Yet more drawings

 

What people talk about.

I have just noticed after all these years(?) that people, myself included, rarely think carefully about what they say to other people. 

When I say carefully, I mean do they consider what that person might be interested in?

They rarely say to themselves:

"I wonder if this person is interested in the fact that I bought 2 new tires for my car yesterday?" Or:

"I wonder if this person is interested in how many grandchildren I have and how wonderful they are?"

I mentioned this to one of the players at badminton last week, and she tellingly said:

"No to the tires, but yes to the grandchildren!" 

I often have trouble with small talk, as I would much rather discuss the war in Ukraine or Evolution.

Going down the Evolution trail is fraught though, because of the religious connotations.  So I very rarely bring this subject up for that reason.  

What can you say about the war in Ukraine? Not a lot, except we all agree Putin is an evil man!

Which leads to our concept of evil.  I am not religious in the sense that I adhere to any particular faith, so I hope I can make my own mind up about this.  Having said that all the coincidences that I have posted about certainly give me the idea that there is some power at work in the universe, with a 10% chance that maybe there are such things as long coincidences with the universe set up as it is?

As far as evil goes, is a wasp evil because it kills a bee? Is a shark evil because it kills a fish? Are monkeys evil because they sometimes kill and wipe out another tribe? 

Maybe it is as simple as: what is right and what is wrong? How do we decide?

Ukraine: What is next, a prediction

 

This seems the obvious and logical thing for the Russians to do, which probably means they should not do it!

The could concentrate their forces along the lines of the green arrows, with the idea of cutting off any Ukranian forces in the area marked "A".

If the Ukranians see this one coming, they could retreat to Cherkasy to a line of prepared defense there. It is easy to say "line of defense" but it is probably not a thing that could be done as the front line might be 300 miles long.  Maybe the best thing might be to have a tank on tank battle at that position.  Because of maintenance and supply issues, maybe only half of the actual Russian tank force might get there, making for a more even fight.

As in the last war, the importance of anti-tank guns and placement of mines is vital.

The Russians have a rather capable mine exploding tank, which is all very nice unless you are being targeted by an anti-tank gun while doing your mine exploding thing.

Their supply lines will be extended and hence vulnerable. 

Someone has noted that there are no forests for the Ukrainians to hide in in this area, so the war in this area may be a different story.

It would be pretty hard to hide an infantryman on a large flat area that this part of the country appears to be.

Because of this factor and the lack of weapons supplied by the allies, I say the situation by 30 July 2022 will be as per the picture below.

At which point Putin might say that was all he wanted anyway, so how about lifting them pesky sanctions?

At this the free world needs to say: You leave, then we might lift the sanctions. We would need Mr Putin to appear in a court and tried as a war criminal.  All highly unlikely.

So what would happen then?  Probably a war that drags on for years, until Putin dies of old age.

As a friend commented, funny how Covid stopped nicely just in time for this to happen?

After years in Afghanistan the US pulls out for no seeming good reason....except that maybe they wanted the decks clear because they knew this was coming?

I think US intelligence did know this was going to happen, at least 5 years before the event.

The various armchair generals (me included) all said:

 "This war should be all over in 3 weeks, Russia will win ".

I have a funny feeling that the US intelligence knew that the Russians would run into trouble, and that Russian logistics and maintenance were not good enough.

They would also have pretty good projections of what the Russians would do next.

What the US could do(?) is flood Ukraine with SAM batteries, good enough to shoot down high flying jets, and low flying helicopters. This alone would redress the air power side of things.

To counter the numerical superiority of Russian tanks it may be possible to bring more ground launched cruise missiles.  The US are already sending 100 Switchblade drones, a camera operated remote controlled flying bomb. All very nice but the Russians have more than 100 tanks.

It may pay to target the fuel supplies of the tanks.  In World War 2 the allies concentrated on knocking out the German petrol supplies, which hastened the end of that war.

Update as at 27 October 2022

Just shows how bad an armchair general I am.

The Ukrainians appear to be punishing the Russians quite badly and are currently pushing them back, with a possibility of taking Kherson.

There seems to be a bit of talk about a dirty nuclear bomb being let off and putting of the blame onto the Russians. At least that is what the Russians are saying.

Such an event would not advantage the Ukrainians, as they are on a winning streak at the moment.  Not to mention polluting their own land for generations to come. So it makes no sense for the them to do such a thing.  

The Russians, though, would have a lot to gain from such a horrific idea......

A Photo of Narrow Neck Beach and Some Artwork or Drawings?

 

Predictions for 2022

 These are Bill's predictions for 2022

1. SpaceX starship. 

This has way too many engines to be successful.
It would be better for him to think about manufacturing something in the size range of about five engines per Starship. The cost of doing all that plumbing and piping on tiny little engines in comparison with the big bulk of the Starship would be worth considering.

There will be Starship 2.0,  it will be 18m in diameter and have 7 engines on the booster. 
My prediction as at 9th of January 2022 is that they hope to send a Starship into orbit around February. This will not happen. I predict it will be two months late and I predict that it will not even reach orbit.

The next ship they send up will be around one month later, around August and it will burn up on re-entry.

Not being a negative birdy here just for the sake of it, just going on how hard it is to do this sort of thing, as proven by how hard it was to do the 10k hops in 2021.
Hats off to Elon Musk and his team for some out of the box thinking and their tenacity.

2. Tesla robots. 

I would love to see a Tesla robot sometime around June but I very much doubt that we will see any such items even in the whole of 2022. It seems a lot of very clever people have tried to solve the problem of balance which is the key factor in making a robot that approximates a human.  

If you consider that a firm called Boston dynamics has spent 10 years getting something that does solve the problem of balance but looks like something that needs to have a lot of things removed from it then you could understand a timeline of at least three years before a Tesla prototype would appear.

3. Tesla self driving. 

As of now the latest release is around about 10.8 and it appears that it is about 90 or 95% along the way of doing the job. Getting the rest of the way will be extremely difficult, So, I say we will not see Tesla full self driving before 2023 at the earliest.

4.Tesla cars. 

There will be an absolute explosion in the number of cars made by Tesla and you will find that other car companies will really be struggling to sell internal combustion engine cars at all. 

5. Tesla stock.  

At the end of 2021 the stock was around about the thousand dollar mark and  by June 2022 I think it will be around $1500 and by the end of the year it will be $2000 per share. This just a hunch.  My hunches are usually wrong!  Just as well I do not have spare cash to put into Tesla shares.

6. Robots. 

There will be many of these.  Most will be in niche

positions like making coffee or greeting guests. There will be a company (and I don't think it will be Tesla) that will create a robot that looks graceful and is almost indistinguishable from a human, coupled with an almost human level of intelligence.

This will be tremendously successful and very disruptive.

7. Artificial Intelligence.

If you have looked into a thing called GPT-3, you will see where all this is headed.

I predict several jobs will have parts that will be done by apps that people have developed using GPT-3.  

8. Architectural CAD Software.

There will emerge a new CAD software that will make all others look a bit lame and hard to use.

Most architectural consultancies will have to switch to it or go under.  It will result in reductions of  time taken to draw a building that will be on a scale too hard to ignore.  I feel for the draftees and architects that are going to have to look for other employment.

It will be real world item driven.  For instance it would know what a concrete block was and

would draw not only it, but the mortar that glues it together, as well as the rebar coming up through it.

9. Tesla Cybertruck and Tesla Semi.

Come on!  Gotta be for sure this year or else!

________________________________________________________________________

Update as at 11.4.22: 

Well, who would have thought Russia would have invaded Ukraine?

My June estimate of Tesla stock is now looking unlikely, as there have been the following mitigating circumstances:

1. Lockdown in Shanghai

2. Likelihood of interruption of gas supplies to Germany.  A bit of bad luck there, as they have only just started production.

Update as at 27.10.22

Spacex: My pessimistic prediction was not pessimistic enough! Still no orbital flight.

Prediction wrong.

Tesla Robot:  What they have done and shown us is quite a feat, considering they are only

just getting started. My prediction wrong again!  

Tesla Full Self Driving:  My prediction on target so far.  Will not be until 2023.

Tesla Cars:  Demand is good and production amazing, so prediction on target so far.

Robots: There are new ones appearing daily, so this is an active area. Prediction on target.

Artificial Intelligence: Not a lot of progress evident, or am I looking in the wrong place?

Prediction off target.

Architectural Software: Still waiting: I have 2 months left in 2022! Again, I may be looking in the wrong place.

Tesla Semi and Cybertruck: On target, if they do deliver on 1.12.22.  Cybertruck? Looks like prediction off target.