perestroika

Going by this article...

https://nltimes.nl/2025/06/30/brothers-still-deny-involvement-18-year-old-sisters-honor-killing

...I would speculate that by sending the letter, Khaled al-Najjar attempts to free his sons of complicity in the crime. Whether they are or aren't complicit, is for the court to determine. Getting the man back from Syria would be a priority for the court, but given the situation in Syria, this might be difficult to arrange.

The court seems to consider the brothers either plausibly complicit or a flight risk and decided not to free them on bail.

The brothers’ lawyers requested that they be released from pre-trial custody. They have been detained for almost 13 months. Both insist that they “had nothing to do” with their sister’s murder. But the court ruled that they’ll stay in custody until the next hearing in September.

...and...

But the OM [prosecution] believes that the father enlisted his sons to pick Ryan up, drive her to a remote location, and throw her weighted body into the water. According to the OM, the three men killed Ryan because she behaved too Western and “shamed” her family.

This does not seem likely.

There has to exist a reason for Wang Yi opening some cards, but Kaja Kallas is not that reason. Wang Yi does not make uncoordinated statements and Kaja Kallas isn't attempting to achieve that either.

Somewhere in the CCP political bureau, it was agreed that Wang Yi will send this public signal.

The reason could be something in China, something in Russia, something in Europe or in the US. What is the reason? I don't know currently, but I'm not the only one solving this puzzle.

As a side note: there is speculation that China may be approaching a change of leader due to Xi experiencing health issues (not a change of leadership in the wider sense - the collegial system of the CCP is considered to be functioning).

Thus, it may be impossible for the Chinese foreign minister to be fully confident of what China's policy will be in the future.

Obviously, China views it as unacceptable for Russia (its ally and soon enough, practically its vassal) to all-out lose. (The easiest way to not lose, of course, is not starting a war, but that train is long gone and behind the hills.)

Prolonging the war does not eliminate this risk well, however - exhaustion could spread in Russian society and morale could collapse despite the state spewing its propaganda, or the economy could collapse. So, simply propping up Russia by letting them buy the goods they shouldn't be getting is not a very elegant solution. Direct interference on behalf of Russia would lead to open hostility with the EU, which is currently ambivalent about China.

What remains is nudging Russia to negotiate. But Putin is hard-headed and only willing to negotiate Ukraine's surrender, on terms which Ukrainians will laugh out of the door.

As for the US being able to focus on China, well I guess they're a bit concerned about it, but given the mental and organizational capability of the current US leadership, I don't think Chinese analysts are particularly worried.

It's like with earthquakes. At first, when nobody knows jack s**t, they tell you 10 people died.

When the statistics come home, often enough, an initial 10 turns into 10 000.

With a heat wave spanning half a continent and breaking records, the typical mortality to expect (basing on experience) is at least 1000 people (some of them old and about to go anyway, but pushed over the edge by heat).

Possibly, reverse motivation - the training goal of such an agent would not be nice and smooth output, but shooting down misinformation.

But I have serious doubts about whether all of that is feasible, given the computational cost of running large language models.

Speculation on my part:

Patriot stocks may have been really reduced - by defending Israel during Netanyahu's adventure against Iran (it could have been smarter to tell Netanyahu not to start).

There is no reason to think that stocks of other weapons (e.g. air to ground missiles, glide bomb units for F-16) have suddenly gone really low. In fact, there is probably a f**kton of them.

Consequently, I suspect that Trump and Putin have made a deal they failed to disclose: Putin promised to refrain from helping Iran (it was an easy promise, he was really low on supplies). Trump promised in return to refrain from helping Ukraine, which he could have easily helped. At best, he got conned, at worst he got to do what he already wanted.

I would advise journalists to ask around: "has the US DoD been ordered to alter criteria for determining what is sufficient supply?" If yes, we're looking at an excuse. If no, we're looking at inability.

Both are bad, but inability can be corrected with honest admission and action, Ukraine has a bit of money from other allies to actually buy some US weapons, although they are rushing to make more domestically.

If it's not inability but an undercarpet deal, then corrections are bit harder to achieve.

But the SBU had followed the pair and had special equipment on hand, the operative said, expecting another attack after the previous blast. “We had certain technical means to block the signals to the telephone,” said the source. When Alexander rang the phones strapped to the bombs to detonate them, the calls did not go through.

That was thoughtful of them. :)

At this temperature, emergency medical departments are guaranteed to be full. Weeks later, an uptick in mortality is registered on stats, without exception.

I think the 38% number is definitely wrong, maybe even wrong by one order of magnitude.

I tried fact-checking and came up with this:

https://providencemag.com/2018/04/what-a-country-immigrants-serve-us-military-well

Few Americans realize that 65,000 immigrants serve in the US military today. That number includes some 18,700 troops who hold green cards (in other words, legal permanent residents who are not yet naturalized citizens). According to the Pentagon, about 5,000 such residents enlist each year.

Since the total number of the US armed forces is around 1.3 million, it follows that 38% is definitely wrong and the correct number of immigrants is likely around 5%.

I think the 38% number originates from service member naturalization stats or service member family stats and has been mis-interpreted. Can't tell for sure, didn't hire a spy to find out. :)

P.S. Edit: found a secondary source with similar data:

https://www.usafis.org/can-i-join-the-us-military-as-a-green-card-holder/

Approximately 8,000 Green Card holders join the US military each year and around 35,000 are currently serving on active duty.

Since green card holders aren't the only variety of immigrant, the number 65 000 seems plausible.

My estimate is that this will result on 410 lawsuits filed per day. :o

I think it's not a smart move to have 150 000 lawsuits per year over the same question - it's much preferable to have 1 lawsuit for a whole class of people - defending the rights of everyone in the same situation - and some extra lawsuits for those who want to present a unique take on the matter.

They use resistive heating, so they can only charge it dirt cheap when there is surplus solar or wind.

It's a pretty neat system:

• can be set up anywhere
• can supply high grade heat (process heat, not mere space heating heat)

However, heat stores are subject to scaling laws which don't favour sand on the large scale, at least unless it's underground (and then you have to keep groundwater out to avoid vaporizing it). Large thermal stores benefit from storing heat in water, and placing the water deep underground, so the boiling point rises. If local rock has low thermal conductivity, even better.

For comparison Helsinki (.fi) has a 10 GWh underground thermal store. Where I live, Tallinn (.ee) will soon get a 1 GWh surface thermal store. And Vantaa (.fi) will soon complete a whopping 90 GWh thermal store that's located 100 m underground, so their water will boil at 140 C instead of the usual 100 C. Boiling points up to 300 C are attainable in practise, then the curve starts leveling out.