Zoraptor

Or the Patriot doesn't perform as well in real world scenarios as it does in demonstrations. Demonstrations are after all designed to sell the product, not test it, and you don't sell the product by having it fail in demonstrations. It's hard to believe the Saudis would spend billions on missiles and launchers, then gimp them with a bad home brew radar. That certainly makes for a good excuse though. There have been a fair few well publicised failures specifically in Saudi Patriot missiles too, failures Raytheon et al can't blame on Saudi incompetence. And an actual factual 1960s vintage S-200 missile also flew most of the way across Israel from Syria and landed near the Dimona Nuclear Reactor without a successful interception.

Finished The Diplomat. Pretty slick, and the second Netflix show I've more or less unreservedly enjoyed in two weeks. The main problem is... it just kind of randomly ends in media res, to coin a phrase. Literally nothing is resolved. Secondary problem I've already mentioned: Rory Kinnear. Who is absolutely fine, but if you tell me he's the British PM I instantly think of him, well, porking a porker in Black Mirror's first episode. end spoilers, be warned

Raw expense isn't the whole consideration though. It's also balanced by mitigation. Take the Shahed/ Geran drones- a Stinger used to shoot one down actually costs more than the drone does. But if the drone is going to hit something worth more than that Stinger then it's a worthwhile trade. Same with Hamas bottle rockets and Iron Dome only there's even more disparity with the interceptors costing 100x the cost of the rocket intercepted. The Saudis had at least one particularly unpleasant experience early (2015) in their war with Yemen from Scuds that informed their apparent profligacy- their head of the air force was killed at King Khalid AFB by one. They'd happily have swapped 50 million for the embarrassment that caused, let alone any other damage caused to the air base. The UAE had a similar experience when their barracks near Aden was hit and they lost something like 100 troops by far their biggest loss in the intervention and which caused a pretty big stink in Fujairah because it was their troops doing the actual dying for Dubai's ambitions. The Burkan (the specific Houthi scud variant so yeah, there might be some complaint about my use of 'ancient scud' at least in some cases since it's relatively advanced) is also pretty hard to deal with intrinsically, since the warhead separates from the fuselage. Really though they're paying well over the odds, especially if they're getting old PAC-2s. The consistency with which that happens specifically to them is one of the reasons they're not so keen on the US any more.

Standard ballistic missiles are intrinsically predictable, precisely because they're ballistic: they go up, they go sideways, they go down. It's what they do. There's no reason you can't shoot down any missile, it's a matter of probabilities and the faster and more manoevrable they are the harder it is. The Saudis were at times firing entire batteries of Patriots to take down one ancient Scud though, hence their constant requests for more missiles. A Kinzhal is basically an Iskander missile fired horizontally from altitude, and is not ballistic* in the normal sense despite what many articles say, it's far closer to a glide bomb, just not gliding, obviously. Or a very fast ATGM maybe.They say it was ballistic though because, of course, the Ukrainians said at the time a ballistic missile was fired. In any case, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and, well, people would be ridiculing Russia if they claimed something with the level of proof Ukraine has for that shoot down which amounts to the most generic 'warhead' imaginable with a hole in it and a... pipe which is even less identifiable than the warhead. It's particularly funny after we had a drone toodling over central Kiev for 20 minutes during which time the Ukrainians hit one of their own buildings with a missile again (having initially said it was... a drone attack, of course). Thank goodness they found some good news the same day. Note also: this is not the first time it's been claimed that a kinzhal has been downed- it was also claimed with no evidence on 26 Jan 2023. As always, one suspects you weren't really meant to remember it a few months later though. This is, of course, the first time the claim has been made, when, hmm, a US firm stands to benefit. I wonder if the NYT sources work for Raytheon. Oh well who knows. *technically of course even a rifle bullet describes a ballistic trajectory, just a very flat one. If you said you received ballistic fire and meant rifle rounds though people would think you were taking the mick, or being incredibly precious. Since the kinzhal is fired horizontally it's far closer to that rifle round in terms of trajectory.

Don't think he needs the equivocation since that's very obviously thermite. Some claims that a Patriot downed a (hypersonic) Khinzal near Kiev yesterday. Very much in the 'more evidence required' though; one of the pictures provided is literal lol and could be anything. May well be distraction from the drone fiasco too.

It's a fantasy movie with barely a vestige of historicity about it. Not actually too bad either so long as brain is parked in neutral. The cast was... not very historically accurate in terms of ethnicity from what I remember, though that was the least of its issues. The only really out of place one was the blonde Isis(?) Even with that though, well, Ramses the Great was pretty much 100% confirmed a ginger (yes, seriously). Doubt we'd see Rupert Grint playing him any time soon though.

Bayraktars: so useless the Ukrainians have started using them for target practice. Oddest drone fact of the war is still the Shahed having one certain and another probable air to air kill despite having zero air to air capacity.

Cleopatra was Greek, she certainly wasn't sub saharan in the way the documentary writers would like her to be. The Ptolemies were greek, and more inbred than the actual Egyptian pharaohs in their later years. But even before that they married fellow Greeks. You'd need an extremely unusual departure to get any sub saharan ancestory into that. The big irony is that there are at least three queens they could have picked that could be argued to have been nubian, and hence 'black'*. Hatshepsut, Nefertiti/ Nefertuaten (assuming the same person) and at a pinch Ankesa/-namun -paaten (likely never a regnal pharaoh though). Historically Hatshepsut was ruler of a far more important and powerful country than Cleopatra's comparatively pathetic rump Egypt, she just didn't boff any Romans or get written about by Shakespeare. But then these are documentary writers who started off claiming her Seleucid ancestry made her African. If you wanted genuinely and historically 'black' pharaohs there is also the actual Nubian Dynasty, but they had no female pharaohs. There are at least two other female pharaohs though not much is known about them (Sobeknefru(?) at the end of the old kingdom and one other whose name escapes me). Fun fact for the day: Nubia has more pyramids than Egypt- and lasted longer as an independent country. Ultimately there isn't any issue with having a black Cleopatra, the issue is with having her in a documentary. No one (well, I'm sure someone does, but...) really cares about, say, a black Anne Boleyn in a BBC drama or a black Queen Charlotte in Bridgerton because they're dramas, and specifically not documentaries. *they probably weren't either though and it still has the problem that to most writers black --> west african, because that's usually their ultimate origin due to where most US/ Caribbean slaves originated. Nubians looked nothing like Ghanaians/ Nigerians/ Congolese/ Senegalese though. Unsurprising, after all Tamils look nothing like Vietnamese and they're a similar distance apart. If you had Muttiah Muralitharan playing Ho Chi Minh in a doco you'd get some commentary too. Yeah, nah. That's the difference between culture and ethnicity (and to a large extent why it's a load of bunk). Egyptians/ Misr are only culturally arab. They're genetically- and thus 'racially'- very similar to ancient Egyptians, so far as anyone can tell. Which actually is a decent amount here, since they left so many mummies. Replacement Theory is very popular in certain circles because it means that the pyramids and the greatest ancient civilisation for a millenia was built by black africans who all then got killed off by not black enough misr around 660AD- and it's a load of old bollocks as credible and scientific as the pyramids being grain silos, something everyone laughed at Herman Cain for thinking. You can see the same phenomenon with other people. English, named after a german tribe and continually invaded for over 600 years in the first millenium, are still mostly celtic genetically. Not Roman, not Angle/ Saxon, not Danish or other Norseman, not French. And Turks are almost all Greek, Kurd or Anatolian genetically, the proportion of actual capital T Turkic DNA they have is miniscule. That's because areas basically never get properly depopulated and invaders almost always end up just replacing the ruling caste, and in the end they get bred out. Unless they're Ptolemaic and the family tree looks more like a plait.

If the US actually believed those casualty figures there's no way they'd have been telling Ukraine to retreat from Bakhmut- unless, of course, Ukraine was suffering disproportionately worse. Would have been interesting to see the response if someone had asked Kirby about that advice, or Ukrainian casualties for a comparison... Also having a bit of a lol at the response to the explosion in Pavlograd yesterday (volume warning) on twitter. I particularly like Geoconfirmed saying it was the SS-24 decommission facility while complaining about others jumping the gun. Turns out it wasn't. That's the problem with geolocating using two points in a line, who'd a guessed and thought to wait for a 3rd? certainly not self proclaimed experts complaining about others' wrong conclusions, apparently- and they're now just a bit baffled about what it was. After a staggering 20 seconds on duckduckgo tho: per a 2020 article. Hmm, could that maybe, just maybe have been the target? (And to be fair, on this occasion at least a decent number of the media have bowed to the obvious and called it a weapons depot hit, or similar rather than a strike on a home for orphan bunnies)

Yes(ish), though not in Europe- the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party The ish is because they're far more fasciocommies than commienazis; and get very upset if you get put the Socialist and Nationalist parts of their name around the other way.

Rory Kinnear playing the British PM? Makes me wonder if the writers did or did not watch Black Mirror beforehand.

There isn't really any point thinking about the possibility that decisions are made with no logical process behind them because in reality that happens almost never and it's almost always only considered when someone desperately wants a particular perpetrator but cannot come up with a reason for them doing it except "well they're evil/ mad, so their decisions don't have to be logical". There are of course plenty of decisions made with faulty logic or wishful thinking- best example is probably the whole idea of the invasion- or out and out mistakes, but zero logic decisions? Not many, if any. The context in which they do make sense can be countered very easily: if there's no logic to decisions and they're made on the basis of cackling insanity and paramount desire to hurt others no matter the consequence then why don't they simply, well, use nukes?

I watched The Night Agent on Netflix. Probably the best 'of its type' show that I've seen since... 24 season 3 maybe? It inevitably collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity in the final episode but even that is... well it's rather like complaining about a fruit salad being a disorganised mess; much of the point of the thriller genre is to have loads of big events and big reveals jumbled up into a tasty desert, not to be able to reassemble the fruit flawlessly at the end. It managed to hit just about every single genre cliché in existence but did so with a certain critical mass of charm and enthusiasm, and the writing and acting was... good. I also have to concentrate not to call it The Night Manager which I suspect is very much as designed, might as well cash in vicariously on Loki and Greg House when your casts' only recognisable names are DB Woodside and Robert Patrick.

It's still working, and has been consistently. One outage of 8% supply in May 2022 that I could find, though I didn't spend long. Everyone is of course an exaggeration. It was however an extremely popular opinion that Russia would weaponise gas deliveries from Ukraine in order to force Europe to open NS2 to make up the deficit. Something they're obviously unable to do in its current state, as with NS1. The general gist, per Zelensky from late 2021 so not polluted by post Feb22 propaganda (only pre Feb22 propaganda, heh) and via DW: Of course when the pipeline went boom suddenly it was no longer a Russian geopolitical weapon, but it was actually in Russia's best interest to destroy their own $12bn project! You'd have to ask someone who actually believes that how they reconcile those two positions, as previous I'm near literally unable to come up with an answer, even a sarcastic one, except the one in the previous post about working back from the belief that anything bad has to be done by Russians.

Their unemployment rate is the same as ours in NZ, and they still have 2.635 mn unemployed. I think they'll be fine- though I'm sure they appreciate the western concern. Though to be fair, it's also funny when, say, Arestovich or von der Leyen becomes credible or not. I don't think it has anything to do with 'contractual obligations' for that exact reason. It's not me arguing that they did it to get out of a contract, I'm just pointing out that that theory requires more mental gymnastics than doing a killer seppuku while practicing dismounts on the parallel bars and indeed, requires Russia to care deeply about something they patently don't in pretty much every other circumstance. (I mean honestly, it's like everyone has forgotten about the first 6 months where everyone was insisting that Russia was going to cut supply via Ukraine in order to force NS2's opening. Then, when those lines go boom... suddenly the master plan was for them to only be delivering sea water instead? Patently a theory that works back from the assumption that anything 'bad' had to be done by Russia, whether it benefited them or not)

AMD marketing has more than a bit of a habit of doing that. Next up most likely is the RX7600 having 8GB of VRAM after making fun of nVidia for skimping on their RAM.

It will take literal years to repair, since once water is in the pipe essentially has to be rebuilt from scratch, and it took over two years to build in the first place. If you want a short term disruption so you can spike prices and get NS2 approved (1) you don't blow up half of NS2 and (2) you don't blow up anything. Oh no, Ukrainians have hacked our pumps and caused damage! Nice and deniable; same effect without the permanence. So that's 2 years during which Russia will have zero leverage and zero income from it, and the large cost of rebuilding it. Funny thing is, even if only NS1 had been blown up it still wouldn't have benefited the Russians, since it would have precisely halved their theoretical supply (ie it would have been as if NS2 hadn't been built). And that was really the only argument for them doing it. I don't think anyone is saying that the EU benefits, but Russia certainly doesn't either. Really though, the argument is the equivalent to that of Russia dousing themselves in petrol and setting themselves on fire in order to burn down the EU's house. Why not blow up those Ukraine transiting pipelines instead, they'd have a reason for that and a benefit. And all so that people don't have to face the possibility that the country that benefited most financially- and said they would do it- did it.

I kind of can't believe it has to be said again, but Russia blowing the pipe up does not get Russia out of their contractual obligations, it makes it worse. Indeed, if the EU/ NATO etc were sure that Russia did it why not go with the UN investigation, hmm, would remove any idea of bias and get them their massive compensation payment with less problems... I mean, international investigations are good enough for CW usage in Syria, or whether Putin is kidnapping children. Them not being good enough here, well, it almost seems like they aren't quite sure, and may be ever so slightly worried about what an independent investigation might find. As it stands, and per the sureness with which they've made their accusations they are (1) giving up financial pressure on Russia, for no reason, (2) refusing to embarrass Russia, for no reason, and (3) not committing to an independent investigation, for no reason. In contrast, Russia would have given itself a massive repair bill and very difficult repair task while handing the market to the US and all for what? Some obfuscation about something we all- including them- know they'd be accused of doing anyway, whether or not they did; and when they had multiple, far better alternatives. I mean, if they're going to do that then blowing up the pipes through Ukraine is a far better choice. Sure, they'd be accused of doing it, but apparently that doesn't matter and they'd be excused any contractual obligations by saying Ukraine did it. Easy to repair, spikes prices and causes panic, and hey, if it's hard to repair or keeps happening there's always Nordstream 2 that could be opened. But no, far better to blow up the ones that don't benefit Ukraine instead. We don't just need Good Guy West, not wanting to embarrass Russia; we also need Good Guy Russia not wanting to deprive Ukraine of its transit fees... That's kind of the point though, eh. If Prigozhin were actually a rogue outsider he simply wouldn't be able to run a PMC, in Russia, because they'd use that law against him and be worried that he'd launch a coup or whatever with his PMC. They don't, so he isn't actually a rogue outsider, he's an insider. It's just convenient to have controlled opposition.

Yes Russia blew it up. In the belief that that way no one would blame them for it and it would be good for their PR. Once again, they were mistaken which no doubt would have surprised literally no one on the entire planet. What was I saying about people defending obviously implausible ideas with ridiculous arguments? If I had the contractual obligation to deliver some clothing and I blew up the road to stop the delivery... I'd still be in breach of contract, y'know, because I blew up the road in order to prevent the delivery. Breach of contract would probably be the least of my problems then, what with the borderline terrorism, but well, still breach of contract as the cherry on top. Really though, it's amazing how far the west has gone to protect Russia. They even prevented a UN investigation, presumably to spare, uh, Russia from the obvious result. Very kind, especially since it spares Russia from... massive fines for breach of contract too. Guess the EU is just generous like that, they are after all renowned worldwide for their financial magnamimity where Russia is concerned. Meanwhile the poor old US, forced to sell the EU gas at an enormous mark up and poor old Ukraine, forced to accept transit fees for Russian gas. I mean, some might say that the Russians would blow up the pipelines through Ukraine first of all for that reason, but oddly enough... they haven't. Only the one Biden said wouldn't exist if Russia invaded was hit. So clearly- yes, clearly- the real reason was that Russia wanted to embarrass Biden! Yes, that must be it!! Case solved!!! Ho hum.

Prigozhin isn't renegade. His whole point is doing things Russia can disclaim and for that you need a level of (apparent) conflict. Mercenary companies are illegal in Russia, if there was any actual and serious disagreement he wouldn't be where he is and never would have got there in the first place. Worst day for Ukrainian air defence in a while, with 4 S-300 destroyed. At least they weren't all parked together close enough to be hit by a single cluster munition though, unlike the last time they lost 4 in a day in February. Also a Gepard claimed, but no actual evidence yet. Yeah, there's footage now. Looks like it may have had a mechanical issue beforehand as it was immobile half way off a road.

Ah, so it's not just good guy Denmark that didn't want to embarrass the Russians, it's good guys Sweden, Germany, Poland and the US as well. I'm sure they've sat on that critical information for 7 months because... to be honest I can't even come up with a sarcastic reason, let alone an actual one. One thing's for sure, it's certainly not 'national security'. Are we really meant to believe that NATO monitoring Russian warships, in the Baltic, after February 2022, is a major revelation that will critically endanger intelligence gathering? That would be nothing less than an insult to anyone's intelligence. The funny thing is that this is exactly the tactic everyone accuses the Russians of whenever they do something bad: coming up with multiple implausible scenarios about how it wasn't them in the hope that one sticks. Funnily enough The Shaggy Defence gets a lot more media/ twitter analyst examination when it's the Russians using it and even the most blatant inconsistencies get papered over when they're from western sources. Can anyone come up with an actual, plausible, explanation for why they'd have sat on this information if they had it? (Bet Mr Texeira wishes he was the 'anonymous source, ie leak, for this one, eh? Pretty sure whoever 'leaked' this isn't getting Danish SWAT rolling up with assault rifles and MRAPs anytime soon)

lol Well I guess the 'enthusiastic amateurs on sail boat' approach had fallen apart rather spectacularly, so something else was needed. I particularly like the hedging at the bottom of the article still mentioning that story as if it were credible. Not quite as much as people still trying to insist the Kerch Bridge was blown up by a maritime drone with 65kg of explosives, but I do love a bit of informational interference running with my morning coffee and you take what you can get. Anyway, good guy Denmark wanting to protect Russia from repercussions for- checks calendar- 7 months. Some might say that Denmark has been more stridently anti Russian than anyone bar the Balts and Poles, but clearly this was an incorrect assumption and things like all those Leopards they pledged were actually... It's truly, truly unfortunate that their reluctance to embarrass Russia has dragged the story out for- checks calendar- 8 days instead of announcing they had the evidence a week ago and they had to bow to public pressure and make a statement. I do hope they won't be forced- forced I say!- to release some images of a russian ship somewhere in the Baltic in a weeks time, however much they want to prevent knowledge of their, uh, ability to take photos at sea being public knowledge as a matter of National Security. Why, next they'll be admitting they have small remote controlled air vehicles with cameras on them on something. No doubt they are also looking extremely hard for whoever leaked the information that they had the photos in the first place. They must be literally livid about that flagrant breach of security. I expect arrests and trials at exactly the same time as whichever Swedish official leaked all the information about Assange.

Sunk cost <--> tax write off, as other relatively close to finished products have become. While the "Zaslav has seen it three times, thinks it's the best superhero movie of all time! Of all time!!!" stuff is, maybe just perhaps, marketing hype it is entirely possible they genuinely think it's good and will do well at the box office. (Will be interesting to find out whether Miller's cameo in the TV Flash version of Crisis was some sort of reciprocal thing for a similar (same?) scene in the Flash movie. It was certainly shot noticeably differently than the rest of the episode(s) were- and was actually kept a pretty good secret unlike a lot of the other cameos like Lucifer/ Ellis)

The mobilisation was slow because they thought they didn't need to, same with the power stuff. Don't want to blow things up that you [think you] will own yourself in a few months; you just end up paying for blowing it up and repairing it. They clearly believed they'd get both the Zap' and Yuzhno' nuclear power complexes, plus the Dniepr hydro systems; and that is the majority of Ukraine's production (and a pretty large majority too, iirc).

Haha yes, I knew someone would mention that as soon as I saw the headline. They may also have had 9 brigades worth of equipment pledged, but... well. Those few battalions of modern tanks pledged are going to be doing a lot of heavy lifting for all the 70s stuff like M113s (that were pretty awful even then). Suppose I should mention the leaks confirming that the Russians can effectively jam military GPS too, since it was a subject of some debate a few years ago during the US attacks on Syria. I mean, the previous list would imply that they weren't actually a threat beforehand, yes*? I doubt the technological sanctions will actually do anything much except make a few things marginally more expensive. We've had interminable articles about how they're crippling Russia's war production, but no actual evidence and it seems that production is either unchanged or increased for most things. That isn't particularly surprising though, as most of the western wunderfwaffe supplied actually use components older than a Playstation. *though I don't really agree, their performance was ruined by the belief that Ukraine wouldn't fight so they could do it all quickly and cheaply. If they'd focused on defeating them militarily they'd likely be in a far better position.