Gongol.com Archives: April 2019
April 11, 2019
The US armed forces don't "get a little rough" like the President wants
One of the virtues of an all-volunteer force seems to be that you can select for adherence to a professional code of conduct. Officers and enlisted members alike are supposed to not only observe the Law of Armed Conflict, but they're also told to study professional reading lists. That's because we don't employ tribes of unfettered barbarians to do violence against others just for fun.
"'Paw Patrol' is a threat to democracy"
Hilarious material: "Watching him try to one-up Goodway is like watching Mr. Bean from the villain’s perspective, except Mr. Bean is somehow the smartest person in his universe."
Lightning strikes the runway at Offutt
Offutt's runway may not be cursed, but God sure seems to be exacting a vendetta against it. This follows a 2017 tornado and colossal flooding earlier this year.
Brexit gets an October reschedule
Perhaps Britain will get its act together on leaving the EU before the extended October deadline. Or maybe not: "The timetable facing [Theresa] May is tight, however. By May 22nd she must say if the UK will hold European Parliament elections. If not, it is out by June 1st, with no deal."
Rockets landing right-side up don't even look real
The SpaceX technology that permits their rockets to land themselves on a platform is really quite mind-boggling. It looks almost like reality, but it seems to violate all of the rules we know about nature and physics -- like a CGI character in the uncanny valley.
International trade has changed a lot in just 10 or 15 years
Cheap labor is disappearing as a competitive advantage (and as a driver of trade). Time to market has adjusted advantages considerably. China is consuming much more of what it produces than it used to. And services matter far more than they did in international trade not very many years ago. Among other things, this makes regional trade more important while making long-haul transoceanic trade less valuable.
Alexa recordings are being checked by humans
Amazon, of course, assures users that the identifying information is being scrubbed before humans review the recordings. And furthermore, on one hand, it's pretty obvious that they have to do away least some human checking, just for quality control. Yet on the other hand, this still has a creepy Mechanical-Turk-meets-George-Orwell quality to it.
A native of Morocco wants to open a restaurant...in Marshalltown, Iowa. Don't fall for the false arguments that immigration makes American culture weaker.
I-29 still isn't fully ready for traffic in southwestern Iowa
Flood damage is significant and widespread, and the requisite inspections haven't been completed yet
"Redistribution for thee, but not for me!"
The money Sen. Bernie Sanders got as an advance on a book deal reveals a certain hypocrisy to the old Socialist's words
