It is one of those daily digest pages. The booster stories are under the Alaska one.

Howdy.

Was trying really hard to keep my social internet confined to a couple of discord servers, but sometimes you just need a threading comment system in your life, ya know?

The main thing going on here right now is that we somehow threaded the needle and bought a house with modest means during the pandemic. Shit is wild out there. The experience was pretty demoralizing as the price floor slowly floated up to our purchasing level. The plan had been to buy a small home in a nearby town of 10K with a detached shop. There were loads of these in our price range when we realized we were in a position to buy a home. But as the process progressed and prices went up month after month we ended up in a town half that size with no outbuildings.

From a day to day perspective this town is fine. But I've been trying to get into woodworking with hand tools and not having a dedicated space for that is frustrating. The plan right now is to build a low roman style workbench and drag it outside when in use. The mosquitos are all for this, but addressing a few of the drainage issues on the lot was pretty simple and hopefully their population will drop down.

Otherwise, I'm mostly trying to beat back my inner misanthrope. Been a wild five years to live in a red state.

China is now the great power of Asia—or so Beijing believes

Just an aside, but who else would it be?

Anyways.

Austraila and France entered into their deal to buy subs back in 2016. There was reporting back then (AFR) that the subs could be nuclear powered in the end as they selected a nuclear design and had converted it to diesel.

France wiffed on the project. This was bad from the obvious point of view, but also because the new subs were supposed to replace existing ships that were near end of life.

If the end goal is a nuclear sub, their realistic vendors were only ever France, UK, and US. One of those is already tried and failed.

I'm not saying that the deterioration in relations with China isn't a factor, just that it might not be the sole cause.