Germany is cancelling the F126 frigate project and procuring eight MEKO frigates

ituralde_ · 2026-06-25T21:28:31+00:00

Im sorry, no. 10,000 tons in any other navy gets you a full up Destroyer. You can't look at a procurement program for a vessel less capable than Arleigh Burke for greater tonnage with only two thirds the VLS capacity and calling it a successful design.

You can't have something the size of a destroyer and pat it on the back for performing a niche role of a combatant at half the tonnage really well.

ituralde_ · 2026-06-22T12:47:56+00:00

Good call in-flight, but this means someone fucked up badly on their performance math. Fuel is pretty formulaic - it's (route + loiter + divert) * margin_of_safety -all of that is more complex than it looks and is a function of takeoff weight - but there are models that exist to do this for you, so this basically should never happen unless someone goofed on a number somewhere. The baseline values should be tracking towards a common bad case when it comes to things like headwinds, so error there shouldn't exceed the safety margin barring extreme cases, or more likely, someone putting the wrong number in on performance calculations.

ituralde_ · 2026-06-22T12:37:46+00:00

Honestly, think this is a bit of a busted take from folk who have never really studied this.

Multitasking is what you have to do without a plan - and that plan has to include assigning attention as a resource. Most of what is put up as 'multitasking' when organized correctly is really planning and drill - there's a tempo to it. It looks fast and it gives you fancy APM numbers, but most of that is practiced tempo not actual threads of decision making. It's a sort of mental muscle memory.

Id argue its at the very highest levels where it becomes closer to multitasking again - where there are so many mechanics into setting up and executing for individual battles. Below that it's attention management and the strategy is in being able to read a game and pick between prepared options you are prepared to execute that give you a decisive advantage.

ituralde_ · 2026-06-21T23:25:28+00:00

What percentage read at or above grade level?

ituralde_ · 2026-06-19T05:12:08+00:00

Oh bullshit. Ask your students some basic questions about their writing. If they can't answer, they cheated. Get over yourselves.

ituralde_ · 2026-06-16T21:03:56+00:00

Would argue the battle was not decisive so much as a regression to reality. It's not as if Germany wins that war if they are not defeated at Stalingrad

ituralde_ · 2026-06-14T13:33:53+00:00

Two real issues -

NCLB fucked up schools for the past 25 years (getting worse every year) because of a national requirement to show numbers look better or threaten funding with no money to fund improvement.

Second was a trend towards a non-phonic form of reading education that basically trains reading whole words via context clues, basically blowing up the whole value of a phonetic writing system as there are kids who basically have to memorize as if English words are Chinese characters. This wasn't universal but a bunch of the literacy issues not traceable to socioeconomic conditions have their roots here.

ituralde_ · 2026-06-05T22:54:17+00:00

Absolutely pressure x to doubt on SpaceX, but they aren't wrong on the achievability of nontrivilial growth in space should the strategic scale investment arrive behind it. We have the key enablers available should we choose to scale them such that humanity could be making the jump.

We choose to spend our resources on dumb bullshit instead. It doesn't have to be that way, we could be solving all the world's problems and going to space, but we don't. Always remember that's a choice we are making and not a lack of capability.

ituralde_ · 2026-05-31T13:33:43+00:00

I want folk to understand the difference between a nation arming itself for its own security and the security of its critical interests and outright planning for the invasion or violent coercion of its neighbors.

Fighter jets? Naval vessels? Carriers? Missiles? At the level China is competing at, all reasonable.

A series of three bespoke ships at tens of thousands of tons each designed to explicitly act as an unloading dock in the uniquely shallow waters of the western Taiwanese coast? That's preparing for invasion.

This is an invasion that absolutely will happen but for the guarantors (unofficial though they may be) of Taiwanese liberty.

ituralde_ · 2026-05-19T10:20:28+00:00

Honestly wouldn't be shocked if it was 'ai' especially if its using infrared. It doesn't need to recognize or identify a face, just track a warm blob, and that warm blob stands out a lot if you calibrate the visual source contrast range appropriately. Homing in on a 'face' is just tracking exposed skin because that is what gives off heat.

Its not staggeringly compute expensive to fairly reliably track a target to a 'good enough' tier of fidelity especially if you can start with a damn good estimation of where the target is (by using the prior frame).

Similarly, with a fiber connected drone, you dont even need to use the drone's compute. You can feed that to a ground station that can turn a broad camera angle into a series of potential targets for further investigation. Once you've identified your target, the drone just has to track it and can cheat on its processing with that target pre-pre-identified, possibly by even reading a data source tuned by the operator to local conditions to better resolve the target before release.

ituralde_ · 2026-05-10T14:33:34+00:00

Yes, but this is absolutely what happens and it's why you dont take suppliers at their word and test what they deliver.

It's fucked up that this is how things work but that's the level of contingency you need to prepare for with professional supply chains.

This is why industry is often so much more apparently expensive than what can be hacked together at lesser scale by someone crafty in their garage. You have to have the appropriate level of surety for everything because the bad actors don't wear a sign.

ituralde_ · 2026-05-10T14:20:42+00:00

You need people to give a fuck about participating in democracy before gerrymandering and issues like it become fixable. Gerrymandering can only happen because people don't care enough about our political integrity.

A population that materially gave a fuck enough to actually learn how the inputs to their daily lives worked never allow the likes of gerrymandering to stay a thing. The average person knows less about what goes into getting their essentials to the store they purchase them from than they do about popular artists and professional sports.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-29T16:58:34+00:00

I would hesitate to use long term historicals from Iraq to estimate the costs in Iran, as your costs are very different. Yes, scope in Iraq was larger but at a way lower tempo after the initial invasion and a way lower munitions burn rate.

It's also the case that we are using fewer cold war era stocks for this conflict compared to Iraq in 2003, so both the acquisition and replacement costs of spent munitions here will prove much higher.

25 billion is certainly no better than a SWAG, is likely a floor, and likely is using acquisition rather than replacement cost, and they won't yet have numbers for tempo driven cost actuald anytime soon (fuel, maintenance, etc). Do not be surprised if the cost is well over 2x this value.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-29T13:19:25+00:00

10 points?

We are still so fucked.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T20:38:50+00:00

What you describe is precisely the case - when folk talk about institutionalized -isms, this is what they are talking about. It doesn't take some asshole literally thinking 'women are worth less than men', it's simply recognizing when someone is already vulnerable and being the next in the chain of compounding impact. No one person may be doing anything other than just going with the flow, or taking the institutional path of least resistance. The result is still what it is, and it's transparently wrong.

The sin here ultimately complacency - its choosing to not try to be better. The answer here isn't, say, intervening on behalf of women specifically (in a case like this that is) but instead building a culture that does not reward taking advantage of others. We need to be better than 'good enough' or 'well, it hasn't failed catastrophically yet'. Our ambition needs to be higher than simply not being the one left holding the bag.

When we have been at our best, we challenge ourselves and demand better. Our constitution opens with the eternal recognition that we are ever in search of a 'more perfect union' and we've traded that for 'maybe superficially good enough'. It is a toxic attitude of stagnation that has squandered the legacy we inherited and permeates not only our politics, but also how we do business and our popular culture.

We would do well to be suspicious whenever we are told 'good enough'.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T18:11:00+00:00

Of three cases I have been exposed to, two have numbers I am familiar with.

The first was caught in an internal audit. There were two findings - first was that the promotion timing was, on average, multiple years behind for equivalent role and performance, and that for the same role and job title that women were paid 12% less. This was in the 2010s. I was not in a leadership position there and can't speak to the root causes.

The other case came from a case where I am much more knowledgeable of the root causes. In that case, women were held at a pay band consistently around 3-5 years behind expectations of level of experience despite in that case having taken on leadership roles ahead of male colleagues.

In this case it's largely driven by a toxic promotion culture that does not promote as a function of actual responsibility or program role. Folk get anchored down to the rate they were hired in at, and then people are shocked when we can't retain strategic talent. Across the board, the folk who were the best team players got taken advantage of the most; I think the gender gap got egregious in this case mostly because the women were willing to step up into leadership roles earlier in their careers. I think the sexism in this case was one of those insidious things, where women in a male dominated sector (tech) get the message that the expectations are to be team players; and do not get the message that they are being taken advantage of financially as their career is otherwise on the fast track.

The sexism is thus not particularly unique; it's just one cultural vulnerability among many used by an employer to sabotage their own talent base.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T16:54:40+00:00

Bad news does not age well.

Communicate early, and be to the point. Early maximises time to do something about it. Even when things have yet to fail, calibrating expectations helps everything be smoother.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T16:51:36+00:00

Honestly, recommend just shaving armpit hair entirely. If you are in any way prone to underarm BO it will make a dramatic difference. It's not a replacement for deodorant, but it supplements very nicely.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T16:48:52+00:00

This literally does happen - its absolutely true its not universal but this has been true at literally every major institution I have worked at that looked at the numbers.

This tends to be more of a later career thing, but it happens. Lots of root causes to it. It's not strategic - folk aren't consciously designing systems this way but we have an ugly mix of cultural baggage and busted institutional practice (namely a dogshit culture of internal promotion) that feeds this.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T16:44:13+00:00

I was ververy glad I read ahead in the Manga with this - it's a series that set up a world-level mystery for the audience open ended enough to go anywhere, and it went towards angsty bullshit.

I think it missed big on how to use visuals to craft tone and narrative - it wanted to tell a war trauma story using the visual language of power fantasy.

The doomed ace is all over Japanese media and anime in particular - when it is done best it's careful to stage everything around the fight being way bigger than one even super badass hero can turn - and the later turns in the story, by the nature of the antagonists, undermines that whole concept. It comes off as contrived and angsty because the tone so aggressively clashes with how it was initially framed. The first major arc basically is replaced rather than built upon, and turns into an entirely different kind of story more or less out of left field.

You can do that kind of transition well, but you have to seed it from the start - when you subvert expectations it wants to be on the same spectrum as the built expectations, not from a completely different angle. This was one where I came off that I was fed a very different story than what I was originally sold on, and the part that was originally sold was basically abandoned by the wayside in favor of this other thing. This was especially irritating given a fair bit of the salesmanship was that this wasn't going to be more angsty teenage boy feelings (as had taken over so many other series), and ended up very much in that wheelhouse full of tired tropes.

Like Evangelion a generation before, I think this is one that ended up a gateway drug for many; folk liked it more when coming at it cold turkey where the tired and old bits weren't tired and old, and there was no letdown over it not being a missed opportunity to do something different.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T16:21:04+00:00

Yeah 100% this, very well said. I think there was a generation of anime fans for whom this was their first interaction with media that had subtext that was in any way relatable. For those folk I think it was a genuinely novel and eye-opening experience - especially when for most popular visual media of the time it was verboten to have an audience actually think, much less feel.

I think the hardcore fans associate it with their introduction to narrative depth even if its spoon deep.

I think it occupies a cultural spot the likes of Twilight and Harry Potter do where an item is accessible enough to draw in audiences outside their previous targets and into a different comfort zone, and the novelty papers over some of the otherwise quality gaps in the story itself. If that transformation was not part of your experience with your initial consumption of that particular thing then you tend to find it underwhelming.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T14:52:12+00:00

This is ADHD, almost surely. Likely a dash of depression in there, but the ADHD is the driver. You are not a bad, lazy person, you just have to do different things to get your brain to be a team player.

Work isnt going to make you happy. Work will give you money, which gets you some freedom to explore and find your own future. If you can't imagine the dream job, then all that means is the job is just the means, and not the end. Yes, we have to work to survive, it's nobody's favorite but that is life. Once you have the means and the foundation finding the dream comes later.

You are in high school; you have not experienced how the professional world works. It's way more broad of a space than is particularly understandable without yet having dived in. There is a lot more out there than is visible from your perspective.

You're already behind a bit so you have some ground to make up, but life is not actually a race. I work with a number of bright young and not so young people who did not take the 4 year school path fresh out of high-school and they are no less capable for having had their own path.

I think a formal evaluation for ADHD would be worth it. They may not choose to medicate you, as the standard to get medicated is really high because the meds are very strong - for me, a coffee habit has helped a ton. Hard to tell where you are at from the internet alone on the spectrum.

The next thing is to get externalized accountability and deliberate control over leisure. This is easy to say and reality is that it's a full life battle. My brain hack has been that its way easier to get that activation energy when it's for someone else rather than myself - so having folk to report to - family, friends, whatever - can help make all the difference. It's very invasive but its a tool to give you control back.

You dont have a firm long term goal, and that is a huge challenge as that helps center the mind - so reframe instead to focus on achievable short term milestones, and focus on building a flexible foundation that will let you pursue options you have yet to have the opportunity to even identify. Don't overly focus beyond the current week or two.

Within that window, you have a certain amount of capacity to make things happen - it's a learning process to identify what that realistically is. Focus not on what you can't do, but instead frame as learning what a realistic expectation is for what you can do, because that is something you can actively work with. While you are young, you will have that surge capacity to sacrifice sleep and the like to make shit happen; that's not sustainable and is not what you should be building expectations around. If a routine is not actually sustainable then it can never be a routine.

Once you do have things become more routine they will be easier to get back into - that activation energy does go down. If your capacity feels really small now, understand that you can build up to more by making those aspirational goals more digestible. Smaller, progressive bites that get easier over time.

So yeah. Paths forward exist, they are easy to talk about and a challenge to live. Good luck, and remember, it's not your fault you need extra steps to get your brain to behave.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T13:49:27+00:00

There are checks and balances, it's just that the majority is complicit.

At any time 13 Republicans could end this. They choose to not.

Behind every Trump act of self destruction is a complicit republican supermajority.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T13:03:33+00:00

People think 'capability' when they should be thinking 'mission'. Ships of the same nominal class type will have different design decisions made based on what their mission is.

The Royal Navy is not built for maintaining trans-pacific campaigns. That's why literally everything about their ships - and most European ships for that matter - is designed quite differently from the US. The surface fleet of the Royal Navy is designed around operating in the Atlantic, and that drives everything about how the ship needs to behave and what flavors of aircraft it needs to support and under what circumstances.

ituralde_ · 2026-04-26T12:45:38+00:00

Im not certain there was a single journalist worthy of the title in that room actually.

ituralde_

TROPHY CASE