Category: Uncategorized

The decline of development

The growing number of development issues with the F-35 will not surprise anyone who understands that the US empire is in its decline-and-contraction stage:

According to a June 2018 report by the Government Accountability Office, the program had 111 category 1 deficiencies on the books in January 2018. By May 24, 2018, that number had decreased to 64 open category 1 problems out of a total 913 deficiencies, according to one document obtained by Defense News.

Another document obtained by Defense News noted that at least 13 issues would need to be held as category 1 deficiencies going into operational tests in fall 2018.

The 13 deficiencies include:

  • The F-35’s logistics system currently has no way for foreign F-35 operators to keep their secret data from being sent to the United States.
  • The spare parts inventory shown by the F-35’s logistics system does not always reflect reality, causing occasional mission cancellations.
  • Cabin pressure spikes in the cockpit of the F-35 have been known to cause barotrauma, the word given to extreme ear and sinus pain.
  • In very cold conditions — defined as at or near minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit — the F-35 will erroneously report that one of its batteries have failed, sometimes prompting missions to be aborted.
  • Supersonic flight in excess of Mach 1.2 can cause structural damage and blistering to the stealth coating of the F-35B and F-35C.
  • After doing certain maneuvers, F-35B and F-35C pilots are not always able to completely control the aircraft’s pitch, roll and yaw.
  • If the F-35A and F-35B blows a tire upon landing, the impact could also take out both hydraulic lines and pose a loss-of-aircraft risk.
  • A “green glow” sometimes appears on the helmet-mounted display, washing out the imagery in the helmet and making it difficult to land the F-35C on an aircraft carrier.
  • On nights with little starlight, the night vision camera sometimes displays green striations that make it difficult for all variants to see the horizon or to land on ships.
  • The sea search mode of the F-35’s radar only illuminates a small slice of the sea’s surface.
  • When the F-35B vertically lands on very hot days, older engines may be unable to produce the required thrust to keep the jet airborne, resulting in a hard landing.

The Pentagon has identified four additional category 1 deficiencies since beginning operational tests in December 2018, mostly centered around weapons interfaces, Winter said.

For the price of the F-35, the USA could have built 79,787 F-16s, or 17.3x more than were ever built. If you don’t understand why the USA is going to lose its next major war, look up the kill rate between German Panthers and US Shermans or between Tigers and T-34s. One F-35 might be better than one F-16, but it’s not capable of taking on 200 at a time.

The clash of low-trust cultures

The more the East invades the West, the more it becomes apparent that my explanation for the historical success of some minorities is dependent upon their possession of a low-trust, high-performance monopoly in a high-trust environment is the correct one:

As a commenter pointed out about my review of This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto by Suketu Mehta, the scion of an Indian diamond merchant clan, diamond merchants are about the last who ought to lecture white Americans on their failures of inclusion and diversity.

The diamond business is globalist yet intensely nepotistic. I knew an American woman who got a job in the Los Angeles diamond district but then went to work for an insurance company due to discrimination against women and non-Indians.

Indians have recently pushed Orthodox Jewish diamond businessmen largely out of their stronghold in Antwerp, Belgium, in part by being more clannish than the Orthodox Jews.

Jews are being pushed out of their merchanting and intellectual strongholds by the Chinese, the Indians, and other Asian groups because after centuries of competing successfully with high-trust Europeans, they are in no shape to compete with similarly low-trust cultures with larger extended families.

Note that the Mehta book is perfectly straightforward about immigration being not merely invasion, but conquest.

When the Middle Ages were Dark

Unauthorized professor Rachel Fulton Brown laments the colorization of what used to be known as the Dark Ages:

You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies.

And why were these Ages so Dark? There were no universities, no towns, only castles with dungeons. Monks huddled in their cells thinking dark thoughts about sin, while Vikings stormed across the countryside, raping and pillaging and capturing Christians to sell as slaves. The Church refused to let anybody learn to read in case they got hold of the Bible and threatened its power.

Meanwhile, in the convents, women went mad, hysterically imagining themselves beloved by God, some even going so far as to have visions of being married to Christ. They were encouraged in these “absurd and puerile” delusions by their priests, themselves driven mad by their unnatural celibacy, who, when they were not seducing nuns, were inventing lies about witches having sex with the Devil, all the while blaming the women for inflaming their lust.

There was no commerce, no learning, no art. All was drab and colorless because the Church hated beauty. The kings were barbarians who knew nothing of law. The Church encouraged the worst superstitions so as to keep the laity bewitched and in fear of God. The barons thought nothing of torturing their own laborers, while the Church was ever on the lookout for heretics to burn at the stake.

Even the high culture was infected with superstition, as the Church coerced the laity into building great cathedrals simply in order to assert its power. Whereas the ancient Romans had build a great civilization (never mind the conquest and slaves), the Middle Ages knew only decadence and decline, thanks to the Church. There was no great literature or philosophy, only the demented ravings of the scholastics, who wasted their lives arguing such stupidities as how many angels could dance on the head of a pin and insisting that the world was flat.

And then along came Charles Homer Haskins (1870-1937) and ruined everything.

Prof. Brown’s first Unauthorized video will be available on Unauthorized.TV later this month.

Prediction: spectacularly bad

The Wheel of Time wasn’t any good in book form. One shudders to think how bad it will be by the time Amazon gets through with it:

Amazon’s highly anticipated TV series adaptation of the beloved book series The Wheel of Time has found its star. It was announced today that Oscar-nominated actress Rosamund Pike will play the lead role of Moiraine in the TV adaptation of Robert Jordan’s fantasy novels.

The Wheel of Time is set in a sprawling, epic world where magic exists, but only women can use it. Meaning that in this series — women hold the keys to power. The story follows Moiraine, a member of the shadowy and influential all-female organization called the ‘Aes Sedai’ as she embarks on a dangerous, world-spanning journey with five young men and women. Moiraine’s interested in these five because she believes one of them might be the reincarnation of an incredibly powerful individual, whom prophecies say will either save humanity or destroy it. The series draws on numerous elements of European and Asian culture and philosophy, most notably the cyclical nature of time found in Buddhism and Hinduism.

The Wheel of Time had a very good introduction. Then it promptly started going downhill in the first chapter and didn’t stop until it reached its nadir at Book Seven. But it was essentially unreadable beginning with Book Four. It’s never a good sign when a series is said to improve by its fans after the author’s death. I very much doubt the TV series will survive to the finish either.

I am, however, genuinely curious to learn who will play the most annoying character in fantasy literature, Rand al’Thor. Whoever he is, one hopes that he will possess a sufficiently punchable face in order to properly play the part. I suggest David Hogg.

No, no, HELL no!

What sort of drooling moron is going to give Mark freaking Zuckerberg control over his money, however virtual?

The much-hyped launch of Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra has met a brick wall of institutional skepticism as politicians and regulators take one look at CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s privacy record and raise a collective eyebrow.

Calibra, the new Facebook subsidiary which will operate Libra, has made no secret of its ambitions to branch out from funds transfer into credit, bill payments and other more sophisticated products. Such consolidation of power in the hands of a company that already has a monopoly on online social interaction for its 2-billion-plus users – and a terrible record of protecting users’ privacy – has understandably worried the skeptics.

I already deactivated my Facebook account – and I’ll activate it only to delete it entirely. There is literally ZERO chance I will ever make any use of Libra. I’d rather trade in seashells.

Now on Unauthorized

Now that we have our logo sorted, we can finally begin the process of rolling out the platform-specific apps for which many viewers have been requesting. We also anticipate launching the Medieval History series very soon. This has been a big month for Unauthorized, so if you haven’t subscribed yet, it’s an excellent time to do so and ride with the outlaws of the Internet.

We’re also going to have a special badge for Unauthorized subscribers on SocialGalactic 2.0, which is rapidly approaching Alpha testing.

Convergence in credit cards

As it is written, every organization that becomes converged loses its ability to perform its primary function. Mastercard is in the process of doing so:

Every time someone in the trans or nonbinary community has to whip out their credit card to rent a car or buy dinner, they may be required to prove a credit card that misidentifies them is actually theirs. That can mean a string of uncomfortable, personal questions that may feel like harassment masquerading as security concerns, and it can make going about daily life not only emotionally draining, but downright dangerous.

According to one survey, nearly one-third (32{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e}) of individuals who have shown IDs with a name or gender that did not match their presentation found themselves being harassed, denied services, and/or attacked. That is a lot to deal with when you’re just trying to buy groceries, see a movie, get your hair done, or just exist in the world.

Now Mastercard is taking one step toward making life a little easier for people in this situation. The company just announced the True Name card, which will allow people to use their true names, not deadnames, on cards without the requirement of a legal name change. The True Name card will make lives easier and safer.

One of the primary functions of a credit card is to correctly identify the person to whom credit is being provided. Now imagine the myriad of ways this new security hole is going to be exploited by thieves and credit card scammers.

Clerk to tall bearded man: “Why does your credit card say Penelope Chao?”

Penelope: “That’s my True Name.”

Clerk: “You didn’t steal this card from that little Asian woman whose purse was snatched in front of the store yesterday?”

Penelope: “Of course not! Can’t you tell I identify as a woman?”

Clerk: “My apologies, Ms Chao. No offense intended.”

Penelope: “None taken. Hey, gimme three packs of Marlboro Reds too.”

They’ve learned nothing

One has to seriously wonder what Indiegogo thinks they are doing by determining that not only its campaigns, but its campaign contributors, are too risky for it. Apparently they want to add a few thousand more backers to their growing number of legal disputes.

This is particularly ironic as they never seem to have any problem with campaign owners who rip off their contributors and don’t actually deliver any products.

It’s an interesting business strategy, Cotton. We’ll see how it works out for them.

Color me dubious

This Reddit analysis strikes me more as revolution porn than a revelation of actual government wargaming analysis, but nevertheless, it appears to be generally correct with regards to the essentials:

The United States Government has extensively studied the concept of second American Civil War. Their conclusion is as follows: They don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning. The moment civil war is declared, the government loses. No scenario or outcome ends in their success. Period. It’s just a matter of how long it takes.

A longer analysis will follow, but here are the salient points.

30{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e} of the American population will actively revolt.

This alone is enormous and damning. Historically, you only need 10{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e} of the population to actively participate in a rebellion to successfully overthrow the establishment: We only had 15{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e} of the population actively attempting to throw out the British during the Revolutionary War; roughly 70{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e} of what remained was neutral and simply stood by. By contrast, 30{f33784e39f95a4a537f95eb029d837fe676a3542b2380ed2d704b841b03a8c5e} of Americans in modern America would support a revolution to stop their own government if it happened tomorrow That’s how discontent the people are and how much the people don’t support the government.

The government would need infrastructure more than rebels would.

Already working with significant handicaps, the establishment would need electricity, access to the Internet, bridges, and airports to coordinate any active campaign against the rebellion. By contrast, the rebellion can work in the dark. Considering how easy it would be to sabotage US infrastructure, one of the first things the rebellion would do is collapse bridges, destroy, or seize power plants, and cover the Interstate in IEDs. This is relatively simple to accomplish, and it would inflict enormous damage on the establishment’s ability to restore order. It would also cost an enormous amount of time and effort to fix any sabotage, because the establishment would need to provide military protection to any workers attempting to rebuild, which is a drain their active fighting personnel resources that they could not afford.

It would certainly make for an interesting wargame design challenge. And it also is in harmony with what we know of the Clinton adminstration’s study of the various militia groups and the government’s inability to suppress them. As a general rule, there is very, very little that governments can do about 4GW insurrections; a government that lacks the ability to suppress illegal organizations such as MS-13 and the Gulf Cartel isn’t going to be able to do much about ideological rebels either.

Stop eating people!

It’s not the heat, it’s the kuru:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed concerns about her health after visibly trembling at an official ceremony, saying she was just a bit dehydrated in the heat.

Merkel appeared unsteady and was shaking as she stood in the midday sun in Berlin on Tuesday next to visiting Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky, whom she was welcoming to her office building with military honours.

Mrs Merkel’s whole body visibly shook and she pursed her lips as she tried to contain the situation as she stood with Zelenskiy in the 28C (82F) heat while a military band played their national anthems outside the chancellery.

It’s rather strange how all these evil globalists exhibit symptoms that are usually only seen among cannibals, is it not?