In a 2015 speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs, George Friedman predicted that Russia would start disintegrating around 2020, if not before. It hasn’t happened and there are no signs it is about to. (Skip to the 48:12 mark in this video)
https://youtu.be/QeLu_yyz3tc?t=2892
Josef Stalin was a sadist and a thug, but he had a notoriously poor grasp of warfare and military affairs. This rang especially true for the navy, which he ordered to build several battleships that would have been massive but horrible.
https://www.navalgazing.net/Soviet-Battleships-Part-2
Here’s an awesome video of nuclear bombs blowing up warships. Even if a ship is still floating afterward, the force of the shockwave has probably caused a lot of damage thanks to walls caving in and machinery and pipes being physically broken.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcmZbyLXB0
And here are even more awesome photos of Mad Max vehicles in Kurdistan.
https://thedeaddistrict.blogspot.com/2020/06/kurdish-mad-max.html
Russia has sent mercenaries to help the rebel faction in Libya, and now Egypt says it might send its own troops there to support them further. The government forces are backed by Turkey, which has also sent troops there, and a few other countries. Does everyone agree at this point that the U.S. made a mistake helping to oust Qaddafi?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-egypt/egypt-has-a-legitimate-right-to-intervene-in-libya-sisi-says-idUSKBN23R0W1
Ukraine’s army released a fascinating analysis of its war with Russia. The #1 killer of its tanks was Russian artillery, followed by shoulder-launched missiles. Tank-on-tank duels were rare events, and I suspect most of those were lopsided engagements where the loser was destroyed by one shot and didn’t even realize an enemy tank was in the area.
https://thedeaddistrict.blogspot.com/2020/03/analisys-of-combat-damage-of-ukrainian.html
U.S. commandos in Syria are using “smart sights” on their rifles. The sights are big and bulky–about the size of a soda can and with wires coming out of them–but they will inevitably shrink as the technology improves. Smart sights and guided bullets will someday let any soldier be a sniper.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/33794/special-operators-in-syria-are-first-american-unit-to-use-computerized-sights-on-their-rifles
Chinese and Indian troops had a massive brawl along their disputed border in the Himalayas. Twenty Indians and an undisclosed number of Chinese died in the fighting, where knives and spiked clubs were used (they mutually agreed to ban guns from the area to reduce the odds of bloodshed).
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53089037
China has finished building its own version of the GPS.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53132957
Space-X became the first, private company to launch humans into space. The two crewmen compared the ride favorable to the Space Shuttle, which both men flew on before its retirement.
https://www.foxnews.com/science/astronauts-falcon-9-rocket-was-totally-different-ride-from-the-space-shuttle
A private U.S. company has built an experimental stealth-y plane.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/34003/scaled-composites-stealthy-demonstrator-jets-spotted-working-with-high-flying-proteus
A quad-copter “flying motorcycle” lost control and crashed during a demonstration in Dubai, nearly killing the pilot. It ain’t like it is in the Judge Dredd movie.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8409489/Shocking-moment-test-pilot-nearly-killed-hoverbikes-spinning-rotor-blades.html
Nineteen years after its debut, the Segway will halt production due to insufficient sales. The machine’s patents have also expired, so anyone can legally make copies. Segways didn’t radically alter ground transportation as its inventor hoped, but the rise of lightweight electric scooters shows there was merit to the idea. Segway just represented the wrong form factor.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/23/882536320/after-nearly-two-bumpy-decades-the-original-segway-will-be-retired-in-july
Thermoelectric stoves convert heat into electricity. Imagine an electric Jeep with one such stove for a motor. Two robot workers would sit in the front seats. It would drive through areas where there was a high risk of forest fires. The robots would get out, chop up dead trees and dry wood lying on the ground, load it into the stove, and burn it to make electricity to charge their batteries and the Jeep’s. Once all the combustible material in the area was burned, they would drive to the next area and repeat.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/05/thermoelectric-stoves-ditch-the-solar-panels.html
Fish “migrate” from one isolated lake to another when birds eat fish eggs at one lake, and then excrete them in their feces at another lake. Some of the eggs can survive passage through a digestive tract.
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-fish-migrate-ingestion-birds.html
At last, a good explanation for why plants are green instead of black. The intensity level of the green wavelengths of light fluctuate the most on the Earth’s surface, and those variations would wreak havoc on a plant’s cells.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/plants-are-green-because-they-reject-harmful-colors
Human vision is pretty weak. We only see details and color in a narrow, forward-facing cone.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-much-color-do-we-really-see
There’s growing evidence that transfusing blood from young people into old people improves the latter’s health. A new experiment suggests that an even simpler technique of removing half an old person’s blood and simultaneously replacing it with an equal volume of saline water and proteins might also be beneficial.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/12/young-blood-and-old-blood
A medical paper published last month in the Lancet claimed that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine actually increased the overall odds of dying among people who took it to treat COVID-19. People from many quarters quickly jumped on it as proof that President Trump’s advocacy of the drug was mistaken. However, the paper was recently retracted after nonpartisan scientists pointed out it didn’t include enough data supporting its conclusion.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/04/870022834/authors-retract-hydroxychloroquine-study-citing-concern-over-data
But it’s not over…the FDA withdrew its endorsement of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 because other, better studies showed it did nothing, but still induced the negative (but not lethal) side effects that have been known for decades. President Trump had previously claimed he was taking it prophylactically.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53054476
People with type A blood are the most vulnerable to COVID-19.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/health/coronavirus-blood-type-genetics.html
We still don’t know if surviving COVID-19 gives a person permanent or temporary immunity to reinfection. Additionally, it’s possible that the first vaccine may only provide partial protection from the disease, and that its effect could wear off over time, requiring people to get booster shots. (There’s nothing surprising about this: the last flu vaccine was only 45% effective.)
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/22/thoughts-on-antibody-persistence-and-the-pandemic
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/06/15/what-might-go-wrong
Surprisingly, the George Floyd mass protests didn’t lead to spikes in COVID-19 infections. It seems very hard for the virus to spread among people who are outdoors, wearing surgical masks, and keeping a few feet of distance from each other. It is vastly more infectious in crowded, enclosed environments.
https://www.wired.com/story/what-minnesotas-protests-are-revealing-about-covid-19-spread/
The COVID-19 quarantines are actually unlikely to produce a baby boom. Instead, there will probably be 300,000 – 500,000 fewer U.S. births across 2020 and 2021, mostly due to potential parents having financial problems.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/half-a-million-fewer-children-the-coming-covid-baby-bust/
America’s leading public health expert has admitted what many have suspected: earlier this year, the government lied about the effectiveness of surgical masks in blocking the spread of COVID-19 because it didn’t want ordinary people to panic buy all of them, leading to shortages at hospitals.
https://www.thestreet.com/video/dr-fauci-masks-changing-directive-coronavirus
In the U.K., South Asians are the likeliest race of people to die of COVID-19 because they have the highest rates of diabetes and hence weakened immune systems. South Asians have a genetic predisposition to diabetes, made worse by the fact that their traditional diets are fatty.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53097676
The architect of Sweden’s hands-off response to the COVID-19 pandemic has admitted it was a mistake, and that more of his people died than would have had they adopted the same strict lockdowns as other European countries.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52903717
This model’s prediction of 110,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. by June 6th was almost perfectly accurate. Today it says deaths will hit 147,000 by the end of July.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/05/13/855038708/combining-different-models-new-coronavirus-projection-shows-110-000-deaths-by-ju
https://viz.covid19forecasthub.org/
If you think things are bad in the world right now with the pandemic, social unrest, and all the other stuff, crack open a history book and realize how good we have it in the grand scheme of things. Be thankful you weren’t alive in Europe in 43 B.C., when the Roman Empire not only fell into civil war, but starvation became rampant because a volcanic eruption in Alaska dimmed the skies, killing farm crops around the world.
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/06/17/2002722117
A convicted murderer has solved an ancient math problem in prison.
https://www.dw.com/en/murderer-solves-ancient-math-problem-and-finds-his-mission/a-53895884
“Internet sleuths” trying to track down an unknown man caught harassing people on video misidentified him and spread the wrong person’s contact information across the internet. Almost immediately, he got a surge of angry, threatening electronic messages.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/what-its-like-to-get-doxed-for-taking-a-bike-ride.html
Here’s an amazing and in-depth interview with AI researcher Joscha Bach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM
A new computer program can generate photorealistic illustrations of human faces based on crude sketches.
https://www.engadget.com/ai-can-produce-detailed-photos-of-faces-from-simple-sketches-122924655.html
Flat-panel TVs have come a long way from the fuzzy, motion-juddering, narrow-viewing-angle devices I remember from 15 years ago, and there’s room for them to improve farther.
https://youtu.be/RTTiQeXXrhI
The Tesla Model S now has an improved battery pack that gets 402 miles per full charge. That’s more than my gas-powered car.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/model-s-long-range-plus-building-first-400-mile-electric-vehicle
“The first piston steam engine, developed by Thomas Newcomen around 1710, was slightly over one half percent (0.5%) efficient.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Engine_efficiency&oldid=958282962
The massive Ford car factory site at River Rogue, MI had a “car disassembly plant” from 1930-44. Hundreds of men worked there, systematically stripping parts off of Fords and other brands of cars, reusing or reselling what was still good, and melting down the rest to make metal for new Fords. I predicted this will return by the end of the 2030s thanks to cheap robots: “The same kinds of facilities will make inroads into the junk yard industry, as they would have all the right tooling to cheaply and rapidly disassemble old vehicles, test the parts for functionality, and shunt them to disposal or individual resale. (The days of hunting through junkyards by yourself for a car part you need will eventually end–it will all be on eBay. )”
https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A80344909/AONE?u=googlescholar&sid=AONE&xid=b0a3b483
Q: “How Will You Get Robots to Pay Union Dues?”
A: “How Will You Get Robots to Buy Cars?”
These are funny quips, probably exchanged between Henry Ford and union leader Walter Reuther in the 1950s, but the insinuation that it will forever be impossible to cut humans out of the economic loop is mistaken. There’s no theoretical reason why there couldn’t someday be a factory run entirely by robots that made cars bought entirely by other robots.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/16/robots-buy-cars/