Interesting Links for 19-03-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Scientists develop a 'cosmic concrete' that is twice as strong as regular concrete, made with potato starch. Even better than the one they made from blood and urine

(tags:materials mars concrete viaDanielDWilliam blood potato wtf )

2. 'Mutual free movement' for UK and EU citizens supported by up to 84% of Brits

(tags:polls UK Europe migration )

3. Russia Wants a Long War: The West Needs to Send Ukraine More Arms, More Quickly

(tags:Russia Ukraine )

4. Across the world, politicians are scapegoating LGBT people to distract from their own failures

(tags:LGBT bigotry )

Comments

[dewline]

1. Andy Weir, Ridley Scott and Matt Damon are jointly having a good long laugh if they've had this article pointed out to any of them.

2. Brexiteers can therefore get stuffed.

3. Amen to that. Whether we can manufacture the stuff fast enough is another matter, regardless of political foot-dragging on our end, but I tend to suspect that the Ukrainians will forgive physical bottlenecks in the logistics process more easily than the political bottlenecks.

4. I suspect this is all too accurate.

[armiphlage]

Without going into details, I can say that the DPA is being used to order US-based factories to postpone production of civilian production in favour of military orders.

When ordering certain commercial off-the-shelf parts with both civil and military applications, companies are now asking what the end use is.

Our factory is in Canada, but we still get the flowdowns on our purchase orders, and our suppliers won't sell certain items to us unless we state the end use.

https://www.fema.gov/disaster/defense-production-act

[hutchingsmusic]

"While the resulting material had a compressive strength of around 40 MPa, which is better than normal concrete, the process had the drawback of requiring blood on a regular basis."

J.F.C.

[andrewducker]

Who doesn't want bloodcrete? It's the vampire's favourite!

[hutchingsmusic]

Just realised: if the potato starch one was "cosmic concrete", the blood one is definitely "cosmic horror concrete".

[andrewducker]

It's certainly the kind of thing I'd expect in a horror novel!

[hairyears]

It's disturbing that Russia appears to be adapting to a long war: whatever the public perception might have been, a year ago, economic and demographic analysis suggested that Russia was far less able to sustain a long war than Ukraine.

Tha sanctions have been extremely damaging. The manpower losses - both the caualties and the emigration of eligible men - are exacerbating Russia's demographic spiral.

But...

These processes are slow and we are now seeing an 'Iraq Effect' in which sanctions strenthen the regime's grip on a shrinking economy.

An increasingly criminal and corrupt economy, which is a surprising thing to say about Russia: I would not have believed that the place could get even worse without collapsing. I guess that a country on a war footing has unusual resources available for maintaining control and cohesion...

...Which brings us to propaganda, politics, and internal repression: tight control of the media and the exile of large numbers of the most intelligent and propaganda-resistant men (and women) is changing Russian society.

[andrewducker]

And it looks like they're managing it with the help of China, which is worrying.

[danieldwilliam]

1 US armoured division = 3 armoured brigades = 5,000 soldiers, approx 100 tanks, 200 other armoured vehicles each, plus 3 other brigades doing other jobs like air cover, artillery and logistics. Those tanks are $10m each and you probably need to start your campaign with the same in spares. So, about, my guessimate would be an all in cost to stand up a US sized armoured division at $20bn.

I've no idea how many US sized armoured divisions the Ukrainians would need to push the Russians firmly out of Ukraine in one summer's campaign.

I do think we, in the West, are more likely to be able to afford several lots of $20bn over the next 5 years than the Russians.

[andrewducker]

I wonder how fast Ukraine can generate an armoured division, and we can produce the kit.

I thought that the comment about the Defense Production Act above was interesting.