Tab Clearing...

• Naval Estimates, a browser-based game of warship design in the Dreadnought Era. Looks like big nerdy fun!


• Tales of crossing the Russian border in the Current Era.


• Run by slavers, manned by captives, the internet scam compounds are moving deeper into Myanmar, adopting AI tools.

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Tab Clearing...

• China's getting extra frisky with Taiwan and the Philippines, and meanwhile we're stripping our last carrier out of the Pacific to go plug holes in the Gulf. "Pivot to Asia" my ass.


• The deficit continues growing at a record pace, nearing $40 trillion.


• We live in a world of miracles and wonders.

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Tab Clearing...

• Russian frigate sent to watch over "shadow fleet" tankers moving through the English Channel is now itself low on fuel and drifting.


• Russia, feeling the stress of Ukrainian counterattacks, believed to be preparing "provocation" in Baltic nations or Poland to test NATO resolve.


• New Jersey residents have to keep cool road sign greased up to prevent theft.

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Tab Clearing...

• The goons who keep an eye on the crews of the "shadow fleet" tankers that are the Russian economy's increasingly tenuous financial lifeline.


• The paid influencers who hype Polymarket to the rubes.


• Pokémon Go location data sold for use in training military drones. No wonder people are starting to hate everything about Big Tech.

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Rising Sun

Japan, like other democracies in the region, realizes that, despite the US talking about a "strategic pivot to Asia" for something like a decade now, it might well be on its own against China. (You know things are tense in the region if Japan and South Korea are speaking to each other.)

The latest step it's taking is legalizing arms exports, which should be an important source of income for the country, as well as making advanced arms available to nations like the Philippines.

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Tab Clearing...

• High-resolution sonar images of the USS Monitor wreck.


• Russia's hacker unit known as Fancy Bear is behind the hacking of wi-fi routers.


• Panopticon-like surveillance isn't any better just because it's not the government doing it.

War News...

• IRIS Dena, an Iranian frigate, has been torpedoed and sunk by US submarine off the coast of Sri Lanka.


• White House arranges evacuation of some social media influencers from Qatar.


• The Royal Navy is dispatching the HMS Dragon, a Type 45 destroyer, to assist in the defense of Cyprus from drone and missile attack.

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Glub.

Iranian navy vessels at Bandar Abbas are looking a little worse for wear.

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Epistemic Crackup

The universality of always-on broadband internet connections in our pockets really kicked off an experiment in Epistemological Choose Your Own Adventure and, friends, it's not going swimmingly.

The proliferation of AI-generated imagery and video has absolutely turbocharged it. Social media was awash by yesterday afternoon in AI videos of varying quality claiming to show a burning USS Abraham Lincoln sinking. (You know, the one the Houthis claimed they sank last year.)

Can't wait to run into the CVN-72 Truthers in the wild later this year who claim that the Iranians actually sank the Lincoln and the Deep State is covering it up.

Tab Clearing...

• CENTCOM denies IRGC claims about striking the USS Abraham Lincoln with four ballistic missiles, saying they didn't even come close.


• "This war brought to you by Draftkings Sportsbook..."


• Maersk avoiding shipping routes in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf less than a month after resuming normal Suez traffic.

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Tab Clearing...

• A peace officer talks accountability: Acting like the good guys should...


• Recovering undersea fiber optic cable for recycling is a fascinating process.


• A fascinating blog post on the evolution of the English language: How far back in time can you understand English?

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I like big guns and I cannot lie.

Was HMS Dreadnought revolutionary? Did it trigger a genuine revolution in naval affairs?

For a deep dive into the era, I recommend Massie's Dreadnought and Castles of Steel.

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Tab Clearing...

• Children and Grandchildren of Immigrants Abduct a Native American


• This guy monitors the movements of the "shadow fleet" of sanctioned tankers from the rooftop of his home.


• ChatGPT wrote a suicide lullaby for this man based on his favorite childhood book, Goodnight Moon.

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Tanker Games

That shadow fleet tanker that tried to run the blockade into Venezuela and was pursued by the U.S. Coast Guard into the Atlantic? Well, the Russians have flagged it and renamed it and now it's being escorted by Russian navy vessels and headed for the Barents Sea, probably headed to Murmansk.

The thing is, the tanker was headed from Iran to Venezuela. It hadn't even taken on cargo. So what is on the ship that Russia's so eager to keep it from being boarded and seized? Drones? SAMs? Sensitive personnel?

UPDATE: Looks like the Russians had their bluff called.

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Battle what, now?

From a piece at the WSJ on current naval affairs...

Ah, yes. History buffs will recall that, after the Imperial Japanese Navy shelled Pearl Harbor and sank all our carriers with gunfire, we famously pivoted to a battleship-based strategy in 1942 because... I'm sorry, I can't even do this as sarcasm. It's just too laughable.

Dude's a retired Navy officer. He knows what he's saying is BS, but it's being phrased for an audience of one, because gotta suck up to that audience for budget money.

Like, imagine being so willing to abase yourself before the current power structure that you're willing to say something on the record that is so dumb on its face that you know you're gonna get absolutely dragged if it's quoted, but you go ahead and do it anyway.

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Meme Dump!

Special Edition Midweek Memes...

Yeah, yeah, the Navy jet that went into the drink the other day was a Super Hornet, not an F-35, but the Truman was busy conducting evasive maneuvers at the time, so weren't nobody standing around snapping pictures. They were too busy trying not to go into the drink with the bird and the tug.

Still...

Silence from the China hawks, though...

Commercial flights were diverted between Australia and New Zealand on Friday, officials and airlines said, amid fears that Chinese naval vessels were conducting live-fire military drills in an incident some security experts called a “show of force” unusually far from China’s shores.

The Chinese naval exercises, in international waters off Australia’s eastern coast, are legal, but they nonetheless sparked expressions of alarm from officials in Australia and New Zealand.

“It’s a wake-up call,” New Zealand Defense Minister Judith Collins said in an interview with Radio New Zealand’s “Morning Report” on Thursday. She said the Chinese exercises were legal but “unusual” and involved “the most significant and sophisticated [vessels] that we have seen this far south.”

This was no freedom of navigation display, either, but a live fire gunnery exercise. Definitely a flex. Just the thing our tip-o'-the-spear, warrior ethos, all-teeth-no-tail Nu Perfect military is supposed to be ready to react to thanks to our pivot to Asia. 

However, it looks like we're pretty much leaving this one to the Aussies and the Kiwis. Good luck, mates!

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Unholy Terror

Watching The Terror I’m reminded that period nautical dramas shoot a large percentage of scenes on deck or in the captain’s cabin, which gives 19th century seafaring an unrealistically light and airy vibe.

That, and they haven’t figured out how to broadcast smell.

Something like seventy dudes crammed into a 100’ long ship… It must have smelled unholy belowdecks, especially with those retrofitted steam engines. Like the locker room in a burning slaughterhouse.

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Tab Clearing...

• Unless you're deployed there (or transiting through) this piece from the Beeb is about as close a look as you'll get at Diego Garcia.


• Helene set some storm surge records in Florida.


• More stuff on the sunk minisub.

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