## Introduction

I travel constantly—averaging around 60 flights per year—and know firsthand the complexity of juggling travel across multiple continents, modes of transportation, and back to back meetings. When you're city hopping this frequently, it helps to have a system to collect it all that avoids wasting precious time and energy. From sketching out early travel plans to tracking each component of a trip, organizing travel requires serious thought. I've organically spent years refining my own method for planning and organizing complex travel. I bring you **Standard Travel Notation**: a streamlined, human- and machine-readable schedule format that lets you (and anyone helping you) see exactly where you're headed, how you'll get there, and what you'll do when you arrive.

This notation was born out of necessity, and has worked brilliantly for organizing years of travel. I needed a system that helped me sketch out upcoming itineraries and then maintain the details as plans firmed up. By keeping the format minimal and consistent, anyone—whether it's a colleague, assistant, or AI—can understand the details of my travel at a glance. The collaborative aspect is essential when you have others helping coordinate high-volume travel bookings and inevitable last-minute changes.

I have iterated on this approach specifically to compress dense travel schedules into something legible that's quick to draft, easy to share, and flexible enough to rearrange as events and demands on my time inevitably shift. If I need to push a meeting by a day or squeeze in a new destination, I can do so without rewriting my entire itinerary. Each entry clearly shows location, lodging, and transport details, with additional room for events and people I need to see nested underneath. The key is making each component simple to spot—using standard IATA airport codes for flights, consistent 24-hour time formats, and short, consistent lines for each transport mode.

One word of caution though—with such an easy tool to lay out months of travel, it can be easy overbook and forget that your body still needs downtime to acclimate. This system won't solve jet lag or magically shorten flights, but for trips beyond a week (or truly epic half-year itineraries), adopting this notation can provide real clarity and reduces stress.

## Why You Need a Travel Notation System

Have you ever found yourself digging through emails, text messages, and calendar invites just to piece together your travel schedule? I certainly have, and it's incredibly frustrating, especially when you're already jet-lagged in a foreign country.

Think about it—if you're taking just four trips a year, each with multiple destinations, you're already juggling dozens of details. Now multiply that for frequent travelers who might be on the road weekly. Without a system, you're bound to miss something important.

What I love most about using a standardized notation is how it grows with you. Starting with a simple outline like "FLIGHT June 10 SFO → LAX" gives you enough structure to plan around, even before you've booked anything. Then as details firm up, you add the specific flight times, reservation numbers, and any other relevant information.

And let's be honest—nothing makes you feel more in control than having your entire travel year laid out in a format you can skim in seconds. It's been a game-changer for me, and I bet it will be for you too.

## Syntax Reference

For ease, the Standard Travel Notation syntax is written in Markdown (https://www.markdownguide.org/basic-syntax/), producing a clear list format that works across many kinds of notating applications. I recommend Reflect (https://reflect.app/), as it makes lists collapsible and easy to view.

### 3.1 Entry

Let's start with the basics. An Entry line shows where you'll be and for how long:

```
- June 7–10: San Francisco, CA
```

It's simple but powerful. Entries start with bullets (`-` in markdown) and use nested bullets to record information nested within like where you'll stay or how you'll get round. Exact times go in transport lines to keep complexity at the top level to a minimum.

Here's what it looks like in practice:

```
- June 1–4: Los Angeles, CA
- June 4–7: New York, NY
- June 7–10: San Francisco, CA
- June 10–26: Los Angeles, CA
```

### 3.2 Accommodation & Activities

Where are you staying and what are you doing while at that place? Within each Entry block, add these details underneath:

```
- March 1–4: Los Angeles, CA
  - Stay: One Hotel West Hollywood (123456)
  - Meeting with local partners
```

I recommend using the **Stay:** keyword to highlight your accommodations and include booking reference numbers or other access details as needed, but otherwise, keep it free-form. You can add as much or as little detail as you need.

### 3.3 Transport Lines

Now for the fun part—how are you getting from place to place? Each `Transport Line` describes one travel segment:

```
FLIGHT June 10 11:15 SFO → 12:45 LAX (UA1234 - 5HBG89)
```

Breaking that down:
- First, name your mode of transport: `FLIGHT`, `TRAIN`, `CAR`, `HELICOPTER`, etc.
- Then add the date and departure time
- Follow with origin → destination (with that helpful arrow)
- Add arrival time if you know it
- Finish with the flight number and the booking reference in parentheses

The beauty of this format is its flexibility. You don't need every detail right away. While sketching out a travel itinerary, you can start with:

```
FLIGHT June 10 SFO → LAX
```

And fill in the rest later once the booking is made:

```
FLIGHT June 10 11:15 SFO → 12:45 LAX (UA1234 - 5HBG89)
```

Let's look at a few more examples:

```
TRAIN November 11 13:11 BBY → 16:50 NYP (Acela 2167 - B26712)
```

```
CAR October 14 14:15 Ōsaka Station → 14:50 KIX (BMW - 大阪 500 さ 34-56)
```

```
HELICOPTER April 3 10:45 Yellowstone → 11:15 BZN (HeliAir - HL556)
```

Now you can instantly see what's happening, when, and where. No more scrolling through endless confirmation emails!

These `Transport Lines` will be appended in order to your `Entries`. So a flight leaving one city would be placed at the end of the Entry like so:

```
- June 7–10: San Francisco, CA
  - Stay: The Battery San Francisco (439)
  - FLIGHT June 10 11:15 SFO → 12:45 LAX (UA1234 - 5HBG89)
```

### 3.4 Detail Lines

Sometimes you'll have day trips or activities that deserve their own notation. Just nest these bullet points under your main entry:

```
- March 4–7: New York, NY
  - Stay: Crosby Street Hotel
  - March 4: Attending Private Company Conference (383 Madison Ave)
```

This gives me a complete picture of a given day's movements without breaking my main itinerary structure.

## Example Schedule

Let me show you how this all comes together. Here's a minimal working example that illustrates my typical usage:

```
# 2025 Travel Schedule

- June: 7–10: San Francisco, CA
  - Stay: The Battery San Francisco (439)
  - FLIGHT June 10 11:15 SFO → 12:45 LAX (UA1234 - 5HBG89)
- June 10–14: New York, NY
  - Stay: Crosby Street Hotel (98765)
  - FLIGHT June 14 16:45 JFK → 20:05 LAX (AA567 - ABCD12)
- June 14–21: Los Angeles, CA
  - Stay: One Hotel West Hollywood (123456)
  - Meeting with partners in Malibu
  - FLIGHT June 21 13:30 LAX → 22:05 JFK (AA23 - YGL43K)
```

Isn't that clean? At a glance, I can see my entire two week-long trip across three cities, including where I'm staying and how I'm getting around. When I'm planning collaboratively with my team, they can easily update the file with booking details as arrangements are confirmed.

I typically start with basic transport outlines to sketch:

```
- February 8–13: Manila, PH
  - Stay: TBD
  - FLIGHT February 13 MNL → KIX
```

And can update them as the plan gets booked:

```
- February 8–13: Manila, PH
  - Stay: Ascott Bonifacio City (A434024393)
  - FLIGHT February 13 14:35 MNL → 19:15 KIX (PR408 - ATVY5S)
```

This graduated approach means I can sketch out my travel months in advance, even before I've locked in specific flights or hotels.

## Advanced Topics

### 5.1 Time Zones & 24-Hour Format

I always use **24-Hour Format** (e.g., `13:45` instead of `1:45 PM`). Why? It's clearer and makes time zone math simple.

When you're crossing time zones, list local times for each location. Need more clarity? You can add UTC offsets or simply use +1 on the time:

```
FLIGHT June 15 22:00 JFK → 05:00+1 LHR
```

This might seem like overkill for casual trips, but trust me—when you're zigzagging across continents, this level of detail prevents costly mistakes.

### 5.2 Multi-Stop Transport

Got a journey with layover or back to back legs? Break each segment into its own line:

```
FLIGHT June 15 09:00 AMS → 11:00 CDG (KL1234)
FLIGHT June 15 12:30 CDG → 15:00 LHR (KL5678)
CAR June 15 15:45 LHR → 16:50 Ham Yard Hotel (Taxi)
```

This makes it crystal clear when and where you're connecting, which is crucial information when you're rushing through an unfamiliar airport.

### 5.3 Entry-Level Day Trips & Complex Excursions

Short trips that don't require overnight stays? List them inline under your main destination:

```
- March 6: Philadelphia, PA (Day Trip)
  - TRAIN March 6 09:05 NYP → 11:05 PHL (Acela 2151 - B112233)
  - Conference at Pennsylvania Convention Center
  - TRAIN March 6 18:30 PHL → 20:30 NYP (Acela 2174 - B332211)
```

This approach keeps your schedule organized chronologically while still capturing all your movements.

## Final Thoughts

I created Standard Travel Notation because I needed a better way to manage my hectic travel schedule, and it's transformed how I plan my journeys. It cuts through chaos, helps me spot scheduling conflicts before they happen, and keeps everyone involved on the same page.

Ever struggled with organizing and finding details on a multi-stop trip while you're jetlagged? Or found yourself frantically searching for flight details while standing in an airport check-in line? Or realized too late that you booked overlapping commitments in different cities? This system prevents those headaches by giving you a bird's-eye view of your entire travel landscape and all the details in between.

The beauty of this notation is its simplicity—it takes just minutes to learn but can save you hours of stress. No matter who you are, if you travel regularly, having a consistent way to organize that travel can make all the difference.

One final reminder: even with the world's best organization system, you're still a human being who needs rest. Use this notation to help you travel smarter, not just more. After all, seeing the world should be sometimes enjoyable, not just exhausting.

Start small with your next trip, and I bet you'll never go back to your old way of planning travel again.

A better notation system for planning and organizing complex travel schedules.

Standard Travel Notation

### Maximizing Habitability
Keeping the majority of our planet hospitable for human activity next century and beyond must become a priority for every person, business, and government.

### Planetary Weather Disruption
Our society’s emissions and rising atmosphereric water vapor have created a heat storage feedback loop that disrupts water cycles and causes dangerous changes in our weather. We must prepare for the cost of increasingly polarized weather.

### Upcoming Refugee Crises
Disruptions in local water cycles and rising temperatures across the most delicate economies in the world will cause tens of millions of people to be forced from their homes as their land becomes unlivable.

### Emission Reduction
CO2, CH4, and Fluorocarbon emissions from human activity are the chemicals at the heart of the changing climate. We must prevent these emissions in order to avoid additional permanent damage to our planet.

### Nuclear Energy
We must add additional bedrock fission generation capacity to help anchor our grid with carbon-free electricity.

### Desalination
Scaling fission-powered desalination will be needed to support populations trapped in yearslong droughts. Mobile, barge-based marine reactors can provide emissionless power for coastal or floating desalination operations.

### Fusion
Developing the technology to sustain a net positive fusion reaction will change the world. Generating our electricity from nuclear fusion reactions is a massive step forward for humanity and will allow us to end our dependence on carbon-based fuels.

### Soot Reduction
Airborne soot microparticles from fuel burning and wildfires are building up in human lungs and reducing brain function and lifespan. It is critical for human productivity to breathe air free of soot and organic compounds.

### Controlling Plastics
Plastic waste buildup on our land and in our water is leading to plastic microparticles coating the entire world. From the depths of the ocean to the highest glaciers, plastic microparticles are everywhere. Through the food we eat and the water we drink, plastic is building up in humans and disrupting countless processes within the body.

We must regulate plastic usage and disposal around the globe. We must also work to remove plastic buildup across the planet and, in particular, the ocean, in order to slow the global spread of plastic microparticles.

### Private Climate Investment
Increasing private investment in climate projects and technologies to help humanity manage the outcomes of our emissions is key to ensuring action in the time available.

### Carbon-Free Money
New financial technologies are rapidly becoming major catalysts for carbon production. Investment is our most important weapon against climate change, and so money itself should not be a contributor to it.

Fixing our planet’s atmosphere is a key challenge for this century. Here are my beliefs about focus areas for climate action in 2022.

2022 Climate Notes

### Subscriptions Aren't Free
The SaaS subscription model is the de facto standard for business-to-business startups and the unspoken expectation of venture capitalists.

Superficially, a subscription model makes sense for early stage companies. By definition, it provides consistent revenue for an otherwise volatile business, even if no new customers are acquired (or if net churn is zero). And, a more approachable cost increases conversion and can help boost lifetime value. As businesses grow, subscriptions are also an excellent test of how well their product serves customers.

However, a subscription model comes with hidden risks for new companies at a time when developing a deep understanding of their customers is vastly more important than quick revenue. This risk can be separated into two buckets: the business and its customer relationships.


##### Subscription Business Risks:
- Optimization around fear of churn
- Increased difficulty justifying evolutionary changes due to fear of churn
- Decision-making bias toward short-term outcomes
- Landing on a comfortable local maxima with a 'good-enough' product

##### Subscription Customer Relationships:
- Provisional by nature
- Product feedback bias toward short-term, granular features
- Customers are less likely to help guide overall product direction
- If product does not meet customer needs, negative feedback is limited to churn

---

### Licenses Support Optimization

Mature businesses and startups alike have embraced the software-as-a-service model. Widespread adoption of subscriptions makes it easy to assume that licenses are inherently inferior; their pricing is less approachable and they require consistent sales for sustainable revenue.

However, these perceived drawbacks are exactly why a license model is an extremely valuable tool for early stage companies. During the product optimization phase, licenses are an excellent way to quickly hone a product to effectively meet customer needs. They increase feedback volume and quality, support greater executional freedom, and closely align business and customer incentives.

Startups will have to think carefully about unit economics when pricing licenses, but declining infrastructure costs mean they can still maintain significant margins over the license term (I should know, I sell licenses to cloud storage). Thoughtful pricing can even make licenses a very attractive investment.

##### License Business Benefits:

- Capital up front accelerates iteration and supports significant product evolution without fear of losing subscribers
- Closing higher-priced sales requires deep understanding of customer need and provides greater product validatation
- Immediate understanding of customer LTV
- SaaS infrastructure costs decrease predictably year-over-year
- Foundation for upsell opportunities in the future

##### License Customer Relationships:

- License investment aligns customers with long-term objectives of the business
- Builds product-focused customer relationship instead of a price-focused one
- Easy to build a community of customers for product feedback and requests
- Customers who disagree with product changes are quick to explain why instead of simply cancelling a subscription
- Data from license customers helps inform future subscription pricing

Ultimately, most B2B startups will adopt a subscription model as their product matures. Increased conversion and recurring revenue are significant benefits for businesses that can reliably predict their current CAC and LTV. However, for pre- product-market fit startups with no historical data, rapid iteration and strong customer relationships are much more important as they develop the best possible product for their market.

Silicon Valley is over-indexing on recurring revenue. Far too many founders and investors assume that the standard revenue model for large software businesses will translate well to small ones. Selling licenses early on helps new companies focus on long-term optimization for millions of users instead short-term optimization for a few thousand dollars in recurring revenue.

Most new startups default to a subscription model for their software. Should they consider selling licenses instead?

Licenses in a Subscription World

### Productivity Infrastructure Today
I believe that digital work today has four fundamental pillars: files, people, messages, and knowledge. For each pillar, tens or hundreds of services exist with only minute differences in execution or focus.

**Files**

Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, S3, and others. Files also live in places that aren't explicitly 'storage' like Slack, Gmail, CRMs, and even our calendars.

**People**

Email addresses, Facebook accounts, CRM entries, iPhone contacts, Slack members, LinkedIn, GitHub. Our digital footprints comprise so many different addresses and profiles.

**Communication**

*Text*: LinkedIn, Email, Slack, Messenger, Text, SMS, IRC, WhatsApp, Discord, Twitter, Drift, Intercom, iMessage, Twilio, Signal, SnapChat.

*Audio/Video*: Slack, Messenger, Zoom, Google Meet, Discord, SIP, VoIP, GoToMeeting, WhatsApp, Skype, FaceTime.

Fundamentally, users are looking for ways to connect with others. Every day, I access between five and ten messaging services in order to stay in touch with the people in my life. If I wanted to send a digital message, I bet I could find more than 100 ways to do it. Some of those messages might have blue bubbles, or grey, or green, some will be plaintext, and others will have richer formatting. A message is a message is a message. It's the same story with audio and video; I could start a real time call with anyone through a dozen different services. There are far more tools that can send text, voice, or video than we need. All of them are different takes on the same fundamental interface for connecting with others through messages or calls.

**Knowledge**

Notion, Slight, Slab, Evernote, Zendesk, Crunchbase, Wikipedia, Confluence, Freshdesk, Monday.com, Trello, Basecamp.

While knowledge can certainly be stored in files, it’s a distinct pillar because of the ways in which it is organized. For example, a flat list of files does not itself contain explicit knowledge, but a folder hierarchy does. What sets knowledge apart from arbitrary data is the effort people have made to organize and link it for others to navigate and consume.

### Productivity Infrastructure Tomorrow

Across each of the four pillars of digital work, there is an opportunity to universalize their underlying infrastructure by abstractly understanding the atomic concepts upon which today’s productivity tools are built. This understanding can power translation layers that seamlessly move data to and from existing services. With these layers in hand, we can tightly link or even replace all our tools while simultaneously eliminating context switching. This new infrastructure is the foundation upon which we can radically rethink productivity.

**Files**

With my team at Rethink, I have already successfully created a universal infrastructure for binary data. It is now possible to access a file anywhere on the cloud with just a single pathname. To do this, we created a translation layer that can abstractly read and write data over any API.

**People**

The translation layer concept is equally applicable to other data. We can develop a system that understands an atomic 'person' and can link the many addresses at which they can be contacted such as Slack, Email, phone, social media, and even physical addresses. By integrating the many tools through which we connect with people, we can build the most comprehensive possible understanding of our networks. This universal contact book reduces friction and removes the onus of knowing which of the many communication tools to use in order to reach someone.

**Communication**

Universal messaging is where these translation layers get really interesting. We could send messages across services, and create communication systems that are not concerned with where messages come from or where they’re going.

When combined with a universal understanding of the people with whom we communicate, this concept becomes exponentially more powerful. Any person you need to reach is immediately accessible to you through one tool instead of ten. We can build a single inbox for everything: emails, texts, slack, social networks, and many others.

Integrated messaging platforms have already been proven to be phenomenally effective.

Intercom does it for customer communication channels. Through their interface, I can reply to messages coming in from email, on-site chat, or Facebook. This enables me to focus on helping customers instead of where I should go to type my response. This is an incredible tool and it astounds me that no one has created the same kind of translation layer for any message. I would use this universal messenger for my personal and work communication in a heartbeat because I am tired of being spread over so. many. different. services.

Audio and video can also be wrangled. Infrastructure has become so commodity that the very same universal messenger could support real time communication just as easily as text content.

A translation layer for communication would remove context switching entirely—the greatest single threat to productivity—and instead allow people to focus solely on communication itself. No longer do we need to consider the text box into which we're typing our message or the color of the bubble in which the message will be sent. We could even understand physical destinations. There exist APIs today that can send a paper and ink postcard using just an HTML formatted message and a POST request. Because it is trivial to support any communication API in our translation layer, hitting send in Gmail could result in the arrival of a letter if we so desired.

**Knowledge**

While the concept of a unit of ‘knowledge’ is a bit more nebulous and harder to reduce than a file, person, or message, each of the other translation layers are already facilitating knowledge storage and retrieval, albeit unknowingly. So, there’s an opportunity to build a fourth translation layer for knowledge based on an understanding of the structures and organizational systems used to identify arbitrary information as ‘knowledge’ (such wikis, tables or kanban boards). Furthermore, by integrating all four translation layers, we can power a universal knowledge base that can self-populate and self-organize in response to any new information that is created or received.

### Why Now?

Today, our dependence on an overwhelming number of siloed tools is starting to work against us. Tens of thousands of businesses have thought deeply about modern productivity and put forth a plethora of products that help us to connect with one another or create, consume, and organize information. Studying the thinking captured in their products has shown that it’s possible to reduce the problems they solve to these four fundamental concepts: files, people, communication, and knowledge. The creation of translation layers will help us to cut out the overhead of navigating disjointed tools and scattered data. They can also power a completely new breed of cloud productivity applications and pave the way for something far more important: a new operating system for the cloud.

We have reached peak cloud. It's time we standardize productivity data.

A Proposal for Cloud Translation Layers

### Stories stick
For tens of thousands of years, humans have used stories to efficiently inform our perception of reality.
Stories help listeners to accept and dismiss facts at the expense of interpreting those facts ourselves.
In the information age, the rate at which stories can evolve has been massively accelerated.
Now, many versions of the same story can easily survive because 'retelling' them has become practically effortless (e.g. sharing).
The oral tradition that once helped humans understand the world and unify tribes through opinion can now be leveraged to edit perceived reality.

### Story Telling at Scale
The stories told to billions of individuals come from a shrinking set of digital information providers.
This consolidation of narrative is helping to cluster opinions around a smaller number of accepted truths.
When a human brain's tendency to distort reality in order to fit biases is combined with the availability of information today, tribes of opinion can easily form around isolated islands of information.

### Managing information
The [brain's ability](https://aeon.co/essays/how-our-brain-sculpts-experience-in-line-with-our-expectations) to detach from objective reality is a biological artifact we must overcome or we risk the loss of truth itself.
However, centralized sources of truth are dangerous and easily abused. There is no perfect solution yet.

The age of the opinion as fact has dawned. So how do we protect objective reality?

Better Facts

### App and Data Storage History
Databases were popularized by the client-server boom of the 90s. Enterprises wanted a centralized place where many systems could interact with their data all at the same time.

The database contract: Define a consistent data schema and in turn enterprise applications get a single server for all their data that is accessible to multiple clients at once.

By the 2000s, applications were comprised of rich clients (e.g. big Java apps) and thin clients (e.g. a PHP page). Both types of clients still read data directly from databases.

Rich clients had far more features than thin clients, but their distribution had to be managed so clients could stay in sync with the server. (e.g. a database migration required every computer running that rich client to have the latest version in order to function).

Thin clients could be instantly distributed via the stateless HTTP protocol, but could not provide the majority of features rich clients offered. Thin clients were only capable of static presentation and very simple interaction. To overcome this, thin clients forced business logic to be shifted into rich backends running on central servers.

### Apps Today
Practially no applications today use a database’s built-in user system, each instead creating their own user system, business logic, permissions, and sometimes even locking mechanisms to serve data to clients.

These clients no longer directly access data, and instead rely on rich backends to read data from the database on their behalf, which causes the duplication of a large amount of business logic that databases once provided.

Every cloud app today is siloed and all reimplement the same core patterns—create, read, update, and delete—dozens or hundreds of times in order to provide a nonstandard API that only their clients can consume. (We grew very familiar with just how non-standard these APIs are when we began connecting to many external SaaS apps.)

### The Bet
Rethink reimagines cloud app architecture from first principles.

Rethink decouples the data layer from the application layer by providing a developer-friendly cloud filesystem. By removing the need for a single, rigid database, it allows software to return to a rich client model with a thin backend. This also cuts out an enormous amount of duplicated business logic present in today’s cloud applications.

On the data layer, the cloud file system can replace a central database entirely. Querying can be provided via a MacOS Spotlight-like indexing functionality and SQLite support. It can read and write any type of data, far exceeding databases’ primarily numerical and textual support, it provides read/write locks (ACID), and even supports real-time collaboration for any file via Websockets.

Today’s application backends keep data consistent by defining table schemas and migrations; Rethink’s filesystem accomplishes the same by allowing rich client applications to specify and maintain file structure, just as desktop apps have for decades.

Not only can a filesystem replace a database, but files have several distinct advantages too. Files are a lot more user-friendly: they provide a skeuomorphic interface to data, they can represent a complete unit of work that is user-portable, and they are interoperable by default when using multi-decade–old file standards. Files represent an abstract interface that allows applications to store any data they need together, while databases depend on external services to store binary files at scale.

This new platform shifts the business logic typically run on servers today back onto client devices. This makes Rethink incredibly scalable because users’ edge devices provide the majority of application compute instead of Rethink’s cloud backend. Because of this, deploying an app on Rethink can be done in one-click and developers don’t need to think about costly hosting or complex network setups.

With the near-universal prevalence of Chromium—an open-source browser engine that powers Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, as well as the relatively recent release of HTML5, the web is so fully featured that we can make the return to rich clients without any distribution trade offs. These new clients can even directly access desktop hardware and run at near-native speeds with WebAssembly. A WebAssembly core also enables these cloud apps to be written in many more languages than just JavaScript.

Cloud filesystem-powered applications return to the efficient model of direct data access, skipping the APIs and databases typically required by cloud apps and gain further advantages by leveraging the latest web technologies to complete a true cloud OS.

Software's history holds the key to an evolutionary step for cloud infrastructure.

Considering New Operating Systems

### Earth's Insulation and the Water Cycle

Earth relies on water to maintain a stable and comfortable temperature. Water is excellent at absorbing a lot of heat. As our Sun's energy evaporates water off of the Earth's surface, the resulting water vapor acts as insulation for the planet. Water vapor accounts for 2-3% of the Earth's atmosphere which allows the Earth to store energy and remain warm.

Water itself is a short-lived insulator owing to Earth's natural water cycle. After being evaporated by the Sun, the stored energy is dissipated as wind and rain. This cycle pulls water out of the atmosphere and back to the planet's surface where it can evaporate once again.

Water is not alone in helping to insulate Earth. Gasses like CO2 also accumulate and store heat in the atmosphere though they cannot store quite as much heat as water. CO2 is significantly more dangerous to Earth's temperature regulation because it lacks a process that can effectively remove it from the atmosphere. There is photosynthesis, which can convert water and CO2 into oxygen and sugar, but human emissions currently outpace plants' CO2 removal. Without a water cycle equivalent, they become permanent insulators, trapping more of the heat that should have been radiated into space.

When more heat is kept on Earth, water has to absorb less energy from the Sun in order to evaporate. The Sun's energy output does not change, so the rate at which water evaporates from the planet's surface increases.

In response to increasing water vapor in the atmosphere, the Earth's water cycle begins to change. Storms grow more frequent, and more energy is trapped on Earth at any given moment, which further increases evaporation. Insulation from additional water vapor combined with human emissions of permanent insulators are decreasing the planet's ability to regulate temperature and shed the Sun's energy.

### Drying Up

Evaporation and precipitation make up crucial elements of the water cycle, but higher temperatures mean more water is being carried away from already dry areas and raining down somewhere else on the planet. In these dry regions, rain becomes increasingly scarce, increasing the rate at which they dry. This migration of water from land into the atmosphere is leading to global water scarcity and record freshwater shortages. In 2019, there were several major shortages that affected tens of millions of people around the world.

Chennai, India entered a water crisis after several years of deficient monsoon rainfall and extreme heat. Four reservoirs supplying water to the city have run completely dry leaving almost 9 million people without water. To access drinking water, poorer citizens had to travel far outside the city while wealthier citizens paid to have water shipped in on trucks.

In Basra, Iraq, government corruption and high temperatures has left around 2 million people without water. Just as in India, the wealthy had water trucked in and those without means were left to fend for themselves. In the summer of 2018, 120,000 people were hospitalized for drinking polluted water.

Sydney, Australia has also been experiencing declining dam reserves due to drought. As of November 2019, water levels have fallen to 47% of capacity. Should the drought continue, Sydney could run out of water by 2021.

Increasing water scarcity is an extremely dangerous symptom of a warming planet. The World Health Organization estimates that half of the global population will live in water-stressed areas by 2025. As a resource critical for survival, declining water reserves will lead to an increase in global political tension. The CEO of DOW Chemical, Andrew Liveris, was quoted in 2008 by The Economist saying, “Water is the oil of the 21st century.” There have been 9 major conflicts over oil since 1932. While many people still take it for granted today, I suspect we will also see armed conflict over water in the future.

### Melting Ice

Rising global temperatures are causing water locked up in land-bound ice sheets to flow back into the ocean. The continent of Antarctica is covered by a sheet of ice that averages 1.2 miles in thickness. The rocky landmass buried under the ice is the fifth largest continent and twice the size of Australia. The continent actually receives so little precipitation that it is a polar desert, yet 80% of the world's freshwater is stored there. Chunks of the ice shelf, some twice the size of New York City, are at risk of falling off into the ocean.

To the north, Greenland, a nation with 80% of its surface covered in ice, is also beginning to see anomalous melting. In 2019, the worst recorded heat wave on record in Europe caused the loss of 12 billion tons of freshwater ice in a single day.

As more ice-bound freshwater moves off of Earth's surface into the sea, the oceans begin to rise.

### Rising Seas
As of 2017, [2.4 billion people](https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Ocean-fact-sheet-package.pdf) live within 60 miles of the coast. Sea level rise has already begun to affect low lying nations. Jakarta, Indonesia sits just a few feet above sea level. The city of 32 million people has begun to 'sink'. In 2019, the Indonesian government [announced plans to relocate](https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/754291131/indonesia-plans-to-move-capital-to-borneo-from-jakarta) their capital.

If the targets set forth in the Paris Agreement are met, sea level rise is predicted to be kept at [17 inches by 2100](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/paris-agreement-period-still-leads-to-sea-level-rise/). However, research shows that seas could rise by [as much as 8 feet](https://www.noaa.gov/explainers/tracking-sea-level-rise-and-fall) since the rate of climate change is outpacing predictions.

Pre-industrial revolution, CO2 levels hovered around 280 parts per million (ppm). In 2019, NOAA recorded atmospheric CO2 levels at 415.64 ppm. Ice cores show that the last time atmospheric CO2 levels were that high was about 3 million years ago. At that time, sea levels were 50-80 feet higher than those of today.

### Ocean Acidity

Rising atmospheric CO2 levels can impact oceans directly. Oceans absorb CO2 which reacts with seawater to produce carbonic acid. Since the industrial revolution, the ocean's pH has dropped from 8.21 to 8.10 (a 26% increase in acidity). Ocean acidification damages the organisms that make up the base of local food chains, impacting current ocean life and depleting a major source of food.

### Investment in Water

With scarcity comes opportunity. Institutional capital is [flowing into water resources](https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-water-barons-wall-street-mega-banks-are-buying-up-the-worlds-water/5383274). Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, the Blackstone Group and many others are beginning to invest in water. Private equity investment in water resources was even mentioned at the end of the 2015 film _The Big Short_. Lakes, aquifers, water rights, and water utilities are becoming attractive commodities for investors. In 2006, the Bush family purchased 298,840 acres located on top of the world's largest aquifer in Paraguay. In 2018, Harvard's endowment fund received media attention when it paid well above market rates for 10,000 acres of California vineyards. Following the purchase, the fund acquired rights to drill 16 wells at a depth of 700 to 900 feet, several times deeper than residential wells.

### Paying for Solutions

Our ability to build better and better tools made it possible for us to shift from agrarian societies to the hyper-connected world in which we live today. The global economy binds nations together through the marketplace of food, resources, energy, and technology. World order is currently decided not by conflict and military hegemony, but instead by participation in this marketplace. Large scale war simply costs too much for everyone involved and, inevitably, progress and technology will drive nations to become increasingly codependent. Climate change is a truly global problem impacting each nation in many different ways. Hopefully it can also be a forcing function for international cooperation.

Major global economic and political stagnation could occur if we cannot make the effort to finance and develop the technologies we need to fix increasing temperatures. If climate change further impacts productivity or water scarcity increases, we risk living on a planet that cannot support today's society. It is becoming clear that CO2 in the atmosphere is a debt we've exchanged for progress. That debt is coming due. The money we must spend to fix this problem can be paid back, but the effects of climate change are increasingly irreversible on human time scales.

### Weathering the Storm

After 4.5 billion years, the Earth has proven itself to be more than capable of handling significant climate shifts. Through ice ages and asteroid strikes, it’s soldiered on. Regardless of the state of the planet, life must conform to its environment or it will not survive. An incredible variety of different species have lived on this planet since the first bacteria existed 3.7 billion years ago, but most of those creatures were far simpler or very different from life seen today. An annually stable global temperature and the resulting water cycle, as well as healthy oceans, are critical for life as we know it.

Humanity faces the enormous task of simultaneously preparing for climate change and also preventing it from getting worse. Luckily for us, we're very hardy creatures when we band together. In exchange for our progress as a species, we've mortgaged our atmosphere and planet. If we fail to repay our debts, we risk losing not only our progress, but an environment in which we can thrive. The effort required to keep the planet healthy will require enormous investment and significant political effort, but we do not have any other option. It's the only planet we've got.


The WHO estimates that nearly half of the global population will live in water-stressed areas by 2025. As temperatures rise, what happens to our most important resource?

What's Happening to Our Water?

### Current Reactors

We get 22% of our energy from nuclear reactors. One ton of a uranium fuel in a modern reactor can produce 44 million kilowatt hours of electricity. Producing an equivalent amount of power using carbon fuels would require burning 20,000 tons of coal or 8.5 million cubic meters of natural gas.

### Fuel

Today, we produce a surplus of commercial nuclear fuel for use in the second generation reactors at power plants. They use an isotope of Uranium, U-235. This isotope is fissile, meaning it is capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction. Mined uranium is made up of just 0.7% U-235 and 99.3% U-238, a relatively stable isotope that cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction. In order to be used to power reactors, Uranium must first be 'enriched' to contain 3-5% of the fissile U-235 isotope. Because U-238 has 3 more neutrons than U-235, the difference in mass can be used to seperate them in centrifuges until the desired ratio of isotopes is met. Stuxnet, the most advanced computer virus to date, was able to greatly reduce Iranian Uranium enrichment capacity by simply targeting their centrifuges.

### Waste Management

When nuclear fuel is used up, it still contains about 96% of its original Uranium. When it is removed from the reactor it continues to emit radiation and heat and is immediately placed in storage ponds at the reactor facility. It remains in water for around a year to cool. Once cooled, the used fuel is highly recyclable and can be reprocessed into fissionable uranium and plutonium. After processing, only about 3% of used fuel (about 750kg per year from a large reactor) becomes high-level radioactive waste. Public concern over radioactive waste and lack of funding hampered the development of deep geological repositories where waste is initially recoverable for re-use before being permanently sealed. The planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in New Mexico was defunded by the Department of Energy and closed in 2011. There is not a pressing need to build these facilities as there is only a small volume of waste and it becomes less dangerous over time. Naturally-occuring radioactive elements are relatively common, so assuming we can start burying the unrecoverable fuel waste, we'll just be putting it back from where it came.

### The Atom's Perception Challenge

Nuclear disasters like the Three Mile Island Accident in 1979, the Chernobyl Disaster in 1986, and the Fukushima Daiichi Accident in 2011 have contributed to governments resisting nuclear reactors. Like plane crashes, each disater is studied and changes are made to ensure it will never happen again. Modern reactor designs and nuclear power stations have reached airline levels of regulation and safety. But, nuclear reactors carry more baggage: prior meltdowns, an association with nuclear weapons, and misunderstanding of radiation have cultivated public fear. This has led to just a trickle of new reactor projects in recent years, even as nuclear research booms.

There are some upcoming reactor designs that have been shown to be even more meltdown resistant alternatives to U-235 reactors. They run by mixing Thorium and trace amounts of U-235 in a molten salt solution. These alternative reactor designs have been around for a long time but the last reactors running these reactions were shut down in the 1960s. Even today, molten salt reactors are still not a viable source of power. Next-generation molten salt reactors will require at least 7-15 years of development before they can become commercially viable. As meltdown resitant as they are, they will also need to accumulate a safety record to temper public fear which will only further delay implementing the designs at scale.

When compared with coal, atomic energy, regardless of how it is generated, is not only much easier to control, but also does not produce greenhouse gases or toxic ash.

### Atomic Politics

Bill Gates' nuclear company, TerraPower, developed a third generation U-235 reactor design. It was more compact and safer than previous designs. However, the cost of producing just one reactor was prohibitively expensive, so they had to find a way to manufacture and sell multiple reactors for the design to be economically viable. They found a partner in China willing to help them accomplish this.

However, the ongoing trade war between the United States and China has blocked the sharing of nuclear technology and blocked TerraPower from working with their partner. China has built the largest number of nuclear reactors, but they meet a smaller percentage of their electricity demand. It seems like a global market could be an accelerant for scaling nuclear, but international relations prevents it.

Politicians have recently expressed interest in new molten salt reactor technology due to their safety characteristics. Very few have acknowledged the level of safety we have achieved with existing technology. Thorium reactor technology is not yet fully understood and have yet to be run on the grid. Even if we were to have a viable molten salt reactor design by 2020, meeting the required scale of reactor production to offset coal will still take significant time. We are not even producing U-235 reactors at the rate we should be. To remove energy-related carbon emissions, nuclear power construction will need to increase by more than 400%.

Compared to new technologies, U-235 reactors have a significant head start. They already have the supply chain in place and constructing them is well understood. They are a better choice because we must massively scale up reactor production. Thorium reactors should be left to be developed by private industry until we can build them as scalably as U-235 reactors.

U.S. reactor spending should be entirely focused on deploying U-235 reactors to reduce carbon emissions. We should be building support for an increased number of nuclear projects using well-understood reactor technologies. The more reactors we build, the more efficient their deployment will become.

Climate change is a global problem, so the U.S. Federal Government should focus on prioritizing a global nuclear manufacturing marketplace. Maybe even the construction of state-owned nuclear power stations.

It's not worth the risk of trying for thorium reactors without first scaling atomic power generation by any means necessary. Luckily, the reactor designs we have been using for decades are very efficient, safe, and well understood. To avoid losing control of climate change, we need to think in terms of decades. Running the U.S. grid on atomic power is a crucial step to cut 33% of our total CO2 emissions.

At the same time, climate change is beginning to happen on human-perceptible timescales which is, sadly, a good thing. We are being forced to face the reality of time as we work to prevent a true global disaster.

Running water over hot Uranium is the only carbon-free energy solution we have available right now that can meet power needs both today and for decades to come. Solar, wind, and other renewables are projected to cover 22% of energy needs. Sure, these nuclear water boilers produce radioactive waste, but we can bury it. I would rather a few thousand kilograms of nuclear waste buried underground each year than worsening fires, rising seas, and toxic air. Today's reactors and buried nuclear waste pose very little threat to us, while climate change is a threat to the entire global population. Replacing as many carbon-based power plants with nuclear reactors is the only option we have to reduce atmospheric carbon levels without impacting growth.

We would be foolish to focus on molten salt reactors, a technology that is decades away, when the one available solution to our electricity generation problem has already been on the grid for decades.


Why we don't have time to focus on molten salt reactors right now and where we should be spending money instead.

State of Nuclear

### The Order
On October 6th, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called President Donald Trump warning of an impending invasion and stating that United States armed forces stationed in the region would be in harms way. President Trump agreed to allow Turkey's invasion. On October 9th, Kurdish forces [learned from a tweet](https://www.newsweek.com/us-fire-back-turkey-syria-strike-1464837) of President Trump's order to withdraw from Syria. Following the President's order, 1,000 U.S. soldiers hastily [began a complete withdrawal](https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-evacuates-state-department-personnel-in-syria-11571070928). At the same time, Turkish airstrikes and shelling of Kurdish positions began. President Trump made [false statements](https://www.factcheck.org/2019/10/trumps-false-tweets-on-syria/) about the U.S. presence in Syria to sell and downplay his retreat order. The decision [left allied Kurds at the mercy of Turkish forces](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/10/the-americans-are-traitors-trump-faces-a-major-backlash-over-syria-announcement/). The Kurds were a longtime U.S. ally throughout the conflict in Syria where they had worked alongside American soldiers and special forces to defeat ISIS cells in Kurdish lands. They were also responsible for guarding more than 10,000 IS prisoners. Before joining the fight against ISIS, Kurdish soldiers had assisted American troops during the war in Iraq.

### Turkish Offensive Begins
On October 10th, just one day after U.S. forces began evacuating, Turkish soldiers marched into Syria. It was well known that Turkey had been [eyeing an invasion](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/07/us-withdrawal-from-syria-leaves-fate-of-isis-fighters-and-families-in-detention-uncertain) of Kurdish lands along their border with Syria for at least several months. President Trump's consenting to withdraw U.S. forces [opened the door](https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/09/politics/syria-turkey-invasion-intl-hnk/index.html) for the immediate Turkish offensive. The invasion has included the [shelling of U.S. Navy SEALs](https://www.newsweek.com/us-troops-syria-turkey-1464727) at a forward operating base and has become an evident slaughter of Kurdish soldiers and civilians. U.S. forces evacuated so quickly that they were [forced to bomb](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-bombed-its-anti-isis-headquarters-as-turkish-troops-advanced-2019-10) the bases they had occupied days before as they became surrounded by [Russian and Turkish forces](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49973218).

### The World Reacts
As news of the invasion came out of northeastern Syria, [Germany](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-turkey-germany/germany-bans-exports-of-arms-to-turkey-idUSKBN1WR0EL?il=0), [the UK](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/15/uk-suspends-arms-exports-turkey-prevent-use-syria), [France](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-turkey-france/france-says-suspends-weapons-sales-to-turkey-idUSKBN1WR0L6), and finally [the entire EU](https://thehill.com/policy/international/europe/465782-eu-countries-agree-to-halt-arms-exports-to-turkey) halted weapon exports to Turkey on October 14th, imposed sanctions, and publicly denounced the invasion. Kurdish soliders, under assult and outgunned, could no longer focus on guarding ISIS prisoners, resulting in hundreds of [escapes](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/hundreds-isil-prisoners-escape-syrian-camp-kurds-191013141044768.html). The U.S. began attempting to retake control of the spiraling situation precipited by the order to retreat.

### Attempts to Reverse the Retreat
On October 10th, President Erdoğan [threatened Europe](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/10/turkeys-erdogan-threatens-send-millions-refugees-europe-eu-calls/) with an influx of millions of Syrian refugees. On October 12th, he announced that Turkey 'will not stop' the invasion as promised. Following his retreat order, President Trump had made several thinly veiled threats of economic 'destruction', but the Turkish army continued to expand their offensive, exceeding stated goals. After [several attempts](https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-turkey-captures-territory-in-syria-kurds-head-to-iraq-11571140687) to stop the invasion made possible by his own hand, President Trump [ordered](https://www.apnews.com/594ac1ca4c294c29b7a213ccf5d4dfad) sanctions on Turkish metal exports on October 14th, to no effect (the Lira actually [rose](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/15/turkish-lira-up-as-trump-tariff-threats-are-less-serious-than-expected.html) on currency markets). On October 16th, President Erdoğan [threw away](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-50080737) [a letter](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/16/us/politics/trump-letter-turkey.html) in which President Trump demanded he [halt the invasion](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/world/europe/trump-erdogan-letter.html). It was becoming clear that the U.S. could not effect the situation. The following day, President Trump [urged](https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/trump-urges-europe-to-take-daesh-prisoners-back/1612788) that Europe should 'take the ISIS fighters that came from their nations', and that it 'should have been done after WE captured them'. As of Friday the 18th, only U.S. special forces remained in Syria.

### U.S. Weapons in Turkey
In July 2019, President Donald Trump [cancelled the sale](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/world/europe/us-turkey-russia-missiles.html) of 5th generation F-35 fighter jets to the Turkish military after Turkey [purchased](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-usa-sanctions-analysis/how-u-s-sanctions-over-a-russian-weapon-could-rattle-turkey-idUSKCN1T00WI) Russian S-400 missiles and other weaponry. During one of his attempts to stop the invasion, President Trump offered to once again [sell Turkey F-35s](https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-sell-turkey-f-35-jets-for-no-syria-invasion-2019-10), putting the planes' technology at risk of falling into Russian hands. U.S. weapon exports account for 60% of Turkey's supply and currently total 364 war planes and 2,400 tanks. A bill to ban the weapon exports to Turkey was [introduced to Congress](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/466349-house-foreign-affairs-leaders-introduce-turkey-sanctions-bill) by Liz Cheney (R-WY) on October 16th.

President Trump and an official airbase website [confirmed](https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2019/10/16/trump-expresses-confidence-when-asked-if-nuclear-weapons-at-incirlik-are-safe/) the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons in the Turkish city of [Adana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adana), home to 1.7 million people. [An estimated 50 B61 gravity bombs](https://qz.com/1727158/us-rethinking-the-50-plus-nuclear-weapons-it-keeps-in-turkey/), a [configurable yield themonuclear weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B61_nuclear_bomb) first deployed during the Cold War, are kept at a U.S. airbase 10km from the city center. As of Friday, the base and weapons stored there remained under U.S. control.

### Ceasefire Failure
President Trump had previously praised Erdoğan numerous times during his Presidency. In the midst of the invasion, President Trump [replied](https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1185220552254017537) on Twitter to the Turkish president's seemingly baseless statements about jointly defeating terrorism. On October 17th, Mike Pence announced that Turkey had [agreed](https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/u-s-turkey-agree-on-temporary-syria-cease-fire-to-let-kurdish-forces-evacuate-1.8005420) to a five-day cease fire to allow the Kurds to evacuate. More than [275,000](https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/57ab4b8e-6757-45dc-96f0-61dab37eca64) Kurds have been displaced and are attempting to leave the war zone that swept up their towns in days. President Trump stated Erdoğan ['wanted'](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/syria-ceasefire-trump-administration-deal-turkey-president-erdogan-today-after-meeting-pompeo-pence-2019-10-17/) the ceasefire. The Turkish ambassador was quick to dismiss this claim as false and they [continued to shell Kurdish civilians](https://www.npr.org/2019/10/18/771266051/pause-in-turkeys-syria-incursion-largely-holding-on-first-day).

### The Response At Home
In the U.S., the number of lawmakers openly objecting to President Trump's decision to leave Syria steadily increased. Even [longtime political allies](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mitch-mcconnell-withdrawing-from-syria-is-a-grave-mistake/2019/10/18/c0a811a8-f1cd-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html) publicly stated it was a mistake and that [the President was unfit for office](https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/699962963239825409). Senators and Representatives from both sides of the isle denounced the retreat as a disaster. [129 Republicans and every democrat in the House](https://www.apnews.com/319c0609dd4d42fa96cde48bad05dfdc) signed a resolution opposing the withdrawal. According to multiple current and former U.S. officials, the White House's announcement Sunday blindsided not just America's Kurdish allies but almost everyone — senior officials at the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House, lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East. The [media](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/opinion/trump-syria-turkey.html) [condemned](https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-syria-mess-11571095091?mod=hp_opin_pos_1) [the](https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-10-09/syria-donald-trump-troops-kurds-turkey-isis-islamic-state) [decision] alongside diplomats and former cabinet members.

Those usually most reluctant to criticize the Commander in Chief also condemned the decision. Members of U.S. high command and [soldiers](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-us-soldiers-its-a-dagger-to-the-heart-to-abandon-the-kurds/2019/10/14/f0a1db60-eecf-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html) [up and down the ranks](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/opinion/trump-turkey-kurds-syria.html) have become increasing alarmed by President Trump's military decisions. The stunning speed of the withdrawal [shook the military community](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/opinion/trump-mcraven-syria-military.html). James Mattis, the previous Defense Secretary, [resigned](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/10/james-mattis-trump/596665/) after President Trump's partial withdrawal from Syria in November. He was [immediately critical](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/mattis-warns-isis-could-resurge-enemy-gets-vote-after-trump-n1065431) of President Trump's full retreat.

### ISIS Regains Strength
The intelligence community has confirmed that the U.S. departure from Iraq in 2011 led to the [rise of ISIS](https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/how-2011-us-troop-withdrawal-iraq-led-rise-isis). As of Friday, the Kurdish coalition [announced](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/14/isis-prisoners-are-escaping-from-camps-in-syria-amid-turkish-offensive.html) that more than 859 of the 10,000 ISIS prisoners in Syria escaped as their Kurdish captors were overwhelmed by the Turkish offensive. [Trump  made the wild claim](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-twitter-kurds-isis-prisoners-turkey-syria-bombing-latest-erdogan-tweet-a9155051.html) that the Kurds were deliberately freeing ISIS prisoners. The U.S. departure has undone years of work rooting out what remains of ISIS.

### Putin Crowned King

The Russian military has lurked in Syria for several years after the current regime requested their help in fighting rebel groups from a 2016 coup attempt. President Trump [ignored](https://www.newsweek.com/trump-ignored-syria-exit-options-russia-takeover-nsc-official-1465731) advisers-a [tendency he had previously displayed](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/11/military-officers-trump/598360/)-on exit options that would prevent Russian takeover of U.S. positions. In February 2018, a base was attacked and U.S. forces there [killed several hundred former Russian soldiers](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american-commandos-russian-mercenaries-syria.html) acting as mercenaries. On Wednesday, [videos of Russians](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/video-shows-russian-speaking-man-abandoned-u-s-base-syria-n1066796) in US bases emerged. President Vladimir Putin has long detested U.S. presence in Syria and President Trump's decision was a [massive strategic gift](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/world/middleeast/kurds-syria-turkey.html). The [Wall Street Journal declared](https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-is-the-new-king-of-syria-11571264222) Putin the new 'king' of Syria. With Trump's [explicit blessing](https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/465724-trump-let-assad-russia-or-china-protect-the-kurds), the Kurds [turned to Russia](https://theweek.com/speedreads/871455/kurdish-general-either-protect-move-aside-let-russians) for help. During an October 12th interview, [President Putin stated](http://www.dailyfinland.fi/europe/12852/All-illegal-foreign-troops-must-leave-Syria-Putin) that all illegitimate forces in Syria must leave, a message likely aimed at the U.S. forces still withdrawing. On October 16th, Russia-backed Syrian leader Bashar Assad [began deploying](https://www.timesofisrael.com/syria-troops-fighting-turkish-forces-alongside-kurds-says-monitor/) Syrian Arab Army troops, complete with embedded Russian forces, to defend the Kurds from the Turkish offensive.

### The Russia Connection

President Trump's seemingly spontaneous decision to pull out of Syria following his call with the Turkish President has become a resounding victory for Russia and ISIS. In less than one week after President Trump's announcement, Vladimir Putin can declare a true victory-not just a victory by proxy-in Syria. News from Syria has also supplanted coverage of the ever growing the Ukraine Scandal, in which President Trump requested China, Russia, and Ukraine investigate his political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. This [fits with Trump's past efforts](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/donald-trumps-ukraine-scandal-has-its-roots-in-russia) to solicit foreign interference in U.S. democracy. The President's chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, [confirmed](https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/17/mulvaney-confirms-ukraine-aid-2016-probe-050156) in a press conference that Trump withheld $391 million in military aid to meant to help Ukraine fight against Russian seperatists. He used the aid, in the form of taxpayer bought Javelin missles, to demand Ukraine announce an investigation of Biden's son and the former Vice President himself.

This week, Trump's [actions](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-directed-work-giuliani-push-ukraine-investigations-sondland/story?id=66341931) to press Ukraine into investigating Biden reappeared. President Trump's personal lawyer, Rudolph Giuliani, was found to have worked closely with [Russian-financed](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/10/exclusive-giuliani-associate-linked-yanukovych-stolen-cash-191010120733266.html) Ukranians [taken into U.S. custody](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/lev-parnas-igor-fruman-arrested-giuliani-ukraine) and charged with [illegally funneling foreign money](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-whistleblower/giuliani-associates-charged-with-funneling-foreign-cash-to-pro-trump-group-idUSKBN1WP0GM) into a political action committee supporting President Donald Trump's reelection. The administration has [failed to appoint members](https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/federal-election-commission-fec-to-effectively-shut-down/) to the Federal Election Commission, which stated after the arrest that they could no longer effectively enforce [rules](https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/464363-fec-chairwoman-confirms-accepting-opposition-research-from-foreign-national). Gordon Sondland, E.U. envoy [testified](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/17/us/politics/gordon-sondland-testimony.html) that Trump had entirely delegated Ukraine policy to Giuliani. President Trump's 2016 [admission](https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-fg-trump-syria-20161117-story.html) that his tower project in Instanbul was 'a little conflict of interest' also [reentered the news](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/donald-trump-s-longtime-business-connections-turkey-back-spotlight-n1064011).

The unmitigated disaster in Syria is very [convenient for President Putin as well as President Trump](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/11/russia-is-common-thread-between-trumps-ukraine-and-syria-problems.html).

It is evident that the American retreat from Syria is a strategic and humanitarian disaster.

Turkey Invades Syria

Mandelbrot sets are fractal structures located in the complex plane. They are defined by the recursive formula Zn+1 = Zn^2^ + c, where Z0 = c. Randomly generated points are within the Mandelbrot set if |Zn| < 2 as n → ∞, so for the script, an iteration limit is set where it can be said that the point stays within a finite radius as n → ∞.

The function generate_mandelbrot(num_points_to_plot, iteration_limit, data_file, power), takes three arguments, the first is the number of points to plot (large numbers of points can be very slow), the second is the limit that decides how many iterations are allowed to check if a point is within the set (high iteration limits (> 300) can also be very slow), the third is the name of the data file to write to, and the fourth is the power to use in the recursive formula to generate the set.

The script in the repository linked below will output the results to a file storing the real values, the imaginary values and the escape iteration of the points. This file, plot.dat, can be displayed using GNUplot.


See the code on Github:
[Fractal Area](https://github.com/wchaering/fractal-area)

Scripting a visualization of Mandelbrot set areas