Pelagic

Pretty good take here in the sense that various actions by Ukraine over the last few weeks/month have been enabling operations for this strike. Lots of videos out there of both the S-400 radar station being taken out a few weeks ago and HIMARs strikes on various mobile radar stations along the Black Sea coast in Russian occupied Kherson. https://x.com/general_ben/status/1701934174209221082?s=20

Dan Carlin's Wrath of the Khan's episodes are a bit more than the average podcast, like most of his other series in Hardcore History. I think that particular series is either 4 or 5 episodes, each 2 hours long or so. He explores some of the what ifs had the Mongols gotten into Europe, like would their horses that were adapted to the Eurasian steppe have been able to find sufficient forage to continue their rapid advance. European warfare at the time was also rather siege centric with defensive fortifications and siege warfare being the name of the game in many conflicts, could a smaller Mongol army enjoy success if forced into prolonged siege warfare. Just a few of the thought experiments he gets into that history will likely never know the answer to. In any case, I highly recommend his series, they bring a lot of life to the topics he covers.

Great episode of Odd Lots on Tractor Supply $TSCO and how they cultivate extremely knowledgeable staff. I've never been in one but sounds like a store I'd enjoy. The chicken swaps anecdote where TSCO's parking lot essentially becomes a local marketplace for hobby farmers was fascinating too.

Exactly. Furthermore, Ukraine has been using GMLRS to hunt Russian individual pieces of artillery for the last few months quite successfully. GMLRS and other smart artillery munitions provided by the west combined with reconnaissance drones have proven very effective against Russia's artillery (as have Ukrainian FPV drones). The idea that Russia maintains some massive advantage in terms of artillery capabilities has been wrong for at least 6 months, probably longer if you look at the logistical challenges Russia faced once western GMLRS started targeting their supply depots. Ukraine is also using precision strikes to target Russian air defense systems, I saw a stat where since May, Russia has lost more air defense systems than throughout the rest of the war combined. I suspect this is being done to allow close air support to strike with extended range JDAMs that they've received, which will pack more of a punch on fortified Russian positions than any of the artillery Ukraine has available.

Here's a fun one.

Convert it all into a fancy new railgun and you're set.

I saw that, will have to check them out when I get a chance. This first season of Silo definitely leaves the viewer with a lot of questions.

Silo on AppleTV is great, a dystopian detective series set in a fallout shelter.

The peloton app is great for this, they have tons of 10-15 min workouts with weights. Very little rest between sets in their shorter classes and depending on the weight you decide to go with they can be pretty intense.

I was watching that video last night @Luca, at 19:10 he mentions that OceanGate's CEO deliberately chose not to utilize voice communication with the surface vessel because of concerns about them interrupting the experience aboard the submersible.

It's always fun dropping divers in the water and them popping up in unexpected places when they're done. On deep wrecks it can get interesting quick, you try to keep the boat over the wreck or ideally over their bubbles as best as possible but the current they're dealing with at depth can be counter to what you're experiencing on the surface. The variables are only magnified by a wreck in 12,000' vs. 120'. Thinking about it now, I'm actually curious how much goes into calculating the optimal position to launch the submersible "up-current" before it descends or if they simply let the sub's propulsion handle any current. It does seem though they should have had a good idea of where it was when it lost contact with them, they were likely tracking it on the ship's sonar. Apparently the mothership provides steering directions to the submersible and loss of contact between the two was fairly common.

Apparently on a previous trip last year the sub was "lost" on the surface for 5 hours while the mothership searched for it. One would hope they learned from that experience last year to have a better way of locating it on the surface.

Good read on some of the issues with the materials involved in its construction. Even if the controller failed, it seems the sub is slightly positively buoyant so in such a scenario it should be floating somewhere on the surface by now. https://newrepublic.com/post/173802/missing-titanic-sub-faced-lawsuit-depths-safely-travel-oceangate

This is a fun read. I got a bit of Theranos vibes from it since it seems like at no point did anyone stop and actually do the math on how much energy the square footage of solar panels on each trailer could actually generate. To say nothing of all the production and financial shenanigans. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/06/dc-solar-power-ponzi-scheme-scandal/673782/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Isn't the likely explanation for this the various VIP visits where special forces are involved in planning and security for the visit? Seems a bit of a stretch to think the US or UK is sending special forces teams to fight Russian troops while at the same time refusing to provide Ukraine fighter planes or longer range munitions for fear of escalation.

Well short of the NATO goal of 2% of GDP but still your point stands, even if it was around 2% of GDP at 85B, 15B would be a meaningful percent. I guess the best explanation is a lot of that 15B would be going to German manufacturers to build modern German equipment for their own military to replace current stock being sent to Ukraine.

The German government said a couple days ago they expect the war to last several years and want to increase their support from around 3B per year to 15B. https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/germany-hoping-increase-military-aid-174914484.html Meanwhile France is considering buying back Mirage fighter jets it sold to UAE to send to Ukraine. What governments end up spending a couple percent of their defense budget on and what a vocal portion of their constituency want them to do are often very different things. I think better framing and more accurate accounting of aid provided would help supporters case, at least among those who are undecided or supportive of the current level of aid but wary of additional aid. For example almost everyone I've talked to who is against supporting Ukraine thinks the US is simply giving them cash which is then lost to corruption. That the vast majority of aid comes in the form of actual military supplies, a lot of which are past their prime, is lost on many of those opposing further aid. There's also an incentive structure at work that makes inflating the cost of materiel provided beneficial, both for those providing it as a show of support and a way to flex their soft power to other countries - China mainly, and for Ukraine as a way to play supporting countries against each other and encourage them to provide more.

This is an interesting thread on the "social media risk" aspect that is somewhat unique to SIVB. Any other banks that have this kind of risk in their depositor base? SIVB seems like it was hyper concentrated not only geographically but also in terms of catering primarily to one industry, that also happens to itself be incredibly interconnected so news travels fast, a lot faster than it might in a regionally concentrated community bank.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-25/offshore-wind-auction-raises-4-4-billion-to-topple-u-s-record Some serious money being spent for these leases. I have to wonder what the timeline looks like for companies that just won. How long until they're achieving full production from the leases they just won, much less what their payback time looks like. Certainly a long road ahead both in terms of regulatory approval and actual construction and installation. On the flip side, could this be like the Ghawar Field of offshore wind? Relatively shallow depth, well understood wind patterns, and most importantly, close to massive demand.

How does this work from your broker's perspective, are they treating it like a covered call?

What is that turbine going into? The irony of the whole turbine vs. diesel argument that has cropped up in recent weeks is very few involved in it seem to acknowledge that Ukraine already operates tanks with gas turbines in variants of the T-80. Most Ukrainian made T-80s are diesel while Russia went with the gas turbine in some of their variants, but Ukraine also had some domestic T-80 production that utilized turbine engines. It's likely they'd pull from their forces that already utilize these to train on the Abrams. https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/01/19/ukrainian-paratroopers-prefer-their-speedy-t-80bv-tanks/?sh=364c461c2207 Also of note is Poland donating 60 of their PT-91s which are a modernized variant of the T-72 platform. While not to the same level as the western tanks Ukraine will receive in the coming months, they're likely quite a bit more capable than a lot of the other Russian variants on the battlefield currently. And, almost completely lost in the news cycle of late that has focused on the tank debate, is the UK sending 600 more Brimstone missiles to Ukraine, arguably one of the most advanced weapon systems in Ukraine currently.

Thought this was funny.

I guess whoever's in charge of Russian air defense has similar thoughts. If it works it works I guess, although you'd think to defend Moscow Russia has better options... Personally I think there might be an unspoken agreement between Ukraine and western Allies to only target clear military targets inside Russia. Russia's oil infrastructure would certainly make for a compelling target, and Ukraine has targeted some closer to the front with their "Alibaba drones".

Thanks @Xerxes interesting article. There was video circulating today of the mobile launch trailer that Tu-141s are towed around on. I hadn't realized they were launched like that, much like the Iranian Shahed-131s in that regard, it's very difficult to target the launcher.

Most of the ammo Ukraine has destroyed in the major ammo dump explosions you'll see highlighted on twitter, reddit, etc. is of the "dumb" variety. MLRS rockets, artillery shells, stuff like that. The precision stuff is kept and launched from well inside Russia - usually by their strategic bomber force. Hence why Ukraine has tried to target them on the ground with long range drones a couple times. I think the west's intelligence agencies underestimated Russia's ability to produce precision weapons and/or overestimated the impacts of sanctions on that production. Russia has decades worth of precision weapons stockpiled. For instance the Kh-22 that struck the apartment complex in Dnipro is a naval asset designed for use against carriers that first entered service in the 60s, it's not particularly precise but it has a massive warhead and is capable of mach 4+ making it a lot harder to intercept than the usual sub-sonic cruise missiles fired in barrages against Ukraine. Launching strikes of 100+ missiles at a time in an attempt to overwhelm Ukrainian air defense takes a toll on their stockpiles, they may not run out in the sense they can't fire any but their ability to sustain that kind of mass strike against Ukrainian infrastructure is limited. They'll be down to what they can produce monthly, which is likely around 30 or so. Probably add to that some conversion taking place from missiles that were armed with nuclear warheads to convert them to put them in service as conventional weapons.