John FitzGiraffe Kennedy

CONCLUSIONS In our sample of 650,173 COVID cases among active-duty military personnel, a total of 278,278 were identified as having post-COVID-19 syndrome (42.8%). Of these, 273,405 reported post-COVID symptoms in at least two visits (42.1%). Our findings showed that the top three symptoms of post-COVID-19 syndrome in military personnel are related to pulmonary, neurological, and fatigue issues. Mild to moderate cases of this syndrome could leave military personnel with long-term deficits in their overall fitness and readiness. This readiness is a critical aspect of military effectiveness, ensuring that personnel can respond rapidly and decisively to threats. Thus, continued assessment and potential treatments are needed to assist active-duty military personnel to improve their overall health outcomes.

Oh look, the 🇺🇸 military concludes over 40% of COVID infections lead to Long COVID, among a population sample that is all adults, & on average in better physical condition & younger than the national/global population.
www.amjmedsci.org/article/S000...

Tonight’s dumb napkin cartoon…

A global war doesn’t magically un‑block a chokepoint. It generally does the opposite.

The incentives that reopen one are de‑escalatory, economic, and diplomatic, not agressive. Turning the whole region into a wider battlefield just adds more reasons for ships, insurers, and crews to stay away.

That being said, anything can be escalated into anything for any reason.

I’m not sure the escalation logic makes sense here. A blockade is a physical and insurance‑risk problem in a narrow chokepoint. A larger conflict doesn’t automatically make that safer - it usually makes commercial traffic even more reluctant to move.

What’s the incantation again - to restore order in the strait.

Fretum custodire, undas lenire,
Hormuz serenare, via manere.
Lux super aquas, pax super fluctus,
Transit securus, pacificutz.

Georgia school teacher is killed in toilet paper prank gone wrong Jason Hughes's family does not want the students prosecuted after the prank turned into a fatal car accident.

US teacher killed after toilet paper prank goes wrong

www.bbc.com/news/article...

In other words, Mann shuts the debate down because he’s still shaped by the trauma of being attacked early in his career.

To him, acknowledging acceleration or aerosol effects isn’t science, it’s risk.

He’s protecting optics, not truth - avoiding anything that bad‑faith actors could weaponise.

Mann was shunned (and broken) early in his career. He learned to be very conservative (not with respect to the science, on the contrary, but with respect to “political optics”).

He’s playing it safe for his own image, at a cost to climate science.

It’s a system with pyramid scheme characteristics.

To clarify.

Climate change is primarily a systemic issue. It is only secondarily a moral issue.

Climate change comes from the structure of our energy and industrial systems, not from individual virtue. The moral questions only show up when we decide who (or what) bears the consequences.

It’s not.
It’s a system issue.

Everything is spectacularly stupid and fucked up.

lolfuck

I have now acted.

You’re welcome.

The Orders No One Gives What environmental agencies taught me about invisible boundaries

Last week: what forests reveal.
This week: what institutions quietly train us not to see.
open.substack.com/pub/lylel/p/...

Political Coffeehouse -I say the quiet parts out loud. Many of our followers on ECH do not like political content so I created a politics channel. I’m progressive & have a lot to say & the life experience to back it up.
YT- www.youtube.com/@politicalco...
This Space TV- www.youtube.com/@thisspacetv

Still going through the valley of death.

Afternoon, Ian.

Have we tried fairy dust yet.

Hope as refusal is just denial with better branding.

Hope as resolve is different: it’s what’s left when you stop expecting unlikely rescue and act anyway, fully aware of what is actually possible.

One hides reality; the other accepts it and moves.

We keep treating climate and ecological collapse like a problem to solve, when it’s a predicament to live through, with minor and reasonable course corrections.

Problems have solutions; predicaments have consequences. Until we name that difference, we’ll keep mistaking hope for strategy.

They’re not trying to make a civilisation more robust, they want an underground yacht with Hollywood hydroponics. It’s ultra-expensive roleplay, technological romanticism, at least as much as hubris.

Exactly. “Culture” is the story, but the function is control. RTO reasserts managerial oversight; automation removes the need for workers who can’t be controlled. Two sides of the same logic.

I don’t think it needs unobtainium.

The neutron issue is a materials‑testing gap, not a physics wall. RAFM steels, SiC composites and liquid‑metal walls already show promise - we just haven’t had true 14‑MeV test facilities until now.

Hard, yes.
Unsolvable, no.

The problem with fusion isn’t plasma, it’s neutrons. Once you run a reactor long enough to matter, high‑energy neutrons shred the walls, embrittle metals, activate everything, and make maintenance insanely expensive. Until that’s solved, technically and economically, solar+batteries will win on cost

“Then they need to solve the engineering for maintenance and radiation.”

That’s the hard part, because neutrons break everything down and can’t be contained.

It’s “solvable“, according to scientists/engineers working on the topic, but not anytime soon.

Morage (noun)

The self‑generated illusion of moral clarity that appears in moments of fear, uncertainty, or collapse.
A blend of moral and mirage: the comforting sense of righteousness that forms when a person mistakes their own meaning‑making for the structure of the world.

We’re not going to fix it, Roger. This is the wrong frame.

It was excruciating. Your need to be a hero betrays that your “system theory” is in fact a moral drama - or some sort of apocalyptical mythology.

This is the second chapter of our success story.