Links 10 November 2023

Oasis in the Libyan Desert

Japanese Navy accounces a crash program to build 12 new frigates by 2028 due to "the increasingly stern security environment around Japan."

Massive hoard of coins dating to the 4th century AD found on the seabed off Sardinia. The hoard had to be massive because the coins are the debased, silver-free folli of the declining empire, worth very little compared to the silver pieces of the 1st century.

Substantive NY Times piece on the intellectuals who have embraced right-wing "catastrophism," the belief that the US is somehow on the verge of collapse and liberals are promoting that collapse because they hate America. Ungated summary by Kevin Drum here. I have to say that it takes a weird mindset to look around America and see a collapsing society. Compared to what? Mexico? Russia? Brazil? The US in the 1960s?

Today's headline: Four Men Charged in the Case of the Missing Golden Toilet (NY Times). You'll be pleased to learn the object it is not merely a toilet but an "artwork." Thank you, Marcel Duchamp.

Microsoft announces an initiative to apply AI and cloud computing to chemistry in a big way: "Our goal is to compress the next 250 years of chemistry and materials science progress into the next 25." They think chemical analysis will be the "killer ap" for quantum computing when that becomes available.

Bizarre goings on among wikipedia admins: wikipedia statement, thread on X.

French police are investigating claims that antisemitic graffiti was spraypainted by Russian agents (Post on X, French news story).

Drunk grizzly bears keep being killed by trains in the Rockies. It seems they get drunk eating grain that falls off trains and ferments, and then pass out on the tracks. We're not talking about a few grains here and there but whole cars full, because, it seems, trains derail up there all the time.

Citibank fined $25 million for discriminating against Armenian Americans. 

Kevin Drum thinks it may be time to stop forcing To Kill a Mockingbird on high school students.

The fascinating origins of the jungle gym in four-dimensional math.

FBI will move its headquarters to Greenbelt, Maryland. I worked on the environmental impact statement for this move back in 2015-2016 but then Trump nixed the plan as too expensive. Biden must have revived it. I think the FBI always prefered the Greenbelt site but there was a lot of local opposition, which I guess was overriden by the state government and Maryland's Congressional delegation.

Wolves eat elk and moose, which helps beavers to thrive, but on the other hand they also eat a lot of beavers, focusing on those who travel too far from their ponds, thus confining beavers to smaller ranges. (NY Times, original article)

Besides the big wins for abortion rights, Tuesday's election was a major defeat for Moms for Liberty, the book-banning ladies from Florida; they seem to have lost in all their high-profile efforts. I am actually a little ambivalent about this because I think there is a lot of harmful racial rhetoric on the left that I would rather not have in schools, but in practice teaching about Kendi-style antiracism seems to be quite rare and the rules people write to ban it could be read as banning all discussion of race.

NPR story inspired by a new book on American Girl dolls. Another product that has fallen into the uncanny valley where you can either ignore slavery entirely and be attacked for that or try to deal with it and be attacked for that.

Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor on the glass harp.

Ukraine

Spectacular video showing the destruction of a Russian column at Avdiivka.

Russian exile Vladimir Pastukhov argues that Putin needs the war in Ukraine to continue indefinitely, because Putin  thinks staying on a war footing is the only way he stays in power. (Like Napoleon, I guess.) War, say Pastukhov, is a drug to which Putin is addicted. And at Threadreader.

Ukraine attacked the Zaliv shipyard in Kerch, damaging a new Russian frigate, the Askold (Uri, Noel Reports, Kyiv Independent) OSINT guys were divided about the damage shown in satellite photos, some calling it catastrophic, other not so impressed, but an up-close photo shows significant damage. And video of the attack. Interesting that shipyards in Crimea are full of Ukrainian sympathizers who gloatingly post all this stuff.

A threat on why Russia has lost so many tanks in Ukraine: lousy tanks, lousy battlefield doctrine, and not caring how many they lose.

Kyiv Independent on the Russian Lancet kamikaze drone.

British military official on the rate of munitions consumption in a contemporary peer conflict like Urkaine: "Think of a ludicrous number, double it, add a zero, and you’re still not there."

European military capacity: "Norwegian ammunition maker Nammo told lawmakers in Oslo...The company estimates Europe would need around 20 million shells for about a month of combat operations, with industrial capacity in the region at less than half a million shells."

Interview with a Ukrainian Captain who has been fighting since 2014. Says many Russians are very tough soldiers, including some who were just mobilized a few weeks before, and Russian commanders are willing to take losses in a way Ukraine cannot.