anecdotally I'm seeing a few people say they decided not to re-enlist because of grenade drop videos
36 warheads is terrifying. Some pics are starting to show up and the individual damage doesn't seem that bad. If each one was a thermo nuke Dnipro would be wiped off the map.
Do we have anymore info on the Oreshnik missile? I counted about 18 distinct hits by counting the flashes on the ground which is a lot more than wikipedia mentions for MIRVs. I'm seeing a few people speculate that the missiles might have been empty and relied on the kinetic energy for damage. Out of curiosity I tried to calculate what that would be but gave up since there were too many unknowns involved. I hate to give up on a calculation once I start so for some resolution I decided to calculate how much KE if you fired elon musk into the ground at mach 20. Wikipedia says non-relativistic KE is 1/2 m x (v)^2 and I assumed musk weighs 90kg so at mach 20 (6860m/s) and 90kg I converted to lb's of TNT. Using elon musk as a hypersonic missile would be = 1102.31 lb's of TNT.
Sirhan Sirhan head of RFK's security team
Cinia, the Finnish state operator of the 1,200km C-Lion1 fibre optic cable between Helsinki in Finland and Rostock in Germany, said it had been cut early on Monday morning in the Baltic Sea close to Sweden and was almost certainly the result of an “external force”.
gonna head over to CVS and pick up some iodine tablets
I'm on my knees praying that g_d (or trump) will do something rly funny
(illustration by Joe Biden)
Sunshine Protection Act. When the worst person you know etc... (marco rubio)
I just spent all day thinking it was an hour later than it is. I was planning on going for a bike ride in the last hour of light so I waited till 5pm and went outside and it was dark already. Went back inside looked at the clock on the wall - 5pm - then checked my phone - 4pm - and remembered daylight savings time. It feels like mild jet lag twice a year and I think I would prefer no DLT. Orange man says he will sign it so if he wins the election it might be the only useful thing he does in 4 years.
“Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder,” co-authored by Josh Brandon, was published by Atria Books on Oct. 4, 2022.
William Shatner:
So, I went to space.
Our group, consisting of me, tech mogul Glen de Vries, Blue Origin Vice President and former NASA International Space Station flight controller Audrey Powers, and former NASA engineer Dr. Chris Boshuizen, had done various simulations and training courses to prepare, but you can only prepare so much for a trip out of Earth’s atmosphere! As if sensing that feeling in our group, the ground crew kept reassuring us along the way. “Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t worry about anything. It’s all okay.” Sure, easy for them to say, I thought. They get to stay here on the ground.
During our preparation, we had gone up eleven flights of the gantry to see what it would be like when the rocket was there. We were then escorted to a thick cement room with oxygen tanks. “What’s this room for?” I asked casually. “Oh, you guys will rush in here if the rocket explodes,” a Blue Origin fellow responded just as casually. Uh-huh. A safe room. Eleven stories up. In case the rocket explodes. Well, at least they’ve thought of it.
When the day finally arrived, I couldn’t get the Hindenburg out of my head. Not enough to cancel, of course—I hold myself to be a professional, and I was booked. The show had to go on. We got ourselves situated inside the pod. You have to strap yourself in in a specific order. In the simulator, I didn’t nail it every time, so as I sat there, waiting to take off, the importance of navigating weightlessness to get back and strap into the seat correctly was at the forefront of my mind. That, and the Hindenburg crash. Then there was a delay.“Sorry, folks, there’s a slight anomaly in the engine. It’ll just be a few moments.” An anomaly in the engine?! That sounds kinda serious, doesn’t it? An anomaly is something that does not belong. What is currently in the engine that doesn’t belong there?! More importantly, why would they tell us that? There is a time for unvarnished honesty. I get that. This wasn’t it.
Apparently, the anomaly wasn’t too concerning, because thirty seconds later, we were cleared for launch and the countdown began. With all the attending noise, fire, and fury, we lifted off. I could see Earth disappearing. As we ascended, I was at once aware of pressure. Gravitational forces pulling at me. The g’s. There was an instrument that told us how many g’s we were experiencing. At two g’s, I tried to raise my arm, and could barely do so. At three g’s, I felt my face being pushed down into my seat. I don’t know how much more of this I can take, I thought. Will I pass out? Will my face melt into a pile of mush? How many g’s can my ninety-year-old body handle?
And then, suddenly, relief. No g’s. Zero. Weightlessness. We were floating. We got out of our harnesses and began to float around. The other folks went straight into somersaults and enjoying all the effects of weightlessness. I wanted no part in that. I wanted, needed to get to the window as quickly as possible to see what was out there. I looked down and I could see the hole that our spaceship had punched in the thin, blue-tinged layer of oxygen around Earth. It was as if there was a wake trailing behind where we had just been, and just as soon as I’d noticed it, it disappeared.
I continued my self-guided tour and turned my head to face the other direction, to stare into space. I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death. I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.
Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong. I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.
It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.
I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”
It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different. It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement, and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware—not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance.
rewatching vids of oct 7 reminded me of something I was thinking when it happened. Hamas was putting video out within a few hours of Al-Aqsa Flood start and I suspect they had crews on motorcycles collecting go-pro sd cards and porting them back into Gaza where Hamas propaganda warriors would edit and upload almost in real time. Like it wasn't just an add-on but a significant part of the operation. They were putting out video, info graphics and other related stuff in order to dominate the narrative as soon as possible. This might be the first time the term 'keyboard warrior' was a real thing and they were likely targeted by IOF in the subsequent bombing campaign. o7 to all the people behind the line.
The west is big mad because Mongolia did not arrest Putin when he arrived on a state visit.
Meanwhile they rolled out the red carpet and old school cool:
Picked up the sea salt one at Muh-nards this morning. Comes with menards 11% storerwide mail in rebate so final cost $ .69 Whoever gets that kidney they need you're welcome.
APEC Summit Q & A
Xi: ....and global warming is an existential threat to humanity so the CCP is committed to ....
Me(a tankie): Sir?
Xi: ....doing our part to help mitigate th....
Me: Sir? Sir? Um hullo yes uh could you pls refer to your party as the CPC?
Xi: What did I say?
Me: Comrade you said the CCP and I think you meant CPC. It's not a big deal but the chuds use CCP and when you refer to it as such your just giving them power it's not helpful.
Xi: (shrugs) CCP/CPC what difference does it make? (motions to security)
As I'm dragged out of the auditorium I shout: "COMRADE LIKE I SAID IT'S RLY NOT A BIG DEAL ACRONYMS SHOULDN'T BE THIS HARD I'M NOT MAD THO.
We pass the exit and I see a reporter by the door. "Pls don't write down that I was mad."
Russians getting their mojo back with that missile strike. Probably feels good after west saying Russia is just a gas station and they don't have paved roads.
