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. Feel free to CONTACT ME if so inclined.

[MON 06 JAN 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 01

DAYLOG MON 30 DEC 24: As more or less a continuation of the Musk Rat's recent fiasco trying to derail government funding, there's a feud in progress between him -- along with other tech oligarchs in his camp -- and MAGA, over oligarchs hiring engineers on H-1B visas.

Industry needs these foreign engineers, but xenophobic MAGA of course hates them. The Musk Rat blew up and told MAGA to "F*** yourself in the face!" -- and then, indifferent to the irony, asked for more "positive, beautiful, or informative" content on Xitter.

It's not clear how much to read into this squabbling -- the RWNJs are angry all the time, so the anger is nothing new. It is true that tech oligarchs and MAGA aren't natural allies. The oligarchs clearly regard MAGA as ignorant bigots who are easily manipulated.

It seems that Trump is backing up the Musk Rat in this dispute. I doubt that it will cost him much with MAGA, since Trump can do no wrong for them, and they will cut him indefinite slack. [LATER: Come the weekend, it turns out that Johnson survived the crisis, thanks to direct intervention by Trump -- barely winning the vote to become House Speaker. I'm not sure if that is good or bad news.]

* Anyway, it is not very surprising that Trump is backing up the Musk Rat, since he's the source of Trump's funding these days. However, it still seems surprisingly passive for Trump, who traditionally never concedes a thing. It seems like he's out of it.

I keep wondering if Trump will give up his old game of baiting reporters at press briefings. If he does give up, that tells me he's REALLY out of it. Incidentally, on saying this online, I had a poster tell me I was way off base to suggest Trump would stop baiting reporters.

I replied that he had me backwards -- I was just wondering what it would imply if he did. The poster just doubled down, so I blocked him. You can go away now. Similarly, when I commented that all the House Dems voted for Hakeem in the last Speaker fiasco and could be assumed to do it again in the upcoming train wreck, another poster insisted that the Dems wouldn't vote for Hakeem this time around. I replied that I couldn't think of why they wouldn't, not adding that it wasn't a big deal if they did or not, but the poster just doubled down. I blocked him, too.

In the online world, there are people who pick fights on flimsy pretexts or get into dogged arguments over trivia. I will tolerate people who are expressing a sensible opinion even if I don't agree with it -- though I may not reply to them -- but I'll block people who just want to argue. No loss. If I blocked 10,000 people on Bluesky, that would be a fraction of a percent of the total audience. I don't think I'm the only person online who blocks often these days, either.

DAYLOG TUE 31 DEC 24: Trump was making noises during the presidential campaign that he would end the Ukraine War on his first day in office. OK, Trump says a lot of things, and it's not clear which of them should be taken seriously.

However, Trump has long buddied up to Putin and has seemed to side with the Russians against Ukraine. About ten days ago, Putin was saying he was ready to talk to Trump about peace, which suggested that Putin might talk Trump into yanking US support from Ukraine. Since the US is Ukraine's biggest support -- on a per-nation basis, US aid doesn't go over half of the total -- that would be disastrous.

What happens with Trump relative to Ukraine is unclear, the signals being very mixed. Most Americans and most of Congress support Ukraine -- but it seems the real pivot point is that Putin is not making nice with Trump, and Trump is vindictive when he's snubbed. The Russians celebrated when Trump was elected in 2016, but they gradually found out he was low-functioning & inept, and was worthless to them.

In the meantime, Zelenskyy is buttering up Trump, & waving a Nobel Peace Prize under his nose. After all, Zelenskyy can say: "Hey Donald, Obama got the Nobel Prize, why not you?" That would get Trump's attention. Hey, if Trump can end the Ukraine War, I'd think concerned he deserves the Nobel Prize. It would make up for ... oh, like half of all the bad things he's done.

One reality is that Russia is economically running out of steam. General Budanov of HUR intelligence echoes many other sources in saying that Russia will be scraping the bottom of the barrel by late 2025. Even if Putin agreed to a ceasefire, Russia will still be under sanctions, and he will still be bearing the economic burden of occupation. War production in Ukraine and Allied nations is ramping up, and may well get to a tipping point sometime in 2025. It will get there faster if Trump doesn't cut Ukraine loose.

DAYLOG WED 01 JAN 25: As discussed in an article from SCIENCE.org ("Ice cores finger obscure Pacific volcano as cause of 19th century climate disaster" by Richard Stone, 30 dec 24), in 1831 there was a chilly summer that led to crop failures & famines in India and Japan.

Obviously the dismal summer was caused by a massive volcanic eruption whose effusions dimmed the Sun, but nobody knew what volcano was the culprit. Now a research team led by volcanologist William Hutchison of the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland has located the volcano in the Kurile Islands chain, in the far north of the Japanese archipelago. The eruption could be detected in ice corings from Greenland and Antarctica as sulfur isotopes and glassy particles of ash, but that in itself couldn't identify the volcano.

The give-away was that the volcanic ash from the corings was unusually low in potassium. That is characteristic of Japanese volcanoes. As it turned out, the chemical profile of ash from a volcano named "Zavaritskiy" on unihabited Sumushir Island, held by Russia, was a tidy match. The 1831 eruption was one of several at the end of the "Little Ice Age", a 500-year period of cooling. Volcanologists warn that another big eruption could take place at any time, & would be a global disaster.

* I saw a video of a Ukrainian "dragon drone" in action yesterday, and I was so startled at what I was seeing that I had to re-watch it to figure out what was going on. I'd heard about incendiary dragon drones, but I assumed they just carried thermite bombs. In the video, the drone was instead pouring out flame in torrents as it hovered over a target. I suspect it was spewing thermite -- aluminum & rust powders mix -- as a slurry in a burnable liquid, activated by a magnesium-flare igniter.

* In unusual architecture news, a new high-rise is being built in Tirana, the capital of Albania. The 71-meter (230-foot) tall "Puzzle Tirana Tower" is assembled from stylized house fronts in different orientations, with greenery in the spaces between. It's definitely thinking out of the box.

DAYLOG THU 02 JAN 25: As discussed in an article from BBC.com ("A genetic quirk protects some people from norovirus. Can vaccines help the rest of us?" by David Cox, 1 jan 25), the contagious "norovirus" is making the rounds, as it usually does in winter.

The "vomiting bug" -- it also causes diarrhea -- traditionally infects hundreds of millions of people, and is dangerous to the old and weakened. It is highly contagious, and also very tough, able to survive in hot or cold, and resistant to disinfectants.

"Challenge studies" in which volunteers are paid to be infected with norovirus show that about 1 in 5 people of European descent have a mutation in a gene called FUT2 This inactivates an enzyme and so protects them against GII-4. That's the most common of the 29 known strains of norovirus, accounting for more than half of all infections. The loss of the enzyme eliminates an antigen that norovirus uses to target cells. It is also known that those with blood type B resist norovirus infection.

This knowledge could help come up with antivirals to deal with the virus. However, norovirus is a tricky target; it is a single-strand RNA virus, and mutates rapidly. It tends to get around resistance, and also makes vaccine development troublesome. The push is to develop a vaccine that gives resistance to a range of variants, and hopefully to resist future variants. It's not going to happen soon, but researchers are hopeful of finding a way.

DAYLOG FRI 03 JAN 25: Microsoft is now pushing "Copilot Plus" PCs, optimized for AI processing. MS introduced notebook computers with Cop+ features about half a year ago, and is now following them up with "brick"-style mini-desktop PCs.

These MS Cop+ PCs feature a "neural processing unit (NPU)" to give them enhanced AI capabilities. Trying to figure out exactly how an NPU works is not easy -- they clearly are built around an artificial neural network of some sort, but it's hard to find user-friendly descriptions. Software changes to Windows appear to include AI-style apps, such as an image creator, and AI enhancements to more traditional apps.

Cop+ PCs also have enhanced security features, though it seems that is only partly is due to the NPU -- better security hardware, maybe? Anyway, looks like I'll have to get a new PC sometime this year. Sigh, I'm already pretty up-to-date ... maybe somebody will offer a cheap NPU board.

AND SO ON: I found a video on YouTube titled: "Putin Already Lost", from the Icarus Project -- which examined the shaky economic basis of Putin's war in Ukraine. It's well known that Russia has been heavily dependent on oil production, but it's still surprising how deep the economic rot goes.

The focus on oil ended up fostering neglect for other sectors of Russia's economy, which not only narrowed the economic foundation of the state, but also made it much more dependent on imports. Such prosperity as there was trickled down from oil -- and once sanctions bit, the bubble began to collapse. It's hard to know what effect Ukrainian drone strikes have had on Russia's oil industry, but they can't have helped.

Add to this the reality that the once-rich oil fields of the Caucasus have been depleted, making Russia more dependent on Siberian oil -- which is much harder to extract, given the remoteness and harsh climate of Siberia. Along with that, hundreds of thousands of professionals have fled Russia because of the war, while the less skilled labor force is being depleted by the war's insatiable demand for cannon fodder.

Of course, the government is throwing ever more funds into war production -- which has limited effect in promoting overall economic growth. Finally, the government is pumping up an economic bubble with paying the troops, paying to medically support them when they're maimed, and paying death benefits to next of kin. Putin has a sovereign wealth fund piggybank to draw on, but it's being depleted. How much longer he can go on is not clear, but he can't go on indefinitely.

[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.

Does that really make any sense? 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.

This may be an exercise in Trump distraction -- but 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 PNG 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 -- though 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. Videos showed him snoozing in his seat.

* 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: 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 be cautious in the comments sections. I'll be quick to to mute or block people -- 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.

[MON 20 JAN 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 03

DAYLOG MON 13 JAN 25: In Ukraine War news, it turns out that Vladimir Putin is funding his war effort by forcing banks to buy government bonds at unrealistically low interest rates -- "junk bonds" in effect. Putin is hollowing out the banks, with a potential collapse down the road.

* Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made headlines, not in a good sorta way, by blatantly toadying up to Trump. It seems unlikely that Zuck is so much worried about Trump than he is about Elon the Musk Rat -- who has bought his way into the White House. No wonder the tech broligarchs are kissing up to Trump: the Musk Rat has an unfair advantage on them. BTW, US corporations are publicly giving up on DEI -- but the Apple board is telling investors not to vote for killing it. One would think that Tim Cook, who is gay, would be for DEI.

Liberal democracy took a big hit in November. It is down, but is it out? Things will happen in response. Let's see how things look at the beginning of 2026. They may be looking better -- but hard times before then.

DAYLOG TUE 14 JAN 25: F-16 jet fighters are going into service with Ukraine. One recently was credited with shooting down 6 cruise missiles in a single sortie -- 4 with missiles, 2 with cannon fire.

There are questions about the configuration of Ukrainian F-16s. They are "Mid-Life Update (MLU)" machines being retired by their NATO users as they are replaced by F-35s, but they do have some visibly unusual features, in terms of their jazzed-up stores pylons.

They include the "Pylon Integrated Dispensing System PLUS (PIDS+)" and "Electronic Combat Integrated Pylon System PLUS (ECIPS+)" defensive systems, both built by Terma of Denmark, collaborating with Elbit of Israel. Of course, they can still carry bombs & other stores.

PIDS+ contains an automated missile warning system with a processor & three infrared detectors -- 1 in the nose facing forward, a pair in the rear facing sideways & backwards. PIDS+ also carries flare dispensers to confuse heat-seeking missiles & a chaff dispenser to confuse radars.

ECIPS+ is similar, featuring the 3 wide-angle infrared detectors to give all-around coverage, but with an electronic radar jammer module instead of the chaff-flare dispensers. The defensive systems are controlled by a Terma ALQ-213 Electronic Warfare Management System in the cockpit.

The ALQ-213 monitors the defensive systems and provides alerts to the pilot. It can be set to automatic operation, for example dumping chaff-flares when a missile launch is detected. Apparently the MLU machines already had PIDS+ & ECIPS+, but got software upgrades.

PIDS+ & ECIPS+ can be used on other aircraft, & not necessarily jet fighters. Other changes to the Ukraine F-16s are not visible. Do they have or will get the relatively new APG-83 "Scalable Agile Beam Radar (SABR)"? SABR is much superior to the old APG-68 of the MLU F-16s. One feature of SABR is well more range. Coupled with AIM-120D AMRAAM missiles, with range of over 160 km (100 miles), F-16s could pick off Orc glide-bomb carriers before they could drop their munitions -- though that's a tricky job, since the window of interception is narrow.

DAYLOG WED 15 JAN 25: According to an article from ARSTECHNICA.com ("New York starts enforcing $15 broadband law that ISPs tried to kill" by Jon Brodkin, 13 jan 25), a few years back New York State passed a law requiring ISPs to offer low-cost services of $15 USD for 25 MBPS and $20 USD for 200 MBPS. The courts blocked the law in 2021, an appeals court upheld the law in April 2024, with SCOTUS refusing a higher appeal in December. It goes into effect this month.

The Biden FCC had a program to help low-end users, but Congress stopped funding it -- so there was some urgency to finally get the program in operation. I'm suspecting we'll see a repeat of the Trump 1 effort to get rid of net neutrality. That didn't work then, since California and other states had their own net neutrality laws, and the ISPs couldn't change their policies unless all the states went along.

* It was interesting that SCOTUS tossed the appeal. SCOTUS is schizophrenic these days, it seems with bad decisions alternating with good ones. There 6 conservatives on the court seem to be split into three pairs:

• Thomas & Alito, who almost always make bad decisions.
  
  
• Gorsuch & Kavanaugh, who sometimes make good decisions.
  
  
• Roberts & Barrett, who seem to track the alternation.

Roberts was something of a swing vote before Trump came along. He's shifted harder Right in the Era of Trump, but there are signs he's mellowing. Barrett has been Right from the start, but it seems she's mellowing a bit, too. Maybe not liking what she sees in Trump? We'll find out.

* Incidentally, there's still fussing these days over the SCOTUS judgement for "absolute presidential immunity". Yeah, it sounds bad, but it's only for the "core constitutional duties" of the POTUS. It allows for corner cases, with no immunity for private acts.

SCOTUS told Trump he had no immunity for trying to overturn the 2020 election. Yeah, it leaves the determination in the hands of SCOTUS, but that's where we were before the judgement. As Roberts more or less pointed out, the judgement protects Joe Biden, too. Of course, the RWNJs would go after him if they could; they want payback for the legal pursuit of Trump.

DAYLOG THU 16 JAN 25: There has been, obviously and of course, a lot of recriminations over the failure to bring Trump to justice. One @davidallengreen, writing in THE PROSPECT, gave some perspective.

As DAG points out, Jack Smith's report outlined the case against Trump, and concluded the prosecution had a good chance of winning in court. DAG adds that's exactly what a pro prosecutor would say; Smith would not have brought an indictment if he couldn't back it up. Of course, Trump's defense would have something to say in court, and in fact they proved very competent at delay & obstruction. The courts didn't help at all -- some of the delay being inevitable in a trial of an ex-president, some of it being perverse, as in Judge Cannon's actions.

In addition, there has been much complaint that AG Garland took so long to bring the indictment, some calling it "the lost year". That can be argued back and forth; the fact is that it's not all that relevant, DAG saying: "[T]his was always going to be a hard and complex case to bring." DAG says that it would require trawling through piles of electronic & non-electronic evidence to link Trump to the Capitol rioters & others "who thought they were doing him a favour with their violence and other criminality."

The core problem, according to DAG, was that the indictment was weak, going after Trump for bland charges such as "conspiracy to defraud the United States", "obstruction and conspiracy to obstruct", and "conspiracy against rights". They did consider going after Trump under the Insurrection Act, but thought it would be too flimsy, rejecting it because of the "litigation risk that would be presented by employing this long-dormant statute."

The little-used Insurrection Act was just not a good option. It would have been much stronger if Congress had impeached Trump for trying to steal the election -- but the GOP wouldn't go along. After all, Trump couldn't be charged with "insurrection" if neither Congress nor the courts established that he was guilty. The real problem in the prosecution of Trump was that the Republicans in the Senate wouldn't green-light it.

* There's also been much talk over the way South Korea impeached and arrested President Yoon Suk-Yeol after he tried to declare martial law; it makes the USA look pathetic. However, South Korea has locked up presidents before -- & most importantly, his own party voted for impeachment.

The first attempt to arrest Yoon, on 3 jan, was foiled because his supporters blocked the ~150 law enforcement sent to arrest him. The authorities regrouped and came back on 15 jan with about a thousand law enforcement. Yoon was hauled off, protesting loudly.

DAYLOG FRI 17 JAN 25: The Biden Administration scored big, if belatedly, in establishing a cease-fire in Gaza -- though it remains shaky. To no surprise, the Trump Gang claimed they were the ones who pushed the agreement through.

That seemed implausible, since Trump was perfectly willing to let Bibi Netanyahu do whatever he wanted -- which meant no leverage over him or Hamas. Actually, it later turned out Joe Biden had personally asked Trump to throw his weight behind the cease-fire deal. Biden still gets the credit, it was on his watch; if he had to outreach to Trump, that's still more to Joe's credit, all the more so because Trump would have not reached out to Joe had the positions been reversed.

* KYIV INDEPENDENT says that, to no surprise, the Biden Administration has been quietly funding Ukrainian drone production. It appears that the Biden Administration hasn't been able to spend all the money allocated for Ukraine support; might they just give it to Ukraine instead?

Along parallel lines, there was a remark in the media about frozen Russian funds being put into escrow, so they could not go back to Russia unless a peace treaty was signed. I was puzzled, but it may have something to do with limiting Trump's options. Who knows what he'll do?

Incidentally, all along Ukraine has played up impressive weapons such as its Neptune cruise missile, which has scored some successes, and the Hrim-2 tactical ballistic missile. However, in practice they haven't amounted to much. The traditional Ukrainian arms industry is, it seems, not in good shape, with facilities easily targeted by air attack. The push is to turn out "cheap & dirty" weapons, like the Trembita "buzz bomb", that are easy to make, with production distributed and protected.

* The EU has now ordered Elon the Musk Rat to hand over his plan for content moderation of Xitter. EU patience with the fascist-leaning Musk Rat -- AKA "Apartheid Clyde" -- is running out. However, governmental organizations rarely do things quickly.

AND SO ON: Trump will return from the political grave on Monday. That will be, of course, bad news. My question is: So what do I do?

Right now I'm feeling at loose ends, not sure what to do next. It's not like I ever felt I had or could have any significant control over the world outside my own space; besides, I'm not seeing anything in Trump that represents a direct threat to me personally. Again, I'm not saying I'm happy with things, but I will say I'm not going to be whining about it.

My bottom line is that I can always take the next step, and the step is going to be in a positive direction. That, I can do.

[MON 27 JAN 25] THE WEEK THAT WAS 04

DAYLOG MON 20 JAN 25: Donald Trump was, of course, sworn in as POTUS 47 today. There was a push to get people to delete their Xitter accounts at 12 noon Eastern time -- 10 AM Mountain time here -- and I was diligent in doing so.

I had tried to delete it twice before, but nothing happened. On a tipoff I got, I told Xitter I was 10 years old, & it immediately blocked my account? I didn't want it blocked, but I got an email saying it would be deleted, so that worked.

There was also a separate push to play the DARTH VADER IMPERIAL MARCH on kazoo at that time. I had got rid of my kazoos, so I played a YouTube video with a kazoo march. Good enough, for as much as it mattered.

* I live in a duplex home. My neighbor is a MAGAnut, & I stay away from him. However, he's a fireman, keeps odd hours, and sometimes I get noise coming through the wall at night. Lately I hear a dark-hours talk show of some sort, somebody talking obnoxiously rapidly. I can't make out the words -- probably some RWNJ troll -- but it was annoying. What to do? I finally decided this morning to turn my bed around so the foot is at the wall and not the head. Might not completely cure the problem, but it should help.

* In the meantime, Joe Biden took some parting shots by preemptively pardoning Dr. Anthony Fauci, the House J6 investigative committee, General Mark Milley, and Joe's siblings. There were people online saying this set a bad precedent that Trump would exploit. Well DUH, Trump has never hesitated to issue pardons whenever he felt like it, and is likely to issue a good number of pardons in the very near future. I can never figure out if people who say such silly things are naive or trolling.

DAYLOG TUE 21 JAN 25: Retired US Army General Mark Hertling wrote an essay on the Trump Gang's proclamation that Trump would conduct a "shock & awe" blitzkrieg on entering office. Hertling wrote that he'd heard it before, when he was a war college student in the late 1990s. It traced back to the 1996 book SHOCK & AWE: ACHIEVING RAPID DOMINANCE by Harlan Ullman & James Wade, both military professionals. They argued for a strategy in which an adversary would be hit so hard so quickly that they would simply fold up.

Nice work if you can get it. Hertling said that in a lecture on the concept, a Marine student whispered to him: "Perhaps this professor who's never worn the uniform doesn't understand how tough it really is in combat."

Hertling heard more about "rapid dominance" over the next few years, up to OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM in 2003, which overthrew Iraq's Saddam Hussein. It did seem that the assault bore that out, with Saddam's forces rolled up like a rug. Unfortunately, little thought was given to what would happen after that, with warnings by the French angrily dismissed. What the USA got was a decade of fighting in a destabilized Iraq, at a cost of over $2 trillion USD & over 4,000 US troops killed.

Hertling writes: "If your plan calls for your side being all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect in execution, and immune to surprise -- when you're working with human beings and you presume your enemy is stupid, weak, and all but inanimate -- the plan probably isn't worth all that much." The same applies to the Trump Gang. Right now, they seem all-powerful and are playing the "shock & awe" card with a blizzard of executive orders to overwhelm the opposition.

However, they are not all-powerful, and suffer from significant weaknesses -- in particular, being ignorant, stupid, and inept even at crime. They can inflict damage, but actually implementing things will be a lot harder. We saw that the 1st time around. Yes, things are bad, they may get worse -- but we're not helpless by any means, and it isn't wise to assume the lose in advance. Let's see how things look a year from now. In the meantime, we stay keen and don't freak out.

DAYLOG WED 22 JAN 25: There is, to no surprise, still a buzz going around that the Trump Gang provably cheated in the 2024 election. The problem is that there isn't any evidence that was true.

US election security is well-developed and works. The Dems had an army of election observers at the polling places, and the CISA data-security agency said its monitoring revealed no serious hacking. Tales of "missing votes" don't survive scrutiny.

In addition, CISA says there's been a lot of online trolls playing the "election fraud" card, to spread chaos among the Dems. Trump has been spreading tales about: Elon cracked the voting machines! -- but it's the same thing. Trump doesn't say real things, he doesn't know how. The voting machines are not connected to the internet. They can be individually tampered with, but that's like counterfeiting $1 bills: a lot of work for a puny payoff. There are no reports of voting machines being physically hacked.

I know I'm being trolled by some of these people. In response to my statement that CISA saw no hacking, some troll came back that CISA was a Chinese-controlled operation, yada yada. I dobut he knew or cared what CISA is. I blocked him.

We got burned by lies, dysfunctional media, and oligarch money. Yeah, it's understandable that people are upset, but that's not a good reason for them to lose their heads -- all the more so because that's exactly what the Black Hats want them to do.

DAYLOG THU 23 JAN 25: The news seems uniformly bad these days: Trump throwing out executive orders, many of which are clearly unconstitutional. Ukraine news appears to be in a loop with "peace talks", which are also clearly about Trump, since Putin is driving the war and doesn't want peace. Ukrainian top General Syrsky says that his forces lack men and munitions -- but adds that this is always true in wars, and Ukraine fights "with what it has".

He also says, significantly, that Ukraine has reached parity with the Orcs with ammunition -- a consequence of Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Orc war infrastructure, along with attrition of Orc resources.

* I get kinda down sometimes, but then -- to my surprise -- I level out. I'm generally rethinking my life for now, settling in for the long haul. I'm much more resilient than I was when I was young. One thing I'm doing is getting more sleep, it improves my morale.

I talked earlier about turning my bed around to get away from neighbor noise through the wall. That's surprisingly ended up being a project, with rethinking of my sleep furnishings & habits. I might get some noise-cancelling earplugs as well -- they're cheap.

In any case, I'm settling in for the long haul. Will we be able to take the USA back in 2028? Probably, but if not then 2032, or at the outside 2036. Trump's in obvious physical decline; I don't know how long he will last, but at least I have good reason to think I will outlive him. I will patiently wait for the day.

DAYLOG FRI 23 JAN 25: The "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)" was passed in 1978, establishing rules for government surveillance operations -- most notably establishing a secret "FISA court" to authorize warrants for surveillance.

As discussed in an article from ARSTECHNICA:com ("Court Rules FBI's Warrantless Searches violated Fourth Amendment" by Ashley Belanger, 23 jan 25), a more obscure feature of FISA was "Section 702".

Section 702 doesn't look problematic on the face of, simply providing the rules for surveillance of non-Americans outside the USA. The problem is that the authorities also had access to data generated by Americans if it was incidentally picked up during surveillance operations. This "finders keepers" rule has been controversial for more than a decade. Now Federal Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall, of the Eastern District of New York, has declared it unconstitutional, establishing that a warrant is required for such access.

The case was about one Agram Hasbajrami, a legal American resident arrested in 2011 for aiding a terrorist organization, then convicted and sent to prison. Judge DeArcy Hall didn't overturn that conviction, saying that the FBI obtained the data on Hasbajrami in "good faith". Hasbajrami was clearly guilty, after all. It appears FISA is up for revision in 2026, and Section 702 may be attended to then.