John J. Mearsheimer has weighed in on characterizing what Israel is doing against the Palestinians.
"I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict. But I want to be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history.
What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an important organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly unfathomable.”
Interested in an informed comment on the paint application part. How do they keep those spray rooms clean from paint? I noticed the robots were covered up to protect against the spray but the floor was pristine.
The floor is open grating above a pool of water that is pumped to reclaim the solids. Further the paint is electrostatically charged as it comes off the bell applicator so it is attracted to the body like a balloon to the wall.
It is odd since Ada is DoD's (bastard?) child and NSA is DoD but a little digging you get this from 1997 (with a singular mention of the word "safety"):
tldr; seems to be that the software development world has changed from the days that DoD was the "dominant" software developer, and Ada in the interim did not get adopted by the commercial sector (with safety critical exceptions in aerospace, etc. noted).
In summary, Ada tries to be memory safe by default -- as far as that can be done without requiring automatic memory management and garbage collection -- but deliberate use of "unchecked" language features can break memory safety.
In other words, if you go out of your way to use unsafe features, and don't use the features that compensate, Ada is memory unsafe. This has become the goto dismissal of Ada, apparently more popular than "eww...a BEGIN..END language" and "designed by committee/government tainted".
It is an interesting contrast to the situation in 'editorial rooms' (not virtual tiktok rooms) where most decision makers globally get their information. Some head of state in country X (entangled "innocent"* bystander state) is being bombarded by pro-Israeli 'official news organs' not some rando with a tiktok account.
The class that prints money and operates fractional reserve banks (in partnership with your local government) extracts a cut from everyone that touches or must use ("legal tender") their money. It's a function of interest rates and the fractional reserve multiple (k). Interest is paid on fictional moneys (accounting fiction) that is canceled but k-1/k fraction of the interest paid on the fictional money goes into the banker pockets. So implicitly (rk-r)/(rk+k) of the economy denominated by that money is exploitation of actual work done to make interest payments on non-existent monies. It's a great scam and it's nicely setup since all direct parties involved (depositors and borrowers) are made whole. But that portion of interest on magic money that bankers pocket was the product of actual work. It's a great racket. No wonder they fight world wars over who gets to print the magic money.
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p.s. some basic math for the down voters. the most basic model with loans issued and serviced in one cycle.
D = total deposits
k = fractional reserve multiple. (iirc ~23 in US?)
r = interest rate. we'll keep things simple, and assume bank interest rate is same for depositor (rd) and borrower (rb) but usually rb > rd.
B = total loans issued = k * D
I = total interest earned = B * r
L = total liability of banker to depositors = D * (r + 1)
I' = total interest liability of banker to depositors = D * r
F = Fictional money created on loan issuance and destroyed on loan conclusion = D * ( k - 1).
X = Exploited wealth from public at large where interest paid for fictional money is wealth extracted structurally by the banking institution. X = I - I' = F * r
It's a nice chunk of money*. So X is wealth extracted from the society that must use a debt instrument that is created by fractional reserve banking. It is structural and "owner" and "worker" alike, anyone who has to make non-fictional interest payments, is affected.
* B = "United States Total Loans was reported at 12,228.056 USD bn in Oct 2023" /G
from Google "Depending on the terms of your loan, you may expect to pay as much as 50% of the mortgage in interest. The point at which you begin paying more principal than interest is known as the tipping point. This period of your loan depends on your interest rate and your loan term"
50%. k-1/k of that is wealth extracted from society. @k=23, 22/23 ~ 95%. Chew on that. The X factor.
So whether you are Elon Musk borrowing billions or Joe Schmoe borrowing for a car or a student for a loan, the overwhelming portion of the interest you pay is wealth extracted by a mechanism that were it not enforced by law, it would be blatant fraud.
None of this explains why I need to give you my telephone number to get on your boat.
Identity is the core of the matter and that is invariant of the modes of transport. On top of that comes key management. On top of that you can build your secure application on whatever platform.
Total end to end encryption can only be built on top of identity and never (ever) on a specific channel. And TE2E should be the social goal.
"The outrage over the incident was intensified just a year later when the US media was tipped off to the existence of CHASE. The Cut Holes And Sink ‘Em program was the Army’s plan for discreetly disposing of dangerous surplus materials. It involved the scuttling of ships loaded with the deadly cargo up to 250 miles offshore. Unfortunately for the US Army’s PR department, some of the materials involved were mustard gas, Sarin, and VX. Apparently a good many people had serious misgivings about dumping dangerous chemicals into the ocean. These concerns were further reinforced by the fact that the Army itself wasn’t sure whether or not the metal and concrete slabs that housed the chemicals would survive the massive pressure during their 16,000 foot descent to the ocean floor."
I read that and the first thing that popped into my head was "the banality of evil".
Right? Like imagine how many meetings they spent coming up with clever acronyms for their project to poison the ocean and then deciding on which to use.
There's a lot down there, people have been dumping chemicals weapons in the ocean for at least a hundred years. Once it sinks you can't see it anymore so that means it's gone forever and you don't have to think about it.
There are a lot of old munitions dumps in the ocean and they don't always "stay down there":
The WW2 bombs dumped off western Scotland washing up on beaches
According to a letter sent by the MoD in June to researchers at the University of Liverpool, the MoD dispatched vast amounts of old weapons to Beaufort’s Dyke.
The ministry dumped some 14,000 tons of 5-inch artillery rockets filled with poisonous phosgene gas in the trench between July and October 1945. Over the following three years, it consigned 135,000 tons of conventional munitions there, and every year “into the late 1950s” another 20,000 tons ended up in the dyke.
"I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict. But I want to be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history.
What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an important organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian disaster and civilian casualties is nearly unfathomable.”
Let me elaborate [...]"
source: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-...