Ukraine scored another major victory by nearly destroying the Kerch Bridge with a truck bomb. The Bridge links Crimea with the Russian mainland, and was built soon after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdAdwahF1Fk
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63255611
Putin retaliated for the bridge attack by firing dozens of cruise missiles against infrastructure targets across Ukraine.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russias-airstrikes-intended-to-show-force-reveal-another-weakness/ar-AA12WCXa
Russia is using cheap, Iranian-made drones to conduct mass kamikaze attacks against Ukraine.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2022/09/28/how-can-ukraine-counter-russias-swarm-drone-offensive/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLVK-QqEguw
“The primary reason for taking Crimea may have been ensuring access to the ocean,” Schue said, “but it also allowed them to regain control of the Loran transmission site there. This has assured them sovereign terrestrial PNT [positioning, navigation and timing] for the entire region, including the Black Sea.”
https://www.gpsworld.com/russia-expected-to-ditch-glonass-for-loran-in-ukraine-invasion/
The U.N. voted overwhelmingly to reject Russia’s recent annexations of parts of eastern Ukraine its military has occupied. North Korea, Belarus, Syria, and Nicaragua were the only countries that stood by Russia on the issue.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-middle-east-syria-united-nations-fd7ede16dec560ebb49f9465644de1b1
Russian tank losses are so high that they’ve been forced to send obsolete T-62 tanks to the front lines.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/russia-to-modernize-800-vintage-t-62-tanks-due-to-ukraine-losses-report
Slovenia is giving Ukraine most of its M-55S tanks, which are upgraded Soviet T-55 tanks. They are probably equivalent to the T-62 tanks Russia is refurbishing and also sending to fight in Ukraine.
https://militaryleak.com/2022/09/21/slovenia-to-supply-28-m-55s-main-battle-tanks-to-ukraine/
The U.S. has lifted its longstanding weapons embargo on Cyprus. This could lead to Cyprus exporting some of its Soviet-made tanks and weapons to Ukraine, which is familiar with them.
https://breakingdefense.sites.breakingmedia.com/2022/09/lifting-the-arms-embargo-on-cyprus-is-a-major-opportunity-to-aid-ukraine/
The U.S. has given Ukraine over 1 million artillery shells since the Russian invasion.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-has-now-received-over-a-million-artillery-rounds-from-the-u-s
This is a good idea. If NATO countries can’t achieve full hardware interoperability yet, then they should trade weapons so that different regions of the alliance are fully interoperable within themselves.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-artillery-officials-nudging-european-193949526.html
Azerbaijan seized upon Russia’s distraction with the Ukraine War to again attack Armenia last month. Azerbaijan is stronger and larger than its neighbor, and has more international allies. Armenia’s only useful friend is Russia.
https://youtu.be/7NOMj7n6QAM
It has been exactly 60 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, the U.S. and Russia are as almost as close to a nuclear exchange as they were then.
https://www.npr.org/2022/10/16/1124680429/cuban-missile-crisis-60th-anniversary
The U.S. military has a large number of old, mothballed cargo and support ships that can be activated on short notice to move troops and supplies anywhere in the world. It is called the “Ready Reserve Force.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ready_Reserve_Force_ships
The U.S. Secretary of State openly claims that China has accelerated its secret plan to take over Taiwan.
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4689892
Someday we will resurrect dinosaurs in some form, aliens disguised as humans could be among us, and humans might someday exist as brains floating in jars, able to indulge in any fantasy (such as triggering waking dreams).
https://youtu.be/iuYACq8v0GQ
Tesla’s new electric Semi truck will be much cheaper to operate and maintain than its diesel-powered competitors, and will produce much less noise pollution.
https://futuristspeaker.com/future-of-transportation/the-extraordinary-economic-benefits-of-the-tesla-semi/
In the 1960s, GE made a four-legged “Walking Truck” that had legs instead of wheels, for the U.S. military. This video of it clumsily moving around shows why it never made it out of the prototype phase, and why legged vehicles of any type were never successful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grVxdNW34FQ
A woman who drinks coffee or other caffeinated beverages each day while pregnant might cost her child an inch of height.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2797983
A new gene sequencing machine called the “NovaSeq X” can allegedly map a full human genome for only $200.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-era-of-fast-cheap-genome-sequencing-is-here/
This guy can see ultraviolet light, and he created this website to show how the world looks different to him.
https://www.komar.org/faq/colorado-cataract-surgery-crystalens/ultra-violet-color-glow/
Training machines to match human workers with the right knowledge and skill sets to the work tasks they are suited for (as discussed in the article) is a huge step towards automating all jobs. If the paradigm of “hyper-personalized training” and “micro-credentials” for humans arises, it won’t last long.
https://futuristspeaker.com/future-of-education/hyper-individualized-learning-for-a-hyper-individualized-future/
Computers are much better than human experts at matching humans with the right colleges, fields of study, and careers. Imagine this paired with the “hyper-personalized training” and “micro-credentials” paradigm: At age 18, a supercomputer would give you a short list of careers you would be suited for. You pick the one you like best, and go through a stripped-down training regimen that only includes things directly relevant to doing that job. You would enter the workforce much faster and would be more of an asset to the economy. Vastly less time and money would be wasted on useless degrees, dropped majors, and career mistakes.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-32416-001
“After building on years of work from MILA, DeepMind, ourselves, and others, our AIs are now expert-human-level in no-press Diplomacy and Hanabi! Unlike Go and Dota, Diplomacy/Hanabi involve *cooperation*, which breaks naive RL.”
https://twitter.com/polynoamial/status/1580185706735218689
Computers can now simulate fluids with lifelike accuracy. This video contains amazing examples of such simulations.
https://youtu.be/8NAi30ZBpJU
The famous Arecibo Telescope won’t be rebuilt.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03293-4
The direction of the economy is practically impossible to forecast, except to the grossest degree. On any given day, a well-credentialed person or team of people working for some impressive-sounding institution will publish a serious-looking paper, or give a very serious-sounding TV interview, where they say the economy is about to collapse. Consider this badly wrong example from a year ago:
“However, downward movements in consumer expectations in the last six months suggest the economy in the United States is entering recession now (Autumn 2021) even though employment and wage growth figures suggest otherwise.”
https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.dartmouth.edu/dist/5/2216/files/2021/10/us-fear-oct-7-final-nber.pdf