Image is from this article in the New York Times.

A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck Morocco on September 8th, with the epicenter 73 kilometers away from Marrakesh.

At least 2500 people have died as of September 11th, most outside Marrakesh, with more people being pulled out of the rubble every day, making it the deadliest earthquake in Morocco since 1960, and the second-deadliest earthquake this year (first being, of course, the one in Turkiye-Syria in February, which killed nearly 60,000 people). While the deaths are the most horrific part, damage to historic sites has also been very significant - including buildings dating back to the 1000s.

Morocco is situated close to the Eurasian-African plate boundary, where the two plates are colliding. The rock comprising the Atlas Mountains, situated along the northwestern coast of Africa separating the Sahara from the Mediterranean Sea, are being pushed together at a rate of 1 millimeter per year, and thus the mountains are slowly growing. As they collide, energy is stored up over time and then released, and faults develop. The earthquake this month originated on one such fault, as did the earthquake in 1960. The earthquake hypocenter was 20-25 kilometers underground, with 1.7 meters (or 5 and a half feet) of rock suddenly shifting along a fault ~30 kilometers (19 miles) long.

Earthquake prediction is still deeply imprecise at best, and obtaining decent knowledge and forewarning of earthquakes is highly dependent on dense seismometer arrays that constantly monitor seismic activity, such as in Japan, and detailed understanding of the local and regional tectonic environment. The best way to prevent damage is to build earthquake-resistant infrastructure and establish routines for escaping buildings and reaching safety. All of these, of course, are underdeveloped to nonexistent in developing countries, particularly in poorer communities inside those countries.

The Country of the Week, in honour of Allende's death 50 years ago (the only bad geopolitical event that has occurred on September 11th, of course), is Chile. Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.

The weekly update is here!

Links and Stuff

The bulletins site is down.

Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists

Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Add to the above list if you can.

Resources For Understanding The War

Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.

Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.

Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.

Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.

On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.

Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.

Telegram Channels

Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.

Pro-Russian

https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.

https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.

https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.

https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.

https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.

https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.

https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.

https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.

https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.

Pro-Ukraine

Almost every Western media outlet.

https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.

https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.

Last week's discussion post.

  • Dull_Juice [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    So that Pro Publica article from the previous thread on the LCS being a piece of crap had a little comment and hyperlink about the USS Gerald R. Ford having reliability issues. Looks like its a PDF from the DOD with all kinds of reliability information from the different weapons programs. Honestly not sure if there's a more secure way to link to the PDF, but let me know so I can update it.

    There's some gems in there like for the Gerald Ford Catapults:

    During testing from March through June 2022 (after the PIA), EMALS achieved a reliability of 614 mean cycles between operational mission failures (MCBOMF) during 1,841 catapult launches (where a cycle is the launch of one aircraft). While this reliability is well below the requirement of 4,166 MCBOMF, EMALS showed slight improvement in reliability from FY21 (460 MCBOMF throughout 1,758 catapults). However, during the first underway of IOT&E in September 2022, EMALS reliability appeared to regress and slowed CQ. While the data are still being analyzed, the adverse effect to operations on two of the ten days of CQ was significant.

    Fun blurb on the ships self defense systems

    There may not be enough data to determine the operational effectiveness and suitability of the self-defense capability ofCVN 78 against anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) due to testdata that will not be available for reasons discussed in the Ship Self-Defense System article of this Annual Report.

    Which leads to this in a different sections of the report:

    The Navy will not complete the remaining planned firing events against the SDTS configured with a representation of SSDS Mk 2 Mod 6 due to there being no AN/ SPY-3 radar set available to install on the SDTS. Additionally, the Navy planned to use data from live operational firing events from the USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000) IOT&E, but modifications to the DDG 1000 AN/SPY-3 radar no longer support the use of the DDG 1000 test data for validation of the Probability of Raid Annihilation (PRA) test bed. The PRA test bed is the high fidelity model and simulation the Navy intends to provide the remainder of the SSDS Mk 2 Mod 6 performance data.

    In FY22, the Navy conducted no tests on SSDS Mk 2 Mod 1 (Nimitz-class) or Mk 2 Mod 5 (Whidbey Island-class and Harpers Ferry-class), as a result of funding shortfalls, prioritization of remaining funding to conduct CVN 78 operational test on the SDTS, and Strike Group availability.

    Some of the lingo goes over my head but nonetheless, the US Navy doesn't seem like its doing so hot.

    Editing in another thing I saw that was interesting

    I guess this JAGM is supposed to replace the Longbow Hellfire and HELLFIRE Romeo missiles and caught this:

    JAGM is survivable against a nascent or limited cyber attacker. JAGM is not survivable against a moderate-to-advanced capability threat. The Army mitigated key vulnerabilities found in two cyber test events conducted in 2017. The most recent Navy testing revealed additional vulnerabilities.

    • JuryNullification [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Some of the lingo goes over my head but nonetheless, the US Navy doesn't seem like its doing so hot.

      I am a repository of stupid lingo. If you have any questions on this brand of stupid lingo, please ask and I will do my best to explain.

      • Dull_Juice [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, after I wrote the comment I started finding some answers, it's just a chore when they define an acronym once in the report somewhere and then use it nonstop so you get paragraphs like this:

        During early developmental testing, reliability concerns were identified with the Electro Mechanical Actuators (EMA) that are used to raise and lower the JBDs on the Ford class. Several modifications were implemented on CVN 78 during the PIA to improve reliability. During the August 2022 CQ, the ship experienced EMA failures on all four JBDs, which caused the ship to cancel the remainder of CQ and return early. The cause of the EMA failures 170 CVN 78 was corroded fasteners in various components of the EMA. The root cause of the fastener corrosion is being addressed, and repairs were completed prior to September’s CQ. During the September CQ, JBD performance did not adversely affect flight operations.

        So I had to go through and find what like JBD (Jet Blast Deflector) was and then piece it together. It's a brutal document to skim because of that.

        Another example of the acronym insanity lol

        An adequate survivability assessment depends upon a combination of Full Ship Shock Trials (FSST), extensive modeling based on surrogate testing, and a total-ship survivability test (TSST). Sufficient data to assess ship survivability against close- aboard explosions should be available by the end of FY23. From June-August 2021, the Navy conducted FSST on CVN 78 including three shock events of increasing effect. The FSST identified several survivability improvement opportunities for CVN 78 against underwater threat engagements. In 1QFY23, DOT&E will publish a classified FSST report that details these results.

        It is surprising to me how many things haven't really been tested and they're putting this thing out on deployment.

        • JuryNullification [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, the DOT&E reports are written for Congress (more specifically congressional aides, tbh), and they don’t know all the acronyms by heart, so they have to define them in the text.

          Unfortunately, I have some past experience with this stuff. If you want some fun, with every report head straight to the cybersecurity section (if it’s applicable).

          • Dull_Juice [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Makes sense, it reads like something written for that purpose. I think there's a section for each entry in the report where they tackle the cyber security aspects, which wildly vary in how well they hold up or if they've been tested at all yet. Haven't looked for a specific section.