans is understandable, since Ukraine needed everything yesterday -- but the reality is that they can't get everything, and they can't get anything yesterday. Many of the critics do not seem to understand that providing massive shipments of munitions is not like ordering gadgets from Amazon.com, there being a long list of details to address for every shipment in order to get it done.
* Another kindly thing to say about the Germans is that they have been energetic about weaning their country from Russian gas shipments -- even though the German government has a reputation for sluggishness. As discussed in an essay titled from PUCK.news titled "The Putin Super Power Myth" (24 January 2024) by Julia Ioffe -- a Russian-born American journalist who is focusing on the war in Ukraine these days -- it was one of Vladimir Putin's many serious misjudgements to think he could really intimidate Europe by throttling gas supplies:
QUOTE:
Last November, Russia put out an ad, one of many media-trolling fantasies, that depicted the struggles of a young British woman, trying to scrape together enough electricity in her freezing home in the freezing British countryside to power her phone long enough to go on a dating app and meet a Russian man, cozy in his warm flat in Moscow, heated and lit by Russian gas. When she finally manages to get there ... she finds a toasty apartment crowded with other European women, all there for this Russian man and his access to Russian energy.
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That's not at all what happened: "A warm winter, low energy prices, and Europe's rapid turn away from Russian energy have revealed that the balance of power wasn't quite as durable as the Kremlin had predicted." Add to that the price cap placed on Russian energy exports in early December that ensured Russia would be starved of funds to prosecute the war. Putin said he wouldn't play along, but he found that he didn't have a choice. Oil producers formed a cartel, OPEC, that worked; it turned out oil consumers could establish a cartel of their own, and get it to work.
The Russians have tried to get around the consumer cartel by creating a shadow fleet of several hundred tankers, but that's not enough to compensate -- with the overhead of transport cutting further into Russian profit margins. They might be able to make it work, if they had three or four years, but they don't. The results are dire for the Kremlin:
QUOTE:
For the first time in a long time, Russia's economy is running at a deficit. In 2022, the deficit was nearly $50 billion USD, or 2.3% of its GDP. In 2023, the Kremlin is planning on a similar deficit -- and that's if [Russian crude] stays at $70 USD [per barrel] and Russia hits its oil production targets, a very big if. Which is why even the Russian finance minister said he expects the 2023 deficit to be even bigger than expected.
Among the many massive miscalculations Putin made in the run-up to his invasion of Ukraine -- that the Ukrainians wouldn't resist, that the West wouldn't punish him, that the Biden Administration was too weak -- perhaps paramount was the notion that Europe would never survive a winter without Russian oil and gas. Russia, the message was, had Europe by the balls.
... economies adapt. Before the war, Germany got nearly two-thirds of its gas from Russia and was getting ready to launch the Nord Stream II pipeline. Now, the country gets exactly 0% of its gas from Russia.
... Russia spent three generations building a business out of selling energy to Europe that Putin destroyed in a year. And it turned out that Russia needed Europe far more than Europe needed Russia.
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One of the big impacts of the war was to teach the West the dangers of economically relying on authoritarian states. This lesson applies to China as well as Russia. The war has also given a big push to the drive to shift the world away from fossil fuels. This is not a world war, but it is a war with global consequences.
* In very late-breaking news, a wave of air attacks was carried out on Iranian armaments plants and other military-related facilities -- including, it seems, Islamic Revolutionary Guards facilities -- apparently by kamikaze drones. For the moment, nothing is known for certain, though Israel is generally assumed to be responsible. That's very plausible, but Iran has no shortage of enemies. If the Israelis were indeed behind the attack, it seems also plausible that the Americans, annoyed over Iran's supply of k-drones to Russia, and the Saudis, similarly annoyed over Houthi / Iranian k-drone attacks on their oil facilities, provided enthusiastic assistance.
* Regarding my push to use Alexa on my Fire TV Cube, discussed here last week, I mentioned I wanted to get it on a smartphone, too. Alexa didn't work on my old smartphones, so I considered an alternative named Databot. That didn't work out either; not only did it come across as klunky, it had intrusive advertising, and they wanted a subscription service to get rid of the ads.
That was no good, but what else could I do? I suddenly realized I was missing the obvious: Google Assistant. I found it on Google Play and downloaded it to my smartphone without much trouble -- the only difficulty being that the installation didn't tell me it had worked and was completed. It took a bit of puzzling around to find out it had, and it came up with no difficulty. I'm going through a tutorial video to dope it out.
I wanted to set up the smartphone next to my PC so I could leave voice memos to myself while I was working. On fiddling with that option, it didn't seem satisfactory, primarily because the speaker on the phone wasn't loud enough to be workable for a "voice computer". I had a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7-inch tablet -- over ten years old, running Android 4, compared to the current version of Android 13 -- that had been gathering dust, so I decided to try it instead. Unfortunately, its operating system had been reduced to a state of unworkability, and I threw it aside in disgust, thinking I should just junk it. It didn't seem compatible with Google Assistant anyway.
I continued to plug away with the Galaxy Tab 2 in hopes of getting it to work in some way. After much frustration, I realized: nothing works with Android 4 any more, it was designed with a less secure internet in mind and it can't even communicate effectively -- so the tablet is nothing but a pretty paperweight now. It's a pity, it's actually still a nice little toy, but I can do nothing with it, and so I junked it.
* As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Sequencing West Africa's Yam Belt For Food Security" by Kazeem Sanni, 9 August 2022), the yam is a staple crop in West Africa, being pounded into paste, ground into flour, boiled or fried, providing sustenance and livelihoods across the region. However, growing conditions across the "yam belt" from Guinea to Cameroon are deteriorating, at the same time as prices of other staples soar. Vendor Adewale Elekun of Ibadan, Nigeria, says farmers are having a difficult time as conditions deteriorate: "Today, the quality of the soil has faded." At the same time, global food prices have been sharply increasing.
Elsewhere in Ibadan, molecular geneticist Dr. Ranjana Bhattacharjee is trying to compensate by developing hardier and more adaptable plants. She is working at the city's International Institute of Tropical Agriculture to complete whole-genome sequencing of around 1,000 yam samples. She says: "If you want to make an improvement in crops, then you have to do genome sequencing to understand the genes of your targeted traits like disease resistance (and) quality."
Yams, bigger than their unrelated North American namesake, symbolize prosperity, wealth and even fertility in West Africa. Battacharjee says that the sequencing could help West African farmers, who grow some 90% of all yams worldwide, improve their yield, with researchers using the extensive set of sequences to come up with improved yam varieties: "That will then ultimately lead to food security."
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