* Blog & notes for the current week.
DAYLOG MON 10 FEB -- Crisis Day 22: It's very difficult to write about anything at this time except the national crisis -- what else matters? The Trump Gang continues its willful and criminal flaunting of the law, the latest being Trump's mad ramblings about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
I was thinking mass demonstrations will be ramping up, and all evidence says they are -- with comments including: But what if Trump sends in the troops? To which I wonder: How many will join the protests? There's not a lot of enthusiasm for Trump in USGOV.
I keep thinking of crazy possibilities for getting out of this jam, but they don't go anywhere. However, with everything going south at a rapid rate, the crazy seems increasingly plausible. In the meantime, I keep my head above water.
DAYLOG TUE 11 FEB -- Crisis Day 23: Events continue on the same track, the Trump Gang spreading destruction. Texas Rep Jasmine Crockett has been busily filing lawsuits to try to slow them down, though the Trump Gang has been consistently ignoring all lawsuits and the courts. However, I'm still happy with Crockett, and am all for the lawsuits; they've got to be exhausted before moving on to the next step, whatever that may be.
One question that has been raised: What are the ex-presidents doing? The silence has been deafening. Some are unhappy about it, but I'm thinking it's more like they're engaged in intensive conversation with each other and with other major players.
One of the major players is, of course, SCOTUS, and communications with the liberal justices are likely in progress. If the Trump Gang ignores SCOTUS, could SCOTUS tell Federal employees not to obey illegal orders? Sure, people complain about SCOTUS, saying they won't cross the Trump Gang -- but I don't think SCOTUS wants to be thrown on the trash heap, and certainly isn't happy with being insulted.
But what, so the doomsayers ask, about the "absolute presidential immunity" granted by SCOTUS? That's misunderstood, it's only for "official acts", and blatantly illegal acts aren't covered. Yes, SCOTUS gets a lot of interpretation in that -- but they did before.
One of the interesting aspects of the Crisis is that the Trump Gang is bullying the Federal bureaucracy, and so has no substantial support in it. The Trump Gang has serious weaknesses, and that's one of the biggest. So what next? I don't know. Wait and see.
DAYLOG WED 12 FEB -- Crisis Day 24: Yesterday, there was a press conference with Trump and Elon the Musk Rat in the Oval Office. It seemed significant in that the Musk Rat did the talking, with Trump looking very grumpy about things. It looked suspiciously like the Musk Rat was showing off who the boss really was.
* As if we didn't have enough to worry about, ARS TECHNICA reports that GAI chatbots like Google Gemini are vulnerable to what is called "prompt injection", in which a clever prompt tricks the chatbot into doing things it shouldn't, such as search for and report secure emails. The poison prompts can infect the chatbot on a long-term basis. The only cure, it seems, is to train the chatbot not to break the rules -- which is an open-ended task. We're stuck with this for a while.
DAYLOG THU 13 FEB -- Crisis Day 25: The Trump Gang is continuing on its "Ukraine Peace" initiative by effectively declaring a partnership with Russia to that end. It's like they don't care that everyone sees they're working for Putin. Will the US drop sanctions?
What, however, will the Trump Gang do to Ukraine? They'll cut off aid, but that's to be expected. Can they do more? Sanction Ukraine? Fortunately, Ukraine gets oil from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, so cutting it off might be tricky. The EU says they'll continue aid -- will it be enough?
* There's a lot of complaining on BlueSky that Congressional Dems aren't doing enough to stop Trump. Since the GOP owns Congress -- and Trump owns the GOP -- there's not so much the Dems can do. They have been leading street protests.
The complainers say the Dems could do more to obstruct, but exactly what? Some asked for quorum-breaking in the House, but that's ignorant: in the House, a quorum is a simple majority, and the GOP has that. I assume that the Dems are doing all they can really do.
* Stress levels continue high at home, to the point my brain does funny things to me at times. My bottom line, however, is to quietly persist and see what happens. We're in unknown territory, I don't know what will happen, but things will happen. I just don't know WHAT or WHEN.
My mind goes in circles, nothing much comes out of the circles; they're not really important. I wonder if listing "Crisis Day 25" seems too optimistic, like things will happen quickly. No, they'll take as long as it takes: "Day 250", even "Day 2500" -- almost 7 years. I'm trying not to be a nervous wreck and stay involved in my work, because there's nothing else I can do.
DAYLOG FRI 14 FEB -- Crisis Day 26: I woke up this morning and was feeling fairly upbeat -- because I had forgotten what was going overnight. Once I remembered, I wasn't so upbeat. The news today coming out of the USA white supremacy regime is uniformly dismal.
One bright item today is that the Trump Gang made some sort of a deal with NY Mayor Eric Adams, being prosecuted for corruption. What was the deal? Not clear, but it involved dismissing the prosecution. The trick was that prosecutors publicly resigned rather than do it. With enough threats, they did get someone to do it.
The world seems full of insurmountable problems right now, but there's only one big problem to be concerned with for the moment. As far as the others go, who knows if they'll work out or not? Take them one at a time, and disregard the useless worries.
* KYIV INDEPENDENT had an article on Ukrainian drone makers, such as Molfar, which makes quadcopter killer drones like the "Molfar". They've done work with drone swarming, and they use lower frequencies for the comlink -- which are harder to detect and jam.
Skyfall makes the big "Vampire" quadcopter -- known to Russians as "Baba Yaga" -- which is a bomber drone, dropping mortar bombs and the like. It uses a thermal imager from the Oko ("Eye") company.
There's also the sleek "Shark" scout drone from UkrSpec, and the boxy "AQ 400 Scythe" long range k-drone from Terminal Autonomy. Of course it's boxy, it's made of plywood, and cheap for drone of its capability.
Last but not least, the long-standing Antonov company makes the "AN-196 Lyuty" long-range k-drone. It's expensive, at about $200,000 USD each, but is the mainstay of Ukraine's attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. It may have countermeasures to help it reach targets.
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