Russian analyst urges nuclear attack on Yellowstone National Park and San Andreas fault line

A Russian geopolitical analyst says the best way to attack the United States is to detonate nuclear weapons to trigger a supervolcano at Yellowstone National Park or along the San Andreas fault line on California's coast.

The president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems based in Moscow, Konstantin Sivkov said in an article for a Russian trade newspaper on Wednesday, VPK News, that Russia needed to increase its military weapons and strategies against the "West" which was "moving to the borders or Russia".

He has a conspiracy theory that NATO - a political and military alliance which counts the US, UK, Canada and many countries in western Europe as members - was amassing strength against Russia and the only way to combat that problem was to attack America's vulnerabilities to ensure a "complete destruction of the enemy".

"Geologists believe that the Yellowstone supervolcano could explode at any moment. There are signs of growing activity there. Therefore it suffices to push the relatively small, for example the impact of the munition megaton class to initiate an eruption. The consequences will be catastrophic for the United States - a country just disappears," he said.

"Another vulnerable area of the United States from the geophysical point of view, is the San Andreas fault - 1300 kilometers between the Pacific and North American plates ... a detonation of a nuclear weapon there can trigger catastrophic events like a coast-scale tsunami which can completely destroy the infrastructure of the United States."

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Have the Hugos of the past been awarded to white males because they were white and male? Or was it simple statistics? If 80% of all SF writers are white males, then you can expect around that same fraction of the nominees to be white and male. And even if the percentage is much higher, that can be due to cultural bias: if the other 20% is relatively unknown, less successful with a smaller fan base for whatever reason, then they are even less likely to be nominated. The reason doesn't have to be anything as bad as racism or misogyny.

Was that really the goal of the "SJW" group? This quote from TFA is spot-on:

SJW of all stripes have one thing in common: a relentless drive for conformist groupthink on the issues they fight for. Few people are as scary and dangerous as the ones who are convinced that theirs is a righteous battle, and are prepared to fight it, whether their belief flows from religion or from ideals. And what appears to make the SJW crowd more belligerent is the fact that often they are right, in that there are still plenty of inequities and social injustices. Compared to other "noisy" groups like extreme right wingers, these are the noisiest, most exclusionary, and indeed most violent. And the really scary part is that because the issues they attack are real, this mindset is percolating into the mainstream. Writers being excluded from an association or from an award because they have the wrong ideas. Or in my home country, where no one so much as blinked when a school official stated that "if you have the wrong ideas or are a member of the wrong political party, perhaps you shouldn't be a student or a teacher here". Remember Churchill: "The fascists of the future will be called anti-fascists".

The last 1% is a gamechanger, though. If cars can drive themselves everywhere, then:
- Many people no longer need to own a car; if they need one, they just dial one up and have it arrive 15 minutes later. Or you would have 1 small EV for your daily needs, and order up a truck, family car, or long-range vehicle as needed.
- You would no longer need to have a driver's license. No more need to drive your kid to school either, the car can do it for you.
- Parking will be hassle-free: let the car worry about it. And who cares if it parks itself 10 minutes away? This means that parked cars can be removed from the urban landscape I always thought that American suburbs, with cars parked in driveways instead of the street, look rather nice. Over here, most middle class people cannot afford the land for a house with an actual driveway.

It'll be nice to have the car drive itself over the highways, but having it drive that last % changes everything.

And it has new animated emojis! Always wanted those... As for the scroll wheel, I wonder why it's there (instead of using gestures on the touch screen)

Still, I think this watch is an interesting development. Maybe this will go the way of 3D TV or VR Headsets that make a comeback every so often but always fall a little short in value compared to the cost and effort, and personally I don't really see the appeal of smart watches. But as an app developer I have an excuse to get one, and perhaps wearing it for a while will reveal some useful use cases.

A common mistake when scaling up is to think that these 3 activities must necessarily exist as levels in a rigid hierarchy, and especially that strategy and management are part of the same work stream. Imagine a department having a management team (handling the day-to-day stuff) and a strategy team, working side by side and reporting to the department head. The strategy team will have some senior "worker bees" in it as well as some managers, but the head of that team (*not* the department head) has a seat in the division strategy team one level up (and so on). I've seen this structure work, sort of, but the problem is to make managers accept this model. Many managers at all levels demanded involvement in strategy, even though it is not their job, and they are often not very good at it, and if they can according to the hierarchy, they will overrule their strategists.

The problem in general is that what we see as "management" is actually several very, very different jobs: business administration, strategy, people management, etc. Managers who do even an adequate job at all of them are rather rare. Yet somehow we haven't yet figured out how to subdivide this work... or maybe managers resist because it makes their jobs a lot less glamorous and a great deal more monotonous, if they are merely career managers, business administrators, strategists or process architects. Well, compartimentalizing of jobs has been ruthlessly applied across almost all other jobs in large corporations. Now it's their turn.

Web of trust cannot survive politics, if we tolerate any bad behavior from any trusted parties, then nobody could be trusted and whole construct falls apart.

There is a problem with the IT or technical ladder itself in many companies where IT is not core business (and even in some where it is). The ladder can be rather short: Junior / Medior / Senior tech (and senior can be someone with as little as 5 years experience), then you basically leave tech and be project manager, line manager or the manager of a division or competence center or some such. A few rock stars may stay in tech as Principal Consultants, but those are rare (and often not promoted from within).

In many companies, there will be a few clever techies who are recognized as being very knowledgable in their own area of expertise as well as having a wider and forward looking view, and who are consulted on where to head the company's strategic direction. Such a techie may be promoted to management (and possibly do a crap job at the people and process aspects of that), or the existing manager may continue to draw upon his best techies to help him strategize, but why not turn it into a role? Some companies do, but I don't see it very often and it's a shame, because it can be a very nice role for a senior tech to be promoted into, increasing his value to the company as well.

I have some bad news, your brick have been leaking cryptographic keys via heat signature side channel for months now. I should have your root any year now.

Considering that nuclear power is the safest form of power the world has ever known, I'd say it's worthy of recognition for offsetting carbon more than anything else. To borrow a phrase, "It's the energy density, stupid."

There's a reason why China has 30 nuclear plants under construction, while the US just approved its first new plant in 30 years.

If it's between a slight possibility of an allergic reaction or a high likelihood of bleeding to death, the choice is simple. The prevalence of shellfish allergy seems to be under 2% anyway. In that light, it might be good to keep this stuff in public buildings next to the AED (if the shelf life isn't too short). More people die from blood loss after a bad cut than you might think, because it takes time for paramedics to arrive and few people know how to properly stanch a wound.

Is it really? It probably varies a lot between countries. I was surprised though to learn (from Google) that an average PPL certification in the US is around $9000 or so, while I found similar courses here for €10.000 (and that includes 21% VAT). Not that different.

Does that include medical bills?

You don't need to have the best quality or be the cheapest, even from a customer perspective. As long as you offer the best value for money. Ikea does pretty good there as long as you know what to buy there and what to avoid. And don;t forget to put a price on convenience: instead of waiting 4-8 weeks for your new stuff, you get to take it home and use it right away (some assembly required). That's very useful... we use Ikea all the time in rental properties that need to be furnished on short notice.

...but they get our shit to space.