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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Those glass bottles used to cause an awful lot of horrific deaths and injuries during handling, so from a safety perspective, there is no desire at all to return to glass. Glass bottles are also much heavier than plastic, so have a commensurate environmental impact due to the increased consumption of fossil fuels for shipping as well. Fixing the problems with plastic was a big PR win and saved companies millions in law suits and shipping costs. They won’t go back to glass. The answer is probably re-usable plastic containers purchased by the customer and refilled at stores for the same price (or more) than when sold in disposable plastic packaging. Another PR win in the offing, no doubt.





  • Russia has been using low altitude approach and low altitude release with a quick pull up to lob the glide bombs in. The bombs have minimal range and accuracy, so Russia has just been throwing large bombs, and more recently, cluster bombs, to try their luck at hitting and damaging front line infantry positions. What they are doing works, is more effective than their artillery at killing Ukrainians, and has been going on for almost a year now with little to no reprisal from air defence. They aren’t going anywhere near 15km high, or forget Patriots, the Buks and S300s that Ukraine is comfortable keeping near enemy lines would hand them their asses.



  • They probably did the shooting down part, but something has changed. Russian pilots know how low they need to fly and how far away they need to be from the front to be able to launch 2000lb glide bombs at Ukrainian front line positions without being picked up by ground-based radar. And that has been stalling their offensive operations for a long while now. Ukraine didn’t extend their air defence by moving it forward. They must have done it by putting something in the air with a radar that can integrate with Western air defence systems. Being in the air instead of on the ground allows radar to see much further towards the horizon and suddenly the air defence can see into the dead area that starts about 30-40km behind enemy lines that the Russian planes have been operating in. This was one of the speculated roles of the F16s in Ukraine, and based on the reports of a sudden and precipitous drop in Russian glide bombing activity at the front due to their planes now being in missile range before they can attack, it wouldn’t surprise me if this is what has happened.




  • I thought the whole point of not using things like cluster munitions or land mines was that even with clearing attempts, some will inevitably stick around after the war and civilians will find them. So introducing either weapon to an area they weren’t previously deployed in is indeed a terrible thing to have to consider. But it also sounds like both Ukraine and Russia have been using cluster munitions and land mines all over the place since the start of the war, so this seems like an argument about closing the barn door after the horse got out last year. Sure, maybe that one more bomblet will be the one that claims yet another life in this tragedy, but the bomb that dropped it may also save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. This really doesn’t seem like a clear cut moral problem at this point.