All North Korea All the Time

China’s Shift on N.Korea Brings Big Risks and Opportunities. If true this is a serious change.

Could North Korea Annihilate Seoul with Its Artillery?. This article is all very true from a factual perspective. But from a modern day political perspective, 20 dead civilians and 100 million dollars of property damage is enough to topple a government. And I don’t think even the optimistic people think the damage/deaths will be that low.

Did Trump-Xi call reveal subtle shift in China’s stance on North Korean nuclear crisis? More reading of the Chinese tea leaves.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un Risk Nuclear War. This article has a lot of bogus statements. For example, the claim that Kim is predictable and Trump is not could only be made by people who don’t remember Kim killing the uncle that everyone thought was his biggest supporter with an anti-aircraft cannon. But buried in the article is the reason even China is getting concerned. If the powers that be really think that North Korea will soon have hundreds of working nukes, they have to be thinking that North Korea will sell them to every one who has money.

The EMP Threat From North Korea Is Real, and Terrifying. A little harder to pull off then the article makes it seem like, but it would not be fun.

Writing love letters, bidding $100,000 extra: Buying a Southern California home is ‘insane’. Link added just for irony.

News for Today (4/25/17)

Japan Made Secret Deals With the NSA That Expanded Global Surveillance. I could not have guessed how this article was going to end. It starts off as a perfectly reasonable if boring story and by the end of it I was groaning in pain.

Mali’s Desert Climate Is the Doom of Armored Vehicles. Everyone seems to have forgotten this place but it is one of many places that the western powers are setting on to try to keep the world from blowing up.

Phoenix Point is now crowdfunding: we spoke to Julian Gollop about standing out in a post-XCOM world. I am skeptical, but it looks more interesting then I would have thought.

News for Today (4/23/17)

Bogus News Story Of The Day

How Chobani’s Hamdi Ulukaya Is Winning America’s Culture War. Maybe I should not put this in the bogus category. I don’t dislike the guy and I don’t know that any of the facts in the article are wrong. But I know it that politics and hating brown skin are not the whole story about people who don’t like this guy. Bottom line: You look up the definition of hagiographical portrait of someone and there is a link to this article.

That said, it is true that nobody else was likely to get that factory in upstate New York up and running again. But I think it is clear that he is not fool enough to do that again (and I don’t mean that as a criticism of him so much as a criticism of New York State.

In The News

The trees that make Southern California shady and green are dying. Fast.

107 cancer papers retracted due to peer review fraud

Laser Vision: Special Operations Command Prepares to Test Airborne Directed Energy Weapon

Not In The News But Should Be

Nothing for today.

Entertainment of the Day

News for Today (4/22/17)

Bogus News Story Of The Day

Nothing for today.

In The News

The Ugly Unethical Underside of Silicon Valley

NYU grad student goes undercover in Chinese iPhone factory and it ain’t pretty

‘Shattered,’ a campaign tell-all fueled by anonymous sources, outlines a generational political disaster

UK weather: Snow and storms to strike Britain with low temperatures lasting for weeks

How a Handwritten Note Gave Erdogan an Uncheckable Election Win

Not In The News But Should Be

Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria. Should be in the news because most people don’t realize how messed up our copyright laws are. Don’t get me wrong, I think the purposed class action settlement was seriously flawed. But the root of the problem is the changes in copyright law brought about by Disney.

Entertainment of the Day

News for Today (4/20/17)

Bogus News Story Of The Day

Nothing for today

In The News

Medieval medical books could hold the recipe for new antibiotics

South Indian frog oozes molecule that inexplicably decimates flu viruses

Extremists on Left and Right Push France to the Brink

Not In The News But Should Be

This kind of reminder of how commanders of day were looking at things is sadly lacking in today’s historical education.

Entertainment of the Day

Nothing for today.

What I got for today

Um… NY Governor Cuomo made nearly $800K on a book that sold 3K copies?

The West Virginia Productivity Miracle. Really!. Headline tries a little too hard to contrarain but still some interesting thoughts.

‘They’re just hiding’: Experts say Puerto Rico may be underreporting Zika-affected births

Kevin O’Brien. So sad in a very selfish way. One of the few good military bloggers down.