Bitchin' Dave’s Blog: Bitchin' Dave's Newsletter

June 13, 2023

Insights, news, ramblings, and other serious nonsense from Dave

Dave’s Musings

Donald Trump was indicted on federal charges, related to his handling of classified documents after he left the office. There are some who defend his actions for whatever reason, suggest that this is all political, or worse, try to suggest that its "no big deal" or "others have done the same or more."

But here's the thing: he took highly classified documents with him after he left the White House. These included information about nuclear capabilities, troop movements, and other sensitive types of things. He was asked to return them, but ignored the request, lied about that, and then proceeded to brag about keeping the documents. They were kept in fairly public places, shown to people with no security clearance, and otherwise left unattended.

The outcome of all of this is that the Department of Justice brought in a Special Prosecutor to review the facts at hand, and decide what to do / how to proceed. The reason for a Special Prosecutor is, essentially, to make this less political and remove any sort of inherent bias. The person independently makes a determination about what happened, and can (and in this case did) make a recommendation on filing charges.

This had to be vetted by various levels of lawyers and analysts and ultimately was brought before the Attorney General. After that, charges were filed in Federal Court.

Getting to this point isn't done lightly. It takes a lot of review, examination, grand juries, interviews/depositions, and so on.

And now there's a case that will be heard. I would suggest it doesn't look good. But in our system of jurisprudence, Trump is innocent until proven guilty in a court. We can't assume this or that will happen, though of course, getting to the point of filing charges and realizing how many counts were filed suggests that there is a likelihood that he is guilty of something.

We will know more in the coming months.

Now as an aside, related to the idea that "others have done the same." As far as we know, no one had taken this large a cache of documents, that they had the specific types of information, or that they left them in a sort of public location. And most importantly, they were returned or otherwise accounted for in some way without any sort of malfeasance.

And I would remind those that want to defend this that Trump defined himself as the "Law and Order" guy, and vowed to not things like this go unchecked. Let the process play out, and lets see where it lands.

In 2022, NASA rolled the SLS rocket from the hangar to the launch pad and back for several months. Several times, fuel leaks occurred while attempting to refuel.

Wilson Aerospace sued Boeing. The large 74-page document states that Boeing is accused of stealing intellectual property between 2014 and 2016.

Specifically, it refers to the design of spanners.

The plaintiff claims that Boeing's experts obtained all documentation on the tools, after which they decided to sever the relationship. Because Boeing was unable to recreate the keys exactly from the stolen documents, this led to defects in the SLS rocket and potentially provoked more serious consequences.

In addition, Wilson Aerospace claimed that Boeing used the tools on the International Space Station, putting the lives of astronauts at risk. A lawyer for the company is sure that there are other firms from which Boeing "borrowed" intellectual property

There's an Israeli company working on a roadway wireless charging for EVs.

Although I couldn't find much detail about what they're doing, it appears as that it is some sort of magnetic field, or perhaps another induction type setup.

But in any case, they see the opportunity to allow for vehicles (particularly busses) to travel a route and not have to stop to charge. And they're testing it out on a test track.

This is really cool piece of tech and could revolutionize the industry.

Quirky

News

This item is maybe a little less "quirky" but it is interesting.

Satellites are in place to track various aspects of our climate. They have detected that there is a rise in surface temperatures on Earth. And have simultaneously detected that atmospheric temperatures are declining.

Or put another way, essentially there is a warming trend on the ground, while temperatures higher up are decreasing. The implication is that these changes are man made - the climate is varying because of greenhouse effects. Otherwise they would be related to each other.

You can read more about this in a recent Wired article: https://www.wired.com/story/the-upper-atmosphere-is-cooling-prompting-new-climate-concerns/

Miami continues to become the mecca for sports. Recently, Lionel Messi, (arguably) the greatest soccer player in the game today, left Paris in the French league, spurned an offer to return to Barcelona in the Spanish League, and turned down a lucrative offer from a Saudi team to come to the MLS, and play for Miami.

Its an exciting time, and Messi becomes the face of the league, and will certainly improve the Miami team. Fans are excited and this could be a lot of fun!

One Little Spark …

… for your imagination

During June, we celebrate many things, including gay pride. There are celebrations and events in many places. In my humble opinion, Its an opportunity for people to simply be themselves. Whatever some might think about gay rights, and pride, I think its a great opportunity to bear in mind that we're sometimes two nations. Why are people so passionate in taking an anti LGBTQ stance?

I was thinking about this season of Ted Lasso, where a player (Colin) comes out to his team. Everyone says its cool, and they don't care. And that's when Ted goes full on Ted and says:

"The point is Colin, We don’t not care. We care very much. We care about who you are and what you must’ve been going through. But hey, from now on you don’t have to go through it all by yourself."

Which I thought was a pretty good assessment. Kudos to the writers for stating it this way.

You can watch the whole segment here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91O7q7D4xnU