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Oh, and now then, about recession in Russia.

The classic measure is 2 or more quarters of flat or negative GDP growth. There have certainly been recent attempts to redefine this, but that is the standard definition.

Before we go looking at Russia’s numbers, note that countries don’t dissolve because of recession. At least, not if they have a central bank. A central bank can create money, hand it to the government and the government will hand that out as spending.

G(ovt Spending) is in the GDP equation. Print it and hand it out and next thing you know GDP is growing.

Then there is the fact that GDP also has a Purchasing Power Parity sub definition.

Russia’s GDP was $2.17T in 2024. That was up 4.1%. This was 11th largest in the world.

Measured by the PPP norm, it is 4th largest.

Prevailing growth projections for 2025 are 1.5%. That’s not flat or negative. The IMF is calling for 0.9%. Which is not flat or negative.

Oh and when GDP is quoted, it is quoted real. Post inflation.

So recession? It’s REALLY hard to get recession when governments spend enormous numbers for that G variable. Which is why the US, with $2T deficit, won’t fall into recession. The govt holds it up.

AI says there is no Azeri government declaration of providing weapons to Ukraine and that the government’s position is one of neutrality.

AI didn’t come up with any sort of production rate.

And AI notes that there are rumors of this taking place, but the government has explicitly said there has been no policy change from neutrality. Such a policy change could happen, but has not.

Oh, and there is the issue of software mods on the airplane to accomodate info transfer to the missile and the launch instruction itself.

$1.5M/missile is absurd.

Whaaaa?

$825 million? That’s all? And paid for by countries not labeled UK, France or Germany?

They are likely talking about 500 mile range weapons that price $1.5M each. Then GPS kits also mentioned . . . no telling what that is. 500 lbs a proper payload of explosives.

US production program not yet underway. When it begins the hopes are **after 1 year** output could be 1000 missiles per year thereafter. This somewhat shoots down the $1.5 million per missile price, since development clearly is underway if there is no current production line. Salary being paid to do more than build. Development still in progress.

This doesn’t look like even 100 missiles, by the end of 12 months. And that doesn’t assess warehouse loss from attack.

So, 3 minor countries are coming up with $895M to place an order for missiles, that won’t be built for . . . call it a year, and call it 100 total output at that point, with more after, if there is more money.

Then there is the issue of Ukraine’s cruise missile production. And European weapons production. Why send money to the US if it can stay in the EU.

I think the interstellar capture concept derived from not being in the ecliptic. Chicken and egg situation.

There was a reasonable explanation for Pluto being interstellar. The fact that planets revolve in the same clockwise or counterclockwise direction makes sense for formation mechanism.

If Pluto is an interstellar capture, it revolving in the same direction is not unlikely because clockwise or counterclockwise is a flip of the coin.

As for other objects getting slightly off ecliptic, I’ve seen some precession of the sun tries at an explanation. Sync precession with non uniform mass distribution in sun’s interior and you have at least a chance at explaining some objects slightly off ecliptic.

I suspect they get away with this because the math would be impenetrable.

Wasn’t there another object coming into the solar system that will fly by Mars. Some dopey scientists think its an alien ship?
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That’s the 31/ATLAS guy, entering on the ecliptic.

Running with the whole thing, there was a passage that seemed odd. Something saying a Jupiter mass object would disrupt nothing gravitationally.

That’s a hmmm. Back when there was talk of planetary alignment and earthquakes, it was popular to have someone stand next to someone and say “I have more gravitational influence on you than Jupiter”. 1/R^2 and all.

But if this thing passes through at some speed slow enough some stable systems should become not stable. Or wrong word. Should become different. Stable in a new config.

Cool drawing, but that 31 Atlas guy is on the ecliptic and as another just noted, this is really surprising.

The planets are on it because of how they formed, the sun’s rotation is on it (precessed what, 7 degs? for the billions of years) and the planets orbit direction is all the same and in the same direction as the sun’s rotation.

For that Atlas guy to be on the ecliptic we would have to presume it formed with the same mechanism as the planets and their orbits, but it’s coming from outside and so . . . not?

Big statistical unusual for it to be entering on the ecliptic.

The people above saying there’s no information in the article are mostly right.

A word. Ecliptic. Visualize a piece of paper with the sun in the middle of it. With one exception, the planets orbit in that plane . . . on that piece of paper.

But it’s all 3 dimensional. No reason planets could not be orbiting at right angles to that piece of paper, or 45 degrees to it up/down. But they don’t, and my recall is that one exception is only off plane about 20 degs.

There is no mention of this new object’s angle to the ecliptic. The 31/Atlas object is entering the solar system from interstellar space (supposedly) but oddly is doing so on the ecliptic. That’s surprising.

Ya, I was peripheral. Not commenting on price in Calif.

Gasoline prices get decided by lots of things, but I wasn’t talking about them. Just what’s underground in Cali.

Pricing is nearly arbitrary, except for the taxes part.

Numbers.

California consumes about 1.8 million barrels per day. It’s within state oil production is about 500,000 barrels per day last I glanced at that.

And no don’t blame government policy. The decline in California oil production has been relentless for many decades including those with Republican dominance.

Empty is empty.

There is a shale in California called Monterey. The Rock layers underground are contorted and twisted and curved because of the millions of years of earthquakes. The sale is there, it has some oil in it but it’s probably inaccessible. It was a big deal too add horizontal drilling to vertical drilling. But trying to follow curved Rock patterns to stay within some portion with high oil porosity sounds like it’s well beyond instead of the art of directional drilling.

I recall is USGS said pretty much that. They like to tease with a parameter called TRR. Technically recoverable resource. When shale hit the radar screen about 15 years ago I think some folks tossed out a number like a few billion barrels embedded in that shell. But USGS revisited their TRR number and said they were not going to depart from their reserves number all that aggressively because of the profound doubts about the word Technically.

Technically recoverable resource is a parameter that is used to try to declare that there is oil there even if it’s not economical to get it. USGS backed away from making that declaration because they couldn’t see any technical way to have such intricate shapes of the horizontal well.

Oh and btw, Russian refinery capacity is 5.6 mbpd.

Russian domestic consumption of oil is 3.6 mbpd. That’s rather a lot of cushion, yes?

Did you have an estimate for how long 22% is accurate. A 300K bpd refinery is due online in about 10 days, after damage about 8 days ago.

The 22% I see talked about is cumulative since . . . the first time a drone hit a refinery with its 5 lbs of explosives and set a fire. Just how long do people think it takes to turn a valve off, replace a crude tank and relight the natural gas burners under the tank.

This is a task of a few weeks, and when it comes back online, that % calculation has to reverse.

In a general sense, it is fundamentally wise to ignore and not post articles that depend on Kyiv Independent or the Institute for the Study of War.

As for Putin’s successor the list starts with Medvedev and maybe, just maybe, ends with Igor Sechin.

Neither has any interest at all in any measures not designed to propel Russia to inevitable dominance.

Seems unlikely.

India just landed near the pole. China has a landing on the far side.

The US effort had disasters and kept going. It will take about 1 disaster to shut down a program now.

As should be clear to all at this point, with 10 million barrels/day, no one has the power to make Russia do anything.

The world is powerless to compel their behavior. Historically, countries are only compelled by total military defeat. That is how Japan got Taiwan in 1898ish. That is how Mao got China.

The Arab countries tried to compel the behavior of the US towards Israel with an oil embargo. Didn’t work. The US tried to compel Japan behavior, also with an oil embargo. The result was war. Didn’t work.

People have to approach this problem from that fundamental starting point. Russia is too powerful to compel.

AI says the reason for the decision is so that young men can obtain training and education elsewhere that is not available to them in Ukraine during the war. The expectation is those trained/educated young men will return to Ukraine eventually. This also lessens the concern of families about these young men re obvious military risk if mobilization ever extended to that age.

Zelensky has a daughter of military age.

Wait a minute. What will be the costs of this disabled child for its entire life? Give the child 75 years of perpetual care of whatever sort, and special requirements when university years arrive, and special this and that.

Might the child be in ICU all the time? Don’t know.

But the price tag is going to explode over 75 years.

Accidents happen. The jury did not think this was an accident. From that point onward, the number has to align to these costs just mentioned.

Odessa? Landlocked?

There are plenty of landlocked countries in the world. Not all that novel.