WE DON’T NEED NO FLAMING SPARKY CARS: Is It Safe to Ship Thousands of Electric Cars on Big Ships?
(Classical reference in headline.)
Archive for 2022
May 11, 2022
HE’S PRIVATIZING WORLD PEACE: China ‘Deeply Alarmed’ By SpaceX’s Starlink Capabilities That Is Helping US Military Achieve Total Space Dominance.
The article notes the SpaceX Starlink’s role during the Russia-Ukraine war, where Elon Musk provided Starlink terminals to restore communications in those parts of the country where internet or phone connection had stopped following the shelling by Russian troops.
”Starlink was the only non-Russian communications system still working in some parts of Ukraine in the wake of the invasion,” claimed SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
However, there have also been reports of Starlink aiding the Ukrainian armed forces in precision strikes against Russian tanks and positions, which has not been unnoticed by Chinese military observers.
Plus there’s this from a commenter to yesterday’s Insanity Wrap when I first mentioned this story:
I think you are missing the big deal with Starlink, Steve. 12k satellites up now, moving to 42k? Musk could use Starlink Sats as anti-sat weapons and probably take out every other satellite in LEO, without significantly degrading Starlink’s capacity. China and Russia together have less than 2100 satellites in orbit.
If I were Xi or Putin I’d be terrified of Musk.
And nobody can even remotely match Musk’s launch capacity to deliver replacements.
ONCE IS HAPPENSTANCE, TWICE IS COINCIDENCE…: There’s Been Another Supreme Court Leak … No One Will Be Happy About This One.
A POSTCARD FROM THE PROPRIETOR:
I’m jealous.
GOODER, AND HARDER, CALIFORNIA: California targets loud exhausts in newest environment regulation.
The state legislature has approved a five-year pilot program targeting loud exhausts from vehicles with new tools to assist police in ferreting out offenders, Autoweek reported.
“Illegally loud exhaust harms our bodies, can be deafening if you are walking or cycling on the street, and wakes people up from their sleep,” read the Assembly bill analysis. “While vehicle exhaust noise is limited to 95 decibels, there are no universal means to monitor and enforce this law.”
Californians love their car culture, and the sunny, open road is a magnet for drivers of both cars and motorcycles to enhance the sounds of their engines.
“Vehicle owners can easily buy and install new exhaust systems or make other modifications to their vehicle that will change the level of sound,” the analysis read.
When we lived in California, one neighbor’s kids had an early 1990s Mercedes sedan whose trunk bed was lined with two massive subwoofers, which could level whole city blocks with a single bass note. Will the California nanny state go after those, next?
WELL, THIS IS THE 21st CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Move Over, Iron Man — Real Jet-Suited Heroes May Soon Respond to Our Emergencies.
Compliments of inventor Richard Browning, the 3-D printed Gravity Industries Jet Suit consists of two small turbines fastened to each arm as well as a larger one on the user’s back. In a test run captured on video, the developer climbed more than 2,000 feet over a 1.2-mile distance in around three minutes and forty seconds.
Witness the miracle:
From the above video’s information section:
The Gravity #JetSuit uses over 1000bhp of Jet Engine power combined with natural human balance to deliver the most intense and enthralling spectacle, often likened to the real-life Iron Man. …
The Gravity Team, based in the UK, have delivered over 100 flight & Speaking events across 30 countries including 5 TED talks.
“The team and I are delivering on the vision to build Gravity into a world class aeronautical engineering business, challenge perceived boundaries in human aviation, and inspire a generation to dare ask ‘what if…”
As relayed by the Post, Richard touted the technology’s benefits:
“If you think about the cost of a paramedic helicopter and all the crew involved and the maintenance and everything, actually this is a fraction of that.”
Very, very cool, but I hope Lucas Electric didn’t do the circuitry…
TO BE FAIR, HE’S UNDISGUISABLY AWFUL: Biden Is Polling Worse Than Trump at This Point in Presidency. “Donald Trump could have only dreamed for the kind of media coverage that Joe Biden gets.”
CHANGE (IT BACK): Elon Musk says he would lift Twitter ban on Donald Trump after deal closes.
But would Trump come back to Twitter?
WHO WROTE IT BETTER?
Washington Post: Ignore the hysteria over the Disinformation Governance Board (this is an alternate link; original is paywalled)
Babylon Bee: Trump Announces First Move After 2024 Victory Will Be Appointing Himself Head Of Disinformation Board
One of these takes on the new agency shows a competent grasp of history, politics, and philosophy. The other is the Washington Post.
THE CROWN OF THE CONTINENT: On this day in 1910, Congress established Glacier National Park. (Go visit, but watch out for the 1000 or so grizzly bears there.)
In his Monday speech, Wallace said Russian vehicles “are frequently found with 1980s paper maps of Ukraine in them” and that soldiers were using “pine logs as makeshift protection on logistical trucks” and attaching “overhead ‘cope cages’ to their tanks.”
I can’t vouch for the GPS story, but the rest has all been confirmed.
HE’S PROBABLY BEEN BEGGED NOT TO: Biden Has Endorsed Fewer Candidates for 2022 Than Major Figures in Both Parties.
EDUCATION: Causing discomfort remains legal. “What the new Republican-backed bills ban is telling students they should feel discomfort, guilt or shame because of things done by other people of the same race or sex.”
THE PROCESS IS THE PUNISHMENT: The Feds Won’t Take Their Jackboot Off Ret. General Michael Flynn’s Neck.
UKRAINE: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, May 10.
The Ukrainian counteroffensive north of Kharkiv City continued to successfully push Russian forces toward the Russia-Ukraine border on May 10. Ukrainian forces liberated several towns north of Kharkiv City and continued pushing north of the recently liberated Staryi Saltiv to capture several towns northeast of Kharkiv: a Russian source claimed that Ukrainian troops advanced to within 10km of the Russian border, though ISW cannot independently confirm these specific claims.[1] Russian forces from the Izyum area are reportedly redeploying northwards to attempt to alleviate the pressure of this counteroffensive and stymie further northward advances toward the Russian border.[2] The Ukrainian counteroffensive will likely continue to divert Russian troops and resources from deployment to other axes of advance where fighting has been similarly stalled out by the successful Ukrainian defense. The counteroffensive will impede the ability of Russian artillery to target the northeastern suburbs of Kharkiv City, will potentially enable Ukrainian forces to threaten Russian rear areas with their own shelling and further attacks, and—if Ukrainian forces are able to further advance the counteroffensive or Russian forces collapse along the Kharkiv axis and withdraw further—unhinge Russian offensive operations around Izyum.
We’ll see what happens in the Donbas and around Kharkiv once Russia reduces the last resistance in Mariupol, at the Azovstal Steel Plant. Although to be fair, even that is weeks behind schedule.
NOT ALL LOCKDOWN SKEPTICS ARE ON THE RIGHT: “The Vindication of the Great Barrington Three.“
A SIGN THERE WILL BE MASSIVE RESISTANCE IF THE SUPREME COURT INVALIDATES RACIAL PREFERENCES IN HIGHER EDUCATION THIS FALL: Utah Was Warned Racial Rationing of COVID Drugs Was Illegal. It Did It Anyway. Though to my mind, using race to ration medical care, with only the barest of pseudo-scientific justification, is a much graver sin.
Relatedly, my forthcoming book on US racial classifications, Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classifications in American, is available for preorder on Kindle from Amazon for only 10 bucks. Here’s Glenn’s blurb: “We mock the racial-classifications schemes of the Jim Crow south, of Nazi Germany, and of Apartheid South Africa. But as David Bernstein ably demonstrates, our own racial classification system is just as risible, and no more scientific.”
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KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Nancy Pelosi Should Probably Stop Getting Drunk Before Work. “I’ve paid a lot of attention to Pelosi since she first became Speaker and I’ve always been stunned by the fact that the woman is an absolute train wreck whenever she’s near a microphone or a camera. Long before we were being subjected to the incoherent ramblings of the village idiot in the Oval Office right now, Granny Boxwine was barfing up word salads on the regular.”
AMAZON’S WAR ON THE WORKING MAN: Amazon Fires Employees at Unionized Warehouse as Its Tactics Come Under Scrutiny. “The spate of firings comes as an official at the National Labor Relations Board, which oversees union elections, found merit in allegations that Amazon may have violated the law during required anti-union meetings by implying workers would lose benefits or their jobs if they voted for the union.”
DEAL OF THE DAY: Home Radon Detector. #CommissionEarned
HEY, IN THIS YEAR OF CONTINUOUS ILLNESSES, I FINALLY GOT MY HEAD ABOVE WATER ENOUGH TO GET THIS OUT IN HARDCOVER. (And yeah, the price is crazy, but it’s making me about the same as the paperback. It’s just more much expensive to print. And yes, my other books will soon be out in paper and hardcover too. Oh, and that continuous illness thing? Part of it I think is the lockdowns created superbugs, and part is recovering from the crazy stress and work of last year.)
FROM SARAH A. HOYT: Odd Magics: Tales for the Lost Hardcover.
#CommissionEarned
Odd Magics
This is a very strange collection of fairytales, recast for modern life. In it the prize isn’t always to the fairest, the
magic is rarely to the strongest.
But lonely introverts do find love, women who never gave it a thought find themselves at the center of romance.
Doing what’s right will see you to the happily ever after.
And sometimes you have to kiss an accountant to find your prince.
DESPERATE AND FLAILING: FDA Commissioner Claims ‘Misinformation’ Is Now America’s Leading Cause Of Death.
LIKELY NOT: Have researchers found an undersea road to the lost city of Atlantis?
Whatever it is, though, it’s interesting.