Russia’s newly drafted soldiers are being built up for a major action in Ukraine within the next six months. It could be a new offensive, or a defensive meant to defeat Ukraine’s own forthcoming attack.
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-january-15-2023
Probably not coincidentally, several Western governments announced they would be donating tanks and other modern weapons to Ukraine:
- Britain will give 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine.
https://news.usni.org/2023/01/17/u-k-sending-14-challenger-2-tanks-ammo-to-ukraine-foreign-minister-says - The U.S. and Germany will send modern infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2023/01/05/us-and-germany-pledge-infantry-fighting-vehicles-for-ukraine/
- France is donating AMX-10 armored vehicles to Ukraine. They’re probably the least useful “tanks” transferred by NATO.
https://youtu.be/CsaHCsZKdRs
NATO still has hundreds of Soviet-era tanks they should donate to Ukraine immediately. Donations of German and American tanks will take longer.
https://youtu.be/9FFDGH7PsV4
The West might be giving modern NATO tanks to Ukraine because they expect the war to go on so long that all of Ukraine’s Soviet era tanks will be destroyed before it’s over.
https://youtu.be/EXbI6fDhhYo
Here’s an excellent video report about the ongoing battle for Bakhmut in Ukraine.
https://youtu.be/jO94rW4tHNs
The Iranian kamikaze drones Russia is firing into Ukraine only cost $20,000 – $50,000 to make, but the interceptor missiles Ukraine uses to shoot them down cost up to $500,000.
https://www.businessinsider.com/suicide-drones-much-cheaper-launch-than-shoot-down-ukraine-nyt-2023-1
In 1977, a British attack sub sneaked under a Soviet aircraft carrier and photographed its propeller.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/how-a-british-submarine-spent-hours-under-a-russian-aircraft-carrier
Another reason not to trust anything Ukraine says about Russia or Putin:
‘A COUP to boot “cancer-stricken” Vladimir Putin from power is already underway, Ukraine’s spy chief has claimed. Major General Kyrylo Budanov, 36, believes the tyrant’s calamitous war in Ukraine will hit a “breaking point” in summer and be over before the end of [2022].’
https://www.the-sun.com/news/5337781/coup-remove-vladimir-putin-underway/
‘India and Pakistan came “close” to a “nuclear conflagration” in February 2019, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said in his new memoir.’
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-64396138
Advances in gun technology are still happening, even if they’re not revolutionary like ones from decades past:
- A company called “Angstadt Arms” has made a new type of silencer that doesn’t have to be screwed into the end of gun barrel–it IS the barrel.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2023/01/20/shot-2023-angstadt-arms-no-baffle-suppressed-ruger-10-22/ - “Bond Arms” invented a lever-action AR-15, marrying Old West technology with that of the modern day.
https://youtu.be/53ZEo35Avfk
China’s population has not shrunk since 1961–the last time the country had a famine. While demographers have long predicted that China’s population would start shrinking again, they didn’t think it would start as early as 2021. This means India’s population size may have already passed China’s.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-population-shrinks-first-time-since-1961-2023-01-17/
The Economist did a good job predicting 2022.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/01/what-prediction-markets-suggest-will-happen-in-2022
Fox News’ U.S. political predictions for 2022 were pretty accurate.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/five-political-predictions-for-2022
Contrary to what U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres predicted, multiple famines were not declared in the world in 2022.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-united-nations-berlin-f295ba73df6ac58b500288f23286f246
Al Gore has been making global warming disaster predictions for so long that some of his dooms-dates have already passed (without incident).
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/al-gore-history-climate-predictions-statements-proven-false
‘An Antarctic oasis is a large area naturally free of snow and ice in the otherwise ice-covered continent of Antarctica.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_oasis
Exxon’s scientists made accurate predictions about global warming starting in the 1970s. Those forecasts were kept internal until recently. Publicly, the company’s leadership denied that fossil fuels were causing global warming. Exxon’s estimates say that temperatures will rise another 2 degrees Celsius by 2100.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063
The “Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)” is usually confused with the “Gulf Stream” during discussions about how global warming might shut down the flow of warm water from the Caribbean region to Europe, making the latter much colder. The real Gulf Steam is impossible to shut down, and while the AMOC’s flow might be vulnerable to human-induced climate change, it probably can’t be terminated, either.
https://youtu.be/tnVWUIhQ8dE
In 2022, Denmark had zero bank robberies, whereas there were 222 such robberies two decades ago. The disappearance of this type of crime owes to Denmark becoming a nearly cashless society.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/bank-robberies-fall-to-zero-for-first-time-in-cashless-denmark-1.1865202
Stephen Wolfram points out ways ChatGPT could be improved by merging it with technology he created.
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/01/wolframalpha-as-the-way-to-bring-computational-knowledge-superpowers-to-chatgpt/
ChatGPT got a “B” grade on a final exam essay at the famed Wharton School of Business.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/artificial-intelligence-chatbot-passes-elite-business-school-exam-outperforms-some-ivy-league-students
ChatGPT nearly passed the Bar Exam.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.14402
A New York rabbi delivered a sermon that was written by ChatGPT. None of his congregants realized a machine had written it. Someday, machines will have memorized all religious texts and will be able to beat humans in debates about them.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/rabbi-plagiarizes-ai-sermon-but-says-humans-arent-obsolete-yet/
The tech site CNET has been publishing articles written by AI and edited by humans since November.
https://gizmodo.com/cnet-chatgpt-ai-articles-publish-for-months-1849976921
CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, gave an interview about the future of AI. He says GPT-4 won’t live up to the inflated expectations of tech people and that AGI will arrive gradually, meaning there won’t be a specific day in history when machines became “intelligent.”
https://youtu.be/ebjkD1Om4uw
Death of the narrator? Apple unveils suite of AI-voiced audiobooks
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/04/apple-artificial-intelligence-ai-audiobooks
Hyper realistic images of fake people could make fashion models obsolete.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/21218332/ai-replacing-human-models-artificial-intelligence-jobs/
The CEO of a machine translation company called “Translated” has discovered that computers are steadily getting better at translating text between languages, and that they will get as good as human experts sometime in 2027 or 2028. He believes that the task is so complex and requires such a level of knowledge that only an AGI will be able to do it. Therefore, the perfect translating machines we have in 2027 or 2028 must by definition be AGIs.
https://translated.com/speed-to-singularity
The Singularity, whether extremely positive or negative for humanity, would cause real interest rates to sharply rise. The fact that 30-50 year interest rates are low indicates that either the Singularity won’t happen until later than that, or markets have failed to foresee the Singularity.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/01/do-markets-expect-unaligned-agi-risk.html
More on that: ‘It is good to recognize that the market has not priced AI (or fusion power, or the kind of climate change people often warn about, or many other things) into market prices or real interest rates. This tells us that the common knowledge economic impact of such things is, as of yet, not so large. It does not constitute ‘market has well-considered the impact, and rejects it as tiny.’
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/on-ai-and-interest-rates
‘On Sunday, April 2, 1978, a huge bang was heard at Bell Island just before noon. The bang was so loud that people reported hearing it as far as 100 km away. The blast sent a shock wave that shook buildings on the island and killed some animals. The energy release was so powerful that the Vela satellites (which the Americans used to detect nuclear tests by other powers) noticed the phenomenon, now known as the Bell Island Boom.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Island_(Newfoundland_and_Labrador)#Bell_Island_Boom
“The reason the US doesn’t have abandoned cars littering the sides of roads anymore is because of cheap shredders [called Newell Shredders] that made recycling them profitable.”
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/01/the-profits-of-recycling.html
‘These studies suggest that ending conversations is a classic “coordination problem” that humans are unable to solve because doing so requires information that they normally keep from each other. As a result, most conversations appear to end when no one wants them to.’
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2011809118
Here’s a simple and ingenious experiment Henry Cavendish did over 200 years ago to prove gravity existed.
https://youtu.be/MbucRPiL92Q
A fascinating overview of how gyrocompasses work.
https://youtu.be/xfnn4HXCy8I
‘Toroidal propellers: A noise-killing game changer in air and water’
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/toroidal-quiet-propellers/
This analysis shows of the Tesla Semi shows its technology and efficiency are adequate, but its price is too high to make financial sense for most truck companies.
https://youtu.be/hvg_i0GE0Vo
D-SLR cameras might already be obsolete. I predicted this would happen this decade.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/blog/we-dont-recommend-buying-a-new-dslr-camera/
The maximum theoretical efficiency of a nuclear power plant is 47.6%. Actual plants have efficiencies of 35%.
https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/collegephysics/chapter/carnots-perfect-heat-engine-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics-restated/
‘Due to these limiting factors, the maximum forward speed of a helicopter is limited to about 250 mph (402 km/h).’
https://aerospaceweb.org/design/helicopter/velocity.shtml
Here’s a fascinating 2005 Freeman Dyson speech where provides unique insights on a range of subjects.
https://youtu.be/8xFLjUt2leM
Here’s a very fascinating Lex Fridman interview with astronomer David Kippling about astronomy, aliens, AI, and other future-related subjects.
https://youtu.be/uZN5xjoS6TU
A space telescope with a 1-meter diameter lens (the Hubble telescope’s is 2.4 meters wide) would be able to use a technique called “gravitational microlensing” to see exoplanets in other star systems with incredible levels of detail. Like, it would be able to see individual buildings if any existed. The catch is it would need to be positioned at our Sun’s light beam “focal point,” which is 550 AUs from it. For comparison, Pluto is 39 AUs from the Sun.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2016/04/26/8417/a-space-mission-to-the-gravitational-focus-of-the-sun/
A space telescope might also be able to use Earth for gravitational microlensing. Though Earth’s weaker gravity and atmosphere make it less effective for this purpose than the Sun, a 1-meter satellite telescope positioned less than the Moon’s distance from Earth might be equivalent to a 150 meter wide telescope.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2019/08/12/planetary-lensing-enter-the-terrascope/
Mercury used to be a bigger planet.
https://www.universetoday.com/8101/a-super-mercury-was-smashed-up-4-5-billion-years-ago
Gold has some unique chemical properties that make it more valuable than, say, iron. It’s also the easiest metal to refine, which is why even ancient people were able to make gold jewelry.
https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/gold/incomparable-gold/gold-properties
We now know that Roman concrete was durable because quicklime was mixed into it.
https://news.mit.edu/2023/roman-concrete-durability-lime-casts-0106
There are many different kinds of steel, and one way they are produced is by heating and cooling the alloy in different sequences, causing different types of microscopic crystalline structures to form. Different crystals give the steels different macro-properties.
https://www.phase-trans.msm.cam.ac.uk/2008/Steel_Microstructure/SM.html
Wild fish in rivers and lakes contain higher concentrations of manmade “forever chemicals” than thought. Even if they’re still technically safe to eat, doing so in large quantities is probably a bad idea.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/eating-one-wild-fish-same-050328070.html
Among the exhumed skeletons of prehistoric farmers, 10% showed evidence of fatal trauma from weapons, and several mass graves were found. This helps to back Steven Pinker’s claims that we are now actually living in the least violent era in human history.
https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2023/violence-was-widespread-in-early-farming-society
The tendency towards violent behavior has a genetic component. Making matters worse is the fact that naturally violent people are likelier to abuse their children, instilling violent habits in the latter.
https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/jax-blog/2015/december/the-genetics-of-violent-behavior
Young men think they’re smarter than young women, and old women think they’re smarter than old men.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/brb3.2857
The World Journal of Oncology retracted a February 2022 article claiming that e-cigarettes cause cancer.
https://reason.com/2023/01/04/a-medical-journal-retracts-a-2022-study-that-linked-vaping-to-cancer/
The U.S. cancer death rate has dropped 30% since 1991, mostly due to prevention, better screening, and better early treatments.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64255719
Surgery that shrinks your stomach so you eat less and lose weight also decreases your odds of early death from a slew of diseases. As offensive as the idea may seem, it could be in society’s interest to make stomach surgeries free for obese people since the up-front cost of the surgeries would be more than offset by the reduction in later healthcare costs for obesity-related problems.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/28/health/bariatric-surgery-success-wellness/index.html
Progress has been made reversing aging in mice. Life extension treatments are one of those things we’ll have someday, and wonder why we didn’t research earlier.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/12/health/reversing-aging-scn-wellness/index.html