After more than a month of stalemate, Ukrainian forces launched a highly successful offensive, recapturing a significant amount of territory in the northern part of their country and routing Russian units in the process.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-dozens-of-towns-retaken-from-russians
As part of their counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces surrounded the town of Izyum, trapping hundreds of Russian troops. This video shows a Russian tank speeding out of the encirclement, with several soldiers clinging to its top. A Ukrainian soldier standing by the roadside sprays it with automatic fire, and the men fall off. The tank then turns the corner and slams into a large tree, which collapses on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1Vb7f8lcVc
Ukraine then retook the city.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-russia-loses-another-key-city
Since February, at least 1,500 of Russia’s main battle tanks, and 2,500 of its lighter armored vehicles have been destroyed or captured by Ukrainian forces. Russia famously hordes huge quantities of military equipment in case of WWIII, so it can replace its massive losses in due time.
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
At the current rate it is losing tanks in Ukraine, Russia’s vast reserves of tanks kept in storage will be totally destroyed in less than three years. However, the loss of skilled tank crewmen will practically cripple their tank fleet before that.
https://youtu.be/ZNNoaRp5lz0
Russia has given some of its retired T-62 tanks to pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine. This video analysis makes it clear that the T-62 is inferior to the newer T-72s that regular Russian Army units have, in every key respect (mobility, firepower, armor). That said, the T-62 is still fine if kept behind the front lines and only used to attack lighter enemy vehicles and infantry units.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcXJNRfVuzk
Due to shortages, Russia has been forced to buy rockets and artillery shells from North Korea. Judging by the state of North Korea’s industry and technology, the Russians should expect lots of duds.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/06/russia-buying-millions-rockets-shells-north-korea-us-intelligence-ukraine
Using Iranian suicide drones, Russian forces made a mass aerial attack against Odessa.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-situation-report-russias-drone-war-erupts-thanks-to-iran
Ukrainian troops captured a fully functional example of one of Russia’s best tanks, the T-90M.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-just-captured-russias-most-advanced-operational-tank
Ukraine also captured one of Russia’s best electronic warfare vehicles, the “Taran-M.” It eavesdrops on enemy communications, can geolocate their sources, and can jam them.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-just-captured-another-rare-russian-electronic-warfare-vehicle
Ukraine also captured one of Russia’s best radar jamming systems, an “RTU 518-PSM,” from the wreck of a crashed Russian jet.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/ukraine-just-captured-one-of-russias-most-capable-aerial-electronic-warfare-pods
For the first time, a U.S. Army combat training exercise simulated a mass drone attack against its troops.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/swarm-of-40-drones-over-fort-irwin-an-ominous-sign-of-whats-to-come
India commissioned its first domestically designed and manufactured aircraft carrier. The country also has an older, ex-Soviet carrier.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/02/asia/india-indigenous-aircraft-carrier-vikrant-commissioned-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
For the fourth time, Joe Biden has publicly said that the U.S. military would defend Taiwan if China invaded it. America’s longstanding “strategic ambiguity” policy on the matter has been abandoned.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/19/biden-leaves-no-doubt-strategic-ambiguity-toward-taiwan-is-dead-00057658
Two months after WWII ended, Hermann Goering gave a fascinating interview to a U.S. Army reporter about the German perspective on the War, on the U.S., and on their own mistakes.
https://www.historynet.com/lost-prison-interview-with-hermann-goring-the-reichsmarschalls-revelations/
This video explains how U.S. Army doctrine shaped the design of the M113 armored personnel carrier, why the vehicle is obsolete (except in a handful of support roles), and why it actually makes sense for America to give them away rather than upgrade them to fix their inherent limitations.
https://youtu.be/cBufXgTnou0
A newer, better image recognition algorithm called “PaLI” has been unveiled.
https://ai.googleblog.com/2022/09/pali-scaling-language-image-learning-in.html
A digital painting created by a computer program called “Midjourney” won first prize in an art contest. Five years ago, this was unthinkable.
https://dnyuz.com/2022/09/02/an-a-i-generated-picture-won-an-art-prize-artists-arent-happy/
Using deepfake technology, a man converted the footage of a black actress in The Little Mermaid movie remake into a white actress. As this technology improves and augmented reality eyewear become common, expect people to use “filters” like this to curate reality to their tastes, however extreme they may be.
https://nypost.com/2022/09/15/racist-ai-scientist-blasted-for-fixing-black-ariel-in-the-little-mermaid/
This weird “Dragon” aerial drone can reconfigure its shape to let it perform different physical functions.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/dragon-robot-flying-manipulator
The extreme possibilities of cell cultured agriculture include growing human flesh for consumption, generating limitless amounts of blood customized to restore the health of old people, and famous people selling rights to their DNA for the manufacture of organic products like purses.
https://futuristspeaker.com/future-of-agriculture/self-cannibalism-and-the-extreme-possibilities-of-cell-cultured-agriculture/
An essay on why tiny, ubiquitous cameras will soon be everywhere, watching us all the time.
https://petewarden.com/2022/06/15/why-cameras-are-soon-going-to-be-everywhere/
In the future, quantum computers will let us simulate new types of materials, with all their chemical and subatomic properties accurately represented. This will lead to major advances in material science and we discover new alloys, batteries, drugs, and other molecules that would otherwise require billions of dollars in trial-and-error lab research to find. More generally speaking, computer simulations will lead to the optimization of all types of manufactured objects. If we ever meet intelligent aliens, their technology will have gone through the same process and should be similar to ours. No one will be using square wheels on their cars instead of round ones.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/how-quantum-simulations-are-set-to-revolutionize-lithium-batteries
“Machine learning can be used to create protein molecules much more accurately and quickly than previously possible. The scientists hope this advance will lead to many new vaccines, treatments, tools for carbon capture, and sustainable biomaterials.”
https://phys.org/news/2022-09-alphafold-ai-excels-proteins.html
Humans didn’t discover how to knit fabrics until 1000 A.D., which is strange since the necessary technologies for it (fabric threads and large needles) were around for thousands of years.
https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2022/08/04/fiber-arts-mysterious-dodecahedrons-and-waiting-on-eureka/
Does Japanese society show where the West is headed?
https://danfaggella.com/japan/
Some thoughts on humanity’s possible transition to a Matrix-like existence.
https://danfaggella.com/husk/
Venus’ closeness to the Sun doomed its prospects of ever supporting organic life. Since the Sun makes its surface hotter, the planet’s crust can’t break into tectonic plates, which in turn makes it less geologically active, preventing a carbon cycle from coming into existence and leading to the buildup of a thick atmosphere that traps heat. With much better technology, we could start terraforming Venus in the far future, but the process would take thousands of years to complete.
https://youtu.be/aaE-RiFilEc
Here’s a roundup of climate change doomsday predictions, including ones that have failed to come true. Global warming is real, is bad, and is partly caused by humans, but its threat to our future has been exaggerated.
https://extinctionclock.org/
Using planes to spread aerosoled particles over the North and South Poles could mitigate global warming at relatively low cost ($11 billion a year).
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/ac8cd3
There would be many benefits to replacing America’s aging coal power plants with nuclear power plants.
https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/doe-report-finds-hundreds-retiring-coal-plant-sites-could-convert-nuclear
Once we dig a piece of metal out of the ground, the clock starts ticking on its return to the Earth, in one form or another. A piece of iron, for example, will rust until it fully disintegrates and all its particles blow away. A piece of metal’s time “in circulation” varies greatly by element, and is affected by factors like mining efficiency and industrial application.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/new-study-estimates-how-long-mined-metals-circulate-before-being-lost/
Starting at age 55, most people derive less and less enjoyment from leisure activities like eating out, traveling, and buying new things. This partly explains why old people spend so little of their money on non-essential purchases.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w30460#fromrss
The USDA just approved a genetically modified purple tomato that has ten times the antioxidant level as normal tomatoes.
https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/genetically-modified-purple-tomato-approved-usda
Chinese scientists cloned an adult wolf and gestated the zygote in a beagle. It provides another way to perpetuate endangered species.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202209/1275594.shtml
Geneticists just accomplished chromosome-level engineering in mice. Techniques like this will someday lead to radical engineering of humans.
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-sustainable-chromosome-mice.html
Birds are more highly evolved than mammals in some ways. For example, one of their brain cells consumes only 1/3 the chemical energy as a mammalian brain cell. With radical genetic engineering, humans could improve the energy efficiency of our own brain cells, boosting our intelligence. The necessary changes to the human genome would be so great that it would result in the creation of a new species that might look human externally, but would not be able to breed with us.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(22)01219-2
Spiders can sense electric fields, and take advantage of faint electrical charges in the atmosphere to fly in a process called “ballooning.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/the-electric-flight-of-spiders/564437/
U.S. life expectancy has dropped from 79 years in 2019 to 76.1 years today. Half of the decline is due to COVID-19, and other half is mostly due to higher rates of suicide, obesity, and substance abuse.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62740249