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Except in 2022 when the war started Ukraine had little to no help in the first weeks of the war, when everyone assumed that Ukraine was doomed. Except the multiple times in 2023 and 2024 and 2025 when all US assistance was cut off for weeks at a time. At this point in time NATO and the US need...

I'm guessing when he eats that Last Cheeseburger and croaks that none of the groups around him who think they are the Rightful Heirs will have enough power to take over. And all of those groups hate each other just as much as they all hate normal people and Democrats. So the internecine...

Just saying. But the line between being an all-powerful dictator and rotting meat is often razor thin and nobody will know they are close to it until it is much too late. Nicolae Ceaușescu went from unquestioned dictator-for-life in Romania to dead from acute lead poisoning via firing squad in...

People need to keep in mind that large majorities of the US Public and large majorities in the Senate and House want to provide more support to Ukraine. And similarly large majorities want the US in NATO. Also some pretty strong institutional barriers have been put up that make it hard from a...

I think you are in a very bad way if your Navy can be defeated by a country that has no Navy. If I were a country which had made enormous capital investments over decades in a Navy and the operations expertise to have a blue-water Navy what is happening to Russia in the Black Sea would have me...

You don't fight a war in 2025 with a "wall of assets on the border". That is a better strategy to stop smuggling. With modern weapons and targeting systems, concentrations of force are just concentrated targets. So a very roomy slaughter is required. I'm very skeptical both that Russia is...

When I said "Maoism", I didn't expect us to go full on Gang Of Four so quickly. So someone who is an apologist for evil dictators can please explain to me how this is going to make things better in the long term. And keep in mind that "long term" is irrelevant if you are horribly screwed in...

... but if the people who are hurt by the FAFO part are Americans it is hard to see how we can call it America First. Yeah, I know, we are just supposed to adapt. But I find it puzzling how we expect soybean farmers in Iowa to plant avocado trees and coffee bushes there. MAGA is...

No small business or its employees can wait a decade. You are putting a lot of people out of business and a lot of people out of work with that foolishness. Stopping it worldwide all at once with zero notice was an insane act. There would have been lots of ways to phase it in and minimize the...

A lot of folks have a naive view of how trade in the modern world works. Also that view is a very good way to cause a major economic collapse. This problem goes both ways. There is a lot of stuff that I purchase from small makers in Europe that are now essentially cut off when they removed...

When I feel grouchy and antisocial for a while, I sometimes have set all of my clocks to UTC.

Even though I live on the Left Coast, a lot of my clocks are set to UTC: Oh, and a trivia question. What exactly are the differences between UTC, GMT, and Zulu time? A lot of people use them interchangably.

There is a substantial problem with this assertion. Most touring bikes tend to favor a more upright riding posture. Some touring bikes that use flat bars favor a very upright posture. And touring bikes tend to be ridden fairly long distances at fairly low speeds, implying many hours of riding...

I've said all of this before. Spend the money and get a decent bike fit. If your bike is properly adjusted chances are a lot of saddles will work for you. But if your bike is not properly adjusted then no saddle will ever work. And since it can be a matter of a few millimeters in stack...

I'm running fatter tires than that, and generally I'd say that with any 30mm tire or skinnier tubeless is of very questionable utility. The whole system works better at lower tire pressures on the average. The weight savings can be dramatic for not just fat tires but even big 29x3 tires. Oh...

For all of the caterwauling about how awful tubeless is, I'd guess that seventy percent of the cyclists I see around are riding tubeless. Probably the big exception is road cyclists on very skinny tires with very skinny wheels and high tire pressures. Especially for bigger tires the weight...

What I'm noticing is this: That doesn't look like a trapezoidal cutout to me. 99 percent of the tubeless issues I have had have either been from poor rim tape installation or the valves. Even bike shops with competent techs might take a couple of tries to get the rim tape installation just...

Not all tubeless-compatible rims are compatible with all tubeless tires of a given size. So a certain amount of trial and error is to be expected. It looks to me in that image like the rim is cracked (look just below the left-most spoke). If the rim is cracked you can hardly blame the...

The real issue is with solar or wind you don't have the recurring revenue that you do with natural gas or coal. You can't really charge for sunlight. In about 2011 a friend who works in finance explained the "facts of life" to me on this topic. Basically you have to borrow money to build any...

Although if you look at the rate of return on power plant development nothing pays for itself faster and brings in more money than solar. No imaginable technology will make electricity cheaper than solar panels. And people aren't going to pay more money to get electricity from dinosaurs.