Favorites April 29th 2022: Missiles, Napoleon, and Maps

San Francisco, October 2019

When you’ve got strong cell signal, you’ve gotta take advantage of it.

Mick Ryan, AM @WarintheFuture

"The war in Ukraine has highlighted lethality of modern precision weapons, but also the fragility of the current munitions base. The United States needs to work with its close allies to both increase munitions stockpiles and production capacity."

defensenews.comThe US needs a new approach to producing weapons. Just look at Ukraine.Thomas G. Mahnken argues it is imperative for the United States and its allies to both increase their munitions capacity and adopt innovative approaches to munitions production.

The war in Ukraine has highlighted the possibility that all of our large weapons platforms are nearly useless. Naturally the next question is "what is a military supposed to be then?". The answer may be "way more precision missiles". And we're going to have to work together with allies on that.

Brian Chesky @bchesky

Today, we’re announcing that Airbnb employees can live and work anywhere. Our design for working at Airbnb has 5 key features:

I guess if any company would be first to do it, the one that focuses on temporary living spaces would make the most sense.

Meg Tirrell @megtirrell

FDA announces tentative schedule for vaccine advisory meetings, should they have completed applications: June 7: Novavax June 8, 21, 22: Moderna & Pfizer/BioNTech in younger populations June 28: Discussion of strain selection for fall

fda.govCoronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Announces Tentative Advisory Committee Meeting Schedule Regarding COVID- 19 VaccinesFDA plans to hold virtual VRBPAC meetings in anticipation of potential submissions of EUA requests after public announcement by COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.

Yup, a month and a half delay. Ridiculous.

Randall Munroe @xkcd

Bad Map Projection: Madagascator xkcd.com/2613

I was wondering how he did this, and someone linked to a website that can make this projection. There are some more interesting artifacts that he's not including.

Mike Duncan @mikeduncan

Think there's been less than five instances in the entire history of warfare where this winds up working out.

Mujtaba (Mij) Rahman @Mij_Europe

👀 A senior EU source tells me: “Putin has now taken day-to day-control of the conflict and delegated the running of Russia to the Prime Minister”

I wonder if Napoleon counts as all five.

Thread

• Thread describing the timetables required for maintenance of Russia's nuclear arsenal, raises the theory that some significant portion of their nuclear missiles no longer work. The US spends $10 billion a year maintaining our nuclear weapons, Russia has slightly more missiles, but their entire defense budget is $40 billion. However! Other experts strongly disagree. Further even if only a quarter of Russia's warheads work, that's a lot of damage.