It should be permitted to say that Charlie Kirk sucked

This blog has never argued for the assassination of Charles Kirk, and certainly not for celebrating the "Kirkversary". The culprit - and Tyler Robinson's trial is I think pointing to the correct culprit - deserves justice. Those online pundits muddying the waters deserve... banning (Beale is right about one thing, that "free speech" is unworkable; I'd ban him too). I will further remind that I left the Catholic Church over their preference for Gaza over Kirk.

This is where readers can smell a "but" incoming. I don't want to say "but". So, I'll say - "that said":

I didn't ever think much of the man. I thought TPUSA was malign from the start, like Campus Crusade back in the day. I pegged Kirk as a Quaker Nationalist, which half-baked ideology (which it is - both) I disapprove. If you pressed 2009ish Yarvin on it, he'd disapprove too. Mencius Moldbug would dig him out and hang him, with ... Locke, to paraphrase; Cromwell on the rope next-over.

As to Kirk in life, Richard Hanania has lately poasted a dossier of various stances he'd took, which, he Considers, Harmful - to the body politic. As is well known, you cannot cancel Herr Hoste. So they're trying to cancel Sohrab Ahmari, for agreeing with Hanania.

I cannot read all of Hanani-Hoste's paywalled article like Ahmari can. Here and there one can read the odd snippet. Like that Kirk supported Carlson past the point Carlson was worthy of this (which is how Carlson got to speak at the funeral, which funeral I virtually-attended instead of Communion With Gaza). Or like that Kirk supported "Stop the Steal". This blog did not support StS. I thought some states were stole, in fact, but not such as would have made the difference, and that Team Trump had lost the room by the end of the week.

Because I haven't (because: can't) read Hanania, I can't judge all he wrote. I can judge only what I can read, which here range from "true" to "honest arguments can be brought". There also exist Kirk's vaccine comments.

So whatever. Ahmari can say what he wants, and shouldn't apologise. As to "Captive Dreamer", Yarvin, whoever else: if you want us to treat Kirk as some icon like Steinem or King, then I'll start mocking Kirk like I've mocked those eminently mockable American Saints.

Some opinions on early Islam

Joel Hayward, who had joined the jund, in 2022 put his book Warrior Prophet through "Claritas" Press. For some reason Catholic-coded institutions seem to love supporting apostates. Anyway I haven't read it; it isn't apologetic like Esposito's, it seems more honest like the works of Juan Cole and Jonathan Rape-Rape Brown. In 2021 I'd poasted a roundup of modern consensus around the maghazi; maybe some of that is in Hayward's book.

From late 2023 as you know I'd moved more toward the preMuhammadan era of Near Eastern Araby. So I might not get to Hayward's work anytime soon. That much isn't a reflection of my views on Hayward, who for all I know has good reason for embracing the faith of the surat al-anfal and of its supposed author. He can try convincing me later.

For more evenhanded takes, rather than "Hellz ya he kilt 'em Khaibar JAHOODS!": Razib is recommending Kyle Orton who runs a 'stack of his own. Adomnán's hadith from Arculf, the Islamic understanding of religio... basic Ibn Warraq stuff from circa 2000 before the towering day.

Relevant to this blog might be the milieu of Late Antiquity. That would track more with IQSA 2015. I was writing Tidings of Flame around the time of Orton's poast.

PS. Happy New Year.

Passive shielding

This isn't really the magnet blog, so I'll relay Space Startup News who knows better. He's talking radiation-shields. To replace his overview, here is one from 2025.

What appears to have inspired our boy is Zenno. They announced a few weeks ago they'd loaded Supertorquer on "Starburst-1". The latter is Portal Space, which rideshares Transporter-18. Present plan: Falcon-9 next month. Portal are trying to shift sats between MEO and GEO, which engine they grandiosely term "Supernova".

Zenno's Supertorquer in this, confusingly termed a "flagship", is the actuator for this ship. It's a superconductor: a passive magnet at 3,500 A·m. Contrast, the usual passive shielding of lithium-hydrates which then add to the dry mass. SSN points out that superconductors are now a commodity, made more-or-less cheaply. (This is because of the work done in the fusion field. If those customers go away, as they well might, this application will keep superconductors in business.)

Although the Zenno magnet be passive it must be kept below 100 K or so. The mission is going to use power (by solar), if nothing else for the "TRL11" diagnostics also on board. It is in fact sun-sync so will be in daylight for a full year. Basic thermodynamics will heat up the chassis, and that heat is not going to be blowing propellant all the time. One assumes radiators will be brought.

Portal's aim is to use Earth's magnetic field for control authority. That's the "torque" part, to turn itself about. This leaves, for propellant, only shifting orbits. I imagine it also simplifies the design as the engine(s) shouldn't need gimbals (the solar and radiators get their own torque). In a future when sats might use the spicy-meatball for higher I_sp, any improvement on shifting cargo about is good.

Naturally the torque part works only over planets with dynamo. Such include the four big'uns, plus Mercury and Ganymede-why-not. We gotta start somewhere so, Earth it is.

This mission already-excellent hasn't even got to SSN's stake in it. Zenno want to test how well this magnet, which again is passive so always-on, keeps out the radiation. That can help scale to such human-rated habitats as can't bury themselves under regolith. Thinking here not so much of longterm space-stations outside Van Allen (Jensen imports regolith - and hydrates), as the shuttles to/from those stations or, perhaps, the stations-under-construction. Meanwhile all those LEO stations are likely going to stay lightweight (so micrograv) so will need the shields too. So much for those BVDs!

Cheaper syngas

Syngas is a mix of carbon-monoxide and hydrogen. I expect Martians can get the hydro' from ice; Venerians must scoop the acid clouds. I hadn't really checked how the chem would work, I'll probably ask Copilot. Where carbon and hydrogen can't be had, or they can't just loot an errant comet for its methanol, I've suggested breaking plastics. Waste Not Want Not.

Some planets by contrast are awash in methane. This study, mostly Chinese, proposes an alumina-based catalyst. This is just bauxite sent through the Bayer process (or, hell, pulverised soda cans) and should be cheap. A little pure nickel is added, like 0.8%, which at that concentration can't be expensive either.

Why the Samaritans didn't want our Joshua

Bible-believers as with Jeremiah and others contend, further, with two Joshuas - or, perhaps, four. For the JudaeoChristian community the main two are the MT (> Vulgate and near everyone else) and the Greek (> Old Latin). The Dead Sea is less helpful than you'd think - or hope: it has a MT (with a few variants) and "4Q Joshua a". The latter might be a retelling, like the Samaritans have their own "Joshua"; albeit, here, perhaps based on an earlier Joshua edition. This topic is colossally complex, but it seems not complicate.

Ernst Knauf, generally-respected at this blog, is respected enough on better fora to be allowed there a summary (pdf).

The story (of the story) begins with a Joshua 6 and 9-10. This, per Knauf page 359-60 #1-3, is what arrived in Achaemenid Jerusalem 500-450 BC with chapter 11 as supplement. Also arriving was the Holiness redaction of Leviticus, which got notorious enough that Ezekiel will read it. The Deuteronomic History from 1 Reigns/Samuel 9+ also by-then was extant. This is where Knauf #4 kicks in, assigning the bulk of Joshua 1-21 as the Greeks will know it.

Copilot is telling me that Holiness has infused Joshua chapters 3, 5, and 7 (also 24 but everyone agrees it's late). Knauf doesn't cite what Copilot is citing, nor say much of these earlier chapters at all; but they independently come to the same conclusion that these chapters be postexilic and [Holiness-]priestly. For Knauf, Joshua 1:6-21:45 was entwined with the prior five "Mosaic" books in a Hexateuch.

Recently one Erasmus Gass has posted "The Land Distribution in Joshua 13-19". This stands to fine-tune #4. Trickling through the Temple circles was a census of cities and, also, of Tribes. The Tribes numbered... seven (18:9). These were Judah, Ephraim, Benjamin, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali. Gass can understand the absences of outliers Simeon, Dan, Reuben (and Machir although nobody asked him). He cannot so understand Manasseh's absence. Gass posits that our Joshua 18:1-10a, then lacking MT v. 4 (as Greek lacks it), omitted Manasseh at the time of composition. Manasseh was Samaritan territory. The "document" had excommunicated this tribe.

Now as we all know, the Samaritans came to find all manner of ways to harmonise Numbers with Deuteronomy. So did the Greeks, even unto Joshua 5:6. Gass is arguing the same process for the Jews. This antiSamaritan document now in our Joshua 18 was accreted, with reference to ... Numbers and Deuteronomy. These were never the same book, as the Samaritans knew, so the accretions were done in different stages. First was another "Priestly" (sic) redaction, to enholify the Tribes. Gass thinks Joshua 18 here got repurposed, to introduce 15-17 also 19:1-48. This chunk was to follow Numbers 34:2-12. Gass argues for the same "ideolect" of Hebrew in these pericopae. Copilot, incidentally, is telling me that Numbers 34:2-12 if not quoting Holiness Code shares Holiness ideology. I expect that serving this ideology, Numbers 14:6-9,38 inject Joshua (and Caleb) to that episode of the Scouts.

Then Joshua 15-19 got reassembled, between 14:1-5 and 19:49f as "frame". From here out, I'll let to others. I'll just note that Gass doesn't see Ezekiel as influencing the assemblage or redaction of Joshua in any way.

Overall, I'll note that the Holiness Code was a Jerusalem project and that Joshua 18:1-10a may, indeed, have been structurally antiSamaritan. The Samaritans accepted Numbers 34 on their own terms, with a lot of redaction. They simply refused the Jewish Joshua; incidentally adding some small evidence toward the lateness of this project. Maybe the men of Gerizim could have accepted Joshua 6 and 9-11 (and 1 Samuel 1-8 la-de-da), but the first scroll proffered to them had the accursed chapter 18 therein. Knauf and Gass ponder if the Jews had attempted to soften Joshua for the north. The north chose instead to write their own "Joshua".

Meanwhile the Jews shrugged; they broke their own holy Joshua into its own book, offset from Torah. Thus Joshua 1:1-5 were born. And the stuff which connects Joshua to Judges and beyond, which the Jews were also assembling.

TL cyclers

ToughSF has linked muh cuz S. D. Ross, along with his minion Michael Roberts-Tsoukkas, on prograde Earth-Moon cycler orbits. Prograde means we can inject sats into there more easily.

The key as ever is the Jacobi. First you have to raise that sat. This altitude - potential-energy - is high, in order to shift toward the Moon easily. It also meanwhile has to be kicked to an orbital cycler trajectory.

Once done, a class of TL cyclers opens up. Among them: (1,1) and (2,1) and (3,1). Last is thrice about Tellus here; once, Luna there. 45, 84, 64 days period respectively. The (3,1) cuts closest Earth and Moon; also doesn't skim the direct Earth-Moon line. Former two intersect close to L1, so will need diverted from any spaceline. Third one looks pentagrammy, skating the far edges of L4 and L5 haloes. Ross with Abdullah Braik lately suspect (2,1) as hard-access. (1,1) retains the lowest flight time so prioritises small journeys toward the Moon and back, like Aldrin to/from Mars.

The team might be settling upon (3,2) although this does clip the spaceline.

As for their use, I expect that's for what Mike Collins was doing in 1969, picking up and dropping off, in a safely-shielded capsule. Maybe big enough to be shielded and have spin'grav.

To test, that's standard Falcon-9 injection into orbit followed by space-tuggery; we're doing a lot of similar Lunar orbitals. For the cyclers proper, would require something more. Like the SLS, but I don't really like that. An assemblage in some HEO shipyard would be better.

1/137

I haven't poasted on the Fine Structure Constant, which approximates 1/137. So, let's.

It's a ratio; no units are here. By convention we denote 1/137 by "α", confusingly since we also use that miniscule hellenism for other ratios like thrust/weight, but this one may deserve that pride-of-place. DEEP2 was observing it back in time (meaning: space) and in 2005 revealed that it hadn't changed in seven billion years. To put another way, the laws of physics had not changed in the whole saga of the formation of our solar system, probably from some nebula expelled by supernovae of stars preceding it by maybe millions of years. Inasmuch as creationists had put into question the antiquity of physical laws, this was one of several findings which let the air out of the movement in Dover that year.

This blog is a post 2019 project so hasn't cared to revisit DEEP2. Two decades later, we should consider other findings to suss out the validity of modern physics before all that.

Google AI points to quasar absorption-lines and (naturally) the Cosmic Microwave Background. This has a recent validation here, within 1%; the observable physical laws constrain what scalar dark matter can be, in terms of mass. Like neutrinos have mass but we can measure only the upper bound per particle.

We - not I - should use this paper in discussions with the Catholics of July 2023. Dr Rudolf Hilfer notes Pius XII positing the universe at five billion years ago, holding that to ridicule, which is a mite unfair to that late-1940s bishop, inasmuch as he (prophetically?) marked a time before what we know of our formation, if not DEEP2-before. Hilfer in fact cedes past even DEEP2, to the Cosmic Microwave Background. He (implicitly) allows that the laws of physics apply throughout pretty much everything Milky Way. I counter: before all that, we can at least constrain what went on.

Now, this is not a cosmology blog. Those exist; we can bring Turtle Island and Woit and Triton Station. Which I do against-interest. On one hand I know that Turtle hates me, that Woit counts me as a supporter of a fascist dictator, and that Triton counts me as a racist. On the other hand I know that Dr Hilfer is commanded to love me. And Hilfer can in fact prove that he loves me, by conceding that alternate theories exist against the Λ-CDM consensus. He can even agree that I'm a fascist racist worthy of hate by others, some not even pagans.

Calling Big Bang a "narrative" in the context of terms like "pagan cosmology" implies dishonesty driven by animus. And what do pagans deserve, Herr Doktor...? Let us just say, Hilfer shows his own animus thereby. And if not dishonesty; a certain disingenuosity.