The researchers say this is consistent with the previous patterns of a Russian disinformation group. The accounts involved were also spreading content opposing France's backing for Ukraine, suggesting a wider international context for the royal rumours.
If Russian disinformation ops piggybacking on local issues are hitting the UK and France, apparently in an attempt to inflame divisions, then it's an absolute certainty that they're doing the exact same thing in the USA.
So be careful how much credit you give to rumours blaming one political faction or another for utterly bonkers opinions (although it's also clear that the MAGA fringe are beyond insane at this point).
]]>A new blog entry will be posted this Friday around 4pm.
Just saying.
]]>The UK had a similar moment in the British European Airways Flight 548 disaster of 1969 (ex-military captain angry at junior officers due to take strike action the next day created chilly climate in the cockpit then fucked up big-time: FO and flight engineer were too scared to take over ... everyone died).
Same sort of thing caused the Korean Air Cargo Flight 8509 crash.
It's always the corporate culture.
Flipside: the United Airlines Flight 232 crash at Sioux City which should have been 100% fatal (the plane had a catastrophic engine failure and lost all hydraulic power to the flight surfaces, but the flight crew basically invented flying with throttle-only control on their way to a "non-survivable" landing that 2/3 of the people on board survived). And then there was Qantas Flight 32 which was again saved through heroic crew resource management (and having not two but five very senior pilots on the flight deck when an engine exploded and took out another engine and a hydraulic circuit).
]]>Astonishingly, in 2023 no civil jet airliner in the developed world crashed.
There were plenty of accidents and a few of them had fatalities -- "captain had a stroke, first officer landed the plane solo but it was too late" -- but IIRC the only "plane departed from controlled flight, broke up, hit a mountain, all dead" was an ATR or a Dash-8 or similar turboprop in Kathmandu, plus some obsolete/no longer certified kit in Africa, and a handful of freighters (elderly airliner conversions, no passengers on board).
]]>Around 1970, the largest container ship afloat carried roughly 3000 TEUs.
The MV Dali is a Neopanamax ship and can carry up to 9971 TEU.
(A TEU is a standard 20 foot multimodal container, capacity roughly 20 tons of cargo. They also come in double-length versions (2TEU containers) and taller versions, but the length/breadth is rigidly standardized for compatability.)
So, when fully laden the Dali has roughly triple the capacity of the largest container ship in service when the bridge was designed.
I mean, 50 years of progress, right?
(I can't help thinking that expecting the structural engineers who designed it to ask "let's plan for what happens if we ram this bridge with something THREE TIMES THE SIZE OF THE BIGGEST SHIP CURRENTLY IN SERVICE" is a bit of a reach. Yes, the bridge structure should probably have been upgraded, or the bridge replaced, before now, but this isn't in the same ball park as the Tay Bridge Disaster.)
]]>An unclassified Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency report said the container ship Dali “lost propulsion” as it was leaving port and warned Maryland officials of a possible collision, ABC reported. “The vessel notified MD Department of Transportation (MDOT) that they had lost control of the vessel and an allision [a ship collision] with the bridge was possible,” the report said.]]>
I think you should think bigger! What 300 metre rotor blades call for is delivery by parachute drop from a Lockheed CL-1201.
]]>A friend of mine was the head of IT security for a second-tier government agency in the UK. (Infrastructure, so neglected/low priority.)
He got a puzzler about a decade ago. As you can imagine, he had to enforce standards for secure disposal of government IT assets -- including decommissioning laptops (and desktops) which might have Confidential or higher classified materials on them. Which was easy enough: extract hard drive and hit it with a hammer/feed it through an industrial shredder, file correct paperwork to certify destruction of hard disk/SSD, and the job's done, right?
This checklist worked fine until he stumbled over a very dusty lunchbox computer circa 1988 vintage that didn't have a hard disk at all.
(In the end he found a junk/failed drive in the trash, duct-taped it to the laptop, decommissioned that per regulation, then filed the paperwork. Result!)
]]>More likely "Blade Runner" is trademarked up the wazoo and the IP rights are owned by a very litigious media corporation. (Does some digging: Alcon Entertainment LLC owns the media franchise property, and they have close ties to a subsidiary of Warner Bros.) So you'd be trying to do a deal with Hollywood lawyers to license the use of a very famous name.
They'd probably charge the cargo capacity of one of those planes ... in gold bullion.
]]>Russia supports them because Syria gives Russia a warm water port on the Mediterranean. Having Syria as a client state is very useful to Putin's long-term plans as it gives Russia a naval base within striking range of the Suez Canal and the Arabian Gulf (hint: oil politics from a previous century still shapes geopolitics today).
Remember, Putin is a Russian imperial revanchist. He wants to rebuild the empire. The Bosphorus was always a major western choke-hold over the Russian Black Sea fleet, and the Russian Baltic fleet was bottled up by the North Sea and the Iceland/UK gap. The Far East fleet (Vladivostok) was too far out of the way to be useful for sea control in the Med or North Atlantic, and in any case was needed as a counterweight to Japan and China. So Syria today is disproportionately important to Russian geopolitical eyes.
]]>FSVO "extremists" that also includes the "defense" industries and Halliburton etc, to the tune of a few trillion dollars in extra sales over two decades.
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