In a major strategic setback for Russia, formerly neutral Finland joined NATO. They made it clear it was in direct response to the invasion of Ukraine. The Finns have a strong military considering their population size and are tough fighters.
https://apnews.com/article/nato-finland-russia-ukraine-membership-enlargement-c703d23a8423d89577d5b752d69d76eb
Putin has ordered a second wave of military conscription, which will add 147,000 men to the Russian army by July 15. Keep in mind the Ukraine War was originally supposed to seize control of all of Ukraine within a few weeks, and with the military forces Russia already had on hand.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/putin-orders-to-draft-147-000-conscripts-by-july-15-kremlin
Last September, a Russian fighter plane tried to shoot down a British surveillance plane that could have had up to 30 men on it. Disaster was averted only because the Russian missile malfunctioned after launch. Both planes were patrolling near Ukraine.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22024706/russian-fighter-jet-tried-shoot-down-raf-plane/
At the rate Russia is losing tanks in Ukraine, they will all be destroyed in two years and three months.
https://youtu.be/2PHUK6zkbpc
A vintage T-54 tank was spotted being used by Russian forces in Ukraine.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/antique-t-54-series-tank-appears-with-russian-forces-in-ukraine
A Ukrainian drone strike destroyed a major oil depot in Russian-annexed Sevastopol. The entire Crimean peninsula is girding for a Ukrainian offensive.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-crimea-drone-29218ed006a79c4b0629688ce4820cc8
Lithuania gave 50 U.S.-made WWII howitzers to Ukraine.
https://youtu.be/P-NbhYiP88U
Ukraine is using Soviet-made WWII antiaircraft guns to defend Kiev.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukrainian-forces-were-spotted-firing-192634207.html
Ukrainian artillerymen are using U.S.-made “Excalibur” smart shells. They have ranges of 25 miles, and can land within 30 feet of their targets.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-hails-gps-guided-excalibur-084403266.html
A Russian nationalist and pro-war internet personality was killed in a bomb blast in St. Petersburg.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/02/1167675096/explosion-russia-pro-war-military-blogger-ukraine
Amazing drone footage of a Ukrainian tank firing its main gun into a trench full of Russians.
https://youtu.be/0EvE6KMmJ70
An advanced Russian T-90 tank captured by Ukrainians somehow ended up parked at a truck stop in Louisiana.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/destination-of-russian-t-90-tank-left-at-truck-stop-comes-into-focus
‘Yet notwithstanding this promising mission, the Russian exiles also pose a major security risk to the countries where they are landing. The main reason is that the Kremlin has long exploited the Russian diaspora as part of its irregular warfare operations. Given the size and spread of the new Russian diaspora, there is no doubt that strategists in the FSB are taking the opportunity to plot nasty operations.’
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/04/04/russian-agents-war-refugees-00090192
In the Soviet T-55 tank, there are two metal canisters full of compressed air right behind the driver’s head. What could go wrong?
https://youtu.be/sOX25jfEiO0
The B-2 diesel engine was invented in the USSR in the 1930s and became the standard for all its tanks. Its design was progressively improved over the decades, and the B-2 is still used in Russia’s new tanks.
https://youtu.be/nyWAd1pQiwU
Here’s an interesting report on the “availability rates” of different U.S. Navy planes. If I have a fleet of ten fighter planes, and the availability rate is 80%, then at any given moment, eight of the planes are able to take to the air, but two of them can’t because they are broken and waiting to be fixed. Availability rates decline as planes get older and more worn out, and the F/A-18 Super Hornet has an anomalously poor rate.
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58937
The Germans had the best machine gun of WWII. After the war, they made several improvements and kept using it until 2012.
https://youtu.be/A0cvxrAkbbE
A 1968 massacre of Vietnamese villagers by South Korean troops allied with the U.S. shows that any group of people can be a victim or oppressor.
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart…”
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/12/1167951366/south-korea-vietnam-war-massacre-court-case
In Myanmar, government military aircraft bombed and machine gunned a rebel town, killing over 100 people.
https://apnews.com/article/airstrikes-military-myanmar-village-918fd636bb81153928ab7481e06423e5
Even by Western European standards, Ireland is a defense free-rider.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/defenceless-ireland-ashamed-itself-180000402.html
America’s USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier was launched 10 years ago but only now is finally entering regular service. The delay is mostly due to the ship being packed with new, unproven technologies that sailors had to slowly work the kinks out of. The expensive lessons learned from this will ensure that the next ship in the Ford class enters service much faster.
https://www.businessinsider.com/navy-carrier-uss-gerald-ford-deploys-after-years-of-delays-2023-4
The military value of hypersonic weapons is exaggerated.
https://youtu.be/0n3fjoacL20
The young soldier responsible for a recent leak of many important U.S. military documents was mentally disturbed and might have been on track to become a mass shooter.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/jack-dripper-wanted-kill-tons-150735710.html
Though autonomous vehicles have fallen below the radar recently, and the slowdown in progress has some claiming the technology will never reach human levels, Bill Gates thinks they’re still improving, and will get much better and more common over the next 10 years.
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Autonomous-Vehicles
The Tesla Model Y now costs less than the average new vehicle sold in America.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tesla-drops-starting-price-model-222900933.html
Electric sedan prices are on track to drop to the same levels as gas-powered sedans by 2025.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/electric-cars-could-cost-same-145723237.html
Ray Kurzweil rejects the recent movement to halt AI development for six months in the name of safety.
https://www.kurzweilai.net/opinion-letter-from-ray-kurzweil-on-request-for-6-month-delay-on-large-language-models-that-go-beyond-gpt-4
ChatGPT has a verbal IQ of 155, which is superior to over 99.9% of humans.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/i-gave-chatgpt-an-iq-test-heres-what-i-discovered/
GPT-4 got a B- on a quantum computing final exam.
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7209
Large language models like the GPT-series machines could be very helpful to people with mental illnesses like autism and ADHD.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/04/llms-and-neurodiversity.html
Corporations are not “superintelligences,” as some people like to argue. Likewise, the team of humans that built AlphaGo could not defeat their machine in a game of Go.
AI-generated, lifelike images will lead to AI-generated, lifelike videos, which creates a new frontier for pornography, including child pornography. As distasteful as the subject is, it must be asked whether such footage should be criminalized if the children shown in it are fake and don’t resemble any real children. In such a case, who is being victimized?
https://www.foxnews.com/world/canadian-man-sentenced-prison-ai-generated-child-pornography
On Twitter, a human documents how they do GPT-4’s bidding in the real world to create a profitable business with only $100 in startup money.
https://twitter.com/jacksonfall/status/1636107218859745286
The singer “Grimes” has invited fans to create computer-generated songs using digital reproductions of her voice, so long as they split the royalties with her 50/50 on any resulting songs that become popular. I have previously predicted that celebrities will start licensing their voices and likenesses in such ways. It will get more common with time.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/24/1171738670/grimes-ai-songs-voice
Recent heavy rains have nearly refilled all of California’s reservoirs and alleviated its long-term drought.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11948365/Stunning-pics-California-storms-refilled-reservoirs-drought-parched-Golden-State.html
From 2011: ‘The report, commisioned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, said the effects of sea level rise and changing weather patterns would be felt as early as the next decade. By the mid-2020s, sea level rise around Manhattan and Long Island could be up to 10in, assuming the rapid melting of polar ice sheets continues. ‘
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/nov/16/climate-change-report-new-york-city
Seventy-five percent of Americans think that climate change is “very” or “somewhat” important, but 2/3 of them are unwilling to spend ANY of their own money on mitigating it. Among the 1/3 willing to pay, a plurality would only donate $1 per month.
https://epic.uchicago.edu/insights/americans-views-on-climate-change-and-policy-in-10-charts/
‘The biodiversity influence of avalanches comes from the natural corridors free of bushes and trees they create as they thunder down a mountainside. These become species-rich grasslands or meadows in themselves, but also, vitally, connect different habitats up and down the mountain. This can be crucial for species such as butterflies, who benefit from the cleared vegetation in the nutrient-poor soils of the Alps.’
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230405-how-avalanche-management-could-help-wildlife-in-the-alps
Last year’s massive volcanic eruption in Tonga also produced mega-tsunamis that were almost 300 feet high. Fortunately, this happened in a remote part of the Pacific, so the waves only hit uninhabited islands.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/1st-mega-tsunami-record-since-161211850.html
It’s not an accident that life on Earth only makes use of 20 types of amino acids, when a much larger number of acids with different molecular configurations could exist.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacs.2c12987
Parrots taught how to use smartphones and tablets to make video calls to each other began doing so under their own volition and seemed to enjoy the conversations.
https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/04/21/parrots-talking-video-calls/
There are shark repellents that are proven to work. One is a chemical mimicking the smell of dead sharks, and the other is a device that uses magnetism to scramble a shark’s sense of direction if it gets near.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_repellent
From the perspective of the birds, humans are Skynet, and we’re now building T-600s.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/22063991/dead-birds-crows-robots-drones-science/
‘Yellow crazy ants break the rules of reproduction. Every male ant contains separate populations of cells from two distinct genetic lineages, making them “chimeras,” researchers report in the April 7 Science. Yellow crazy ants (Anoplolepis gracilipes) are the first known species that requires chimerism to create fertile males.’
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/invasive-yellow-crazy-ants-male-chimeras-reproduce
Here’s a fascinating educational video from the 1930s explaining how images were transmitted over phone lines.
https://youtu.be/cLUD_NGE370
There’s a new twist in the scientific debate over whether and to what extent money can buy happiness. For all but the most naturally miserable people, more money DOES make them happier without any upper limit. However, the “happiness dividend” steadily shrinks.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2208661120
Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit company has filed for bankruptcy. This might not have happened had its latest space launch not failed.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/richard-bransons-virgin-orbit-files-bankruptcy
NASA has selected four astronauts for next year’s orbital flight around the Moon. It will be the first time since 1972 that humans have done such a thing.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/03/1167738502/these-are-the-4-astronauts-wholl-take-a-trip-around-the-moon-next-year
A European space probe mission to explore the moons of Jupiter took off. It will arrive in 2031.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65273857
Elon Musk has played a major role in downgrading Russia’s space program. China is probably ahead of them at this point, and has a few hundred satellites in orbit that it could use against its enemies in a war.
https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-space-program-in-decline-china-leaping-forward-us-intel-2023-4
TV celebrity Howie Mandel and his wife saw a UFO near Toronto.
https://youtu.be/GX36kpETS7c
A U.S. military drone filmed a spherical UFO during a surveillance mission over the Middle East.
https://youtu.be/1fKhqnAtnx8
On the night of March 8, 1994, several people in the same part of Michigan saw glowing UFOs in the sky. The separately reported it to the authorities, and a local meteorologist in charge of the area’s weather radar station pointed the dish towards the objects, resulting in a bizarre radar image. He and all of the eyewitnesses are still adamant about what they saw, and the objects remain unidentified.
https://youtu.be/QMQArS-s90I
A third, highly effective weight loss drug might be coming to the U.S. market soon. I’ve long thought that the obesity epidemic will only be ended with pharmaceuticals and, in the longer run, genetic engineering. We can’t count on most people to exercise more self-discipline to control their weight through diet and exercise.
https://apnews.com/article/mounjaro-wegovy-ozempic-obesity-weight-loss-bd0e037cc5981513487260d40636752a
A widely-cited study that showed rich people were more selfish and unethical than everyone else has failed to replicate.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2023-34988-001
In as little as 50 years, profiles of dead users could outnumber the profiles of living users on Facebook. Maybe digital clones of dead people will outnumber living “original” people as well.
https://time.com/5579737/facebook-dead-living/
Spanish actress Ana Obregon conceived a grandchild by having a surrogate mother impregnated with sperm removed from her son, who died in 2020 at age 27. Once human cloning becomes possible, the first clients will be bereaved parents who want to resurrect their dead children, and narcissistic rich people.
https://www.todayonline.com/world/spanish-tv-star-says-her-adopted-baby-was-conceived-using-her-late-sons-sperm-2145466
It might be time to declare the COVID-19 pandemic over in the U.S.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12007739/US-Covid-deaths-hit-lowest-point-pandemic-began.html