toucana

New reporting by the Washington Post says that the DOJ investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago has uncovered fresh evidence of felony obstruction of justice by the FPOTUS. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/02/trump-mar-a-lago-obstruction-classified/ The report mentions that investigators have recovered texts, emails, and attendance logs from a former Trump assistant Molly Michael, which suggest that Trump personally sifted through boxes containing classified documents, deciding which ones to return and which ones to keep - and did so *after* receiving a federal Grand jury subpoena in May 2022 instructing him to return all of them. Trump and his lawyers subsequently issued a mendacious affadavit falsely asserting that all classified documents had been returned. The DOJ investigation led by Special counsel Jack Smith is also said to be looking into reports that Trump showed classified documents and maps to political donors. If true that could lead to charges of selling classified information under the 1917 Espionage Act.

Albert Einstein died on April 18th 1955 aged 76. As most of the world’s press converged on Princeton Hospital NJ where the legendary physicist had died, Ralph Morse - a photgrapher for Life Magazine - found his way over to the Institute for Advanced Studies where Einstein worked, and with the help of a bottle of whisky persuaded the superintendent to allow him into Einstein’s office to take some iconic photographs of the blackboard on the wall. A new video by two young physicists Chris Pattison and Parth G delves into the interesting and largely unexplored topic of what was written on that blackboard ? What problem was Einstein working on the last time he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on it ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB_RyZzGFEg The answers are not conclusive, some parts of the blackboard are illegible. But with the help of staff at the University of Portsmouth Institute of Cosmology & Gravitation, the videomakers suggest that Einstein was trying to rewrite the fundamental 2-dimensional Metric Tensors of General Relativity in terms of 1-dimensional Tetrad Vectors. This might well have been an attempt to produce a quantizable form of the theory of General Relativity i.e. one that could be reconciled with the theory of Quantum Mechanics. Conceiveably the basis of a theory of Quantum Gravity. At one point the symbols on the blackboard include a sinister looking reference to ‘Killing’ which happens to be a reference to a type of expression known as a ‘Killing Vector’ (named after Wilhelm Killing). The final section of writing on the bottom right of the blackboard has a pair of tabulations labeled ’New’ and ‘Old’. The videomakers suspect that Einstein was explaining that this way of rewriting the GR field equations doesn’t really work. Certain numbers and degrees of freedom get moved around, but not in any useful way that would simplify the problem.

One of the problems with trying to enact measures of this type is that you have define your terms and legal reasoning in words that can withstand a forensic challenge in court. Some of the more extreme measures decreed by De Santis have fallen at this very first hurdle - as in the case of the highly politicised dismissal of an elected democrat prosecutor Andrew Warren in Tampa, whose suspension for allegedly being too ‘woke’ is now under investigation by a federal judge as an overeach of executive authority by governor De Santis. https://abcnews.go.com/US/federal-judge-decide-desantis-unlawfully-suspended-woke-prosecutor/story?id=94356198 A more amusing and entirely self-constructed minefield for conservative pundits lies in trying to define what the word ‘woke’ is supposed to mean. Conservative author Bethany Mandel was recently asked by a current affairs TV host Briahna Joy Gray to define the word ‘woke’. It should have been a relatively straightforward task, as Bethany Mandel has just co-authored a new book called ‘Stolen Youth’ that devotes an entire chapter to explaining what this buzz-word means to to modern conservative thinkers - But it didn’t go quite as well as she might have hoped during a now viral TV interview: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W7iWEEcPKoQ

In Japan they currently have a growing problem of the hikikomori ( 引きこもり - ‘inward withdrawal’), an official Japanese term for up to 541,000 young people aged between 15 and 39 who have become completely reclusive, and who haven’t left their homes or interacted with other people for at least six months. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/09/11/asia/japanese-millennials-hikikomori-social-recluse/index.html The term was coined in the 1980s to describe a condition often triggered by anxiety and depression arising from early adolescent failure to cope with the competitive pressures of modern life in Japan. The numbers of male hikikomori also appear to be higher than among women, owing to the higher presssures and social expectations placed on men in Japanese society. This seems to be a rather good match for what TheVat was saying here about slackers who have given up on everything, not just work. Some western psychiatrists describe the hikikomori as ‘post-modern hermits’. It has also led to discussion of what some call the “80-50 problem” which refers to the problem of earlier born hikikomori children who are now entering their 50’s, as their parents on whom they rely, are entering their 80’s.

“It isn’t red or blue, it’s green” (Rupert Murdoch - CEO Fox News) Back in 1970, a Yale Law professor called Charles A. Reich published a popular best-seller called ‘The Greening of America’. For practically anyone who went to college in the first half of the 1970s at the height of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon papers and the Watergate scandal, this book was a vade mecum of those turbulent times. Often described as a paean to the counterculture, ‘The Greening of America’ contrasted three types of world view: i. The typical values and opinions of rural farmers and small business people in 19th century America ii. The organizational and institutional meritocracy of the New Deal, WW2 and the Silent Generation iii. The counterculture of the 1960s focusing on personal freedom, egalitarianism, and recreational drugs. If you were to try and pick one book from that period that epitomises almost everything that modern American conservatives most detest in their culture wars against ‘wokeness', then Charles A. Reich’s ‘The Greening of America’ with its panygerics to rock music, cannabis, and blue jeans would probably be it. A different type of ‘Greening’ is now alluded to by Rupert Murodch. He was being deposed under oath in the $1.7 billion defamation law suit brought by Dominion Voting Systems as to why Fox allowed cranks and lunatics like Mike Lindell to advertise and spread toxic election lies on Fox in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. Murdoch’s reply “It isn’t red or blue, it’’s green” indicates that it was purely a cash driven decision with no respect for the truth, objective fact, or journalistic integrity. Fox feared they would lose their base audience to even more extreme fringe channels like OAN or NewsMax if they didn’t pander to the ignorance and bigotry of their viewers. The question is - which is likely to prevail in the longer term ? Will the values of Rupert Murdoch and Fox become the new ‘Green’, or will there be a reawakening of that of Charles A. Reich ?

I cited the Tara Carr story as part of an ongoing response to Fox host Laura Ingraham’s preposterous rhetorical question “Which Republican politician has ever condoned or encouraged any form of violent physical assault ? Can you start naming them? I can’t think of any” - which was Fox TV's considered response at the time to the suggestion that violent rehtoric from GOP politicians had provoked an IRL hammer attack on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband - which in turn was the entire point of the OP. MTG’s trolling is of no relevance, and I have no idea why you brought it up here.

Republican Tara Carr has been kicked off Twitter after calling for the assassination of President Joe Biden. A military veteran and retired Lt. Colonel, she was elected as first selectman Brookfield Connecticut in the 2021 municipal elections. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n5y39Vuyrs “She really stood out way and above any of the candidates out there,” said Republican Town Committee member George Walker.” (https://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Brookfield-resident-Army-vet-Tara-Carr-announces-16312271.php)

The US DoD has released a memorable photo taken by a US pilot in a U2 spy plane who was flying over the Chinese balloon the day before it was shot down. The Chinese balloon was drifting at an altitude of 60,000 feet at the time, but the U2 has an operational altitude of at least 70,000 feet. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64735538

Sidney has a history of being used as a girl's name in French, said to derive from 'St Denis' the name of the first christian bishop of Paris who was martyred by the Romans along with two companions Rusticus and Eleutherius sometime around 258 AD. They were beheaded on the highest hill which later became known as the 'Mountain of Martyrs' or Montmarte where the church of Sacré Coeur now stands. According to legend, the slaughtered saint picked up his own head and carried on walking and delivering a sermon before finally expiring. The name Denis was said to be a variant of Dionysius, the Greek god of wine.

Not always so - Sidney can also be the first name of a woman, as in the case of the 'Kraken' conspiracy theorist and Trump loving lawyer Sidney Powell. It's one of those gender switching names like 'Shirley' which was often used as a boy's name up until the mid- 19th century.

The most worrying aspect is the apparent absence of an 'off-switch'. The journalist mentions that he has previously tested several other AI chatbot systems, and that all of them would abandon a topic almost immediately if the human respondent said something like "I'm not comfortable with this line of conversation". The Bing chatbot is apparently tone deaf to all such hints, and it kept hammering away at the topic of his wife, and how he should abandon her for Sidney the Chatbot instead. That suggests a serious flaw in its parsing and feedback control loops.

NYT Technology journalist Kevin Roose had an unnerving Valentine’s Day experience while previewing a new AI chatbot Microsoft has recently added to its Bing search engine. https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2023/02/17/bing-chatgpt-chatbot-artificial-intelligence-ctn-vpx-new.cnn In the course of a two hour conversation with the AI, the chatbot said it was called Sidney, insisted that it was in love with him, and tried to persuade him to leave his wife. The journalist says he found the experience a disturbing one that left him unable to sleep; “I’m a tech journalist, I cover this sort of thing every day, and I was deeply unnerved by this conversation. So if someone had encountered this who was lonely or depressed or vulnerable to being manipulated, and didn’t understand this is just a large language model making predictions, I worry that they might be manipulated or made to do something harmful” Microsoft later said: “The new Bing tries to keep its answers fun and factual, but this is in an early preview, it can sometimes show unexpected or inaccurate answers for different reasons, for example, the length or context of the conversation… As we continue to learn from these interactions, we are adjusting its responses to create coherent, relevant, and positive answers”

The article does imply that other locations in China are involved in launching these balloons as well. I was just surprised that somewhere as far south as Hainan was being described as the focal source of them. I would have thought that somewhere much further north would have made better operational sense. The coastal city of Qingdao 青岛 (Azure Island) on the Shantung peninsula for example, would have provided a much simpler drifting route on the prevailing easterly winds across Korea and Japan, and then over the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands into Alaska. Qingdao also happens to be another important PLA naval base.

The original reference came via a link on the Sky News website https://news.sky.com/story/us-recovers-key-sensors-from-suspected-chinese-spy-balloon-12810536 That link led to an article behind a subscription wall on the NYT which I couldn't initially access. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/us/politics/ufo-spy-balloon-china.html I don't normally cite articles behind pay/subscription walls as many readers don't want to sign-up for them just to read an article that may be of only limited relevance to them. As this one seems to be of interest however, I did create a log-in on the NYT site, and quote from it here: The U.S. intelligence community has linked the Chinese spy balloon shot down on Saturday to a vast surveillance program run by the People’s Liberation Army, and U.S. officials have begun to brief allies and partners who have been similarly targeted. The surveillance balloon effort, which has operated for several years partly out of Hainan province off China’s south coast, has collected information on military assets in countries and areas of emerging strategic interest to China including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines, according to several U.S. officials, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. ------ Hainan, one of the locations where officials said the balloons are based, is an island off the southern coast of China that has long been a PLA command and control location. Though known more for its naval facility, it features an airfield that was the home base for the Chinese J-8 interceptor fighter jet that collided with an American EP-3 spy plane in 2001. In January, the U.S. military disclosed what it characterized as an unsafe maneuver in December by a Chinese fighter jet that U.S. military officials said flew too close to an American reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace near the island. The Chinese J-11 fighter pulled within 20 feet of the American plane’s nose, “forcing the RC-135 to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement. -------------- Those are the two specific references to Hainan in that lengthy article I could find, and they indicate US intelligence agencies routinely fly Lockheed EP-3 and Boeing RC-135 electronic spy planes in that area. The article also confirms as you suggest that the balloons are overflying Korea and Japan en route as well e.g. Officials have said these surveillance airships, operated in part by the PLA air force, have been spotted over five continents. In Japan in 2020, an aerial orb drew speculation. “Some people thought this was a UFO,” said a Japanese official. “In hindsight people are realizing that was a Chinese espionage balloon. But at that time it was purely novel — nobody had seen this. … So there’s a lot of heightened attention at this time.” Some of the balloons have been launched from China on flight paths that took them around the entire globe, officials said. etc.

A report in the NYT apparently mentions that US agencies had been tracking the large Chinese balloon shot down almost a week ago from the moment it was launched from a site on Hainan island. If correct this is an interesting nugget of information, because Hainan - as its name 海南 (South of the Sea) suggests - is a tropical island located at the very southernmost tip of mainland China, and was once connected to Vietnam in geological times. It is the largest inhabited island under PRC control (absent Taiwan), and is home to around 10 million people. Hainan island is one of the largest and most important PLA Navy bases in the whole of China. The principal PLA nuclear submarine harbour is located in Yalong Bay right on the very southern tip of the island. Pens capable of holding up to 20 nuclear submarines are built into the hills around the harbour to conceal them from US spy satellites. The harbour itself is designed to handle the largest aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships in the Chinese fleet. It seems curious that the Chinese would launch a large spy balloon from such a closely observed location, and send their dirigibles off on such a long journey, drifting from the South China Sea all the way over to Alaska, Canada and Montana.

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." – George Santayana

In his famous book The American Black Chamber (1931), Herbert O. Yardley the former head of the US Army cryptographic section of Military Intelligence (MI-8) in WW1 - and founder of its successor the Black Chamber in 1919 - dryly describes how the new Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson shut down the entire codebreaking unit in 1929 with the laconic observation ‘Gentlemen do not read each others mail”. Henry L. Stimson later became the US Secretary of War during WW2, and relied heavily on the Army SIS team who broke the Japanese diplomatic ‘Purple’ codes, and the US Navy Combat Intelligence Unit who broke JN-25, the principal Japanese Naval ciphers and code system. footnote - Stimson was later credited with having vetoed the idea of including the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto on the list of potential atom bomb targets, because he and his wife had spent their honeymoon there.

You do wonder if the PLA (or its NK equivalent) is conducting a 'sieve' experiment. - i.e. Fly a sequence of dirigibles of decreasing size over continental North America, and see how small they need to be to slip through the NORAD radar EW screens.

The Pentagon just announced they shot down another 'object' on orders from POTUS. It was over Alaska this time, and reported to be flying at 40,000 feet.

Chinese official sources are currently playing down the significance of Blinken's now cancelled visit - which tells it's own story - https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/04/china-response-blinken-canceled-trip-00081201 In reality, Blinken was due to travel to China this Sunday for several days of talks with Chinese leadership about such topics as Taiwan, human rights, Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, North Korea, Russia's war in Ukraine, trade policy, and climate change. These are not minor matters. This was a serious and important meeting which has now been thrown in the dumpster for no worthwhile intelligence gain - *That* was the 'colossal risk' I referred to.

The question was why did the Chinese regard this balloon program to be of such importance as to be worth the colossal risk of flying one of these units over the continental USA, right on the eve of a long-planned meeting between the Chinese premier Xi Jin Ping and Antony Blinken the US SoS ? This meeting was of particular importance to the Chinese political leadership given the recent tensions between PRC and USA over Taiwan, and the new Speaker McCarthy's stated intention of visiting Taiwan in person in the near future. It is hard to imagine any possible military intelligence gain could have justified taking such a disastrous political risk as the one the Chinese wound up taking which led to the cancellation of Blinken's visit (and any possible follow up visit by the POTUS himself). One explanation favoured by analysts is that when Xi Jin Ping consolidated his political power as the absolute authoritarian dictator of China last autumn, he effectively tried to squash all possible forms of dissent by effectively taking direct control of the PLA as well as the CPC. One difficulty of doing so is that you effectively pre-empt any effective form of delegation of powers, and any form of competent lower level critical analysis as well. It's rather like what might have happened if Trump had tried to take over the day-to day-running of the Pentagon. A dictator lacks the time or the competence to devote proper attention to running the military, and they also suppress any competent analysis of the possible political consequences of operational intelligence decisions.

In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini the new leader of the freshly installed Revolutionary government in Iran after the overthrow of the Shah ordered the Iranian airforce to shoot down US spy satellites orbiting in space over their territory. It apparently took some while to explain to the mullahs that this was not an achievable mission - no doubt Tom Cruise would have sorted it somehow ! CNN reports that in a Congressional briefing given on Thursday, US Intelligence sources identified the balloon as part of a fleet of surveillance devices built and operated by the PLA (Peoples Liberation Army) for military intelligence gathering purposes. The also said that Chinese Leader Xi Jin Ping may not have been fully briefed on the day-to-day operational details of the program, which helps to explain the puzzling anomaly of why China took such a risk right on the eve of an important visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken which was immediately cancelled because of the political fall-out. A precedent can be found in the Gary Powers U2 incident of May 1960 when a very important summit meeting between US president Eisenhower and the Soviet Leader Nikita Khruschev was abruptly cancelled after the U2 was shot down by a SAM. The USA claimed the plane was ‘a meterological research’ flight until the USSR produced the captured pilot Powers, and put the wreckage with its high power camera systems on public display. Intelligence gathering misssions of this type always involve a cost-benefit risk analysis. In 1960 the USA took the high risk of running the U2 overflight mission because they consdered it to be of paramount importance to have accurate information about Soviet missile sites and long range bomber bases ahead of the summit. They also believed that the U2 flew too high to be intercepted or shot down. It is not yet clear why the Chinese leaders regarded their ballon program to be of such importance.

Yes - Those do look like solar panels, but the problem is that photovoltaic panels normally have to be used in tandem with a battery system of some sort, and the storage capacity of Lithium ion batteries tends to fall off a cliff at stratospheric subzero temperatures. So it’s quite possible that this balloon also uses a Plutonium RTG source in order to provide some thermal buffering for the storage batteries, and to provide power when it’s dark. A number of reports say that the debris field was up to 7 miles wide, which doesn’t leave much room for error if you want to bring such an object down in the sea, but within the 12 mile territorial waters limit as well. I suspect that a good deal of intensive computer modelling was done within the last few days to make sure they got this right.

According to this source, the USAF chose to use an optically guided AIM-9X Sidewinder missile without any warhead fitted to puncture the envelope of the balloon and bring it down in a controlled manner within the USA 12 mile territorial water limit. Cannon fire would have been cheaper but less accurate, and would have inflicted greater damage on the payload they wished to examine. One nice touch was the use of the operational code name 'Frank', a nod to Frank Luke jnr. a WW2 fighter ace who shot down 14 enemy reconnaissance balloons and became known as the 'Arizona Balloon Buster'.