https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/01/pentagon-munitions-ukraine-halt-00436048

Explanation (which might be wrong, since I’m writing this after banging my head against a wall. Please do correct me if I’m wrong):

In regular numbering systems (i.e., decimal), we exhaust all 10 digits (0–9) before we reach two-digit numbers. The first number to require 3 digits is 10². The first to use 4 is 10³, and so on.

In music intervals, there is no “0”. The interval c’–c’, for instance, is called a prime (1). This has the funny consequence that moving by a fifth and then by a fourth doesn’t land you on the ninth, but the octave (8). Moving by an octave and then another octave gets you to the 15th, not the 16th.

In Excel, shit hits the fan when you need to convert column names (A, B, C…) to numbers (0, 1, 2…). Since we use 26 characters as our ‘digits’, we’re in the hexavigesimal system. Knowing what I told you in the first paragraph, you’d expect the first double-digit column (AA) to be 26. And you’re right.

However, when do we need 3 digits? Which column is column AAA? A sane person would say it’s 26², so 676. Ha! No. Column number 676 is actually ZA. What gives? Well, we only ditch the zero for single digit numbers. All subsequent columns actually use 27 different characters, the ‘empty character’ being one of them. That’s where we get the ‘single digit’ – there actually is a second digit, only it’s empty.

So the column AAA actually has index 702, or 26×27. Which index does the column AAAA have? 26×27². The system of adding powers of the base works, only we changed bases midway through.

You can see the lopsidedness in the index lookup table (I’m not displaying all characters for brevity). Sane number systems have square tables. Excel’s is 26×27 (shown are 4×5).

WASHINGTON (AP) — Legally mandated U.S. national climate assessments seem to have disappeared from the federal websites built to display them, making it harder for state and local governments and the public to learn what to expect in their backyards from a warming world.

Scientists said the peer-reviewed authoritative reports save money and lives. Websites for the national assessments and the U.S. Global Change Research Program were down Monday and Tuesday with no links, notes or referrals elsewhere. The White House, which was responsible for the assessments, said the information will be housed within NASA to comply with the law, but gave no further details.

Searches for the assessments on NASA websites did not turn them up. NASA did not respond to requests for information. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which coordinated the information in the assessments, did not respond to repeated inquiries.

https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-national-assessment-nasa-white-house-057cec699caef90832d8b10f21a6ffe8

Ocalan’s anti-Israel stance is well-known, as his group was based in the Bekaa Valley in the 1980s, cooperating with the leftist Palestinian liberation groups. In the document, Ocalan presents himself as the leader who could stop Israel from becoming a hegemonic power in the Middle East.

"Israel has been at this for 30 years. For three decades, Israel has been secretly promising us a state," Ocalan said during the meeting, according to the document.

He added that Israel was using the media to encourage Kurds to establish an independent state. "Whoever aligns the Kurds with themselves will gain dominance in the Middle East," he said. "They realized this before I did."

He also described an exchange of messages with then-Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir in 1982, when Ocalan was based in Damascus under the protection of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad.

A series of Israeli governments lent political and military support to Turkey in the 1990s, establishing a close alliance with secularist generals at that time.

But under Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the relationship has deteriorated, and Ankara has occasionally accused Israel of indirectly supporting the PKK.

In November, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar openly called for closer relations between Israel and Kurdish communities, saying that his country should reach out to Kurds and other regional minorities that are "natural" allies. Ocalan said the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad also contacted him in Moscow, where he was seeking refuge from Turkish authorities in 1998, telling him they could hide him even in Russia.

PKK's Abdullah Ocalan: 'No Israeli dominance through Kurds'

Since the Israel-Iran conflict erupted last year, Turkey has found an unexpected ally: Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

^{Ragip Soylu (Middle East Eye)}

Outdoor working has been banned during the hottest parts of the day in more than half of Italy’s regions as an extreme heatwave that has smashed June temperature records in Spain and Portugal continues to grip large swathes of Europe.

The savage temperatures are believed to have claimed at least three lives, including that of a small boy who is thought to have died from heatstroke while in a car in Catalonia’s Tarragona province on Tuesday afternoon.

In Palermo, Sicily, a 53-year-old woman died on Monday after fainting while walking along a street. She had reportedly suffered from a heart condition.

Italy limits outdoor work as heatwave breaks records across Europe

June temperature records have been broken in Portugal and Spain, as French schools close amid heat

^{Angela Giuffrida (The Guardian)}

So, I still receive telemetry information from my old lease car, a Kia e-Niro, to my app. A huge, HUGE privacy issue.

I made sure to remove my profile from the car before turning it in, and doing a factory reset of the car's software.

I can see everything, AC, whether there are doors open, odometer, and above all, location.

Also tried to see if I can turn off the AC, but any commands throw an error, so disabling my account on the car at least did something 😅

I had it in the Netherlands, it's in Poland, and it looks like it's on its way to Ukraine.

Kia, you need to check your security.

Edit:

Holy shit it gets real bad. I can lock and unlock the car.