perihelions

> "And all that as official doctrine"

The Donroe Doctrine.

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mbjv2l5otf25

More quotes in that vein,

> "We're going to have our very large United States oil companies go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country. And we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so."

> "We're not afraid of boots on the ground if we have to have it"

> "It's gonna make a lot of money"

> "Well, you know, it won't cost us anything because the money coming out of the ground is very substantial"

Reading @atrupar.com 's live transcriptions,

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com

The US has historically captured and executed heads of states in wars, including Iraq's Saddam Hussein in 2006 (executed by the US-administered Iraqi government), and Imperial Japan's Tojo in 1948.

The US extradited, convicted, and imprisoned Honduras' Juan Orlando Hernández, for drug trafficking crimes (though Trump, incongruously, pardoned him in 2025).

Another notable example, the UK arrested Chile's Pinochet in 1998 on a Spanish arrest warrant claiming universal jurisdiction, though no conviction followed from that.

edit: And US Marines captured Grenada's Hudson Austin in 1983, turning him over to Grenada's new government who sentenced him to death, commuted to prison.

edit²: Two other heads of state imprisoned in the US were Alfonso Portillo of Guatemala (extradited to and convicted in US courts in 2014), and Pavlo Lazarenko of Ukraine (fled willingly to the US, convicted in 2006).

To briefly quantify some things: US public support at the onset of the Afghanistan invasion polled at 88% [a]; at the onset of the Iraq invasion, 62%, rising to 72% [b]; and Venezuela here and now polls at 30% supporting "U.S. taking military action in Venezuela" [c] (Nov. 19–21 2025).

[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_public_opinion_o...

[b] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S...

[c] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-venezuela-u-s-military-act...

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-presidential-pardo... ("Inside the New Fast Track to a Presidential Pardon" / "Lobbyists close to Trump say their going rate to advocate for a pardon is $1 million")

They're only 40 miles apart. Moreover, they're both (apparently) premeditated gun murders targeting academics at famous universities.

edit to add: (For those who weren't aware, the Brown University terrorist is still on the loose).

Or in theory, indefinitely,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16527007 ("First firing of air-breathing electric thruster (esa.int)" (2018))

The distinction here is whether police can secretly enter a home to plant bugs, &c. In the US, this is routine; in Germany, this is (was?) taboo.

(FYI, you can escape * as \* to get it to display as *).

The explanation is deceptively unclear, IMO. What's being authorized is court-ordered searches of a type that were previously prohibited, even for courts to authorize, by strict privacy laws. The US has always had the power to conduct these searches [0]; the "inviolability of the home" human dignity concept doesn't exist in the US. (I'll defer to German people to explain this concept).

As explained in heise.de[1] (in German) about a parallel law being enacted in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,

> "For the online search, the deputies now also grant the law enforcement the right to secretly enter and search apartments with judicial permission."

[0] e.g. https://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138916011/home-visits-and-oth... ("Home Visits And Other 'Secrets Of The FBI'")

[1] https://www.heise.de/news/Mecklenburg-Vorpommern-Durchsuchun...

> "Whenever a high energy photon strikes the CZT, it mobilises an electron and this electrical signal can be used to make an image. Earlier scanner technology used a two-step process, which was not as precise."

I understand the unnamed alternative is the scintillation-type detector, where high-energy photons induce fluorescence, emitting secondary photons of lower energy. Detecting the secondary photons (converting them to electrons) is the second step.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillator

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillation_counter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scintillation_(physics)

Direct link to filing,

(.pdf) https://redditinc.com/hubfs/Reddit%20Inc/Content/2025.12.12%...

> "In its lawsuit, Reddit said the law would have the effect of suppressing teenagers’ freedom and ability to participate in political discussions."

> "is this considered a violation of free speech?"

There were major Supreme Court rulings on the topic recently, see

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44397799 ("US Supreme Court Upholds Texas Porn ID Law (wired.com)"—5 months ago, 212 comments)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Coalition_v._Paxto...

> "MPAA ratings for movies"

(IANAL) That demonstrates the opposite: that's a voluntary system with no force of law behind it—the private sector "self-regulating" itself, if you will.

The film rating systems were created under threat of legislation in the first half of the 20th century (so, in lieu of actual legislation). The transformative 1st Amendment rulings of the Warren Court would have made such laws unconstitutional after the 1960's, but the dynamic that created these codes predates that—predates the modern judicial interpretation of the 1st Amendment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code (history background)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Association_fil... ("The MPA rating system is a voluntary scheme that is not enforced by law")

Pretty sure many of Meta's tech workers are furious about these actions, as they were in the previous story where 404media published a number of employee comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178 ("[flagged] Total Chaos at Meta: Employees Protest Zuckerberg's Anti LGBTQ Changes (404media.co)")

https://www.404media.co/its-total-chaos-internally-at-meta-r... ( https://archive.is/R1c7S )

Guyana says it's a false flag,

> "The government of Guyana — which borders Venezuela — said in a statement Wednesday the ship was falsely flying the Guyanese flag, despite not being registered in the South American country"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-we-know-oil-tanker-the-ski...

(Context reminder: Guyana is the country Venezuela's Maduro threatened to invade in 2023).

(Also context: the sanctions on this ship's Russian owner date from 2022, and are about violating US sanctions on Iranian oil).

Further context: it's owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch,

> "The ship — known as Adisa in 2022 — is among the vessels controlled by sanctioned Russian oil magnate Viktor Artemov, the Treasury said in a statement[...] The tanker is controlled by Nigeria-based management company Thomarose Global Ventures LTD and owned by a firm linked to Artemov, according to publicly available data."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-we-know-oil-tanker-the-ski...

For what it's worth, HN is on ICE's list of surveilled sites (which it pays a tech contractor to crawl),

https://www.404media.co/the-200-sites-an-ice-surveillance-co... ("The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring")

https://archive.is/Lldzh

There's no right to entry at US borders; you can be arbitrarily refused (or much worse) for any subjective suspicion.

(And you are misled by assumptions of privilege, any readers who think this could never happen to you. Your social non-conformity (rejection of social media) is quirky and geeky and completely harmless; and surely the nice government man will understand this).

Those pink granite cubes make that H&H look like it's built in Minecraft.

The same source has an article about the pink granite quarry involved in a lot of NYC buildings,

https://www.untappedcities.com/stony-creek-quarry-and-the-gr... ("Stony Creek Quarry and the Granite that Built New York")

> "Nah, they are fine. They ate head of presidents office alive last week."

That's the same guy who tried to take over that anti-corruption office. He would be controlling it now, if it weren't for the massive country-wide protests about it. I'm not sure that they're doing fine.

Economist, July 2025:

> "On July 22nd the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, passed a bill that would place the country’s two main anti-corruption bodies—NABU, which investigates wrongdoing, and SAPO, which prosecutes it—under the control of the presidency. This was not the work of rogue MPs. It was orchestrated from the top by President Volodymyr Zelensky and his all-powerful chief of staff, Andriy Yermak."

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/07/23/volodymyr-zelen... ( https://archive.is/kYh4w )

BBC, last week: "...was forced to U-turn after mass demonstrations",

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz0nljm4y74o ("Andriy Yermak: How Zelensky's right-hand man fell from power" / "Fall of Zelensky's top aide - reboot for Kyiv or costly shake-up?")

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_anti-corruption_protests_...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46000977 ("Larry Ellison discussed axing CNN hosts with White House in takeover bid talks (theguardian.com)")

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46048351 ("Larry Ellison Met with Trump to Discuss Which CNN Reporters They Plan to Fire (techdirt.com)")

Viewing this acquisition in terms of simple revenue alone is like positing Musk bought Twitter for its ad revenue. Total information control is priceless.

(In case anyone hasn't kept up with the plutocratic oligarchy in the US: Oracle's Larry Ellison currently owns Paramount (since July 2024), and Warner Bros. Entertainment owns CNN. This isn't explained in the CNBC OP: David Ellison is Larry's son and the token CEO).

Could be this one, perhaps?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43208973 ("Zelensky leaves White House after angry meeting (bbc.com)")

5044 comments, or 5349 with "showdead"

I used a null query,

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity

> "special vacuum tube for memory derived from the kind in television cameras"

A Williams Tube?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058531 ("KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support (phoronix.com)"—237 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46085593 ("KDE going all-in on a Wayland future (kde.org)"—46 comments)

It's not a viable heat sink because it's a thermal insulator that doesn't support transport of heat. The thermal conductivity of lunar regolith is lower than rock-wool insulation,

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9646997/ ("Thermophysical properties of the regolith on the lunar far side revealed by the in situ temperature probing of the Chang’E-4 mission" (2022))

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_42...

(Imagine, for entertainment purposes, what would happen if you wrapped a running server rack in a giant ball of rock-wool insulation, 50 meters in radius).

Only way to dissipate large amounts of heat on the moon is with sky-facing radiators.

> "Maybe even smarter as there was no lead poisoning their brains!"

It's a good guess the people who made these artifacts (the bronze ones particularly) suffered from lead poisoning: lead was a primary alloying metal for bronze. You can even look up elemental analysis for BMAC bronze artifacts specifically: "...contain appreciable amounts of arsenic (up to 3%) and lead (up to 4%), as did bronzes of the preceding chronological horizons"[0].

The early smelting techniques simply released everything into the open atmosphere, as fine particulate fumes. Environmental samples going back 5,200 years show regional-scale lead pollution[1] from Bronze Age metals smelting.

[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/earth-science/articles/... (under "3.1.3 Bronzes of the Late Bronze Age II")

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01921-7

("The smelting- and cupellation-related release of Pb into the environment is predominantly via the fine-particle fraction and, as such subject to large-scale atmospheric transport, resulting in a supra-regional to hemisphere-wide distribution9,10,11,20,21,22,23")

Reminds me of the time the EU Commission itself was caught violating laws in the course of their pro-Chat Control ad campaign,

https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-files-complaint-against-eu-commissio... ("noyb files complaint against EU Commission over targeted chat control ads")

> "In September 2023, the Commission used unlawful micro-targeting on Twitter (X) to promote its heavily criticized chat control regulation... This move both undermined the established democratic procedures between EU institutions and violated the EU GDPR."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46058531 ("KDE Plasma 6.8 Will Go Wayland-Exclusive in Dropping X11 Session Support (phoronix.com)"—231 comments)

Some assorted media here,

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=63952.0 ("Major damage to PU-6 at Baikonur")

Natural gas and wood chips,

> "The installation will supply heat to the Vääksy district heating network and is expected to lower fossil-based emissions by approximately 60% annually, primarily through an estimated 80% reduction in natural gas consumption and reduced reliance on wood chips."

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/11/25/finlands-polar-night-...