The experimental “Rapid Dragon” weapon is a cruise missile packed in a pallet. After being shoved out the open rear door of a cargo plane in flight, the pallet quickly disintegrates, and the missile’s engines turn on, guiding it to its target.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43550/special-operations-c-130-hits-target-with-a-rapid-dragon-pallet-dropped-cruise-missile
Interesting to see how quickly private air forces are growing.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43379/draken-doubles-its-fleet-of-private-aggressor-f-16s-with-a-dozen-surplus-jets-from-norway
The hideous East German helmet has an interesting history. It was designed during WWII as a replacement for the iconic M35 “Stahlhelm,” and tests showed it was stronger yet cheaper to make. In spite of that, Hitler rejected the adoption of the new helmets because they lacked the distinctive “German” appearance that the world had come to know and love. After the War, the Soviets made the new East German Army divest itself of weapons and equipment from the Nazi era, which meant the Stahlhelm was out. Luckily, the East Germans found the data sheets for the ugly helmet Hitler didn’t like, so they made it.
https://equipment.fandom.com/wiki/Stahlhelm_M1945
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor 80 years ago, dragging the U.S. into WWII. They also did a little-remembered and unsuccessful follow-up attack on the base a few months later.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43414/flying-boats-flew-japans-little-known-follow-on-raid-on-pearl-harbor
“If the Japanese had sunk every ship at Pearl Harbor and destroyed every plane in the Hawaiian Islands, we still would have been in a situation where our economy was 10 times larger than theirs. We had already begun building this enormous new fleet, and I believe the result — it might have taken us longer to win the war — but there’s no doubt that the (United States) would have reacted much like it did — (a) unified sense of rage and purpose. and as soon as that happened, I think Japan was finished.”
https://www.joplinglobe.com/news/local_news/acclaimed-historian-says-japan-lost-the-war-on-dec-7-1941/article_59862a68-52d4-11ec-8410-c31d1abee0fb.html
One reason the Japanese Zero fighter was better than its early U.S. opponents was it weighed less thanks to a superior aluminum alloy. The Americans eventually copied it after recovering a crashed Zero.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344352786_Extra_Super_Duralumin_and_Zero_Fighter_-Why_could_Japan_develop_the_strongest_aluminum_alloy_in_the_world-
The “Bailey Bridge” was a modular bridge invented in WWII. Crews could assemble it in the field by lining up the components and hammering thick, metal pegs through their corresponding holes. They also used permanent clamps to hold the parts together. I think we should assemble modular houses like this. After the concrete foundation was poured and dried, several 18-wheeler trucks and a small crane would arrive at the site. Each truck would carry a different, box-like section of the house. The crane would stack them in the right order, and construction workers would do the careful work of lining up the holes on the edges of each section’s frame with its neighbors, and then hammer pegs through the holes to secure them. All the “framing” work could be done in a day. The different components might even come with plumbing and electric wiring, only making it necessary for the workers to join the short gaps between each section.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaNOuVgwPos
Since WWII, there have been few improvements to the Bailey Bridge design. They got it very close to right the first time.
https://www.mabeybridge.com/products/bridging/mabey-logistic-support-bridge
Here’s a fascinating analysis of how the Allies gained the upper hand against the Axis Powers in 1942 with weapons production and readiness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKCScYZoEj4
The Soviet T-55 tank began production in 1958, and the vehicles are still being remanufactured, upgraded and traded. Though much worse than modern main battle tanks, upgraded T-55s are still effective against lighter armored vehicles and against enemies that lack armor. Pakistan just bought them for such a role.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7vKHiygopk
Here’s an intense drone video of Syrian and Turkish armored vehicles in a sort of “dogfight.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGtosGZsztY
More information about the encounters between U.S. Navy warships and UFOs off the coast of San Diego in 2019 have come to light. At one point, sailors fired a weapon at one of the craft.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43561/mysterious-drone-swarms-over-navy-destroyers-off-california-went-on-for-weeks
Elon Musk says Space-X might go bankrupt if it fails to get its upcoming “Starship” rockets operational on time.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/30/22809720/elon-musk-spacex-raptor-engine-crisis-bankruptcy-starship
There’s skepticism over the viability of the “SpinLaunch” system, which is meant to fling satellites into space.
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/is-spinlaunch-viable/
“The first images from [the James Webb telescope] should be available by summer 2022.”
https://earthsky.org/space/james-webb-space-telescope-30-days-of-terror/
‘A solar balloon is a balloon that gains buoyancy when the air inside is heated by solar radiation, usually with the help of black or dark balloon material. The heated air inside the solar balloon expands and has lower density than the surrounding air. As such, a solar balloon is similar to a hot air balloon.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_balloon
Whether life exists on Venus, it’s interesting that our scientists can conceive of life forms that could theoretically survive there. We could someday synthesize such microbes in cloning labs on Earth, and then send them to Venus on space rockets to seed that planet with life (some people think aliens did that to Earth billions of years ago). I don’t think we should do it yet, though. We should build stations orbiting Venus to slowly siphon its thick atmosphere into space for whatever industrial uses we have, until the atmosphere is about as thick as Earth’s. At that point, we could seed the planet with a greater abundance of engineered life forms, and of greater biological complexity.
https://news.mit.edu/2021/habitable-venus-clouds-acid-neutralizing-1220
The Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago.
https://apnews.com/article/europe-russia-ukraine-voting-rights-moscow-2f0a5907e9172c5a7c14451d39752f5d
Sri Lanka’s government-mandated attempt to switch to 100% organic farming is being called off after it caused a sharp drop in food production.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/sri-lanka-revokes-ban-on-fertilizers/article37614990.ece
Again and again, the doomsday global warming prediction models have proved inaccurate.
https://www.science.org/content/article/un-climate-panel-confronts-implausibly-hot-forecasts-future-warming
Adjusting for inflation, the amount of property damage caused by tornadoes in the U.S. didn’t increase from 1950 to 2021. If anything, there was a slight decrease.
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/us-tornado-damage-1950-to-2021
The “greater male variability hypothesis” says that human males are more genetically diverse than females because males have only one “X” chromosome whereas females have two. Any recessive traits and/or extreme traits that may be on a person’s X chromosome are expressed in males, but tend to be muffled in females because of the effect of the second X chromosome. A growing body of evidence from human medical studies supports the Hypothesis, and now, it seems the same effect applies to chimpanzees.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2019.2858
“Intellectual disability,” formerly termed “mental retardation,” is a condition where a person’s IQ is lower than 70. It has many different causes, including the inheritance of genes from naturally low-IQ parents, totally random genetic mutations in the womb (Down Syndrome), brain damage during difficult births (Cerebral Palsy), and severe neglect/abuse during early childhood. As a result, while intellectually disabled adults might seem the same, they can have low IQs for diverse reasons. This study filtered out the intellectually disabled people who were so due to random genetic mutations, birthing accidents, and early childhood trauma. It determined that low IQ is very heritable, just as other studies have shown high IQ is very heritable. Also, an unusually high number of genes coding for IQ are located on the X-chromosome, which explains why the population “bell curve” for IQ is narrower for women than it is for men. Men are likelier to be intellectually disabled and also likelier to be geniuses than women.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jcpp.13560
Three percent of Greenlanders have a genetic mutation causing sucrase-isomaltase deficiency. It allows them to eat large amounts of sugary foods without weight can or health penalties.
https://www.studyfinds.org/genetic-variant-sugar-healthy-greenland/
‘We found evidence that most countertop microwaves sold in the US are manufactured by just one company, Midea. We confirmed with Midea that it makes and sells Toshiba, Comfee, and Black+Decker ovens. We’re also confident that GE, Whirlpool, Sharp, Breville, Insignia, Magic Chef, Hamilton Beach, and others also sell microwaves that were originally built and probably designed in large part by Midea, though all parties that we contacted declined to comment.’
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-microwave/#most-microwaves-come-from-the-same-factory
Did microwave technology peak in 1997 with the Sharp “Carousel”?
https://youtu.be/UiS27feX8o0
Recumbent bicycles are more efficient than traditional “vertical” bikes because the rider is positioned in a way that reduces his drag. By one estimate, recumbent bikes are 23% more “fuel efficient.”
https://www.quora.com/How-much-more-efficient-are-recumbent-bicycles-than-conventional-ones
‘Since at least 2017, a mysterious threat actor has run thousands of malicious servers in entry, middle, and exit positions of the Tor network in what a security researcher has described as an attempt to deanonymize Tor users.’
https://therecord.media/a-mysterious-threat-actor-is-running-hundreds-of-malicious-tor-relays/
This analysis concludes that Moore’s Law is not dead, though it could die at any minute. Regardless, there is still enormous room for the improvement of silicon computer chips, and we’re decades away from hitting limits imposed by physics.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aNAFrGbzXddQBMDqh/moore-s-law-ai-and-the-pace-of-progress
Intel claims it has developed 3D computer chips, which will let it continue Moore’s Law rates of improvement.
https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded-revolution/article/21183706/electronic-design-intel-proposes-new-path-for-moores-law-with-3d-stacked-transistors
New AI language models answer questions more accurately than GPT-3 in niche domains. In aggregate, the models are approaching the levels of human experts.
https://deepmind.com/blog/article/language-modelling-at-scale
The E.U. has rejected the controversial new Alzheimer’s drug, “aducanumab,” due to a lack of evidence that it works.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59699907
The odds of a pandemic starting because a corpse full of something like the Spanish Flu or smallpox thawed out of the permafrost are about zero.
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ancient-plagues
In the U.S., the COVID-19 vaccines have saved about 1 million lives so far.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/12/how-many-lives-has-vaccination-saved.html
Merck’s new drug to treat COVID-19 is less effective than claimed, but still better than nothing.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/rethinking-molnupiravir
In August of 2020, Bill Gates predicted that “for the rich world, we should largely be able to end [the COVID-19 epidemic] by the end of 2021, and for the world at large by the end of 2022.” At least in the U.S., the prediction would have been right had people continued getting vaccinated at the rate they were during April 2021.
https://www.wired.com/story/bill-gates-on-covid-most-us-tests-are-completely-garbage/
Bill Gates predicts that the “acute phase” of the COVID-19 pandemic will end sometime in 2022.
https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2021
At a Taiwanese pathogen lab, a worker accidentally contracted COVID-19 after an accident. This bolsters the plausibility of the “lab leak hypothesis” for the virus’ origin.
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4372853
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/covid-lab-leak-in-taiwan/
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 hit 800,000. Given the availability of vaccines, there’s no reason the milestone had to be reached this year.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-nfl-sports-health-football-f967f156fb205277266d2bb2483b858c
A year ago, the U.S. finished vaccinating its first million citizens against COVID-19. The lack of side effects in that cohort at this stage suggests it is safe as its developers claimed in the beginning.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/23/covid-vaccine-us-has-vaccinated-1-million-people-out-of-goal-of-20-million-for-december.html