November links: Skiing, deep-fried coffee, Ukrainian victories

Hello from Salt Lake City, UT. It was another whirlwind month. Since the last "Tidbits" installment, Fiona and I drove 1700 miles over three days from New Orleans to my parents' house in Utah for the holidays, picked up our puppy, and put on a hell of a Thanksgiving spread. During that long drive, we also finished three of the Murderbot Diaries series on audiobook, which I would highly recommend to anyone looking for crushable sci-fi (thanks to my pals CharlieG and NicB for that recommendation!).

For Thanksgiving, I convinced my family to let me smoke a brisket in place of a turkey. Up to that point, I had no experience with smoking meats. So, I picked up a Traeger and went on something of a "meat-blitz" over one week to get some reps in before the main event. I made short videos out of each endeavor:

• Pulled pork
• Test brisket
• Smoked apple pie
• A whole chicken
• Chicken wings
• Pork tenderloin
• The final, delicious Thanksgiving brisket

Good stuff from last month

"In a sport where being called 'crazy' is often a compliment, few of Cummings’s contemporaries knew how to regard someone who fit the term’s clinical meaning."

The Final Descent of Dean Cummings

From the outside, things seemed perfect for the former world extreme skiing champion: he had a family, a successful guiding business, and unending adventure out his front door in Valdez, Alaska. But something dark festered beneath the surface.

Outside Onlinejversteegh

A bitchin' ski edit made at Alta, UT, (where I grew up skiing) that got me excited for winter

I found this webzine about the western US pretty darn charming

Desert Rats

A love letter to people who love the desert

CowgirlCowgirl

A brief explanation of the FTX thing.

Categorizing the 10,000+ SOS calls from Garmin InReach, as an InReach owner I found this fascinating

10,000 People Have Hit ‘SOS’ on a Garmin InReach—Here Are the Data

Here’s who calls for rescue and why.

Adventure JournalJustin Housman

What happens when you deep fry coffee?

Medieval beats by Dre

Apples, ranked

Home - Apple Rankings by The Appleist Brian Frange - Comedian Brian Frange

The industry-standard, definitive, inarguable guide to ranking and reviewing munching apples. Curated by comedian Brian Frange.

Apple Rankings by The Appleist Brian Frange

Someday soon you too will ride to space in a tricked-out balloon while sipping a cocktail

Travel to Space

Space Perspective is taking space travel to a new level. Discover a new way to travel to space.

Space Perspective

Top Gun, but with a cat

Ukraine/ Security stuff

How the Ukrainians retook Kherson

The power of open-source intelligence:

The Taliban's air force

One Year On: The Taliban Air Force

By Lukas Müller in collaboration with Stijn Mitzer and Joost Oliemans This article summarises the development of the Islamic Emirate Air...

OryxOryx

Impact of US artillery on the Ukraine conflict.

The end of Chimerica

The end of the system of the world

A critical point has been reached; decoupling is for real this time.

NoahpinionNoah Smith

The "Pentomic" Division: How the US army attempted to design a force structure for a tactical nuclear conflict

The Rise and Fall of the Pentomic Army - War on the Rocks

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev failed to reach an agreement on the elimination of nuclear weapons while in power, but both men agreed in 1985 “that a

War on the RocksR.F.M. Williams

How many nuclear weapons does one really need?

The Illogic of Nuclear Escalation—Asterisk

How much is enough? It’s the most basic question in the nuclear arms race. For over sixty years, few have asked it, and even fewer have received an answer.

Requirements for the Tempest program--UK's sixth generation air dominance fighter