The spammers in the spam queue have gotten a lot less creative lately, but with better grammar, they’re sneaking through the automated filter a bit more often. Fascinating tradeoffs in spam design.
Word of the Week
- I used ‘boustrophedonic‘ to describe a neat, even winding on a spool of 3D printer filament.
Defense
- Battlefield lasers: fact and fiction – An interview.
- Azerbaijan seems to have engaged in some war crimes – Repatriated Armenian remains are coming back beheaded, which a) seems like a great way to get another war in 10-20 years, and b) doesn’t bode super-well for the reasons behind Azerbaijan’s slow-rolling of prisoner exchanges.
- Armenia to rejoin the Russian orbit? It’s not that simple, maybe – I have speculated that Armenia would end its attempts at ingratiating itself with Europe and turn back to Russia. Except it seems that the Westernizing wasn’t as far along as I had thought, and there is anger in Armenia at Russia for being such a passive ally (contra the Turks, who did an awful lot of helping on the other side). Of course, it could just be the Russians sending a message: “You wanted to ditch us for Europe, and look where it got you.”
- Havana syndrome caused by directed, pulsed RF energy – Creepy, but at least it’s resolved.
Science and Technology
- Video of Arecibo collapsing – Scott Manley has some analysis on Youtube.
- FDA regulators are the picture of awful bureaucracy – American-developed vaccines are now approved for use in two non-America countries because American bureaucrats are the worst. Repeal the Pendleton Act; bureaucracy as political spoils at least solves the problem that bureaucrats think they should have a cushy lifetime gig.
- Long read of the week: iPhone iPwned – The problem is fixed now, but it was an extremely powerful attack while it was available.
- Late breaking: a software engineering war story, in Twitter thread form – It’s about Uber, and required a cask strength single malt scotch.
Motorsport
- Goodwood Speed Week: 1920s Grand Prix cars – Decade may not be quite right.
- Goodwood Speed Week: 1930s Grand Prix cars – See previous comment. These ones sound a bit more car-like in the modern sense, revving a bit more than the really old cars (which embody the idea that there is no replacement for displacement).
- Romain Grosjean escaped from a fiery crash at the Bahrain Grand Prix two weekends back – This is his description of escaping, which is pretty heavy stuff.
Grab Bag
- On the Pentagon’s unidentified aerial phenomena task force – So is it Actually Aliens? The USAF spooking the spooks? A psyop to confound the Chinese?
- Remember the spiked Hunter Biden story? Yeah, there’s something to it