Gongol.com Archives: June 2025
June 16, 2025
Someone with too much time on their hands and access to video production tools created a version of Smash Mouth's "All Star" that auto-tunes the phrase "and they don't stop coming" for ten straight hours. The sheer relentlessness of the loop is impressive in its own right, even if being subjected to ten straight hours of the song would be a form of psychological torture. ■ Reflecting on World War II, Dwight Eisenhower wrote, "There was no sight in the war that so impressed me with the industrial might of America as the wreckage on the landing beaches. To any other nation the disaster would have been almost decisive; but so great was America's productive capacity that the great storm occasioned little more than a ripple in the development of our build-up." Allied victory in that war was the result of many factors, but one of the most significant was the ability of the United States to ignite an industrial machine that couldn't be matched, with outputs like 2,711 Liberty Ships -- a production rate of more than one a day. Like the Smash Mouth gag video, they just didn't stop coming. ■ That historical knowledge is already widely-held, so it's marginally surprising that it has taken so long for modern militaries to re-engage with that old knowledge. Denmark, though, has launched its first "uncrewed robotic sailboats" for a trial in the North Sea -- and, probably more crucially, in the Baltic Sea. The drone-like sailboats will be used to conduct surveillance where it's been hard to do so up until now. ■ There will always be a place for big, powerful tools in combat. But it's unwise to dismiss the knowledge that producing low-cost tools in massive quantities may well be not just the key to victory in the past, but in the present and future as well. There will likely always be some things that only an advanced fighter (like an F-35) or an aircraft carrier can do. ■ But whether you're in a strategic position like Denmark, or maintaining a presence across a third of the Earth's surface like the Pacific Command, thinking in terms of relentless volumes of small tools is probably one of the chief ways forward. If managed well with good technological results, Denmark's four sailboat drones ought to be only an extremely modest start to a much more ambitious effort.
It's not often that Iowans are under a single severe thunderstorm watch that stretches from Des Moines all the way west into Colorado.
Internet Archive updates a giant collection of vintage .gif files
It is going to be extraordinarily hard to explain to future generations growing up with augmented reality on their phones just how innocently charming it was to stumble upon the Ham[p]ster Dance for the very first time, back when the public Internet was new.
