[url=http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/10/19/trump_put_chad_on_the_travel_ban_because_of_passport_paper.html]Finally, We Learn Why Chad Is on the Travel Ban List. It’s Not Good.[/url]

I imagine that folks in Puerto Rico, being told by FEMA to fill out reams of paperwork before any assistance will be rendered, can relate.

Well, [i]Il Duce[/i] did say he wanted to run the government like a business...

Less than a week after the grotesque decision to put Chad on the travel ban list, Chad pulled its troops out of Niger. [W.C. Fields voice]It must have been a coincidence...[/W.C. Fields voice]

And a week after [i]that[/i], four of our soldiers were killed in Niger on a patrol which had, for the six months before Chad withdrew its forces, been routine.

From the accounts I have heard, it seems that the assessment of risk had not taken into account the recent crucial change in circumstances. If that is the case, then, like the decision to put Chad on the travel ban list, it bespeaks a level of incompetence that beggars the imagination.

[URL="https://www.outsideonline.com/2249221/nine-year-old-completed-thru-hikings-triple-crown"]This 9-Year-Old Completed Thru-Hiking's Triple Crown[/URL]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;470147]And a week after [i]that[/i], four of our soldiers were killed in Niger on a patrol which had, for the six months before Chad withdrew its forces, been routine.[/QUOTE]

"Routine" - except for the "WTF are 800 U.S. special-ops troops doing in Niger, anyway?" aspect, you mean? (Hint: [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/10/links-102017.html#comment-2875981]French Uranium needs figure largely[/url].)
Also, according to Reuters, the area where the incident in question occurred has seen at least 46 such attacks since early *last* year, so your orange-haired-satanic-causality claim is dubious, as the attack frequency for over a year now seems to indicate something other than "routineness" should have been indicated in such missions. We're there supporting ongoing neocolonialist activities by the French, causing many of the locals not to love us, ergo bad shit happens now and again. (So of course we need to greatly increase our military involvement there, goes the inevitable line of Exceptional-nationalistic thinking.)

Getting back to the Puerto Rico situation, a well-known blog has an update:

[url=https://www.duffelblog.com/2017/10/puerto-rico-reaches-out-to-taliban-for-tips-on-getting-us-aid/]Puerto Rico reaches out to Taliban for tips on getting US aid[/url] Duffel Blog

(BTW, Other recent Duffel Blog gems include "War in Afghanistan turns 16, applies for driver's license".)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;470205]so your orange-haired-satanic-causality claim is dubious[/QUOTE]The only thing I claimed (and only implicitly) as (likely) cause-and-effect was, putting Chad on the travel-ban list, and Chad withdrawing its troops from Niger within a week. I certainly never even suggested that this was "satanic." I have never heard of Satan being accused of a level of incompetence that beggars the imagination!

How Chad's withdrawal from Niger may have affected the threat to the unit whose men got killed has not been established, and I made no claim in that regard, but I'm sure the Islamist fighters didn't ignore the fact that hundreds of their most effective military enemies had abruptly left the field.

You may, if you wish, dispute the DOD's claim that the same patrol had been conducted 30 times in the last 6 months without incident.

It is possible that in the October 4 engagement, the patrol was lured into an ambush by skirmishers, whom they unwisely pursued. Of course, this raises the question of whether the enemy force had been in the area for a long time, or had only arrived recently.

If the commanders thought the unit had inadequate support for its mission (lack of intel, air recon, air cover, etc) but allowed the mission to proceed anyway, that would be less an "intelligence failure" and more along the lines of dereliction of duty.

As to [i]Il Duce[/i], there remains his refusal to address the soldiers' deaths publicly. Perhaps the new WH motto should be, [b]THE BUCK [i]never[/i] STOPS HERE[/b].

It turns out that, as early as October 5th, the NSC had prepared a [url=http://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/18/trump-niger-condolence-statement-243917]routine condolence statement[/url], but [i]Il Duce[/i] never read it. Now, [i]that[/i] is something that makes me go Hmmmm...

Not sure where to share this but Prof Hawking's 1966 thesis "Properties of expanding universes" was made freely available for the first time on the publications section of university's website at 00:01 BST.

Stephen Hawking PhD readers crash Cambridge University website - BBC News
[url]https://apple.news/AYAC20fdYTGO1DfTskFWzUg[/url]

[url]https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/step-inside-the-mind-of-the-young-stephen-hawking-as-his-phd-thesis-goes-online-for-first-time[/url]

[QUOTE=pinhodecarlos;470243]Not sure where to share this but Prof Hawking's 1966 thesis "Properties of expanding universes" was made freely available for the first time on the publications section of university's website at 00:01 BST.

Stephen Hawking PhD readers crash Cambridge University website - BBC News
[url]https://apple.news/AYAC20fdYTGO1DfTskFWzUg[/url]

[url]https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/step-inside-the-mind-of-the-young-stephen-hawking-as-his-phd-thesis-goes-online-for-first-time[/url][/QUOTE]

I tried to download it 4 times, but the download never started :sad:

Sssh... Looks like I had to write this message to matke the download start...

[QUOTE=ET_;470271][quote]Originally Posted by pinhodecarlos
Not sure where to share this but Prof Hawking's 1966 thesis "Properties of expanding universes" was made freely available for the first time on the publications section of university's website at 00:01 BST.

Stephen Hawking PhD readers crash Cambridge University website - BBC News
[url]https://apple.news/AYAC20fdYTGO1DfTskFWzUg[/url]

[url]https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/...for-first-time[/url][/quote]I tried to download it 4 times, but the download never started :sad:

Sssh... Looks like I had to write this message to matke the download start...[/QUOTE]
The crush of requests for Hawking's thesis reminds me of an anecdote about Einstein, found e.g. on the [url=http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Einstein.html]University of St Andrews Albert Einstein bio[/url]:

[quote]During 1921 Einstein made his first visit to the United States. His main reason was to raise funds for the planned Hebrew University of Jerusalem. However he received the Barnard Medal during his visit and lectured several times on relativity. He is reported to have commented to the chairman at the lecture he gave in a large hall at Princeton which was overflowing with people:-

[i]I never realised that so many Americans were interested in tensor analysis.[/i][/quote]

[url]https://reddit.com/r/hmmm[/url]

[QUOTE=ixfd64;470568][url]https://reddit.com/r/hmmm[/url][/QUOTE]

:thumbs-up:

[url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies]Harvey Weinstein’s Army of Spies[/url] | The New Yorker
[quote]In some cases, the investigative effort was run through Weinstein’s lawyers, including David Boies, a celebrated attorney who represented Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential-election dispute and argued for marriage equality before the U.S. Supreme Court. Boies personally signed the contract directing Black Cube to attempt to uncover information that would stop the publication of a [New York] [i]Times[/i] story about Weinstein’s abuses, while his firm was also representing the [i]Times[/i], including in a libel case.

Boies confirmed that his firm contracted with and paid two of the agencies and that investigators from one of them sent him reports, which were then passed on to Weinstein. He said that he did not select the firms or direct the investigators’ work. [u]He also denied that the work regarding the [i]Times[/i] story represented a conflict of interest.[/u][/quote]
You wanna get down and dirty in your spying and dirty-tricks-playing, you can do no better than ex-Mossad operatives. Some jaw-dropping ethical contortions and [i]chutzpah[/i] there by Mr. big-time white-shoe defense lawyer David Boies.

In other dirty-tricks news: [url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/07/facebook-revenge-porn-nude-photos]Facebook asks users for nude photos in project to combat revenge porn[/url]. I'm sure you can trust FB to not misappropriate or misuse your nude pics in any way, and you can rest assure that their data security is top-notch, just like that of, say, the [url=https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/11/me_on_the_equif.html]credit-history-data-vampires at Equifax Inc[/url].

[QUOTE=ewmayer;471444][url=https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies]Harvey Weinstein’s Army of Spies[/url] | The New Yorker

You wanna get down and dirty in your spying and dirty-tricks-playing, you can do no better than ex-Mossad operatives. Some jaw-dropping ethical contortions and [i]chutzpah[/i] there by Mr. big-time white-shoe defense lawyer David Boies.
[/QUOTE]

[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Boies"]David Boies[/URL] was the same lawyer retained by SCO when they tried to shake down Linux users.
[QUOTE]Boies' firm was retained by the SCO Group, during the SCO–Linux controversies, in their pursuit of alleged infringement of their rights to the Unix intellectual properties. He spoke to the media about the case, but never personally appeared in court.[/QUOTE]