Real Kurt

Starship flight maneuvers

Elon Musk’s message today is the same one he shared 3 years ago. He wants peace and an end to the killing. “The reason I proposed some sort of peace a year ago was because I predicted pretty much exactly what would happen, which is a lot of people dying for basically almost no changes in land. And the loss of the flower of Ukrainian and Russian youth, and we should have some sympathy for the Russian boys as well as the Ukrainian boys, because the Russian boys didn’t ask to be on their front line, they have to be. So, there’s a lot of sons not coming back to their parents, and I think most of them don’t really have, they don’t hate the other side. It’s like young boys who don’t know each other killing each other on behalf of old men that do know each other.”

No one is "winning". Russia lost day 1, the day Kiev did not fall. Both sides have been losing ever since.

Maybe we should start a competitor to Amazon 🤔

I had not realised before that the Bronze Age Collapse was literally *caused* by iron. Bronze age powers like the Egyptians, Hittites and Babylonians used bronze weapons, made by combining copper and tin. Tin was so scarce that only the richest and most powerful groups could access it and the bronze weapons it allowed. (Tin was so rare that it was being transported from Cornwall to the Middle East more than 1000 years BC.) The scarcity of tin gave these empires a near-monopoly on violence. Iron weapons are not actually any better than bronze ones – they're not stronger or easier to work with, as I'd assumed. They're just much, much easier to mass produce once you have bloomeries, which are the first furnaces that were hot enough to melt iron in a way that made them useable for weapons. Bloomeries meant that iron ore, which was widespread, could be used to make weapons anywhere. That led to warlords, bandits and city-states rising in a massive decentralization of military power, which the Bronze Age empires were unable to resist. After the invention of the bloomery, skeletons show a measurable increase in weapon-inflicted injuries. 'Destruction layers' with bones and signs of burning have been found from this time at archaeological sites including Troy. Ancient writers – including Herodotus, Ovid, and the writers of the Old Testament – believed the invention of iron had unleashed a new age of violence. New at Works in Progress, WEAPONS OF MASS DECENTRALIZATION: how iron itself brought about the Bronze Age Collapse. And what technologies could do the same today? worksinprogress.co/issue/wea…

🇺🇸🇨🇳 The White House is still playing keep-away with CNN and MS NOW on the night Xi comes to dinner. A judge told the admin to restore their passes, yet this morning they were still bounced. Some got back in later. Then, as the state dinner arrival started, CNN says it was blocked again and pointed to Steven Cheung. Courts can hand back a badge, but the building can still decide who stands on the lawn when the motorcade pulls up. Writer: Lucas

ICE killed another man. His name is Mario David Coronado Juarez. Mario lived and worked in Michigan for 7 years as a construction worker, sending money home to his kids in Guatemala. ICE pursued him in an unmarked car, causing a fatal car crash. These killings have to stop. #AbolishICE.