When I was a young boy, my father would semi-frequently take us all to local museums. I really appreciated that. It was, and still is, some of my most favorite memories.

On one such visit my father bought me a small bronze mastodon. It was magnificent, but tiny and I loved it a lot.

I loved it because of the great long tusks. It looked so cool, and I loved to hold it in my hand. It was one of my favorite nick-nacks, and I set it proudly on my brick-a-brack shelf in my bedroom.

One day, I came home from school and discovered that my little treasure was tusk-less.

You see, my father was afraid that I might hurt myself with the tusks, so he sawed them off.

I don’t know where he got that “hair up his ass” about me hurting myself. After all, he got me a cub-scout pocket knife two years earlier. What’s this shit about pointy tusks?

Anyways, someone influenced him. Bastard.

…

My little story for today. Take what you will from it. Be careful of the poison that seeps into the ears of others. Who knows what damage it would do…

Today…

Western powers are falling behind in technology, held back by systemic rot

The West’s terminal technology problem

Alex Krainer

Sep 24, 2023

Western powers are falling behind in the development of new technologies, particularly in the military domain. This is partly caused by the perverse system of incentives that suffocates research and development work, but also by a system of education that’s producing less and less technical, scientific and engineering talent. From the strategic point of view, this is a critical problem, as I elaborated in an earlier Substack, “Of Empires and Technology.”

Did Israel commit a war crime by turning off its supply of electricity and water to Gaza?

Yes

Absolutely

Article 33 of the Geneva Convention says so

Cutting of living essentials to Civilians is a violation of Article 33

However there are ways to spin this and claim this is NOT a collective punishment but a strategy for war

Israel may say, we are targeting the HAMAS but they hide among civilians and thus we have no choice

Israel may say “The 1949 Amendment was inserted when the world didn’t know about Terrorism of this type”

Israel may point out to the British inplementing the same violations in Belfast from 1963 to 1984 (Northern Ireland) or Malaya in 1955

They may point out US Violations in Vietnam between 1968–1972

---

So sadly today, the winners dictate the laws and their interpretation

At the 8th Eastern Economic Forum held earlier this month in Vladivostok, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin spoke about the development of a new generation of weapons: “If one looks into the security sphere, new physical principles weapons will ensure the security of any country in the near historic perspective. We understand this very well and are working on it.”

The kinds of weapons Putin was referring to include particle beams, laser, ultrasonic, radio-frequency and electromagnetic systems. That sounds quite futuristic – was Putin telling tall tales? When he announced that Russia had developed a variety of undetectable hypersonic weapons back in 2018, many in the West thought that he was bluffing and we heard much mocking and crowing: “the West outspends Russia 10 to 1, the Russians can’t possibly bla, bla, bla…” And like the Chinese, the Russians are inferior and incapable of innovating, they can’t think strategically, etc.

Fast forward to today: the Russian forces have successfully deployed hypersonic Kinzhal and Zircon missiles in Ukraine, delivering pinpoint strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure and military facilities, the crowing and the gloating about all the ways in which the Russians are inferior to us westerners has died down a bit. Still, we can’t just admit that Russian weapons systems are superior to the western arsenal, so the western press, relying on Ukrainian sources, claimed that Ukraine’s air defenses manage to intercept and shoot down Russian hypersonic missiles.

That would actually quite spectacular since NATO officials themselves have corroborated what Putin had said: that the missiles are undetectable and were not picked up by western radar systems. Either the Ukrainians have managed to develop targeting solutions very fast, using binoculars, or they’re lying. Whatever the case, Putin’s latest announcement did not trigger much mocking and crowing this time around. In fact, some western analysts now concede that Russia’s military technology has eclipsed that of the west.

The significance of hypersonic weapons

But how can this even be possible if for decades now, western “defense” spending outstripped that of Russia by a factor of 10 or even more? In a recent article titled, “Hypersonic Missiles Are Game-Changers, and America Doesn’t Have Them,” the Wall Street Journal explored why the US and the West have fallen behind.

“For more than 60 years,” says WSJ, “the U.S. has invested billions of dollars in dozens of programs to develop its own version of the [hypersonic weapons] technology. Those efforts have either ended in failure or have been cancelled before having a chance to succeed. … This situation is raising alarms.”

Last March I explained why hypersonics are a radical game-changer in my Substack article titled, “Why hypersonic weapons change everything“. Indeed, hypersonic systems are regarded as so critical that in 2021, US National Defense Authorization Act explicitly made the development of these systems a priority in US defense spending.

Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal didn’t provide any convincing explanation for why western powers are falling behind in development of new technologies. It also didn’t explore the fact that they even fall behind in production and maintenance of legacy systems. As NATO’s Admiral Robert Bauer lamented this week,

“Today the chiefs of defense expressed their concern that across the alliance, production capacity is lagging behind. Delivery times are moving to the right [they’re getting longer] and prices for equipment and ammunition are shooting up. Right now we are paying more and more for exactly the same, and that means that we cannot make sure that the increased defense spending actually leads to more security.”

Bauer’s statement is a clear admission that defense spending does not translate into better defense. He also said that, “Our liberal economies are not apt at creating the prioritization that is so desperately needed right now.”

The problem with incentives

There is a great deal to ponder in all this, but it is perhaps Admiral Bauer’s last statement that provides the most food for thought. Western powers do spend massively on the military, but most of that money is squandered, lubricating the wheels of corruption in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). Spending the money (i.e. allocating it to defense contractors), is much more important than actually developing new systems and the upkeep of legacy systems.

In the United States, the MIC consists of publicly traded corporations whose market value is determined by how profitable they are. Today, about half of the Defense Department’s (DOD) $850+ billion budget is spent with the DOD’s top five “prime contractors” who, after decades of consolidation have all but eliminated all competition (in the 1990s the DOD had more than 50 such “prime contractors”).

Given that research and development (R&D) is a cost which cuts into profitability of these very powerful contractors, they’re incentivized to reduce it as much as possible to maximize the profiteering. The more profits, the higher the stock price and the higher the executives’ bonuses. On the other hand, cutting the R&D and skimping on the essential work of technology development means that a lot of real talent and promising projects get axed even as massive pork-barrel programs like Lockheed Martin’s F35 Joint Strike Fighter drain trillions of taxpayer funds. The F35 is now more than 15 years behind schedule and for its $1.7 trillion in expenditure, the program has delivered no meaningful military advantage. 

Meanwhile, the lobbying arm of the MIC makes sure that such spending remains protected behind the flag and a veil of patriotism. Military generals who go along are rewarded and those who challenge the system get sidelined. That is how our wonderful “democratic system” sources top talent and delivers bestest solutions. The problem is that the top talent it draws are MBAs, lawyers and lobbyists, not scientists, engineers and systems developers. The actual military capabilities of the United States only receive lip service necessary to keep the American public distracted and unable to identify the root of the problem which is corroding the competitiveness of American industries in a very real way.

Losing talent

However, there may be deeper problems blunting the West’s technology edge, including education and cultivation of skills that are required for the challenge. Today, fewer than 20% of Americans choose STEM degrees in universities (STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) as more and more talent gravitates toward law and business degrees or humanities like gender studies.

According to the UNESCO, in countries like Tunisia and Malaysia as many as 37.9% and 43.5% of students (respectively), choose STEM degrees. In Germany, UAE, Belarus and India about 35% of students choose STEM degrees. While it’s true that western nations can overcome the shortage of human potential by attracting foreign talent, more and more nations today offer great career opportunities and compelling work to young professionals, so western nations face tougher competition for talent.

Ignorance is strength?

There’s also the problem of rigor in education, which has gone very loose in the West, and it is even affecting the prevailing cultural environment. Today for example, if you say that there are only two genders, your career could be finished that day. But if you insist that feelings matter more than facts and that 2+2 = 5, you could have a stellar career and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation might even fund your cause with tens of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, it is the Chinese youth that are sweeping the medals in one math competition after another. They may not know how to count genders, but they seem better prepared to solve practical problems.

Wife Self-Deletes After Husband Discovers All 4 Kids Aren’t His

I can feel the love in this gentleman’s heart. I had the same for the son I raised for over 2 years and found out he wasn’t mine. It takes a toll on your sanity. I was down for years afterwards and gave up on women for around 10 years, and still couldn’t ever trust another woman for the rest of my life. Which is a shame because I have a lot of love in my heart to give, but western women are just horrible. No accountability at all for anything. I will definitely be saying prayers for this guy and his kids

What was the strangest part of your divorce?

When I married my ex, he had an 18 month old boy. I loved him as my own. I raised him for 5 years before my ex and I divorced. It was an awful marriage and my ex was never around. The boy’s mother showed up to visit him maybe once every 2–3 months. I had to stay with my parents while I was getting the divorce. They hated my ex and were very controlling of me. It was a very small community and everyone knew everyone.

In the courtroom (ex didn’t show up), the judge asked where my son was. I responded that he was my step-child and I didn’t have any rights to him. The judge said “He IS your son. He loves you as his own mother. In fact, he loves you more than his own mother.”

I responded that I couldn’t have him. The judge said “Do you want him? I can make it to where you’ll never have to deal with his biological parents. He needs you!” I thought about it and knew that my parents would have a fit. I declined the offer and cried the rest of the day. My mother told me they would never let me stay with them with my boy.

This horrid story does have a happy ending! My mother called me one day out of the blue. She said “Someone knocked on our door and when I opened it, the handsomest young man was standing there. He said “Is my Mama here?”. She invited him in and they had a wonderful visit. She gave him my phone number and he called me! That was 30 years ago. My boy came to live with us at the age of 17. He stayed until he met and married a wonderful young lady. We have the best relationship ever! I have 5 grandchildren from him and 3 great grandchildren! I love my boy so much!

UPDATE: I am very surprised by the responses to this. Please understand. I was very young, had no job and no way to support myself and a child. My parents were very controlling and were afraid my ex would use the child to worm his way back into my life.

I Say: Let Them Kill Each Other

World Hal Turner

I am 61 years old and for much of my life, I have seen the Arab/Israeli hatred for each other manifest in tragedy after tragedy, fight after fight, war after war and frankly I’m sick of it.  I say, let them fight it out to the death.  Right now.

It’s not like we didn’t try.  We did.  We spent literally hundreds of billions of dollars trying to educate, placate, pacify, please, or even coerce, both sides into behaving like normal human beings.  It has all failed.

You see, the mistake we’ve made for decades, is treating these Barbarians as if they are civilized people.  They aren’t.  Neither side!

Their never-ending fighting, bickering, and warring has been going on since before Jesus Christ walked the earth two thousand or so years ago.  And these Barbarians — and that’s what they are – have hated each other, deceived each other, fought each other, and killed each other for that entire time.

As the world got smaller thanks to modern travel and innovation, both sides recruited others into their age-old hatred.  The Jews with money, the Arabs with oil and the wealth it generates.

It’s NEVER going to stop, unless we in the rest of the world, step back, and tell them both: Go at it.  Go ahead, slaughter each other.  We don’t care anymore.  We’re tired of your bullshit.  We’re tired of paying you to be nice to each other.  We’re tired of hearing how you’re both always being wronged by the other.  We’re tired of you.  We don’t want YOU or your bullshit in our lives anymore.

So go fight it out.  Kill each other.  Fight until you’re ALL dead for all we care.  But if any of you survive, we will be ready to have good relations and do business with whoever wins.

You see, it’s simple: the world will know absolutely no peace unless and until the two sides are allowed to slaughter each other.

I don’t care if the entire Middle East runs knee-deep in blood.  We in the United States, and the rest of the civilized world, should do absolutely nothing.

Both sides are big talkers.  Both sides are tough guys.   OK, let’s see how that works out when big brother America is no longer there to influence the outcome.

Let’s see how each side does when the checks written by their big mouths, arrogant posturing, and intransigent positions, have to actually be cashed by their bodies as they fight it out to the death.

Your mouths have been writing checks that your bodies can’t cash.  It’s time to ante-up and fight it out once and for all.

Go ahead and slaughter each other.  The rest of us just don’t give a shit anymore.

Oh, and if any Americans or Europeans are so incensed at the situation that THEY think WE should be involved, then THOSE PEOPLE in the US and in Europe should head on over to whichever side they support, and offer to fight along side them.

Let them get killed to.  This way the rest of us can have peace.

Shelter cat uses sweetest meow to get adopted

He is so sweet.

What incident has traumatized you for good?

Sorry to go anonymous, but I never feel comfortable enough to reveal my name.

I was about 7 years old and my sister was 5, we just came home from Halloween and were sitting on our carpet in our room, dividing our candies in equal parts (but mostly eating all of them).

I remember my sister suddenly stopped talking, looked at me in the eyes without saying a word, with her eyes wide-open, pointing at her throat.

She was suffocating and I started panicking. I was taught in school what to do so I put myself behind her and started pushing above her stomach, but as you can imagine I didn’t have much strength as a 7 years old.

My mum, whom I had been desperately calling from the beginning, rushed in our bedroom and started taking my place in doing the “move” but nothing was working. I was sitting in our carpet, helpless and in full panic mode, watching my sister turn more and more blue as seconds went by. I really thought I would have seen her die in front of me and I couldn’t bear to look. I shouted “sorry, sorry, I will always love you” and closed myself in the toilet, crying and shouting as if the world was going to end.

After maybe 2 minutes, but it could as well have been much less (Time always seems stretched in situations like these) I hear the bedroom go silent. I hear my mom stopping to try. And I hear… breathing. Heavy breathing.

I’m scared that if I go in the bedroom I will see her dead, but I gather my courage and exit the bathroom.

Turns out my mum had grabbed her by the feet in hope to let gravity do its work, as a last hope move… and it worked. She had inhaled a whole hard candy and it was stuck in her throat, slowly suffocating her.

The candy was still on the carpet when I entered the room, and there was my sister, on the ground, slowly going back to a normal color.

I hugged her so tight that she almost lost her breath again, but I was the happiest person in the whole world. That time I really thought I would have lost her.

From that day on, I always check if she bites the candy as soon as she puts them in her mouth. When she lost her back childhood teeth, I would take her candy and break it into little pieces with my knife, and then give it to her. She sometimes got annoyed but she will never know the fear I felt that day.

15 years later and I’m still as attached to my sister as I was that day. I still secretly check if she bites her candies. It truly traumatized me for good. I never want to lose her.

WSJ Joins Neocons To Instigate War On Iran

Updated below.

The neo-conservatives want to blame Iran for the current war in Palestine/Gaza.

They have for years tried to instigate war against it. Now they again see a chance. But its not a big one – yet.

Yossi Melman is a very well connected Israeli author:

Yossi Melman @yossi_melman – 5:33 UTC · Oct 9, 2023

IDF spokeperson Brig-General Danny Hagari said that there is no indication of an Iranian involvement in the war in Gaza.

—

Biden administration scrambles to deter wider Mideast conflict – Washington Post – Oct 8 2023

Asked whether Hamas may have acted in partnership with Iran to disrupt the effort to broker a Saudi deal, Blinken said “that could have been part of the motivation. Look, who opposes normalization? Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran.”

But, he said, “we have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack.”

—

Fear not, say the neocons, we still have the Wall Street Journal to carry water for us:

Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks (archived) – Wall Street Journal – Oct 8 2023

DUBAI—Iranian security officials helped plan Hamas’s Saturday surprise attack on Israel and gave the green light for the assault at a meeting in Beirut last Monday, according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed militant group.

Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had worked with Hamas since August to devise the air, land and sea incursions—the most significant breach of Israel’s borders since the 1973 Yom Kippur War—those people said.

Details of the operation were refined during several meetings in Beirut attended by IRGC officers and representatives of four Iran-backed militant groups, including Hamas, which holds power in Gaza, and Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political faction in Lebanon, they said.

WSJ authors in Dubai(!) have access to “senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah”?

Both groups are notorious for their secrecy and their senior leadership is usually hidden away. Those facts alone are enough to debunk the report as nonsense. But the WSJ authors continue:

“We don’t have any information at this time to corroborate this account,” said a U.S. official of the meetings.

A European official and an adviser to the Syrian government, however, gave the same account of Iran’s involvement in the lead-up to the attack as the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members.

Asked about the meetings, Mahmoud Mirdawi, a senior Hamas official, said the group planned the attacks on its own. “This is a Palestinian and Hamas decision,” he said.

A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations said the Islamic Republic stood in support of Gaza’s actions but didn’t direct them.

“The decisions made by the Palestinian resistance are fiercely autonomous and unwaveringly aligned with the legitimate interests of the Palestinian people,” the spokesman said. “We are not involved in Palestine’s response, as it is taken solely by Palestine itself.”

Three direct rejections by official sources of the WSJ claims get countered with an anonymous ‘European official’ and a likewise anonymous ‘adviser to the Syrian government’.

It is like the authors don’t even try to sound believable:

A direct Iranian role would take Tehran’s long-running conflict with Israel out of the shadows, raising the risk of broader conflict in the Middle East. Senior Israeli security officials have pledged to strike at Iran’s leadership if Tehran is found responsible for killing Israelis.

The IRGC’s broader plan is to create a multi-front threat that can strangle Israel from all sides—Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, according to the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members and an Iranian official.
…
Israel has blamed Iran, saying it is behind the attacks, if indirectly. ​​ “We know that there were meetings in Syria and in Lebanon with other leaders of the terror armies that surround Israel so obviously it’s easy to understand that they tried to coordinate. The proxies of Iran in our region, they tried to be coordinated as much as possible with Iran,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, said Sunday.

There is however little evidence for the Israeli assertion:

Leading the effort to wrangle Iran’s foreign proxies under a unified command has been Ismail Qaani, the leader of the IRGC’s international military arm, the Quds Force.

Qaani launched coordination among several militias surrounding Israel in April during a meeting in Lebanon, The Wall Street Journal has reported, where Hamas began working more closely with other groups such as Hezbollah for the first time.

Hamas and Hezbollah have cooperated for decades. During the war on Syria some Hamas members took the side of the ‘moderate rebels’. They taught them how to dig large tunnels, a technique they themselves had once learned from Hizbullah:

Abu Musaab, a leader in Ahrar al-Sham, told the pro-uprising satellite television station Orient News that the Syrian militant group received tutorial videos from Gazans showing them how to repair collapsing tunnels.

“The ground here became damp and began to fall on us…and some of our youth were trapped inside. So we spoke to those with expertise, our brothers in Gaza, may God reward their good deeds,” Abu Musaab was quoted as saying.

“We consulted them regarding the problem and they advised us to bring in wood (plates), sending us video segment showing us how they do it and we replicated that,” Abu Musaab added.
…
And in June 2013, the pro-Hezbollah al-Akhbar newspaper reported that “sources close to Hezbollah and the Syrian regime claim that Hamas had a role to play in the battles of Qusayr, [where tunnels] … had been dug using small Iranian devices that Hezbollah had transferred to Hamas.”

“Some of the explosives, they added, were found to contain electronic chips that Hamas had acquired from Iran and Hezbollah,” the Lebanese paper said.

After the war in Syria was decided in the governments favor, Hamas slowly found its way back into the resistance camp. Consultations between Hezbullah and Hamas have been constant since. Back to the WSJ:

Representatives of these groups have met with Quds Force leaders at least biweekly in Lebanon since August to discuss this weekend’s attack on Israel and what happens next, they said. Qaani has attended some of those meetings along with Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, Islamic Jihad leader al-Nakhalah, and Saleh al-Arouri, Hamas’s military chief, the militant-group members said.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian attended at least two of the meetings, they said.

This, however, is clearly no believable. Amir-Abdollahian is a professional diplomat, not a security official. While he has been deeply involved in political issues regarding Palestine he is unlikely to have been involved in any top-secret operational planning.

Also biweekly meetings between Qaani, Nasrallah and other high ranking resistance leaders are unlikely to have ever happened. Each such meeting would be a security nightmare.

The planning for the recent Hamas operation must have taken years not just the few month since August. While the WSJ lets it seem that there is operational coordination between the various resistance groups their real cooperation is on a way more strategic level.

Each group in the resistance axis has its own plans and goals. That does not exclude strategic cooperation, but not on the detail level of fighting:

Egypt, which is trying to mediate in the conflict, has warned Israeli officials that a ground invasion into Gaza would trigger a military response from Hezbollah, opening up a second battlefront, people familiar with the matter said. Israel and Hezbollah exchanged fire briefly on Sunday.
…
The Iranian official said that if Iran were attacked, it would respond with missile strikes on Israel from Lebanon, Yemen and Iran, and send Iranian fighters into Israel from Syria to attack cities in the north and east of Israel.

While there is no denying that Iran, Hezbullah, Hamas and others consult with each other on a high level, any deeper cooperation, training or assistance is unlikely to still exist. It is each on their own, but with a common big goal in mind.

Update – 14:40 UTC

Of interest:

Andrew MacGregor Marshall @zenjournalist – 11:54 UTC · Oct 9, 2023

The main reporter on this story, @summer_said, has a history of dishonesty and inventing stories. I fired her from Reuters in 2008 for this reason. I’m surprised that the @WSJ has hired her and is publishing her stories that are clearly bogus.

Posted by b on October 9, 2023 at 11:20 UTC | Permalink

The problem with going fast…

Paradoxically, even technology itself may have contributed to the slowing of progress in the west through the ubiquity of software tools that make problem solving much easier than it used to be. I recently came across this little chart on social media. I must say, I felt the sting of its message personally.

When I was in high school in Croatia, our training in mathematics and science was very extensive: we had 9 hours of math per week and 6 hours of physics in addition to chemistry, biology, information technologies, software programming and more. It was a lot of work – so much so that when I came to the United States and enrolled in AP (advanced placement) math as a high school senior, I found the program very easy and aced it without even trying very hard.

By today however, I’m definitely at the “spreadsheet” stage of life: without Excel I think I’d be lost and I fear that my own conceptual thinking abilities and math problem solving skills have atrophied disconcertingly.

In the west, where fast and efficient problem solving is prized over conceptual thinking and inventiveness, more and more scientists and engineers work in that last, “spreadsheet” phase, quickly working out solutions to problems, perhaps at the expense of more creative, conceptual “out of the box” thinking.

The importance of pencil-and-paper work

In places like Russia and China, that broad-based thinking and working with pencil and paper is still very much prized and their educational institutions continue to insist on it (or at least have done so in the recent past). Of course, it would be difficult to assess how creative Russian or Chinese engineers or software developers are compared to their western counterparts, but beyond leapfrogging the west in development of hypersonic weapons, I came across an interesting case that speaks to this gap. 

Namely, in 2009 Goldman Sachs pressed charges for theft of intellectual property against one of their software developers, a Russian man named Sergey Aleynikov. In 2013, Michael Lewis wrote a fascinating story about that case in Vanity Fair in which he revealed that more than half of Goldman Sachs’ software developers were Russian – an extremely interesting bit of information, especially in view of the notorious rigor which Goldmans is known to apply in recruiting their quants and software engineers.

Now, given that Russian software engineers don’t constitute half the population of the US, either Goldman Sachs liked to have a lot of Russians lurking around, or it could be that they found them better prepared to tackle tough problem solving. The latter possibility might also explain Russia’s ability to develop the Zircons, Kinzhals and Avantgard missiles as well as weapons based on new physical principles. Here’s how Aleynikov himself explained the difference between Russian and American education: 

“In Russia, time on the computer was measured in minutes,” he says. “When you write a program, you are given a tiny time slot to make it work. Consequently we learned to write the code in a way that minimized the amount of debugging. And so you had to think about it a lot before you committed it to paper. . . . The ready availability of computer time creates this mode of working where you just have an idea and type it and maybe erase it 10 times. Good Russian programmers, they tend to have had that one experience at some time in the past: the experience of limited access to computer time.”

Indeed, clicking “run,” then deleting and retyping code is no substitute for doing a lot of thinking, which is absolutely indispensable to building high quality, reliable solutions and genuinely useful innovations. 

My own experience with ‘pencil-and-paper’ R&D

My own experience in developing the I-System trading model confirmed its importance. In 1999, when my team and I built the model’s prototype, it turned out to be a maintenance nightmare and it was clear that I needed to hire serious software talent to turn the prototype into a reliable tool. For a few months in 1999 I worked with an American software engineer, David B., who had recently graduated from Stanford University. Although David was extremely bright, he was literally working in the debug mode almost nonstop.

He was able to maintain the software and fix bugs as they crept up, but the code itself was growing into a patchwork of fixes and workarounds. I began to worry that sooner or later it would become unmaintainable and in 2000 I decided to hire an older engineer from Croatia, Boris Brec. Boris was old school and he insisted on extensive pencil-and-paper foundation work. He pretty much told me that he wouldn’t lift a finger until I had drafted the full set of specifications explaining exactly how the model worked, including schematic process-flow drawings of all the routines under the model’s hood.

The process of upgrading the I-System from the prototype to its ‘industrial’ version was extraordinarily labor-intensive, costly, and it took four years to complete. That was the cost of quality, which included the tradeoff between diving headlong into trading and continuing with the fastidious development work, going over every algorithm with a fine tooth-comb and testing everything ad nauseum. I was only able to do this because I managed to wrest full control and ownership over the project from my superiors.

Had the costs of project’s development impacted someone’s bonus, the firm’s profitability or market cap, it would have been axed and never lived to see its upgraded version. Fighting to keep the project alive and adequatly funded was a struggle at every turn. For me it is easy to see how frequently great and promising projects must die over money, missed deadlines and organizational politics.

Quality solutions, breakthroughs require abundant time and resources

The difference between I-System’s prototype and the upgrade was the change from nonstop maintenance patchwork with David to the flawlessly functioning, zero-maintenance machine put together by Boris. It was worth the four years and every euro spent on it: quality is the gift that keeps on giving, not only in having the system that functions as intended, glitch free for 20 years, but also in having the peace of mind, never fearing whether all the patchwork maintenance introduced new hidden bugs into the edifice.

The experience has taught me that this kind of work MUST begin with pencil and paper, that it must be methodical, that it must be given adequate time and resources, and that if we want to achieve quality solutions we must be willing to bear the associated costs. Where the system of incentives generates pressures to cut corners, take shortcuts and rush out half-baked solutions, it will ultimately suffocate creative work and kill many quality solutions before they had the chance to prove their merit.

Programs like supersonic weapons are only symptoms of self-inflicted systemic headwinds that are now slowing the advancements of science and technology in the Western world. A reform – nay, an overhaul of the system – will have to look at those perverse incentives as well as our educational and governance systems. This won’t be easy, especially as the western nations have deliberately seeded their political and academic structures with ideologues and zealots who are far too busy policing social justice, hate speech and gender equality to worry about the real future challenges faced by our societies.

What is something weird you read or saw today?

Was looking at one of my wife’s old cookbooks, for some reason and found the old lore and wisdom in the book fascinating. It’s hard to imagine people believed these things back then.

Like these:

‘When frogs holler, rain will soon foller.’ That could help my weatherman who has no idea when it’s going to rain.

‘Anyone born when the mulberries are ripe have a good chance of being red-headed.’ That one has got to be true, right?

Here’s an old insult. ‘His family is like potatoes. All that is good of them is underground!’

‘Corn is not ready to grind into meal until it is dry as an old maid’s kiss’ ouch.

‘We huckleberry gatherers don’t like to admit it, but what we call huckleberries are actually mountain blueberries.’ “I’m your huckleberry,” Doc Holliday.

‘To take the last piece of bread on a plate foretells rain.’

If a piece of buttered bread drops on the floor butter side down, it will rain soon.’

“We’re eatin’ the long corn now,” meant one was finally financially well off. No wonder it’s raining so much in my area. Happens to me all the time.

‘Corn must be knee high by the fourth of July.’

‘Onion skin very thin, mild winters coming in. Onion skin thick and tough, coming winter cold and rough.’

I love this one. ‘When you are tired of life and all its busy scenes; just run to the garden and hide behind the beans.’ God I wish I had a garden sometimes!

‘Always bake a cake when the sun is going up or it will fall.’ The cake or the sun?

‘A cow with its tail to the west, weather the best. A cow with it’s tail to the east, makes weather the least. ’THATS what my weatherman needs, a cow. He’s always wrong.’

‘If a bat flies into your head, you’ll soon become bald.’ Now we know what happened to The Rock and John Travolta to name a few.

Okay guys, here it is. A cure for baldness. ‘Consume the gall of a lizard, fresh mouse meat or mole’s blood.’

‘To prevent lockjaw, ‘If a needle is stuck in a foot, put fat meat next to the puncture then a penny over that.’ I’ll try that next time. The hell with a tetanus shot.

To cure a blister, ‘Kiss a red headed fellow.’ I’ll bet a lot of red headed guys were hanging around women sweeping the floor.

A good spring tonic? Anvil dust mixed with cream. Yum.

To cure asthma. ‘Stick the dried skin of a mole to the chest with honey.’ Did people really do that back then?

Mock cherry pie? Use cranberries and raisins.’ No one will tell the difference. Especially if they’ve never had cherry pie before. Then make them a sandwich of mock chicken.

To prevent mumps. ‘take a chip of wood from a log, and rub it on your jaw and throat every day.’ And see how many girls you’ll meet. None maybe? “Watch out for Ned, he’s off his rocker. Keeps rubbing a hunk of wood on his jaw and throat!” “Eeeeuuuw” “Here he comes! RUN!”

In the mid 1700s, women shaved their foreheads and eyebrows so they could press on mouse skin eyebrows. Girls, don’t you wish you lived back then. Save a lot of money on makeup.

That’s all folks!

Why do so many Chinese students study abroad? Are there schools colleges, science centers, institutes, and science universities in China? Does China have schools, colleges, and institutes?

Hi, Jain Patel. Thanks for the very interesting question.

No, China doesn’t have any school colleges, science centers, institutes, or science universities.

We get a couple of years of primary school, but after that, we all have to go and get tracker microchips implanted at the base of our skulls and start working in the Factories.

These Factories are run by our alien overlords.

Here are some pictures I took on my way to work.

These are the “Prime Sentinels” that guard the Factories.
If you are late for work, you will get stomped on.

The vast majority of us live in the mountains.

We have to bore holes into the mountains, and we live in those holes.

With a year’s salary, we get to buy a house/bedroom.
I say house/bedroom because the house is literally just one room – your bedroom.
That room is your house, and it’s also your bedroom.

Here’s a picture I took of my house/bedroom.

The view’s not too bad.
Especially in the morning.

Here’s a pic of my neighbors’ house/bedrooms.
These guys live just below me:

The pay for working in the factories isn’t that great.
I get paid USD 0.01 a day.
If I work overtime, I get paid USD 0.001 an hour.

Thankfully, the soil in the mountains is pretty good and we can grow a lot of vegetables in our allocated community gardens.

Here is the community garden allocated to the people who live on my side of the mountain.
Everyone gets to take home a small piece of broccoli for dinner.

Oh, and because we don’t have electricity in China, the three most common modes of travel are:

(1) Horse:

(2) Boat:

(3) Sword (powered by qi):

Some of the richer peeps own aero-cycles.
These are tiny little bike/seating platforms powered by qi:

Since there’s no electricity, we have to find creative ways to spend our weekends.

Going to the local monastery to hone our martial skills is one option:

As is hiking in the hinterlands:

In the evenings, some of us enjoy playing mahjong at the local park.

A long time ago, a race of giants used to live in the mountains.
For some reason, they enjoyed cutting down the many giant trees that dotted China’s many mountain ranges.
The tree stump you see below is just one of many giant tree stumps you’ll find up here in the mountains.

It makes for a great mahjong table.

---

Conclusion (a.k.a. TLDR):

No, Jain Patel , China doesn’t have any school colleges, science centers, institutes, or science universities.

Now you know the reason why!

Officer’s wife says words to this effect: “You shall address me by my husband’s rank.” Isn’t this impersonation of a military officer? And what legal consequences would there be? I would assume UCMJ can’t apply to non-mil.

As a United States Marine Corps Staff Sergeant, I went to work one fine morning, to discover a young lady laying down on the horn of her car at 0730 in the morning! Dressed like they were going to the beach?

She had some of her Girlfriends with her.

I approached her, and inquired what the problem was, and pointed out to her that she was blaring her car horn in front of an enlisted barracks FULL of people who worked 2nd Shift and the Graveyard Shift that needed their rest and sleep. Military Police, Watch Standards, Cooks, Bakers, Corpsmen (Medics) etc.

She responded with, do you know who my Daddy is? Pointing towards the Blue Base vehicle sticker on thr lefthand , lower windshield. Sticker with THE STAR!

(Meaning her Whoever Whatever was a Commissioned Officer) !

And laid down on the car horn again!!!!

I called the MP’s on her and reported her! And went to work (It was on a Sunday) Forgot, all about it.

Next morning? (A Monday) I had the Commanding General of Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina walk into my office with his daughter apologizing to me!!! A Marine Staff Sergeant?

Disabled cat was about to be euthanized. This woman took her home.

Epic Games laid off over 800 of its employees on Thursday.

The official number is 830, but the actual number could be well into 900 because of various legal considerations outside the US and Canada.

And I’m one of those 16% unlucky bastards who got screwed over.

I already signed my severance package, so I can’t say much about this other than this is such a shitshow. Layoffs are, unfortunately, very common in the video game industry, to the point that it’s almost expected. But the way Epic did it, it’s just so … anyway, Like I said, if I want my severance, I better shut the fuck up about it.

I was in shock on Thursday when I got the news. It was so sudden. I got an email around 8 am in the morning (PST), and within half an hour, all my company access was shut down/removed. I get up early because I work East Coast hours. A lot of my West Coast colleagues don’t start their day until 10 a.m., and they arrive at the company with everything shut down and no longer have a job. I had to reach out to my co-workers via text because Slack is no longer accessible. I imagine, if I were working at the office, this would be the time when the security escort all of us out of the building.

I guess when you have to cut 900 people, you have to be quick and brutal about it.

900 people, that’s the size of a large company. Poof, gone.

Thinking back, this is actually the first time since I started working in video games that I got laid off. For over a decade, I dodged every layoff from every company I was with until my luck finally ran out. You play the game company layoff Russian roulette, there’s always a bullet waiting for you sooner or later.

All things considered, severance is generous. We have 60 days of pay from the WARN Act and then 4 months of severance. So, all together, I’m covered for 6 months until I need to dip into my savings.

After the initial shock, anger, and fear, and frustration, and anxiety, I actually started to feel better about it. I went to bed that evening, realizing I didn’t need to get up at the crack of dawn every day from now on. My brain suddenly has some extra processing power because I don’t need to think about work-related stuff anymore. It’s funny. I found myself habitually thinking about the stuff I was doing before I got laid off, the Tableau project I was working on, the AirTable updates I needed to do… And I realized, wait, none of that matters anymore. When I was working, there is a portion of my brain never stopped thinking about work. It’d be like a program running in the background, taking up memory and CPU. Even if I’m on vacation or holiday, that program is always running. I can’t shut it down.

Now, it’s gone. And I feel lighter with an odd sense of emptiness.

I realized this is my opportunity to take a step back and think about what I want with my life. Do I even want to go back to the video game industry? Or do I want to try something new? I’m already 43. If I want to make a pivotal change in my life, this is perhaps the last time I still have the energy to do it.

Maybe I could start a podcast! LOL.

On the bright side, Epic might screw us over, but the people who are laid off and people who are still working for the company are so supportive. I’ve already joined several slack/discord spaces organized by Ex-Epic folks. We vent about the layoff, and we pull our resources to help with job searching and networking. I have multiple people reaching out to me with tips and potential job leads. Recruiters are already sending me emails hours after I put on the “Open to Work” sticker on LinkedIn. The general consensus on social media is overwhelmingly supportive of employees who recently lost their jobs. So all of these is really nice, makes me feel less isolated and shitty about this whole thing.

And of course, there’s Baldur’s Gate 3. I just finished my first run as a Warlock. My Tav saved the World from the big bad. The game landed on a positive note, with Tav and Astarion going on their next adventure together, even though I couldn’t give every single companion their own happy ending.

I immediately started my second run as Dark Urge oathbreaker Paladin Tav. I’m thinking about doing a “good ending” run again, with Tav trying to resist the Dark Urge.

Maybe on my third run, I’ll do a total evil run with “Ascend” Astarion. Although I still want to try the Bard class. I heard so many good things about playing as Bard, with so many fun dialogue options.

That’s already another 2 runs, meaning an additional 200–300 hours. And there’s Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty and, of course, Starfield. My schedule is full! LOL.

Maybe 5 or 10 years from now, I’ll look at this period of time thinking, “While it sucked at the time, I’m glad I got laid off from Epic. Otherwise, I’ll never <insert awesome stuff here>.”

Lavrov’s answer to Blinken’s Ukraine conflict freeze

What made you forbid someone from ever entering your home again?

When my oldest daughter was about 2 years old, a longtime and very dear friend stopped by for a visit. The friend referred to me as his second mom. Danny was a good good guy who made a lot of mistakes. I always treated him with love; and, I gave him advice when he asked for it. Outside of his asking, I only gave advice when he was doing something that could hurt him or someone else. After his visit, I was sitting in the living room when my daughter picked up a plastic bag. It’s contents were a white powder. It was cocaine. I was livid. I flushed it. Later, Danny called frantically and asked if I had found anything that he may have left. I told him about the bag and he admitted that it was his; he had accidentally dropped it. I told him that he was no longer welcome in my home. He was upset that I flushed it. Oh well, I didn’t care if he was mad. He didn’t understand why I was mad. You brought something into my home and lost it. My child picked it up. If I hadn’t seen it immediately, I’m sure that it would have been in her mouth. That’s what little children do. I have no doubt that this would have killed her had she consumed it. Danny did apologize later. But, I couldn’t allow someone that reckless into my home.

I realize that flushing it might not have been a good solution. But it was the only way I could think of to get it out of my home ASAP.

Waffle Potatoes. Holy shit this is good!

So in case you didn’t know, hubby was a professional chef. He cooks for us M-F and I have started cooking on weekends (I do need to know how to care for myself). He teaches me things as we go. Tonight was a carb bomb that is so damn tasty! He said the only place you will ever see this in a restaurant is a staff meal because it’s used to teach technique (knife cuts). He remembered it last night and decided this was going to be dinner tonight.

Ignore the smudge of mayo on the plate. There were 3 of these and I only thought about posting here when I was down to one.

Basically, you take a potato, square it off and cut it into “steaks”. Then you use skewers to measure your cuts and make fine cuts on both sides to make it almost accordion-like. Boil them in an alkaline solution (water + baking soda), fry them until GBD (golden brown delicious), then top with stuff and put in oven to warm everything.

Ours were topped with caramelized onions with bacon and shredded cheddar cheese. When he took them out of the oven and put them on the plates, he drizzled them with a seasoned mayo.

I’m going into a happy, full food coma right now.

EDIT: Since so many people asked, I’m putting the recipe below. There aren’t too many measurements because he doesn’t really measure, so it may take a bit of tweaking. I’ll describe everything best as I can. I do not write recipes well.

• 3 large potatoes, like the kind you would use for a baked potato.
• Skewers
• Make your caramelized onions and any other toppings before even starting. We also used shredded cheddar cheese, so get that all done now. Here is how he did the mayo: 3parts mayo, 1 part sour cream, a dallop of dijon mustard, 2 garlic cloves smashed, salt, pepper, a dash of garlic and onion powder, and a spritz of lemon juice (not enough to squeeze a whole lemon half, just a few drops).
• Start some water in a pot and add 2 TBSP of baking soda, NOT BAKING POWDER. Bring to a boil.
• Square off your potatoes. Don’t worry about cutting the ends off. Cut the potatoes into “steaks”. I’d say they were about 1/2″ thick?
• On your cutting board, place a potato steak and put a skewer on either side against the potato. DON’T SKEWER THE POTATO. The skewers are your cutting guides to make sure you don’t cut all the way through. (That was a super neat trick to me). Cut the potato diagonally along the entire length. Because I’m a visual learner, I did not understand this when he explained it to me, only when I saw it.

• Flip the potato over and repeat on the other side cutting the opposite diagonal. Keep the potatoes in cold water while doing this so the ones you aren’t working on don’t dry out. When done, the potato should sort of be like an accordion. Don’t worry if you accidentally cut through a couple. If it’s just the end, take it off. If it’s through the middle, toss it.
• Once all the potatoes are cut, put them in the now boiling water for about 8 minutes.
• Line a baking sheet with foil and place a rack on top. We use a baking cooling rack.
• Heat oven to 350F. Heat oil in a deep pan to 275F. We used a wok for the oil. You don’t need to fill the pan, but put enough in that it will cover the potato slices with a little more so they can move and not sit on the bottom.
• When 8ish minutes have passed, pull you potatoes out of the boiling water and place them on the rack. It’s a convenient place to put them while you fry them in batches.
• Fry the potatoes in batches in the oil once the oil is up to temp. Don’t over crowd the pan. You want to be able to flip them regularly. Fry until they look GBD (Golden Brown Delicious). Remove them back to the rack. Continue until all of them are fried.
• Now put your toppings on, NOT THE MAYO. It doesn’t matter if the toppings are cold, that’s what the oven is for. He spread the caramelized onions pretty thick, like he was making a bruschetta. Sprinkle the cheese on top if you want cheese. (Who doesn’t want cheese?)
• Put baking sheet in the oven and bake until the cheese is all melty and the toppings are warmed.
• Place them on plates and drizzle with the mayo.
• Make sure you have napkins and gobble that shit down.

China’s PC system announced to be permanently free, PC version of HarmonyOS system will come soon!

China has been building mass scale of manufacturing photonic chips factories now & will be ready to supply the world by year 2023. The photonic chips are 1,000 times better & faster than the 3-5nm chips manufactured by Taiwan & South Korea. Why?

Here is the Thing

YES:-

China is the only Nation on Earth who can manufacture Photonic Chips Cost Effectively

No other Nation on Earth Can

US gave it up nearly 20 years ago

You simply cannot run a sustainable Profit

The Scale for which Profit is required is simply unsustainable

The Demand would need to be So Tremendous to justify a scale which would involve ENTIRE CITIES dedicated to manufacture Photonic Chips.

Its not the Technology. The Technology is available openly and readily.

LIke Hypersonic Missiles

The Technology was available in 2000 itself and was nothing new. The Theory was available. However manufacturing efficiently was not possible and US decided it was not worth it.

China and Russia later managed to use their Manufacturing Dominance (China) and Raw Material Haven (Russia) to ensure they could make efficienct Hypersonics and ensure that they now have or plan to have a cost effective Arsenal.

Likewise Photonic Chips Manufacture can be done by China at Effective Cost and on a Scale large enough to achieve sustainability for its own Internal Domestic Market.

That is the Good News!!!!

---

So All Good?

2023 is simply impossible

Developing the Basic Infrastructure for Indigenous Implementation of the Technology may take 5 Years and another 3 Years for achieving Commercial Dominance

Thats 8 Years or 2030

In the meanwhile China still has to keep targeting the 3nm or 5 nm Wafer Fabrications Indigenously and keep spending the massive Scale of Production

So you see the Problem

China could abandon the 3nm/5nm Manufacture Aim and move completely to Photonic Chips but that would mean a 8 Year Gap and after that – the Results could be screwed up or the Photonic Chips may not work as China expects to

That means a Waste of 8 Years

The Cost of which would be a Delay in Chinas AI plans, Robotics Plans, Upgrading Technology plans

China could stay with the 5 nm/3 nm Manufacture Aim and achieve Indigenous Manufacture by say 2025–2027 and dominate AI and Robotics and move to the next phase of Technology

That would be easier than developing and taking a risk on Photonic Chips

Its the same as Abandoning the Option of Manufacturing of J-20s to make it as good as a F-22 Raptor , and instead seeking to manufacture the Avengers version of Aircraft

Better to persevere and make aircraft like the F-22 in 4–5 years than totally abandon everything to hope to make Captain Americas Helicarriers

Can China do Both?

That would be the thing

However it would need a Huge Load of Investment

---

HUAWEI

Huawei is in a perfect position to explore and work on Photonic Chips

Huawei has the Technological Edge and the Exponential Leap into cutting edge Research

SMIC

SMIC Meanwhile can continue to explore and keep targeting the Indigenous Supply Chain dominance of Chips within the Chinese Economy

Presently SMIC has achieved Commercial Production Capability of 14nm

And that was fast

---

So its a Lot of Hard Work and China shouldnt be like India

This “Ready to supply the World by 2023 and 1000 Times better”- this is Indian Language

Chinas language is always China Hopes to achieve indigenous control over its Chips and leave it there

Its Possible and if China can manage it – It would be incredible

Fingers Crossed!!!!

Time Travel Possible? Evidence Says Yes | 9 Time Travelers caught on film

Is time travel possible? According to physicists, yes. Time travel to the future is not only possible, it’s been scientifically proven.

But what about traveling to the past? Well, that’s a little trickier. BUT, there does seem to be evidence that travelers from the future have visited us in the past; and may be among us right now.

The human race has been fascinated with traveling through time ever since, well, ever since the human race understood what time was.

But has time travel been achieved by future humans?

And if so, did they leave us clues that they were here? We’ve scoured the internet for the best time travel stories we could find. You may know some of them. Some are hoaxes.

A few have been debunked. But there are a couple of stories that defy explanation. Why are we so obsessed with time travel?

Probably because we’re obsessed with time.

Time rules our lives.

Who doesn’t wish they could go back and talk to our younger selves, or meet our ancestors, or witness historical events.

Time creates possibilities; but time also ends possibilities. It’s finite. When a moment is over. It’s over. There are no second chances.

The expression “time is money” isn’t exactly true. Time is much more valuable than money.

Wealth can be made; lost and made again.

But time? Once we lose it, we can never get it back. Time is the most valuable thing you have.

Spend it wisely.

Beef Pies

Ingredients

• 2 (8 ounce) packages refrigerated biscuits
• 1 pound lean ground beef
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
• 1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon oregano

Instructions

1. Separate biscuits; then pat each on floured surface to 5-inch circles.
2. Lightly brown ground beef, onion and bell pepper in a skillet. Pour off fat.
3. Add remaining ingredients to the skillet and stir.
4. Place heaping portion of meat mixture on each biscuit circle. Fold in half and seal edges with a fork.
5. Deep fry until golden brown in 2 inches of oil at 375 degrees F.
6. Drain on paper towels.

Yield: 10 pies

My Wife & F**inist Daughters Turned Against Me & Took EVERYTHING…Now I’m Thriving & They’re Toast!

Amazing story. Many mistakes. Modern America. (Sigh)

US is the true ‘empire of lies’: China

The US is the true “empire of lies”, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Saturday, lashing out at a US State Department report that accused China of ploughing billions of dollars annually into information manipulation efforts.

China is manipulating global media through censorship, data harvesting and covert purchases of foreign news outlets, the US State Department said.

Despite the unprecedented resources devoted to the campaign, Beijing had hit “major setbacks” when targeting democratic countries, due to local media and civil society push-back, according to the report, which was produced under a congressional mandate to detail state information manipulation.

The report has disregarded facts, and is itself false information, the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement.

The agencies of the US State Department that produced the report “were the source of false information and the command post of ‘cognitive warfare’,” the Chinese ministry said.

“Facts have repeatedly proven that the United States is the true ‘empire of lies’,” it added.

The US report comes amid controversy over China’s attempts in recent years to increase the global footprint of its government-controlled media. Beijing is seeking to combat the negative images of China it feels are propagated by global media.

Huawei chip disassembly report,18-core chip far exceeds its peers.TSMC Intel are starting to panic

Huawei chip disassembly report, The 18-core chip far exceeds its peers. TSMC and Intel are starting to panic

Huawei introduced the new 5G phone with a 7 nm chip semiconductor made in China. Are Taiwan, South Korea, and the USA doomed?

Well, in the smartphone arena, there is really only one foreign brand left in China.

Yes, Apple.

LG is gone.

HTC is gone.

Samsung is irrelevant.

Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, Pixel, Sony and a host of has-beens or bit-players are all irrelevant.

It’s Chinese brands, and Apple, with 3 ecosystems, Hongmeng, iOS and Android.

No prizes for guessing how the balance will evolve, given the clear and present risk of disruptive sanctions forcing Google to pull Android licensing from other Chinese vendors.

In Africa, Transsion outsells Samsung, and Chinese brands as a whole dominate market share. Transsion, based in Shenzhen, has a sizable global share of >10%. It is the hidden champion no one has heard of.

The Chinese EV makers recently made waves in the Munich car show, with several media outlets trumpeting them as the “star of the show”. The Chinese overtook Japan as the No. 1 car exporting nation this year, and next year promises more growth.

Fancy Toyota defending its position in a sunset industry? I thought it impossible but the speed of the Chinese transition and the scale plus depth of the EV supply chain they have built is putting lots of doubt in my mind. Not to mention the dearth in AI/ML/big data/UI and battery advances among Japanese automakers.

---

It isn’t all doom and gloom.

Let’s take a cursory look at Hyundai’s EV strategy. The Ioniq series is a clear step up from the typical Hyundai ICE offering, with premium materials, interiors, paintwork and fit and finish typically not found in the price segment. It is positioned as a bang for the buck premium series, almost luxury, but affordable.

Why?

Because the Chinese are making the mass market EV impossible to compete on cost alone. Besides, volume production necessary for economies of scale are impossible without Chinese partners. Hyundai wisely decided to cede market space and move up the segment instead. Fewer but better, or like my friend puts it, becoming “German”. Hyundai is quietly positioning itself as the Korean BMW or Audi EV.

The Japanese have been slower in response. I am increasingly pessimistic about their chances. What happened to Honda and Mazda’s mainland operations in the past few years portend seismic shifts ahead. EVs are not like ICE cars, because there are critical materials and technologies upstream that China controls.

This time, the patent walls and enabling tools/tech favor China, too.

---

What happens when the Koreans, Taiwanese, and Japanese can’t make a killing through export-driven demand for their mass market goods?

They will have to move upmarket, selling less for hopefully, more, much like Sony’s repositioning and reorganization. Those that cannot adjust to the speed of the Chinese transition will be crushed.

---

There we have it.

The days of Samsung and Toyota hitting home runs from economy to premium is coming to an end. They will have to specialize and move upmarket, or bleed red competing with the Chinese.

We’re in for interesting times.

Very interesting times.

This is the real trade war, with abiding consequences.

Mirror Spock mind-melding McCoy

The part of the 4th episode “Mirror Mirror” of TOS 2nd season.

Why isn’t all of Finland a part of Russia?

This oversight is easily fixable. Once NATO falls apart, and Finland faces the angry bear it poked and provoked for cheap thrills, its entire population will be shaken by the violent paroxysm of love to Russia and all things Russian.

Just kidding! Relax. Russia does not need Finland. Russia created this pesky nation from the ass of Sweden, like Eve from Adam’s rib, and let them go long time ago. It had many opportunities to re-annex them. If it did not, it means it just does not want to, because it is much better the way it is. That Finnish state and many Finns in Quora forgot all the good between the two countries and sold out their soul to the overseas Russophobes is too bad.

As an American of Russian background, I feel enraged that rabid Russophobes and neocolonialists possessing our government started the bloody conflict in Europe in 2014. When President Trump called Zelensky, in order to find out what is going on, he was impeached. Elections 2020 were rigged on an unprecedented scale, followed by the January 6th false-flag provocation timed to prevent Objections to be heard in Senate. The corrupt elite illegally holding power that belongs to We the People will not go without struggle.

USA Terminates Project! China Takes Over $25 Billion Saudi Military Projects | USA is Disappointed!

https://youtu.be/ifyr6GfpENU