Celebration of the B-1 Bomber (BONE) at Oshkosh

by philg

One of the talks at Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture) that we enjoyed was by Kenneth Katz, author of The Supersonic Bone: A Development and Operational History of the B-1 Bomber, John Chilstrom (B-1 pilot), and Fred Swan (B-1 Wizzo).

They reminded us that the B-52, which first flew in 1952, was considered a temporary aircraft that would hold us until we had a full fleet of supersonic bombers. The requirements that turned into the B-1 (“B-ONE” or “Bone”) were first set forth in 1955. The B-1 evolved so slowly, changing from a very fast high-altitude machine to a barely-supersonic low-altitude machine, that Jimmy Carter, running for office in 1976, was able to promise to strangle it in its crib. During the Carter administration, the USAF managed to continue some testing of the prototype B-1s against Russian radar systems that Israel had captured in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. (Oshkosh is pretty much the opposite of New York City; speakers referred to “our friends in Israel” when mentioning various forms of military cooperation, e.g., Israel providing the U.S. with MiG fighters to seed a secret training and testing squadron in Nevada. Nobody enthuses about river-to-the-sea liberation, Queers for Palestine, or anything else that is sacred in the Mamdani Caliphate.) The B-1s got through much better than the B-52s.

The machine that first flew in 1974 (more than 50 years ago) is still in use today, e.g., as part of our gradual surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran (maybe Jimmy Carter was right; he surrendered to Iran in 1979 and if our foreign policy is to surrender to anyone tougher than Grenada then why do we need the B-1 or, indeed, an air force?).

The WSO (“Wizzo”) talked about bombing Iraq in 1973. Bombs and missiles are loaded into a rotating carousel and if conditions change, e.g., someone thinks there is a chance to drop a particular bomb on Saddam’s head, it is necessary to jettison other items in order to get to the desired munition. Here’s how this is loaded up:

A couple of B-1s made low passes, but none stopped to visit this year (2018 was the last time?).

It was common in airshows and talks at Oshkosh for those who’ve served in our military to be praised. Of course, a percentage of these folks exhibited remarkable bravery and took significant risks. Guess who didn’t receive any praise, though? The taxpayers who made it possible for the machines on display to be designed, built, and operated! Eighty percent of federal income tax receipts come from roughly 20 million tax returns (Tax Foundation). Even assuming that over half of these are joint returns, that’s just 10 percent of the U.S. population that is dumb enough to work and pay significant tax. Would it be so difficult to say “If you paid tax on more than $150,000 in income last year, thank you for your service and for enabling us to have F-35s, F-22s, B-1s, aircraft carriers, and all of the other amazing stuff that we’ve been using as part of our surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran”? Speaking of the F-22, here’s one parked at the FBO:

Circling back, so to speak, to the B-1… what is a likely role for the aircraft in a world of ever-more-advanced drones?

How much do attendees at Oshkosh love bombers? Have a look at the simulated bombs that are an essential part of every airshow at EAA AirVenture:

Somewhat related,

“The destruction of Germany’s great war industries was accomplished almost entirely from the air. No one can stand among their ruins without a feeling of awe for the devastating power of such attacks. The courage and skill of our pilots and their crews in these operations is legendary. They deserve the highest tribute of our people.”

— The Honorable Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War

Found on the cover of a book about the B-24 at the Aeromart within EAA AirVenture:

(We seem to have chosen the opposite approach with the Islamic Republic of Iran, i.e., allow them to continue as an industrial power and ask them nicely not to use their industy to make weapons.)

Boeing now takes credit for the B-1B, which was entirely developed and built by North American Rockwell. Boeing lost the design competition circa 1970 and acquired Rockwell in 1996, 22 years after the B-1’s first flight. What else does Boeing take credit for? At the Boeing pavilion’s gift shop, the Black Americans who won World War II:

ChatGPT, regarding the Tuskegee Airmen:

  • the display in your photograph is best understood as modern corporate and cultural messaging
  • they did not fly Boeing aircraft operationally (the Stearman was used for primary training, though)
  • No Tuskegee Airman officially qualified as an ace during World War II (vs. 1,279 non-Tuskegee pilots)
  • The group encountered enemy aircraft on only 35 of its 179 Fifteenth Air Force bomber-escort missions, partly because it entered that campaign relatively late, as German fighter opposition was declining.

Elsewhere on the field, we are informed that the “fearless” pilots who fly the B-29, an actual Boeing plane, were not the men who plowed through 16 hours of thunderstorms round-trip to Japan, but rather “fearless women” who operated the B-29 over the Continental U.S.

ChatGPT:

Many male test pilots, instructors and crews were already flying the B-29. [Enola Gay pilot Paul] Tibbets himself trained the women, and a male instructor or aircraft commander was involved in their qualification. The aircraft could not have been developed, tested and fielded otherwise.

The reluctance concerned a troublesome new aircraft, not a universal refusal by men to undertake danger.

The women were selected partly because Tibbets expected the gender comparison to embarrass reluctant male crews. The stunt depended upon the period’s assumption that a man ought to be ashamed if a woman undertook a flying risk he avoided.

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Why didn’t Europe want to be enriched by the Ceuta migrants?

by philg

Europe is home to about 40 million non-European migrants and perhaps 25 million children of non-European migrants. The total is very close to the population of France and, due to the higher migrant fertility rate, will soon exceed France’s population of about 69 million.

Roughly 60,000 migrants entered Ceuta within the past week. Instead of giving each one a proper asylum hearing, the Spanish mostly pushed them out by denying them food and water (they left “voluntarily” rather than die of dehydration and hunger). This is now praised by pro-migrant European politicians, such as Ursula von der Leyen, who uses the hateful term “illegal migrants” (“no human is illegal” is now out the window?).

We can infer that Europe wants 65-70 million non-European migrants because the ones currently residing in Europe aren’t being sent home. Given that Europe considers these 65-70 million to be beneficial somehow (cultural, economic, and religious enrichment), why wouldn’t an additional 60,000 have also been considered beneficial? And if the 60,000 people who came to Ceuta recently aren’t beneficial, why wouldn’t Europe expel the 65-70 million current resident migrans as non-beneficial? Can this apparent inconsistency be turned into something vaguely logical?

(Note that if we were to add the Islamic Republic of Britain to the mix, that would be at least another 15 million and the non-European migrant+children population would be comparable to Germany’s population.)

It’s possible that “family separation” is bad when Donald Trump does it, but good when Spain does it? Those who claim to be under 18 may get whisked away to mainland Spain, while their parents are (illegally?) pushed back across the border:

Here’s a Spanish Member of European Parliament saying that refusing to accept asylum applications is an example of “dignity and respect” and “defend[ing] human rights”. (Also that Israel is the Great Satan (“genocides”) and the U.S. is the Little Satan.)

(Consistent with EU freedom of speech principles, the politician disabled comments on the above post.)

The Prime Minister, February 2026, in the New York Times, says that the migrants are “needed”:

Some additional excerpts:

Last month, my government issued a decree that makes up to half a million undocumented migrants living in Spain eligible for temporary residence permits, with certain conditions, which they will be able to renew after a year.

We have done this for two reasons. The first and most important is a moral one. Spain was once a nation of emigrants. … It is our duty to become the welcoming and tolerant society that our own relatives would have hoped to find on the other side of our borders.

This seems odd. Suppose that the dermatologist neighbor from Sheboygan invites you over for dinner on Saturday night. Do you then have an obligation to reciprocate by inviting someone from Sudan over on Sunday night? Maybe Spain could have a moral obligation to some of the countries that welcomed Spaniards in the past, but did any Spaniards emigrate to Sudan? Also, why make any economic arguments if something is a moral obligation? If one is obligated to do something does it matter whether doing it makes you better or worse off?

The West needs people. Currently, few of its countries have a rising population growth rate. Unless they embrace migration, they will experience a sharp demographic decline that will prevent them from keeping their economies and public services afloat. Their gross domestic products will stagnate. … The only option to avoid decline is to integrate migrants in the most orderly and effective way possible.

This is objectively false. See Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan as examples of GDP growth with working population shrinkage. (the Asian countries mentioned exhibit the following combination: shrinking population; more rapidly shrinking working age population; growing aggregate GDP; more rapidly growing per-worker GDP).

Here Pedro Sánchez turns out to be a prophet:

Neither A.I. nor robots will be able to prevent this outcome, at least not in the short or medium term.

How did someone with no technical education come to be more of an expert on the likely trajectory of AI and robotics than all of the AI and robot nerds in California and China?

MAGA-style leaders may say that our country can’t handle taking in so many migrants—that this is a suicidal move, the desperate act of a collapsing country. But don’t let them fool you. Spain is booming. For three years running, we have had the fastest-growing economy among Europe’s largest countries. We have created nearly one in every three new jobs across the European Union, and our unemployment rate has fallen below 10 percent for the first time in nearly two decades.

Spain is a dwarf among midgets, in other words?

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Elizabeth Warren’s Stinson at Oshkosh

by philg

Here’s a Stinson that was disabled by an engine failure over the Red Lake Nation, a dream environment for a progressive (“the only fully “closed reservation” in the United States of America. In a closed reservation, all land is held in common by the tribe and there is no private property.”). The plane belonged for about seven months to Elizabeth Warren before AOPA and the FAA finally persuaded the tribe to return it to Darrin Smedsmo, below:

Here’s the AOPA story:

Smedsmo says he called AOPA “within minutes,” and connected with Deputy General Counsel Jared Allen, who started working immediately to help Smedsmo navigate the situation. … Allen met with Smedsmo and his attorneys at least once a week for months, and shared updates with the FAA. Meanwhile, in December, AOPA sent a letter to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy urging them to intervene.

If you want to preserve access to airports and, apparently, emergency landing areas, this would be a great time to sign up for lifetime AOPA membership!

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Ceuta migrant question: Why are some Africans entitled to live in Europe, but not all?

by philg

“After Most Migrants Leave Ceuta, Exhausted Holdouts Find Shelter on Beach” (New York Times):

Sitting on a beach on Saturday in Ceuta, Spain, a Senegalese man called Djibril Mboup … despite his hunger, Mr. Mboup, 30, said he was not going to return across the border to Morocco.

Mr. Mboup was among roughly 400 men, most of them from sub-Saharan Africa, who were gathered on this beach on Saturday. Many of them lay on ragged sheets of cardboard, their feet blistered from crossing the border and roaming Ceuta’s streets.

The fate of some of the holdouts “is not the same as that of the Moroccans,” Mr. Mohamed, 26, said. Unlike Moroccans who had joined the exodus to Ceuta on a last-minute whim, some of the sub-Saharan migrants are from war-torn regions and had journeyed for months to get to Europe. “They genuinely have the right to request international protection,” Mr. Mohamed said.

For those on the beach, the best possible outcome as they navigated the complexities of the European Union’s asylum system was to be transferred to the city’s official migrant reception center.

Mr. Mboup grew up in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, earning a diploma in logistics, he said. After struggling to find work in his early 20s, he decided to leave the country in 2018 and made his way to Morocco by navigating the deadly smuggling routes through the Sahara. He settled in Casablanca, a coastal city, where he scraped by working illegally as a taxi driver at the airport.

What makes this enricher more entitled to live in Europe than the 19+ million Senegalese who stayed in Senegal? It can’t be superior knowledge of geography:

Hoping to avoid the police’s attention, Mr. Mboup joined a group of Moroccans swimming toward Ceuta, he said. He reached the Spanish shore after roughly 30 minutes, he said, though he did not feel that he was in Spain until he saw the cars — the “Spanish cars.”

His happiness quickly gave way to disappointment, he said.

“I kept looking for signs toward Madrid and Barcelona,” he said, only to realize that he was still “on an island” and that mainland Europe was far away.

I can understand a policy under which everyone from Senegal is entitled to move to Europe. A policy under which nobody from Senegal is entitled to move to Europe would also make sense. But I can’t figure out why the Europeans run a system in which a person from Senegal is entitled to move to Europe, or at least spend 10 years there waiting for an asylum case to be heard by a court or for an amnesty to be declared by a politician, conditioned on first swimming to Ceuta or arriving on a beach in Lampedusa.

(Same question about the U.S. We are home to about 25 percent of the world’s Mexicans and 10 percent of the world’s Haitians. Why aren’t the other 75 percent of Mexicans and 90 percent of Haitians entitled to move to the U.S.? What did they do wrong?)

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The most beautiful warbird at Oshkosh this year (PBY Catalina)

by philg

Fresh out of a 7-year restoration in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, this sub-killing PBY Catalina is my pick for the most beautiful warbird of EAA AirVenture 2026:

(Also a very welcome sight in 1945 for sailors from the USS Indianapolis who were abandoned to exposure in the Pacific Ocean.)

The 35,000+ lb. plane belongs to the American Heritage Museum in Maskachusetts (their press release), but will live for a year at the EAA Museum in Oshkosh. Some details on the plane’s history:

Credit to the folks in New Smyra Beach, Florida who handled the 7-year restoration:

In other seaplane news, as soon as we got to the EAA Seaplane Base, a 30,000+ lb. Grumman Albatross flew over our heads and splashed down. A bit later, a Grumman Mallard took off and then did a fly-by:

We encountered the plane on wheels a few hours later, back at KOSH, and the owner invited our boys to climb up into the cockpit and then down through a tunnel into the bow:

Any other fun warbirds? A Boeing B-52 in Boeing Plaza next to the Boeing pavilion:

A couple of B-1s flew by. Some additional aggression, but apparently not enough to stave off surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran:

The A-26 Invader and Al Franken:

EAA AirVenture also has some hardware related to potential civil war. Suppose, for example, that Ayatollah Mamdani’s Red Guards come to your house to arrest you for being part of the bourgeoisie. You might be able to flee down I-95 in the $465,000 BEC Defense Renegade APC, built on a Ford F-600 4×4 chassis:

It’s perfect for “family protection”:

If you prefer speed to armor, Piper is ready with a Corvette:

(Parked in front of the “Fury” makes sense since anyone in South Florida would be furious that this isn’t at least a Z06 version. 495 horsepower is insufficient for the trip to Publix.)

Just don’t try to flee the Mamdani Caliphate in a Joby. As in previous years, they showed up with something that does everything except fly:

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I drove my Prius to the bookstore in Evanston

by philg

Picking up where Evanston, Illinois Public Library left off…

Houses in the nicer parts of Evanston are worth over $2 million. Some of what were originally family houses have been converted to commercial or Northwestern University use. Example:

Here’s a 10-bedroom (with no “master” bedroom?), 5,500-square-foot place at 1707 Hinman Ave, worth $2.2 million (Zillow):

What if the owner were to drive his/her/zir/their car from this house a few blocks to the bookstore? First, let’s consider the Prius, a beautiful genocide-free car from any angle:

The shop directly in front of the car is Bookends & Beginnings, an “ICE FREE ZONE” (because a lot of undocumented migrants spent their time in English-language full-price bookstores?):

Just as one walks in, the shop reminds us to #Resist Amazon:

(See also How’s your National Data Center Day of Protest going? for how other retailers in Evanston are #Resisting)

There were no customers or employees in the store who appeared to identify as “Black”, but there is a robust African American Studies section on the main level:

A “Love is Love” card is available on the main level, but most of the Rainbow Flagism books are downstairs:

Acceptance of homosexuality is in no way a gateway belief to acceptance of polygamy:

Did the cruel Trump administration manage to kill DEI? Fortunately, a book by Evelyn R. Carter, PhD, remains available:

Stepping out into the wider world of downtown Evanston, we find that undocumented migrants who like to dress in tennis whites and swing a custom-strung racquet are safe inside the tennis shop:

What if speaking with one of the handful of Republicans who are hiding somewhere in Evanston has made a “marginalized” progressive feel unsafe? “Support and validation” are available for a fee in “The Safe Room” (fully virtual, for safety from SARS-CoV-2):

(Over 90 percent of Evanstonians vote correctly in a typical election so it is unclear why a “POC” would be “marginalized” by these righteous folk.)

The store by our hotel was a refuge for dogs, migrants (ICE thugs not allowed to enter), and the 2SLGBTQQIA+ (note trans-enhanced Rainbow Flag):

Given that so many migrants to Illinois are Islamic, however, how can the store be considered a welcoming environment for migrants if it also welcomes the haram (pet dogs; men who have sex with men)?

There was a Cars and Coffee event the next day and at least one attendee was sacrilegious (“Black Cars Matter”):

Speaking of religion, the First United Methodist Church seems to have been neglecting its BLM and Rainbow Flags in favor of sheltering migrants from ICE. It’s not a replacement, of course, but concern for migrants has replaced concern for native-born Blacks and native-born 2SLGBTQQIA+:

The Lake Street Church has a huge pro-open-borders banner and somewhat smaller signs promoting Rainbow Flagism (not trans-enhanced, however) and BLM:

Is there any space for the progressives of Evanston to welcome the stranger? Northwestern isn’t $100,000/year to attend just yet, thank God, but only $99,375/year:

Northwestern is officially relentlessly positive regarding immigration (web site). Immigrants don’t commit crime and create tons of jobs. ICE is bad because “Immigrant Enforcement Can Impact Trust in Law Enforcement”. Any objection to open borders stems from a “misconception”.

Could these virtuous pro-immigration folks make room on their own campus for enrichers? If they built up their 240 acres to the standard height of newer lakefront buildings in Chicago proper, i.e., about 50 stories, they could house roughly 500,000 immigrants in addition to their 5,000 on-campus students. That assumes that the new apartment buildings cover about 50 percent of the 240 acres, leaving the rest for green space, streets, etc.

Like Pope Leo XIV, in other words, Northwestern doesn’t want to “welcome the stranger” on property that it actually controls, but instead wants other people to organize a welcome for strangers.

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Can Spain get rich by selling the Ceuta migrants to other EU nations?

by philg

Spain has been in the news lately due to an influx of enrichers via its Ceuta colony in North Africa:

We’re informed that low-skill migrants make any European nation richer both economically and culturally. If that weren’t true, there would be no reason for Europe to accept even one low-skill migrant (acceptance of migrants can’t be based on humanitarian grounds; Sudan has a population of 52 million, for example, and it makes no sense to provide four generations of welfare to a handful of Sudanese in Europe while providing nothing to 52 million Sudanese in Sudan).

After one bounteous day, Spain is now in possession of roughly 60,000 additional migrants (BBC). Can Spain now offer these enrichers to other EU nations for a reasonable processing and transportation fee? At 60,000 migrants per day, even $20,000 per migrant yields a $438 billion/year revenue stream.

Bizarrely, the head of the EU says that enrichers are “unacceptable”! Europe previously wanted to be enriched, which is why some European nations are now 25% migrants or children of migrants, but Europe no longer wants to become culturally and economically richer?

Here’s the same leader saying that €10 billion in tax dollars are going to be spent on data centers because, presumably, private companies are underinvesting in AI?

Could Spain fund a massive collection of data centers by selling migrants to France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and other EU nations? Retail electricity rates in Spain are more than 2X what consumers in the efficient U.S. states pay so it doesn’t seem like the most obvious place for AI cogitation.

“Migrants wreak havoc in Spain enclaves with shops looted, cars on fire & homes ‘broken into’ as city ‘totally invaded’” (The Sun):

Ceuta-based lawyer Manuel Jurado said: “Like the rest of the residents here we’re living through this situation with a feeling of complete uncertainty. There are people everywhere and there’s violence now in the city.

“I understand these young migrants have arrived here looking for a better life but there are legal mechanisms that offer that security both for them and for us.

The “looking for a better life” as a justification for immigration into a welfare state is confusing. By this standard, shouldn’t anyone anywhere in the world whose spending power is less than whatever a welfare state, such as the U.S. or any of the headline EU countries, be entitled to move? If it’s “a better life” to be on welfare in Maskachusetts or Spain than to live in Yemen, for example, shouldn’t at least 40 million Yemenis be entitled to migrate to Maskachusetts or Spain?

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Will Amazon be the dominant commercial drone company?

by philg

“EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2026 introduces Vertical Lift Center, offering focal point for rotorcraft and vertical lift technology”:

Rotorcraft and vertical lift technology will be the featured highlights at the new EAA Vertical Lift Center to be unveiled during EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2026. The 73rd Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in convention is July 20-26 at Wittman Regional Airport.

As announced at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2025, this area will feature an emphasis on helicopters and VTOL aircraft as part of a partnership with the Robinson Helicopter Company and Vertical Aviation International (VAI), a membership organization dedicated to supporting the vertical lift industry. The dedicated space within AirVenture’s Aviation Gateway Park will display aircraft as well as promote rotorcraft education, industry recruitment, and innovative technology in the vertical lift industry.

“The future of flight is vertical, and EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh is an ideal stage to sponsor and showcase the innovation happening across our industry, from traditional rotorcraft to the next generation of piloted, remotely piloted and unmanned systems,” said David Smith, President and CEO of Robinson Helicopter and sponsor of the inaugural Vertical Lift Center at AirVenture 2026. “As the demand for skilled engineers, A&P mechanics, and test pilots reaches an all-time high, Robinson is committed to supporting education and careers across vertical lift. We encourage everyone to visit the Vertical Lift Center to discover how these advancements are shaping the next era of flight and how they can become a part of it.”

Robinson, under new MIT-educated leadership, seems to be making dramatic project in autonomous aircraft. Who’s going even faster, though? The hurry-up-and-deliver crew at Amazon Prime Air (Wokipedia seems to be understating the scale of this enterprise):

All of the FAA regulatory hurdles that are impossible to surmount Amazon seems to have surmounted, e.g., operating Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS, for which Amazon got approval in 2024). The company is building its own airframes, its own engines, its own software, and then is operating its own Part 135 cargo airline. This is a throwback to the old days of Boeing, before President FDR broke it up into airframes (Boeing), engines (Pratt), and airline (United). (Bill Boeing quit at this point and became a developer of racially segregated suburban real estate.) The FAA seems to be trying to encourage a whole industry in this area, but among the vendors at Oshkosh, Amazon appeared to be way out in front. The guys in the booth said more than 1,000 drones were currently in operation and that the assembly line is capable of producing mroe than 1,000 additional drones per year.

Could a human pilot do what the Amazon drone does? It would be unfair to ask a human to drop a Blackhawk into a driveway surrounded by trees, but suppose that we gave a Robinson R44 pilot the same amount of open space relative to machine size. Could the R44 pilot go straight down, avoiding obstacles and vortex ring state, push a package out the side, and lift back up? Theoretically, yes, but to do it 50 times per day every day would require a remarkably high level of proficiency, not to mention a ton of power! (Helicopters are most efficient when taking off and landing like airplanes, ironically.)

What’s the planned scale for Amazon? April 2026 article:

Jassy said Prime Air service will be able to serve communities with 30 million customers by the end of the year, with a much wider catalog of goods to choose from, and is expected to annually deliver 500 million packages by the end of the decade in under 30 minutes. The ability to scale up drone deliveries is possible now because of more than 85 same-day fulfillment centers that carry Amazon’s top 90,000 products and serve as launch pads for the autonomous delivery vehicles.

Does anyone need this? Consumers in China already experience something similar, though delivery is mostly by scooter. I was surprised during a 2019 visit to Shanghai at the lack of any stores like CVS and also at the absence of supermarkets. It turned out that everyone was getting everything delivered in about the same amount of time that it would have taken them to walk to CVS and back.

Amazon has competition in this area, of course. Zipline is one and they’ve supposedly done a couple of million deliveries, but the product that they brought to Oshkosh didn’t seem as finished as Amazon’s. Wing, part of Alphabet/Google, has a similar system to Zipline’s in that the main drone stays up in the sky while a sub-drone is lowered by cable. The Amazon solution seems cleaner and a better fit for suburban American life. The “longline” idea does seem to open up the possibility of deliveries to tighter spaces, e.g., within the Mamdani Caliphate or San Francisco, but how can it work to deliver high-value packages autonomously in those places given the number of package thieves?

The barriers to entry for creating human-occupied eVTOL “super drones” seem to be remarkably low right now. Some truly tiny companies, e.g., with only 10 engineers, were exhibiting. Below is a sampling of some of the human lifters.

Here’s a hybrid from France (reclaiming the country’s early leadership in aviation!) with two hours of flight time:

Here’s one from Korea, apparently sized for Koreans:

We’re informed that everything good that happens in Britain is thanks to non-British immigrants, but the team at Skyfly has a distinctly pale appearance:

Their product had an encouraging finished look (the potential customer in the red pants, however, like she might be a better fit for a Cirrus SR22):

Jump Aero was exhibiting in a separate tent. This company, founded by a co-founder of Terrafugia (a flying car), offers a practical use case for human-occupied eVTOL: deliver a paramedic to the scene of an accident.

What about Robinson, the sponsor of all of the above? If we ever decide that we want to win a war, rather than almost immediately surrendering, Robinson is there with an autonomous R66 that can deliver ammo to a beleagured hilltop.

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Robots to bury Canadian trees instead of letting them burn (massive CO2 release)?

by philg

CO2 emissions from Canada 2023 on the same order of magnitude as all North American fossil fuel CO2 emission. (Nature Magazine) The effect on U.S. air quality of recent fires was pernicious (“Air quality: 1980s Ponderosa smoking section”).

How about a solar-powered robot that can go through a Canadian forest, pick out every fourth tree, cut it down, and bury it? The idea has sort of been explored, but without the robot angle, in a different Nature Magazine article: “Optimal spatiotemporal thinning schemes combined with wood vaulting could maximize the forest biomass carbon sink in China” (2025).

ChatGPT suggests some improvements to the scheme:

It also says that simple burial isn’t sufficient. One must construct a “vault” that minimizes infiltration of oxygen and water.

Here’s a July 28 map of “out of control” fires in Canada (constantly updated source):

The idea is dumb, you say? How dumb is it compared to building millions of robots to somehow terraform Mars into a livable planet? Speaking of Mars, let’s have a look at SpaceX stock:

Who bought at $202 based on I am buying a lot of SpaceX stock; what will it be worth? and SpaceX is worth $63/share according to the most expert experts?

Finally, what about the fires in the Islamic world? The New York Times says that the burning is unprecedented. Could forests in the Dar al-Islam reasonably be thinned? My impression was that the pre-Islamic (“legacy”) Europeans already did as much cutting within what used to be their forests as was conceivably reasonable to do. It’s not a Canadian-style situation where there aren’t roads into the forests, right?

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Historical Dr. Fauci content from this blog

by philg

Anthony Fauci testifies today. Let’s look back at some old postings and previously featured links here.

April 13, 2020: Shutdown decisions are made by people with no skin in the game; when would they ever decide to reopen? (“they will still have the same job at the same pay regardless of the length of the shutdown”)

July 30, 2020: “Fauci urges Americans to wear goggles for added COVID-19 protection” (NY Post)

February 2021: If coronascientists can’t predict the future, why do we call their predictions scientific?

February 2021: We love our children so much we will give them an investigational vaccine

early March 2021: “It’s Too Soon to Lift COVID Restrictions: Fauci” (US News)

March 2021: CDC Director: Impending Doom for the mostly-vaccinated U.S. (Fauci: “If we open up completely now, that is premature, given the level of infection” The likely reason for the uptick in cases, he said, is that states are opening up too quickly.)

August 2021: All will be well in the garden; There will be growth in the spring! (Dr. Fauci as Chance the Gardener)

June 2022: Science Personified runs but cannot hide from COVID-19 (Fauci guzzles Paxlovid)

January 2023: Could you please paint a portrait of me (you can cover every wall of your house with portraits of yourself and not be an “egomaniac”; unclear what the term is for someone who covers every wall of his/her/zir/their house with portraits of a golden retriever family member)

Fauci’s legacy was alive and well at Chicago’s main airport yesterday. Here’s a Faucist wearing an under-chin mask while traveling with at least one unmasked family member (who, if infected, can easily pass the infection on to the Faucist):

My personal favorite Fauci diary excerpt, highlighted in party by the New York Times:

“I went to a book party last night for Jonathan Karl’s new book about Trump” at Cafe Milano in Georgetown, reads the entry on Nov. 17, 2021. “I was totally swamped all night by people wanting to say hello, shake my hands, and take pictures with me. I could not get away from it. Although some people may think that this is great to have people treat you like Elvis Presley, but it was really very unnerving.”

After telling young nearly-invulnerable Americans that their #1 focus should be avoiding a respiratory virus (social distancing, masking, etc.), the vulnerable old guy voluntarily goes to jam-packed events and takes off his mask. More from the NYT:

“Chris and I went to a book party for our friend Ruth Marcus (Washington Post columnist)” at the home of David Bradley, former owner of The Atlantic, reads another entry. “Super A list at party: Senator Mark Warner, Kellyanne Conway, Andrea Mitchell, David Ignatius, David Frum, Zeke Emanuel, etc., etc.”

After being honored at a gala at the National Portrait Gallery (“it was the highest level of AAA list you could imagine in Washington DC”), he writes about hanging out with Venus and Serena Williams, Clive Davis and the celebrity chef Jose Andres. “We were invited to go across the street by Jose to his restaurant Zaytinya for after hours champagne.”

(Note that José Andrés later became core to Hamas’s military logistics in Gaza, cooking and serving food to the Palestinians via “World Central Kitchen” so that they could concentrate 100 percent of their time and energy on fighting to achieve river-to-the-sea liberation (i.e., the destruction of Israel and imposition of Hamas rule over a larger area).)

The quarterback weighs in on the situation…

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