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tda

Anyone else chuckle at the term "laser-induced mortality"?

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Laser-induced rapid scheduled disassembly.

Ah, as in missile defense systems. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

I wonder how much discussion it took to settle on that phrasing. Or maybe there is precedent?

I had a big one at reading one phrase, "lithic braking"

Lithobraking, I think? Cf aerobeaking :)

Laser-induced unscheduled disassembly would be how the mosquitoes describe it.

I wonder if it is just heat/denaturing of mosquito polypeptides, or if electrical signals in their brian fry from too much instantaneous power.

I wonder how the SDI guys used to refer to targets getting taken out by lasers. Oh wait, they didn't have to worry about it as it never worked!

Defense Secretary Espers gave a speech a few weeks ago where he said China and Russia had directed energy weapons on satellites. This was largely ignored with all the other shit going on.

Satellites are easy. They're just sitting ducks. ICBM re-entry vehicles are much tougher.

And more likely to have an ablative heat shield on the side pointing at you. Adding a little heat to a thing already being heated a lot by the atmosphere isn't as effective as blinding a spy telescope aimed at you.

Good to hear America has espers, though. As shown in Akira, espers beat directed energy weapons on satellites.

They might have just been having fun with the title.

Not really. It sounds like Newspeak.

That or humor.

It means killing them using lasers.

You call it what it is and people do not like it.

Maybe my opinion that the title is using "Newspeak" was not that wrong after all.

I love reading interesting verbose paper titles. I’ve also thought it might be fun if they added subtitles:

> Optical tracking and laser-induced mortality of insects during flight

> Or, zapping mozzies WITH LASERZ!

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