It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
I've found a couple of interesting things to read lately. First, a writeup of US satellite intelligence on the Kirov class, which covers several major topics here. Second, if you want to know about the continuing travails of the US icebreaker program, check out Sixty Degrees North, a substack that follows this in great detail.
Overhauls are my review of Mystic Seaport, The Arleigh Burke class, The Coast Guard and for 2023, VLS and Megasilverfist's review of the West Australia Shipwrecks Museum.
Comments
Given how successful Israel appears to be at decapitation strikes against their further abroad enemies (obviously Nasrallah, but also various Iranian bombings), what's the best explanation for why they haven't been similarly successful against Hamas' leadership?
Given how successful Israel appears to be at decapitation strikes against their further abroad enemies (obviously Nasrallah, but also various Iranian bombings), what's the best explanation for why they haven't been similarly successful against Hamas' leadership?
Probably just not having the same degree of intelligence. My understanding is that after the 2006 war, Israel has been very focused on Hezbollah as a potential enemy and a lot more casual about Hamas. And you can't really build that kind of capability on the fly, either.
Also, Hamas's top leadership is probably colocated with several dozen Israeli hostages, and dead hostages are serious business in Israeli politics. Nobody who wants to remain PM of Israel, is going to order a bombing that he knows or strongly suspects will kill a hostage.
Clearing the spam from the sidebar - feel free to delete the duplicates afterwards.
Planning to look at whether I can actually fix that problem later, but in the meantime, Firefox 'Duplicate Tab' (in the right-click menu) with a comment written does duplicate the comment text.
As an FYI, I don't have anything beyond the sidebar (easily, at least) so clearing spam makes it harder for me to track it down and delete it. (I found the one in bibliography, and have passed a suggestion to Said Achmiz about how to reduce frequency.)
Sorry - I'm not particularly bothered by the spam myself (and would consider some potential solutions worse than the spam), but was vaguely (and very possibly mistakenly, but I didn't have time to investigate right then) concerned that having it visible might be attracting other spammers and/or getting us penalized in search engines etc.
And after our recent discussions of wanting an escort to protect you at night and referencing an earlier one on lack on initiative, it was too easy to imagine myself as that night guard shooting a shadower. (Even found it funny that it takes nine.)
I don't think it being visible in the sidebar is going to get a google penalty, and I don't know if I really care. I'm not monetized or anything, and I try my best not to care too much about traffic numbers. As for attracting spammers, well, I do my best, and the block list is pretty effective.
The problem with spam in the sidebar is that pushes actually worth reading comments down to the point at which we may not know they ever existed.