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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • Both of these are “without prejudice”, meaning the gov can refile charges if they get their act together on legally appointing a US attorney with the advice and consent of the Senate.

    It’s not completely clear, but these dismissals could moot the other pending motions to dismiss, including the vindictive prosecution claims, even though those could result in “with prejudice” dismissal.

    The government can appeal these rulings. They have done so in other invalid US attorney cases.

    If they refile on Comey, he will argue that the statute of limitations has run out. The government will argue that they get a 6 month extension under a statute. Judge Currie already stated today that Comey’s position is correct, but I don’t know if that opinion binds whatever future judge gets the case when it’s refiled.

    Letitia James still has more time on the statute of limitations, so she’s in a worse position.

    It might be hard to actually get these cases refiled. Halligan was appointed using an invalid procedure precisely because there’s no way she could pass Senate confirmation. Every other prosecutor of any competence has preferred to get fired rather than charge these cases. The order today gives the judges the power to appoint an interim US attorney again, and if they do so, that one could stop any prosecution. And finally, the cases would have to pass grand jury scrutiny again. We know the Comey charges barely scraped by on 14 votes the first time.









  • There’s a class of orbits called “polar orbits” that are sideways and perpendicular to the spin of the earth. These orbits are useful for satellites whose main job is taking pictures of earth, because they will cover nearly all of the earth’s territory over time. You get into a polar orbit by launching to the north outer south.

    Aside from that, nearly all launches go towards the spin of the earth, because it’s a free boost. The fancy rocketry word for this is “prograde”.

    The sun appears to traverse from east to west in the sky. This means that the earth is moving the opposite way: west to east. So if you want to take advantage of the free boost, the rocket needs to take off in an easterly direction.

    The amount of spin you get is greatest if you launch from the tropics near the equator, and it falls off at greater north or south latitudes. In theory, if you set up a launch pad at the north pole, the spin boost would be zero in all directions, because you’re just rotating in place. At the equator, the free boost is around 1000 mph or 1600 km/hr.

    So the ideal launch site is as close to the equator as possible, and it has low population off to its east, in case the rocket blows up or crashes. The United States has two sites that meet these criteria: one in Florida and one in extreme south Texas. Both of these face an ocean to the east. Europe launches Ariane rockets from French Guiana in South America. Russia uses Kazakhstan, which is on the southern ends of the old Soviet Union.



  • The North Atlantic area is defined in an expansive, but not unlimited, manner. The treaty defines the North Atlantic area as:

    • all of North America
    • The Atlantic ocean, including islands, north of the Tropic of Cancer
    • the “home” territory of any European member.

    So, Turkey is at the extreme flank of the area, by having a bit of core territory in Europe. All of Turkey’s territory is covered, though, even the parts not in Europe.

    Palestine is not eligible to join the alliance, because its territory is not in Europe or North America.

    Some other tidbits: Guam, Hawaii, the Falkland Islands, Reunion, and the British Indian Ocean Territory are all examples of member territories that are not protected because they fall outside the North Atlantic area.




  • mkwt@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    3 months ago

    There was a book a while back called Guns, Germs, and Steel that delves into this topic.

    The root cause, as I understand it, is that Europe is on a continent oriented east-west instead of north-south. And Europe in particular is on the part of that continent that has a lot of easy access to the sea.

    East-west orientation allows you to transplant plants and animals long distances and keep them at roughly the same latitudes, which means roughly the same climate. That is a big boon for spreading “civilized” agriculture, which is what creates surplus of labor, which creates non food jobs that advance technology.

    Among the common 5-7 domesticated food animals people eat today, all but one or two were domesticated in Mesopotamia, but then spread all over Europe.

    Access to the sea is the other component that turns tech advantage into colonialism, because it gives the transportation. Even today, China and Russia are great powers, but they are forced to be continental powers instead of maritime powers, because nearly all of their coast lines are hemmed in by narrow seas that are easy to blockade.

    There are, of course, a bunch of other factors I’m not even thinking about and competing opinions. But I don’t for one second think that any of this has anything to do with European “innate intelligence” or skin color.