Complete farce. A UN mission arrives in Artsakh for the first time in 30 years to “monitor” the situation. There’s nobody left to monitor.
8 Likes
Today is the Nobel Prize in Physics
It goes to Pierre Agostini (USA), Ferenc Krausz(Germany) and Anne L’Huillier (Sweden) for their work on electrons
https://www.reuters.com/science/agostini-krausz-lhuillier-win-2023-nobel-prize-physics-2023-10-03/
Fast-moving events flow into each other when perceived by humans, just like a film that consists of still images is perceived as continual movement. If we want to investigate really brief events, we need special technology. In the world of electrons, changes occur in a few tenths of an attosecond – an attosecond is so short that there are as many in one second as there have been seconds since the birth of the universe.
The laureates’ experiments have produced pulses of light so short that they are measured in attoseconds, thus demonstrating that these pulses can be used to provide images of processes inside atoms and molecules.
In 1987, Anne L’Huillier discovered that many different overtones of light arose when she transmitted infrared laser light through a noble gas. Each overtone is a light wave with a given number of cycles for each cycle in the laser light. They are caused by the laser light interacting with atoms in the gas; it gives some electrons extra energy that is then emitted as light. Anne L’Huillier has continued to explore this phenomenon, laying the ground for subsequent breakthroughs.
In 2001, Pierre Agostini succeeded in producing and investigating a series of consecutive light pulses, in which each pulse lasted just 250 attoseconds. At the same time, Ferenc Krausz was working with another type of experiment, one that made it possible to isolate a single light pulse that lasted 650 attoseconds.
6 Likes
For the first time in US history, the House has voted to remove the Speaker of the House. The unanimous Democrats were joined by eight Republicans in voting to vacate the position.
Now the House can’t conduct business until a new Speaker is elected, something that took 15 ballots back in January.
9 Likes
I love that only 8 republicans voted to oust him and yet he is gone. I just have no clue who will be palatable to a majority of that chamber.
5 Likes
The 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been announced.
It goes to Moungi G. Bawendi (USA), Louis E. Brus (USA), and Alexei I. Ekimov (USA) for the discovery and development of quantum dots.
https://www.reuters.com/science/bawendi-brus-ekimov-win-2023-nobel-prize-chemistry-2023-10-04/
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2023 rewards the discovery and development of quantum dots, nanoparticles so tiny that their size determines their properties. These smallest components of nanotechnology now spread their light from televisions and LED lamps, and can also guide surgeons when they remove tumour tissue, among many other things.
Physicists had long known that in theory size-dependent quantum effects could arise in nanoparticles, but at that time it was almost impossible to sculpt in nanodimensions. Therefore, few people believed that this knowledge would be put to practical use.
However, in the early 1980s, Alexei Ekimov succeeded in creating size-dependent quantum effects in coloured glass. The colour came from nanoparticles of copper chloride and Ekimov demonstrated that the particle size affected the colour of the glass via quantum effects.
A few years later, Louis Brus was the first scientist in the world to prove size-dependent quantum effects in particles floating freely in a fluid.
In 1993, Moungi Bawendi revolutionised the chemical production of quantum dots, resulting in almost perfect particles. This high quality was necessary for them to be utilised in applications.
7 Likes
What an embarrassment for all parties involved, especially Russia.
4 Likes
Today is the 2023 Nobel Priza in Litterature.
It goes to Jon Fosse (Norway) for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.
“What is special is that he touches on the deepest feelings you have”
7 Likes
And the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to imprisoned activist Narges Mohammadi, for fighting the oppression of women in Iran. She is deputy head of the banned Defenders of Human Rights Center, an organization led by 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.
One of Iran’s leading human rights activists, Mohammadi has campaigned for women’s rights and the abolition of the death penalty.
Hailing Mohammadi as a “freedom fighter”, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee started her speech by saying, in Farsi, the words for “woman, life, freedom” - one of the slogans of the peaceful protests against the Iranian government.
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize to Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” Berit Reiss-Andersen said in the citation.
Mohammadi is currently serving multiple sentences in Tehran’s Evin Prison amounting to about 12 years imprisonment, according to the Front Line Defenders rights organisation, one of the many periods she has been detained behind bars.
6 Likes
- 5000 rockets launched per AFP reporting Hamas declaration (certainly much less, the largest previous one was 2000 in a month, 4000 in a year)
- Hamas is calling it “operation Al-Aqsa Flood” (as a reminder : Al-Aqsa is the mosque at the Temple Mound)
- gunmens in trucks are reported in multiple southern israeli cities
- dozens of civilians reported executed
- IDF and reservist called, “on war footing”
- this is the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war
There will certainly be consequences for weeks to come. This is the largest attack in years (since 2014 at least), and is obviously coordinated, planned. We still have to see if there is a larger strategy, nulti-staged, or with follow ups.
10 Likes
And unfortunately nothing will change. Hamas will inevitably be repelled and most likely destroyed but they’re throwing away so much sympathy for Palestinians worldwide, all for the opportunity to kill some Israelis.
8 Likes
It’s war.
7 Likes
I got back to the base wish me luck
10 Likes
Some facts are starting to settle :
- numbers of rocket launched at 2000
- death toll is currently of 40, but expected to grow
- hundreds of wounded
- some IDF soldiers are held hostages
- firefights in Israel are still underway
- operations are currently a mix of retaliation/paralyzation strikes in Gaza, and security restoration in southern Israel.
- Mahmoud Abbas (Palestinian Authority) quoted as saying that the Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves against the “terror of settlers and occupation troops" during a emergency meeting of the PA leaders. So, usual, and ambivalent to the actual events.
It’s larger than 2014, admittedly it’s the largest attack in half a century.
There are still numerous unknown, so a lot can still change
- we don’t know what Israel plans, aims, and objectives will be in what is announced as a war.
- multiple regional and local actors have not yet communicated their reactions, even less acted on it.
Some contexts :
Here is a timeline :
- 1993-1995 Israel and the PLO mutually recognize each other and establish the Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule (subject to overall Israeli control) in the Gaza Strip and specified areas of the West Bank.
- 2000-2005 Second Palestinian intifada affects prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, leads to tightened Israeli security in the West Bank, and complicates the U.S. third-party role.
- 2004-2005 PLO Chairman/PA President Yasser Arafat dies; Mahmoud Abbas succeeds him.
2005 Israel unilaterally disengages from Gaza, but remains in control of airspace and land/maritime access points. - 2006 Hamas wins majority in Palestinian Legislative Council and leads new PA cabinet; Israel, United States, and European Union confine relations to PA President Abbas.
- 2007 West Bank-Gaza split: Hamas seizes control of Gaza Strip; Abbas reorganizes PA cabinet to lead West Bank; this remains the statusquo to date.
- 2007-present Various rounds of U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations (the last in 2013-2014) end unsuccessfully; PLO/PA increases efforts to gain membership in or support from international organizations.
Some key facts about Hamas :
- Designated as a terrorist organisation by Canada, the European Union, Israel, Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Military branch designated as terrorist organisation by New Zealand, and Paraguay
- Hamas rules through presidential decrees since its victory in 2006, at the cost of the rule of law.
- They also have a presence in the west bank.
- Gaza leader is Yahya Sinwar, he comes from the military branch of Hamas.
- Political leader is Ismail Haniyeh, he is based in Qatar, and he deals with the international dealing of Hamas.
About the larger context of current Israeli relations :
- this happens during the process of normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
- the process saw a resurgence of the US as a third party
- current leadership of Saudi Arabia (around Mohammed Bin Salman) doesn’t really care about Palestine, this was for the old guard they steadily replaced since 2017, but they still remain ambivalent/fluid on their intention
- some of the concession/deal are already enacted (in July US congress made Saudi Arabia a “Major Security Partner”)
@Switcher , good luck.
10 Likes
The Missile Gap and its consequences…
The swift parrot is one of two migratory parrots and the only animal that goes willingly to Tasmania.
BRING BACK THE RED WALL. KEEP THE RED FLAG FLYING HERE
Silly Democrats, Biden said he would re-evaluate American relations with the Saudis. He re-evaluated them and found nothing wrong with them. Biden is the foreign policy equivalent of a gimp.
God I hope Tusk wins.
Silly Dutch people, Prince Bernard said he was never a paid Nazi he was more than willing to be a Nazi for free.
6 Likes
Hey @Quinn, so yes it’s true.
The grievances of the region are pertinent, and essential to the dynamics.
It’s not my intent to wash them out.
So, I want to explain the cut off.
This is not a historical timeline of the conflict.
This is a timeline of how the current political and institutional landscape of the region was formed. And the pertinent part of this have a cutoff in the 90s.
I did that because it is my school of thought that the structure, organisation, and institutional foundations are what shape the current, and future, decisions, and actions of the actors.
And this was the intent of the showcase. Not the conflict, the structure in place.
If anyone thinks that this is not the appropriate approach, sorry. And I’m certain more can be found.
More certainly, sorry for not defining more the intent of the timeline.
5 Likes
250 killed at a music festival by the terrorists. It’s disgusting
10 Likes
The major issue with this approach is that in attempting to make it consumable to the public, it flattens a lot of the details and tends towards easily playing into simple narratives.
For example:
Glossing it over like this kind of skips over that the reason there is a “usual” response is because the ongoing conflicts that have ultimately been resulting in Palestines losing more and more of their ancestral homeland, while the world in general overlooks wrongdoing of the IDF has been going on for eighty plus years.
There is very little they can say in a press friendly sound byte that will meaningfully address what is going on here, particularly since when you start breaking it down to a granular level there will be numerous individuals who require essay length summaries to explain their motivations and actions.
Perhaps a good example to look to for how harmful this can be is the Irish, who all the way up until the Good Friday Agreement was generally portrayed as terrorists, actually did attempt to assassinate the PM of England, and had a law passed to try to stop people representing the movement politically from being heard because it would be “supportive of recent terrorist violence”
News reports and discussion on it invariably focused on the last unpleasant incident, rather than the previous centuries of oppression and economic damage done to the people of the movement, and it was also often characterized as a religious war.
Then they reached and agreement and now everything’s basically fine except for the Brexit creating a strong incentive for the people who wanted to say part of the UK to join Ireland.
It is important to try to find to ways to explain situations in ways that make it digestible to people in general, but it is also important not to accidentally mislead people by skipping over important information that provides context. It didn’t get this bad over thirty years and there’s a lot of steps involved:
- Hamas didn’t get to where it is without a lot of events leading a lot of people to believe it was necessary
- The IDF did not get all their weapons and support purely because of Hamas, they got them because Israel is counted on to represent overseas interests in the region
- Israel’s relations with their neighbours, that make it necessary for have a defence force and intel group like it does, are further strained by their representing outside interests who have… a not good history in the region
- Palestine territory has shrunk to the extent that a lot of them are now genuinely worried that their nation will be erased in their lifetime, and all their conventional attempts to halt this have yielded no notable results
- Given the disparity of the size of the groups, guerrilla warfare is the only viable option for any group that wants to oppose the IDF from within the borders
- By its nature guerrilla warfare creates difficulty in working out who is responsible for what and why, you cannot maintain a decentralized group with limited information and also maintain a centralized hierarchy of authority.
- Generally speaking, antisemites always rise out of the woodwork to try to use Israel as a blunt instrument against Jews - and other groups latch onto this to use as a blunt instrument against Arab Muslims. And there are also plenty of people who are both and try to play both sides.
Basically it’s a giant fucking mess and it’s difficult to compact into a timeline because we’d have to go back at least as far as the Ottoman Empire and track events over three continents - thus there is a danger in a simplified timeline that the snapshot will give people the impression that they can form an understanding that can lead them to make assumptions.
9 Likes
It didn’t meant “usual” to show and forget their stand.
What I meant was that the PA was not engaging in the events. The messaging is the usual one, and ambivalent to the situation. It’s a non-reaction to the events.
Which itself, is the reaction of the PA. They didn’t, and still don’t, get (truly) involved in the current situation. Which is important.
At the time I wrote the post, it’s wasn’t certain, but the message they sent, then less than an hour old, was pertinent enough of a showcase to highlight it.
And yes the entire region is complex.
I didn’t meant to explain the region, or the conflict.
I meant to show how the actors were reacting, and how the one that hadn’t yet were probably going to by showing the kind of information that could help making them predictable.
7 Likes
Since this war was truly hard for everyone around me, and I saw way too many horrific reports this week, I’m gonna share the 3 reports that actually brought a smile to my face:
https://twitter.com/Benhartman/status/1712113280515235960?t=nU3TVp0w4uLJfecogsa_7A&s=19
It wasn’t the easiest task to find a source in english for this one, but, a literal crimelord that spends all of his fucking time hidden in secured places, headed out to the borders and donated supplies to the soldiers! The supplies are valued at around a couple hundred thousands of NIS.
Mia Khalifa posted a shit ton of posts supporting Hammas and playboy pretty much fired her, w playboy, she was posting so much shit to the point that a literal porn megazine wanted to distance itself from her.
While the terrorists were going door to door, 1 brave woman kept them distracted for 15 fucking hours by serving them coockies and meals, and just spending their time together, that is insanely brave and we all solute to her.
7 Likes
Playboy has always been intensely political and its founder was always distinctly pro-Israel.
Also despite the articles best attempts to claim she was support Hamas, this was their best quotes:
So it kinds seems like she’s less pro-Hamas and more pro-Palestine liberation, which is not surprising since her family is from Lebanon.
Again, I realise that current events are terrible all around - but I must discourage people from trying to flatten complex issues for the sake of a simple narrative.
9 Likes