Links For Today

Forgot to hit publish on this one.

The Last Undertakers of Bakhmut

Turkey-Syria quake toll tops 7,800 as rescuers battle cold

Medicaid rolls swell as 8 million New Yorkers get coverage at expected record- price of almost $35B

I asked ChatGPT to write a WordPress plugin I needed. It did, in less than 5 minutes

Eric Adams lifts COVID vax mandate for NYC workers — but what of the 1,780 fired?

‘Affront to democracy’: NY Assembly move to snuff out GOP voices in Albany

Ohio crews release toxic chemicals from derailed train

Oil Break Below $80 May Test OPEC’s Resolve

Links For Today

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 6, 2023

Russia reported another attempted Tu-141 drone attack deep inside its borders, the latest in a series of such incidents.

Ukraine army discipline crackdown sparks fear and fury on the front

MIDDLE EAST EARTHQUAKE: ‘An Emergency Within an Emergency’

Can Beijing halt China’s housing avalanche? The most important economic-policy question for 2023?

A Wall Street Time Bomb

Migrants abandon NYC for Canada with taxpayer-funded bus tickets

They planned on “conducting critical infrastructure attacks, including statements about sniper attacks against substations, and how conducting a small number of attacks on electrical substations could cause a ‘cascading failure.’”

The man reputed to have shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 speaks about Russian prospects

Needless to say, he is pro-Russia stomping on Ukraine. But he has said many times that he believes that Russian needs to go to a total war footing to make this happen. In the clip below, he expresses his bitterness that the same old same old is still going on. Right or wrong, you can tell he is a professional solider based on the things that he focuses on.

Links For Today

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN UPDATE, FEBRUARY 5, 2023

California Snowpack At 40 Year Highs…And Rising

SUNY to require DEI and social justice courses in fall 2023

No one can stay in the quietest room in the world for more than an hour

Blood sugar rises more slowly when protein, fat and carbs are eaten together compared to just eating carbohydrates on their own, Al Bochi said.

How Elon Musk’s Satellites Have Saved Ukraine And Changed Warfare

California Halts Plans to Force Children to Get the Coronavirus Vaccine to Attend Schools

Links For Today

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 4, 2023

After days spent floating over the U.S., the Chinese spy balloon was shot down and a collection operation is now underway off the Carolinas. Judging by the close up video in this article, I don’t think there is going to be much to recover.

Fears of Russian nuclear weapons use have diminished, but could re-emerge

Internal Biden administration memo said need for aggressive gas stove regulations ‘has reached a boiling point’

A Foretaste Of The End.

An anthropological expedition into a Portland anarchist newsletter

Fire Log #5: Testing the Armageddon Option

The first ferro rod I ever bought was the GobSpark Armageddon with an attached magnesium rod. At the time I was just starting to think about the need to have something that I could start fires with beyond the lighters I had always used. My goal was to have a fire starting system that could…..

1. Be stored in rough conditions without any care to taken to avoid breaking it or to maintain it.
2. Be used to start fires by even an amateur who had little experience starting fires.
3. Be used to reliably start a fire even in awful conditions.

The fact that it was a Ferro rod with a hard plastic case is what I pinned my hopes of meeting the criteria number #1 on and I can say I have carried it many places without it taking the least damage. So that part worked at least.

But for goals number #2 and #3 I was relying on the attached magnesium rod to magically make everything work. I knew even when I bought this thing (this was before I had ever used a Ferro rod myself) that a Ferro rod can take some skill to use effectively and I knew that they had trouble if you did not have good tinder or were trying to use them in rough conditions. But I also knew that if you made shavings of magnesium and then ignited them, they burned really hot. It was this that I was relying on to make it useable even for those with little skill in bad conditions.

In theory this sounds good. But I never tested it. So for this fire starting test I decided to see how it would work.

Continue reading

Links For Today

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 3, 2023

Kyiv Officially Getting Long-Range Rocket-Boosted Bomb

Joe Biden Offered Vladimir Putin 20 Percent of Ukraine to End War: Report

“First, our best assessment at the moment is that whatever the surveillance payload is on this balloon, it does not create significant value added over and above what the PRC is likely able to collect through things like satellites in Low Earth Orbit,” the official added. “But out of an abundance of caution, we have taken additional mitigation steps. I’m not going to go into what those are.”

When it comes to describing the problems in Miltenberg in the German state of Bavaria, District Administrator Marco Scherf doesn’t know where to begin. In the past year, about 500 people from Syria, Afghanistan and North Africa came to the largely rural district, along with around 1,500 refugees from Ukraine.

An excellent interview that started of seeming like it was going to talk about things I already knew and then went into stuff that was all new to me. Inside the global battle over chip manufacturing.

Pfizer Director of mRNA Research Raises Fertility Worries Over COVID-19 Vaccine More info here.

Biden Administration Blocks Development of Alaska’s Pebble Mine

Links For Today

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, FEBRUARY 2, 2023

After Netanyahu talks, Macron warns of Iran nuclear ‘consequences’

Where would they find 700 million people even if they did make themselves attractive to immigrants? The United Nations has estimated that if China’s birth rate remains at its super-low level and the country fails to position itself as an attractive destination for migrants, the country will lose nearly half of its population by the end of this century, a contraction of roughly 700 million people.

Chinese intelligence-gathering balloon seen over Montana

“Significant Threat To National Security”: US Air Force Warns Over Chinese Corn Mill In North Dakota

Japan’s 2022 National Security Strategy concludes with a dramatic pronouncement

British workers unite in largest strike in a generation

Germany’s population is declining, as is the number of students studying technical fields like science and engineering. To remain an industrial powerhouse, the country will need engineers from abroad.

Gray was referring to New York Democratic lawmakers passing legislation significantly increasing the amount of retiree money that pension officials can deliver to Wall Street. The bill was championed by the New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, just weeks after the Democrat won office promising he would be “reviewing the funds’ positions with risky and speculative assets including hedge funds, private equity, and private real estate funds”.

Extremely drug-resistant germ found in eye drops infects 55 in 12 states; 1 dead