* This is an archive of my own blog and online notes, with weekly entries collected by month. For daily postings, follow @gv_goebel on SPOUTIBLE.
DAYLOG MON 30 SEP 24: Mike Pompeo, once Trump's secretary of state, commented a few days back that Putin didn't invade Ukraine while Trump was president, because he didn't dare.
OK, first of all, Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, and Trump did nothing to get him out. Second, maybe it was the case that Putin was still thinking Trump would help him take Ukraine with little effort? When Trump wasn't re-elected, Putin decided to raise the ante on his own.
* The biggest crime committed by Trump, worse than all his other crimes combined, was his gross dereliction of duty in handling the COVID-19 pandemic. He started a resistance movement, and Hundreds of thousands of Americans died who didn't need to.
A Spouter called it in reply "premediated murder". I replied: "Trump doesn't premeditate ANYTHING. He didn't even premeditate becoming POTUS -- he was running a hustle. These days, he barely knows where he is." He is unaware and unconcerned about what he does.
DAYLOG TUE 01 OCT 24: The USGOV signed a big contract with Boeing to build GBU-39 Small Diameter (glide) Bombs for Ukraine. Big puzzle: the SDB wasn't working in the war theatre last year because of GPS jamming. It's working now. Why?
Updated guidance system? In what way? Using alternative guidance? A smarter GPS receiver system? Or same guidance system but a ground-based GPS augmentation network? Nobody's talking, though it might be noted that current manufacturer literature on the GBU-39 says it features "anti-jam GPS". There's a much smarter "SDB-II", but it's the "GBU-53" & built by Raytheon.
* As anticipated as fallout from Israel's crushing assault on Hamas in Lebanon, Iran launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel. It is unclear how many got through. Will the Israelis shrug it off? Or respond in kind? On what targets?
* I'm a little unsettled by seems some signs of Trump enthusiasm in my neighborhood -- but I think about it and relax. Colorado got a Blue trifecta government in 2018, and since then MAGA has done nothing but fail miserably.
DAYLOG WED 02 OCT 24: It seems Iran launched about 180 ballistic missiles against Israel yesterday, with the Israeli Defense Forces and a US-led coalition shooting most of them down. There was some damage from a few that got through, but no reports of casualties.
Of course, Israel may retaliate. The USA warned against striking Iranian nuclear facilities -- but they are deeply buried and not really good targets. They might not do much in particular, since the strike was expected, did little damage, and the Israelis are always raising hell in Iran anyway.
* Trump, staying on brand, has been claiming Joe Biden has been indifferent to the plight of Hurricane Helene survivors because they live in Red states. Joe has irritably called that out as a lie, with Joe backed up by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.
Joe had called Kemp: "What do you need?" Kemp replied: "We got what we need. We will work through the Federal process." Joe told Kemp to call him directly if needed. Kemp said he appreciated that, but FEMA had been embedded in GA before the storm hit.
In response to GOP complaints that funding for Helene recovery was inadequate, Joe Biden did the obvious thing: He asked Congress for more FEMA money. House Speaker Mike Johnson said: NOT GONNA HAPPEN. Joe couldn't lose on that one; either the GOP give up the money, or look bad for the elections.
DAYLOG THU 03 OCT 24: JD Vance and Tim Walz had a VP debate on Tuesday. There was an expectation that Vance would be his normal troll self, but the debate was polite and measured. The two got to bickering at one point, so the moderaters cut the mikes as a hint. Otherwise, it was generally regarded as a snoozer.
The smooth Vance stayed generally a step ahead of Walz -- but the debate doesn't move the needle at all. Vance's glib delivery could be seen as demonstrating that, unlike the mindless Trump stooges, Vance knows he's lying.
Vance did score an "own-goal" when he protested against being fact-checked; that wasn't supposed to happen in the debate. More significantly, Walz did score an important goal by asking Vance if Trump had lost the 2020 election -- & Vance wouldn't answer. Although Vance had the upper hand in the debate, that didn't matter, because Walz made no blunders that could be used against him. Vance got that sound-bite thrown back at him in the media, so in practice won the debate.
There is speculation that Vance wants to head the MAGA wing of the GOP after Trump goes down -- and also speculation that Liz Cheney wants to lead the Never Trump wing. It doesn't appear either wing has much of a future, so we'll see what happens.
Liz Cheney actually spoke today at a joint campaign event in Ripon, Wisconsin, where the Republican Party was founded in 1854, at the "Little White Schoolhouse". Cheney of course ripped Trump, saying he "is not fit to lead this great and good nation." I sometimes still fear that the election could go badly, but there isn't a single indicator that says it will. In the meantime, prosecutor Jack Smith dumped a hefty revised filing on Trump for gaming the election, with all official acts removed.
DAYLOG FRI 04 OCT 24: Tina Peters, an election official in Colorado's Mesa County who tampered with voting machines, just got nine years in state prison on four felony counts. Nine years seems like a bit much for the crime, I would think no more than three, but Peters was entirely uncooperative with the authorities. She was arrested early on when she refused to turn an iPad over to the authorities, to be led out of a bagel shop in Grand Junction handcuffed, literally kicking and screaming.
Apparently she fought back every step of the way, and on conviction said "God doesn't like messing with his kids, and I'm a child of God." She said she couldn't go to prison because she had to sleep on a "magnetic mattress".
Judge Matthew Barrett was clearly not feeling lenient, saying Peters was completely unrepentant: "You're as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen." 9 years, not 3 year -- play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
To add to the cluelessness, Colorado is a UVM ("Universal Vote by Mail") state, and only a small number of people go to polling places; on top of that, Mesa County voted for Trump. Somehow unsurprisingly, Judge Barrett and other members of his court have subsequently received threats. We'll see where that goes.
AND SO ON: I mentioned last week being hammered by hay fever. At that time, I didn't know what I was really in for: hay fever has traditionally been a nuisance to me, now it's starting to look more like a health crisis. Early on, I was fighting off the shakes & shudders.
I have been coping. I finally figured that I needed to remain masked all day and night, sleeping with an N95 mask on. As it turns out, aspirin-acetaminophen-caffeine (AAC) painkillers don't do a thing for a sore throat, but ibuprofen does that job fairly well. AAC painkillers are great for dealing with the general beat-up feeling, however. Another trick was: leave the windows closed.
Sleeping with an N95 mask left a lot to be desired, so I decided to look into air purifiers. I was surprised how cheap they were, so I got a compact floor unit from Amazon for $85 USD, though it would take two days to arrive. Wednesday evening I crashed out two hours early, simply because I couldn't remain upright any longer.
I was hoping the air purifier would arrive before I went to bed on Thursday, but it was delayed -- so I crashed out, wearing sweats, for an hour so. When I got up it had arrived. I unpacked it, set it up, and got it to running -- then undressed and went back to bed, with an N95 mask on. I woke up about an hour later, pulled off the mask to see how it would go, and went back to sleep.
The air purifier worked so well that I bought a smaller one, a tabletop model, for $45 USD. It came in Saturday evening, and I set in up in my gym room (repurposed second bedroom). I used it Sunday morning and it was effective. There's really nothing much to them, they're just multi-speed fans with filters. The floor unit has a UV lamp to sterilize particulates, but I leave the lamp off. I still cough too much because scratchy throat; I just ordered a humidifier for $35 USD to see if that will help. I've got a problem? Throw technology at it. Amazon's been doing a steady business with me, thanks to the allergies.
The air purifiers are a big step up, but then there's the question of what I can and cannot eat. I don't necessarily know what is edible or not until I try it. I mentioned trying oatmeal? It was wretched. I've been tossing a lot of food I can't stand to even look at for the moment. On Saturday, for the first time since this started, I had something like a regular supper: a bowl of chili along with a cup of mexicorn, as well as nacho chips with chunky salsa, and creamsicle sherbert for dessert.
I had been thinking a vanilla milkshake would be nice, and thought of going to McD's to get one. Then I thought: Get a milkshake mixer from Amazon. It arrived along with the small air purifier, I'll use it to make a milkshake today. I prefer the high-end vanilla icecream I get from the Kroger store, but I bought a tub of the cheaper stuff this morning, since it should do well enough for milkshakes. I have no idea when the pollen is going to let up -- in fact, for the moment it's getting worse.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 07 OCT 24: Recent reports indicate that the buildings on Vladimir Putin's estate at Sochi on the Black Sea have been or are being demolished. Nobody knows exactly why, but the estate is clearly vulnerable to Ukrainian attacks from air and sea.
Is the estate being abandoned? If so, why not simply board it up instead of demolishing it? Is it being converted into a fortress, possibly as a military base? We'll see.
BTW, today is Putin's birthday; he is now 72 years old. As a present, Ukrainians performed an unprecedented attack on state TV and radio, disrupting delivery. Drone attacks were also performed on Russian targets. State media blamed the "collective West".
DAYLOG TUE 08 OCT 24: The Israeli ambassador to Ukraine, Michael Brodsky, indicates that Israel has provided Ukraine with an early warning system to give alerts of attacks by Russian drones and missiles.
This is something new for the Israelis, who have been reluctant to provide more than humanitarian aid to Ukraine. There are plenty of Jews in Russia and the Israelis don't want them persecuted. Of course, the early warning system is purely defensive.
I think it highly likely the system is based on balloons. Both the US and Israel have developed high-altitude balloon radar platforms -- the latest being "Sky Dew" -- the "Dew" probably meaning "Distant Early Warning" -- with a US balloon & Israeli radar.
DAYLOG WED 09 OCT 24: It is known that North Korea is supplying Russia huge quantities of ammunition for its war in Ukraine. KYIV POST reports that NK ammo is, to no surprise, low quality, sometimes damaging guns and mortars, sometimes injuring Russian troops.
As for NK KN-23 / Hwasong 11 tactical ballistic missiles, only about half reach their targets, sometimes instead exploding in midair. NK has sent engineers to the war zone to get the problems under control, with some of the engineers killed in action.
* Bob Woodward has released a new book about Trump, in which Woodward says Trump has spoken on the phone with Vladimir Putin at least 7 times since Trump left office. There was much indignation over this, but it's not exactly clear why.
(1) It's not a surprise in the least. (2) The probability that the Feds recorded the conversations is only slightly south of "1". (3) Given that Putin knew he was being recorded, it is unlikely much of significance was said. So ... Woodward didn't have anything the Feds didn't already know, and he didn't say anything that would change anyone's opinion of Trump -- now or earlier.
DAYLOG THU 10 OCT 24: Earlier this week, Trump had a rally in Reading PA, with the Kamala Campaign taking a pan video to show the facility was well more empty than not. The Kamala Campaign is good at trolling Trump. Serves him just right.
In the meantime, THE BULWARK is saying that liberals "can't get their heads wrapped around how close an election this is." That's because it isn't. Trump wiped out in 2020, he'll do better in 2024? I think not. In the meantime, Trump has been talking trash about the Biden Administration's response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Joe Biden told him publicly to "get a life."
It should be noted that Republicans running for re-election in swing states have been distancing themselves from mockery of hurricane relief, and even in some cases are coming out for reproductive rights. Way too little and much too late -- but that does hint at the chaos the lost GOP will confront in the era after Trump.
DAYLOG FRI 11 OCT 24: A commentary on Bob Woodard's new book suggested that it had boosted the "debate" over whether Trump would sell Ukraine out to Putin. My immediate reaction was: Debate? Of course Trump will sell out Ukraine if he gets the chance.
We have got so used to Trump that we aren't fully aware of how bizarre he is: given a choice between RIGHT and WRONG, it's a solid bet he will chose WRONG. To compound the lunacy, his fans like him for it. However, I think everything Trump is, at long last, running out of steam.
* Ukrainian drone -- possibly missile as well -- strikes on Russia have been noticeably picking up steam. A recent attack hit a set of warehouses storing hundreds of Shahed killer drones. Phone videos show the fires punctuated by impressive secondary blasts.
In other Ukraine news, KYIV POST had a visit to a training camp for foreign International Legion fighters, under the command of HUR intelligence. One interesting item was a Legion fighter carrying a pump shotgun. Huh? Oh right, to take down drones.
* Reports are that Microsoft has given up on its HoloLens and is getting out of the VR/AR industry. A sign VR sickness is a worse problem than the industry admits? No, MSoft just could not meet the competition from Meta and Apple, and had to throw in the towel.
AND SO ON: Regarding ongoing misadventures with hay fever: most of the time I feel okay these days, as long as I stay in my air-filtered bubble room. When I go out, even into the rest of the house, I put on an N95 mask.
I go for walks in the morning and I don't feel like I'm dragging a bag of rocks behind me. My appetite is coming back as well -- about time, my weight's dropped to an uncomfortably low level. I've got into Kroger chocolate-chip granola bars, they're cheap and tasty; I'll have to try the peanut-butter variety next.
Things are still not okay, since if I do stray out into the world, even with a mask I get some pollen, and I'm coughing for an hour. No signs of the pollinators letting up for the immediate future.
COMMENT ON ARTICLEDAYLOG MON 14 OCT 24: The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been providing assistance to help recover from Hurricanes Helene and Milton. To no real surprise, the MAGA rumor mill has been working overtime to smear FEMA.
Rumors include claims that FEMA will seize the properties of citizens, is preventing evacuations, and is spending money helping illegal immigrants. The last is semi-true, in that FEMA cooperates with Customs / Border Patrol to help illegals, but CBP provides the money.
FEMA has been getting threats, forcing implementation of security measures. In backwoodsy North Carolina, one William J. Parsons, age 44, was arrested after making threats against FEMA. Rumors that there were truckloads of militia "hunting FEMA" were false, however.
Along much the same lines, meteorologists across the nation have been getting threats, it seems because the meteorologists are supposed to be helping cover up the "fact" that the hurricanes were made by humans, or were helping make the hurricanes themselves. Just can't make this up.
* Nintendo has a new product, the "Alarmo", which is a smart alarm clock that can be programmed to work with themes from various Nintendo games. It's really cute, but at $100 USD I think I'll pass. Wish I had nicer clock displays for my Google Nest Hub, though.
DAYLOG TUE 15 OCT 24: First thing I do in the AM, even before I get out of bed, is check news headlines on my smartphone to see if anything significant has happened overnight. Usually not, but today I ran into an article saying that, although Russia has been burdened by sanctions, the Russians have more or less shrugged them off, and the Russian economy remains resilient. The fun part was that I later ran into a second article on the Russian economy that pointed to the official statistics, to say: THEY'RE LYING.
Since the Russians lie all the time, I found that plausible, and it appears Russia really is in dire economic shape. Since Russia is a tyranny -- a corrupt and inefficient one, but still an iron-fisted tyranny -- it's hard to say how much longer this can go on, because Putin doesn't answer to anyone. Tyrants are like that.
Other articles suggest that Russian casualties in Ukraine are increasingly of men in their 40s and 50s. Putin's talking about massive expansion of his army, but where can he get the warm bodies? For the moment, it appears North Koreans are being sent to fill the gap. Details are not clear, and it seems like desperation.
* I put my ballot in the drop box at the Larimer CO county offices this morning. Now I wait on getting the email saying it's been received. I'm thankful that voting in Colorado is so easy and unproblematic.
It took a bit of time to fill out the ballot. I voted all Dems, so that wasn't a problem, but I had to wade through the amendments and referendums. One to tighten up bail on certain suspects? Naw, leave that up to the discretion of judges as before.
There was one peculiar amendment to guarantee "school choice" for Coloradans. What? People can already choose what schools they want their kids to go to. It looked like a thin entering wedge for school vouchers, so I said NO. And then there was an amendment to guarantee reproductive rights -- incidentally, it only takes a 55% vote to amend the Colorado constitution. That seemed redundant, since reproductive rights aren't a problem here, but it couldn't hurt, so I voted YES.
DAYLOG WED 16 OCT 24: An online video asked the dire question: What would happen if Putin decided to expand the war by invading the Baltic States? Speculations on the wider war followed.
Of course, the Baltics are NATO members, and NATO Article 5 requires a response from NATO members. The US / NATO send ground forces into the Baltic States, with NATO air power crushing the Russian ground offensive. US / NATO naval forces assist in the air assault while wiping out Russian naval power in the Baltic Sea. That done, the Kaliningrad Enclave is swiftly overrun.
In the next phase, US / NATO forces operate from the big airbase at Mihail Kogalniceanu Military Base in Romania to clean Russian naval forces out of the Black Sea -- with the isolation and destruction of Russian forces in Crimea following. Crimea then falls. That leads to offensive actions against the Russians in the Donbas, possibly leading to a drive into Russia itself.
In the meantime, the USA gets assurances from Beijing that China won't try to bail out Russia, so the USA occupies the Russian Kurile Islands north of Japan. That is followed by strikes against Russian assets in Siberia, with strikes ongoing against Russia ports -- and particularly oil terminals -- elsewhere. Russian naval power is exterminated. What happens after that? Putin collapses? Or does he go nuclear? This is all an informed fiction, so who knows?
DAYLOG THU 17 OCT 24: Kamala Harris appeared on Fox News yesterday, dealing with Fox journalist Bret Baier. After the fact, both sides called the win, but in reality it played out as it had to be expected to -- Kamala not losing anything, but did she gain anything?
It appears her appearance pegged Fox viewership. Today she was campaigning in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, standing up for reproductive rights, pointing out truthfully that Trump had done all he could to destroy them, and would keep on doing so. Some hecklers shouted out something or other at her. She snarked back at them: "Oh, you guys are at the wrong rally." Cheers from the audience; they faded, she added: "No, I think you meant to go to the smaller one down the street." Louder cheers.
In the meantime, Trump has been canceling interviews with mainstream media outlets. In fact, for the moment he seems to be canceling most of his media appearances. It's like he knows he's beaten and has given up, sinking into lethargy. This is the endgame.
DAYLOG FRI 18 OCT 24: TECHCRUNCH reports that Elon the Musk Rat is weakening blocking on Xitter: If Alice blocks Bob, Bob will still be able to see her postings, just not interact with them. 1st question: Who wants this?
Elon says that the current block scheme is unsatisfactory, because anyone can still see through blocks just by logging out of an account and reading as an unlogged guest. 2nd question: So what?
Yes, I have experimentally got around blocks by logging out and reading as a guest -- but it was just to see if it could be done, since I couldn't think of a good reason to bother. I'm in the online world to make friends and get followers. If I end up interacting with people who I'm clearly not going to get along with, I block them -- or they block me -- and we have mutually ceased to exist. I'm happy, they should be happy, the world is a better place.
If I have blocked someone, I don't want to see them again, and I assume I will be forgotten. The only reason I can think of as to why someone would want to penetrate the block is for cyberstalking, seeking indirect means of making trouble for the target. Yes, they could still read through the blocks by logging out and checking as a guest, but that's jumping through hoops; why make it easier for them?
The Musk Rat is, as usual, blowing smoke: it appears neither the Google nor Apple appstores will distribute apps that don't have a proper blocking mechanism. I faintly and unreliably recall the EU doesn't like that, either.
Incidentally, sometimes I equivocate about blocking people, wondering if it's fair to do so. I usually don't like to engage with trolls, but I will do so to see if they're really on the level and I've misunderstood. Sometimes I have, mostly I end up blocking them, and I engage less all the time. I will block people who show up indirectly on my timeline but who annoy me; they don't know I've blocked them. In the same way, I will always block people whose postings say: You can't read my postings unless you follow me. Most ridiculous Spout feature ever.
AND SO ON: Reports are coming in of Ukrainian drone attacks on Saint Petersburg that temporarily knocked out power to hundreds of buildings. More impressively, there have been drone attacks on Russian air bases in Murmansk, which is like 1800 kilometers (1,120 miles) north of Ukraine. It appears the attacks on Murmansk exploited gaps in Russian air defenses -- which, not surprisingly, are focused on attacks from the west and not so much in other directions. There was also an attack on a major electronics factory in Bryansk.
Joe Biden was in Germany, making ringing declarations of support for Ukraine. However, he made no commitments to anything new. He can't. Congress is not going to allocate any more money for Ukraine before the next administration takes office, and any big decisions will have to be made in light of the political situation then. There's been some talk that if Kamala wins, she'll back off from Ukraine, it seems to refocus on the Far East -- but she's said nothing of the kind, and defeating Putin would certainly discourage Xi from making more trouble for Taiwan. I'm optimistic, but we don't know how things will be.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 21 OCT 24: I was over on Threads, poking around, and got to thinking: What good is it? It's like a weak version of Xitter, being troll-infested, but with much less interesting content. BlueSky has even less substance.
Things have been disgusting lately -- I busted a tooth yesterday, though it was rapidly patched up this AM -- but it's the election that's the big worry. I think we'll win and hopefully win big, but the legacy media keeps running all these bogus fraidy-cat polls.
There's been talk of the election hanging on the economy. I doubt it. 1st, the economy isn't so bad -- fuel prices are way down, as they usually are in the fall -- & 2nd, it's not like Trump has any capability to improve the economic situation; more like the reverse, really. I suspect the people talking about "the economy" are just looking for a fake reason to justify voting for Trump. Chris Bouzy, not incidentally, sees independents are leaning against Trump. Right -- nobody capable of doubts will vote for Trump.
* I've run a blog since late 2005, have all the archived materials online. It was mostly renderings of articles, some technical, and rough drafts of major documents.
I finally decided to junk it. It gets little attention, is too much like useless work, and it leaves me vulnerable to the copyright cops. I'm putting the archives into deep freeze offline and deleting the online material. I'm replacing it with an archive of THE WEEK going back to its roots. THE WEEK is much more like a conventional blog anyway. I even have a modest email list for it. Maybe I can grow it.
DAYLOG TUE 22 OCT 24: Regards tales of North Koreans fighting in Ukraine: it appears that about a brigade, 12,000 men, have been sent. That's not enough to make much difference, and the North Koreans are likely to find the experience unpleasant. Rumor also has it that the Russians don't have the resources to support them in combat.
The South Koreans, in response, appear to be raising their game in support of Ukraine. Given how xenophobic North Korea is, there is the question of how the returning troops are likely to be treated. Very possibly not well.
* Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov publicly stated that the USA has provided Ukraine with $64 billion USD in military aid since the beginning of the conflict -- speaking along with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Umerov said: "[America's] unwavering support is not just a gesture of friendship. It's a powerful symbol of the shared values that bind our nations together." Austin was quick to point out that the other Allies now provide more support to Ukraine than the USA.
This was a welcome correction to the inclination to say the USA isn't doing enough for Ukraine. Yes, more would always be welcome, but that's no cause to dismiss what's already been done.
DAYLOG WED 23 OCT 24: Yesterday, I ran into a poster on Spout who was preaching doom & gloom about the election. I told him to not believe the bogus polls. He said he was actually worried about early voting trends.
What? Most of what I've heard says the early voting has been encouraging for the Dems. Yes, there's been a burst of early GOP voting enthusiasm -- but that's not a big deal, and many GOP may well be voting for Kamala anyway. I didn't want to argue with him, so I just blocked him. Incidentally, I checked online concerning my own ballot: it's been logged in, what a relief.
There's also still some griping about the DOJ "dragging their feet" on bringing Trump to justice. I replied that the problem was mostly with the courts right now, and there was little the DOJ could do about it. Sigh, all experience shows big ugly cases take years.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Hidden Hydrogen" by Eric Hand, 16 February 2023), in 1987 well-diggers were drilling boreholes in a village in Mali -- to find a well that produced almost pure hydrogen gas. The villagers used it to drive a generator.
There is now a faction of geologists who think there are huge deposits of gaseous hydrogen underground. Why haven't we noticed before? Because the deposits aren't in the same sorts of places where people drill for oil.
The Soviets, pursuing unorthodox geological theories about the origins of oil, did often strike hydrogen while drilling. The deposits are in locales where hot iron-rich minerals come into contact with water. A number of companies over the world are drilling for hydrogen now.
There is good reason to believe there is enough hydrogen underground to serve energy needs for centuries -- and it may be renewable at some rate. The big question: Is it cost-effective to extract it? Investigations continue.
DAYLOG THU 24 OCT 24: As discussed in an article from TWZ.com ("Secretive Phoenix Ghost Kamikaze Drones Rushed To Ukraine Finally Come Out Of The Shadows" by Thomas Newdick, Rachel S. Cohen, & Joseph Trevithick, 17 October 2024), early in the Ukraine War the US rushed a batch of mysterious "Phoenix Ghost" killer drones, built by AEVEX Aerospace, to Ukraine, with very little said about them. Now they've broken cover -- and in themselves, there doesn't seem to be so much to them.
The "Disruptor", for example, is about 3 meters (10 feet) long, with a carbon-fiber body, straight wings, vee tail, and a pusher prop driven by a flat 2-cylinder air-cooled engine. Payload is about 23 kilograms (50 pounds), range is about 600 kilometers (375 miles).
Range is more than doubled with a fuel-injected engine. The "Dominator" drone is roughly on the same scale, but has a twin-boom tail. There is also a half-sized drone, the "Atlas", it seems electrically powered.
There's nothing particularly distinctive in their appearances. However, AEVEX says the drones can navigate autonomously, can identify targets on their own, and can be configured for a wide range of missions. It appears they have a modular configuration to make them easy to adapt.
It was known early on that the Phoenix Ghosts were being obtained by the US Air Force's "Big Safari" office, which has been around for decades, doing fast-track modifications of existing weapon systems. What missions the drones were tailored for remains unclear.
* One Michele Morrow is running to be North Carolina's Superintendent of Public Instruction. Comedian Jason Selvig of The Good Liars met up with her at an event, and asked her for her autograph, saying he was a fan. She was agreeable until Selvig pointed out that the document she was signing was a copy of a social media posting she had made, calling for "#DeathToTraitors" such as Barack Obama -- apparently Morrow was part of the QAnon cult. She became less agreeable. Same reaction to a posting calling for Obama's execution.
DAYLOG FRI 25 OCT 24: Memory-RNA (MRNA) vaccines proved, in spite of hysterical claims to the contrary, to be one of the success stories of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were quick to turn out and proved effective at blunting severe disease in pandemic victims.
As it turns out, MRNA has a far greater range of potential uses than vaccines. As discussed in an article from SCIENCE.org ("The perfect pesticide?" by Erik Stokstad, 27 June 2024), one of the possible uses is as a pesticide.
The Colorado potato beetle is a highly destructive pest that was, at one time, considered as a bioweapon. That didn't happen, but the beetle continues to rampage over the Northern Hemisphere, wreaking havoc on potato crops.
Chemical pesticides have been developed to kill the beetle, but it keeps developing immunities against them. This year, American farmers are getting a new, highly selective pesticide based on MRNA that the beetles may not find so easy to evade.
The spray -- named "Calantha" and from GreenLight Biosciences -- is based on a scheme called "interference (RNAi)" that targets a vital gene in the beetle. Because of the genetic match, it only targets the beetle and is close relatives.
Basically, RNAi works by jamming cell functions with too many copies of a gene. It was easiest to implement as a spray, instead of modifying target crops. GreenLight had a challenge in scaling up production Calantha, and still wants to make sure it only kills the beetles.
Calantha and its derivatives can't take on all insect pests, but GreenLight is working to target others -- such as the varroa mite, the main plague of honey bees, which shrugs off almost all existing pesticides.
* Cite from Pete Buttigieg: "Sure is interesting how we passed the Inflation Reduction Act, & then inflation went down." Also interesting that the Fed keeping interest rates high did not -- much to the disappointment of MAGA -- cause a recession.
MAGA so totally hates Pete, because he's always owning them. He's smarter than all of them put together.
AND SO ON: I have three smart lights in my house -- desk lamp in the bedroom-office, a string-LED tower lamp in the living room, and an identical tower lamp in the kitchen. I turn on the living-room lamp with Alexa, the other two with Google Nest Hub.
I also had a touch lamp in the bedroom that I used when I didn't want to turn on the brighter bedroom lamp -- but I knocked the touch lamp off its perch and broke it. I had other small lamps around the house, so I did some mix and matching, finally deciding to replace the touch lamp with a plastic goblet-style desk lamp. I figured I'd install one of the smart LED bulbs I had sitting around into that lamp.
That's when my troubles began. All configuration of smart LED bulbs, as well as getting them to play with Alexa and Google Nest Hub, is done on a smartphone -- with the "Smart Life" smart device configuration app, along with the Alexa app and the Google Home app.
Smart Life appears to be a very common tool, being found under a number of different names. First problem was that I hadn't made a note of the Smart Life login when I originally configured the lamps, and so I had to start over again. This time I put the login into my passwords file. Getting the smart LED bulb in the goblet light to work was a pain. I did figure out how to put the bulb into pairing mode by turning it OFF-ON three times, making it blink. The problem was that when I tried to configure the bulb over my wi-fi net, I kept running into dead ends.
The trouble, it turned out, is that my wi-fi hub, built into my fiber modem, has two available channels -- one being marked with a "G" suffix, the other not. I only have vague ideas of what the difference is, but they're clearly different. I kept trying to use the channel with the "G" suffix, but I just got timeouts. I finally figured out: Use the OTHER channel. That done, I could get the LED bulb configured and use Smart Life to set its operating mode.
I then went on to configure the other three lights -- the smart LED bulb into the bedroom desk lamp, and the string LEDs in the tower lamps. Getting the tower lamps into pairing mode was easier, because they had buttons I could push; I think if they are manually powered up and don't pair, they automatically go into pairing mode and start blinking. Anyway, using Smart Life I got all four lamps configured and gave them names.
Next problem was to get the lamps to work with Alexa and Google Nest Hub. The living room tower lamp wasn't so important, so I focused on Google Nest Hub first. I got into the Google Home app, selected "devices" and "add device", then got a very long list of possibilities. I typed in "Smart Life", clicked on the resulting link, and Google Home transferred me to the Smart Life app, where I puzzled through the configuration of the lamps. On returning to Google Home, Google Nest Hub could turn lights on and off for me.
The Alexa App was more confusing; I finally figured out that I had to go through the main menu and select "Skills and Games". I typed in "Smart Life", selected the "Smart Life" entry in the list -- and it took me out to the Smart Life app once more, allowing me to configure lights for Alexa. I only configured the living room tower lamp for Alexa.
This took hours of false steps, but I was pleased that everything worked neatly when I was done. I had set the smart LED bulb to color-shifting mode with Smart Life, and now it's the light I turn on when I get up. It's more calming and pleasant than the bright desk lamp, its glare being a harsh wake-up.
Incidentally, the tower lamp in the kitchen is in the front window, and I leave it on all night as a beacon into the darkness. Sometimes I forget to turn it on and don't realize it until I get up in the middle of the night. I have to turn it on then, because it's like my house doesn't have a heartbeat if I don't.
BACK_TO_TOP