Tag: Essay

What really brought down general aviation

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I was looking at histories and such concerning the post-WW2 decline of general aviation in America. Most of the stated reasons center around costs, regulation, lawsuits, and changing demographics. None of these I’m denying were factors, even major ones. But I came across something that was very eye-opening and was not mentioned in most of the usual ones.

That was the decline in its practicality. One amusing side-part of the “flying car” discourse is that in a way, in the early postwar period, flying cars in the way we think of them kind of existed. See, in the early postwar period, as long as you could afford something that still always cost at least the equivalent of six figures today just for the airframe (ie you were a rich professional), flying in your own aircraft over the Depression-adjacent countryside was frequently the quickest and most convenient way to get from point A to point B. Whether it was for the luxury of a getaway or the necessity of business travel, there was a practical use.

Later on this eroded with two big things, which I shall provide graphical illustrations of.

Yep, better roads and better, cheaper, and more accessible commercial air travel. Which meant a lesser actual need for private planes, which naturally had giant ripple effects. At the very least it’s an underappreciated piece of the pie.

The A Button Challenge

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Mario was originally known as “Jumpman” in the first releases of Donkey Kong. Super Mario Bros. defined the platformer. What I’m trying to say is that Mario jumps. Until now.

For 20+ years, an array of gamers dug deep into the code of Super Mario 64 to see in how few A presses (jumping) they could beat the game. Last year, a successful run with zero presses was finally accomplished.

Numerous stars and even entire levels had to be skipped entirely as they required jumping. The centerpiece that enabled the final “A”-less run to be performed involved playing on Wii Virtual Console and using an emulator/porting glitch that had platforms in the Bowser in the Fire Sea stage moving sloooooowly upwards over time. The game had to be run for three real-time days to let them get into place.

Yet in the greatest human accomplishment since the moon landing, the A Button Challenge was finally completed.

Donks

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There is a type of car called the “Donk”. Usually but not always a large vintage car in its base, anything with four wheels can theoretically be “donkified”. It apparently started with hip-hop musicians in the American South, but the concept is universal.

A donk can be considered the inverse of a lowrider, in that it’s a “high-rider”. The car, usually ornate, is given very large wheels with thin tires and has its suspension raised as high as possible, the springs stiffened both for prestige and to ensure the chassis doesn’t bump the wheels.

Donks look good. But don’t expect them to handle like a formula one racer.

Console Pokemon Returns

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With the release and controversy of Pokemon Legends ZA, it’s time to once again return to the Console Pokemon fantasy that was popped for good in Sword/Shield.

What is “Console Pokemon”? It’s something us 90s/00s kids had in our minds as we moved pocket monsters around our pocket gameboys. Basically, without severe hardware limitations, a Pokemon that would burst out into a paradigm shifting masterpiece.

Was this naive gamer fantasy? Probably. But it was something that had indeed happened with Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time (or GTA III, or Halo, or Final Fantasy VII…) We kept getting hints-a Snap here, a Stadium or Colosseum there. And then the 3DS (probably the first real big “Console Game”) and finally the Switch gave us… unoptimized 3d games with similar mechanics that looked worse than ones twenty years prior.

Of course, now I know that rather than being made by a mega-publisher as its flagship title, it’s actually developed by small Game Freak, whose lack of programming chops was evident in some ways from the get-go. Now I know that the business model is basically that of a yearly sports game, being critic proof in that regard. Now I know that with the franchise so lucrative, the games themselves matter as much as Half Life currently does to Valve.

So yeah, Console Pokemon isn’t coming.

Gaming’s Ford Edsel

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Looking at retrospectives for the infamously legendary recent video game bust Concord , I thought a lot of “wow, this really is the Ford Edsel of video games.” And I mean that specifically.

This video is as good as any for explaining in short terms what Concord was. That said:

  • It wasn’t actually that bad mechanically
    The Edsel was no worse in performance or safety than any other car of its era. Whatever issues it did have could be understood as it being brand new and not ‘broken in’. Likewise, Concord wasn’t a Memetic Bethesda Launch glitchfest with a lot of its immediate issues being… brand new and not ‘broken in’.
  • The timing was terrible
    The Edsel launched in a recession where the cars in its market segment were the hardest hit. Concord launched when hero shooters had gone from “hot” to “disco in 1982.”
  • The visual design was bad
    I don’t think I really have to elaborate here.
  • Expectations were far too high
    Concord was supposed to be a big merchandising and spinoff paradise as well as a tentpole franchise. The Edsel was supposed to be an entire division like Lincoln, the slightly above average in the brand ladder.

    Amazing how history can rhyme.

The Italian Lesson

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What has been said, and said accurately is that drones and tactics surrounding them are advancing and moving extra-fast in Ukraine. Yet counter-intuitively, this is a case for not rushing forward with swarms. Note: It is still important, and rapidly getting C-UAS, especially hard-kill weapons and proper training, is high priority.

Because this isn’t the first time this happened. And the (often unfairly) scorned Italian military of World War II is a stark example why.

So in the 1930s, automotive and aircraft technology was indeed roaring forward at a “Moores Law For Tanks and Propeller Planes” rate. Now I’m oversimplifying, but here’s what happened: Italy didn’t have the economy or resources for multiple huge waves, so they “modernized” too early , and were left with tons of biplanes and tiny tankettes .

I remember seeing a lecture on US interwar armor where even though he didn’t mention Italy or anything similar, he did use that as a reasonable answer for why America was slow in the same period. Now I mentioned the defensive priority being higher. Anti-tank guns and AA guns even if underpowered are still going to be useful in ways strictly worse tanks are not.

The UAV Illusion

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So RUSI fellow Justin Bronk has given focus to what I’ve kind of grasped but struggled to articulate myself: Small UAVs are not a panacea.

A smaller piece by the same author.

The short version is:

  • The weirdest analogy I have but one I believe is comparing FPV/etc… drones to B-17s and the like. There’s been a giant debate about the effectiveness of WW2 strategic bombing. The Western Allies had less a choice in it than one might think. Until 1944 it was the only direct offensive ability they had, and being shielded by water made it viable. Similarly, Ukraine’s use of drones, as Bronk explains, is a necessary one, just like that a result of desperate circumstance. But it’s not the circumstance and abilities that others, just like how no one had the WAllies circumstances there, will have.
  • Practical effects, which very few people are mentioning- namely, relying on drones against a force that’s spent three years optimizing against them is like relying on deep pass plays against the Lawrence Taylor Giants (ask yourself how the Joe Gibbs teams behaved offensively most of the time).
  • Finally and most crucially, Bronk brings up it’s the Walter Payton in Super Bowl XX / SA-2 not scoring that many direct kills in Vietnam problem. Which is that what’s causing drones to be effective is massive amounts of traditional weapons: Normal artillery, mines, missiles, and backed by UAVs in the traditional spotter role.

A very good splash of cold water. This isn’t to say these aren’t dangerous and won’t get better, but it helps to have perspective beyond highlight reels. Speaking of which, here’s a veteran talking about the side you didn’t see.

The First (and best?) Rock Opera

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The first rock opera can be considered the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed. It tells the story of one day from morning to night. (It happens to also be an excellent album in its own right). Most people know this as where Nights in White Satin came from, but every track is great. My favorite is “Evening”, both “Tuesday Afternoon” and “Evening Time To Get Away”.

No track is wasted on pointless “story”, which is something that afflicts the otherwise excellent Tommy and The Wall. My favorite story concept album at any rate.

Tanks of the Soviet-Romanian War

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Main Battle Tanks of All Union’s Soviet-Romanian War, starting with the victors.

Sovereign Union

  • T-94. The star of the tank scenes in All Union, the T-94 was inspired most heavily by the Object 640/Black Eagle prototype with its advanced gas turbine, low turret and crew position, and much more. It also has a heavy remote turret with an aircraft-adapted 23mm autocannon (for improved anti-soft target AND hitting things not worth a main gun shell). This was an actual proposal. Most advanced Sovereign Union tank of the war, used only in some mobile corps.
  • T-84. The T-84 was chosen as the “low” tank in the high-low mix (ie T-64/80 and T-72 in real life). The real reason was as a bribe to the Ukrainian SSR where a potential situation was defused by All-Union President Yatchenko. Ukrainian firms would get preferential choices in procurement while Crimea was handed back over. T-84s were used in mobile corps and some high-category legacy divisions and had the most advanced suites of the “125mm classics.”
  • 125mm Classics: IE the T-64, T-72, and T-80, in various states of upgrade. Even the mobile corps had many of these. The 7th Mobile Corps famously had only T-64s and BMP-2s. Not much else to say except that T-64s were disproportionately used because so many units were drawn from the Ukrainian SSR where they were historically based.
  • T-62/55s: These classics were minimum viable tanks that did minimum viable tank things, seeing service in low-category legacy divisions.

Bulgaria

  • T-72. The most advanced Bulgarian tank, which showed their limitations compared to the Sovereign Union.
  • T-62. Bulgaria was the only NSWP country to use the T-62, and they saw extensive use (and losses). Likewise with the T-55, the most common Bulgarian tank.
  • T-34. The absolute contrast between the electronically linked supertanks and Bulgaria fielding hundreds of T-34/85s in its crazed mobilization was one of the big ironies of the war.
  • LPT-100. A fictional tank based on a real proposal, this like several other semi-improvised vehicles could be built in Bulgaria, so it was used by the Bulgarians. Others included APCs on bus chassis and uparmored jeeps from local factories.

The Atomic Bombs Are Not Controversial

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Every August 6 this comes around, and I have to give my take. No, the atomic bombs were not controversial and were entirely justified. Totally justified. When Japan was already being starved and firebombed, when the bloodbath of Okinawa was fresh in sight, to not use the superweapons would be wrong even by 2020s standards, much less 1940s ones.

Were they horrific? Definitely. Were they a magic win button that guaranteed a peaceful surrender in place of an invasion that could have killed a million Americans and ten-twenty times as many Japanese? Not by themselves. Could you have wished the war would have ended without them? Of course.

But there was no way they were not being used, and they very well could have prevented something worse. Much worse.