u/BalticBro2021

This morning, Lithuania issued an air raid alert for Vilnius, forcing everyone to seek shelter as the Lithuanian military detected wayward drones heading for Lithuanian airspace. Estonia and Latvia recently issued air raid alerts and scrambled jets after a jammed Ukrainian drone flew into their air space, forcing a jet to blow it up over Southern Estonia.

The largest recent incident took place around a week ago when two jammed Ukrainian drones attacked oil storage containers in Latvia, forcing Latvia's defense minister to resign. Ukraine alleged that Russian jamming redirected it to attack those oil containers.

If Russia is actually using jamming technology to get drones to fly into or even attack the Baltic countries, that's quite an escalation considering these are all NATO countries. It's also a gray area considering the drones are from Ukraine, and not directly launched by Russia. Russia's UN ambassador at the same time is alleging Latvia is helping Ukraine's drone campaign, and even went so far as to suggest they're letting Ukraine launch drones from Latvia too.

So if you don't follow the Ukraine war too closely, a few days ago, Russia attacked a UN aid convoy consisting of white SUVs with massive "UN" letters on the side with drones. This convoy was delivering aid to civilians in Kherson when it came under attack.

The UN released a statement:

"The Secretary-General is alarmed that a United Nations vehicle was struck twice in Kherson city in Ukraine on 14 May.

The clearly-marked vehicle was part of an inter-agency humanitarian mission, led by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, that had been notified to the parties well in advance.

The United Nations is working to establish the full facts surrounding this incident.

The Secretary-General reiterates that international law, including international humanitarian law, must be respected at all times.  Civilians and civilian objects, including humanitarian relief personnel and objects used for humanitarian relief operations, must be respected and protected at all times."

The problem is, it's not simply a mystery attack with drones of unknown origin, Russia literally took credit for it. A Russian military Telegram channel released a screen recording of the attack and accused the UN of transporting Ukrainian soldiers around Kherson which we all know is BS. In the video, you can clearly see "UN" written on the SUVs. I'm not going to link it here but you can easily find the video.

I have to wonder though, what is there to investigate? Russia is literally bragging about attacking the convoy and released a video, yet the UN can't even name who did it and is acting like they don't know anything. Even António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, tweeted out that he was "Alarmed that a clearly-marked UN vehicle was struck twice in Kherson city in Ukraine this week." Well who did it? If you're that alarmed why don't you call out who did it?

I used to have a lot of respect for the UN, but we've known for years the UN is incapable of preventing wars or bringing them to an end, but has the UN seriously reached the level where it's unwilling to do the bare minimum to respond to direct military aggression against itself? It honestly feels like the UN has become a totally powerless, irrelevant organization like the League of Nations at the start of WWII. I think it needs to be totally overhauled and rebuilt from the ground up.

So it looks like Bill Cassidy in Louisiana is going to not make it into the runoff and will get replaced by a more hardcore MAGA Republican. In Texas, it looks like Ken Paxton is going to win the runoff and defeat John Cornyn. In Indiana, several of the State senators who voted against gerrymandering were voted out in favor of more hardcore MAGA candidates. Not that I'm a John Cornyn or Bill Cassidy fan in the slightest, but if MAGA is as unpopular as people say it is, and if Democrats are projected to win big in November, why isn't that bleeding over to help more moderate Republican politicians? It seems the way you get elected in a Republican primary is to become as MAGA as humanly possible. You would think if Trump is pushing a lot of conservative voters to the Democrats, they'd vote for people like John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy but that's clearly not happening.

So my son got a job in Philadelphia and is planning on moving there in a few weeks. He owns a car and lives with us but will not be taking his car as he plans on sticking with public transportation and buying a bike. His car is under our car insurance too. He's planning on swapping his license over and registering to vote ASAP as he'd rather vote there. We have USAA and want to keep him on our car insurance so he can drive when he visits and also rent cars if needed. When he gets his new license out there, do we need to notify USAA? I'm guessing they'll see he swapped licenses and I'm wondering if that'll cause problems?

Today the Virginia supreme court overturned the Virginia redistricting referendum, even though it passed with a majority of votes. For some reason Virginia can't redistrict with a literal vote yet all these Red states can just do whatever they want. Seems like and overreach of the judiciary to be able to overturn a literal election outside of credible evidence of voter fraud. What do you think?

So I have a 2023 Integra and had a long day at work and coming off the highway off ramp heading home, I went to shift from 6th gear to 4th, but accidentally went to second and over-revved the car. I was probably at around 45-50mph and the flashing shift light came on. Immediately put it in neutral and let it coast for a bit. Didn't notice any strong smells and it seemed to drive fine after that, but then again I was only like 5 minutes away from home. I pray I didn't just blow up my engine or transmission. Anyone done this before? Last thing I need right now.

So my current bike is getting old and needs some work so I'm considering getting a new one soon. It's a flat bar large sized Specialized Sirrus from over 10 years ago. Because it's flat barred, I can't get it in my car, and I haven't found a bike rack that works well. I've seen several pictures of people getting full bicycles in their Integras, including on this subreddit. Those of you who bike and can get your bike in your Integra, what do you have? What size bike is it too? I'm looking at a 56CM Specialized Roubaix or Trek Domane SL.

So I was listening to NPR tonight and they had an interesting story. I guess scientists have discovered they can use CRISPR to specifically encode certain genes to reencode themselves generation after generation. If you're unfamiliar with CRISPR, it's a gene editing tool which allows scientists to insert traits in DNA and change things. For example, one could theoretically eliminate genetic diseases like Sickle Cell disease by editing out the faulty gene. The way DNA typically works is offspring have generally a 50% chance to express a certain trait inherited from a parent. Passed down, that means the next generation after that will have a 25% chance of inheriting the target gene and so on.

What scientists have discovered is it's possible to use CRISPR to encode genes to edit themselves in generation after generation, which means there will be a 100% chance the targeted gene change is expressed.

What this means is it's theoretically possible now to cause entire species to go extinct using CRISPR. For example, you could edit in a gene which causes infertility in a specific gender of a species, that gets passed down until no members are able to reproduce and the species become extinct.

One such species profiled were screwworms, which is a type of fly whose larvae cause horrific parasitic infections in wild animals and livestock by laying eggs in exposed wounds which can become fatal. Scientists have considered if they should be gene edited to go extinct. Should pest species be eradicated such as screwworms, mosquitoes with malaria, lyme disease in ticks etc?