MrG's Blog & Notes For Week 02

* Blog & notes for the current week.

[MON 13 JAN 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 02

DAYLOG MON 06 JAN 25: Brilliant political cartoonist Ann Telnaes -- one of the few women in that business -- came up with a cartoon of Jeff Bezos and other tech oligarch lords (Disney represented by Mickey Mouse) all making offerings to the Great Idol Trump.

WASHINGTON POST refused to publish it, even though the money being lavished on Trump by the tech oligarchs is not a secret -- with the editors making lame excuses as to why not. Telnaes quit, blasting the decision in a Substack commentary. Media mogul Mark Cuban, who supported Kamala in the presidential race, said that the tech oligarchs' generosity to Trump is all about AI. The different factions see their survival as dependent on not losing the AI race, and they fear government regulation. Cuban says:

QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Cuban has an idea for getting Ann Telnaes a deal to publish her work exclusively on BlueSky. That hints at social media becoming the new patron of journalism. The 2024 election fiasco was driven by the collapse of legacy media and the domination of troll media. Are we going to see the emergence of new models to employ upright journalists now seeking work? Or will we be stuck with dreadful muddle? We'll see.

DAYLOG TUE 07 JAN 25: THEWARZONE:com ran an article ("Ukrainian Su-27 Flanker Pilot's Rare Account Of The Changing Air War" by Thomas Newdick, 3 jan 25) on the air war over Ukraine, focusing on a Ukrainian pilot with the callsign "Viking".

At the outset of the war, Viking flew his Sukhoi Su-27 "Flanker" heavy fighter in the air defense of Kyiv. Incidentally, Ukrainian Su-27s haven't got much press, most of the focus being on the smaller Mikoyan MiG-29. His Su-27 was old and was disadvantaged by older avionics.

Ukrainian combat aircraft are moved around regularly to protect them; fortunately, Soviet combat aircraft were designed to operate from rough airstrips, often having "farm tractor" landing gear. However, at least half of the Ukrainian 32 Su-27s have been lost -- though some others have been returned to service.

In any case, early on in the fighting, everything was "seat of the pants", doing whatever was immediately necessary to deal with the crisis. The antiquated avionics made it very difficult.

Early on, Ukrainian combat aircraft couldn't make strikes on Russian positions, because of Russian surface-to-air missiles (SAM). Western stand-off munitions changed that.

Viking spoke of the "incredible effectiveness" of the AGM-88 High Speed Anti[radar] Missile [HARM]. Rigging up the HARM to old Soviet jets was a challenge, but there are tools to do the job. The HARM & other Western munitions have to be controlled via a MILSTD 1760 databus. Rewiring the Su-27 was not practical, but stores pylons with a wireless link to the 1760 databus in a pylon were available. A tablet computer was mounted in the cockpit to link to the pylon over wireless. Of course, Viking had to be trained in how to use HARM in combat.

He also has used the GBU-38 JDAM 225-kilogram (500-pound) and the GBU-39 SDB 110-kilogram (250-pound) guided glide bombs. Viking likes the JDAM, but really likes the SDB. An Su-27 can carry 8 of them, 4 on a pylon, and it is accurate -- which is something of a puzzle, since by default the SDB is GPS-guided, and the Orcs jam GPS. It's working fine now, obviously something's changed, but nobody's saying what. An SDB has a penetrating nose and can punch through like 2 meters (6.6') of reinforced concrete -- or be programmed for airburst, to scatter fragments.

However, the Russians have their own glide bombs, with the biggest threat to Ukrainian troops these days being the heavy Russian KAB glide bombs. Ukrainian pilots need long-range missiles and modern avionics to pick off the glide-bomb carriers. F-16s are coming into service with Ukraine, if slowly. Reassuringly, Viking says Ukraine is not lacking planes or pilots for the time being.

DAYLOG WED 08 JAN 25: On Monday, Trump had a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago club -- which included the usual nonsense, such as attacks on Joe Biden and Jack Smith, along with complaints about the election despite the fact that he won, but he went farther.

Online influencer @AngryStaffer wrote: "Dear god, this presser is bats*** even for Trump." -- with Trump complaining about water-efficient showers, saying electric heaters make people itch, that wind turbines drive whales crazy, & proposing to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. This on top of Trump's comments about the "anschluss" of Canada, Greenland, and Panama. People are upset, but is he serious? Trump talked about grabbing Greenland years ago, and nothing came of it.

He sent Junior to Greenland, with Junior reporting back on the success of the trip -- but he didn't stay the day, and there's no evidence anyone in authority even had a conversation with him. Junior did come up with pictures of Icelanders in MAGA hats, with Junior claiming that Trump was welcome there. It turned out Junior had recruited a gang of homeless people with a bribe of a free meal to pose for the cameras. It's all gaslighting, & Trump rarely tries to follow through on any of it.

Trump may be simply trying -- successfully -- to divert attention from his imminent criminal sentencing. However, I'm thinking it's more that he is simply bonkers. Another observer of the Mar-a-Lago meeting called it "Caligula naming his horse a consul" crazy. It's obvious Trump has been in decline, the only question being: HOW FAST? It may be faster than I anticipated. Will he even be able to deliver his inaugural address? I think he will, but it may be bizarre. Exactly how this plays out, I do not know.

* One Elizbeth Cronise McLaughlin shot back on Bluesky at her followers who were pouring out nihilism saying: Nothing matters, we're doomed, yada yada. She said: "Every movement of the needle in the right direction counts."

Yeah -- I replied: "My read on the same is: Enough of the whining, crying, and freaking out. Yes, things are bad, but you losers are both boring and useless." I got some LIKEs out of that. I added that a lot of the whining is really trolling in disguise.

* I've wanted to have the ability to make fact-check queries in social-media postings, but found I can't do that. Then I thought; Or can I? Now I've taken to making queries to Google Gemini, cutting the response and pasting it into a JPG file, then posting it. It works neatly, though it's a bit laborious. Might I end up starting a trend? I'd like that, but the cut-&-paste scheme is vulnerable to faking. I would really like to be able to make a query as a posting.

DAYLOG THU 09 JAN 25: Wildfires have been ravaging the Los Angeles area, with the fires driven by drought and very high winds. Homes have been destroyed, including it seems the home of Trump-aligned actor James Woods.

When people commented on how climate change was driving the fire, Woods indignantly shot back that it was the fault of California's Democratic government. Indeed, Trump and all of MAGA seems to be playing this same silly tune. One MAGA troll that was going around was that the California government was badly underfunding fire control, with the government firing back that funding had been increased instead. The quarrel goes on. I'm trusting the word of CA:gov more than that of MAGA.

Somebody said on BlueSky that he had been expecting that, as climate change got worse, the Right would start to come around. He added, more or less, the reality was looking more like a fascist dictatorship that prosecuted climate-change researchers.

* In other pathetic news, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta announced that fact-checking on Facebook was being cut back, with loud howls of protest in response. That seemed a little over-wrought; Facebook has never been all that eager to deal with trolls. At the same time, the European Union has been getting annoyed with being trolled by Elon the Musk Rat, and is moving forward on investigating Xitter for its support of RWNJ subversion as violations of the EU DSA Act. Facebook is going to get the same scrutiny.

* The legacy media continues to be pathetic as well, now trolling Joe Biden for saying he wasn't sure he would have been able to complete a second term. Well DUH, everybody knew that. If he had to drop out, Kamala would have stepped up, & been an excellent president.

DAYLOG FRI 10 JAN 25: Yesterday was Jimmy Carter's funeral service, with ex-presidents and other dignitaries in attendance. There were some awkward scenes, including George W. Bush refusing to shake hands with Trump; GWB can't stand Trump -- too bad GWB would never really cross him.

Mike Pence's wife Karen similarly shrank back from the Trump family, no doubt recalling Trump's threats towards her husband. Barack Obama, in contrast, chatted cheerfully with Trump -- which led some MAGA to crow that Obama "kissed the ring". Ridiculous, of course. Obama is a very cool guy and would not be inclined to be uncool in public. Obama is also very self-assured, and would not have a problem humoring Trump. Joe Biden, however, scored oblique hits on Trump when Biden delivered the eulogy.

BIDEN: "Jimmy Carter's friendship taught me ... that strength of character is more than title or the power we hold. ... We have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor and to stand up to what my dad used to say is the greatest sin of all: the abuse of power." It's not clear that Trump even noticed.

* Today, Trump received sentencing from Judge Juan Merchan, with Merchan saying that, though Trump's conviction stands, no penalties would be imposed -- because, in so many words, the office of the presidency didn't allow for it. That's entirely disappointing, but under the circumstances the best that could be had. Imposing a deferred sentence would have been nice -- except that it seems unlikely it would be practical, & Trump seems unlikely to be functional or even around in 4 years.

* In response to a comment on BlueSky saying the economy didn't really seem to be the reason Trump won, something else was ... one "@visgrrl" suggested that the "something" appeared to be "racism & misogyny".

I replied: "The Tea Party, the ancestor of MAGA, got started on Obama's watch. Not a coincidence." I got a lot of LIKEs out of that -- but then somebody replied that was implying Obama was responsible for it. Anyone coming to topsy-turvy conclusions from what I wrote gets (did get) an instant block. I have other options besides blocks, however. I had a chat with someone who posts got ever less relevant, so I "rickrolled" her with the classic Rick Astley GIF. That ended it.

* AND SO ON: Trump is talking up a meeting with Putin. I got to thinking: What if Zelenskyy called up Trump and asked for all three to get together? Trump might go along -- Putin would be furious. We'll see what happens.

I'm also thinking of what surprises Joe Biden might pull in his last days in office. Maybe he'll quietly tell the government to set up parallel accounts on BlueSky? He couldn't stop them from posting to Xitter, Trump would rescind the order. Or maybe he'll transfer frozen Russian funds to allies so they can continue the loan program to Ukraine, backed by returns on Russian frozen funds, without Trump interference? I'm not sure that's legally possible -- and it may not actually be necessary.

* I finally got too sick of the trolls on BlueSky and got to wondering about what to do. To be sure, BlueSky is nowhere near as bad as Xitter, but it's still not very good -- it's like what Twitter used to before the Musk Rat snapped it up.

I thought of going back to Spoutible and re-established an account there, but I quickly remembered why I left it: it's a great place, but with very little activity. I figured I needed to rethink what I was doing on BlueSky, and came to some conclusions: I be very selective in who I follow, and stay out of the comments sections. I'll only go into my own comments section, and will be quick to mute or block people who do make replies -- mute if they're merely useless, block if they're toxic.

My major goal on BlueSky is to promote my writings, and I'm rethinking how to do that, too. It's a work in progress. Incidentally, I didn't delete my Spoutible account this time around; I'm thinking I still may have some good use for it. I just like the place too much.