Wednesday What We’re Reading (Jun. 24, 2020)

Is it time to officially move Wednesday What We’re Reading to Thursday? No, but you could be forgiven for thinking so.

Our native (adopted-native) Pennsylvania has about 65,000 recovered COVID cases and about 5,000 deaths. Neighboring New York has about 65,000 recovered COVID cases and about 30,000 deaths. Take that, Cuomo.
COVID immunity may only last two or three months – Based on blood antibody counts.
The ‘Rona and social cohesion – Twitter thread, but by an epidemiologist who I trust to be correct on these things.
Italy had coronavirus in the sewers as early as December – Well before China announced it to the world.

Last week, Australia saw a cyber-attack from an unnamed assailant – i.e., China, who they aren’t naming because they don’t want to make China angry.
Post-fire photos of the French SSN Perle
The Bundeswehr readiness report 2020 – In German, but parvusimperator says it isn’t good.
Russia backs India in the India-China standoff – What a strange way 2020 has devised to bring us around to the plot of The Bear and the Dragon. I guess India is an important arms market for the Russians, and China is mainly known for knocking off Russian arms, so maybe it’s purely mercenary.
Stealth destroyer, hypersonic missile? – So we’d have a bunch of refreshed 1980-vintage destroyers, new frigates to someone else’s design, useless frigate-sized patrol boats, and… three sci-fi destroyers with hypersonic missiles.
Clash between Turkey and Egypt possible in Libya? – How very Ottoman of Turkey to be inserting itself into North African affairs.
Shipyard capacity: it’s not just the raw numbers – If you’re not an Asian power and you’re at war with China, your shipyards are probably out of its reach. If you’re China at war with anyone in the Pacific, your shipyards are in play.
Big Army’s new thermal sights
AK-203 delayed

A long article on static code analysis, and the difficulties therein – Most of them are difficulties in customer interactions rather than difficulties in the actual process.
A 3D-printed camera – Not a 3D-printed camera body, an entire camera, lenses included, made with 3D printing. I find that much more impressive than 3D-printed guns, which are pretty impressive in their own right.
How did The Mandalorian film on location in so many cool-looking places? – They didn’t, or at least not the way you’re thinking. No green screens—they built their scenery in Unreal Engine, and filmed in front of an array of enormous LED screens.
Broke: Earth is special. Woke: Earth is an average planet circling an average start. Bespoke: Earth is special again – I’m relatively strongly in the Rare Earth camp. I don’t find the anthropic principle to be a very compelling counterargument—sure, we wouldn’t be able to observe a universe if it wasn’t compatible with life, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be unusual that, out of all of the possible values for all the possible cosmological parameters out there, we happen to have a set that’s compatible with us.

A new tank sim approaches: Gunner, HEAT, PC – Parvusimperator’s beat, so although I get the credit for the find, you’ll have to lean on him for detailed coverage. Evidently, multi-crew and co-op are in the offing.
A brief design history of Ricochet Poker – That is, a poker-based casino game in the blackjack mold. It also has a fairly sneaky house edge. See if you can spot it.
An interview with the dynamic campaign designer on Falcon 4.0 – From 2011, but it’s still a talk with the one guy who’s done the most for dynamic flight simming out of anyone in the world.

A quick piece on the joy and wonder that is the Costco hot dog combo – Costco sells more hot dogs than every MLB stadium combined.
Anti-Castro Cuban expat: “Hey, all this is a little worrying, based on my experiences in Cuba”
SlateStarCodex deletes blog – Scott Alexander was to be the subject of a New York Times article. They refused to grant him pseudonymity, which they’ve been happy to do for other Internet figures known mainly by pseudonyms. Mr. Alexander then deleted his website (so there’s no story), or at least made it private. I like SSC even if I occasionally think that the rationalist community must be half aliens and half robots trying to convincingly pretend at being humans, so I’m a little sad to see SSC gone.

The Soapbox