Open Thread time
I’m of the opinion that we should always have an Open Thread in the list of 10 Recent Posts….
"This is the Voice of Moderation. I wouldn't go so far as to say we've actually SEIZED the radio station . . . "
It’s FINE having an open thread….
…until the fabric of your website unravels, that is.
Tsk tsk Snarki, that’s a LOOSE thread!
…
Suggested caption for image from CharlesWT:
I blame the cat.
I see an open threat concerning the next elections.
But will the latest SCOTUS ruling be enough to satisfy the Right?
Will they – successfully – demand that the abominable 6 (or maybe just 5 this time) declare minority majority districts to be per se unconstitutional? With a loophole of course that Latinos outside Florida cannot play that game. That should be easy though since minority will defined not on state but national level. And before whites become a national minority, this whole free election nonsense will be safely in the past anyway.
There also is a threadbare excuse to earmark 1 billion $$$ for His Orangeness’ ballroom. It’s explicitly only for the ‘security features’ and can’t be used for anything else. Of course His Orangeness’ permanent mental state of insecurity will allow to use the money for the luxury parts too. Why should the bunker below lack all the tasteless accoutrement of the farcility* above.
*I just made up this word and it’s mine!
*I just made up this word and it’s mine!
Googling it, I find this word exists in the UK cycling community implying ill-planning, impracticality and self-defeating concerning infrastructure.
So, perfectly fitting, although nothing’s rolling except the ruble.
The snow has started here at the north end of the Colorado urban corridor. The forecast says 4-8 inches of accumulation overnight and through tomorrow. As much as a couple of feet up in the mountains. The moisture is welcome, but it won’t break the drought. It’s also mostly happening east of the Continental Divide so does nothing for the Colorado River crisis.
California, Arizona, and Nevada appear to have reached a one-year agreement on the river in which each takes only 60% of their legal allotment. The debate on long-term changes to the Colorado River Compact seems to be at an impasse between the lower basin and upper basin states.
Still on track for power generation at the Glenn Canyon Dam to stop due to low water around August. That takes ~1.3 GW of generation off line. The regional coal-burners were retired years back and have been torn down. Wonder what Trump’s Dept of Energy will order done?
Statement from my local power authority after the first month of being in an RTO that controls what generation gets dispatched… These guys are dispatching our NG-fired peak generators every day for base load just because they’re cheaper than the crud the other power authorities operate. At this rate, we’ll have to take them off line in July and August for maintenance, just when they’re really needed.
Wonder what Trump’s Dept of Energy will order done?
Proclaim, loudly, that the rolling blackouts aren’t happening. Combined with claiming that the non-existent blackouts are the fault of California (and maybe blue areas of other states).
Actual actions? Order generators East of the Mississippi to fire up and generate more power. Yes, we all know that they are in the Eastern Interconnect Grid. But consider that, during the fires in Southern California, when there were water shortages to fight them, Trump ordered releases from reservoirs in the Central Valley. Which send water in the opposite direction. In short, do something useless.
Can’t they put some nuclear powered warships on wheels (or tracks), drive them into the areas in need and use their reactors for that?
And maybe the drought can just be nuked like a hurricane?
And don’t tell me one cannot put warships on tracks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeteufel
Over here the announced heavy rain was also just a bit of drizzle in the morning. Adenauer seems to become finally correct that beyond the river Elbe the steppes of Asia begin. Brandenburg is steppifying alarmingly.
For those of us still concerned (or obsessed!) with the need for proper investigative journalism, I thought some might be interested in this, which is held annually in memory of the legendary journalist and editor Harry Evans. The actual summit is held in London for an invited audience only, but there is a live stream available for anybody interested to watch.
https://sirharrysummit.org
Pioneering British newspaperman Sir Harry Evans (1928-2020) was one of the giants of post-war journalism.
The award-winning work he spearheaded as editor of The Northern Echo, The Sunday Times and The Times set the gold standard for courageous investigative journalism – from his fight to overturn a young Welshman’s wrongful murder conviction that spurred the end of the death penalty in the UK, to his celebrated ten-year campaign to win compensation for Thalidomide children, and his exposure of the cover-up of Soviet spy Kim Philby. In 2002, he was voted the Greatest British Newspaper Editor of all time by his media peers.
The summit brings together the world’s most dogged and diverse truth-seekers, both seasoned and innovative: unsung reporters who risk their lives and reputations, intrepid war photographers, digital data sleuths, relentless documentarians, and enterprising investigators in podcasting, publishing, TV, and streaming media. What they share is a moral commitment to the truth – not the sanctioned story, the acceptable version or the cosmetic spin – but the unvarnished account of what really happened..
Hartmut,
IIRC, back in the 60’s? there was a nuke test in orbit that caused an EMP that trashed the electric grid in Hawai’i.
The Navy parked a nuclear sub nearby and powered Oahu for a while, as a result.
That’s a lot harder to do for Colorado. You mention “put it on wheels”, but that’s still a long way from any coast, mostly uphill.
Train locomotives have been used as an emergency power source.
If you could transport the sub by rail, the route wouldn’t get steeper than about a 3% grade. None of the subs, though, is going to fit through the Moffat Tunnel, so coming from CA is out. Not sure if any of the other 30 tunnels on the California Zephyr route are between Chicago and Denver, but I imagine that track clearance would be an issue even without the limits of train tunnels.
(Just finished a deep dive into bicycle rail trails for a research class this winter.)
That’s a lot harder to do for Colorado. You mention “put it on wheels”, but that’s still a long way from any coast, mostly uphill.
1) They wouldn’t have to get to Colorado. The Glenn Canyon Dam sits at the center of the Arizona-Utah border. In theory, with enough time to do some planning, you could pick a different switch yard much closer to the ocean for connection. Except that both Diablo Canyon reactors are running at full power, anchoring there might have been feasible.
2) All of the Navy reactors, both submarine and carrier, depend on circulating seawater to dump waste heat. One of the underappreciated reasons that wind and PV solar are popular in the American West is that they don’t require any form of cooling water. Semi-arid and precipitation variance increasing? I’ll have some of generating technology that doesn’t need cooling water, please.
None of the subs, though, is going to fit through the Moffat Tunnel, so coming from CA is out. Not sure if any of the other 30 tunnels on the California Zephyr route are between Chicago and Denver, but I imagine that track clearance would be an issue even without the limits of train tunnels.
An LA-class sub is 360 ft long (109 meter), has a 33-foot beam (10.05 meters), and I believe is the smallest of our active nuclear submarines. I, for one, do not want to be responsible for even trying to balance that over rails spaced 4′ 8.5″ (1.43 m) apart, and then moving it.
Sure, nuclear subs circulate seawater for cooling.
BUT the vast majority of the shielding is “fore” and “aft” of the reactor. Minimal shielding on the sides, because it’s mostly seawater out there.
(Some personnel access between ‘fore’ and ‘aft’ shielded zones, of course, but ‘move fast through there to get less dose’)
Okay if in water, very not okay on dry land.
The Great Salt Lake is sadly lacking in nuclear subs, however…
…and thus ends our reductio ad absurdum.
Tippecanoe and Trumpkins too?
First thing that popped into my head. Which probably says something unfortunate about what else might be in there….
Just chiming in to say that I’m always amazed at the stuff you all know.
Carry on!
More Springtime in the Rockies this morning.
>Wonder what Trump’s Dept of Energy will order done?
ban EV charging!
Any thoughts from our friends across the pond about the unintended post-Brexit rise in UK immigration? That sort of backfire cracks me up.
Wow, this story from today’s Times is quite something. Hard to approve of anything done in Elon Musk’s name, but still. In fact, if he had a good instinct for PR (instead of being a mad bastard) he’d fund a movie about it:
The great Starlink sting: how Ukrainian hackers are duping Russian troops
On the front line with the cyberassault division tricking enemy invaders into revealing their GPS co-ordinates
Wednesday May 06 2026, 11.53am, The Times
Under cover of fog, the Russian troops had trudged through swampland to flank Ukraine’s defensive positions on dry land.
The tangled undergrowth of the Kakhovka floodplain had slowed their movement but offered sanctuary from the prying eyes of Ukrainian drones buzzing across the sky.
Advance units had infiltrated within 12 miles of Zaporizhzhia city, the capital of one of the four Ukrainian regions coveted by President Putin, and prematurely announced as annexed in 2022.
It was early February, at the tail end of an intense Kremlin bombing campaign and a long, freezing winter of blackouts. The future looked bleak for Ukraine’s defenders.
“The enemy was attempting to infiltrate their units through indirect assault operations — particularly by exploiting poor weather — to move their infantry between our positions and continue their advance,” said Yaro, an intelligence officer with the 128th Heavy Mechanised Brigade, which is fighting Russian forces in the village of Plavni, south of Zaporizhzhia city.
Further east, Russian forces were advancing near the city of Hulyaipole. Across the Donbas, Ukrainian troops were falling back at Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, Lyman.
Then, suddenly, the invaders lost access to the battlefield internet provider they had come to rely on for encrypted communications and drone control, Space X’s Starlink.
Tens of thousands of Starlink satellite receivers had been smuggled into Russia via Central Asia, Turkey and the Middle East. Russian soldiers were able to use them to increase the range of their attack drones, as well as make them more accurate and difficult to jam. Officers were able to employ real-time mapping of the battlefield overlaid with troop positions and terrain imagery, improving their co-ordination of soldiers in combat.
“Since 2025 they started to use Starlinks to control their big drones and give a higher precision for the attacks, give them an advantage to bypass our anti-drone systems,” said “Goldfinger”, a wounded soldier turned hacker for Ukraine’s 256 Cyber Assault Division, a group of civilian cyberwarriors. “So it was becoming more important and dangerous for us.”
Kyiv appealed to Space X and its founder, Elon Musk, to introduce a registration requirement for any Starlink on Ukrainian territory. They agreed. To register, users had to visit an authorised service centre on unoccupied territory and present their passport. Shortly afterwards, unregistered devices were blocked.
The Russians in the field were blinded. Desperate soldiers sought Ukrainians willing to register their Starlinks for cash, and the 256 Cyber Assault Division spotted an opportunity. Posing as cybercriminals, they opened a Telegram channel offering to register Russian Starlinks as Ukrainian in exchange for cryptocurrency.
Inside the Ukrainian tank brigade trying to hold back Putin’s onslaught
Acting like IT support, they used an AI chatbot to gather data from the Russians in stages, starting with innocuous requests for serial numbers and culminating in a request for the Starlink’s GPS co-ordinates. Surprisingly, they coaxed out the data of more than 2,600 receivers.
The co-ordinates revealed Russian headquarters, command posts and drone pilot positions. The hackers turned them over to Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence, or gave them directly to Ukrainian brigades they knew were fighting near by.
One such brigade was Yaro’s. In his command centre, a wall of screens broadcast a dizzying array of information, including troop dispositions, radar alerts for incoming enemy drones and livestreams of outgoing friendly ones striking their targets.
On one screen, he opened up the latest co-ordinates from the 256 Cyber Assault Division, mapped them on to reconnaissance imagery and zoomed in to examine the area. The Russian infiltrators were revealed.
He said: “So, they live here. The roof of the shelter is absolutely perfect, but because there are many branches across it, it’s been closed off as if ruined. This is where they’ll be, and right next to it we can see all the signs of their rubbish. Fresh tracks. We’ll now process and issue the co-ordinates to the lads.”
Soon afterwards, a strike drone smashed into the roof, bringing the walls of the shelter down around the Russians. Just before impact, the drone’s camera relayed images of a satellite dish on the building’s roof. It pointed not toward the sky, but to a neighbouring village.
Since the Starlink receivers no longer work, the Russians have begun using dishes to build wifi bridges between units. The tactic allows communications but also helps the Ukrainians spot new enemy positions.
Yaro said that Russians often remained in the same position that had been given away to the hackers, either because the soldier who gave away their co-ordinates was too afraid to confess his mistake to his superiors or because it was too difficult to move out into the open so close to the front line.
Once his team have verified the target, the attack itself is farmed out to one of the brigade’s strike drone teams, or those of a neighbouring unit. Katerina, 24, pilots a heavy bomber drone, launching from close to the front line to fly deeper into enemy territory.
She decided to join the Ukrainian armed forces after her village was liberated in the first year of the war. “My fellow villagers suffered during occupation — some of the men were taken prisoner, one was tortured to death. They threw grenades into basements were people were hiding, too terrified to come out. Some people died as a result,” she said.
Katerina is four months pregnant but runs the gauntlet daily attacking the Russian positions, and is determined to fight on: “I just feel a thirst for revenge, for everything they’ve done here and are doing.
“I’m protecting my sisters, brothers, little nephews and, in fact, all the children in Ukraine who are suffering from Russian aggression. And I’m doing this so that my children can live in peace later on.”
During the week The Times visited the 128th Heavy Mechanised Brigade, the pace of attacks was relentless, with new intelligence coming in daily and the brigade’s drone teams striking target after target.
In the brigade’s area of responsibility, Russian strikes on Ukrainian lines have fallen by 45 per cent thanks to the shutdown of Starlink terminals and the strikes enabled by obtaining co-ordinates of Russian positions, Yaro said.
The true impact of the operation may be much greater. The 256 Cyber Assault Division has been able to distribute the data gathered to Ukrainian units from across the front line. Other brigades too, have emulated their success, adopting hacking techniques for frontline reconnaissance and gathering yet more Starlink data.
Yet the hackers’ work does not stop there. Working with the Ukrainian think tank Dallas Analytics and volunteer hactivist organisations like InformNapalm, the division has exposed western politicians and companies working with Russia by hacking the email addresses of Kremlin officials and Moscow businessmen.
They have even discovered the location of Russian arms factories, since targeted by UK-supplied Storm Shadow missiles. Increasingly, their operations are begun using AI personas or other AI designed and implemented hacking tools, and finished by semi-autonomous attack drones.
The nature of warfare is becoming increasingly dystopian, and fast, Yaro said. “I see the picture that in five years we mostly won’t need people. It scares me.”
The nature of warfare is becoming increasingly dystopian, and fast, Yaro said. “I see the picture that in five years we mostly won’t need people. It scares me.
And then Starlink renamed itself Skynet.
“And then Starlink renamed itself Skynet.”
Musk and others plan to put AI data centers in space.
CharlesWT – Musk and others plan to put AI data centers in space.
Or, to put it more accurately, Musk and others plan to float these ideas to supporters, investors, and banks and and use that idea to leverage access to more capital. The actual practicality of such a thing has yet to be established, and the opportunity costs of doing such a thing is likely outside of the scope of these guys’ concerns.
How often does the hardware at such a center have to be updated? How does one access it to service it? How much does that service cost? Can any of the old hardware be recycled, or is it single use? What about the solar panels? Same questions there.
Guess I’m just not on enough ketamine to be captivated by this bold vision of the future.
I know…we can build all of those data centers in Galt’s Gulch, bypass all of the small minded bureaucrats, and skip all of the governmental red tape!
Good point. I bet Elon Musk thinks he is John Galt.
🙂