(no subject)
After the Russians fired their new intermediate-range ballistic missile at the Yuzhmash plant in Dnepropetrovsk, there were a lot of discussions among online commentators about the extent of the damage from the missile. Some said that it was devastating. Others, that it was moderate to negligible. I saw Ted Postol argue the latter, illustrating his analysis with photographs.
This is background to the story that I saw today via someone's twitter feed. Someone (a different someone) has published an article on Substack in which he tells a story of how he purchased satellite images from the next day after the strike, and concluded from them that the damage was fairly mild, only to be informed by some of his readers that all the damage that he described was already visible in earlier images from before the strike. He believes now that the post-strike satellite images that he purchased had been edited as part of some kind of cover-up.
I don't know, of course, one way or the other; but I am fascinated by this power of, as the joke goes, weaponized autism to obtain and make sense of the data, to compare it with the historical data, and to discover holes in the story. It is also thrilling to think that companies that produce and sell satellite images would edit them to hide sensitive information.
This is background to the story that I saw today via someone's twitter feed. Someone (a different someone) has published an article on Substack in which he tells a story of how he purchased satellite images from the next day after the strike, and concluded from them that the damage was fairly mild, only to be informed by some of his readers that all the damage that he described was already visible in earlier images from before the strike. He believes now that the post-strike satellite images that he purchased had been edited as part of some kind of cover-up.
I don't know, of course, one way or the other; but I am fascinated by this power of, as the joke goes, weaponized autism to obtain and make sense of the data, to compare it with the historical data, and to discover holes in the story. It is also thrilling to think that companies that produce and sell satellite images would edit them to hide sensitive information.