As reported here and in many other places, Chinese hackers stole large amounts of Americans’ phone data from eight large telecom companies. What is even more scary is that appears their presence remains.
Anne Neuberger, a deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology at the National Security Council, said, “There is a risk of ongoing compromises to communications until U.S. companies address the cybersecurity gaps. The Chinese are likely to maintain their access.”
How anyone can think that TikTok is nothing more than a giant Chinese espionage operation is beyond me. How can anyone think the US and the West are not already at war with China and its allies?
******************
Golf Gets It…that’s the subject line of the email I sent myself with the link to this ESPN article titled, “LPGA, USGA gender policy updates include female at-birth clause.” The piece begins, “Players must be assigned female at birth or have transitioned to female before going through male puberty to compete in LPGA tournaments or the eight USGA championships for women under new gender policies published Wednesday. The policies, which begin in 2025, follow more than a year of study involving medicine, science, sport physiology and gender policy law.”
Currently, a case is being argued at the US Supreme Court about a Tennessee ban on “gender-affirming care” for children under the age of 18. (Some think the Court has already decided to uphold the ban.) From an article in The Free Press:
“But increasingly, many people are speaking out and saying the government is not only wrong about “gender-affirming care,” it is enabling the greatest medical scandal of our time.
Jamie Reed is one of those people. Almost two years ago, she became the first whistleblower from a youth gender clinic in the United States to come forward, raising the alarm about the dangers of pediatric gender transition in The Free Press. Now, she’s cited in an amicus brief being presented to the Supreme Court in favor of Tennessee’s ban today.
Even though she is a progressive lesbian “to the left of Bernie Sanders,” Reed is supporting the Republican-led ban. This morning, she will appear on the steps of the Supreme Court to explain why.
“I saw regret in my patients a few months after it was too late,” she says of her four years working as a case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “An 18-year-old girl who had a double mastectomy, only to decide to accept her female identity, begged us, ‘I want my breasts back.’
‘I am here in favor of legislation that protects vulnerable young people from being misled by a medical system that has lost its bearings.’”
“A medical system that has lost its bearings.” I would say much of the world has lost its bearings.
******************
This Hemmings article about a possible return of Dodge V8 engines with the departure of former CEO Carlos Tavares is nothing more than wishful thinking, in my opinion, and even the author–Bradley Iger–sort of admits as much near the end. He wrote, “While the return of a Dodge V8 is still unlikely, we’re not willing to rule it out entirely.”
Iger speculates that, “any iteration of this hypothetical V8 would need a power adder of some kind. That could take the form of supercharging or turbocharging, but our money is on a hybrid setup that’s implemented a manner similar to the new BMW M5.” Would die-hard Mopar aficionados buy any performance car that has the “hybrid” label attached to it even if it has a V8 engine at its core? Here is a picture, from Hemmings, of the aforementioned M5.
Any emissions-compliant V8 in the future, so it seems Iger is saying, will need to be of smaller displacement meaning it will need forced induction and/or electric “boost” in order to give the traditional V8 kick. Frankly, I have long thought that smaller-displacement, forced-induction Internal Combustion Engines running on synthetic fuels should be the core of personal transportation in the future. (No, really?! Tell us something we don’t know…)
Think about the car pictured below, the now discontinued Peugeot RCZ R, that–inexplicably–cannot be purchased in Europe and legally brought to the US until it is 25+ years old (meaning it won’t be legal to bring any of these here for 10 more years). It was powered by a turbocharged 1.6 liter/97 cubic-inch four-cylinder engine that, in top spec, produced 266 HP/243 LB-FT of torque, propelled the car from 0-60 MPH in 5.7 seconds AND the car was rated at almost 40 MPG overall.
Yes, it looks like an Audi TT. Yes, much of the world has lost its bearings. Maybe some derivation of that should have been the title of today’s post.
#TheNewRealitiesOfWar
#GolfGetsIt
#DeathBeforeEV