Nothing locks up like a stolen $300,000 John Deere combine shipped by Russian invaders to Chechnya.
What would be best would be if these stolen vehicles could go on some sort of Killdozer rampage. Or just burn themselves up. But turning themselves into bricks is a nice start. Sure, the thieves will simply take them to a chop shop and make some money on the spare parts (something Russian farmers are going to need since doubtless John Deere customer support is likely thin on the ground in Russia these days), but they won’t do near as well as if they’d had functional equipment.
YouTube has for several months kept suggesting videos on “nuclear diamond batteries.” Most of the videos I’ve glanced at looked like clickbaity rubbish about fraudulent pseudoscience… and ever now and then I briefly watch one of the videos, and they kinda don’t disappoint.
The Nuclear Diamond Battery itself seems a reasonable enough idea. Small quantities of some radioactive substance such as Carbon 14 or Nickel 63 are formed into thin films and sandwiched between thin films of diamond semiconductors. The radioactive element emits beta radiation – high energy electrons. The electrons are captured and converted to electricity by something akin to a photoelectic cell. The radiation is captured and prevented from escaping, and in the process converted to electricity… sounds like a winner, right? And apparently prototypes have been built that work. And thus we get videos like this:
The video promises batteries that are safe and last for thousands of years. And while this seems to be true, there is one problem that these sort of videos tend to not mention. From the Wikipedia article on the subject:
In 2018, researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), the Technological Institute for Superhard and Novel Carbon Materials (TISNCM), and the National University of Science and Technology (MISIS) announced a prototype using 2-micron thick layers of 63Ni foil sandwiched between 200 10-micron diamond converters. It produced a power output of about 1 μW at for power density of 10 μW/cm3.
That’s ten *micro* Watts per cubic centimeter. A battery one meter on a side (which, using the density of diamond of 3.5 g/cm3, would mass 3,500 kilograms) would produce a power output of… ten Watts. Granted, it would do so for thousands of years but… ten fricken Watts. The Tesla Model S has a total motor output of 615,000 Watts. Such a car would require a Nuclear Diamond Battery with a volume of 61,500 cubic meters, massing somewhere in the vicinity of two hundred thousand *tons.* The Seawise Giant, the largest supertanker in history, could carry two of these batteries.
This saber was made by the Rock Island Arsenal with an additional feature not normally found on swords: a 1911 pistol. I can see this going kinda wrong, but I still kinda want to give it a shot. Clearly it was not adopted for use; it’s practicality is to be seriously doubted. I wonder if the people behind it made it hoping it would be a practical weapon, or if they did it purely as a conversation piece… or as a joke.
This sort of thing is not new… I recall seeing drones like this being used like this in the middle east a few years ago. I imagine China is thrilled that they are unwittingly serving as arms dealers for the forces opposing Russia… and giving ideas to those who may soon have to face Chinese forces.
Also notice: that looked like it was, before the invasion, a pretty nice house. Russia will have one *hell* of a reconstruction bill when all this is done.
Come Back Alive fund showed work of Mavic 3 drone which they upgraded. (It costs only $3000).
The fund not only bought 17,000 body armor, 3,500 optics, 77 vehicles and more since 24 Feb but also created many IT and technical upgrades for🇺🇦armyhttps://t.co/o77FjneGq2pic.twitter.com/u0RZqqTv9b
I suspect the bomb that was dropped was a fairly simple explosive, basically a hand grenade or small mortar round.For anti-infantry purposes, this works: the video shows one guy likely killed, another guy crawling away and then stopping, either injured or dead. What you *want* is a weapon that injures as many as possible, but not necessarily kills. The dead are dead… but the injured are costly liabilities, requiring resources and personnel to take care of.
But imagine if it was a shaped-charge warhead, perhaps taken from an RPG… and smuggled into a port city such as Sevastopol where cruise missiles are being loaded onto submarines. Poke a few holes in a surfaced and docked sub and boy, you might really make a mess. If you can penetrate the torpedo compartment (honestly, I suspect it would take a fairly massive warhead to do that, but who knows) or zap a cruise missile… scratch one sub, and block one dock.
🇷🇺submarine stroke Ukraine with cruise missiles. Reportedly this is the 1st time🇷🇺military used submarine strikes agst🇺🇦–Reuters
A satellite image collected this morning revealed the loading of probable Kalibr missiles on Kilo-class submarine in Black Sea Sevastopol port @Maxarpic.twitter.com/7n1CQR5GxJ
An armor-penetrating bomb would be useful for taking out tanks like this one that spent a good long while destroying a building that apparently had a number of civilians sheltering in the basement:
🇷🇺tank in Mariupol destroys residential building where ~20 civilians hid in basement; then, occupiers herd survivors in unknown direction
"A visual explanation why Mariupol civilians R afraid to leave basements, don't believe 🇷🇺 on safe evacuation from the city" – Azov Regiment https://t.co/2wyLwhdwcv
The news out of China, in particular Shanghai, is just bizarre. The governments extraordinarily draconian lockdown just doesn’t make sense on the face of it. It seems nuts. But the video below presents a few theories that *do* make it make a bit of sense. The first is that Xi is simply stubborn, and that saving face – either of the man himself or of The Party – trumps reason. But the last theory is the most disturbing… and it seems pretty believable: the havoc and despair produced by these policies is intentional because it’s a test. If China invades Taiwan like Russia invaded Ukraine, the worlds response would be similar: an economic lockdown of China. How would China’s cities respond to suddenly no longer having income? When all the factories shut down and nobody is working, how bad will it have to get before the citizens rise up or die en masse? China is also hoarding food supplies as if they are preparing for something major.
Some people wonder why the West should give a damn about Ukraine. *This* is part of the reason why: if large dictatorships see that they can invade and conquer without meaningful pushback, they’ll do it again and again until they *do* get pushback.
Casual Geographic explains succinctly and entertainingly why some species are more important than others. Spoiler warning: humans do a dandy job of wiping out those important species.
The best of the Russian military seem to be getting smacked about by *farm* equipment. I saw these sort of vehicles all over rural Utah; they are great for tooling around farms, ranches, small towns. And now it seems like they’re great for mounting smallish anti-tank missile launchers and crew served machine guns and harassing million-dollar main battle tanks.
They’re cheap, fast, maneuverable, cheap, maintainable/repairable and cheap. Being small, they’re probably a *little* hard to hit. And I’ve little doubt that rural Ukraine is as filled with them as rural Utah is.
#Ukraine: A curious buggy (all terrain vehicle) armed with a Stugna-P anti-tank guided missile was recently destroyed in the vicinity of Izium, #Kharkiv Oblast. Such vehicles are currently used by many Ukrainian hit-and-run and raid teams in the region. pic.twitter.com/6JW9FbDpLB
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 28, 2022
The uncomfortably-named “Padraig Belton” who works for the BBC came to the US and forgot that the US doesn’t have British power outlets, so he went to WalMart. He reported on twitter his findings.
There are times when I really, REALLY miss Utah. Where the local grocery store sold ammo and magazines, but if I wanted pistols, shotguns and AR-15s I’d have to walk all the way next door to the Ace Hardware.
So this 16-year-old decides to steal a car. While being chased by the police, he decides the thing to do is to bail out of the passenger side… while the car is still going at a pretty good rate of speed, with the result that he’s spun like a ragdoll. At the time he was wearing a neck brace due to an injury he’d received from a prior car theft escapade. He has apparently *several* recent arrests related to car theft.
So, the question: what good could come from this fine young gentleman ever being released back into society? Can any valid argument be made for something other than permanent incarceration, deportation or execution? Is there any possibility that someone with this combination of criminality *and* mind-boggling stupidity ever contributing positively to society? Or would the community and the gene pool be best served by him being removed from it before he could do more damage?
In the process of bailing out he let his car continue down the road unmanned. Passing over the median and crashing head-on into another vehicle, potentially killing people, is a very real prospect. Consequently, IMO he should be charged with attempted murder. And since I see no reason to be lenient with *incompetent* murderers compared to successful ones, I see no reason why he should avoid the maximum punishment meted out to murderers.
