In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

In the week following the explosion or explosions on the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea with European Russia, there have been lots of questions and few solid answers. Initial analysis of the damage, even from informed engineers, was sanguine. For instance, as of this past Monday , Observers have been left wondering: what was the effect of the blast and fire on the surviving bridge elements, what repairs could be required, and when is it safe to re-open a bridge after such an event? As experts in bridge safety and blast engineering, we have (some) answers. . . . In structural engineering, safety is not an either-or proposition. It is measured on a continuum known as the probability of failure, or more positively, the reliability index of a structure. . . . for key bridges such as the Crimean Bridge, it may be reasonable to accept a reduced level of safety when the costs associated with a disruption are very high. Cranes have been shown lifting the fuel tanker wagon wreckage o...

The fallout from the PayPal "glitch", whereby they announced they would debit customer accounts up to $2500 directly for publishing "misinformation", continues. Do not take their $15 bribe. Delete your PayPal account. https://t.co/lFd7QBxG7M — Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) October 13, 2022 Despite this, however, it sounds as though PayPal has been experiencing an effective bank run : Following the trend to boycott PayPal, some users were having a problem closing their accounts. One user commented, “Endless hours chatting with the support here. Some people are able to close it in seconds. Others it takes weeks. Criminal.” Another said, “Looks like they’ve disabled Account Closure over at Paypal to prevent customers exiting their platform. No doubt there’ll be the usual corporate-speak on “temporary technical issue” inbound.” Well, consumers aren't stupid. When I began to research this issue, I discovered information that was already in the public doma...

As I've been saying, since late February, Ukraine President Zelensky has been setting a de facto agenda for the Western response to the invasion, and if he doesn't get what he wants right away, he gets it later. Sec Austin's remarks (translated back to English from a Ukrainian report at the link) at the start of yesterday's Ramstein conference reflect this state of affairs: In Brussels on October 12, the next Ramstein meeting brought together defense ministers from about 50 countries to discuss assistance to Ukraine. Opening the meeting, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin stated that the dynamics of the war unleashed by the Kremlin had changed. He stressed the serious progress of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in this conflict, Dialog.UA reports . . . . He stressed that the Ukrainian troops changed the dynamics of the war by seizing the initiative from the occupier. It seems to me that Sec Austin is talking about two dynamics. Ukraine seized the initiative a few mont...

I said yesterday that Volodymyr Zelensky is the de facto leader of the free world. Elsewhere I've maintained the point that he makes proposals that at first seem out of bounds -- longer range missiles like HIMARS, for instance -- but are eventually approved, often in unofficial ways, by Western countries. So far in every case, Ukraine has made effective use of them, which gives him more credibility with each subsequent proposal. I complained yesterday, as I've complained before, that there's been no Roosevelt equivalent who can lead a Western consensus on what a world would look like after the Axis forces, or in this case, the Russian bloc, is defeated, even though the Russo-Ukraine war almost immediately turned into a proxy conflict between Russia and the West, with the effective defeat of Russia as a geopoliical force the inevitable outcome. I had an instinctive sense that Zelensky might provide a substitute in his address to the emergency meeting of the G7 yesterda...

Let's get real. The de facto leader of the free world is Volodymyr Zelensky. For now, everyone else is in reactive mode, and the whole subtext for the rest is what they can send Zelensky in the way of second-tier NATO weapons that won't provoke Putin to use nukes. The result is a slo-mo collapse of the former Russian empire, done on the cheap. It's generally understood, based on the unofficial threat from Gen Petraeus more than a week ago, that if NATO were to step in with more advanced weapons, the war would end in a matter of days. So the state of the game is Putin loses more or less slowly, or he loses right away, nukes or not. Conversely, Zelensky wins slowly as Western leaders gradually recognize that Putin has no credible response to their weapons, or Zelensky wins quickly when Putin makes some last, critical miscalculation, and either NATO ships long range missles, F-16s, Panthers, or whatever else, or NATO steps in directly. For now, the clearest potential Puti...

Two big events in the social media-tech world went mostly unmentioned over the past weekend. On YouTube, a large number of channels covering the Russo-Ukraine War was demonetized without notice on Saturday morning . The link quotes Denys Davydov, one of those demonetized and a very prominent YouTuber, saying his channel was demonetized because it "exploits, dismisses, or condones the war". The YouTuber at the link says, So, his daily update videos were averaging about one million views -- one million views in one day -- this makes Denys Davydov one of the largest creators on YouTube, I'm not even joking. But he was entirely kicked out of the YouTube adsense, because he operates more than one channel. He also has the channel Pilot Blog that has over a million subscribers, has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine on this channel, this is his pilot and travel channel, and this was also demonetized. So, it wasn't the channel, it was Denys who was demonetized. Ano...

In this post, I advanced my theory that, as a result of the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal followed by the public disagreement over sending Polish Migs to Ukraine, the lizard people through the agency of Antony Blinken told President Brandon that he was not to interfere in Ukraine policy, and in addition, he was not to say anything about the conflict that had not been previously drafted and approved by Secs Blinken and Austin -- and in addition, when he delivered any such approved statements, he was to deliver them without deviation. (A normal president, even a Donald Trump, would understand this implicitly. The problem with Brandon isn't medical, it's the Dunning-Kruger effect -- he thinks he's the smartest guy in the room.) A data point emerged yesterday that, at least for me, confirms this: Canadian [sic] socialist tyrant Emmanuel Macron is spending the weekend in Prague, attending a European Union summit along with other NATO leaders. During one press g...