Ukraine-Kursk
Okay , now there is probably a tendency in the media and elsewhere to overthink this particularly since no one saw it coming. In tennis we call it “Hit It Where They Ain’t”. It’s precisely what it sounds like.
For Ukraine it probably began with the observation that new Russian units are getting younger and younger on average , and that many of them are literally starving in the field. Of course this is partly due to Russian MOD’s propensity for destroying most of the local resources they come into contact with. Pretty clearly an intellectually impaired strategy at best and full on reflective of brain damage at worst. These observations, for an experienced and capable command , should begin a chain of calculations. If there is reasonable control of ground your adversary needs for supply chains and attacks are being launched from largely unsecured terrain (hello Kursk) within enemy borders…holy toledo what are you waiting for ? (and to be fair Ukraine has had to wait for far too many things). You can change the balance of outcomes more efficiently with operations within that territory.
So now these Russian military impairments are exposed for all the world to see. We are watching the well run dry in real time. The propaganda machine is grinding gears loudly and the truth is leaking out of the disinformation engine the kleptocracy normally uses to keep citizens in the dark. There is now more than one endgame for Ukraine. Will Russia have that moment of sanity and begin withdrawals ? Sanity, unfortunately for Russian governance, is also in short supply. That has been the case for quite some time now.
Debby-Ernesto
For those that follow the Killeans Row Mastodon feed I tracked and did some native input modeling for the Tropical Storm / briefly Hurricane Debby approach and transit of Florida thru August 6th , something we’ve been doing for local storms for many years from the days when Twitter was first a thing. Of course NOAA / NHC as well as all of NWS were all on there along with a legion of weather bugs. It was fun until well…if you know you know.
In case you’ve lost track after Debby left Florida the mayhem continued with flooding rains from Georgia all the way up thru Pennsylvania and into Southeastern Canada (and record rainfall in Montreal !). Here are some totals via Yale Climate Connections :
Florida: 18.86 inches, Parrish
South Carolina: 18.25 inches, 5.3 miles southeast of Summerville
Georgia: 14.82 inches, 1.4 miles east-southeast of Oliver
Maryland: 6.95 inches, 1 mile south of Damascus
New Jersey: 8.67 inches, 1.7 miles southeast of Pennington
North Carolina: 15.25 inches, Kings Grant
Delaware: 6.57 inches, 5.3 miles north of Newark
Virginia: 7.6 inches, 1.3 miles east-northeast of Afton
West Virginia: 5.98 inches, 12.8 miles south-southwest of Harpers Ferry
Pennsylvania: 5.39 inches, 5 miles north-northwest of Rainsburg
Yale Climate Connections has Jeff Masters and Bob Henson Eye On The Storm Coverage of these events. They are two of the best in the business and if your not following them you should be.
Ernesto is now a tropical storm and compared to the slow crawl of Debby is absolutely hauling a** at about 28 mph due West-Northwest towards the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The storm has plenty of breathing room so Hurricane status is likely a given. Primary threat is still rainfall but a turn north later keeps the cone away from the East Coast. Bermuda unfortunately is still in the intensification track.
Harris-Walz
From here the Democrats handling of events post debate regarding Joe Biden were a quintessential public relations disaster. It naturally seemed like things would go from bad to worse. We were caught totally off guard when he made the announcement that he was dropping out and then once again when Harris-Walz came roaring out of the gate. The whole thing in its entirety has been a shocking lesson that predicting political outcomes can be a lot harder than predicting weather. Chastened we are. But also relieved at the very positive direction heading into November.
Notes On UAP Discussions
Most of this activity thus far has been with posts to the Mastodon feed. Rather than start at the beginning I’ll summarize what this is about: Events in 2017 triggered a rash of media coverage regarding the Nimitz and other battle group encounters with UAP that were recorded by fighter pilots, battle group radar and signals intelligence. To be clear it was improved systems performance and integration (including upgraded radar in fighters) that amounted to some of the first high fidelity multi messenger tracking and video of these objects released to the public. It’s not that UAP haven’t been on the radar for quite some time but rather that deployed technology has now crossed a threshold that makes certain kinds of verification less subject to noise.
So these things are real vehicles. That particular cat is out of the bag. It’s extremely unlikely that they are ours or belong to any known adversary. There is a lot more in the way of technical research interest now that the first stages of what some are calling initial disclosure are in the rear view mirror. It’s still hard for many to accept but no longer carries that stigmatized potential padded room crazy of a circus carnival coming through town. Researchers in astrophysics, aerospace engineering, aviation, materials science and many other areas understand now that related work is of serious import. The time has come for real work outside the confines of the military apparatus.
Perhaps more importantly there is already a surge of funding in the private and public domain for work that will not be subject to classification, clearance requirements, non disclosure agreements and the like. That means that the highly skilled people necessary to do this work are not going to be getting sucked into an abyss of silos never to be seen again. They can work and publish and share findings in the sheer light of day the way most researchers do. To get a taste of what all that means visit The Sol Foundation or watch their video posts on YouTube.