Zoraptor

It's best to just use 'unit' unless you're sure of the size. A division is a proper military term for a unit which has a lot of men (iirc something like 12k for a Russian one), far more than even the largest estimate for the number of Wagner members. Based on the more credible estimates Wagner might scrape together two understrength battalions, if deployed monolithically, which even combined are an order of magnitude smaller. Probably not for the Port proper. The port residential area being taken seems pretty well supported though.

I was always amused by Zhironovsky's party being the Liberal Democratic party like he just picked it by random generator rather than to reflect any actual belief. Fun (?) fact, Zhiro contested the 'original' Russian Presidential election way back in 1991, coming 3rd. He only missed one election campaign since then (2004)

I'm just going to assume that you're working on the Epic side of 'Witcher 4' then, because that would be cool. (was going to say please be adding a shopping cart to Epic Store so everyone would shut up about it, but apparently one was added some time ago)

Rwanda was more or less understandable, since the US was getting most of its information from the French who were backing the Hutus politically, and training their militia. Key take away: don't get all your information from an interested party or you may end up embarrassed; see also, outsourcing research on the 'moderate Syrian opposition' to, lol, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. (The million deaths from sanctions claim was always shaky as it came from demographics, and demographics inevitably includes people who, well, never actually lived (like most of the babies who 'died' in the infamous quote). But, demographic analyses are fine when they show what you want. The classic example being that demographic analysis of Churchill's Bengal Famine is Unscientific because you can end up with something extraordinary like 8-10 million deaths, because to quote Churchill "Indians breed like rabbits" while demographic analysis of Stalin's Famine is perfectly Scientific because you 'want' a high death toll for that, and you certainly don't want Churchill to look worse than Stalin!)

That doesn't really fit what happened though. If they wanted it publicised to frighten others into submission or whatever they'd have, well, publicised it. As it is it's only come out after they've withdrawn. Wagner's certainly more of a "let's do something monumentally stupid, and let's film ourselves doing it so we get a reputation" sort of group when it comes to violence given some of their conduct in Syria and CAR. But that doesn't fit Bucha well at all.

Doubt it was Wagner. Certainly not because they're incapable of atrocities though, they most certainly are. Mostly because they seem to only pop up in Ukraine when a boogie man is needed and all the intelligence on them is mutually contradictory. eg I think someone else linked Wagner casualties as being 4000 dead weeks ago, which is more than they even have employed. Indeed British Intelligence has them only deploying about 10 days ago, and to eastern Ukraine. That's not the only report of them deploying though, to be fair.

And they were only trying to shoot at it in the first place because the operator had managed to assign it a grounded F-14's transponder because he didn't know how to work his system properly. The really 'funny' thing is he (Scott Lustig) got a medal for his conduct as well despite being flagrantly and obviously incompetent. (Have to admit I do rather like that as an example of debunked propaganda as it was the first example I really remember as such. Flight wasn't scheduled! Yes it was, your ship was on Bahraini time though, which isn't the same, and you didn't take that into account. They ignored our hails! Strange that they ignored hails addressed to "Iranian warplane", and which... got the flightspeed incorrect (used groundspeed, or v/v I forget), and were mostly on a military channel the plane literally could not pick up (and occasionally Guard, but meh if you're giving wrong identifying info anyway). But it wasn't broadcasting a civilian transponder! Yeah it was, and the other US warships confirmed it, you just managed to associate an on ground F14 with it instead because you're an idiot. Well I guess at least the Vincennes was in international waters, eh! Uh, yeah, about that, wonder why the report map was redacted in the declassified version... oh yeah, you were in Iranian waters even as recognised by the US, and not marginally either) Plenty can be said about that too, but KAL-007 really was a very, very long way- around 500km- off the course it was meant to follow. Pretty easy to see why, though.

The depression in winter thing has a proper medical term: Seasonal Affective Disorder. Though technically it applies if a mental illness is regularly/ cyclically worse in any season, not just winter.

Neither side constantly flies near civilian aircraft, it's rare enough to get some comment when it happens non incidentally. When it does they are usually either brief (ie making sure they aren't a spy plane with a rigged transponder) or, well, incidental. Kind of have to clarify that though, as military <--> military interceptions can be... theatrical. You have to be behaving very oddly to get one of those treatments as a civilian jet. More detail is needed to know how serious it was. Say it every time it comes up but actual intrusions into airspace are not at all common except around St Pete's where the airspace is complicated- and you're still talking a few incidents a year level- it's usually intrusions into either ADIZ (which have no legal standing whatsoever) or civil air controller areas (which typically project well outside territorial airspace over water)- or resolve to 'approached our airspace but turned around before reaching it' when over land. All the english language sources I could find have it as an actual intrusion, and since it's Russia/ Latvia it would have to be over land; but, that's not exactly conclusive. It does however appear 'close' is a bit of a misnomer, since Vukcic is at least quoted as saying it was 1000m- a full flight level- below the passenger jet which should be perfectly safe.

If it had been released a year later after the success of Baldur's Gate had had some time to set in it may have been an RPG, but it came right at the tail end of the RPG decline of the late 90s. At least it was set well outside the book continuity which made the... divergences there a bit easier to cope with.

Wheel of Time released. Guess I probably ought to clarify WoT (1999), since there's meant to be a new game in (early) development. Far better than it had any right to be really, and one of the more interesting Quake/ Unreal clones of the ~2000 glut.

Eh, at the time of the Winter War Germany and the USSR were (technically, kind of if you squinted) allies under Molotov-Ribbentrop so Finland got zero help from Germany. Continuation War though, sure. (Churchill at least was very keen to declare war on the USSR in 1939, but in this case at least fortunately Chamberlain was still PM. Then again Churchill was also very keen to invade... Norway, at more or less the same time. Well, protectively occupy even if the occupants objected. Practically there wasn't anything France or Britain could do to help anyway, and if there had been a campaign Churchill would have been in charge- and while his speeches were great his military campaigns tended to be awful. Indeed, the actual Norway campaign run by him was an almost unmitigated disaster, the almost part being pretty much solely Warspite sinking half the Kreigsmarine's total of destroyers at Narvik. Churchill's plan for helping Finland was... Dardanelles 2.0, of course, just run a big fleet and invasion force through to the Baltic, what can go wrong? Not like Britain was also at war with Germany, and Germany could invade Denmark at any time bottling the British fleet up wholesale and forcing them to run a narrow strait dominated by the Luftwaffe. Then again, Churchill being Churchill, maybe he was going to invade Denmark too...)

Eh, Russia would 'lose' a normal war very quickly and always would. The Soviets might not have won a non nuclear war, and the Russians have less than half the power the soviet bloc had, with a fair bit of that lost half swapping sides outright. It's not even a debate. It just wouldn't be a 'normal' war. It's particularly funny when you get people talking about the 'lessons' to be learnt from the current war then proceeding to completely ignore them by saying that anyone and his dog could invade Russia- because, presumably, Russians aren't as patriotic as Ukrainians? Not as willing to sacrifice? Really just pining for some tough love from their western superiors? I mean, it's not like there's a recent example of a country being invaded with the aim of chopping it up where things went very badly when the people living there objected. It's not like there have been multiple examples in the past 20 years of things going very badly when someone isn't even trying to annex bits of a country. I guess it's different when they're Russians though, they just lack the spine and fortitude of the invading westerner with their superior values- is it genetic, is it cultural, who knows, but it's just self evident and the mere knowledge of westerness gives me a chub thinking of all the people I'm superior too- and will no doubt welcome the invaders with flowers and cheers. Or maybe not, but that would just be because they've been misinformed or are stupid, hate us for our freedoms; and irrelevant because what are they going to do against the serried and glorious undefeated legions of Senatus PopulesQue Americam. And no, to paraphrase the great philosopher Otto from 'A Fish Called Wanda', "They were all draws, and we weren't trying anyway". Really, it was just a stupid idea. It could (almost certainly would) have been executed flawlessly and failed. The entire invasion force was marginal for taking a city of 3.2mn people. The only way it makes some military sense is if they thought the Belarusians were going to invade alongside them since at least that guards their flank

Eh, it's pretty much the same pattern it always is: older, poorer, more conservative, and more rural --> more enthusiastic; and for the poorer less to lose anyway. Middle class and educated urban young people --> not. For enthusiasm, and susceptibility to propaganda, Goering is still relevant: “Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

New Blood is... mostly very good. Suppose I should post the Strange New Worlds Trailer, despite it being blocked in NZ (lol)

They can't build them but they do have some capacity to maintain/ upgrade them, and have for example exported T-72s to 3rd parties. Though that was a decade ago now and under Yanukovich when purchase of any required Russian parts would not have been so much of a problem. They inherited ~1000 from the soviets, though the vast majority were never mothballed properly so may as well be junk so far as use for replacements go. Their tank plant in Kharkov makes T-64s and T-80 variants, and since they can't be supplied by anyone else (well, except Russia for the T-80) that is pretty irrelevant. You'd also have to assume that it's not in the best shape at present. [if it's replacement tanks for Poland there's heaps of options. If nothing else the US has a load of older Abrams in reserve- and Poland is meant to be getting new Abrams this year(?) anyway so it wouldn't be a long term shortage]

It was pretty close to Blitzkrieg in the south for a week. Considering Ukraine had 8 years to fortify Crimea- which is naturally about as bottlenecked as you can get- the progress from there was extremely fast. They just didn't have anything to follow up that success with because it was all stuck pointlessly in a traffic jam, swamp and forest on the wrong side of the Dniepr north of Kiev. Whoever decided sending 50k troops along a single road that decamped straight into an extended urban area of 3+mn population was a good idea is an idiot (and as previous, I'd put a lot on that being Putin since it smacked of a political rather than military decision). Have those troops pretty much anywhere else and things would potentially be a lot different. Now the best they can do is send them all along the same single road back into Belarus.

Group E --> group of death. Spain, Germany, Japan and potentially a team that hasn't lost a WC finals match since 1982 (and no, that wasn't the last time they were in it)

lol. "Democracy is for civilised people, and they just aren't civilised" The reality was that Yeltsin followed the economic suggestions of the west pretty much wholesale and it resulted in two sovereign bankruptcies, the largest known drop in life expectancy in any country outside of wartime and an implosion of the standard of living- while the privatisation model resulted in the oligarchs we know and love today. Also, of course, what happened in their first actual Presidential election? Massive pro Yeltsin interference from the US, as well as massive (uncondemned) pro Yeltsin ballot stuffing. That is what changed things- the enthusiasm for democracy and the west ran into a rabid pro west pro democracy candidate who was bent as a paperclip, and ran the country into the ground using a western plan and while being feted in the west. Air superiority isn't air supremacy, I can quote the definitions again if needed. The estimate is that Ukraine is managing 'up to' 10 sorties per day, and flown at treetop level as that's under the height ceiling for most of the Russian air defences. Despite that they've lost 2 planes in the last few days (one of which was videoed and can be found, inevitably, 'as Russian Su35 shot down') Everything else is small drones.

Classic Raja Koduri over promising, nice to see he's brought that over from his time at AMD. Guess he's avoided an "Intel ARC will be called Intel ARC" moment at least. XeSS always seemed likely to be at least a bit of a marketing stunt to imply a full suite release comparable to the competitors- it probably had the wind taken out of its sales somewhat by FSR2.0's release as well.

That's really not a good example since the Russians made the Turks cry over that. Erdogan went from triumphantly ordering the shoot down personally to "sorry, it was all a scheme by Gulenists and I had nothing to do with it"- pretty close to a direct quote too- in a year. Actual breach of airspace is very uncommon, except in a few areas of dispute (eg Kurils) or where the airspace situation is complicated- for NATO, almost all actual airspace breaches involve Estonia, and the St Petes/ Kalinigrad route. What is usually labelled as intrusion in the press is either ignoring ADIZ or air traffic control areas. The Canadian ADIZ is regularly breached, but an ADIZ also has zero legal basis and is entirely self proclaimed- the go to example being Taiwan's which extends way over mainland China and over the entire city of Fuzhou (pop 4mn, so not a hamlet). Actual Canadian airspace otoh is very seldom breached. Any rebuttal involving the footage being faked can be dismissed out of hand. Even the BBC- whose coverage was belated and at best grudging- admitted that every expert they spoke to said the footage was not faked. And while they weaseled a lot on responsibility they were explicit that the footage showed people being genuinely shot. The claims for it being faked ultimately resolve to "but hollywood shows/ I'd expect something different" type stuff from non experts. Some of the injuries shown- but conveniently, not if you blur the images- are pretty much impossible to fake. I'd presume the Amnesty one is the "In the Dark" report. I don't think anyone (well, except Russia presumably) disputes that there's repression of the Crimean Tartars. I was just ridiculing the claim that every Tartar had been forced from Crimea and deported to Siberia.

Raytracing isn't really surprising- Exynos has it and they're for even lower wattage devices albeit on supposedly a far better node than Arc (w/ RDNA2). I'd suspect that despite RT cores being listed separately they're baked into the core design, ie they're intrinsic and you can't exclude them.

Eh, they could simply be, well, lying or functionally lying (ie releasing low confidence intelligence as if it was high). We've got plenty of rumours and statements that were obviously designed to foment distrust among the Russian leadership. Though they usually go the 'unnamed intelligence/ defence official' line for that. I mean, Shoigu has 'reliably' been fired, arrested as he was about to launch a coup, been fired and arrested (again) and had a heart attack and died/ been incapacitated all in the last month. That sort of statement is also, of course, meant to draw comparisons to Hitler and Stalin. (Now, if they said that Putin ordered Kiev to be a major immediate target of the invasion I'd believe that without equivocation, since that reeked of a political rather than military decision)

If their reactions are actually going to influence which faction you join you might want to read the spoiler below:

In that case at least it isn't really the faction being extreme though, it's just Nasty being herself. I've actually found the factions a bit less extreme than in E1, though that may partly be residual effect from the Berserkers constantly moaning every time you checked your map/ journal. However, the Clerics were kidnapping people and indoctrinating them in E1 for example...