Putin plays his asshole card

Deportation of Ukrainian Civilians to Russia: The Legal Framework - Lieber  Institute West Point

It doesn’t look good for the Russian military in Ukraine. Better-supplied and -motivated Ukrainian troops are pushing-back Russian forces even in Donbas— Moscow’s more modest pivot objective after failing to take Kyiv.  What gives?  Could Ukraine actually win this war? Could Russia actually lose? Or could Putin even be deposed by a coup?

Probably not.

That’s because, while everyone outside of Moscow was gloating over Russia’s lack of military success, Putin was quietly playing his asshole card.

Yes, his asshole card.

Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy said last week that Russia has kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian civilians and is holding them hostage in Russian prison camps. […]

How to quickly end the war in Ukraine with $10 laser pointers

President Zelenskyy of Ukraine is begging NATO for a no-fly zone they can’t risk providing. So I came up with another solution — $10 laser pointers. 

Buy 100,000 laser pointers and give them to Ukrainian mothers (not kids — too dangerous). Even the puniest lockable laser pointer (notice the keys?) can temporarily blind a pilot at a distance of more than a mile, so what will 100 non-puny laser pointers do to the same aircraft? It would not only create an effective no-fly zone, it might kill hundreds of Russian pilots before they figure it out.

Though outdoor laser pointer pictures are usually shot at night so the beam is easier […]

Here’s why Putin won’t use nukes in Ukraine — Pass it on.

President Putin of Russia has been talking a lot lately about his forces using nuclear weapons — presumably tactical nuclear weapons — in the war with Ukraine. It’s an easy threat to make but a difficult one to follow-through for reasons I’ll explain here in some detail. I’m not saying Mr Putin won’t order nuclear strikes. He might. Dictators do such things from time to time. But if Mr Putin does push that button, I’d estimate there is perhaps a 20- percent chance that nukes will be actually launched and a 100 percent chance that Mr. Putin will end that day with a bullet in his brain.

Given that I don’t […]

When is a no-fly zone not a no-fly zone? When it’s an airlift.

This was the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49. Post-war Germany was partitioned into sectors administered separately by the major Allied powers. The city of Berlin, buried deep in the Soviet sector of Germany, was similarly partitioned. So there were American- and British- and French-administered parts of Berlin. Access from the rest of Europe was by road, rail, or air with trains and trucks passing through a Soviet-ruled countryside. That was until the Russians decided to shut down those roads and railways in 1948, keeping Berlin from receiving both fuel and food.

The only remaining access to Berlin was by air and so the United States Air Force and the Royal Air Force flew everything into […]

A nanotechnology overnight sensation 30 years in the making!

I’m not dead yet!

Fallon and I continue our collaboration, though who knows what I’ll do when he starts back to school on Tuesday? With Mama now working and me blind the kids will be going to school by Uber.

Fortunately, we have something very interesting to write about today that will likely change every technology we currently use.

One of my favorite mad scientists sent me a link recently to a very important IEEE paper from Stanford. Scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) have managed to observe in real time the growth of nanocrystalline superlattices and report that they can grow impressively […]