Napoleon pioneered an operational level of warfare that lies between strategy and tactics

March 27th, 2025

Napoleon by Andrew RobertsNapoleon adopted the inspired corps system, Andrew Roberts explains (in Napoleon: A Life), originally the brainchild of Guibert and Marshal de Saxe:

The time spent in encampment at Boulogne and on continual manoeuvres between 1803 and 1805 allowed Napoleon to divide his army into units of 20,000 to 30,000 men, sometimes up to 40,000, and to train them intensely. Each corps was effectively a mini-army, with its own infantry, cavalry, artillery, staff, intelligence, engineering, transport, victualling, pay, medical and commissary sections, intended to work in close connection with other corps.

Moving within about one day’s march of each other, they allowed Napoleon to swap around the rearguard, vanguard or reserve at a moment’s notice, depending on the movements of the enemy. So, in either attack or retreat, the whole army could pivot on its axis without confusion.

Corps could also march far enough apart from each other not to cause victualling problems in the countryside.

Each corps needed to be large enough to fix an entire enemy army into position on the battlefield, while the others could descend to reinforce and relieve it within twenty-four hours, or, more usefully, outflank or possibly even envelop the enemy. Individual corps commanders — who tended to be marshals — would be given a place to go to and a date to arrive there by and would be expected to do the rest themselves.

[…]

‘During the Revolutionary wars the plan was to stretch out, to send columns to the right and left,’ Napoleon said years later, ‘which did no good. To tell you the truth, the thing that made me gain so many battles was that the evening before a fight, instead of giving orders to extend our lines, I tried to converge all our forces on the point I wanted to attack. I massed them there.’

Napoleon pioneered an operational level of warfare that lies between strategy and tactics. His corps became the standard unit adopted by every European army by 1812, and which lasted until 1945. It was his unique contribution to the art of war, and its first use in 1805 can be regarded as heralding the birth of modern warfare.

Posted in War | 1 Comment »

Dealing with intermittency requires both increasing the power produced by our panels and adding storage

March 26th, 2025

The biggest energy story of the last fifteen years is the rise of solar photovoltaics:

Solar PV was invented in the 1950s, and began to be used in appreciable volumes for utility-scale electricity generation in the US in the early 2000s, but only around the 2010s did it start to become a large share of planned generation projects worldwide.

Since then, solar generation capacity has grown incredibly quickly. By some metrics, solar PV has been deployed faster than any other energy source in history, going from 100 terawatt-hours of generation to 1,000 terawatt-hours in just 8 years, compared to 12 years for wind and nuclear, 28 for natural gas, and 32 for coal.

[…]

But while solar PV is growing rapidly, in absolute terms it’s still fairly small potatoes. As of 2023, solar made up around 4% of overall electricity generation, and less than 1% of total US energy production.

[…]

Since its invention in the 1950s, the cost of solar PV has fallen by a factor of close to 10,000. In the last 10 years alone, the cost of solar PV cells has fallen by more than 50%, and they’re projected to get even cheaper. This has made solar PV one of the cheapest methods of electricity generation.

[…]

On Earth, sunlight reaches the top of the atmosphere with an irradiance of 1,360 watts per square meter, but this gets attenuated as it travels through the air, and at Earth’s surface irradiance is about 1,000 watts (1 kilowatt) per square meter when the sun is directly overhead and not blocked by clouds. So a 21% efficient solar panel will have a maximum output of 210 watts per square meter.

[…]

The average capacity factor of utility-scale solar PV in the US is around 23%, meaning that on average they produce 23% of the power they would if they were exposed to 1,000 watts per square meter of sunlight 24 hours a day. This capacity factor varies by location, with sunny Southwestern states having higher capacity factors than Northeastern states.

Peak power generation for a solar PV system will be in the middle of the day, when the sun is highest in the sky. This doesn’t align particularly well with patterns of electricity consumption, which tends to be highest in the early evening.

[…]

Not only will clouds sporadically reduce the power generated from our panels, but cloud cover tends to be higher in winter, further reducing our already-anemic wintertime PV output.

[…]

There are a few different ways we can address this intermittency problem. The most obvious one is to just use other sources of power when the sun isn’t shining; either power sources that can be turned on and off on demand (such as gas turbines), or other intermittent sources whose peaks are offset from solar (such as wind).

[…]

In practice, dealing with intermittency requires both increasing the power produced by our panels and adding storage.

[…]

As we increase the amount of storage, we can supply greater and greater proportions of our household’s electricity demand, reaching over 99% with 42 kilowatts (~200 square meters) of PV capacity and 80 kilowatt-hours of storage. This is around four times our maximum household power consumption, and roughly 40% more storage than the capacity of a base Tesla Model 3.

[…]

Overall US costs are slightly more than $1,000 per kilowatt. We see that thanks to 70 years of learning curve improvements, the solar PV cells themselves are less than 1/3rd the cost of the overall system. The shrinking fraction of the cost of PV cells vs the rest of the system are why there’s interest in things like ground-mounted solar which can eliminate racking entirely, and reducing installation costs by robotically installing solar panels.

[…]

Because solar and storage systems don’t require purchasing fuel, and have almost no moving parts, operations and maintenance costs are low. NREL estimates that for utility PV, O&M is about $16 dollars per kilowatt per year, or about 1.5% of capital costs annually.

[…]

We can see that without any sort of storage, and with low amounts of solar (where the power can simply be used immediately without any going to waste), our solar system costs around 5.7 cents per kilowatt-hour. This is smack dab in the middle of what Lazard lists as the current range for LCOE for utility-scale solar in the US, and slightly more than the average LCOE for recently built US utility-scale solar plants.

However, as we expand the size of our system to serve a greater fraction of our electricity demand, our cost per kilowatt-hour quickly rises. At 50% of electricity served, we’re at 13 cents a kilowatt-hour. At 70% we’re over 16 cents. At 90%, we’re nearly 25 cents.

Posted in Technology | 11 Comments »

That’s what we call dogfighting in space

March 25th, 2025

A top Space Force general said Tuesday that commercial systems have observed Chinese satellites rehearsing “dogfighting” maneuvers in low Earth orbit:

“With our commercial assets, we have observed five different objects in space maneuvering in and out and around each other in synchronicity and in control,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said during the McAleese Defense Programs Conference in Washington. “That’s what we call dogfighting in space. They are practicing tactics, techniques and procedures to do on-orbit space operations from one satellite to another.”

A service spokesperson later elaborated on Guetlein’s comments, saying the operation occurred in 2024 and involved three Shiyan-24C experimental satellites and two other Chinese experimental spacecraft, the Shijian-605 A and B. The Shijian-6 systems are believed to have a signals intelligence mission.

The exercise showcased the country’s ability to perform complex maneuvers in orbit, referred to as rendezvous and proximity operations, which involve not only navigating around other objects but also inspecting them.

Guetlein listed the satellite dogfighting demonstration alongside several other concerning activities from “near-peer” U.S. adversaries. That includes Russia’s 2019 demonstration of a “nesting doll” capability, where one satellite released a smaller spacecraft that then performed several stalking maneuvers near a U.S. satellite.

[…]

“That capability gap used to be massive,” Guetlein said. “We’ve got to change the way we look at space or that capability gap may reverse and not be in our favor anymore.”

[…]

“The purpose of the Space Force is to guarantee space superiority for the joint force — not space for space’s sake. Space [operations] guarantee that, just like all the other domains, we can fight as a joint force and we can depend on those capabilities,” Guetlein said.

Posted in Technology, War, Weapons | No Comments »

Although the GLONASS system is newer than GPS, it is more vulnerable to jamming, which the Ukrainians have exploited

March 24th, 2025

Recent upgrades to the Kometa system are allowing Russia to bring back glide bombs:

Most Russian glide bombs use a UMPK precision guidance kit, which relies on Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) signals from Russia’s GLONASS satellite system, the Russian constellation of satellites similar to GPS. The UMPK determines the glide bomb’s location and heading, adjusting its course with rear-mounted fins to stay on target. Although the GLONASS system is newer than GPS, it is more vulnerable to jamming, which the Ukrainians have exploited. The Ukrainian jammers emit fake PNT signals than are stronger than those from the GLONASS satellites, overpowering the actual signal and misguiding the glide bomb into thinking it is in a different location.

To counter this jamming, the UMPK includes the Kometa system, which uses multiple radio receivers to distinguish between genuine and spoofed PNT signals. Information about this system is somewhat limited given its sensitive nature. However, the Ukrainian Military Portal published an article in July 2023 with background information about the system. The initial Kometa design, introduced in 2012, consisted of three receivers capable of detecting the spatial separation between authentic PNT signals and the more powerful jamming signals. The system compares the strength and angle of arrival of the signals, allowing it to identify the real signal and filter out the signals coming from a jammer.

In April 2024, Armada International reported that the Russian military had started using an upgraded version of the Kometa system with an additional five receivers, bringing the total to eight. With more receivers, the upgraded Kometa could process a larger number of signals simultaneously, increasing its ability to identify and reject complex jamming patterns. Images posted on social media show Ukrainian forces capturing a device equipped with the 8-channel Kometa system. According to the post, the Ukrainians installed the system into one of their own devices and used it in an attack against Russia. Although not stated in the post, Ukrainian scientists likely studied the captured device to determine how to jam it. The Ukrainians were successful in jamming the upgraded Kometa system, forcing the Russians to stop using glide bombs.

Posted in Technology, War, Weapons | 1 Comment »

The one thing you can’t do is shoot the thing down or otherwise disable it

March 23rd, 2025

The Hollywood Reporter notes that drones are being used for spying on and stealing from celebrities:

Emilia Clarke was sitting on the sofa in her Venice, California, home when she heard an insectile buzzing. She glanced up and there it was: a drone, hovering outside her living room’s tall windows, its camera trained on the Mother of Dragons as she gave an interview.

“There’s a drone looking in my house!” a stunned Clarke exclaimed. “That’s really creepy.”

Once spotted, the drone shot off. About 20 minutes later, however, the whirring device crept back to gawk some more at her personal space. Clarke was exasperated and more than a little unnerved.

This happened in 2019 — four years after a California law passed banning drone operators from violating the airspace of private property.

[…]

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, for example, called the L.A. Police Department multiple times to report drone peepers in 2020. And drones continue to plague on-location film sets; Ryan Reynolds says he and the rest of the Deadpool & Wolverine cast had a “run for cover” plan in place if anybody spotted a drone while staging a spoiler-filled scene. And while a recent viral drone video showing Drake in a high-rise suite furiously shooing off a spy-copter was faked, it reinforced the prevalence of these buzzing breaches of privacy.

[…]

The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department said in November that drones were being used in a string of burglaries in Stevenson Ranch. Around the same time, the Associated Press obtained a memo sent by the NBA to team officials warning that “transnational South American theft groups” were using drones and other tech to target wealthy players. Also last year, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that drones were believed to have been used in burglaries of beachside homes.

[…]

The one thing you can’t do is shoot the thing down or otherwise disable it, even if it’s hovering over your property. Drones are classified as aircraft, and taking one down violates the Aircraft Sabotage Act. “Which is not something you want to be charged with,” Fraietta notes. “If you want to secure your space from unwanted drones, think smart security, not shotgun.”

Posted in Crime, Technology, War | No Comments »

Here was a peace-and-love cult, yet the constant threat of violence loomed over the place

March 22nd, 2025

Chaos by Tom O’NeillOn March 23, 1969, Tom O’Neill explains (in Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties), a desperate Charles Manson went searching for Terry Melcher, thinking he’d goad the producer into a record deal:

He found his way back to the house at Cielo Drive, having remembered that Melcher lived there. Instead, Sharon Tate’s personal photographer, Shahrokh Hatami, intercepted him. Hatami had never heard of a Terry Melcher. He told Manson to go to the guesthouse and ask the owner of the property, Rudolph Altobelli, who explained curtly that Melcher no longer lived there and hadn’t left a forwarding address.

Manson prevailed on Gregg Jakobson — still a friend, and still a fan of the girls — to book another session with Melcher. This time, it worked. That May, Melcher made the winding drive to the Spahn Ranch and auditioned Manson in person, visiting twice over four days.

Manson had rounded out a dozen or so of his best songs with backup singing from the girls. Performing in a gully in the woods, the girls sprawled on the ground and gazed up at their leader, who sat astride a rock with his guitar. “I wasn’t too impressed by the songs,” Melcher would later testify. “I was impressed by the whole scene… by Charlie’s strength, and his obvious leadership.” As a courtesy, the producer complimented Manson, saying that one or two of his songs were “nice.” He had no intention of offering a recording contract, but he saw how the Family’s rustic, cultish lifestyle would lend itself to a TV documentary. Melcher suggested that his friend Mike Deasy, whose van was outfitted to make field recordings, could come out to the ranch and capture another performance.

Before Melcher could get out of there, a foreman at the ranch came stumbling out of a pickup truck. Drunk and belligerent, he was dressed like a cowboy, fingering a holstered gun—the same one that would later be used at the Tate murders. Manson stepped up to him and shouted, “Don’t draw on me, motherfucker!” socking him in the gut, taking his gun, and continuing to pummel him.

It spooked Melcher. Here was a peace-and-love cult with naked girls roaming the old Western sets, and yet the constant threat of violence loomed over the place. It needed to be documented in all its oddity. A few days later, Melcher returned with Deasy and Jakobson, and the Family repeated their audition. But what had seemed spontaneous now felt rehearsed. Deasy returned a few more times, until he had a frightening LSD trip with Manson and vowed never to go back.

[…]

Bob April, a retired carpenter who’d been a fringe member of the Family, told me with confidence that Manson “would supply girls” for “executive parties” that Melcher threw, giving well-heeled business types unfettered access to Manson’s girls. But what would Manson get in return?

“That’s why everyone got killed,” April said. “He didn’t get what he wanted.” Melcher had promised Manson a record deal “on Day Labels,” his mother’s imprint. But Doris Day took one look at Manson “and laughed at him and said, ‘You’re out of your mind if you think I’m going to produce a fucking record for you.’ Said it to Charlie’s face.” Melcher and Manson “knew each other very well,” April said. “I’ve tried to get this out for years.”

Posted in Crime | 1 Comment »

Beginning in 1957, massive tunnel complexes were drilled into the volcanic rock and granite by hard-rock miners working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week

March 21st, 2025

Area 51 by Annie JacobsenUnderground tunnels, called N-tunnels, P-tunnels, and T-tunnels, have been drilled next door to Area 51, Annie Jacobsen explains (in Area 51), for decades:

The 1,150-foot-long tunnel at Jackass Flats, drilled into the Calico Mountains, through which NERVA scientists and engineers like T. D. Barnes accessed their underground workstations is but one example of an underground tunnel at the Nevada Test Site. The NERVA complex in Area 25 has since been dismantled and “deactivated,” according to the Department of Energy, but elsewhere at the test site dozens of tunnel complexes exist. In the 1960s, one tunnel dug into the granite mountain of Rainer Mesa, in Area 12, reached down as far as 4,500 feet, nearly a mile underground. There are many such government tunnels and bunkers around America, but it was the revelation of the Greenbrier bunker by Washington Post reporter Ted Gup in 1992 that set off a firestorm of conspiracy theories related to postapocalypse hideouts for the U.S. government elite—and since 1992, these secret bunkers have been woven into conspiracy theories about things that go on at Area 51.

The Greenbrier bunker is located in the Allegheny Mountains, 250 miles southwest of the nation’s capital. Beginning in 1959, the Department of Defense spearheaded the construction of a 112,544-square-foot facility eight hundred feet below the West Virginia wing of the fashionable five-star Greenbrier resort. This secret bunker, completed in 1962, was to be the place where the president and certain members of Congress would live after a nuclear attack. The Greenbrier bunker had dormitories, a mess hall, decontamination chambers, and a hospital staffed with thirty-five doctors. “Secrecy, denying knowledge of the existence of the shelter from our potential enemies, was paramount to all matters of operation,” Paul Bugas, the former onsite superintendent at the Greenbrier bunker, told PBS when asked why the facility was kept secret from the public. Many citizens agree with the premise. Conspiracy theorists disagree. They don’t believe that the government keeps secrets to protect the people. Conspiracy theorists believe the leaders of government are only looking to protect themselves.

The underground tunnels and bunkers at the Nevada Test Site may be the most elaborate underground chambers ever constructed by the federal government in the continental United States. The great majority of them are in Area 12, which is located approximately sixteen miles due west of Area 51 in a mountain range called Rainier Mesa. Beginning in 1957, massive tunnel complexes were drilled into the volcanic rock and granite by hard-rock miners working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. To complete a single tunnel took, on average, twelve months. Most tunnels ran approximately 1,300 feet below the surface of the earth, but some reached a mile underground. Inside these giant cavities, which averaged one hundred feet wide, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense have exploded at least sixty-seven nuclear bombs. There, the military has tested nuclear blast and radiation effects on everything from missile nose cones to military satellites. A series called the Piledriver experiments studied survivability of hardened underground bunkers in a nuclear attack. The Hardtack tests sought to learn how “to destroy enemy targets [such as] missile silos and command centers” using megaton bombs. Inside the T-tunnels, scientists created vacuum chambers to simulate outer space, expanding on those dangerous late-1950s upper atmospheric tests code-named Teak and Orange. And the Department of Defense even tested how a stockpile of nuclear weapons inside an underground bunker would hold up to a nuclear blast.

Richard Mingus has spent many years inside these underground tunnel complexes, guarding many of the nuclear bombs used in the tests before they were detonated. In Mingus’s five decades working at the test site, these were his least favorite assignments. “The tunnels were dirty, filthy, you had to wear heavy shoes because there was so much walking on all kinds of rock rubble,” Mingus explains. “The air was bad and everything was stuffy. There were so many people working so many different jobs. Carpenters, welders… There were forty-eight-inch cutting machines covering the ground.” Most of the equipment was hauled in on railroad tracks, which is at least partially responsible for inspiring conspiracy theories that include trains underneath Area 51—though the conspiracy theorists believe they’re able to ferry government elite back and forth between Nevada and the East Coast. In reality, according to Atomic Energy Commission records, the Defense Department built the train system in the tunnels to transport heavy military equipment in and out. If employees wanted to, men like Richard Mingus could ride the train cars down into the underground tunnel complexes, but Mingus preferred to walk.

Posted in Policy, Science, Technology, War | No Comments »

The Iron Crown of Lombardy had been worn by every Holy Roman Emperor since Frederick Barbarossa

March 20th, 2025

Napoleon by Andrew RobertsNapoleon accepted the crown of the newly created kingdom of Italy in a grand ceremony in the throne room at the Tuileries on Sunday, March 17, 1805, Andrew Roberts explains (in Napoleon: A Life), and then proceeded to Milan, for another coronation ceremony at the Duomo:

‘The church was very beautiful,’ Napoleon reported to Cambacérès. ‘The ceremony was as good as the one in Paris, with the difference that the weather was superb. When taking the Iron Crown and putting it on my head, I added these words: “God gives it to me; woe betide any who touches it.” I hope that will be a prophecy.’ The Iron Crown of Lombardy, a heavy oval band of gold containing metal supposedly from one of the nails of the True Cross, had been worn by every Holy Roman Emperor since Frederick Barbarossa in 1155. Napoleon’s use of it was thus a further sabre-rattle against the present incumbent, Francis of Austria.

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We could learn far more about the JFK assassination from the files still under wraps in Russia and Belarus

March 19th, 2025

Fred Litwin noted years ago that we could learn far more about the JFK assassination from the files still under wraps in Russia and Belarus:

Some of the evidence of Soviet interference comes from the April 2018 release of JFK assassination documents, one of which related to the American conspiracy theorist Mark Lane. Lane was an attorney and civil rights activist, and one of the earliest critics of the official Warren Report into the assassination. In 1966, he published the first of a series of books on the assassination entitled Rush to Judgment, which would go on to become a bestseller. A CIA document discovered in the FBI’s file on Lane disclosed that, according to information obtained from an unnamed foreign government, the KGB had funnelled $1,500 through a “trusted contact” to Lane for his “work on a book” and $500 for a trip to Europe. The document says that “LANE was not told who was financing his work, but he might have been able to guess” and adds that, in 1964, Lane “wanted to visit Moscow and acquaint the authorities there with the revealing materials he had regarding the KENNEDY murder.”

But the Soviets did “not wish to enter into difficulties with the US” and so the trip was postponed. From then on, “trusted contacts among Soviet journalists met with Lane,” and he maintained regular contact with Genrikh Borovik, a Soviet writer, film-maker, and suspected KGB agent. In 1969, Lane again expressed interest in travelling to the Soviet Union to screen his 1967 documentary (also entitled Rush to Judgment), but “he was delicately told that the time was not right for such a trip, since the American government might begin a slander campaign against him in connection with his involvement in the anti-war movement.” Furthermore, “American communists who were in Moscow in 1971 expressed the opinion that, although LANE was engaged in activity that was advantageous to the Communists, he was doing this not without profit to himself, and sought to achieve personal popularity and become a national figure.” The CIA memo also claims that “other investigators and Kennedy assassination buffs were supplied by the KGB not only with money but also with circumstantial evidence that made the affair appear to be a well-concealed political conspiracy.”

[…]

A persuasive body evidence now shows that Soviet intelligence would routinely plant misinformation in outlets like these. Between 1956 and 1985, KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin secretly documented the activities of the Soviet Union around the globe. His notes would subsequently be collected and released as The Mitrokhin Archive, after he defected to the UK in 1992. In a book co-authored with MI5 historian Christopher Andrew, Mitrokhin claimed that, “In April 1961 the KGB succeeded in planting on the pro-Soviet Italian daily Paese Sera a story suggesting that the CIA was involved in the failed putsch mounted by four French generals to disrupt de Gaulle’s attempts to negotiate a peace with the FLN which would lead to Algerian independence.”

[…]

Opening the Russian files could be useful in determining what else they did to influence American public opinion. As the declassified CIA document notes: “the KGB informed the Central Committee of the CPSU that it would take additional measures to promote theories regarding the participation of the American special services in a political conspiracy directed against President Kennedy.”

Posted in Crime, Policy, War | 2 Comments »

Night Watch’s new Lima jammer is partly responsible for the recent degradation of Russian glide bombing

March 18th, 2025

Satellite-guided glide bombs were “miracle weapons” for the Russians, traveling 25 miles or farther under pop-out wings, facing practically no countermeasures.

That has changed. Now the Ukrainians not only have countermeasures — some of these countermeasures appear to be extremely effective.

“Previously, the enemy used glide bombs with high accuracy to attack objects in the territory of regional centers such as Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia,” Narek Kazarian, whose 10-person Night Watch team in Ukraine develops electronic warfare systems, told Forbes.

Night Watch’s new Lima jammer is partly responsible for the recent degradation of Russian glide bombing, Kazarian claimed.

Lima isn’t a traditional jammer that simply blasts radio noise toward the enemy. “We use digital interference,” Kazarian explained. It’s “a combination of jamming, spoofing and information cyber attack on the navigation receiver.”

[…]

“All high-value targets are guaranteed to be covered by [electronic warfare],” Fighterbomber claimed. It might take eight or even 16 glide bombs to reliably hit one target, the channel added. And while the glide bombs are inexpensive for a precision munition — each costing around $25,000 — the Sukhoi jets that lob them two or four at a time aren’t cheap.

Launching four jets to maybe hit one target is risky and inefficient for an air force that has just a thousand or so modern jets, and has already lost 120 of them in action in Ukraine.

The intensive Ukrainian jamming has also grounded many of Russia’s drones. Night Watch’s earliest efforts focused on forcing down Shahed attack drones that routinely strike Ukrainian cities.

Radio jamming has effectively accomplished what the Ukrainian air force largely failed to accomplish with its expensive, vulnerable S-300, Patriot and SAMP/T surface-to-air missile batteries, which can hit Russian jets from scores of miles away but were always too few in number to fully protect the front line and safeguard Ukrainian cities

Posted in Technology, War, Weapons | 6 Comments »

Regrettably, [his] behaviour has escalated to a point that is deeply disturbing

March 17th, 2025

The “overwintering” team of nine people at the South African National Antarctic Programme base is ten months from rescue and 2,500 miles from home:

Members of the team, a researcher wrote, were living in fear not because of the hostile conditions, but because one of their number had attacked them. This person, the author added, was a threat to the entire team.

The message, shared with South Africa’s Sunday Times, pleaded for rescue. It said: “Regrettably, [his] behaviour has escalated to a point that is deeply disturbing. Specifically, he physically assaulted [name withheld], which is a grave violation of personal safety and workplace norms.”

Neither the author nor the person accused of wrongdoing have been named. The letter added: “Furthermore, he threatened to kill [name withheld], creating an environment of fear and intimidation. I remain deeply concerned about my own safety, constantly wondering if I might become the next victim.”

The team member was also accused of sexually assaulting another researcher. “His behaviour has become increasingly egregious, and I am experiencing significant difficulty in feeling secure in his presence,” the letter said. “It is imperative that immediate action is taken to ensure my safety and the safety of all employees.”

[…]

The first Sanae base was established in 1959. South Africa also formally administers two islands between the country and Antarctica, Prince Edward and Marion, where it has a research station. In 2017, an “unstable” team member on Marion Island was reported to have attacked a colleague in the kitchen with a frying pan and destroyed his room with an axe.

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They were speaking from a very motivated standpoint, trying to shut down something that they thought would hurt their interests

March 16th, 2025

Viral by Alina Chan and Matt RidleyFive years ago, the SARS-CoV-2 virus shut down the world and changed it forever:

While initial reports suggested that the virus had jumped from wild animals to humans at a market in Wuhan, China, others pointed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the only lab actively experimenting with closely related viruses. Since these viruses have never been found naturally within 1,000 miles of Wuhan, a local outbreak made little sense — yet questioning this brought swift political and institutional backlash from scientists worried about risking their careers and their work. But while working at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, scientist Alina Chan kept publicly questioning the official story, despite attempts from influential scientists and the media to cast the hypothesis as a conspiracy theory.

[…]

So back in 2020 when I interviewed you for Boston, you were basically a postdoc with a Twitter account. Since then, you’ve published a book as well as influential opinion pieces in Science magazine and the New York Times, and have shifted to work on the challenges relating to research that can cause pandemics. How has your life changed?

My gosh, five years, that’s a lot to cover. I mean, almost everything has changed.

[…]

Has your confidence that the pandemic resulted from a lab incident changed since 2020?

Back then, I was pretty agnostic. I was about 50/50. To the rest of society, that seemed insane because all of the top scientists were saying that this was a racist, anti-scientific conspiracy theory.

Yes, and now we know, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, that they were colluding to suppress discussion of the lab-leak theory and were secretly trying to get you disciplined or fired. How did that make you feel?

Scientists are people. They have a lot of different pressures in their lives. Pressures to keep their labs running, to publish, to advance in their career. These virologists were not speaking scientifically. They were speaking from a very motivated standpoint, trying to shut down something that they thought would hurt their interests. Even in a situation where millions of people were dying. That shocked me.

What finally convinced you that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the likely cause of the pandemic?

For me, the thing that really shifted the balance of evidence was the discovery of a 2018 research proposal called Defuse that was submitted by the Wuhan Institute of Virology and their U.S. collaborators that specifically said, “We’re gonna look for novel SARS-like viruses in the wild, we’re gonna put in these novel furin cleavage sites and see what happens, and we’re gonna test these viruses in human cells to see how these features can impact their ability to replicate and cause disease.” And then, barely two years later, exactly such a virus causes an outbreak in their city, very far away from where these viruses are found naturally. To me, that extreme coincidence was too much to ignore.

Posted in Policy, Science | 3 Comments »

He and Wilson had pledged allegiance to the “Golden Penetrators”

March 15th, 2025

Chaos by Tom O’Neill The story of Charles Manson and Terry Melcher, Tom O’Neill explains (in Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties), starts with Dennis Wilson, the drummer for the Beach Boys:

By the summer of 1968, Wilson, then twenty-three, had reached an impasse. He’d become world famous as the drummer for the Beach Boys, helmed by his brother Brian; now the band was in decline, edged out by more subversive acts. He and his wife, Carole, had recently divorced for the second time. She wrote in court filings that he had a violent temper, inflicting “severe bodily injury” on her during his “rampages.”

The couple had two young children, but Dennis decided to rusticate as a bachelor. He moved into a lavish, Spanish-style mansion in Pacific Palisades, once a hunting lodge owned by the humorist Will Rogers. The home boasted thirty-one rooms and a swimming pool in the shape of California. He redecorated in the spirit of the times — zebra-print carpet, abundant bunk beds — and hosted decadent parties, hoping to have as much sex as possible.

Beach Boys 20-20If we look back at the late-60s Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson is clearly the one member of the band who looks like he’d be right at home in a hard rock band.

In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it’s Brad Pitt’s character who does this:

One day, Wilson was driving his custom red Ferrari down the Pacific Coast Highway when two hitchhikers, the Family’s Ella Jo Bailey and Patricia Krenwinkel, caught his eye. He gave them a quick lift. When he saw them again soon afterward, he picked them up a second time, taking them back to his place for “milk and cookies.” History hasn’t recorded what kind of cookies they enjoyed, or whether those cookies were in fact sex, but whatever the case, the girls told Manson about the encounter. They weren’t aware of Wilson’s clout in the music industry — but Manson was, and he insisted on going back to the house with them.

After a late recording session, Wilson returned to his estate to find the Family’s big black bus parked outside. His living room was populated with topless girls. Whatever alarm he felt was eased when their short, intense, unwashed leader, Manson, sunk to his knees and kissed Wilson’s feet.

This night ushered in a summer of ceaseless partying for Wilson. Manson and the Family set up shop in his home, and soon Manson recruited one of the group’s deadliest members, Tex Watson, who picked him up hitchhiking. The Family spent their days smoking dope and listening to Charlie strum the guitar. The girls made the meals, did the laundry, and slept with the men on command. Manson prescribed sex seven times a day: before and after all three meals and once in the middle of the night. “It was as if we were kings, just because we were men,” Watson later wrote. Soon Wilson was bragging so much that he landed a headline in Record Mirror: “I Live with 17 Girls.”

Talking to Britain’s Rave magazine, Wilson offered disjointed remarks about his new friend, whom he called “the Wizard.” “I was only frightened as a child because I didn’t understand the fear,” he said. “Sometimes ‘the Wizard’ frightens me. The Wizard is Charles Manson, who is a friend of mine who thinks he is God and the devil. He sings, plays and writes poetry and may be another artist for Brother Records,” the Beach Boys’ label.

This last bit excited Manson, who was desperate to leverage his connection with Wilson into a music career. The two cowrote a song, “Cease to Exist,” whose lyrics claimed that “submission is a gift.” (Later that year, the Beach Boys recorded it as a B side, changing the title, finessing the lyrics, and dropping Manson’s songwriting credit — a snub that fueled his anger toward the establishment.) Manson fraternized with some of the biggest names in music. Neil Young remembered meeting him and the girls at Wilson’s place. “A lot of pretty well-known musicians around L.A. knew Manson,” Young later said, “though they’d probably deny it now.”

Among these was Terry Melcher. He and Wilson had pledged allegiance to the “Golden Penetrators,” a horny triumvirate they’d formed with their friend Gregg Jakobson. The Penetrators, who’d painted a car gold to celebrate themselves, aimed to sleep with as many women as they could. Wilson’s ex-wife referred to them as “roving cocksmen.” Obviously, then, Melcher would want to rove over to Wilson’s house — it was full of promiscuous young women. Sometime in that summer of ’68, at one of Wilson’s marathon parties, he crossed paths with Manson for the first time. After another such party, Melcher rode back to Cielo Drive with Wilson, and Manson came along in the back seat. As Melcher later testified, Manson got a good look at the house from the driveway.

When the end of summer came, things went south with Wilson, who’d finally grown tired of footing the bill for the endless party: upward of $100,000 in food, clothes, and car repairs, plus gonorrhea treatments. According to Bugliosi, Wilson was too frightened of Manson to throw him out. Instead, he simply up and left in the middle of the night, leaving the messy business of eviction to his landlord.

But it must’ve been more complicated than that. Wilson gave three interviews in which he raved about Manson and the girls — and all of those interviews date to the winter and summer of 1969, nearly a year after he and the Family had supposedly parted ways.

Posted in Crime, Media | No Comments »

They hiked inside several atomic craters

March 14th, 2025

Area 51 by Annie JacobsenA little-known fact, Annie Jacobsen explains (in Area 51), is that to prepare for what it would actually be like to walk around on the geology of the moon, the astronauts visited the Nevada Test Site:

There, they hiked inside several atomic craters, learning what kind of geology they might have to deal with on the lunar surface’s inhospitable terrain.

[…]

“I was with them in 1965, and again five years later when they came back,” Williams recalls. This time the astronauts arrived with a lunar roving vehicle to test what it might be like driving on the moon.

[…]

The lunar roving vehicle was not a fast-moving vehicle, and the astronauts took turns driving it. “NASA had built it and had driven it in a lot of flat places,” Williams explains. “But before it came to the test site and drove on the craters, the vehicle had no real experience on inhospitable terrain.

[…]

The craters Williams was talking about are subsidence craters—geologic by-products of underground bomb tests. When a nuclear bomb is placed in a deep vertical shaft, as hundreds were at the test site (not to be confused with tunnel tests), the explosion vaporizes the surrounding earth and liquefies the rock. Once that molten rock cools, it solidifies at the bottom of the cavity, and the earth above it collapses, creating the crater. The glass-coated rock, giant boulders, and loose rubble that remain resemble the craters found on the moon. So similar in geology were the atomic craters to moon craters that in voice transcripts sent back during the Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 missions, astronauts twice referred to the craters at the Nevada Test Site. During Apollo 16, John W. Young got specific. A quarter of a million miles away from Earth, while marveling at a lunar crater laden with rocks, Young asked fellow astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr., “Remember how it was up at that crater? At Schooner.” He was referring to the atomic crater Ernie Williams took the astronauts to in Area 20. During Apollo 17, while looking at the Haemus Mountains, Harrison H. Schmitt can be heard talking about the Buckboard Mesa craters in Area 19. For Ernie Williams, hearing this comparison was a beautiful moment. For lunar-landing conspiracy theorists, of which there are millions worldwide, the feeling was one of suspicion. For these naysayers, Schmitt’s telemetry tapes, the moon photographs, the moon rocks—everything having to do with the Apollo moon missions would become grist for a number of ever-growing conspiracies that have been tied to man’s journey to the moon.

Posted in Science | 1 Comment »

Payments to allies amounted to 14 per cent of British government revenue

March 13th, 2025

Napoleon by Andrew RobertsIn December 1804, William Pitt signed an alliance with Sweden, Andrew Roberts explains (in Napoleon: A Life), and once Britain had also signed the Treaty of St Petersburg with Russia in April 1805 the core of the Third Coalition was in place:

Britain was to pay Russia £1.25 million in golden guineas for every 100,000 men she fielded against France. Austria and Portugal joined the coalition later.

[…]

Pitt had set the precedent for subsidizing France’s enemies as early as 1793 when he had started hiring troops from the German princes to fight in the Low Countries, but he was often deeply disappointed with his investments, as when the Prussians seemed happier to fight the Poles than the French in 1795, or Austria took the Veneto at Campo Formio in 1797 in return for Belgium (and peace). Overall, however, the subsidy policy was seen by successive British governments as well worth the cost. Napoleon naturally characterized it as Britain being willing to fight to the last drop of her allies’ blood. ‘Please have caricatures drawn,’ Napoleon ordered Fouché in May 1805, of ‘an Englishman, purse in hand, asking different Powers to take his money, etc.’

In 1794, payments to allies amounted to 14 per cent of British government revenue; twenty years later, with Wellington’s army actually inside France, it was still 14 per cent, although the British economy had grown so considerably in the intervening period that this now represented £10 million, a vast sum.

Posted in Policy, War | 2 Comments »

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