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They are getting used to the place. I also need to get used to the little one as she bites the crap out of the poor guy to the right(Ignus) whenever she feels like it. Poor Ignus. He never fights back, just sits there and screams as Boss chews his face away.

I feel like this is an oxymoron. Any halfway decent active community on that trash bin, outside of older niche interests perhaps, unfortunately seem to always eventually attract the childish simpletons that spam the same awful memes and caveman thoughts ad nauseam. I'm to the point where I can't even use it for sports because of how repetitively obnoxious it's all become...much less actual serious matters.

FIFA banning Russia and all Russian clubs from international competitions - https://www.fifa.com/tournaments/mens/worldcup/qatar2022/media-releases/fifa-uefa-suspend-russian-clubs-and-national-teams-from-all-competitions Interesting to see if this will be consistent going forward. They are all opposed to it on the basis that war is wrong.

Russia has succeeded to persuade Finns that we need to join to Nato, as support for Nato membership has increased from ~25% to 53% and opposition has decreased to 28%. Also all parties in parliament have now given statements in support of joining to Nato. So now it would be possible that Finland joins to Nato soonish.

The websites of Moskovsky Komsomolets, Forbes, Takie Dela, RBC, Peopletalk and many others, as well as the websites of Sberbank, VTB, Tinkoff, Pravo.ru are not working. Today, the websites of TASS, Kommersant, Fontanka and Izvestia, RBC, Buro 24/ 7, Chalk and E1 were hacked. source: Telegram post Ukrainian Defense Ministry: Russian soldiers surrendered to the Ukrainian army near the southeastern city of Zaporizhia Source: Al Jazeera

Where have you seen this? I'm trying and failing to find this being reported. In any case, if true, even just the fact that Russia has taken this long to achieve air superiority seems laughable to me.

While the war ending in less than a week with Russia going home would be good, I think it's likely this drags on for a while longer than that. I would very much love to be wrong though.

I've been saying for years that there needs to be an age limit on politicians and world leaders. There is this weird idea that people just keep getting wiser as they age. My mother-in-law is 70 and can barely operate the television. She doesn't need access to the red button at her age. People retire in their 60's for good reason.

Saw this and was somewhat entertained:

Man, talk about shooting yourself in the foot. I'd be anything but Putin right now. He is probably locked in his office right now, crying, drinking vodka and listening to Radiohead.

Putin should just shoot himself in the head at this point, no need for a cyanide capsule.

I've been so busy with work lately. The biggest problem is the tedium of data entry. The data that I use for my work comes from multiple platforms because we are using multiple vendors. I am pretty handy with VB so I use Excel & Power BI for my actual work. The tedium is all this data has to be entered into excel. Manually on some formats. Some come in .csv so that's easy. Bri was over doing her laundry and we got to talking about it. She offered to do the data entry for me. I told her there was $20 an hour and a license for MS Office in it for her if she would. She agreed and my workload just got cut in half. Sub-contracting. Why didn't I think of that???

This is true. They leave their own country and fly to Serbia for a dose of Pfiser vaccine. Why? They don't trust the Sputnik vaccine or their own government for that matter.

This video is making the rounds right now. Just watched it and I think it's pretty good at explaining why russia is doing what they do and I think seeing it from this side, I even agree with russias perspective. However, as usual, the issue is ... complicated. We know that life under russian rulership isn't necessarily great. There's a crapton examples of that to be found.. so I totally get why people don't want this. Guess the tl;dr is ... if russia would stop being such a corrupt duck that only serves the very rich, the whole situation could look quite different now and *maybe* more people would like to join them instead of the NATO. I want to blame the west for this crap situation as well, because let's be honest, we love selling weapons and fire up conflicts wherever isn't our home, but ... again ... if russia would have been less of a duck, maybe the situation could look different? After all.. there is a reason why the ukraine population (and the other countries surrounding russia) don't want to join CSTO and look at NATO instead. It's a competition, and for me, imagining myself on the side of russia is economically simply not attractive enough.

Suuure, or he's thinking ahead, if he can free up prison wardens and get volounteers at the same time it's a win/win.

EU's energy ministers are currently having meeting about cutting down energy purchases from Russia.

Well I have feeling that Ukraine air force is operating from poland airports anyway... What I am scared of is that Russia really might be getting ass kicked, what would that do with Putin? That is the scary part. Will his generals let him push that big red button?

Not necessarily the "truth" (nobody has a patent on that I think), but an interesting take on what makes Putin tick (warning 30+ minutes long, but quite interesting)...

There really is no 'normal' to get back to anymore. Putin is past the point of backing down and sanctions will have to stay in place for a long time to come. And far more important is that he made some top European politicians look ridiculous.

On the face of it, sure. With Western support that might not be as true. The longer this conflict goes on, the weaker the internal support becomes for Putin and the more it is going to cost the Russian economy.

Absolutely but I was watching a comparison on CNN between the sizes and resources of the Ukrainian army vs the Russian army and its literally like David vs Goliath. So we need to be realistic but I do think the Ukrainian army has done exceptionally well so far against the much better resourced and much larger Russian army https://en.as.com/en/2022/02/26/latest_news/1645907062_698195.html But what has made this invasion much harder for Russia is they cant just adopt their normal military strategy of " bombing cities to the ground " and they have been forced to use boots on the ground and hand to hand combat and clearly their training of infantry is not that great

That remains to be seen. You can lose every battle and still win a war.

Andromeda had its issues, true, but that doesn't take away from 6 seasons of the glorious campy goodness that was Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Plus, that show spawned the GOD-TIER Xena: Warrior Princess which gave us so much joy, including the single greatest sequence in cinematic history:* * This is hyperbole. The true greatest sequence in cinematic history is obviously ED-209 going haywire on Kenny in the original Robocop.

I began my caffeine addiction in high school. (Lived in a foster home with up to 10 people in the home. My brother would wake me up at 5AM so we could get the first showers. Coffee was the only way I could stay awake until the school bus got there.) Anyway, about a year and a half ago I saw an ad for mudwtr (mud water), a coffee substitute without caffeine. Recently I ordered a (very expensive) can to try it out. Keep in mind I've only used it for 2 or 3 days and prior I was on a caffeine detox. Taste: Cinnamon. In fact so cinnamon that it made me realize that it wasn't the pumpkin in pumpkin pie I didn't like but the cinnamon. If you're like me and not the biggest fan of lots of cinnamon then I'd recommend adding the coconut creamer to your order 'cause the coconut takes the spiciness of the cinnamon down several notches. Price: $40 a 30 dose can. I was raised like a child born in the Great Depression and spent my whole life drinking only the cheapest coffee, to me that price is staggeringly high. But, Effectiveness: It works. I don't get the sudden shot of chemical satisfaction that I do from drinking caffeine but I also don't get the jitters and crashing either. It does wake me up though not as fast as coffee or Mountain Dew or a Five Hour Energy. If anyone is interested, ingredients as seen here (not my pic):

....AA equipment is still a thing, a gift from the West. I'm actually amazed they were able to neutralize it so quickly. Economically, Russia has all they need to be self-sufficient and do not need SWIFT. It is CHIPS that is significant - the international bank clearing house. If Russia don't get paid, they shut off natgas and oil exports. They could demand gold. On the U.S. domestic front, many are predicting a very hot summer, and by hot I don't mean temperature, but culture clashes. The mood is just ripe for combat. @Chilloutman Putin has never lost a war and Ukie will be no different Rough sketch of the situation as of yesterday. They're being encircled and it's SO LAUGHABLY WW2.

meh, I'll give it 2 or so weeks until most will not be talking about it anymore. I can already see the feeds slowing down right now.

Tired? Surly you jest, this is just the beginning I have been having debates around the US invasion of Iraq for nearly 20 years and we are going to talking about how Russia lied to justify an invasion of Ukraine for decades You must have fortitude ....its going to be a long and glorious series of debates and outrage for the rest of your life, or at least the next 20-30 years

That's exactly what I posted about, but people were like lalalala, blocking SWIFT will be PERFECT! Anyways. I'm kinda tired of all of this and I wouldn't mind going back to normal again. For all I care, we could forget about most of this if russia just pulls out now and leaves them alone.

The torc works on yourself but has limited uses and just removes injuries, doesn't make you immune to them. The easiest way to make such build work is to import a second Ring of Reset and refresh its charges after each fight.

There's more to the Russians' problems than it's a ground war in a highly populated urban setting. We can clearly see their problems include poor command and control, supporting fire, equipment serviceability, and logistics. Also poor training and morale. And most of all, a lot of their vaunted hi-tech weapons are not performing as well as expected, especially their aircraft and missiles. But their propaganda machine is the one area they've excelled at, to where both we (NATO) and they themselves ended up believing and buying into their hype. And on this score I feel the same will prove true of the Chinese in a real war.

Well, I'm hardly surprised at this, Putins lapdog joining in isn't terribly surprising, and there were videos of a Belarussian former soldier that went online with a video to tell Belarussian soldiers not to follow the illegimate regime.

I wish it was that simple, Russia will definitely win a sustained war Their should be no doubt of that. But this invasion has highlighted weaknesses of the new Russian army when they are involved in this type of city warfare

Or we all turn into Hulks. That at least would be more entertaining than whatever the hell this hypothetical show from the anti-universe is doing.

Gracefully there is Blood Surge to make SC Barbarian really offensive even in longer fight, and carnage applies Hemmorhaging (and so Spell Disruption) but only with BPM that give to Carnage the possibility to crit. Because of the impossibility to use scroll, Mage Slayer with Effort is more potent to disabling spellcasters when multiclassed with Spellcaster in my opinion, particularely with druid or chanter (Refreshing ressources, Her Revenge can crit a multiple time each enemies, and because of Troubadour's 3s). But offensively, SC barbarian are really strong.

Russia is losing the war. Seriously, Putin...go home.

Thanks for the reply! I was just curious, but clearly a SC barbarian with Effort would be great even without LUC.

Turkey to implement pact limiting Russian warships to Black Sea.

Heh, as someone practicing some of this, I wholeheartedly agree...

Speaking of Mariupol

I've heard nothing but good about Hades, so I'm excited. I slept on Chanter in PoE and that was a mistake. I am using the IE mod to replicate Deadfire behavior of starting with all phrases, which helps a lot. It's still clunky in terms of progression but that AoE paralyze is very useful. Of course, Priest is still practically required, the +30 accuracy that stacks with everything is probably the biggest game changer in PoE.

And then I read this... https://greekcitytimes.com/2022/02/27/greece-defence-equipment-ukraine/

This may sound a little...whatever... but for now it looks like the Russians are really trying to avoid civilian casualties. Then again it may only look like that, I guess we will never know for sure. But guess in the end it doesn't matter at all, because the best way would have been not to invade after all.

Lot of Eastern NATO members have still a big piles of Russian stuff in their armies, so I presume this is being sent in a first wave. And a lot of Ukrainian have been trained in western tech, during last 8 years. I bet, that Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has sent some kind of list of stuff, which they deem most useful. At least that would be the most logical way of things to do.

Interesting story, thanks for sharing Did you not drink tea when you were young instead of coffee? I was raised on tea growing up and the first time I had coffee was maybe 17-18 years old. Tea is so much better than coffee

I belong to the most elite army in the world... ...and yet, I don't even know where I'm headed!

Happy to answer. I'm a professor with a doctorate in international relations. My academic focus is in international security and conflict, and international rivalries. My research focus has been on nuclear weapons proliferation, but in recent years has shifted to the emerging US-China rivalry. Prior to my doctorate, my bachelors and masters degrees are in aerospace engineering. Separately from my academic interests, I've long had a passion for WW2 and Cold War history and military affairs. I was in my senior year in college when the Berlin Wall came down, and at that time knew the full orders of battle of NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in Europe by heart. Used to do a ton of Cold War wargaming with my friends in college.