MrG's Blog & Notes

* This is an archive of my own blog and online notes, with weekly entries collected by month. The current week in stand-alone format is available here. For daily postings, follow @gv_goebel on SPOUTIBLE.

[MON 04 NOV 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 44

DAYLOG MON 28 OCT 24: On 1 October, Iran pummeled Israel with a barrage of ballistic missiles; retaliation had been expected, with Israel's allies asking for restraint. As discussed by TWZ.com, retaliatory strikes were indeed performed on Saturday.

The 20 targets hit included the air defenses of the Imam Khomeni International Airport (IKIA) outside Tehran; three IRGC (Revolutionary Guards) missile bases; a solid-fuel rocket production site at Parchin; and other weapons production sites.

The attack on IKIA was noteworthy in that only the air defenses, which cover Tehran, were struck -- opening up targets for another strike if Iran escalates again. The Iranians had (notice past tense) 4 batteries of Russian-made S300 surface-to-air missiles (SAM); one was taken out in a previous exchange of shots, the other three in this one. The Iranians have lots of other SAMs, but none as capable as the S300.

Apparently the attacks were with air-launched ballistic missiles (ALBM) and possibly some drones. The most familiar Israeli ALBM is the "Rampage", which is 4.7 meters (15') long, weighs 570 kilograms (1,250 pounds), has a warhead weight of 150 kilograms (330 pounds), a range of up to 250 kilometers (155 miles), and infrared-imaging target seeker. It is a modified artillery rocket. The larger "Air LORA" and smaller "ROCKS" ALBMs were apparently launched as well. It appears the F-16 is the primary launch platform, with the weapons launched over Iraq, expended booster stages being found on the ground later.

The solid-fuel rocket production site at Parchin is likely buried or otherwise protected, which implies that some of the missiles had penetrating warheads. Later reports hint Iran wants escalation.

* Another Spouter was talking today about the news media saying Kamala might lose the popular vote. The Spouter wanted to get whatever drugs they were on, since they might prove handy. I replied that they needed to get anyone peddling such junk off the streets right away.

Michelle Obama was saying that she was a bit angry with "undecided" voters -- with me thinking: They're all fakes and frauds who have no intention of voting for Kamala. In the same way, the media was playing up a young woman who said she was unhappy with the economy, blamed the Dems, and said she would vote Trump. Why is the media focusing on such fringe characters? The media has always been off base sometimes, but I've never seen it so consistently hallucinatory as it is now. I am not young.

DAYLOG TUE 29 OCT 24: There's a big ruckus going on. The WASHINGTON POST was going to release an endorsement of Kamala, but Jeff Bezos -- the owner -- intervened and stopped it. There followed resignations of WAPO staff and mass defection of subscribers. Andy Borowitz of the BOROWITZ REPORT shot back:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

* In similar news, Trump had a rally at Madison Square Garden in NYC on Sunday -- which was a bit off to begin with, because he has no chance of winning anything in New York. The real problem with the rally was the parade of nasty characters backing him up.

The worst offender was a dubious comedian who called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage." Public reaction was loud, angry, & still ongoing. The puzzle is that sort of thing has long been Trump's message, he has no other, and has usually had no consequences.

It seems to be having big consequences now. Something's changed, Trump isn't getting a free pass any longer. Some time back, Chuck Schumer said he wasn't worried about the 2024 election, because: "The American people have got wise to Donald Trump."

DAYLOG WED 30 OCT 24: Kamala Harris gave a closing speech in Washington DC for her presidential campaign yesterday at the Ellipse -- the open area in front of the White House. She brought down the house. They were expecting 20,000 spectators, they got an estimated 75,000. The Ellipse isn't that big, so the overflow was directed to the National Mall around the Washington Monument. Incidentally, one news source said the "Jefferson Monument" instead -- which is far away from the Ellipse, down the Potomac from the National Mall.

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.org ("How powdered rock could help slow climate change" by Ann Leslie Davis, 1 July 2024), farmers all over the world are now experimenting with spreading crushed volcanic rock on their crops.

The idea behind "enhanced rock weathering (ERW)" is that volcanic rock, particularly when crushed into a fine powder, naturally traps CO2. That had been known for a long time, but it wasn't until about two decades ago that researchers began to get serious about ERW. Not only could ERW help fight climate change, but it can also reduce soil acidity to improve crop yields; crushed limestone is already used for that purpose.

Current efforts indicate ERW is highly promising, but there are challenges. 1st, there is the overhead of crushing the rocks and distributing the powder. The cost-effectiveness of the process is hard to prove at a small scale. 2nd, use of the mineral olivene -- one of the main volcanic rocks for ERW -- might lead to toxic heavy-metal buildup in soils; nobody's exactly sure that's a problem. 3rd, ERW might do bad things to soil micro-ecologies, though nobody's sure about that, either. 4th & finally, it's not easy to measure just how effective ERW is in removing atmospheric CO2.

These issues are not show-stoppers, they just need further study. It would be helpful to that end to establish a global office that could help with the investigation and set standards.

DAYLOG THU 31 OCT 24: Trump, in an effort to make something of the trading of shots over his "garbage" insult to Puerto Rico, did a video in which he drove a trash truck with TRUMP painted on the side. And this proved what? That he is an unserious person?

Hey, we knew that all along. Trump's getting beaten up with this, so he keeps it going? RIDIN' WITH BIDEN: Get in the Corvette! RIDIN' WITH TRUMP: Get in the trash truck!

* There's been a lot of complaint about the slow delivery of munitions to Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion, with some claiming the US and its allies are deliberately dragging their feet.

That's based on ignorance of logistics. As discussed in an article from DEFENSENEWS.com ("Army races to widen the bottlenecks of artillery shell production" by Jen Judson, 14 October 2024), the prime example is the critical 155-millimeter artillery shell.

At the outset of the conflict, the US Army could produce 14,400 155mm shells a month, at two facilities in Scranton PA. That was totally inadequate, with the Army throwing billions at expanding production -- notably a new, automated plant being built in Mesquite TX. Other facilities are being brought up to manufacture or help in manufacturing 155 mm shells, with a parallel effort to ramp up production of explosives, primers, and propellants. The US Army had no domestic facility to produce explosives at the outset.

Production of 155mm shells should be 55,000 a month by the end of the year, towards a target of 100,000. Dragging their feet? The US and the allies were not prepared for this war and are playing "catch up". It takes time to build new factories and supply networks.

Many new factories are being built in Ukraine as partnerships; although they have to be buried or otherwise protected, manufacturers have problems justifying building new plant at home. The US is not deliberately dragging its feet. If that were the case, we'd get a flood of Pentagon leaks complaining. We get crickets instead.

DAYLOG FRI 01 OCT 24: As election day approaches, Trump is flailing, saying of Liz Cheney that she was a "war hawk", and that she should be given "a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?"

Reaction to this was that Trump wanted people to shoot Liz Cheney. Oh, he would -- but my reaction was that Trump was talking meaningless, violent-minded gibberish, admittedly knowing it incites MAGA to do vicious things. Years back, Trump talked trash all day and nothing happened; now it's all blowing up in his face. He's a goner.

* As discussed in an article from CNBC.com ("How American Malls Survived The Slow Death Of Department Stores" by DeLon Thornton, 14 April 2024), the rise of Amazon and online commerce has meant the decline of America's shopping malls.

The big malls have adapted -- replacing department stores with grocery stores, casinos, gyms, ice skating rinks and, in some cases, even residential apartments. It's working, with mall traffic remaining at high levels.

The smaller malls, however, are in a more difficult position; the number of such malls is inevitably shrinking. However, at the same time the USA has a housing crisis. Maybe, some think, it would be good to convert the dying strip malls into housing?

Some of the big malls, have noted, have featured conversions from department stores into apartment blocks, with shops and restaurants in the malls serving the apartment dwellers. As for the smaller malls, they are generally demolished and rebuilt.

Mall-building got rolling in the 1960s and 1970s, with the result that malls are often in decrepit shape. It makes more sense to tear down and rebuild than to modify old structures. These updated malls often include shops and other amenities. That poses a problem, in that local zoning laws tend to frown on "mixed use" parcels of land. Work is underway to appropriately reform the laws. In the meantime, the Biden Administration is seeing what can be done to help the conversions along.

AND SO ON: I saw a set of cartoons by Mat Barton online. I wasn't familiar with him, though I think I've seen his work someplace before. Anyway, in one cartoon a band of four fantasy adventurers -- archer, knight, dwarf, wizard -- was standing on a cliff, with a dragon flying in the distance, and the archer saying: "Fate is but a roll of the dice, cast by giant nerds."

* Halloween was of course Thursday night, and I got to try out my Uncle Sam costume a second time. After the first time last year, I decided I didn't like the awkward prop hat that came with the costume, so I bought a tall Dr. Seuss-style hat. I didn't want to put on a fake goatee, so I bought a stars-&-stripes tube bandana instead and went masked.

I had a total stars-&-stripes outfit, including socks and tennis shoes. The tennis shoes had LED soles; I set them to slow red-white-blue blinking -- which was a nice effect, particularly because the two shoes weren't in sync. I only got about a dozen visitors, good enough. I sang SPOOKY SCARY SKELETONS when handing out candy:

   Spooky, scary skeletons
   Send shivers down your spine!
   Shrieking skulls will shock your soul
   And seal your doom tonight!

I do a little karaoke, I'll have to add that to the song list. I usually practice silly tunes, because I can't sing well enough to be very serious. Anyway, I was thinking the batteries in the LED shoes would conk out before too long, but they were still going strong when I stood down after two and a half hours.

Incidentally, on Friday I ended my hay fever "lockdown". It's now freezing in the mornings and the pollinators are standing down themselves -- so I shut down my air purifiers, don't need to eat in the air-purified room, and don't mask when go out in the yard. I cough a little bit sometimes, but not very much. I hadn't been riding my Razor A6 adult kick scooter while on lockdown, so that day I took it for a spin twice. I was a bit out of shape for it, but I was fine the next day when I went for a spin again.

My appetite's getting back to normal, or at least as normal as a heavy-eating routine permits. The onslaught of the hay fever drastically cut my weight, which alarmed me. Now, along with my normal food consumption, I drink two fair-sized glasses of milk a day, along with four chocolate-chip chewy granola bars. I'm hoping I'll be back up to normal weight by the start of 2025. I'm looking forward to it -- I don't like stuffing myself like this all the time.

* I've gone through some adjustments in lifestyle as of late. One thing I was after was to find some casual entertainment for a few minutes before I crashed out. I watch an anime three times a week, but on the other four evenings I've got nothing.

I got to wondering if I could find a manga site to keep me entertained, but I couldn't find one that was satisfactory, and they were all basically for pay. That's only fair, but I didn't see one that seemed worth paying for. It has been possible to get pirated anime and manga off ".to (Tonga)" sites -- but they're sleazy in all respects, and are getting shut down anyway.

I finally found WEBTOON, available as website and smartphone app. It's just what it says, web comics for free, structured for reading on a smartphone. It's a Korean-American collaboration, many stories taking place in Seoul. Much of it is junk, but there are hundreds of comic series on the site, and many are ongoing. I'll sample a series or two on the website during the day, subscribe to one I like, and read an installment of one for like five minutes before I crash out. I may run out of steam on it before long, but it's working well for now. I'm gonna buy some Android credits -- set up for gaming originally -- and hand out dollar tips for the series I like.

[MON 11 NOV 24] THE WEEK THAT WAS 45

DAYLOG MON 04 NOV 24: Tomorrow is Guy Fawkes Day, and more significantly for the USA, election day. I'm trying to ignore it. I'm not worried about the outcome, and the hysteria in the media annoys me. I check news on my smartphone every morning before I get out of bed. I should get interesting news on Wednesday morning.

* One of the latest weapons to arrive in Ukraine is the "MQ-35 V-Bat" from Shield AI. It has a "tailsitter" AKA "pogo" configuration, taking off & landing vertically, flying horizontally. It has a torpedo-like fuselage with a duct ring at the bottom, enclosing the prop for a 2-cylinder engine, and a long straight wing above the duct. It has a day-night imaging turret in the nose. Height is 3 meters (10'), wingspan 2.7 feet (9'), and weight 55 kilos (125 pounds).

It's not very fast, cruise speed of about 90 KPH (55 MPH), but it has endurance of up to 10 hours, allowing it to spend hours in the target area. Ukraine tests show that it is very resistant to electronic warfare and highly effective.

DAYLOG TUE 05 NOV 24: IEEE SPECTRUM spoke with Rachel Plotnik of Indiana University titled: "Touchscreens Are Out, and Tactile Controls Are Back" (interview by Gwendolyn Rak, 3 nov 24) to investigate the return of the pushbutton.

It has seemed like touchscreens are forever, but Plotnik -- who wrote a book on the history of the pushbutton titled POWER BUTTON -- says there's been a reaction against them. Touchscreens are great, but pushing a button on one gives no tactile feedback.

Besides, touchscreen buttons change with the device mode, while we always know where a physical button is. When driving a car, buttons tend to be more predictable, though they are much more inflexible. Touchscreen inputs are also troublesome for the blind.

Touchscreens aren't going away, but there has been a reaction, with designers adding physical buttons and knobs. Myself, I would find it much easier to play some smartphone games -- pinball for example -- with a couple of buttons. A rocker switch would be nice, too.

Plotnik said she got interested in the history of the button during the gesture recognition craze. I once had an XBox-Kinect and the gesture recognition was fun, but a game controller works much better. Touchscreen gestures have endured, however.

* This goes along with the backlash against touchscreen checkouts in supermarkets. They were seen as eliminating checkout clerks at the outset, but they didn't come close. They don't work efficiently for more than small purchases, and a clerk needs to keep an eye on them. Customers can get confused, and there's been a problem with theft as well. Some stores have abandoned them, but most think they're fine in their place. I like to use them when I want to buy a few items.

* OK, election returns are coming in this evening, and they are making me jumpy. I'm posting this and going to bed. I'll check in the morning.

DAYLOG WED 06 NOV 24: I couldn't see how Trump could do better in 2024 than he did in 2020 -- and last night he didn't, getting about the same number of votes. Unfortunately, Kamala got well fewer votes than Joe Biden did, and we got an electoral disaster all down the line.

It is not clear how bad things will be down the road -- the best case being another four-year fiasco, the worst case being Rightist rule for a generation. It is also not clear how long Trump will serve, since he's obviously falling apart. JD Vance is likely to be president sooner or later. How will that work? It will be a mess.

All this because so many Joe Biden voters couldn't be bothered to vote for a black woman. It's a hard call, but maybe it wasn't really a good idea for Joe Biden to have dropped out of the presidential race. Unkind to say it, but he simply had more clout.

I'm elderly, I may not see this to the end. Right now, I'm just proceeding on track -- not that upset, just at completely loose ends, not really knowing what to do next. Opportunities will arise.

DAYLOG THU 07 NOV 24: All kinds of recriminations going on right now about Kamala's failed presidential bid -- most notably Bernie Sanders, carrying on about how the Biden Administration didn't pay enough attention to the working class.

Since anyone who read the news knows Joe Biden focused on the working class, that was way out of line, and the general response was: Shut up, Bernie. Other foolish reasons have been floated -- but the ugly reality is that too many Dems refused to vote for a black woman, even when the alternative was a crooked, decrepit, fascistic trashbag.

* This morning I got up, started on my morning routine; when I went into the kitchen, a mouse scuttled under the refrigerator. A mouse? I've been in this house for over 30 years, I never saw a mouse in it before.

A mouse was bad news -- not merely filthy vermin in itself, but capable of doing petty damage to the house that wouldn't be so petty to fix. I got a box with a lid and pulled out the refrigerator, hoping to corner the mouse, but I wasn't hopeful it would work. It didn't.

I went on my morning walk, the far endpoint being the local supermarket mall, and bought a pair of mousetraps for $2 USD. I hate mousetraps, they're cruel, and would have bought a live trap for much more, but they didn't have any. When I got back home, I immediately baited -- with cheese, of course -- and set the traps. I didn't think I'd get results during the day since the mouse was likely keeping a low profile until it was dark, but I wouldn't rest on the matter until I had done all I could.

Later, I went into the bathroom -- and looked into the trash bin there, with the mouse staring back at me. I picked up the bin &, shaking it to keep the mouse from escaping, took it outside and emptied out on the lawn. I said: "Now BEAT it!" -- and the mouse scurried off. Things moved too quickly for me to inspect the mouse in detail, but I think it was a field mouse, not a house mouse.

The mouse boxed itself in. Happy ending -- I didn't want to kill it, certainly didn't want to mangle it in a mousetrap. Even if I hadn't caught it, I doubt it would have survived inside the house, since I keep it clean; I don't think it could have easily found food and water. I don't believe it had been in the house for long -- probably crept in while I had the door to the garage open.

Later I looked up live traps on Amazon, and found out I can get two for $10. No rush to get them, it might be decades before another mouse gets into this house. I'll just trash the two kill traps. I don't want them to be used.

DAYLOG FRI 08 NOV 24: I mentioned getting into the Korean-American WEBTOON site. I've been sampling comic series that seem interesting to follow, and finding more than I expected.

Latest I've found is THE GREATEST ESTATE DEVELOPER by Lee Hyun Min and Kim Hyunsoo, apparently adapted from a "light novel" series by Moon BK. It's an "isekai (Japanese term)" or "isegye (Korean term)" series, meaning "different world". It involves a person from our world transplanted to some other world.

One common variant of an isekai is people being transplanted into works of fiction, gothic novels being popular targets. ESTATE DEVELOPER involves a civil engineering student named Kim Suho, who went to bed after reading the novel KNIGHT OF BLOOD & IRON.

The novel was about a failing aristocratic family -- Lord & Lady Frontera, along with their dissolute and worthless son Lloyd; the hero being the knight Javier, a family retainer. In the novel, the family comes to a bad end. Suho wakes up to find out he is Lloyd, lying in the road after a drunk. Suho / Lloyd is brought home by Javier -- to find out everyone despises him, and for good reasons.

Suho / Lloyd decides to use his civil engineering skills to rescue his reputation and head off the family's doom. He starts out building a tiny house with an "ondol", a traditional Korean underfloor heating system. It soon attracts attention and more customers. Javier is bewildered, since Lloyd is acting like a sensible person, and doesn't know what to make of him.

Typically, isekai involve the hero charging forward with a sword. With Suho / Lloyd, it's a shovel instead. I'm trying to get four comic series to read, checking out an installment every night except the three when I watch a video. ESTATE DEVELOPER has over 150 installments.

AND SO ON: Latest reports from Ukraine indicate that Ukrainian forces are using drones that lay out a fiber-optic thread, making them highly resistant to jamming. The thread is about 5 kilometers (3 miles) long. Other reports indicate that AFU attacks on Russian artillery with drones were often ineffective, because it's hard to damage artillery. Now they're attacking with swarms of drones -- some with fragmentation warheads to hit the gun crews, one with a shaped-charge warhead to punch a hole in the gun barrel. Once holed, firing the gun would burst it. Gun barrels are not easy to replace.

Trump 2 Administration officials are already making noises about selling out Ukraine. We'll see how that goes down. I am refusing to be optimistic or pessimistic: it's like playing a game, the issue is not whether I'll win or lose, because at the outset there's no way to know. The issue is what my options are and what moves I make next.

Indeed, after a few days of dither, my morale's back to level. Incidentally, Spout's Chris Bouzy says Spoutible has been booming in the aftermath, though spammers and some trolls are coming in along with new users.