Agiel

Finland Has Taco Bell Now And it Serves... Oats?

Decided to spoil myself of the Battlefront 2 story...

Interesting related fact: Back in 1986 the first hint the outside world had that something very wrong had happened at Chernobyl was when some workers at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden came back from a smoke break and set off alarms for the radiation portal monitors meant to prevent workers from taking radiological materiel_outside_ the plant; radiological materiel from Chernobyl Reactor #4 had gotten all over the shoes of the workers. Seems apropos that in this instance the country that relies the most on nuclear power plants for its base power needs were the first to catch on to this phenomenon.

Someone repeatedly tried to log into my Blizzard account today. Perhaps he was expecting I was loaded with tons of sick Overwatch skins or something, but had he succeeded he would be disappointed to only find that the only things of any particular worth are some avatars in Starcraft 2 and a circa 2004 WoW account with only one level 60 character.

Somehow I think Trump has an even more contemptuous attitude towards provincials than Bill Hicks, though likely couched more in his own overly-inflated sense of self-worth:

Of note that this is the first serious ground-based air-defence acquisition by Sweden in close to half a century.

New algorithm helps turn low-resolution images into detailed photos, ‘CSI’-style I guess that brings us one step closer to that Bladerunner cyberpunk future.

Awaiting Trump's coal comeback, miners reject retraining Honestly baffling that either they didn't have parents who told them "I go down to the mines so that when you grow up you don't have to" or they were too thick in the head not to listen.

Finished Stranger Things, idle thoughts:

Because it has long since been debunked, it's the latter. Where is the debunk part in the link? Libsyn podcast link at the very top. The Lawfare blog goes further into this. But if you wanted to know the crux of the argument in short contrary to Trump's claims during the election the uranium, if it ever were to go to Russia (which it wouldn't, as Arms Control Wonk and Lawfare explains, the ore was for sale within US borders), was unlikely to be used in nuclear weapons in large part because growth of the Russian strategic arsenal are capped at current levels due to treaty obligations. Even its modernisation program would either use warheads or fissile materiel from older weapons (the focus of modernisation efforts are launch platforms and the mechanisms surrounding the "pits" pf the weapons, which are generally quite stable; plutonium cores for instance are good for at least 80 years after processing). In fact, there was a time when Russia and the other former SSRs were selling HEU to the US like it was going out of style. All of it was blended down into LEU for use in nuclear reactors (as Jeffrey Lewis notes, during the Megatons to Megawatts program one in ten American lightbulbs was lit by power generated from former Soviet nuclear weapons). Further, the fact that it was a Russian SOE that was purchasing ownership of the mine is not quite as alarming as some make it out to be. Yes, the company is a state-owned enterprise, but so is at least 70% of the entire Russian economy. Yes, because it is state owned it could bow to pressure from the Kremlin to limit output or send proceeds from sales into the Kremlin's coffers, but the operative word is that the mine represents 20% of US uranium _output_, which is different from total US _reserves_. As the US is similarly not growing its warhead count (unless Trump's "Let there be an arms race" bears out) and most power companies are switching over to natural gas for power plants rather than refurbishing old nuclear plants and bringing them up to modern safety standards there isn't a huge demand for uranium for nuclear power plants, so much of the United States' uranium supply is simply left untapped. Put another way the US is not in danger of suddenly having its uranium reserves severely limited if for some reason the demand for them were to skyrocket.

Because it has long since been debunked, it's the latter.

Should note that there isn't any particularly deep meaning behind the reporting names for helicopters, as long as it's a noun in the English dictionary that starts with "H". Not all of them particularly dignified (my favourite being "Hormone" for the Ka-25).

Wonder if all the off-monitors at work tomorrow are going to have Netflix open for them.

The finally...

Same. The authors seem to believe that the equation for "Centrism" means that all answers have to be binary and whatever they are cancel each other out.

My dad is a proud Angeleno with a burning hot hatred for the Yankees and all things New York (the way he described his brief stay in the city makes me believe his experience was akin to that of Homer Simpson's), so unfortunately for him he won't be seeing his dream 7th World Series game of them shutting down the Yankees called by Vin Scully.

Vermintide 2 revealed: Fingers crossed for a Shadowdancer career, which is probably as close to my dream Warhammer 40K game where you play as an Eldar Harlequin as I'm going to get.

Trump's seeming indifference to the 41 and counting deaths in the NorCal fires doesn't bode well for the people of South Korea.

OK, either this is treason and US military has a much bigger problem than Trump plans to expand nuclear arsenal or the story is a complete hoax. Have our priorities skewed here, huh? The cabinet undermining a President's nuclear policy is not without precedent (and contrary to what is in the movies, or what may seem logical in the post-Cold War era, there is absolutely no democratic firewall between the President post-inauguration and the men turning keys). If anything it is Trump who has been undermining the long-term strategy laid out by his own generals with his tweets if Dunford's words on North Korea and Iran's compliance with the JCPOA are anything to go by. As for hoax, well, Trump has said himself that he wants to see an expansion of the nuclear arsenal. It matters little whether or not he intends ten times as many the US has now or even a, say, 25% increase. It's a beyond moronic proposition given the extreme cost associated not only building up the necessary infrastructure for building new bombs but also the delivery platforms for them when current forces as noted in the article above more than suffice, especially if it cannibalises funding for other critical programs (Ballistic Missile Defence against a North Korean ICBM, tanks and fighters to defend the Międzymorze portion of NATO, and ships in the South China Sea).

Re: Trump's desire to expand the US nuclear arsenal ten-fold, courtesy of the Federation of American Scientists -

Didn't really get why they decided to nerf the Bone Spider. It costs 3 AP to cast and the thing has no magical armour.