Zoraptor

Not everyone in anglo media is saying that it was a missile either, though it was certainly popular with certain groups. The ones who are* are tending to use evidence they wouldn't use in a more neutral situation and doing so because it makes a nice tidy story though. *maybe were, now, since the US came out and said it wasn't a missile. I haven't really been paying attention to it today.

To be fair in this case whether it was a missile or not is peripheral rather than fundamental, it's just indicative of some bad reasoning. The only fundamentals are if it was an accident or deliberate, and if the latter who did it. But; people do desperately want it to be a missile because that's definitive on both counts ie that would make it deliberate and done by Russia. And there's been an awful lot of experts working back from the conclusion they want rather than working from the evidence over the course of this war over multiple different issues and with multiple examples of experts ignoring or not knowing stuff they really ought to. You thus end up with two conclusions; either they're not experts but 'experts' or they're being deliberately dishonest. The first explanation seems more... charitable.

Well that sucks. And everyone thought he was finally recovering. Yeah, vast majority of people who die from 'dementia' die from pneumonia (or malnutrition when they lose their swallow reflex or for Alzheimers lose all interest in food, or from a plethora of other secondary effects). Unlike HIV it's possible to die directly from the disease itself via the breathing reflex being lost but it's pretty rare to survive that long.

If this war has done anything it's finished off any vestigial respect I had for 'experts'. Which to be fair, wasn't much at all, but still. Bodies of people who die in bomb incidents on planes are very seldom either burnt or exposed to high temperatures as a result of a bomb*; they almost always have just blunt force/ impact trauma. This is a common mistake people make when they've seen a lot of LE/ propellant explosions which are, basically, a big fire created from something that is designed not to explode violently. Same for fuel: there's a reason your cabin is pressurised at 8500m and engines require a compressor- lack of oxygen- which is exactly what fuel needs to ignite. Despite the reputation of jet fuel it's generally about as ignitable as diesel (indeed the main jet fuel, kerosene, was used as fuel for tractors just like diesel is now and some diesel engines and jet turbines will run on the other fuel fine), not worse than petrol. HE otoh does not create much 'fire'** as that would be counterproductive to its main task. Fire involves a lot of relatively slow and incomplete/ inefficient combustion (hence smoke--> unoxidised carbon) while you want very rapid and complete 'combustion' for a HE; and all it has to do in 99% of cases to bring down a plane is punch a hole in it. If you really want to do that and you're a state security service there are a plethora of ways to do it that will leave no traces on any bodies and no obvious traces on the aircraft anyway, not just bombs. Still could be a missile of course, and I'd agree if it were there's no chance of it being a case of mistaken identity. If it had been a random plane then with what we've seen the suggestion would be either bomb or far more likely a mechanical issue but it wasn't a random plane. *on the ground is more likely. Think of it this way, while our experience of flying is in a high oxygen low (apparent) velocity environment in which a fire would flourish as soon as a hole is made in the plane by a bomb all the air gets sucked out and at very high speed--> fire in low oxygen environment and with very high velocity winds --> fire goes out. **hence HiMARS having aluminium powder added to their explosive warheads to enhance heat/ incendiary effects. Which, of course, was forgotten completely when it came to the Olenivka Prison explosion. Especially when the target was Prigo. One suspects all the hand wringing over the poor flight attendant and pilots would stop pretty damn quick if Ukraine claimed responsibility. Though one doesn't really need to suspect given the completely different attitude towards the truck driver Ukraine atomised in the Kerch Bridge attack. At least the FA and pilots were Wagner employees...

Name change (or two*, perhaps something educational sounding after the musical name?) for Wagner and then status quo for Africa, assuming Prigo is actually dead. Which he probably is, but that guy loves/ loved a good troll. In any case nice deniable groups are far too much use for geopolitical shenanigans and Wagner was far too successful to be wound up as a concept. *I will never fail to be amused by Jabhat al Nusra/ Al Qaeda in Syria and Blackwater using the exact same strategy to whitewash themselves

Internationally, people ought to know Mike Pence at minimum since he was VP to Trump and was prominent in the post election incidents. And for his uncanny resemblance to a character on Sealab2021. Otherwise, decent chance of recognising Haley and DeSantis. Christie too maybe, especially if you like Nyoo Joizee bridges.

If Prigozhin getting shot down is a psyop then it would be far more likely it was all a psyop and they pop up again attacking Chernigov or Sumy in a few weeks time. He doesn't seem the type to fake his own death so he could retire to the Bahamas.

Since there was some debate a while back: SBU chief reveals details of 1st attack on Kerch Bridge per PravdaUA. Summary: 21 tons of explosive in a homicide truck bombing. Not 65kg of TNT in a rinky dinky boat, not a false flag and not any of the other pie in the sky theories media were banding about to make it not a suicide bombing. Though to be fair, remote trigger, "we used so many people without their knowledge" so obviously right about it not being a suicide bombing, just plain old murder. Next item on list Nova Kahkovka dam... Note for pro Russian types though, that doesn't actually make them worse than ISIS. ISIS used plenty of drugged up and unwitting 'suicide' bombers too.

Fallout 4 goatee edition released w/75% discount (-->9 USD, here).

Plenty of pictures of lancets hitting targets with cope cages, doesn't seem to do them much good (though see below). A couple of examples of them snagging rather than detonating I can think of, but that was on large flexible camouflage netting/ non taut chicken wire over artillery, not the classic rigid cope cages over a tank turret. Perhaps the best example though are of lancets hitting obstacles like tree branches well before their target yet still taking out armoured vehicles. On the big lancets with HEAT the copper jet is long enough to cope with even that amount of displacement. Definitely would be confirmation bias there as the Russians are unlikely to release footage where cope cages work- but at the same time you'd think more Ukrainian vehicles would have the cages if they did work. They did for a time back when lancets only had HE/frag warheads but don't seem popular any more. Presumably the negatives to usability/ visibility doesn't work out against increased survivability any more. That's a pretty specific example though, in normal circumstances evidence is that they do very little to nothing for either side.

DLCs for Outer Worlds are more of the same, but better. They were not as good for me as they should have been because I found the base game was too long and too much the same (especially massive amounts of filler combat) but even so I still liked the expansions. For someone who is still enjoying the base game they would, I imagine, be thoroughly worth buying.

Upgraded so they can keep chickens on top of the turret as camouflage, absolute genius! Though the other one we've seen doesn't have the cope cage. And that's all the brigades for the 'counter'offensive committed now. I am most definitely not looking forward to seemingly every video of an armoured vehicle being hit in the next week being labelled as a Challenger by hopeful pro Russians though.

Irony is that Linus obviously didn't actually watch the video before responding (or didn't pay attention) since it was specifically mentioned that they auctioned it. So it wasn't a valid correction in even the most trivial sense.

Meteorit and US equivalents are packed full of HE, they'll go up spectacularly at a drop of a hat. A single line charge has multiple times the HE that a tank loadout would have. New Zealand had 944 industrial site fires over 5 years. Assuming Russian industrial site safety is as good as ours that would give... around 5000 industrial site fires per year, for Russia, based on population. And you'd have to assume it's quite a lot worse.

That's, well, youtube. Videos are designed to hit monetisation milestones time wise, drama gets more hits, controversy gets more hits, tribalism gets more hits and these are businesses that want to make money, not (just) passion projects. Case in point: that ytimg. Is Steve going to rip out Linus' earrings and stuff them down his throat live on youtube to teach him a lesson in ethics and competence, because that's what it looks like. Probably not; but don't you want to find out? OK you don't, but surely you want to be able to make informed remarks on internet forums about all the drama? If you don't watch you'll miss out... or have to wing it. And that's why you get ludicrous crap like a depressive Linus wandering around a rainy Tokyo* bemoaning the state of Intel's CPUs as if he's a step away from being discovered in a wood by a Paul brother and similar OMG drama! stuff with little actual value. People love that crap a lot more than analysis of the idle wattage of a 4060Ti and how to shave 25% off it with a judicious undervolt and the correct windows settings. *if it was Tokyo. Not like I actually watched the video, after all.

Given just about every other national sports team in Aus is named after marsupials (like the soccer-roos men's team) they really should have been called the Soccer Quokka. Marketing levels --> through the roof.

Finished up Strange New Worlds S2 yesterday. Overall a good season with no stinkers at all and indeed none even close to being bad. OTOH, not really any standouts either for me. There was some potential for them but... generally I felt that the ideas had been done before and better in previous Trek. Or other series, I guess, for the musical episode and the rather obvious plethora of Alien(s) homages in the last episode (done with a certain amount of tongue in cheek). If the season was graded it'd be a B average, highest mark B+, lowest mark B-, so very consistent. Even having two gimmick episodes close together worked OK. And it is... fun for want of a better word, and despite it at times actually being pretty dark in its subject matter. Season MVP same as last season, Anson Mount's magnificent hair.

I'm not even sure the US could have sent much lend lease wise. Flail tanks were made in relatively big numbers but would have quite obviously been useless on most of the eastern front (had to move at walking pace with turret reversed if the flail was deployed, and a Tommycooker's survivability on the eastern front was marginal without that due to its skyscraper profile) plus the soviets already had roller tanks present in greater numbers than the US built total over the course of the entire war. And of a design the US ended up copying, so better than the Sherman Crab anyway. That leaves the British/ Polish semi modern induction detectors and iirc the batteries were the limiting factor there. They pretty definitely used German PoWs for mine clearing which was a bit naughty, but then so did pretty much everyone. (I've always thought that particular urban legend was a reaction to allied conduct in WW1. Can't have the soviets being less profligate with their troops than Joffre or Haig after all)

The multiple angles thing has definitely happened a decent amount. We got probably a dozen or so angles on the two big pile ups in June and got a new angle/ in progress video on the Big Bradley Burn Up only a few days ago. Clearly labelled as such though. And there's an occasional video that has clearly been manipulated (most recently a lancet hit where the explosion was on the opposite side from where the lancet hit) plus a lot of Ka-52 footage is so degraded you'd be forgiven for thinking they were shooting aliens from Space Invaders. OTOH, plenty of reasons to hit abandoned stuff again, and you don't get people complaining about Ukrainian drones dropping grenades into already abandoned BMPs; that's just sensible military tactics. And it's always funny how simultaneously Russia is down to its last 50 lancets or whatever yet still has enough to stage pointless PR stunts...

I thought they did a pretty good job of making Nyrissa redeemable in Kingmaker. It felt like a third of the game was learning why she was like that and ultimately it was because the actual villain had stripped her of her humanity. Or morality since she wasn't human. Romancing her... yeah, that's a bit more questionable. If for no other reason than it essentially reduces to "I restored your empathy, let's boff". (Then again most rpg romances reduce to "I did x tasks for you, let's boff" I guess)

Weird that so many of the hottest takes have come from the British MoD. It's like they've employed an article writer from The Sun. Mine Clearing Line Charges (specialised launcher that, uh, fires explosives attached to a line to set mines off), specialised tanks (eg Leopard 2R) with rollers or reinforced dozer attached. Ukraine lost half their Finnish 2Rs in the first two days though, and they can't cope with mines stacked two or more on top of each other. As Malcador mentioned, the MCLCs are highly vulnerable too in contested areas though I cannot recall seeing any actually destroyed. Then again, may not be much left if they did get hit since a single line charge is 750kg of high explosive.

One of the big problems is they don't actually need months to prepare mines. The Russians are using MLRS to mine areas on the fly. That was something the Ukrainians did extensively around Vugledar too. Don't think they can double stack the mines that way (that takes out mine clearance vehicles) but they will handily take out standard armour which is driving in areas they think has been swept. Which is the reason you get a lot of combat footage of Ukrainian vehicles seemingly just sitting around in columns waiting to be destroyed- lead vehicle has hit a mine and the rest can't drive around it without hitting others.

A lot of those complaints are inevitable though when things are contested- and they aren't necessarily out and out mistakes. Fair enough complaining about artillery not being ready when it's you having to cope with making an assault with no support; but there are circumstances where that is going to happen and it happening is not a mistake. An artillery piece isn't going to do anyone any good if it's blown up and there will be situations where limbering up those m777s or driving a Krab off is going to save it from counter battery fire or a lancet, and where doing so is 100% the correct call even if it leaves an attack in the lurch. It's not NATO's fault that that happens since it's inevitable, but... if the offensive had worked we'd definitely have had wall to wall praise for NATO tactics, so it's only fair that they cop criticism when it doesn't. Plus, of course, you didn't tend to get nuanced takes when it was Russia doing the same thing at Vugledar. Most of the complaints also ignore that there are two sides fighting, it's perfectly possible that the Russians are fighting well and not allowing Ukraine to perform. At this point the offensive is definitely faltered. Might always restart, but you'd think their best chance has gone now that they've committed almost all their best/ western trained brigades- and haven't even reached the main defensive line yet.

Giving their kit to new formations was at western insistence, the idea being that they would not have learnt any 'bad habits' and of course that meant that the troops were completely green when it came to combat realities and hadn't learnt any good habits either. I don't think it's been unequivocally stated but the inference is certainly that Ukraine wanted to send people with combat experience on the basis that they'd learn and ultimately perform better but NATO wanted them running on their doctrine from ground up. The social media complaints are mostly about the sort of things that always happen in military campaigns. The main exceptions firstly being complaints about announcing the 'counter'offensive and its marketing campaign. Which was certainly moronic and looked so at the time, and had zero military justification since reddit upvotes and breathless news reporting don't count there. The other is anything corruption related. But a bit of disorganisation and occasional supply issues etc are par for the course, and the complaints about tactics are things that always happen to greater or lesser extents, especially as the scale of things decreases. And fundamentally if you have a big convoy run into mines and get shot up miles behind the front lines the grunts are always going to blame their immediate commanders, not the ones who told them that was how to conduct manoevre warfare and the Russians would panic and run in their classroom in Wiltshire. A thought experiment about what they could have done better on the larger scale doesn't come up with much obvious they could have. Or at least, not much they could have that doesn't rely on handwaving. Maybe they shouldn't have tried at all, in retrospect, but you do have to take some political aspects into account.

Don't think Ukraine can be blamed (much) for the military failures, but they can be blamed for setting expectations far too high. And yeah, announcing the offensive was stupid both for doing it at all and for setting ludicrous expectations on a completely ridiculous timetable (Crimea by spring!.. in their hearts). In that at least Western Official was a lot more circumspect, in general, they just tended to be drowned out by by expectation inflation from people competing for clicks, Unnamed Western Official and Retired NATO Officer writing column. It also sets the stage for recriminations when things don't go to plan or schedule and recriminations can get out of hand. Militarily... well NATO hasn't fought a 'proper' war ever and you have to go back to Korea 70 years ago to find an equivalent fight. No doubt their tactics look great in a simulator and when wargamed, but those always work on the basis of assumptions and the assumption is never that your army has to fight a way you don't want them to. So you get a self reinforcing impression of your own competence. Sitting back and asking why they aren't fighting as the simulations suggest they should is paternalistic bollocks at best and has often been accompanied by extremely obvious inconsistencies. It would be interesting to see how they'd perform when their lead vehicle hits a mine, everyone has to stop, and a helicopter picks your convoy off from 10km away (or artillery from even further). Just drive around the minefield (lol), deploy infantry screens (unsupported, because your armour is stuck trying to get through the mines), don't move in convoys (but keep launching those 1000 man attacks!), keep moving (but stay on the cleared lanes!); very easy to say not so easy to actually do. The one thing they might be blamed for is going for obvious PR targets over military importance, and that's mainly wasting energy and resources attacking Bakhmut not because it's important strategically but because losing it was embarrassing. OTOH, whining about 'only' getting 60 odd billion dollars worth of military aid from your allies (and about as much again non military) is not a great look either.