While drafting these, I keep on forgetting I’ve already shared match videos, and have to go dig them out later. Oops.

Defense

• The new British carriers have always looked a bit fat to me – They may not be true carriers with catapults and arresting gear, but having two of them does count for something.
• An EC-135 at Mildenhall in 1991 demonstrated that airliner-form-factor aircraft have quite a bit of thrust to spare at light loads
• Charles de Gaulle and Izumo, to the same scale – The year is 2028. The War of the South China Sea is heating up. In a Mitsubishi warehouse, engineers pull the tarps off an angled flight deck attachment for Izumo…
• Big Army to field a ground-launched strike SM-6 – It’s similar in concept, I suppose, to the ADATS—one missile, multiple missions. Too, ‘medium-range strike’ conflicts much less with ‘air defense’ than does ‘anti-tank’—the tough thing about ADATS is that using the missiles on tanks feels like a waste, or at least it did when I gamed it out in Armored Brigade.
• US looking for a NATO-like alliance in the Pacific
• Apaches to sling Spike NLOS missile – It’s the hi in a hi-lo setup, with the lo being JAGM… except JAGM, the less-capable missile, is also the more expensive one. In the time since the JAGM project started, the UK developed and deployed Brimstone… and then Brimstone 2.
• India tests hypersonic scramjet vehicle? – Welcome to the club!
• China has a space plane; here’s where it lands
• For light ambush-protected vehicles, Thales charges Australia double what the American option would have cost – Cost disease: not just an American malady.

Guns

• Shocker! Gun sales skyrocket in regions struck by rioting
• Analyzing the circuit split on magazine bans – In which John Roberts is a squish on guns.
• Chrono trip coming up – These .38 Short Colts are better for USPSA revolver than full-length .38 Special—they flop less in the moon clips, and eject rather than partially. I just need to find a load that a) makes power factor and b) does not blow up.

Science and Technology

• In China, GitHub is a bastion of free speech – Because GitHub is HTTPS-only, China can’t ban repositories individually, and China’s technology industry has enough clout to keep the Party from banning GitHub altogether.

Riots etc.

• Al Sharpton: “latte liberals” want to defend the NYPD, average black people recognize the need for police – Something about stopped clocks and right twice a day.
• Latte liberals give homeless men the bum’s rush – Unlike in Hank Scorpio’s utopia, they will not be allowed to go at their own pace.

Grab Bag

• Eternal Brexit – The article didn’t quite pay off the title—in particular, it seems to insinuate that Brexit is, rather than being eternal, likely to come to some sort of conclusion as the EU tires of the whole process.
• The planning of US physician shortages – It’s because think tanks in the 80s concluded that there would be a glut of physicians, and people made plans based on that.