Apologies if the intros to the last couple or three editions of the letter seemed a bit down or bleak. That wasn't my intention. It was just me (politely) venting. Don't worry: all is, if not good then pretty OK. That's better than the alternative!

With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:

Why Did America Choose to Bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki? — Popular accounts may not, as it turns out, reflect the true reasons and justification for dropping a pair of nuclear weapons on Japan at the end of World War Two. As with anything to do with history, there are multiple facets that we need to examine.

From the article:

To revisit Hiroshima and Nagasaki today is not to excuse past wrongs, but to examine how narratives of “necessity” and “lesser evil” have shaped our moral imagination. The bombings were not inevitable; they were decisions made within a global system of empire, fear, and technological ambition — and the same grammar of justification is applied to new targets now.

Human Canaries: Remembering the Munitionettes — Yet another true tale of a group of people who sacrificed their health and (in more than a few cases) their lives in the name of king and country, and who were promptly forgotten.

From the article:

The women were supplied with some protective clothing, although there were no masks or gloves. Medical care was provided, but doctors could do little to relieve the symptoms of TNT poisoning. Instead, great emphasis was placed on eliminating lice

Copyright Is Not Enough — As always, creative people get the short end of the stick when a new technology appears on the scene. There needs to be better protections for original creative work, and ways for tech companies to pay for the work that they lift.

From the article:

Yet even a robust licensing regime cannot remedy all the harms caused by GenAI. While creators would receive income from the use of their work in AI training and AI outputs, these sums are not calculated to compensate for market dilution and the loss of their livelihood.

How to Hack a Superyacht — A detailed look into the vulnerabilities of GPS, especially how easy it is to fool the system, and the dangers doing that can pose.

From the article:

While Bhatti was now spoofing the yacht’s autopilot, there was nothing obviously amiss. The yacht’s GPS tracker showed that it was going straight. There were no beeps, no alarms, nothing on the horizon to indicate that anything had changed at all. It was only when they turned around that they could see a slight bend in the yacht’s wake, subtle but noticeable. This had been the goal: little by little, the yacht would be led off course.