Wednesday morning
Awake 6:30am, should stretch at 7:00am, eat breakfast 7:30am, and either start telework early at 8:30am or take a walk break first. Undecided about weight lifting because my shoulders are bugging me, and with the 10K approaching on Saturday perhaps I shouldn't risk an injury, but we'll see how I feel this afternoon during class.
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The latest update to MtG:Arena arrived yesterday, after 3 hours of scheduled downtime. I continue tinkering with a bunch of different decks using different strategies. I'm finding the game addictive, but fun.
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After hearing an interview with the author on one of my favorite history podcasts, I acquired the audiobook: Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen. She reads it herself, and does a decent job of doing so. The book is part history lessons, part hypothetical. She walks through, minute by detailed minute, how during 72 minutes from "go" the US would be completely destroyed by a "general nuclear exchange" with Russia, killing most of our population, wrecking all of our cities and industrial production, with a subsequent ice age (from all the atmospheric dust/soot) wrecking our agriculture, knocking the few survivors back into a hunter/gatherer subsistence.
Her sourcing is top notch, the list of qualified experts she interviewed takes over 8 minutes to announce. She describes the effects of the nuclear explosions in haunting detail.
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Whenever the topic of nuclear weapons/war comes up, I feel appropriately horrified by the possibility, but I also wonder why it hasn't happened yet after 70 years, and why a general war between great powers hasn't happened since nuclear weapons were used to end WW2. It seems to me that nuclear weapons replaced the previous messy international relations concept of "balance of power" with a new horrifying "balance of terror" -- great powers with nukes have to be careful to avoid escalation if they want to survive, so instead of fighting each other directly they engage in proxy warfare against and through non-nuclear client states.
But people speculate about what could happen if nuclear escalation happens anyway, and the "logical insanity" that could wreck human civilization in 72 minutes.
Nine countries are currently thought to have nukes, and other countries have the technical knowhow to build nukes if/when they want. To be useful as a deterrent, a nuke builder has to convince its rivals that it will use nukes if threatened -- but -- what if they don't believe you, and threaten you anyway? And then you use one, and they use one back, etc.
I'm not sure how to undiscover nukes, but so far the best way to avoid their use appears to be this now-eternal balance of terror. The only time so far that nukes were used in wartime, was when only one country had them. But the only thing nukes would be good at is destroying cities, and then your rival will destroy yours.
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Time to get up and stretch!
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The latest update to MtG:Arena arrived yesterday, after 3 hours of scheduled downtime. I continue tinkering with a bunch of different decks using different strategies. I'm finding the game addictive, but fun.
-----
After hearing an interview with the author on one of my favorite history podcasts, I acquired the audiobook: Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen. She reads it herself, and does a decent job of doing so. The book is part history lessons, part hypothetical. She walks through, minute by detailed minute, how during 72 minutes from "go" the US would be completely destroyed by a "general nuclear exchange" with Russia, killing most of our population, wrecking all of our cities and industrial production, with a subsequent ice age (from all the atmospheric dust/soot) wrecking our agriculture, knocking the few survivors back into a hunter/gatherer subsistence.
Her sourcing is top notch, the list of qualified experts she interviewed takes over 8 minutes to announce. She describes the effects of the nuclear explosions in haunting detail.
-----
Whenever the topic of nuclear weapons/war comes up, I feel appropriately horrified by the possibility, but I also wonder why it hasn't happened yet after 70 years, and why a general war between great powers hasn't happened since nuclear weapons were used to end WW2. It seems to me that nuclear weapons replaced the previous messy international relations concept of "balance of power" with a new horrifying "balance of terror" -- great powers with nukes have to be careful to avoid escalation if they want to survive, so instead of fighting each other directly they engage in proxy warfare against and through non-nuclear client states.
But people speculate about what could happen if nuclear escalation happens anyway, and the "logical insanity" that could wreck human civilization in 72 minutes.
Nine countries are currently thought to have nukes, and other countries have the technical knowhow to build nukes if/when they want. To be useful as a deterrent, a nuke builder has to convince its rivals that it will use nukes if threatened -- but -- what if they don't believe you, and threaten you anyway? And then you use one, and they use one back, etc.
I'm not sure how to undiscover nukes, but so far the best way to avoid their use appears to be this now-eternal balance of terror. The only time so far that nukes were used in wartime, was when only one country had them. But the only thing nukes would be good at is destroying cities, and then your rival will destroy yours.
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Time to get up and stretch!