Music Can Make Life Liveable

 

The MAGA-GOP Coalition Is Falling Apart

 

Trump's decade plus old hold on the GOP is slipping, because Republican political leaders they know that their prospects in the midterms look apocalyptically bad as a result of his actions over the last year.

Parenting

 

Good parenting is raising children who are a force to be reckoned with.

For those not familiar with the comic, Puck (left) informally adopted Daphne (right) as a toddler when Puck was still in college, in episode 3 on February 15, 1998, and has raised her for entire life in the comic over 28 years of our world time (Daphne now has a little sister, Miranda, who is about the same age as Daphne was when Puck adopted her, who is the child of Puck and her common law, soon to be legal, husband, Colin). This is the last panel of comic 831. The comic is currently on episode 843. It is set, primarily, in a medium sized city in Canada.

Quote Of The Day

It's honestly a little inspiring to realize that it's always possible to screw up in an entirely new way.

- xkcd

Soft Kill

 

One of the tactics used by Ukraine in its current war with Russia has been to secure the "soft kill" of enemy armored vehicles by defeating their view ports and sensors, leaving them blind and then vulnerable to being dispatched by opponents that can get close enough to do real damage. This has allowed, for example, a Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, whose cannon rounds aren't strong enough to pierce a main battle tank's armor, to nonetheless defeat it.

Concern about the risk of this kind of sensory deprivation soft kill has also been part of the debate about procuring unmanned ground vehicles for military use. 

The comic illustrates this tactic, in addition to containing an inside joke pun for Dungeons and Dragons fans.

Military Technology Musings

Nuclear Weapons

Most of the nuclear weapons in the world are H-bombs (which create a nuclear fusion explosion from heavy hydrogen) and ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that carry H-bombs) with multiple warheads that spread out over a large area, and a much greater explosive power than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs (that created a nuclear fission explosion from uranium) that were the first and only time that nuclear weapons were used in combat in 80 years ago.

The problem with one of these typical weapons in nuclear arsenals worldwide is that blowing up everyone and everything in a major metropolitan area, irradiating that area for many years, doing significant harm to the global environmental, and risking a counterattack in kind from other nuclear powers under the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine, is almost never a militarily useful thing to do. We justify them primarily under the MAD doctrine as a way to discouraging anyone from ever using nuclear weapons.

Even for extreme military missions like "bomb Mecca", or destroying the headquarters of an enemy government in a capital where its top leaders are located, or destroying a large military base isolated from civilian populations, or penetrating deep bunkers (such as a North Korean or Iranian nuclear facility or an ICBM missile base or an underground submarine base in China), a single warhead much less potent than a typical U.S. ICBM or SLBM (submarine launched ballistic missile) and closer in explosive power to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombs, are more than adequate in terms of explosive power.

Really, the only mission for which such powerful weapons make any military sense is planetary defense, to break up a large incoming meteor or comet into small enough pieces to burn up in the atmosphere before doing serious damage, or to divert an incoming meteor or comet from a collision course with Earth, in the basically oxygen free environment of deep space.

Indeed, one of the main reasons that nuclear weapons haven't been used again for 80 years, despite the fact that quite a few countries now have them, is precisely because they aren't a good fit to any military objectives, and not because the countries that have them been particularly ethical.

Tactical nuclear weapons, such as the backpack sized "Davy Crocket" bomb from Cold War era, are another matter. These can be as potent as, or perhaps ten times as potent as the largest conventional missiles and bombs, but can be five hundred times less massive. This makes them the right size to bust deep bunkers, sink aircraft carriers and other large warships, or destroy a large dam, bridge, or military base, or a dictator's palace while the dictator and his top lieutenants are in residence, with a single blow. This could be delivered using a small hypersonic missile, or small fast supercavitating torpedo, or small stealthy drone, or a guided bomb delivered with a stealth warplane, or by special forces soldiers disguised in a civilian boat or car or ATV, that can more easily evade air defenses that could more easily intercept a conventional sized missile or conventional bomber aircraft. If one could make a tactical nuclear weapon with a much smaller yield than even the 10-20 kiloton Davy Crocket bomb, one would even use it to make much smaller anti-armor/anti-ship/anti-fortifications weapons - with a four to ten pound mini-missile doing the damage of the two thousand pound bombs that are the largest typically used by fighter aircraft and as conventional ship and submarine launched missiles.

But, the much smaller size of the bomb is less likely to provoke a civilization ending counterattack, and, particularly if it is an H-bomb that doesn't spread uranium or plutonium all over the place, leaves a much smaller area irradiated for a shorter time period and doesn't do nearly as much damage to the global environment.

What this means for policy is another matter. 

On one hand, it suggests that investing in large numbers of multiple kinds of large modernized nuclear missiles and bombs doesn't really make sense. Optimally, one wants no more of them than is necessary to present a credible MAD deterrent. Why, for example, should you have land based ICBMs at all, when they turn those bases into first priority targets in World War III and are easier to use missile defenses against than SLBMs and nuclear bombs delivered by stealth aircraft or shorter range hypersonic missiles launched from aircraft.

On the other hand, if you create a significant arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, particularly if other nations and insurgent groups follow your example, it is much more likely that they will actually be used in war. And, honestly, existing conventional bombs are more than adequate to destroy or disable that most heavily armored vehicles and all but the deepest and most secure bunkers, without crossing the line of normalizing the use of nuclear weapons in war.

Nuclear Batteries

Nuclear power for military applications has only been used for military submarines and large ships like aircraft carriers and mega-cruisers, in part, because they have been hard to scale down in size, and in part, because the nuclear materials in them could be used by an enemy, if captured, to make nuclear weapons.

But nuclear batteries, using lighter radioactive isotopes than uranium and plutonium (like thorium), that are not nearly as suitable for use in nuclear weapons, share the immense energy density of existing nuclear power plants on submarines (which use only 10 kg of fuel for decades), and large warships, and can be scaled down to arbitrarily small sizes (e.g. a pacemaker or watch or single automobile). Nuclear waste from nuclear batteries using lighter isotopes is also reputedly easier to dispose of than uranium. This has tremendous (I hesitate to use this overused phrase but it's appropriate here) game changing potential to reduce the logistics burden of military units. 

In fiction, this is basically the innovation that makes Iron Man's suit possible. 

Nuclear batteries facilitate quieter, lower maintenance, all electric military systems that don't need to be refueled for years, and that can also use that spare power to recharge electric devices in the unit and military lasers and directed energy weapons, and they allow fuel supplies to be decentralized to individual vehicles, systems, and equipment items. It generates no smoke or emissions smells. Combined with night vision, IR sensors, and LIDAR these vehicles could operate without lights at night. If a ship with a nuclear battery were sunk, it wouldn't create an oil slick that would endanger sailors who abandoned ship. 

The logistics burden involved in providing water to troops could be reduced as well. In coastal areas and at sea, it could power a desalinator, at least for showers and cleaning use, even if it wasn't good enough to make tasty water for drinking. In deserts, it could power a device to extract clean water from the air. In jungles and forests, it could power a water purifier that would allow local water supplies to be used. It could also power heat pumps in places that were too hot or too cold.

No more tanker ships. Propeller and rotor driven aircraft could dispense with aerial refueling tankers. No more vulnerable, unarmored convoys carrying diesel fuel. No more vulnerable fuel depots. No more reliance of distant fuel supplies whose prices are influenced by foreign powers who may become adverse to you.

And, because nuclear batteries can be much more compact than conventional fossil fuel tanks or chemical batteries, without sacrificing range, there is one less thing in the military system which can be easily struck causing the vehicle or military system to explode from its own fuel, because nuclear batteries are a much smaller target and, if properly designed with this risk in mind, aren't necessarily explosive if hit with a high explosive round.

Things That Are Hard To Predict

The mix of drones (armed and unarmed), guided bomb and missiles, active defenses including but not limited to directed energy weapons and jammers, new materials that could make armor lighter and stronger, hypersonic missiles, prototype "invisibility" cloaks, claimed (but not demonstrated) sensors that can penetrate radar stealth, and the use of artificial intelligence to organize information in the fog of war, identify incoming targets and respond before a human could react, and guide drones and guided munitions without active direction from a human controller and guide sniper weapons more accurate, all combine to make the future of warfare hard to predict.

Active defenses, particularly as used by Ukraine and Israel in recent conflicts, and by U.S. naval ships, have made securing air superiority much more challenging, intercept something like 85-90% of incoming missiles and drones reversing the one shot, one kill trend established by the first guided weapons, and could be the only thing that rescues tanks and fixed forward operating bases from obsolescence (while allowing the use of less armor since threats only countered by heavier armor can be actively intercepted). 

And, these are only in the early days. There is plenty of room to make interceptor munitions less expensive (particularly with directed energy weapons), to make them and their associated sensors smaller, lighter, and more secure, to increase the percentage of incoming munitions that are intercepted, and to increase their range.

On the other hand, countermeasures to active defenses, like AI guided and wire guided suicide drones that make jamming ineffective, are being developed rapidly too, out of necessity. So far, suicide drones have been mostly crude modification of commercial, off the shelf quadcopters, but there is also plenty of room to make them quieter, harder to see, and to make them harder to discern with radar and electronic signals.

Part of what makes the future course of these technologies so hard to predict is the constant, rapid Red Queen hypothesis evolution of measures and countermeasures. 

For example, recent efforts to develop rail guns with unguided rounds that rely purely on kinetic energy without resort to explosives or guidance systems, which were set aside because they were too difficult technologically, may receive renewed attention for their immunity to active defenses based upon jamming, lasers, or other directed energy weapons (like microwaves), and may be possible to scale down in size as heavier armor is abandoned in favor of active defenses.

Armed drones are much smaller and cheaper than comparable manned warplanes, warships, submarines, and military ground vehicles, and can be used to take much greater risks since the smaller ones are expendable. They have become the dominant weapons in the Ukraine War and in military encounters directly between Israel and Iran, and have been one of the primary weapons used in the war on terrorism carried out by the U.S. in the wake of 9/11. They can strike targets well beyond the range of slug throwing artillery, and can be effective in precisely striking the most vulnerable parts of moving targets whose exact location isn't known when they are launched, while reducing the risk of friendly fire.

So far, simple, remote controlled, flying drones have been predominant in military applications. But, we have seen glimpses of other possibilities. Large sophisticated drone fighter aircraft are smaller, cheaper, and capable of higher-G maneuvers and faster reaction times than manned fighter aircraft. Flying drones have been used to resupply troops in war zones in environments where there is too much enemy fire or the terrain is too difficult for conventional logistics convoys. Drone jet skis and speed boats filled with explosives have destroyed large warships in the Black Sea. Small, comparatively inexpensive, drone ships carrying anti-ship missiles in shipping containers have been successfully tested against target test ships. Small anti-personnel aerial drones carrying small arms or grenade sized munitions have been prototyped but not yet widely used, but could facilitate sniper-like tactics in conditions where these tactics were previously not viable.

Reconnaissance drones can identify enemy forces in ways that previously took much larger and more expensive helicopters, fixed wing reconnaissance aircraft, and satellites, at a cost and size that make them cost effective for even platoon or squad sized army units to use organically for themselves in real time. Coast guard cutters can use them to patrol far more of the sea at once, and more quickly and in more places at once, than any ship or boat could. Smaller battery powered reconnaissance drones can be similar in size, speed, and noise level to birds, making them harder to detect. The smallest insect-sized reconnaissance drones can enter buildings or clear anti-drone netting, undetected, aren't that expensive, are harder to shoot down if detected, and can be deployed in swarms. There have also been successful efforts to put cameras on actual roaches and other insects for tasks like locating survivors in the rubble of collapsed buildings. Small remotely monitored sensors can constantly monitor roads, bridges, fields, buildings, and ports with a much reduced risk of detection. And, unlike a human scout or forward observer, who is also easier to detect, they can't reveal many secrets, or create a POW hostage situation or casualty if they are captured.

Submarine drones can be on constant patrol for days or weeks for enemy armed submarines, sea mines, and enemy ships, or could follow enemy submarines to their hidden bases, while appearing to sensors like sea life. Submarine drones or mostly submerged drone ships can be used to smuggle supplies in interdicted waters, in the way that drug dealers have used them. Submarine suicide drones (or armed submarine drones) can be used to destroy enemy ships without being detected until it is too late, at distances far exceeding what is possible with a conventional torpedo.

Nuclear batteries could be used to create drones or remote sensors that can operate autonomously for years without human contact or maintenance.

It is hard to know what kind of balance and mix of technologies will emerge as experience and economics guide the choices that make sense as these technologies become more mature. 

For example, lots of drone and missile guidance systems (and military aircraft) are expensive to a significant extent, not because they are expensive to manufacture, but because a large premium is being paid for the intellectual property rights arising from the development process. So, a significant part of the cost barrier to their use is economic and could be addressed without any technological advancement (perhaps the military would be better off paying for R&D itself on a work for hire basis and retaining all of the intellectual property).

Things We Can Predict

This said, there are some predictions and conclusions that can be reached with some comfort:

* Tanks and conventional warships without active defenses are as obsolete against a near peer opponent as horse cavalry, warships with sails and cannons, swords, and bayonets. Howitzers and mortars throwing unguided slugs will follow soon.

* Large, mostly unarmored and undefended forward operating bases near "front lines" (such as they are), massed formations of ground troops and armored vehicles, and small pillbox type fortifications are obsolete tactics against near peer opponents.

* No armor, unaccompanied by active defenses, is effective against anti-armor weapons, which are increasingly inexpensive, light, and effective, making large, heavy military systems that rely on armor ineffective against near peer opponents. Armor pretty much only makes sense against enemy forces or insurgents or civilians with only small arms.

* The cost and availability of the weapons necessary to be effective, in a cost-effective way, against a big budget sovereign nation military force has greatly declined.

* National borders, national waters, and military tactics organized around front lines have limited relevance when long range strikes are widely available.

* Large nuclear weapons will continue to not be used because they don't serve useful military objectives.

* Biological weapons are unlikely to be widely used until they can be better controlled, because the risk of blow back to the user is great.

* Despite being lumped in with nuclear and biological weapons, chemical weapons, at least historically, have not been significantly more effective than conventional weapons, and have been amenable to effective countermeasures when they have been used like air sealed vehicles with positive air pressure, filters, protective clothing, and gas masks.

* Advances in modern military weapons have made great strides in destroying distant and armored targets, but drones, missiles, and guided bombs can't hold or control populated territory, which is one of the most common military objectives, without boots on the ground.

Ghibli v. Disney Villains

In a nutshell, this video makes the case that Disney villains are inherently evil and must be defeated and punished, while Ghibli villains are redeemable and have understandable motives but have suffered and are misunderstood. To a lesser extent DC Comics follows the Disney model and Marvel Comics follows the Ghibli model. The video argues that Ghibli villains are more realistic and creatively interesting, but acknowledges that Disney villains are cathartic, efficient, and satisfying. The video attributes the difference to a Judeo-Christian American culture compared to Japanese values rooted in Shinto religious roots (although much of that is really Confucian).

Honestly, I disagree that Ghibli villains are "more realistic".  Ghibli style villains may be more common, but Disney style villains are out there too. We call them "psychopaths" and some key distinctions in criminal law, like the distinction between 1st degree murder and 2nd degree murder, are attempts to distinguish irredeemable psychopaths from misguided or impulsive or environmentally pressured individuals who are capable of being reformed.

Anime Seasons

Japanese anime fit themselves into a rather rigid formula. 

There are four anime seasons a year: January to March, April to June, July to September, and October to December. All anime seasons run in parallel to each other. There are 12-13 episodes per season unless something went horribly wrong in the production process. Some shows that are received well will received additional seasons (although sometimes two consecutive seasons are called a single twenty-four to twenty-six episode season).

Each episode to 23-24 minutes long, including a minute and a half long intro sequence (sometimes after a cold open) and a minute and a half ending sequence (sometimes followed by a few seconds about the next episode or a post-script sequence). There is a suitable place for a commercial break about half way through. Sometime an episode is broken into two or three mini-stories with commercial break spots between them.

The evolving U.S. and streaming driven model of experimenting with series that have different lengths (even within the same series for different episodes), start at different times across the year, and can be terminated mid-season if ratings are poor, mostly hasn't spread to Japanese anime producers.

(There are also sometimes one or two 3-5 minute short episode series in a season, with the same number of episodes aired weekly, presumably distributed in a different medium.)

There are also plenty of genre and sub-genre conventions that they follow.

Anime fans decide at the beginning of each season which shows they plan to watch for the season sometimes sampling a lot of them for a week or two until they hone in on the shows that they will be following. If you dread watching the next week's episode somewhere mid-season, sometimes that show is dropped as well.

Fans generally know what they want and pick accordingly, although sometimes a highly hyped new series will lure someone who normally wouldn't watch something in that sub-genre or with its notable elements.

But, this can go awry. Suppose you like sweet, high school rom-coms. Depending on the season, there might be several of them available and standing alone, they might all be reasonably enjoyable. But if you cue up too many of them, and too few other anime types to provide variety, it can be overwhelming and you can get sugar sick from too much of a good thing.

That's me this season. 

Envy v Jealousy

 From Quantum Entanglement (Episode 11).

Quote Of The Day

Your life was quite short, and now, you are quite dead.

- Konosuba - God's Blessing On This Wonderful World! (Episode 1).

Quote Of The Day

 

From "A Terrified Teacher At Ghoul School" (Episode 9).

If Mermaids Went To School

artist: rojirojiroji

 

Hello Baby (Spoilers Below The Fold)

Hello Baby is a webcomic at Webtoons by Enjelicious, a South Korean comic author, who established herself with her first "big time" debut comic, Age Matters, which was recently completed after years of serialization. Hello Baby has been running for about six months and as I write, thirty episodes are available if you are willing to pay a modest price so you don't have to wait three weeks to read episodes for free.

Age Matters, one of the hottest titles in the romance comic genre at the time, was about a young woman filling in for a friend in her friend's job a cook and maid for a young CEO of a social media tech company who falls in love with him, that also has a strong supporting cast of secondary characters, and a backstory of melodrama involving famous models, villains motivated by jealousy and money, and rich family business chiefs looking for marriage alliances. Overall, the tone is cute and funny, if somewhat cliched. The most serious issues it explores, not very seriously, are the propriety of a woman dating a younger man, and the propriety of a woman dating her boss. It has a good chance of being made into a live action K-drama if this isn't already in the works.

Hello Baby is her sophomore romance comic effort. It is more serious, more down to Earth, and explores deeper emotions and issues related to modern marriage, parenting, love, responsibility, and our social instincts that deserve thought and discussion (but can't be discussed without revealing some spoilers from the first dozen or so episodes from what will probably be more than a hundred episodes when it's done, below the fold). It is also a huge hit and also has strong K-drama potential.

A Ms. Marvel Moment

 

Reporting The Truth Isn't Media Bias

 

The Purpose Of Writing

 

The issue isn't confined to liberal academics either. Senior military officials and large corporate bureaucracies do the same things.

What Limits The Use Of "Deepfakes"?

From here.

Quote Of The Day

From Death Rescheduled by Snailords.

Selected Fakemarks

One common literary convention in a variety of fictional settings, but especially webcomics and anime, is to avoid depicting real trademarks, to avoid promoting real companies and to avoid any claim of trademark infringement (even though "nominal use" of this type would almost never actually be infringing). 

But trademarked products are pervasive in daily life, so any reasonably realistic work of fiction in a modern setting needs to reflect this reality. This is often done with what I call "fakemarks" that may echo a real world trademark or trade name or famous title of a fictional work, or may be entirely original, for products in the fictional world depicted. Some are wry satire, others are simply phonetically or visually similar, or tweak a semantic concept in the original.

I have collected a number of examples of them, which I present below.

An Interesting Way Of Expressing Simultaneous Dialog

I'm always on the lookout for innovative ways to communicate things or literary devices that pop up in popular culture. This way of expressing simultaneous dialog in a speech bubble caught me eye today.

 From Rooftops and Roommates (Episode 94).