Author: lamydavid

Aurelien, of Trying to Understand the World has two recent posts Ukraine:, A Guide for the Perplexed and Ukraine: A Further Guide for the Perplexed. I recommend reading both. It provides the basis for this post. Aurelien’s conclusions about Ukraine’s prospects are well-founded. What follows are my thoughts about the impact of Ukraine’s fate on…

Western officials in the past made claims that the Russian military was severely degraded, was running short of missiles, and facing a lack of artillery munitions. How are those statements wearing in the course of time? Not very well as Ukraine has lost an enormous amount of their capability to generate electricity. They will not…

Yesterday, Ian Welsh wrote a post laying out pathways for the U.S. to collapse. For me, doom has many pathways. These can happen in close sequence. The fiscal damage from the loss of three aircraft carriers will be horrendous. I say three because at the moment that seems to be all that the Navy can…

None with regards to my daily ride. I took my XCO bike for the first time on the short hilly loop rather than my trail bike. Went quite a bit quicker. That necessitated pulling the plug to keep from over doing it. Can’t say the same for Israel and its client state the U.S.A. Our…

Thought that I was treading in a ride between the last storm and the expected next one. Too, today had the start of the elite men’s and women’s UCI XCO mountain bike series and the first of the UCI World Tour Ardennes Classics, the Amstel Gold race. I blitzed through downtown over to the trail…

The monsoons brought a day of incessant rain. I wrote a poem while commenting about the 702 surveillance renewal debate: Still, our deep state will grind on with or without 702, because spying is what they do. Don’t take it personal, it’s institutional! Fixed the bathroom faucet and completing the task led me to ride…

Slow was all that I could go today. My last three rides were uptempo and tough. Today, as well as yesterday I rode my green muncher (a Canyon Stoic 4) which is a heavier bike than the gorgeous red Canyon Exceed CF 5. With the saturated soil, the going was soggy and soft. The perfect…

Took to the short hilly trail that is a 1.9 km loop close to my home. Ground was a little soft which was a good thing as I dumped. Still a good time was had by me. Got in a healthy amount of climbing at a pretty good pace considering how lackluster I felt at…

Yesterday was an abbreviated ride due to heading out too close to the time for the solar eclipse. I was a bit too cautious, but on the other hand here is another missive from me today. I did do 3 gravel loops at pace (read aggressive). Today was my bog standard trail ride but with…

The eclipse was supposed to attain 94% occlusion. Using a pinhole I projected an image of the sun that had a big cookie bite taken out of it. Then the clouds rolled in. It did get dark. Then as the light returned the birds started chirping. My neighborhood won’t get another bite out of the…