> The West continues to put pressure on Russia to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline - and the most important event in this chain was the Polish military provocations. Can opponents of the gas pipeline resort to real military operations against Nord Stream 2 - and if so, what should Russia counter this with?
> Recall that in early April 2021, the situation around the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline seriously escalated. A significant number of civilian ships and warships (mostly Polish), as well as submarines, made dangerous maneuvers around the pipeline construction vessel Fortuna. Polish military aircraft flew around and over the construction site.
Later:
> Under such conditions, the most likely means to attack the pipeline is the so-called mine destroyer - a disposable uninhabited underwater vehicle (UUV), controlled from a surface ship via a fiber-optic cable, having its own television camera and a simple sonar. Such devices are in service with foreign fleets in huge quantities. The device carries an explosive charge on board, the remote detonation of which destroys the mine.
Almost a year ago I had fun with a poll: Do you find Humanity's lack of science-faith disturbing?". This got a decent number of comments and poll-votes, even though none of you voted it up as a submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28908797
Now people like myself feel vindicated. The funny thing is the poll option, "I'm going to skip the COVID-19 vaccine and wait for the COVID-22 version" is not actually an option: you have to get the obsolete COVID-19 jabs to be eligible for the COVID-21 booster. I didn't see that coming. I guess this is what passes as a Science-joke, sorta like how "boosting" is slang for stealing or lying [0]. Why would one want to get boosted for COVID-21, when we're almost to 2023?
Read a piece by someone who claimed to know about vaccines that really they should have targeted anything on SARS-CoV-2 but the spike protein. Any of the virus' surface proteins would've been better, as the spike is too similar to the body's other proteins. Someone else points out that the spike protein is what does all the damage, so it's rather silly to induce ("boost") bodies to create spike proteins. Whoops.
Walter Chesnut [1] is one of those anti-Science™ types who was kicked off twitter for saying not-nice things about the experimental drugs that were pushed on us all. He says stuff about the spike -> cancer connection that I don't understand:
In March of this year, I discovered that the Spike Protein
mimics radiation in the sense that it causes EXACTLY the
same damage to the Endothelium that radiation causes.
Initially, I thought this was an explanation for the
observed increase in cancers. I still believe that
to be true
My point was that Science™ has done tremendous damage to its brand.
The tragedy of our era is how Medicine™ forgot that oxygen is toxic. How many people would have been saved if Medicine™ used the antidote for oxygen toxicity?
® is Registered Trademark.
™ is for non-registered trademarks. In the US you can claim protection for a non-registered trademark via the common law.
“Most countries require formal trademark registration as a precondition for pursuing this type of action. The United States, Canada, and other countries also recognize common law trademark rights, which means action can be taken to protect any unregistered trademark if it is in use. Still, common law trademarks offer to the holder, in general, less legal protection than registered trademarks.”
My greatest success as a taxi driver was learning to follow my intuition. One passenger led to the next, until I'd met all the people I was supposed to meet for that day.
At the start of a shift I'd ask myself where to go. When I was between passengers, driving around thinking about where to find my next fare, I'd do a "left, right or straight" as I approached intersections. Sometimes it was definite response, sometimes I got the impression that it didn't matter.
One of the passengers I've told you all about ... I was next to her apartment when she called for her taxi. She's doing much better now, because I took some time to talk to her.
Intuition helps keep us alive, and helps put is in the right place at the right time so we can meet the people we're supposed to meet to move us along on whatever we're working on.
My brother recently moved, and was taking his USB-C powered cable boxes back to the cable company. I thought the cable company wouldn’t care if the power adapters were missing.
The cable boxes’ USB-C power supplies do not charge my Sony USB-C camera. They’re on my stack of things I intended to look into one day, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
There was a comment on Slashdot years ago about making special vodka with hot peppers, vodka and Mason jars: chop peppers in half, put in mason jar, close mason jar, put at back of cabinet for a few months.
I don’t consume this very often anymore, and my tolerance for capsaicin is not what it once was, but I think you never go back to the tolerance of people who have not trained themselves to tolerate relatively-high amounts of the stuff.
Had a girlfriend who got down on herself and locked herself in the bedroom with a bottle of wine. She came out when it was finished and said she needed more alcohol. I reached into the freezer and handed her my bottle of special vodka. She tipped up the bottle and took a generous shot. She instantly knew what I’d done: “asshole”, then went outside and threw it all up. She didn’t drink alcohol again for 3 or 5 years.
Lots of my taxi passengers had drinking problems. One of my favorite stories was the old guy who explicitly pointed this out to me. Eventually I mostly figured out better strategies for dealing with the cause behind the compulsion…
But capsaicin-vodka is a good way to sour drunks on helping themselves to your fine liquor collection.
Ingo Swann said at the talk I attended that the government managers always hated their remote viewing program, so they had to get results right from the start. As soon as the Soviet Union was no more they said ‘thank God we can finally get rid of this awful program.’ The problem was that they liked the idea that there can be “secrets”.
Isn't this a "worst case scenario" for Europe? How did the Russians convince Germany to make their economic machine dependent on Russian-supplied natural gas?
I think the answer to your question is "gradually, by being reliable for decades". The contracts in question were signed in the seventies.
Germany's general foreign policy may be described as paying for things to achieve mutual dependance. Having Germany depend on Russa and Russia really depend on Germany would be a classic German move. Note that when Russia wanted to bypass Ukraine and Belarus, it somehow ended up building two pipelines to Germany, none to Italy, none to India and a remarkable small one to China. That second pipeline to Germany looks like a bit of a WTF if you ask me.
Oxygen in excess is toxic. The implications of this science-fact has been mostly forgotten by Medicine, but is commonly known by SCUBA divers (whose enemy is Nitrogen).
Just watched my mom's 98 year old friend get finished off with nasal oxygen (~week ago). Once she'd been on it for a day couldn't go without it. If the goal was to extend her life, they would have incorporated the antidote to oxygen toxicity.
I call it #MedicalHyperventilation [0], but afaik my term hasn't taken off.
I started taxi driving in early 2012. I'd drive my little 1994 Honda Civic Hatchback to the taxi yard and check out a cab for 12 hours or 24 hours. It was a pretty good deal: the taxi company took care of complying with Arizona's minimal taxi regulations, provided insurance and customers. I could do anything I wanted with their taxi, I just had to pay them at the end of the shift. I always made money, even on my 4th day when the dispatch system went down. On that day I found some people in downtown who'd scheduled a cab to go to the Frank Lloyd Wright museum in Scottsdale. The taxi was free that day. After the 'new driver' $20 off coupon the taxi company actually paid me to drive their taxi around.
Uber arrived in Phoenix ... in 2013 or 2014? I remember sitting at the Cardinals' football stadium. Another of the company's drivers had gotten an uber fare. He said something like, "it's not that cheap". We didn't realize at the time that what the driver got was not what the passengers paid (that is, drivers' pay was subsidized).
Things started to get bad for us taxi drivers in 2015. I remember sitting in old town Scottsdale. Two ladies were waiting for their ride-share driver to show up. A "gypsy-cab" driver (someone not associated with one of the big taxi companies - who'd gotten a taxi meter and insurance, and complied with Arizona's minimal licensing) asked if they needed a ride. The ladies said, "you're too expensive." A Honda Accord showed up, with two ladies in the front... I figured the female driver didn't feel safe driving around by herself late at night, and recruited her friend to copilot with her.
Cars are expensive. I'd made enough to upgrade my old honda civic to a Uber-acceptable Ford Fusion by ... 2013? (Truthfully my father paid for most of the vehicle, I took out a $5,000 loan.)
When I did the calculations on driving my Fusion for Uber, the numbers just didn't work. I figured I'd need a transmission sooner or later, and the miles really add up quickly when you're driving. We'd put 100,000 miles a year on our taxi-Priuses. The early years of 'ride sharing' was an exercise in Wall Street tricking people who wanted nice cars into wearing out their personal vehicles for barely minimum wage.
I took to blogging about my fares, initially at kuro5hin.org [rip]. Lots of stories... reposted them at https://www.TaxiWars.org/
Had this recent comment about the taxi industry get a couple upvotes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31065345 ("The company had economy of scale in their fleet operations that was hard to beat: mechanics who knew the Prius like the back of their hand, boneyards (for parts), connections in the automotive industry.")
On the one hand, Uber's software was better than our 'electronic taxi dispatch v1.0' system [0]. But Arizona's taxi regulations were so incredibly minimal, that it wasn't very fair for Governor Ducey, et al, to throw us under the bus.
I’m glad you pointed the driver economics out, I meticulously keep track of my auto costs (hour out to road trip [1]) and am always surprised by what my actual mpg/cost per mile is, as well as how repairs and maintenance add up over time - I honestly don’t think most Uber drivers realize they are just trading deferred maintenance costs, and depreciation expense for cash now.
A lot of miles were not paid for. A typical shift in the cab (12 hours) would have maybe 200 miles, with half of those being paid. I drove for an owner-operator - I think I paid her $75/shift for the use of her car... Maybe $20 for gas, and the rest paid me.
The taxi company put together a system where drivers could take their contract fares (such as in the video I linked) in personal vehicles. I had to get a commercial license plate. Then the company did a safety inspection on my car. Their contracts paid better than standard ride share fares, but the numbers still didn't work. I only did that a couple times. One time I got a solid fare, but it took me out to Apache Junction. It was 40 miles to get home. The technical term for unpaid miles is deadheading [0].
> I honestly don’t think most Uber drivers realize they are just trading deferred maintenance costs, and depreciation expense for cash now.
I referred to this as this 'economic cancer'. Professional drivers figure out how to keep their expenses down.
I am glad the taxi industry worked for you as a driver for a while. But it was unbelievably bad for consumers for so long, I have no sympathy for anyone related to the industry pre Uber at all. You might have been a good driver but most were not and frankly the odds aren't in your favor either. I am sincerely glad that the taxi industry got fucked as hard as it did, it forced them to at least think a little bit about customer experience and improve in some places.
The hn comment I linked told of how the company I drove for became the default cab company for the Phoenix area. One aspect was how passengers could file a complaint, and they'd look into it.
I got taken for a ride by a taxi driver in San Jose, cira 2003... That should have been a $20 fare, not a $100 fare, but I was naïve.
Sometimes my passengers would watch our route on their phone.
You're not exactly wrong but your comment isn't really reflective of anything meaningful. Correlation does not always equal causation. And I know a LOT of people with the same experiences. The commonality of these experiences leads me to believe it's a cab thing and not just a me thing.
In all other aspects of my life I tend to be pretty easy to get along with and generally have reasonable expectations. I don't have any reason to think my expectations of the cab industry are out of line with my expectations for everything else.
edit: Here's the translation via google: https://vz-ru.translate.goog/society/2021/4/14/1094528.html?...
Edit2: Opening paragraphs:
> The West continues to put pressure on Russia to stop the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline - and the most important event in this chain was the Polish military provocations. Can opponents of the gas pipeline resort to real military operations against Nord Stream 2 - and if so, what should Russia counter this with?
> Recall that in early April 2021, the situation around the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline seriously escalated. A significant number of civilian ships and warships (mostly Polish), as well as submarines, made dangerous maneuvers around the pipeline construction vessel Fortuna. Polish military aircraft flew around and over the construction site.
Later:
> Under such conditions, the most likely means to attack the pipeline is the so-called mine destroyer - a disposable uninhabited underwater vehicle (UUV), controlled from a surface ship via a fiber-optic cable, having its own television camera and a simple sonar. Such devices are in service with foreign fleets in huge quantities. The device carries an explosive charge on board, the remote detonation of which destroys the mine.