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Sunday’s Forum
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35 responses to “Sunday’s Forum”
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The headline of the day- US inserts itself into Israel’s war with Iran, striking 3 Iranian nuclear sites
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“Netanyahu manipulates Trump into entering Israel’s war with Iran” would be a rather more accurate headline IMO.
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The Florida headline of the day- Brother and sister compete for Florida state senate seat in a sibling showdown
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Some old thoughts on moments like this. The TL:DR version:
Congress’ unwillingness to insist on its war powers has been perverting the US Constitutional order for decades. That cravenness led, in the 2000s, to perversions like “the unitary executive,” “enemy combatants,” and wars for which no one could craft a clear definition of victory. Today, while Congress remains mostly silent, with barely a mumble about its Constitutional duties, the current occupant is capable of far worse illegal and unconstitutional actions than anything George W. Bush and company conceived.
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Today, while Congress remains mostly silent, with barely a mumble about its Constitutional duties, the current occupant is capable of far worse illegal and unconstitutional actions than anything George W. Bush and company conceived.
This is how progress–which is always a mixed blessing at best– works. We’ve conditioned ourselves to notions of “the march of progress” and “creative destruction” as both inevitable and positive. Welcome to progress marching to non-creative deconstruction. This, too, is progress.
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@Kathy:
Whatever a “direct hit” might mean, would a bomb actually destroy The U-235 or just scatter it. That’s the crux of my question. -
Every commercial break for Game 7 tonight is going to be telling me how dangerous this guy is to the city, Jewish people, the United States, and Israel. I don’t think Zohran Mamdani is going to pull it off and defeat Cuomo. Mamdani has his flaws. I think Brad Lander is the better candidate. And Cuomo has too much name recognition and he’s dialed into the city’s political establishment.
People like Mamdani, though. The negative attacks are working for pundits and rich men and that’s about it. If Cuomo wins, mainstream Democrats who listen to pundits and rich guys are going to walk away with what they want to hear: which is that their form of creepiness is actually a winning message.
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@Bobert:
Just scatter it.
The main target of the operation will be, not the uranium as such, but the means for enriching it to over 90% U235 versus U238 isotopes. -
@Bobert:
Strictly speaking, matter can neither be created nor destroyed. So, no 🙂
Seriously, it depends on whether any was in there. I’m not sure how enriched uranium is stored, just that it can be tricky (ie get too much of it together in one place and you’ll get a chain reaction).
I should think safeguarding the uranium was done soon after the first Israeli bombs fell.
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EXCLUSIVE: The Onion calls out ‘cowardice’ of Congress in full-page NYT ad
Onion: https://theonion.com/
Who’d a thunk that we’d need to turn to the Onion for rational journalism.
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@Kathy:
Strictly speaking, matter can neither be created nor destroyed.
Just rearranged sometimes. Like in my bestselling book.
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Pet peeve du jour: Apple Music often has only the extended edition of albums for streaming, so the “zone out for one album’s worth of music while doing something” strategy fails as the album stretches into its third hour and you suddenly pop back into reality and realize that you’re listening to the studio outtake version of a song that was a b-side, remixed by Dr. Disco or something.
Also, as much as I love Whitesnake, there is no world in which a Whitesnake Essentials playlist should be two and a half hours long.
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@Gustopher: You just don’t love Whitesnake as much as you say you do. For shame.
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@DK: the Whitesnake Essentials playlist doesn’t even have “Belgian Tom’s Hat Trick”, but does have every song from the eponymous Whitesnake album except one, and half of Slip Of The Tongue. So there’s plenty of padding.
The song missing from Whitesnake is “Crying In The Rain ‘87”, as the original 1982 version is included instead.
(Yes, Whitesnake was sometimes a Whitesnake cover band — some of their biggest hits were previously recorded by Whitesnake.)
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Meanwhile, the LGBTQ+ is seeing rifts appear
An even more strongly worded comment comes from JR Colorado: “Please, WaPo, stop referring to LGBTQ+ as a monolithic group. Many gay and lesbians do not consider ourselves part of the LGBTQ+. We’ve been turned into pawns for the TQ, who are in turn are destroying the many advances in gay rights over recent decades. The two have nothing to do with each other, and the TQ has made me as a gay man very resentful of their overreach, aggressively mean and illogical stance on women and children. I want nothing to do with TQ and I don’t care if they call me transphobic.”
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@JKB:
It never has been an ideological monolith, outside of the paranoia of some on the right, and the rather delusional hopes of some on the left.
This should hardly be a surprise.
The same has applied to almost every political tendency in history.People have varying opinions and priorities. People are like that.
Big deal.
News at 11. -
@JKB: Ah well. If there’s a strongly worded comment online somewhere from some anonymous unseen person identifying themselves as notable and legendary leader of the gay community JRColorado — successor to Harvey Milk — the LGBTQ community must surely be on the verge of a crackup.
Awaiting further confirmation and instructions from Dr@gR@ceFanboi1988 and Maddy_CatPics0697.
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@Gustopher:
Never mind that, why does Qobuz “albums like this”, after playing Pink Floyd, suggest Abba’s Greatest Hits?
lol -
@Kathy:
That’s a good point. We have no way of assessing if we got the stash at 60%, which wouldn’t take much volume. Maybe a few hundred pounds, and as that is close to 95% of the way to weapon-grade, it should not take the massive facilities (we bombed) to finish. Seems unlikely Iran would store that anywhere near a known facility, which does still allow inspectors from time to time.What would Winston Wolf say?
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@Kathy:
Safeguarding the uranium that was in the centrifuges is going to be a non-trivial undertaking.
Safeguarding other enriched uranium stocks will be easier.
But given the evidenced extent of Israeli and US penetration of Iranian command channels, may not be secure.And so long as the enrichment is short of 90%, and isotopic separation is not available, it really does not matter, in the short run.
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@dazedandconfused:
Getting an enrichment to 90%+ from 60% is easier than getting to 60%
Enrichment has a “difficulty curve”: getting to 5% is hard, but doable.
Getting to over 20% is very hard indeed.
But after that it becomes easier.But the process still requires isotopic separation, which by its nature, to produce weapons level quantities entails a lot of plant and power.
There are reasons why becoming a nuclear weapons state entails considerable effort and expense.
Gunpowder it ain’t. -
@JKB: Congratulations, you have found the Log Cabin Republicans!
They’re like the light-brown white supremacists.
They think that if they hate someone the right wing hates, they will be welcomed, from gay republicans to off-white supremacists, to black republicans. I don’t think this calculation has ever worked out for any group of people — individuals can cash in (see Williams, Candice), but most people get crushed.
That said, if you feel like exploring your sexuality, the Log Cabin Republicans would likely be welcoming.
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@Gustopher: JKB just found out today that Trump won 13% of the queer vote. Apparently, this means the 85% who voted for Harris are just barely holding back some massive rupture or something.
Candace doesn’t hate blacks, she just loves money more than black people, America, white people, democracy and basically anything else besides the sound of her own voice. Candace was a vocal anti-Trumper until she figured out she could get rich by telling stupid and gullible racists what they want to hear. That’s no longer growth industry for her, apparently, because now suddenly she’s back on the anti-Trump train. Scam scam scam.
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@JohnSF: The large plants and big power are needed to reduce thousands of tons of raw material to a few hundred pounds of 60%. There seems no need for large installations to handle a few hundred pounds of material. As you said, it gets easier. Particularly concealment.
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There seems no need for large installations to handle a few hundred pounds of material. As you said, it gets easier. Particularly concealment.
But the last stages still require quite large infrastructure.
I at one time (c.2003) had a Excel table with the estimates of energetic requirement of x isotoptic separation input at various levels of enrichment for y given mass U235 output at 90%.
Seems to have got lost, many years ago.
But I do recall the basics: such separation aka enrichment is easier given a highly enriched feedstock.
It is still not a simple process.
It still requires large amounts of U input, and is an energy pig process.
It’s much easier than getting to 50%; but that’s a bit like saying a catalytic cracking oil refinery is “easy” to set up.
The “easy” is rather arbitrary. -
@dazedandconfused:
“Just bury the bodies where they won’t look.” ? -
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