4:49 profiling several people whose lives and jobs have been directly impacted and improved because of the ocean cleanup project. 5:06 A silkworm farmer has increased his yield 30%.
Sunday, May 3, 2026
An experiment where genetic change happens in a single generation
https://youtu.be/J9-Ov-_KcWk?si=daw6ps41f_mCsOy8
Mice exposed to almond scent when shocked will grow more almond-sensing neurons - in their offspring.
World's largest organism
A few contenders:
By area: The largest living organism by area is a Posidonia australis seagrass meadow in Western Australia's Shark Bay, covering 180 square kilometers (about 69 square miles).
By weight/mass, it's a tie — 1) the "Humongous Fungus" (Armillaria ostoyae) in Oregon, which spans 3.4 square miles.
(The best defence against it is to 5:50 plant tree species that can survive the infection.)
or Pando, a 106-acre aspen grove in Utah.
It weighs 13 million pounds. It's in Fishlake National Forest. The immature sprouts being 3:27 eaten, or browsed, by animals unopposed by traditional predators, and the older trees are near the end of their life span. So 5:12 they're fencing off the young plants.
Saturday, May 2, 2026
Fixers vs hopeless catastrophizers
https://youtu.be/ZtOxCJqEHjY?si=xYz-MuzoSTkgOew_
2:14 it's a learned relationship with uncertainty 3:34 uncertainty doesn't sound like a verdict to them is a starting point.*
0:41 self-efficacy...you are capable of handling what's in front of you
1:01 this belief changes how long someone pressure at a problem before giving up
2:17 internal locus of control...do better at fixing things...don't get depression...cope better with stress... They sense that their effort matters (which is a protective psychological trait)
5:51 spending time around people like that is one of the most recalibrating things you can do.
*This reminds me of the podcast "Sitting with uncertainty" on Hidden Brain.
Flashing sediment out of a dam
https://youtu.be/_pad4MAV1H0?si=KN5YFOhlSKRkaQdY
[Preparing to flush segment buildup] 3:21 requires detailed planning and coordination.
Before flushing begins:
Reservoir levels are carefully monitored.
Weather and inflow forecasts are analyzed.
Downstream safety alerts are issued.
Power generation units may be reduced or temporarily shut down.
Instrumentation systems are checked for structural monitoring.
Engineers ensure that the dam structure, galleries and monitoring instruments remain within safe operational limits.
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Sargassum for good
https://youtu.be/dYbPuR1hmao?si=ZT6TlYizTdRpV65X
Harvesting ever-increasing massive beach-dumps of sargassum seaweed - mixed with rum byproducts (sugar) and sheep manure (anaerobic bacteria) to yield methane gas fuel.
Picture at 6:10 - removing arsenic yielding fertilizer and methane. Arsenic is preferentially taken up by the seaweed.
Sunday, April 26, 2026
Self driving fails
https://youtube.com/shorts/nOfU04nB9-Q?si=YStgmIV7--_g-2sc
I think they deployed this self-driving tech before it was fully tested! These are some pretty embarrassing fails.
Sunday, April 19, 2026
Robots working in close proximity to humans safely.
The End of the Cage: How Robots and Humans are Finally Working Side-by-Side
For decades, the "safety protocol" for industrial robots was simple: a giant steel cage. If a human stepped inside, the power was cut. It was safe, but it was also slow, rigid, and physically demanding.
As we move through 2026, we’ve entered the era of Human-Robot Collaboration, where multi-ton machines and human workers share the same floor, often working on the exact same part at the exact same time.
Here is how we’ve moved from "reactive stopping" to "intelligent collaboration."
1. Meet the Cobot
The foundation of this shift is the Cobot (collaborative robot). Unlike traditional industrial robots, cobots are designed with rounded edges, hidden pinch points, and specialized internal sensors.
However, being "collaborative" isn't just about the hardware—it’s about the mode of operation. A robot is only truly collaborative if it is governed by one of the following safety pillars.
2. The Four Pillars of Collaborative Safety
To keep humans safe without cages, engineers rely on four distinct, verifiable methods:
Safety-Rated Monitored Stop: The most basic level. The robot operates at full speed but halts the instant a human enters its "yellow zone."
Hand-Guiding: Think of this as the "power steering" of robotics. A human can grab the robot arm and physically lead it to teach it a new path.
Speed and Separation Monitoring (SSM): The robot uses 3D vision, LiDAR, or radar to calculate the distance to a human. The closer you get, the slower it moves.
Power and Force Limiting (PFL): This is the "gold standard." The robot’s joints contain torque sensors that detect even a light touch. If it bumps into you, it instantly dissipates its energy so the impact is no more painful than a gentle tap.
Watch: Combining SSM and PFL for Safe Collaboration – A biting lecture and deep dive into how robots use math to decide when to slow down vs. when to limit force.
3. The Future: E-Skin and Predictive Engines
The newest developments in 2026 have moved beyond just "sensing" a human to "understanding" them.
Electronic Skin (E-Skin)
Modern robots are now being outfitted with tactile "skins” — thin, flexible sensor arrays that give the robot a sense of touch over its entire body, not just its "fingers." This allows a more nuanced response to accidental contact.
Predictive Safety Engines
The most exciting breakthrough is the shift from reactive to predictive safety. Using Edge AI and 3D depth cameras, robots no longer wait for you to move before they react — they analyze your body language and walking path to predict where you are about to move, adjusting their own path to stay productive while keeping you safe.
Watch: How E-Skin Makes Robots Intuitive – See how touch sensors allow robots to feel pressure and adjust their strength in real-time.
4. Safety is Software, Not Steel
In today's factories, safety is no longer a physical barrier; it’s a living, breathing software protocol. As robots become more mobile and more humanoid, these standards—like ISO 10218—ensure that technology adapts to us, rather than forcing us to stay behind a fence.
Watch: You Think Robots Are Safe? Think Again – A field guide on how modern factories manage "uncaged" robots and the risks of mobile machinery.
Saturday, April 18, 2026
Friday, April 17, 2026
We didn't know where eels come from
https://youtu.be/y0UIJekwyPY?si=o9wzVxBPzkMb4XfY
This guy is incredibly good at long-take monologues filled with facts.
Solugen harnesses bioenzymes to achieve 96% yield
The Eureka Moment (02:23-03:30): The founders discovered a specialized enzyme found in pancreatic cancer cells—which produces hydrogen peroxide—and realized they could harness it for industrial chemical synthesis.
Scaling Up (10:32-11:57): The company evolved from small-scale experiments to their state-of-the-art Bioforge plant. This facility uses industrial-scale bubble columns to transform corn syrup into massive quantities of chemical products with high efficiency (96% yield).
Monday, April 13, 2026
Sunday, April 12, 2026
Autological words
I love words like sesquipedalian and obfuscatory because they are perfect examples of themselves. Apparently they're called "autological" words.
Erudite
Polysyllabic
proparoxytone (pro-par-OX-y-tone) - a word stressed on the antepenultimate, or third-to-last syllable
https://theweek.com/articles/459441/17-words-that-describe-themselves
Saturday, April 11, 2026
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
Cascadia megaquake is inevitable
We're overdue for the next "big one" earthquake in WA, OR, CA and it will likely last longer than 3 minutes at over 9 on the Richter scale.
9:15 things to have on hand - shelf-stable food, water 1 gallon per person per day for 3 days, fire extinguishers, 2-bucket toilet, toilet paper, sawdust for #2, and a 4-in-one gas shutoff tool.
Avoid chronic Omeprazole PPI
https://youtu.be/m4dDMYNLMUU?si=LI2GD2Maum6ylryp
(Nexium), Pantoprazole (Protonix) (1:33-1:47).
Risks: Chronic use can lead to kidney damage, and deficiencies in magnesium and Vitamin B12, which are crucial for heart and nerve health (3:05-4:34).
Monday, April 6, 2026
Sunday, April 5, 2026
Friday, April 3, 2026
Self-driving will save us from rising traffic death rate
Graph at 25:29 shows succeeding statistic that distracted and drunk driving is making death rates in the US surpass those of other advanced nations.
Monday, March 30, 2026
Robots handling difficult terrain over the years
https://youtu.be/9kae-UAME1U?si=sNDpM5t6ZkP8baN5
https://youtu.be/NAcanWv_2Z8?si=kmz5yEhg4XBY6q_R
https://youtu.be/iNL5-0_T1D0?si=towV6vSSvg6pJc3s
https://media.wired.com/photos/5c34feb32020097d13ab868b/master/w_1600,c_limit/robottraining.gif
https://www.wired.com/story/the-clever-clumsiness-of-a-robot-teaching-itself-to-walk/
Sunday, March 29, 2026
10 Year Old's Research Shocks Scientists Around the World - memories retained during butterfly chrysalis metamorphosis
https://youtube.com/watch?v=nhESxrqPjfU&si=oed4FVBuKb-Wi6lC
The remarkable story of 10 y.o. Jo Nagai from Japan who conducted groundbreaking research on swallowtail butterflies (0:23). Jo documented unique behaviors and eventually challenged the scientific belief that metamorphosis completely resets an insect's brain (1:42-2:52).
The Experiment and Results:
Memory Persistence: Jo replicated a study by entomologist Martha Weiss, demonstrating that swallowtail butterflies retain memories formed as caterpillars. By associating a lavender scent with a mild shock, Jo showed that 70% of the trained butterflies avoided that scent as adults (5:25-7:56).
Transgenerational Memory: Jo later discovered that the offspring and grandchildren of these trained butterflies also avoided the lavender scent, despite never being trained themselves. This suggests that learned behaviors might alter biology and be passed down to future generations (9:00-11:00).
War is not about precise targeting
"This is the recurring illusion of overequipped leaders: Because they can map the battle space, they think they understand the war. But war is never merely a technical contest. It is shaped by grievance, sacred narrative, the memory of past humiliations and the desire for revenge."
"The military theorist Carl von Clausewitz long ago recognized the delusion of reducing war to a kind of algebra. War, as he understood it, is never merely calculation. It is saturated with passion, uncertainty and political purpose."
-Yonatan Touval
Saturday, March 28, 2026
Friday, March 27, 2026
Pothole repairs
Quite a few technologies have been developed for mobile pothole repair.
Robotic arm on from of truck
Expand hole to fit pre-formed patches
Multiple heads on backhoe-type machine
Injection patching handheld hose
Patch sheets laid down by hand
Shake from bag, paved by traffic
Lumps paved by traffic
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Is an image AI or real? SynthID
Any user with free access to Google Gemini can upload an image or video file and simply type "SynthID," then press "Submit," to run a quick scan.
Monday, March 23, 2026
The Secret of Charisma - Hidden Brain Media
https://www.hiddenbrain.org/podcast/the-secret-of-charisma/
Charisma and the Paradox of Control
"Most of us want some feeling of agency...but we don't quite want the responsibility of being wholly in charge of it all ourselves." – Molly Worthen[27:25]
[32:50–36:10]
Charismatic leaders position themselves as keepers of "secret truths"—offering followers a vision or information withheld by mainstream authorities.
"You think you have a full picture of reality, but you don't. You've been denied some crucial facts…" [33:14]
"The power of charisma resides much more in the story and the message than in the individual." – Molly Worthen [31:44]
The Risks and Ethics of Following Charisma
[50:18–54:27]
Self-Assessment Needed: Who is being cast as the "enemy" in the story, and what do I really know about them?
Quote: Worthen: "What are my sources of information? ...that personal knowledge of these victims as individuals... was crucial..." [53:05]
Stay grounded in well-rounded traditions, not filtered narratives.
Listener Q&A: Breakups, Healing, and Emotional Growth
[60:13–62:33]: Breakups differ from bereavement in that one involves rejection and the refusal of a shared vision for the future; it's not just loss, but a relational rupture.
Rumination's Pitfalls [72:54–77:38]:
Rumination keeps people stuck in emotional pain, whether through "what if" scenarios about the future (anxious), regrets about the past (depressive), or rehearsals of conflict (angry).
Quote: Leone: "Rumination is busy work, right... And yet that verbal cognitive loop insulates you from... what's really going on, which is the present." [73:08]
Helping Friends Who Are Stuck [94:10–96:59]
Be a companion, help them take a third-person perspective, encourage forward-looking stories.
Friday, March 20, 2026
Making neon signs
My favorite moment is at 11:36 when he "blacks out" the connecting portions behind the letters.
Using hydrogen-oxygen concussive blasts to clear snow accumulation to prevent avalanches.
Can also be permanently attached to the mountain instead of dangled from a helicopter.
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Oscars quotations
The glory of art is that it can not only survive change, it can lead it. - Robert Redford.
Amy MacAdams said that Diane Keaton would often sing on set:
Make new friends, but keep the old.
One is silver, the other is gold.
A circle is round, it has no end.
That's how long, I will be your friend...
Denver's huge and controversial dam improvement
This huge project to improve Denver's water supply is some pretty amazing engineering, using roller-compacted concrete to 4:58 change the dam from a gravity-based design to a thick-arch fan that spreads the load of the held-back water onto the surrounding bedrock. The video outlines the environmental and downstream water-rights controversy for and against the expanded dam.
A desert wastewater reclamation oasis in Riyadh
https://youtu.be/f0skGsSd3jE?si=1EB3C6RpKp1ImsEb
9:41 "Over 1 billion people live in deserts," so this technology is greatly needed.
Riyad 1:47 pumps desalinated seawater 400 miles across the desert to supply the city, so water is a valuable resource.
A transformed 2:22 toxic waste stream is now a biological water-treatment garden complex 8:00 designed to treat 45 million gallons of water a day, 8:14 getting rid of 89% of fecal coliforms. (By contrast, potable water requires removing more like 99.999% of them.)
3:55 Over 21 hours, water is aerated and then flows through engineered "biocells" including rocks with a biofilm of plants, algae, and microorganisms to purify it.
Eventually 5:55 this recycled wastewater is used for farm irrigation downstream.
Saturday, March 14, 2026
Making tires with robots, and rubber harvesting.
I found this video totally mesmerizing. The level of robotic automation is incredible, and the agility with which the robots handle the materials is impressive.
I always ask myself in such videos, when there's one step that is 1:04 & 2:08 done by human hand, what was it about this step that a robot was unable to reliably do? (I think it's a light metal bead that can easily end up at the wedding angle in three first one, and inspection for defects at the latter one.)
Why would they stockpile hundreds of spools of rubber at 0:53 rather than using them right away - is rubber harvest seasonal which could fall short of production demands? (Yes!)
(How latex is harvested. - Tapping cannot occur when the bark is wet, so heavy rain reduces the number of workdays for farmers...Tapping is almost always done at night or in the early morning. This is because cooler temperatures lead to higher internal pressure in the tree's vessels, allowing the latex to flow for a longer duration before it naturally coagulates and seals the cut. Rubber trees contain latex in "laticifer" vessels that run vertically but slightly spiraled. By cutting at a 30-degree angle, tappers intersect the maximum number of these vessels to get the most liquid out. The cut needs to be deep enough to reach the vessels but shallow enough to avoid the cambium (the tree's growth layer). A precise, angled shave allows the bark to grow back smoothly. )
Saturday, March 7, 2026
How to fall asleep at 3 am
Box breathing counting to 4-7-8
Tense then relax ascending muscles groups
Cognitive shuffle - spell "blanket" with 3 random neutral items you associate with that letter and picture each item.
Trump has "Victory disease"
History provides important lessons. This sobering and sad essay from the Atlantic yesterday describes the mismatch between military surgical precision and the lack of political strategy behind it. It's a ten-minute read, but if you don't have time, the first 4 and last 3 paragraphs make the most salient points.
Trump has a severe case of 'victory disease'—revelling in the technical and professional capabilities of the American military, but void of any strategic purpose…. This is an excellent diagnosis of the historically common malady.
Operational Excellence, Strategic Incompetence
The president is pointing to the American military's excellence as though that somehow constitutes a strategy in itself.
By Tom Nichols
The Atlantic. MARCH 6, 2026, 9:04 PM ET
The war in Iran has reaffirmed two truths. One is that the United States is blessed with the most professional and effective military in the world. The men and women of the American armed forces can conduct missions of almost any size with formidable competence, from special operations to seize a rogue-state president to a large-scale war. The other truth is that the Trump administration, when it comes to strategy, is incompetent.
Strategy is about matching the instruments of national power—and especially military force—to the goals of national policy. The president and his team, however, have not enunciated an overarching goal for this war—or, more accurately, they have presented multiple goals and chosen among them almost randomly, depending on the day or the hour. This means that highly effective military operations are taking place in a strategic vacuum.
Worse, Donald Trump is now pointing to these missions as if the excellence with which they have been conducted somehow constitutes a strategy in itself. He appears so enthralled by the execution of these missions that he has enlarged the goals of this war to include the complete destruction of the Iranian regime, after which he will "Make Iran Great Again."
This kind of thinking is an old problem, and it has a name: "victory disease," meaning that victory in battle encourages leaders to seek out more battles, and then to believe that winning those battles means that they are winning the larger war or achieving some grand strategic aim—right up until the moment they realize that they have overreached and find themselves facing a military disaster or even total defeat. It is a condition that has afflicted many kinds of regimes over the course of history, one so common that my colleagues and I lectured military officers about it when I was a professor at the Naval War College. The issue is especially important for Americans, because when national leaders have exceptionally capable military forces at their disposal—as the United States does—they are even more likely to be seized by victory disease.
The Persian emperor Xerxes had it; that's how he found himself eventually suffering a historic defeat in Greece at the Battle of Salamis. Napoleon had it; that's how he ended up freezing in the Russian snow after years of brilliant victories over other European states. The French in 1870 had it; that's how they confidently marched to catastrophes against a superior Prussian army. The Axis had it; that's how Germany and Japan convinced themselves that their early successes meant that they could quickly defeat the Soviet Union and the United States, respectively.
The Americans caught the same bug in the Korean War, when they chased the North Koreans to the Yalu River, a drive that ended in disaster when Communist Chinese troops streamed across the border and joined the conflict. The U.S. fell prey to this syndrome again in Vietnam, when it poured men and material into the war for years yet remained unable to turn many battlefield triumphs into a strategic victory.
American policy in the Gulf War in 1991 is an honorable exception; George H. W. Bush avoided victory disease, calling an end to Operation Desert Storm rather than marching on Baghdad after achieving his stated aim of rescuing Kuwait. But his son, George W. Bush, chose to fight two wars at the same time. Once again, the men and women of the U.S. military managed to achieve remarkable operational successes, but it took years to stabilize Iraq, and Afghanistan today is back in the hands of the Taliban.
And now Trump seems to have contracted a whopping case of victory disease. He is clearly convinced that previous operations in Venezuela, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and, of course, Iran are all evidence that a total victory over the regime in Tehran will be relatively quick. But he has provided no conception of what "victory" would look like. As of yesterday, his goals have expanded to include a demand for "unconditional surrender."
Admiring the performance of the U.S. military is understandable. But it is not the same thing as using that military power to achieve some national purpose. Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth so far seem to be enjoying the fireworks. But the efficient and rapid destruction of buildings and machines, and the killing of some enemy leaders, is not the same thing as a strategy.
Today, the U.S. and Israeli militaries have achieved almost full control of the skies over Iran and the waters around it. They appear able to destroy any targets they choose with near impunity. The Iranians still have the ability to strike back by launching missiles and drones at various targets, and they managed to kill six American service members with an attack against a makeshift installation in Kuwait. Nevertheless, Iran has been bested at the operational level of war, and its air and naval forces cannot offer meaningful resistance.
American operations have not been flawless. Last week, a U.S. strike on an Iranian naval base may have destroyed an Iranian school and killed dozens of children. Every major military engagement is fraught with risks of targeting errors, friendly fire, and other accidents, and preliminary evidence indicates that the school bombing was a tragic American error, one that was made more likely by the U.S. and Israeli decision to attack during the day (when children would be in the building). Even so, American military operations have for the most part been astonishingly well executed. Years of training, study, and planning, along with careful use of intelligence, have all contributed to the rapid elimination of much of Iran's capacity to project power, and almost all of its ability to resist allied attacks.
Operational competence, however, cannot answer the question of national purpose. What is the war about, and when will America know it's done? Trump, when pressed, dodges the issue of war aims by pointing to the excellence of the military. "I hope you are impressed," Trump said on Thursday to ABC's Jonathan Karl. "How do you like the performance? I mean, Venezuela is obvious. This might be even better." Trump then repeated, "How do you like the performance?" Karl noted that no one is questioning the success of military operations, and he asked the president what happens next. "Forget about 'next,'" Trump answered. "They are decimated for a 10-year period before they could build it back."
Likewise, the next day, CNN's Dana Bash asked the president how he thought the war was going. Trump rated the war, Bash said, a 12 or 15 out of 10, and then said, "We're doing very well militarily—better than anybody could have even dreamed."
Each time Trump or one of his lieutenants speaks this way, they generate more questions than answers. Yes, military operations are proceeding impressively, with very few casualties among the U.S. and Israeli operators. But what would have constituted a "10" that we can now say that America is at a "15"? Now that Trump, at least for the time being, has issued a call for "unconditional surrender," perhaps vaporizing every piece of military hardware with an Iranian flag on it is enough. Comments on Thursday by Hegseth and Admiral Brad Cooper of Central Command suggest that this seems to be the plan.
But "unconditional surrender" is unlikely to last. To effect such a total defeat, Iran would have to be occupied and administered by the victors. This kind of language is at odds with the reluctance of some in the Trump administration and other Republicans, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, to even call Operation Epic Fury a "war." (I will exercise my prerogative here as someone who has studied and taught national security and international relations and confirm that when you bomb a nation, kill its leaders, and call for its people to rise up, you're engaged in war, and if you call for "unconditional surrender," you are definitely at war.)
Trump will likely find himself backpedaling from the demand for unconditional surrender. He might also redefine unconditional to denote more easily achieved aims. (Indeed, hours after Trump's post, the White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt was already offering an interpretation of unconditional that was far more limited than absolute capitulation.) Soon, the Americans could find themselves retreating to the strategic incoherence that has characterized the administration's approach since the first hours of the war. Military operations and national purpose will become more and more distanced from each other, because military prowess cannot clarify America's war aims. As the old saying warns: If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.
My colleagues Marie-Rose Sheinerman and Isabel Ruehl have pointed out the severity of this problem by noting that Trump and his aides have offered at least 10 rationales for war over the course of only six days. Rationale No. 1 was "an imminent threat" from Iran, Rationale No. 2 was nuclear weapons, Rationale No. 5 was election interference, Rationale No. 6 was "world peace" writ large, Rationale No. 10 was that America had been dragged into the war by Israel. Some of these reasons might constitute a casus belli—others, such as Rationale No. 9 ("fulfill God's purpose"), less so—but Trump's team has thrown them all at the wall to see what sticks, perhaps in part because the war is still unpopular with the American public and Trump has so far seen no "rally 'round the flag" benefit from launching it.
But each of these rationales demands a different strategy; eliminating an imminent threat involves a different set of operations than establishing peace in the region (or the world). Instead, the Americans are choosing an "all of the above" approach, employing immense power across Iran. Entranced by the show, Trump, Hegseth, and others assume that because these operations are going well, something good will come of them. This kind of poor strategy, ironically, is an option only because of the excellence of the American and Israeli militaries: If Trump had to make decisions under greater material or military constraints, such as shortages of money, weapons, or talent, he would have to choose an actual war aim and stay with it.
If the goal is regime change and "unconditional surrender," do current U.S. operations support that goal? Again, military prowess and victory disease may be encouraging the White House to avoid thinking about some hard realities. Regimes are not changed by bombing; they are put in place by men and women wearing boots and carrying guns. (These need not be American boots, but they have to be somebody's boots.) Trump has called for the Iranians to surrender, but to whom? A U.S. occupation force? Or is an internal group of rebels assembling in Iran? In any case, a new regime will have to gain support by rebuilding infrastructure that's being destroyed. Are the target sets being adjusted accordingly over time? No one can answer these questions, because the civilian leadership of the United States does not seem to have thought them through.
Victory disease divorces military excellence from political wisdom and strategic discipline. It convinces leaders that whatever they're doing must be working and that they should keep doing it, blinding them to the possibility that military operations may have become counterproductive or detached from achievable aims. The American military is given tasks—clear the skies, suppress air defenses, sink the enemy navy—and then it breaks those instructions down into discrete and granular missions against particular targets. The pilots and planners can execute those missions with courage and professionalism, but they cannot force them to make strategic sense.
Meanwhile, despite the successes of the military overseas, Trump now admits that a regime that was supposed to be eliminated quickly could reach the United States with terrorist attacks. He told Time this week that "we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die." The American people might be willing to tolerate such risks if they knew what their sons and and daughters were fighting for and how long they would be at war. Trump has retreated behind the skill of the U.S. military rather than answer such questions.
Perhaps the greatest danger of the current epidemic of victory disease is that it seems to be making Donald Trump think he's a brilliant strategist: He is already talking about overthrowing the government of Cuba, even as American forces are still fighting in the Middle East, and the threat of terror may well be growing at home now that the United States is at war. At this point, all Americans can do is admire the fortitude and excellence of the U.S. military while hoping for victory—whatever that is, and whenever it comes.