Home » Open thread 3/29/2025

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Open thread 3/29/2025 — 33 Comments

  1. So I have a fun – kind of long – story to tell. Pretty funny though. Hope you enjoy. The folks that manage my office building in downtown Chicago sent an email a few days ago that there was going to be an organized protest outside the building on Friday beginning at 4:00. The Israeli consulate is there, and it is also one of the two main train stations in Chicago. I go by to have a look and it’s delightfully pathetic. Thirty people at most, doing their thing – waving Palestinian flags, a chant or two about genocide, etc. Lots of police. There is one guy on the other side of the street holding an Israeli flag. I went over and chatted with him for a bit.

    Time to catch my train, so I make my way inside and am headed to the escalator. A scruffy looking guy with his equally scruffy looking wife/girlfriend/whatever walk by me. There aren’t many protestors but they do have megaphones, so it’s noisy. She says to him, “What’s going on?” He says, with a spectacular degree of confidence, which made it hilarious, “It’s something to do with the Irish.”

  2. Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

    Herbert Hoover’s Plan for Palestinian Refugee Resettlement. https://archive.md/ykJoJ

    I read a fair amount of history. A lot in here I didn’t know.

  3. Fascinating link, physicsguy. It perfectly exemplifies what I have been saying for a while, “If the science is settled, it ain’t science”.

    But if there is a “cosmological crisis” does that mean we don’t really exist? I was going to do my laundry tomorrow but now I’m not sure.

  4. @FOAF:“If the science is settled, it ain’t science”.

    Pretty much no one was saying cosmology was “settled”….

  5. Discrepancy in measurement if the universe is 15 billion years old why wouldnt their objects about a quarter of that distance from earth

  6. Meanwhile back in Iran…
    __________________________________

    Just a few days ago, Trump moved seven of our B2 bombers—each capable of destroying Iran’s underground nuclear facilities—right to Iran’s doorstep.

    The Indian Ocean is buzzing. American B2 stealth bombers landed in Diego Garcia, a remote island in the Indian Ocean. It serves as a joint base for the UK and the US and has been a hub of intense activity lately. The first reports came from open-source flight trackers that noticed unusual movement involving at least seven B2 bombers. These planes took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and flew non-stop to Diego Garcia. They weren’t alone—three C-17 cargo planes and ten aerial refueling tankers joined them. That’s some serious aerial movement.

    The US has 20 B2 bombers in total—30% of that fleet is now in Diego Garcia. This was a strategic move to pressure Iran.

    When Trump took office, he sent a letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, basically saying: we need to agree on a nuclear deal—or else.

    –Better Business, “Iran ‘Surrenders’ After Trump’s Nuclear Strike Warning”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkDAd3Zvdlw

    __________________________________

    Brinksmanship time. We are in Cuban Missile Crisis territory.

    Pray ’em, if you’ve got ’em.

  7. The German news outlet Der Spiegel reportedly found private contact information online for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and national security adviser Mike Waltz, who were involved in the Signal group chat security breach.

    The Der Spiegel report said each individual’s email address and phone number were readily available on the dark web.”

    This is being spun as carelessness by Trump’s team, which it may be. On the other hand, I think it could be a deliberate Democrat operation to create a crisis. Perhaps it is both.

    https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5216758-german-outlet-reportedly-finds-trump-officials-private-contact-info-online/

  8. The Der Spiegel report said each individual’s email address and phone number were readily available on the dark web.

    I’ve been informed by my identity protection services (which I was given after my info was exposed in data breeches), that my personal info is on the Dark Web. But I’m just a nobody.

    I wonder how many Democrat officials’ and operatives’ info is “readily available on the dark web,” as well.

  9. Open Thread (April Fools day early bird):

    Could you Rearm Europe without US Weapons? – Equipping a Unified European Military (April 1 special) – Perun

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFoJGHZEqAk

    Timestamps:
    00:00:00 — Opening Words
    00:01:22 — What Am I Talking About?
    00:01:54 — the Brief
    00:06:02 — Force Design
    00:10:35 — the Navy
    00:26:08 — the Air Force
    00:30:08 — What About the UK?
    00:38:30 — the Ground Forces
    00:58:57 — Covering the Last Few Participants
    01:00:39 — Conclusions
    01:04:29 — Channel Update

  10. WARNING:
    This report does NOT emanate from the Hamas Ministry of Health.
    Ergo, it may likely not exist.

    “Hamas begins brutal crackdown on Gaza protests with torture, executions;
    “Residents in the enclave say terror group executed at least six organizers; Gaza City resident returned to his family after four hours of torture and died shortly afterward, while others reported missing”—
    https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sjl5xnua1x
    H/T Powerline blog.

    Meanwhile, it appears that President “Islam-Does-Not-Sanction-Massacres” of Turkey may be feeling some political heat possibly because of his latest attempts to imitate “Biden” of Delaware:

    “Erdogan: ‘Allah will destroy Israel’…”

    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/406142

  11. its more than likely to be true,

    seeing how 10 million OPM records and 140 million equifax records were leaked at one point or another, it’s possible that info is on the dark web

    the curious thing is one of signal’s selling points is it self deletes messages, so how did Goldberg get a screen grab, (btw he is still flogging that mangy mutt on Meet the Depressed (ht Rush)

  12. Yep, Houthis lob an Iranian ballistic missile per day at sleeping Israelis and the “held-to-account” Mullahs have yet to see counter-strike one from the account-holding US military. Action, goddamnit, not words.

  13. well isn’t earth, really the only planet, that has a critical mass of oxygen certainly in the inner circle, the methane and sulfur of venus’s atmosphere is likely flammable but not in the same way, mar’s atmosphere is too thin,

  14. @miguel cervantes:the curious thing is one of signal’s selling points is it self deletes messages

    It CAN do that. I don’t think it’s automatically set up to always do that. Maybe you’re thinking of Snapchat, I don’t know.

    so how did Goldberg get a screen grab

    The “screen grabber” is on your own machine, the Signal app probably has no way to stop you, but even if it did you can always take a photo of a screen with another device. I’ve seen people smuggle things that way, use their phone to take a photo of what’s on a computer monitor.

  15. @miguel cervantes:well isn’t earth, really the only planet, that has a critical mass of oxygen certainly in the inner circle

    The Earth wasn’t handed an oxygen atmosphere. Green plants made it, and killed off most other life on Earth in the process. It was originally mostly mostly water vapor and hydrides. Later it was mostly nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and a bunch of hydrogen compounds. Green plants turned it into the mostly nitrogen + oxygen we know today.

  16. true but Venus’s atmosphere was never conducive to the development of an oxygen atmosphere, maybe mars had one at one point, but some great catastrophe, sheered it,

    Greg Kelley demonstrated how signal works, some three months ago

    goldberg would have to take screen grabs of every post in the
    thread

  17. Re: Iran nukes / Trump’s threat / Iran’s response
    ________________________________

    Iran Rejects Talks with U.S.; Trump Threatens Bombing as ‘Never Seen Before’

    Iran’s president said Sunday that the Islamic Republic rejected direct negotiations with the United States over its rapidly advancing nuclear program, offering Tehran’s first response to a letter President Donald Trump sent to the country’s supreme leader.

    President Masoud Pezeshkian said Iran’s response, delivered via the sultanate of Oman, left open the possibility of indirect negotiations with Washington…

    The White House, the State Department and other officials offered no immediate reaction to the announcement. However, Trump said before Pezeshkian’s comments he was considering military action and secondary tariffs if Iran does not agree to a nuclear deal.

    “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing and it will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,” Trump said in a comment aired Sunday by NBC News.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/03/30/iran-rejects-talks-with-u-s-trump-threatens-bombing-as-never-seen-before/
    ________________________________

    We are perhaps only a few weeks away from the US and Israel attacking Iran’s facilities for developing nuclear weapons with full force.

  18. miguel cervantes on March 30, 2025 at 5:32 pm said:
    the gordian knot …

    But an open thread post:
    FYI in the direction of advancing nuclear power, there is a Substack by Jack Devanney from Gordian Knot News . He discusses the flawed regulatory regime for nuclear power that is too restrictive because it is based on a model of radiation damage that does not allow for the now known ability of cells to repair DNA damaged via radiation. Evolution had to provide for this repair capability to allow life to survive with the normal earth background radiation levels. If the dosage rate profile from a nuclear power plant radiation release is low enough and spread out over sufficient time, people will not experience cancers, etc. from that source. Thus credible insurance processes can be implemented to account for that reduced risk and make nuclear power issues and restrictions more realistic (i.e., less drastic).
    And thereby also much lower in cost.
    You might start here https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-two-lies-that-killed-nuclear-672
    or here https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/the-case-for-2-msvday-20 ,
    but he is a little hard to follow until you have multiple exposures to his essays.

    He is now exploring how to bring his analysis to the attention of Sec’y Wright, DoE.

  19. @miguel cervantes:maybe mars had one at one point, but some great catastrophe, sheered it,

    No catastrophe needed, Mars is too small hold the atmosphere it once had.

    Earth’s escape speed is 11,200 m/s. Mars’s escape speed is 5,030 m/s.

    Take Earth’s temperature to be 290K, then nitrogen and argon are typically moving at about 450 m/s, and hydrogen and helium 1700 m/s and 1200 m/s respectively. Not a lot of it is lost to space, but it adds up and hydrogen and helium do routinely escape from the earth’s atmosphere. (Only reason the Earth still has helium is radioactive decay.)

    Take Mars’s temperature to be 210K, the speeds are about 20% slower, but the escape velocity is 55% lower, so Mars loses nitrogen, argon, oxygen and carbon dioxide the way Earth loses hydrogen and helium.

  20. @R2L:Thus credible insurance processes can be implemented to account for that reduced risk and make nuclear power issues and restrictions more realistic (i.e., less drastic).

    I disagree on that, I don’t see that the numbers work out. It’s the small probability of catastrophic loss, and the attendant difficulty of setting rates, that drives the risk for nuclear power. The low-dose stuff is really low even if you assume the old model. Living near a nuclear plant for a year is like flying on a jet for a minute, in terms of radiation dose, and people who fly on planes can still get insurance with no trouble. I’ve never even been asked about commercial air travel by an insurer.

  21. Re: Nuclear power pros and cons

    Somehow France gets around 65–70% of its electricity from nuclear power and has been for decades.

    Are the French lucky? Are they ignoring the damages suffered by its citizens from nuclear power?

    Fossil fuels quietly kill millions through air pollution — yet they rarely cause media-grabbing catastrophes. Nuclear is the opposite: very safe statistically, but when it goes wrong, it’s dramatic and terrifying.

    What are the damages suffered trying to power 21st C economies by moving to renewable solar and wind?
    ______________________________

    This is a very complicated case, Maude. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous.

    –The Dude, “The Big Lebowski — complicated case”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw36ivnRHRQ

  22. @huxley:Somehow France gets around 65–70% of its electricity from nuclear power and has been for decades.

    France has little coal or oil and values energy independence (and jobs programs) over economics. They have built, if anything, too much nuclear, having to shut down plants over weekends or pay someone else to take their power.

    They also do practically all of Europe’s nuclear waste reprocessing. I don’t know if they break even on that either, they wouldn’t if it were only French waste they reprocessed . But if any European country reprocesses waste they pay France to do it.

  23. as Germany has dismantled their power plants, which started after Fukushima, well they probably only handle the UKs waste, of course, they have a bit of shortfall on fuel, because niger,

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