“extraordinarily vague allegation” that does not rise to the level of a federal crime.

https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-09/u.s._v._adams_indictment_1.pdf

There’s the indictment. It looks pretty specific to me.

bancars

Setting aside whether that’s a reasonable position to take, the vehicle here is a snowmobile.

The proposed change would require a person who hits a wolf that survives to immediately use “all reasonable efforts” to kill it.

That sounds unreasonable if it’s unqualified.

There are legitimate, if fringe, reasons that you might want to hit a wolf but not kill it. Say the thing is chasing down someone and you hit it with a snowmobile. But in this hypothetical case, unlike the situation above, it’s not seriously injured and heads off in another direction. Imposing a legal obligation to make every effort to personally kill the thing at that point seems unreasonable.

At the least, I’d think that this should only apply to predators that are obviously seriously injured.

Sorry about including the bit about Hezbollah; Lemmy’s “auto-grab subheader” code apparently doesn’t play well with CNN’s live updates page, grabs content from the latest update or something rather than the linked one.

I couldn’t find many details yet online on any news sites. There are some video clips on various sites, not much commentary.

EDIT: This says that tank fire is involved, not whether it’s direct or being used as short range artillery, though:

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/r1u3xkdra

Ground operation in Lebanon begins with heavy artillery, tank fire

On the Saudi Al-Hadath network a report said that there is “Israeli preparation for the entry of ground forces and commando forces, in order to locate Hezbollah targets and blow them up.” Another Saudi network, Al-Arabiya reported that tanks penetrated Rmaich in southern Lebanon, but later deleted that report.

So maybe not direct engagement on the ground yet, but I assume that that’s imminent.

EDIT2: The IDF apparently just announced initiation of ground operations:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/israel-hezbollah-live-updates-hamas-leader-lebanon-killed-strike-hits-rcna173218

Israel says it has begun ‘limited, localized and targeted’ ground incursion

Israeli Defense Forces troops have begun a ground incursion into Lebanon, Israel said, adding that the operation will be limited in scope.

“A few hours ago, the IDF began limited, localized, and targeted ground raids based on precise intelligence against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon,” IDF said in a statement.

The declaration of a limited mission comes amid fear of full-on regional war. Hezbollah militants who re-energized their attacks on Israel after Hamas militants’ Oct. 7 terror attack on the country are backed by Iran.

The IDF said the incursion is meant to protect Israeli citizens who live along the border with Lebanon.

Israel’s ground incursion into Lebanon appears to have begun, U.S. officials say

Israeli officials notified the U.S. that it planned to begin a ground incursion into Lebanon that would be limited in scope, scale and duration, and two U.S. officials tell NBC News that the operation appears to have begun.

The officials said the U.S. does not have independent confirmation, but the timing tracks with what the Israelis notified the U.S. it had planned.

The officials said the U.S. has not seen any movement of assets or equipment in Iran to indicate that a response from Tehran is imminent, but Iran has been postured to move quickly if it decides to do so.

Iran has signaled to the U.S. that it still does not want a wider war, the officials said.

Hmm. I wonder if the fire code has an exception for that or just requires it.

a deranged lunatic has parked an Abrams on the flight deck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_PQ_17

On receiving the third order to scatter on 4 July 1942, Lieutenant Leo Gradwell RNVR, commanding the anti-submarine trawler HMS Ayrshire, did not want to head for Archangelsk and led his convoy of Ayrshire and Troubador, Ironclad and Silver Sword north. On reaching the Arctic ice, the convoy pushed into it, then stopped engines and banked their fires. The crews used white paint from Troubador, covered the decks with white linen and arranged the Sherman tanks on the merchant vessels decks into a defensive formation, with loaded main guns. After a period of waiting and having evaded Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft, finding themselves unstuck, they proceeded to the Matochkin Strait.

Now, you might say that the USS Enterprise isn’t a merchant ship desperate for some kind of defensive armament, but on the other hand, it appears to be firing battleship guns at a MiG still flying low right above the ship, and I have to believe that a tank’s main gun, to say nothing of the machine guns, are probably more-suitable as short-range antiaircraft weapons than a battleship gun for that.

Frankly, I think that given the scenario, pre-positioning a tank in that situation probably demonstrates a considerable amount of foresight.

https://www.sandboxx.us/news/how-an-f-15e-shot-down-an-iraqi-gunship-with-a-bomb/

The full story of how an F-15E scored its only air-to-air kill… with a bomb

Because they were moving so fast through the sky to close with the team in trouble, the unpowered bomb actually had a greater range than the Sidewinder missile. Bennett released the bomb 4 miles out from the Hind-24, with Bakke carefully keeping his laser sighted on the helicopter.

All you need is a steady hand and a laser designator!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk

For this reason, it is equipped with integrated sophisticated digital navigation and attack systems, targeting being achieved via a thermal imaging infrared system and a laser rangefinder/laser designator.

It’s got the designator, so…

I’m pretty sure that CVN-65 won’t meet the displacement bar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)

Displacement: 93,284-long-ton (94,781 t) full load[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_the_Regime_of_the_Straits

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention

The maximum aggregate tonnage of all foreign naval forces which may be in course of transit through the Straits shall not exceed 15,000 tons, except in the cases provided for in Article 11 and in Annex III to the present Convention.

Article 11.

Black Sea Powers may send through the Straits capital ships of a tonnage greater than that laid down in the first paragraph of Article 14, on condition that these vessels pass through the Straits singly, escorted by not more than two destroyers.

The US isn’t a Black Sea power (though I guess maybe if the US transferred the Enterprise to Romania…). Russia can do it because it’s a Black Sea power.

considers

I guess maybe if they got a whole lot of helium balloons and attached them to cables going down to the carrier, they could get the displacement below 15,000 tons.

EDIT: Actually, if they can get enough balloons to offset 80,000 tons, you’d think that they could just do the last 15,000 and convert the Enterprise into an airship and fly it into the Black Sea. The Montreaux Convention didn’t think of that loophole!

Though…hmm. I think that the Enterprise relies on constant seawater cooling for the reactors, so maybe they can’t do that. Maybe the turret does make sense in the context of the helium balloons after all.

The EU’s answer to this has been baffling, to say the least. In a bid to save its inefficient (and expensive) car making industry, the bloc is actively going against consumers (the people who theoretically vote in all those bureaucrats) by doing its best to make Chinese EVs more expensive, thus forcing people who want EVs to pay more than they otherwise would have in a free market.

I mean, vehicle production is a strategic industry. There are reasons – aside from domestic politics – why you’d want to have the ability to produce vehicles. It’s cheaper for Europe to buy vehicles from China than to build them domestically (though I suppose it’s probably possible for European manufacturers to improve on cost competitiveness relative to where they are now).

In World War II, American vehicle production capacity was fairly important. It wasn’t just the fighting vehicles, but also a lot of unarmored vehicles, trucks and such. When Nazi Germany – which was mostly using horses for logistics still – had logistics problems reaching into the Soviet Union, the US had provided a lot of trucks to the Soviet Union, not to mention also providing some to the British and motorizing and mechanizing American forces.

https://www.historynet.com/studebaker-us6-the-lend-lease-deuce-and-a-half/

An ideal free market will optimize using price to guide it. But in order for that to produce the outcome you want, the price information needs to reflect everything that you care about.

When you have externalities, there are factors that the market will not take into account.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

In economics, an externality or external cost is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party’s (or parties’) activity. Externalities can be considered as unpriced components that are involved in either consumer or producer market transactions.

Externalities often occur when the production or consumption of a product or service’s private price equilibrium cannot reflect the true costs or benefits of that product or service for society as a whole.[9][10] This causes the externality competitive equilibrium to not adhere to the condition of Pareto optimality. Thus, since resources can be better allocated, externalities are an example of market failure.[11]

National security is a public good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)

In economics, a public good (also referred to as a social good or collective good)[1] is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Use by one person neither prevents access by other people, nor does it reduce availability to others.[1] Therefore, the good can be used simultaneously by more than one person.[2]

Public goods include knowledge,[4] official statistics, national security, common languages,[5] law enforcement, public parks, free roads, and many television and radio broadcasts.[6]

The value of a public goods is normally going to be an externality.

So you’ll want to internalize it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality

Governments and institutions often take actions to internalize externalities, thus market-priced transactions can incorporate all the benefits and costs associated with transactions between economic agents.[12][13] The most common way this is done is by imposing taxes on the producers of this externality. This is usually done similar to a quote where there is no tax imposed and then once the externality reaches a certain point there is a very high tax imposed. However, since regulators do not always have all the information on the externality it can be difficult to impose the right tax. Once the externality is internalized through imposing a tax the competitive equilibrium is now Pareto optimal.

Now, is this tariff the right way to do that? Is the value the EU places on it correct? I don’t know. National security is a positive externality, which I suppose might be an argument that EU vehicle production should be subsidized, rather than external producers subjected to a tariff. And it’s hard for me to say “this is the right number to price in national security”. There’s also a question here of the impact on EVs – which I think are the future of a lot of vehicular transport – versus other types of vehicles; placing a tariff just on EVs will tend to also encourage use of other types of vehicles. So, you could argue the details. But I will say that there is very probably some value associated with having the ability to having a “safe” source of vehicles, that it is non-zero, and internalizing an externality like that is not unreasonable.

All that being said, it is also important to recognize that there is a cost to doing this. There are a lot of risks out there that one might hedge against, and vehicle production may or may not be the main one to be concerned about. There are a lot of vehicle manufacturers out there around the world. Japan makes vehicles, Korea makes vehicles, the US makes (kinda expensive) vehicles. Unless the EU believes that they will be cut off from those, they could choose to not maintain a domestic source, but they would probably want to make sure that they had high confidence that those sources weren’t cut off.

Another factor is that automobile manufacture has high capital costs.

For a market to be efficient, it needs to be competitive. That is, if you have monopoly providers of something, the market may head away from being efficient. One way you can get monopolies is if the environment is such that it tends towards a natural monopoly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors. Specifically, an industry is a natural monopoly if the total cost of one firm, producing the total output, is lower than the total cost of two or more firms producing the entire production. In that case, it is very probable that a company (monopoly) or minimal number of companies (oligopoly) will form, providing all or most relevant products and/or services. This frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate, creating large economies of scale about the size of the market; examples include public utilities such as water services, electricity, telecommunications, mail, etc.[1]

High capital costs can act as a barrier to entry and cause an industry to head towards being a natural monopoly. So, from this standpoint, it might make sense for the EU to ensure that it has access to a competing automobile industry if the potential alternative is a world where they can only otherwise obtain automobiles from China. Here, you’re basically paying something to make sure that you retain a market that is – at least somewhat, even if the tariffs decrease that competitiveness – competitive for the long haul.

Is that justified here? I don’t know. But it’s at least something to consider. The author is just saying that any restraint on trade makes a market less-efficient, and that’s true in the general sense. But…there are also exceptions, like the above factors. It’s not prima facie a bad idea for the EU to take those exceptions into account, which I think is what the author is saying.

Remember Nord Stream 2? That was fairly inexpensive as a source of energy. But…there were some externalities, some costs that were not incorporated into the price there – like the fact that the Russian government might use that dependence to cut off gas supply as a source of political leverage, even if it didn’t make sense for Gazprom as a company. The EU probably did Nord Stream 2 because its market regulators didn’t internalize national security costs.

Does the same thing apply here? shrugs I don’t know. But the idea that it might ain’t crazy.

I’d also add that the US has been doing something similar.

I mean, if you were an embedded reporter, would you be willing to miss the opportunity to film this scene?

I mean, the MiG has his wingman flying at very low altitude directly through what appears to be a napalm strike that he’s just conducted on the starboard side of the carrier, so there’s some questionable behavior on both sides here.

I assume that that’s just the tailgunner firing his flamethrower.

I’m assuming that the Abrams tank makes sense to protect the people on deck from the blast of the guns on that turret.

The armored triple turret on the carrier that is apparently being fired at the MiG did not meet the bar to be included in the description.

The thing says “video unavailable” for me, but this YouTube video from Associated Press seems to have at least the same frame shown in the thumbnail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUE7_rlO2RM&list=RDNSyUE7_rlO2RM&start_radio=1

They don’t. There’s typically a compass in phones that provides information useful in determining direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetometer

Mobile phones

Many smartphones contain miniaturized microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) magnetometers which are used to detect magnetic field strength and are used as compasses. The iPhone 3GS has a magnetometer, a magnetoresistive permalloy sensor, the AN-203 produced by Honeywell. In 2009, the price of three-axis magnetometers dipped below US$1 per device and dropped rapidly. The use of a three-axis device means that it is not sensitive to the way it is held in orientation or elevation. Hall effect devices are also popular.

Where traffic lights were dark, drivers treated the intersections as four-way stops.

Good job, North Carolinians.

My local experience has been that when traffic lights are dark, drivers – who have a questionable understanding of “traffic takes turns a car at a time in clockwise order at a stop sign”, much less “treat a flashing red signal as a stop sign”, much less “treat an out traffic signal as a stop sign” – just enter a state of total confusion and start randomly driving however.

I mean… fuck around and find out?

If you mean Hezbollah, sure.

The IRGC guy who was working with Hezbollah here is gonna be Iranian intelligence, though, and I doubt that Israel specifically is going after the IRGC. I mean, Iran’s ultimately involved in all this, sure, but aside from some missiles that we and Israel mostly shot down, it has mostly acted against Israel via proxies. Like, if Israel wanted to nail the IRGC, they’d probably have hit stuff in Iran.

I don’t think that Israel’s likely to initiate against Iran directly, though I did just read some news discussing whether Iran might initiate direct hostilities against Israel, and then we might go after Iran, which I think is probably a more-likely route for the IRGC getting hit than Israel specifically acting against Iran directly.

digs up page

https://apnews.com/article/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-war-pagers-920ced5349562163eeb96d6a5a768e89

Hezbollah, however, is Iran’s chief ally and proxy group, and Tehran may have to respond to retain its credibility with its partners in the axis.

“Iran is very much in a policy dilemma right now,” said Firas Maksad, of the Middle East Institute. On one hand, clearly it very much has wanted to avoid an all-out and direct confrontation, given its long-standing preference for asymmetric warfare and using proxies.

“But on the other hand, a lack of a worthy response given the magnitude of the event will only encourage Israel to push deeper past Iran’s red lines,” he said. Not responding also sends a signal of weakness to its regional proxies.

Any direct Iranian involvement risks dragging Israel’s chief ally, the U.S., into the war, just over a month before the U.S. elections and at a time Iran has signaled its interest in renewing negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program.

EDIT: And I’m skeptical that Iran’s going to get directly involved here. The Iranian government issued a statement, and it wasn’t “we’re going to clean Israel’s clock”, but just generally urging Muslims in the area (not, like, Iranian Muslims) to fight Israel, and explicitly put Hezbollah at the forefront. So I suppose they probably aren’t looking for a direct conflict with Israel:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-khamenei-calls-muslims-confront-israel-after-nasrallah-killing

Israeli “criminals must know that they are far too small to cause any significant damage on the strongholds of Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Khamenei said, adding: “All the resistance forces in the region support and stand alongside Hezbollah.”

He also urged Muslims to stand alongside the people of Lebanon and Hezbollah and support them in “confronting the usurping and wicked regime.”

“The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront,” he added.