In a major strategic defeat, Russia failed to conquer Kiev, Ukraine’s capitol, and withdrew the army it sent there for that task. Those forces have been sent to join an offensive in Ukraine’s rural eastern region, inaugurating a new phase of the war. Russian and Ukrainian military and economic losses from the conflict sharply rose this month, though both still have enough reserves to keep fighting for the foreseeable future. The amount of weapons, money, and battlefield intelligence the West is giving to Ukraine also grew, inflaming Putin and raising the possibility that he will expand the War.
- During the first nine weeks of the Ukraine War, Russia lost as many troops as the USSR did during the NINE YEARS of fighting in Afghanistan.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-troops-ukraine-deaths-9-year-afghan-war-ussrs-collapse-2022-4 - The contrarian narrative that the War is actually proceeding according to an intricate, secret plan that Putin has is nonsense. Invading Ukraine will probably go down as the biggest mistake of his life.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/23003689/putin-ukraine-russia-donbas-energy-feint - The Russian troops that moved in to occupy Chernobyl might have been exposed to radiation.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/45098/ukraine-situation-report-evidence-russia-dug-trenches-in-contaminated-chernobyl-forest-emerges - Thanks to the West freezing most of its foreign currency reserves, Russia defaulted on a debt payment. As it owes billions of dollars to other groups of foreign creditors, the country is likely to default on more debts as the months pass.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/11/investing/russia-default-sp/index.html - Ukraine captured one of Russia’s most advanced ground-based antiaircraft systems, codenamed “Barnaul-T.”
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44981/ukraine-captured-one-of-russias-newest-air-defense-systems - Ukraine captured an intact Russian “Orlan-10” surveillance drone, and found it contained surprisingly cheap, basic technology.
https://petapixel.com/2022/04/11/ukraine-opens-russian-drone-finds-canon-dslr-inside/ - Some Russian tanks have sandbags attached to their sides to improve their armor protection. The practice dates back to WWII. The sandbags look like something more advanced since they’re rectangular and not saggy teardrop shapes.
https://www.outono.net/elentir/2022/03/13/the-egg-cartons-of-the-russian-tanks-the-poor-protection-of-many-t-72b3-and-t-80/ - One of Russia’s most advanced fighter planes, a Su-35S, crashed in Ukraine, and its pilot was captured.
https://theaviationist.com/2022/04/03/first-russian-su-35s-flanker-e-confirmed-destroyed-in-ukraine/ - Ukraine destroyed Russia’s most advanced and powerful warship in the Black Sea, the Moskva. It is a serious blow to Russian prestige and naval capabilities, and the biggest loss of a surface ship belonging to any navy since the Falklands War, 40 years ago.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/sinking-a-warship-is-a-truly-rare-event-in-modern-naval-warfare - Russia has dispatched a 110-year-old ship, the Kommuna, to salvage the sunken Moskva.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russias-110-year-old-salvage-ship-deploying-to-moskva-wreck-report - Czechia is donating several of its old T-72 tanks and BMP-1 armored personnel carriers to Ukraine.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/45078/ukraine-situation-report-donated-czech-t-72-tanks-bmp-1-armored-vehicles-headed-to-ukraine - Slovakia is donating an S-300 antiaircraft missile system to Ukraine, in exchange for the U.S. agreeing to backfill Slovakia’s arsenal with Patriot missiles.
https://www.npr.org/2022/04/08/1091711705/us-missile-defense-system-slovakia-ukraine - Some Ukrainian reserve troops and pro-Russian separatists are using WWII-era weapons in the current conflict. Some of the weapons are 100 years old.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDd8NFftuXI - Russia cut off natural gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria in retaliation for them supporting Ukraine.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-business-bulgaria-moldova-2505307f5dcc882d38bab642ffce649f - It’s not encouraging when someone who is supposed to be an expert gets a prediction so wrong: ‘Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley predicted in early February that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could take Kyiv in just “72 hours,” a far cry from the monthlong conflict Russia and Ukraine are now engaged in.’
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mark-milley-ukraine-war-prediction-fall-72-hours - Here’s a detailed analysis of the Ukraine War and its future. Some key points:
-Russia can still win.
-If Ukraine falls, its highly likely Russia will take over Moldova next.
-Russia is dependent on foreign companies for military-grade electronics. A tighter embargo could significantly reduce Russia’s stockpiles of missiles, visioning equipment, and other gear within months.
-Whether Russia wins or loses, the outcome will be negative for it and the world in many ways. The war was a costly mistake.
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-resources/operation-z-death-throes-imperial-delusion
The German submarine U-2365 was scuttled in 1945, on the day the country surrendered to the Allies. Eleven years later, it was raised to the surface, repaired, and put into the service of the West German navy. Ten years later, it sank again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_Hai_(S_170)
Here’s an interesting article about WWII Liberty Ships and how they represented a revolution in shipbuilding techniques.
https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/lessons-from-shipbuilding-productivity?s=r
Someone restored a WWII-era M1 Carbine that was equipped with a primitive night vision scope. The visioning system consists of a large flashlight that only emits infrared light, aligned with an aiming scope that transforms infrared light into visible light. Americans used the weapon to snipe Axis troops in the dark.
https://youtu.be/AAhe4pk2Pn8
British WWII tanks had a bad reputation. This internal wartime analysis comparing the country’s Centaur and Cromwell tanks to the U.S. Sherman gives a sense of how big the difference was.
https://worldoftanks.com/en/news/chieftain/The_Chieftains_Hatch_Dracula/
A man made a functional replica of the “Smartgun” from the movie Aliens.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2022/04/07/m56-smart-gun-replica/
Here’s a very in-depth analysis of Russia’s new rifle, the AK-12. Basically, it would have been smarter for them to have upgraded their older AK-74 rifles, or to have adopted an even more advanced rifle that they had available. The AK-12 falls in an unhappy middle ground between those two options, being less effective than an upgraded AK-74, but just as expensive as the more advanced rifle that didn’t win the competition. The video also does a great job at the end summarizing how the Kalashnikov gun company has been nimble and clearheaded until recently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cJbOAVDQxQ
China delivered several HQ-22 antiaircraft systems to Serbia. They’re equivalent to Russian S-300 or U.S. Patriot missile systems.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-china-serbia-nato-682ab79c4239f14ecc1133ff5c7addc9
Here’s a good argument against keeping old, upgraded tanks in service. Basically, the tank itself is only a small fraction of the overall tank force’s expense: large amounts of manpower and money go into things like fuel, spare parts, maintenance, and training, and these are fixed costs regardless of whether the tank being supported is brand new or 50 years old. Buying a new tank only increases the overall expense by a few percent.
https://youtu.be/mUyAPQEb01Q?t=2405
Biden the Democrat will spend more on defense than Trump the Republican. In fact: ‘Once Congress approves the request — and, in all likelihood, makes it bigger — U.S. defense spending will be larger in inflation-adjusted dollars than it was at the height of the Vietnam War or President Reagan’s Cold War buildup.’
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-04-03/bidens-defense-budget-is-big-democrats-will-vote-to-make-it-bigger
In 1972, the book The Limits to Growth predicted several key resources would be exhausted in 50 years, leading to a global population collapse. Well, the future is now, and the book was totally wrong. This passage is important: ‘In his insightful 2021 article in Mineral Economics, German geologist Friedrich-Wilhelm Wellmer explains that when markets signal that a mineral or metal is in short supply, companies develop new more efficient ways to exploit current reserves and seek to find new resources. Consequently, the supply horizon for most metals, minerals, and fuels remains always about 20 years out.’
https://reason.com/2022/04/22/after-53-earth-days-society-still-hasnt-collapsed/
Six months ago, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad predicted “the biggest crash in world history” was coming. We’re still waiting.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kiyosaki-biggest-crash-world-history-155600637.html
‘Ireland has a blanket ban on nuclear power, as per section 18 of the Electricity Regulation Act, 1999. After this ban, the committee for nuclear regulation was made redundant and promptly dissolved. This leaves Ireland in a unique position – following a vote of the Oireachtas (parliament) to un-ban nuclear, Ireland would be one of the few countries to have no regulation on nuclear power at all…Ireland has the potential to leapfrog over an entire generation of ineffective nuclear regulators, and avoid the traps of the early adopters.’
https://www.thefitzwilliam.com/p/irelands-unique-promise-for-nuclear?s=r
Here are some interesting proposals for a nimbler, cheaper credentialing system than the four-year college degree model.
https://futuristspeaker.com/future-of-education/inventing-the-college-equivalency-scale/
When salt water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, and the resulting ice is pure water.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-sea-water-have-salt-in-it-but-ice-in-polar-ice-caps-have-fresh-water
Moore’s Law isn’t dead yet.
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-m1-ultra-chip-moores-law/
The two founders of DeepMind, possibly the world’s most advanced AI research group, think that the first intelligent machine will probably be invented in the next 10 – 30 years.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SbAgRYo8tkHwhd9Qx/deepmind-the-podcast-excerpts-on-agi
In 1995, Bill Gates did a presentation that predicted many key technologies that are common today.
https://youtu.be/o0O0Xjpjvfc
Here’s a 2015 interview where Bill Gates predicts how the world will change by 2030.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RETFyDKcw0
Here’s a 2017 article about more recent predictions Bill Gates made. His worries about a pandemic were prescient. He also warns of mass technological unemployment.
https://futurism.com/bill-gates-seven-predictions-future
In December 2021, Bill Gates predicted:
-“the acute phase of the [COVID-10] pandemic will come to a close some time in 2022.”
-“Within the next two or three years, I predict most virtual meetings will move from 2D camera image grids—which I call the Hollywood Squares model, although I know that probably dates me—to the metaverse, a 3D space with digital avatars. “
https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2021
Rudolf Diesel invented the…Diesel…engine in 1897 after working on it privately for 12 years. The prototype was impractical and enjoyed no commercial success, but it attracted a lot of attention from other engineers and businessmen who thought it had potential. After failing to work out the engine’s kinks himself and finding no buyers, Diesel got so depressed that he killed himself in 1913. The engine didn’t reach the necessary level of refinement to find commercial success until the 1920s. The Diesel engine is an interesting technology because it’s one that only started working well after tons of tweaks to incrementally improve its performance. During WWII, the Diesel engines found in some of the military vehicles really were cutting-edge technology.
https://dieselnet.com/tech/diesel_history.php
A variant of the Diesel engine is the “opposed piston Diesel engine,” and it is very fuel-efficient.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF5j1DvC954
Here are some predictions about how electric, autonomous vehicles will affect homes and the real estate market.
https://futuristspeaker.com/future-of-transportation/nine-ways-autonomous-transportation-will-impact-real-estate/
A large trucking company called “Embark” and a real estate investment company called “Alterra” have partnered to create an infrastructure network for autonomous trucks in the southern U.S. The core of the plan is buying large parking lots and warehouses that are both near highways and just outside of cities, where the autonomous trucks could park themselves. The trucks will drive themselves over long, simple interstate routes and then park at the nodes, where their cargoes will be transferred to human-driven trucks for last-mile delivery over shorter, but more complex routes through suburbs and cities. Embark will supply and run the autonomous trucks, while Alterra will buy and run the nodes. They plan to open the network in 2024.
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/02/28/2392950/0/en/Embark-Partners-with-Industrial-Real-Estate-Firm-Alterra-to-Open-Transfer-Points-and-Accelerate-Rollout-of-Embark-Coverage-Map.html
“Robots will bring manufacturing back to America. A robot workforce should also make human unemployment less volatile because a robot workforce can be increased or shrunk quickly and isn’t worried about nominal wage stickiness. Also, as of yet robots don’t unionize. Robot wages will make the minimum wage more salient. Working out the interactions between a monopsony buyer of labor facing a perfectly elastic supply of robots will be interesting.”
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/04/robot-rentals.html
OpenAI’s newest text-to-image synthesis AI, “DALL-E2,” can make remarkably realistic-looking pictures based on written instructions.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1049061/dalle-openai-gpt3-ai-agi-multimodal-image-generation/
‘Equity, the performing arts workers union, has launched a new campaign, “Stop AI Stealing the Show.” AI can use samples of an actor’s voice or face, to generate content including so-called “deep fakes”.’
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61166272
Computers can now train other computers.
https://scitechdaily.com/when-it-comes-to-ai-can-we-ditch-the-datasets-using-synthetic-data-for-training-machine-learning-models/
“I expect most written communication will eventually be done by bots. I could train my bot by letting it read all my previous email and other writings. Eventually my bot would answer most of my email directly, though it could hold some aside to ask me whether they merited a personal response.”
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2022/04/when-your-bot-is-better-than-you.html
Some elements of “Humanity Lost’s” fictional future are realistic:
-Humans merging with AI for the former’s benefit, followed by the latter coming to dominate.
-Far future technologies having what we would see as both “organic” and “synthetic” characteristics.
-The evolution of organic humans into an unrecognizable species.
-Small numbers of “humans” like us surviving in spite of it all, even if they are powerless compared to other intelligent life forms.
I don’t know whether the aliens are realistic, and I actually suspect there will be convergent evolution among intelligent aliens, driven by technology and a scientific pursuit of an optimal form.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxVjFYi-9JU
NASA’s first “Space Launch System” (SLS) rocket is finally complete, after $50 billion in development costs and years of delays. Unfortunately, the SLS is unlikely to serve long, as Space-X rockets are much cheaper, and it’s upcoming “Starship” will be as large as an SLS.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/03/its-huge-expensive-and-years-late-but-the-sls-rocket-is-finally-here/
Could the Space-X Starship be weaponized?
https://austinvernon.site/blog/starshipsuperweapon.html
Despite its closeness to the Sun, Mercury is not tidally locked to it.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Mercury-not-tidally-locked-to-the-Sun-2
The notion that Australian Aboriginals lived in harmony with nature, and that ecological problems only started once Europeans arrived, is flawed. Fossil evidence shows that the Aboriginals’ habit of setting bush fires to corral wild animals and to encourage the growth of useful plants helped turn the continent into a desert. If you burn down the trees in an area, then the land can’t hold in moisture as well, creating a positive feedback loop that dries out the soil until it’s desert sand. Once the soil lacks moisture, clouds don’t form above it, and it stops raining.
http://theconversation.com/how-aboriginal-burning-changed-australias-climate-4454
A combination of natural climate change, human-caused climate change, and over hunting also killed off Australia’s megafauna. Yes, the Europeans killed off several species once they arrived in Australia, but the Aboriginals had done the same earlier.
http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/humans-climate-change-australian-megafauna-extinction-07861.html
Knocking out a single gene in maize and rice raised yields by 10% and 8%, respectively, “with no apparent trade-off in other agronomic traits.”
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg7985
The man who made the first genetically engineered humans has been released from jail after three years.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/04/1048829/he-jiankui-prison-free-crispr-babies/
It’s actually possible to transplant teeth from one person to another, though the rejection rate is high. The procedure was relatively popular in 1700s Europe. A rich person who needed a tooth would find a poor person who was willing to sell his same tooth, and they would go to the same dentist at the same time for the transplantation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth_transplant
Medical evidence is accumulating that low salt diets don’t improve cardiovascular health or reduce the odds of having heart attacks.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(22)00369-5/fulltext
Most Americans have been exposed to harmful levels of lead in their lives, usually during childhood. Thankfully, the problem is lessening as time passes, and the people with the highest exposure levels are older.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2118631119
Up to 65% of Africans have been infected with COVID-19 or have it now. This far exceeds the infection numbers reported by African government health agencies.
https://apnews.com/article/covid-health-world-health-organization-united-nations-matshidiso-moeti-92d8d2206341c9d15a6d6a35d62302f5
A new COVID-19 vaccine has been approved in Britain.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-61104594
This article from 2020 was wrong.: ‘The COVID-19 episode will likely lead to a large, lasting baby bust. The pandemic has thrust the country into an economic recession. Economic reasoning and past evidence suggest that this will lead people to have fewer children. The decline in births could be on the order of 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births [in 2021].’
We now know that the “COVID baby bust” was about 100,000 fewer births in 2021 compared to 2020.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/half-a-million-fewer-children-the-coming-covid-baby-bust/
https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/113283