What the F/A-XX renderings might tell us about it

In December of 2022, the first sixth generation stealth bomber B-21 Raider was unveiled to the public. But a sixth generation fighter jet is yet to be produced. The F/A-XX program is intended to deliver just that.

Current renderings of the future fighter jet, show a tailless plane without vertical stabilizers. Although it is an early rendering and often does not display, what the eventual fighter looks like when finished, it might tell us something about the plans for it.

Artist rendering of F/A-XX fighters

While it is clear, that most of the advancements happen under the air-frame like sensors, open data architecture, networking capabilities, engine technology and so on, the design might give a few hints on the engineers intentions.

With software controlled flight stabilizing getting so cheap and accessible, that it is even running on things like an Arduino board (https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/projects/tags/drones) there is no more need for building an aircraft around maximum stability these days, which makes radical designs feasible like seen in the F-117 Nighthawk or the B-2 bombers as both airplanes were extremely aerodynamically unstable and could not be flown without computerized flight control.

F-117, stealthy but unstable

Getting rid of the vertical stabilizers and going with a tailless design leads to less drag. This means higher fuel efficiency and potentially longer range. Something the F-35 is criticized for. Especially with the current military understanding, that China is the main rival of the USA it might be designed with a potential conflict with China in mind. One of the likeliest scenarios would evolve around an attack on Taiwan from China's mainland, making it important for the US to have an aircraft carrier capable design with long range, as they do not want to risk a multi billion dollar ship by parking it in range of China's (hypersonic) missiles.

Therefore long range is crucial in such a potential conflict.

Other than that, such a design also has fewer surfaces to reflect incoming radar waves. Which means higher emphasis on stealth. Showing again, that stealth is still regarded as very important to the US military.

Often the canards are discussed to be a diminishing factor in stealth but it might not be necessarily the case as the J-20 and the X-36 are both associated with good stealth capabilities.

Stealthy despite canards and agile due to thrust vectoring

The chances of ending up with a result like shown in the designs is also very likely when considering, that the US has lots of data on similar air-frames.

Notable examples are:

-X-36 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_X-36)

-Boeing/McDonell Douglas Bird of prey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Bird_of_Prey)

-B2/B21 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit)

...and many other unmanned vehicles.

Pictures often also display the jet to be equipped with two engines rather than one, which could indicate a bigger plane in general. This could also hint at bigger fuel reserves and/or higher weapon load capabilities, something the F-35 also was criticized for.

Additionally the design is very reminiscent of the YF-23 in terms of how the engines are located. In some pictures the exhaust nozzle shows similarities to the ones found on the B-2. Potentially indicating measures to further reduce the heat signature of the plane.

YF-23 and its unique engine positioning

 

This indicates, that stealth might be way more important to the US than high maneuverability. Especially since the renderings so far do not show things such as three-dimensional thrust vectoring but instead a design associated with a lesser degree of maneuverability. As such it follows the idea of dog fights being dead and a strong focus on beyond visual range combat, already big part of the F-35 and F-22 philosophy.

As for now, this is an highly speculative article and I hope to share some interesting thoughts on the development of the new fighter jets. But as fascinating as those planes might be, I also hope they will not be used in combat. It stands to hope, that China might develop into a more democratic country without the desire to declare war on a peaceful country such as Taiwan.

 

On antinatalism: Antinatalism is compatible with a lifeless and a lively world

Antinatalism, the absence from procreation is often associated with the end goal of a sentient free or even lifeless world.

People like David Benatar argue, that creating life in the first place is ethically wrong. As such, the end result of this philosophy would be an earth without any (sentient) life on it.

Recently though, the amount of people not willing to have children is growing (https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-49298720).

Driven by considerations about climate change and resource consumption more and more young people question procreation.

Those mostly younger generations argue, that adding more humans onto this planet increase overall suffering and will worsen current developments such as climate change and/or the ongoing great extinction event, that kills whole species with each passing day.

Interestingly, the end goal of David Benatar would be worldwide extinction of any sentience and possibly any life, while the other group wants to preserve life -but int the end both rely on the means of antinatalism.

 

Or in short: antinatalism is compatible with saving/preserving life as well as ending it in order to spare sentient beings of suffering. At least as a means of reaching their eventual end goals.

The Pentagon UFO tapes, most likely seagulls

When the Pentagon UFO tapes saw the light of the day some time ago, the press was eager to report on it and many speculated about alien life forms visiting us and other pseudo scientific nonsense. Without any regard to Occam's razor or to Paul M. Sutter's principle: "If it's interesting it's probably wrong!". Or to quote Fraser Cain of "Universe Today": "It's not aliens, it's never aliens!".

My best guess is, that it was a flock of seagulls.

The shots where there is one UFO to be seen, is most likely the parallax effect when traveling at high speeds and looking at an object at a great distance.

                                                        

As the jet fighters were traveling at rather high speeds and the background being the ocean it makes this scenario very likely. It also explains the mysterious and supposedly fast moving object, that can be seen on the IR-camera. Since seagulls are masters at gliding it also explains why one does not see flapping wings.

 

To me the most likely scenario is, that it all started, when the pilots saw a flock of seagulls. At that point the birds were hunting fishes at one spot, causing the water to look like it was boiling due the many fishes and the dozens of birds getting them.

This strikes me as a very plausible explanation for the fact, that pilots reported a boiling spot of water of which the mysterious Tic Tac emerged.

Maybe a few of the seagulls were fleeing from the scene, because of the loud engine noises of the fighter jets. I am personally living at a place, where Panavia Tornados and Eurofighter Typhoons fly by on a regular basis and they are extremely loud despite not flying supersonic. In fact they can be so loud it makes normal conversations quite difficult at times. The fighter jets in the video are most likely FA/18 Hornets, which are quite comparable to the aforementioned planes. If those sounds are affecting me, it probably also effects the birds there.

So when the pilots applied their targeting cameras, they focused on one of the ducks and fell for an optical illusion.

While it is hard to believe, that trained pilots make mistakes, it certainly happens and with enough time and personnel spent on a task such as this, errors have to occur rather sooner than later.

Of course this whole post is highly speculative and I can not prove my thesis. However it displays an explanation for the footage and eyewitness report without resorting to highly unlikely occurrences such as physics violating aliens/aircraft.

Cooking on budget pt.1

Some recipes for people short on time and money:

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Healthy Porridge:

80g of rolled oats

20g of flax seed

200ml of soy milk

1 apple

30g nut-mix

Put together all the ingredients except the apple, mix them well and put into the fridge for 1-3 hours. Then slice the apple into little pieces and add before dinner.

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Smoked Tofu, carrots and peas and couscous:

400g of smoked Tofu

1 jar of carrots and green peas

2 onions

1 garlic glove

150 g of couscous

4 tablespoons of oil

vegetable broth

pepper

soy sauce

Put a pan on medium heat and add oil and smoked tofu. Prepare a pot with water and vegetable broth for couscous.

Start heating the pot for the couscous.

Get Tofu nice yellow in color on all sides.

The water should be boiling now, get the couscous in.

Add the onions, sliced (or diced), pressed garlic gloves and the jar full of carrots and green peas (remove the fluid from the jar first).

Keep the couscous from burning on the pot and add some soy sauce to the Tofu pan.

Repeat until couscous is ready.

Sprinkle some pepper on the pan with tofu in it according to your taste.

Fill your dish with half couscous and the other half with the tofu, carrots, peas etc.

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Poor man's taste of asia:

200g rice

2 red bell peppers

3 onions

2 garlic gloves

1 broccoli

2 carrots

2 big tablespoons peanut butter

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoon vinegar

2 tablespoon maple syrup

 

Slice the vegetables into middle sized pieces. Meanwhile add oil into pan and heat it!

Setup another pot, add salt, put on heat and wait until it boils.

In the meantime add the vegetables into the pan and let them until they still have a bit of bite but are not wobbly anymore.

Water should be boiling ,so add rice!

While the rice and the vegetables are about to get ready for dinner, use a small pot and put in the peanut butter, soy sauce, lemon juice, vinegar and the maple syrup and stir this mixture on low heat, so it comes together nicely.

Vegetables and rice should be done now. Put rice and vegetables on your dishes and add the peanut sauce!

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Vegan Wrap #1

1 vegan yoghurt

6 wraps

2 garlic gloves

salad of your choice

1 onion

200g vegan minced soy granulate

1 can kidney beans

150g tomatoes

1 can corn

salt

pepper

lemon juice

vegetable broth

Heat some water until it boils, mix in vegetable broth and add the vegan minced soy and let it rest for 15 minutes.

In the meantime prepare the vegan yogurt by adding one pressed garlic glove, some salt, pepper, and a bit of lemon juice. Mix well and put into fridge.

Slice and dice the onion.

Heat the pan and add oil, add onions and the kidney beans.

Drain the corn jar, get the salad and tomatoes nicely sliced and add to a beverage of your choice.

The kidney beans and onions should look very nice now, drain the water from the minced soy granulate and add to the pan.

Wait until the color of the granulate changed from yellow to brownish.

Add some salt and pepper until it is just right. 

Proceed by folding your own wrap!

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Italian Crime Pasta

500g Noodles (Spaghetti)

Nutritional yeast

1 Eggplant

250g cherry tomatoes

1 onion

salt

pepper

oregano

tomato paste

olive oil

Cover a pot on the bottom with olive oil, add diced eggplant and onion and let it cook on medium heat.

Meanwhile fill another pot with water and a bit of salt.

Get the cherry tomatoes ready by washing them and remove any green parts.

 

Heat the water filled pot until the water boils.

 

Add the cherry tomatoes to the pot with the vegetables in and wait until they are very soft.

 

Water should be boiling now, add the noodles there. Also add the tomato paste in the vegetable pot, add some salt, pepper and oregano there.

 

When the noodles are fine, the tomato vegetable pot should be fine as well. Take from heat and let it cool down.

Drain the water from the pasta pot and wait until most of the water is gone.

 

Put everything on the dishes and add nutritional yeast as topping!

 

 

Prove me wrong: Electronic drumkits are the best choice for most drummers!

Once I met a professional sound engineer at a music exhibition and asked him what he thinks about electronic drum kits and his response was clear:

"They suck!"

I was somewhat perplexed and told him, that I had been using e-drums for a while now on live gigs and his comment was something like:

"Well, if they work for you that is great, but I don't use them!"

Sure, from a sound engineers point of view e-drums suck, because they use samples instead of a more individual approach.

Samples are by their nature more limited than acoustic drums with more parameters one can influence.

Even if the enormous amount of high quality samples, virtual mic positioning, virtual tunings etc. provide electronic drummers with more possibilities than ever before.

While it is not possible to use electronic drum kits with specific techniques such as brush-use, the more meat-ier stuff remains largely the same.

Apart from a few very specific shortcomings however electronic drum kits offer a wide range of advances over acoustic drums.

-Portable: Often electronic drum kits use rack systems, which allow for folding the whole kit together without the need to disassemble too much gear.

See: https://www.roland.com/us/products/v-drums_portable_td-4kp/

-Space efficient: A 22x18 bass drum requires a lot of space and we have not even touched on Floor Toms or 20 inch Ride cymbals. E-drums use way less space, as your bass drum often is often just 5-10 inches in depth and 3-12 inches in diameter, while Ride cymbals often are the size of acoustic Crash cymbals.

-Highly adaptable sound: If a component of your analog drum kit is too loud or not sharp enough in its sound to cut through the wall of sound you are rather limited in your approach to fix this. With electronic drum kits you can change the volume of each component or simply select a sample that fits better with your situation.

Especially the fact, that the volume can be changed by a knob on your sound module is extremely useful, when playing in small places or when practicing with your band.

We made a huge leap forward in our cover band, when we switched to electronic drums in our rehearsal room as the more controlled sound helped us dramatically to become tighter and pay more attention to details as tiny errors became much easier to spot.

Gone are the days, where our guitarist complained about being too loud. Now he complains about having to play perfectly as otherwise you would easily hear him messing up somewhere.

Live it has been so easy to get a perfect sound and despite people having a lot of prejudice over electronic drums, I often get told how well balanced the sound is.

-More sterile sound: Often quoted a disadvantage, the more sterile sound e-drum modules make it easier to get unwanted frequencies out. For example the snare in an acoustic set creates noise, when certain resonant frequencies are hit. This does not happen with electronic drums.

-Easy control and mixing: Most sound modules these days, allow for onboard mixing, EQ, tuning, ambience, dampening etc. This makes it super easy to adjust your sound to the conditions needed within seconds.

-No microphones needed: E-drums do not need microphones as each pad is directly connected to the sound module. So just plugging in your cables into both and you are done.

-Different sounds for different songs: With the ability to switch between kits you can easily use a noisy punk sound for one song and more sterile samples for the the next industrial metal song. This allows for a wide variety of different song types.

-Easy recording for everyone: While the sound might not come close to a perfectly mastered real drum kit, directly recording your drum modules output into your audio interface gives you semi-professional results nonetheless with almost no effort at all.

Here is an example of my Roland kit:

https://on.soundcloud.com/A9gQ

Bottom Line: For most drummers not in the big studios, electronic drum kits offer great benefits and should be considered as an optimal solution for most situations.

Making Youtube greener (and more profitable)

With the success of TikTok in recent years, Youtube saw itself under pressure and brought up its competitive format called "Youtube Shorts" with the goal to provide the platform with more short videos and animate content creators with limited (time) budget to upload videos there.

Often with little value to its audience (one can only put so much information/entertainment into a few seconds long clip), the platform further increases its need for hard drives at even higher speeds.

Especially with ever more high resolution video formats and more and more people uploading content.

Not only the resources to produce these storage mediums are huge but also the energy demands to run this system (servers, active cooling, maintenance etc.) are enormous.

Youtube (but also other platforms) could save a lot of resources with only one simple trick:

Deleting content nobody watches anymore. Such an approach would allow for a more lightweight, more profitable business, with less material and energy needed.

By applying a filter searching all videos not having received a single view for "X" amount of years and delete those.

Especially in combination with checking, whether the account that created the content is still in use.

If not, the it might be safe to get rid of all the junk files currently wasting valueable disc space.

A less radical approach is to just compress and maybe de-list the videos not being watched. In this case the content creator has the possibility to download his own content still but due the compression, more disc space is freed.

While I have no access to the Youtube database, I would assume, that this measure would allocate gigantic amounts of data storage and potentially save a lot of money and resources in general.

Deleting this quasi-dead content also has the nice side effect of restoring privacy as it adds a "right to be forgotten" function, which is often asked by various privacy focused institutions. 

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten

Despite being a logical conclusion, I have little hopes this feature will be added anytime soon, unless a competitor forces Youtube to do so. Until then resources and money will get wasted by sheer unwillingness to change for the better.

Further readings:

https://angelo-sasso.blogspot.com/2019/11/saving-ressources-in-digital-world.html

How sanctions on China might be the change the world needs

When Russia attacked Ukraine in the beginning of 2022, we saw something many thought unimaginable: almost worldwide sanctions on the aggressor Russia.

While it can be debated, whether the sanctions go far enough to bring Russia to retreat from Ukraine it still shows that there is a will to stop senseless atrocities and provide help where needed (even if it is for national interests at the end of the day).

But with sanctions of course, comes a price. Quite literally, as large quantities of oil and gas from Russia were a cornerstone of the european economy.

Europe is ready to swallow some bitter pills as a result, as prices rise, whole sectors are under the threat of going bankrupt and its people fearing a cold winter, should the conflict not resolve.

The motivation to take this into account comes from:

-The fear of getting attacked by Russia also, if it should be able to take Ukraine

-The unwillingness to just let our neighbours die by the hands of Dr. Evil aka Putin

-The unwillingness to lose an economic partner as Ukraine is one of the biggest providers of grains for example

While this is already horrible enough it could get worse: China is openly threatening Taiwan to get "liberated" as well. 

What are scenarios here:

#1 Nobody does anything about the situation and Taiwan gets threatened for all eternity but it stays pretty much the same all the time -> highly unlikely as China is growing its military at break-neck-speeds with Taiwan in its focus.

#2 Taiwan falls to China, the world just does nothing and has to face shame for letting a democratic country fall into the hands of a dictatorship with all implications incorporated -> highly unlikely, as this would only fuel further empirialistic ambitions

#3 The world intervenes and China also becomes the target of the biggest sanctions ever imposed in history, as China is one of the biggest economic players in the world with exports to almost every country on earth. This would result in an epic market crash, worldwide shortages in nearly every good imaginable -> very likely as the alternatives are not

A reality in which China gets cut off from the market, every first world country would face massive problems in supply chains, prices would skyrocket and in an instant the cheap lifestyle we all know and love would disappear in an instant. About anything of our belongings gets at least partially produced in China. Cutting those things out of our daily lives seems hard and it is.

But where there is a will there is a way.

Maybe this is the wake up call the world needs.

Too many things become produced under unethical and overall terrible conditions. This might be triggering point in which countries decide to produce with quality and repairability in mind. Sure a German washing machine might cost a lot but it will potentially last longer and be repairable. Furthermore companies might shift to produce their goods in more democratic countries, in which man-hours are still cheap, such as Greece or Romania.

While the first years of such drastic sanctions might be big burden to societies all over the globe it might lead to the long awaited and needed changes in consumer behavior:

It becomes more frugal and highly concerned on quality.

Producing our goods largely in European or American countries will most likely rise prices but at the same time will lead to shorter delivery routes as goods get produced more domestically.

Another positive aspect might be innovation. As many resources can only be found in areas such as Russia and China, first world markets are forced to find replacements for those materials wherever possible. Also long dead technology might find its long awaited revival.

Often the cheap stuff is only cheap at first glance because the bill it causes has to be paid by someone else. The usage of many toxic materials in everyday products is usually a problem for future generations and then it is often not as cheap to take care of them.

Microplastics are a good example of this behaviour as we only recently discovered its terrible effects on biology, when it turned out, that it might cause infertility in men for example (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7967748/).

Maybe and just maybe, China and other countries with their constant threats and ethical problems will change the overall attitude of our societies and their wrongdoings will no longer be tolerated.

Personally I do not think that is currently the case, as for example Germany is already preparing partnerships with other dictators to deliver cheap gas for example instead of taking care of their promises of a green sustainable future.

But who knows, I would like to be proven wrong on this.

Nevertheless, every crisis is a chance to correct past mistakes even though it is also possible to take measures beforehand...

Bad comics: Some things are better left unknown...

 

This drawing is of course CC0 or public domain.

Practice regimen splits for musicians

 For years I have been playing in bands and with that comes a hefty amount of practice.

As time is our most valueable ressource, one needs to have a practice regimen which allows for proper preparation while not being too time consuming.

Right before gigs (2-4 weeks) I try to split the gig's setlist up to easy digestable chunks.

This allows for practicing every song while not being forced to do the whole set everytime I do.

A setlist could be as long as 1,5 hours so, instead of practicing the whole set each day, I split it up into 3 sections of roughly 30 minutes, so I play one of these a day -every section about twice a week.

The 3 sections do not necessarily resemble the set list but rather they are designed for easy practicing.

I usually start with songs, that do not need warm-up and are easy to play and build up to the hardest songs.

So when you reach the end of the "split set lists" you are properly warmed up for the real nasty songs.

When I encounter some f*ck up's I try to repeat the evil stuff along with the messed up songs and do them at the end of the set again, depending on how bad I messed up.

This way, I keep it short and simple.

I can directly start to practice the set without any big warm-up's.

I repeat every song of the set (during concerts its quite likely to mess up the easiest parts, therefore even practicing those helps a lot).

I don't get tired or bored by playing the whole set at once and can focus on learning new songs or techniques.

Meal replacement powders can be cost competitive in single households

Meal replacement powders are known to be rather pricy in comparison to cooking your own meals.

Yet for single households it is actually price competitive to the alternative if you factor in the time needed for shopping food and preparing meals and cleaning dishes etc.

Here is a quick rundown on the math:

One bag of meal replacement powder is roughly 4000 kcal, this is equavalent to 2 days worth of food, considering it is mixed with water instead of milk.

So one month is about 15 bags.

One bag is roughly 14€.

This leaves you with food costs of 210€.

For my eating regimen I have chosen the vanilla variant of drinking 3 shakes a day. 

I considered a prep time of 1 minute, about 2 minutes of drinking and cleaning afterwards so about 10 minutes of time wasted on "eating".

Resulting in 5 hours spent on food per month.

Furthermore I assumed a wage of about 10€ per hour -not far away from the minimum wage in most first world countries.

This means 50€ worth of time is used up in this scenario.

So total cost: ~260€ a month.

Cooking for yourself I assumed the ingredients to be worth 100€ (cheap, but possible).

For Breakfast and Dinner I estimated prep and eating time to be 10 minutes each.

Lunch I assumed 40 minutes for everything.

Leaving you with about 60 minutes for cooking, eating etc. everyday.

Furthermore I assumed 1 hour of buying your ingredients per week.

Leaving you at about 34 hours of work associated with food or 340€.

Total costs should be around 440€ for the cooking route.

So theoretically you could save about 180€ by buying meal replacement powders instead of cooking.

Time benefit is about 29 hours for the meal replacement route, which is more than an extra day per month or 14 additional days per year, not too bad!

A few notes:

Meal replacement shakes can be bought even cheaper via subscription. Additionally preparing them with (plant based) milk could further decrease costs under certain circumstances.

Also meal replacement powders of course won't allow for developing cooking skills among many other deficits.

Nevertheless it is interesting to see how much cheaper the meal replacement option is, once time is considered as a ressource.

See also my other blog entry regarding meal replacement powders for further reading:

https://angelo-sasso.blogspot.com/2019/12/on-meal-replacement-powders.html