After the raging kegger we threw to celebrate the 50th WWRW, we needed a week off.

Actually, it was a busy week at work and I just forgot. Enjoy this special double edition.

Long Reads

• A Chinese martial arts master travels the country, challenging and defeating those whose kung fu he perceives as weak – Plot of a wuxia movie? Well, yes, the plot of every wuxia movie, but also a true, ongoing story in modern China. The best thing I’ve read in the last two weeks.

Quiz of the Week

• Which of these two force hierarchies pictured on Twitter is attacking, and which is defending? – See the spoiler tags at the end of the post for our guesses and the answer key, respectively, but I encourage you to take a look, think about it, and give your answers/justifications in the comments before checking the answers.

Defense

• Check out these goofy anti-flash goggles – A view of a B-52 flying a nuclear alert mission. This week on the Many Words Discord (see sidebar at right): a discussion of antiflash paint on bombers, and why it may have gone away.
• Bell is trying to cast Raise Dead True Resurrection on the Comanche – It’s the purest helicopter of the new scout helicopter competitors, so I like it, even if it does have wings. Also this week on the Many Words Discord: a discussion of tandem vs. side-by-side seating for military aircraft. Ars Technica reports they’re calling it ‘Invictus’ this time..
• Let’s play parade analysis – By which I mean, let’s let someone else play parade analysis. What’s the news from China’s National Day parade?
• Boeing’s why-you-should-buy-Chinook-Block-II website – The nice thing about helicopters is that you can slap new engines and a new gearbox in, and even without doing any work on the hull you’ve suddenly created a new, more compelling product.
• Iran says it foiled an assassination attempt on the commander of the Quds Force
• A video on the BAE Amphibious Combat Vehicle – A much less cool vehicle than the previous attempt to replace the AAV. 2700hp in the water by using open-circuit seawater cooling!
• Speaking of the Marines, they’re working on ways to fight China – We shared a story a few weeks ago on the planning document for same.
• Zerohedge: NoKor tests sub-launched ballistic missile? – The question mark is mine, because I don’t know if I fully trust Zerohedge’s reporting, and don’t have the time to run the story down myself.
• CDR Salamander is not happy about the Navy permitting fatigues in DC – Honestly, I’m against letting anyone with a staff job wear anything besides a proper uniform.
• Lynx 41 disqualified from the Bradley replacement game – Why? Because of bureaucracy and bad requirements, that’s why.
• … and the program is at risk of three failures in a row
• Iraq is in flames – Self-inflicted this time, though.
• Germany proposes ‘European’ aircraft carrier – Me: “Maybe Graf Zeppelin?” Parvusimperator: “What’s the German for ‘dock queen rustbucket’?”
• Defence Technology Review has some good articles this week, in particular on speculative amphibious assault ship designs
• Norway’s F-35 drogue chutes aren’t working right
• The AS21 rollout in photos – As AFVs go, I think it’s quite handsome.
• Big Army looking to replace the Longbow radar?
• Rheinmetall brought a 130mm gun to AUSA
• Puma Czechs out – I had to use Parvusimperator’s punny headline. The Germans decided not to submit the Puma to Czechia’s IFV program, but they have three other bids.
• Baby flattop all grown up – USS America has 13 F-35s on deck.

Sport

• This Week in Sportsball, Week 4
• And Week 5

Science and Technology

• The scientist behind the Navy’s UFO patents has filed one for a compact fusion reactor – A two-meter box capable of generating between a gigawatt and a terawatt of thermal energy. Naive back-of-the-napkin math suggests 2600 gallons per second of cooling water at one gigawatt, and five Rhines or two-thirds of a Mississippi at one terawatt.
• Science takes another crack at a reactionless thruster – This one uses relativistic mass change to get more impulse from a forward-moving particle than a backward-moving one. Nobody’s built one yet—rather, it’s a ‘the concept seems plausible’ thing, by a NASA engineer, who admits it’s a long shot.
• Update your Linux boxes – An exploit in sudo! It’s less serious than I thought, though, and basically only affects users/groups with a RunAs (ALL,!root) configuration).
• Teslas run Linux, Linux writes a lot of logs, flash memory in Tesla ECUs is not rated for a lot of writes, flash memory problems are bricking Teslas – ‘About four years’ seems to be the lifespan. Ol’ Musky says on Twitter that it’s better now.

Grab Bag

• Why is Costco so good?
• UN may run out of money by the end of October, says SecGen Guterres in letter to 37,000 employees – The headline is its own punchline.
• Washington Center for Media Self-Aggrandizement to close – That is, the Newseum.
• Blizzard suspends Hearthstone player for supporting Hong Kong – With this story, you can see why I try to do these weekly. The story’s advanced a bit. Anyway, isn’t it refreshing to see traditionally leftist media outlets calling out a company for suppressing unpopular speech, rather than shrugging, saying something about freedom of speech not meaning freedom from consequences, and forgetting about it a day later? $10 says they forget the lesson again next time it’s identifiably conservative speech.