Zoraptor

Pretty obvious what you were replying to anyway. Thing is, as much as Minsk may have been hard to implement what they've ended up with from not implementing is a lot lot worse, and they're still going to have a worse ultimate result than Minsk too. And on a somewhat related tangent; I am highly amused by Australia and New Zealand throwing fits about Solomon Islands maybe signing a defence agreement with China. I thought it was an inalienable right of countries to sign defence agreements with whoever they wanted, and objections were just a sign of paranoia? I'm getting the distinct impression it's only an inalienable right when they're signing agreements with, well, us... Might have helped if we- well, mostly the Ockers with a bit of political cover from us- hadn't treated the Solomons like a vassal state close to an outright colonial possession since independence. Though not as badly as Nauru, of course.

Uh, yeah. Girkin is a decidedly Zhironovsky style 'critic'. You might have heard stories about '200 Russians killed by the US in Syria' a few years ago- that resolves to him. It was actually about 190 local tribespeople and about a dozen Wagner. He said they were all Russians because he wanted Putin to... bomb the US in Syria. Yes, really. In other words his 'criticism' would be something like "this operation is badly run because Putin isn't nuking every west Ukrainian city, plus all the bits of NATO that are supplying them". Russia has way more tanks than that. It's cheaper to mothball tanks than scrap them so they've still got a load of ex soviet stock. Probably around 15,000 of them. In this case it's not even denied by Russia, but by the Ukrainians. Given the lols generated by americans not understanding the difference between rif and city in Syria they're probably confused by oblast vs city in this case. They actually had that already- that was the Minsk Agreement. The trouble was that that was signed when Ukraine was indisputably losing so didn't favour them, and was politically impossible to implement.

US Intelligence is not exactly a disinterested party. Their last estimate for Ukrainian losses is also now 2+ weeks ago, I believe. And jesus h christ twitterati, please look up thermite some time. If I see one more "omg teh white fosforuss!!!1!! it's a war crime!!!" post from some numpty proclaiming expertise I'll sigh and get on with my life. Worst thing is it's all recursive; they use the proof of WP being used in Syria- that was thermite too- to 'prove' that it's being used in Ukraine. Per the Israeli use in Gaza it's really, really obvious when WP is used on civilians as it has really, really characteristic burns. Just don't look them up in an image search unless you're really, really prepared for some unpleasantness. Eh, believe it when you see it, and not before.

There's also the question of what happens when the Ukrainian side starts getting reverses they can't paper over. It's all very well having glorious martyrs, so long as it's someone else. Per yesterday, the Russian casualty figures are going through a massive inflationary phase because the Ukrainians said they had ~15k troops in Mariupol. As soon as that battle is over the Ukrainian casualties overtakes the Russian ones, and they can't have that. [why did the forum software randomly post just the reply part of this? I blame Russian bots]

I wouldn't usually defend either Albright or Clinton, but I also don't doubt that their faux pas had a lot more legs because they were women. Quasi ironically considering Albright's justification of the 'special place in hell' remark their biggest mis-steps in office almost certainly came from trying to say something overly... aggressively to 'compensate' for being women too, and instead coming across as being sociopathic and diplomatically, being counter productive. End of the day though, if Hillary didn't get fulsome support from Albright she wasn't going to get fulsome support from anyone- possibly even including Bill in that. Would have been better if it hadn't come across as, well, overly aggressive and mildly sociopathic plus ultimately counter productive fulsome support though.

Hmm. I doubt he was arrested for something posted on Feb 24 whatever Ukraine says*. There were at least two videos from Ukrainian sources purporting to show a MLRS in- and a MLRS firing from- the mall carpark on the day it was hit so it seems likely it was one of those, not something from 3 weeks ago. The one of the MLRS firing was timestamped only a few minutes before the mall was hit (but was also not really able to be independently confirmed, except via its poster being Ukrainian and posting it as pro Ukrainian). The Russians also had video of a MLRS entering the mall, though a certain degree of skepticism about that would be understandable, and there were certainly secondary explosions- though that too is not absolute confirmation of weapon stores. They've also released a lot (relatively, since they aren't releasing much) of official videos of them using drones to tail MLRS and the like back to reloading stations and then hitting them while reloading to take out the supplies as well. Balance of probability is that it was a legit military target. *Good to see BusinessInsider maintaining its reputation for excellent research and in depth analysis. Citing Russian outlet... pravda.com.ua for the Feb 24 date. Hmmm. Bit odd of the Russians to use a Ukrainian url, it's almost like the Ukrainians have a Pravda too?

That's the US being... irrelevant in that situation, for want of a better term; it's not a direct snub. UAE doesn't like Iran, and they don't like Turkey due to Erdogan's support for the Ikwhan/ Brotherhood. Assad is already against Turkey, UAE has no Syrian proxies left to challenge Assad even if they wanted to, and they'd like to split him away from Iran if possible. They also don't really care about tacitly admitting they lost. The damage to their reputation from that- such as it is- is done already, they'd lose more from continuing to pretend they haven't lost. The US being the US they no doubt think they can still win, and it will take 20 years to admit they won't.

4000 Wagner mercenaries killed? Funnily enough, Ukraine itself reported a grand total of 1000 Wagner troops in Ukraine last week. So they've killed each of them 4+ times. To be blunt, that's all about the Ukrainians saying they had 15k troops in Mariupol and wanting to stay ahead (well, behind) in the casualty race. There's a decent amount of forest and swamps too, especially in some inconvenient places for the Russians like north of Kiev. (Comparison to WW2 is a bit fraught though, as the scale is completely different. Look at a relatively minor battle like the 2nd Battle of Kharkov which took place more or less from Lugansk to Kharkov, ie over maybe a third (to be generous) of the current frontage. Number of men involved? ~1.2 million, or around 3 times the number involved in the entire current war. Lasted two weeks, number of casualties, ~300k) Yep, and if the defenders don't want to 'starve' they have to either be relieved, or break out. And that means lots of troops out in the open, vulnerable to artillery and the like, and a reversal of the usual defensive advantage. The question is whether Russia has enough troops deployed for this to actually work. On Mariupol, sure, it'll work eventually. But they also have Sumy (kind of? there's been some sort of ceasefire there for 2 weeks supposedly) and Chernigov too which are definitely behind the front lines, and others which are sort of invested like Mykolaev or Kharkov (plus a bunch of others like Severodonetsk or Izium which are smaller). At some point you run out of troops able to do anything other than guard the cities, and it certainly appears that that point has largely been reached. Which is, presumably, why the Ukrainians are so keen for Mariupol to keep fighting despite it pretty obviously being hopeless.

The US never stopped bombing Iraqi anti air systems, so they only had what had been missed previously, which wasn't very much except for AAA. They (allegedly) got some up to date stuff like GPS jammers though. The usual question to ask whenever anyone cites 'experts' is 'which experts'. In this case, I've never seen that claim from anyone other than western intelligence sources (citation of) claiming it's what the Russians thought.

Sorry guys, not supposed to post this but someone leaked me a still from the set of Picard S3 on the hush hush. Apparently he's posing as Sejanus and infiltrating the household of the Emperor Tiberius. (You'd think they would have learned that de-aging tech is still uncanny valley tier, and look at that risible wig...)

Kind of? On a per country basis you already had the inevitable infrastructural and distribution/ supply issues with previous vaccine applications and that means that not everyone needs a new booster at the same time- there's already a built in smoothing of demand. If a booster gave decent protection for, say, 6 months then the only people needing a new omicron specific booster are those who got their booster 6+ months ago. On the more macro scale you could have the issue of all the countries wanting the new boosters simultaneously, but that's only an issue if there's a build up of demand. Contrast that with the situation 15 months ago: the initial dosage was 2 shots over 3-6 weeks and everyone wanted those simultaneously because no one had been vaccinated; despite the production starting at literally zero with limited precursor supply and manufacturing facilities. Hence the issues. That situation doesn't apply now- or at least doesn't apply to anywhere near the same extent.

Yeah, Elex 2's environmental graphics is far superior to 1's on PC. I actually replayed 1 not that long ago, and in some respects it's really really obvious how large the improvement is- Elex 1 has some very low poly objects and environments which clash with the rest, there's almost no grass and the water quality is night and day better in 2 etc. 2 has got a lot of extra engine overhead though and runs far worse (but nowhere near as badly as, say, Gothic 3 did at a similar point) And also yes, the human models are... well, they probably should have stuck with the Elex 1 models in most cases, the E1 flashback cutscenes actively look better. They do now seem to have had the bump/ normal maps applied at least, but the mouths are still gateways to hell and the eyes still imply that an eldritch horror has taken up residence in a meat puppet. Also one or two funny dialogue bugs, like rescuing a merchant who is grateful to some dude called 'Calahan', instead of 'Calaan'. I'm about 20 hours in and the biggest difference is still difficulty curve. Instead of being the traditional "run away from literally everything you can't kite" PB gameplay most of the starting enemies ('young' 'sick' 'old' __) are easily dispatchable with even starting gear, very unlike getting stunlocked and killed by the tutorial area biter in E1. It's actually more difficult now than in the beginning, which is a big change.

The ETA for an omicron specific vaccine was March, though it had been pushed out a 'couple of weeks' from that, apparently. The issue with natural omicron immunity is that we already know it doesn't even protect fully against other omicron strains- if you've had BA.1 you can still get BA.2, and much like delta was BA.2 is also worse than BA.1 That's also immunity gained after being sick, not really comparable to immunity gained after a bit of a sore arm after a trip to a clinic.

I think the war crimes statements are in the context of [future western friendly Russian government] handing him over for some reason (or joining the ICC). Which would require two fairly fundamental alterations to reality- a western aligned government willing to join the ICC, which is a pipe dream after Yeltsin, and a change to Russia's Constitution to allow extraditions. As for the more general point of why the concept of international law has to be applied to everyone even handedly or else is pretty much pointless, if not actively counterproductive: what we have is a system where only the weak and poor can be punished. Imagine claiming that is a good justice system in any other context, and it's fine because "at least some people are getting punished". Well sure some are getting punished, but others are getting away with it not because they're innocent, but because they are too powerful or threatening the judge and police. That's probably the single biggest sign of a bad justice system.

Sure I'd be happy with that too- I'm happy with anything with anything so long as it's applied even handedly without fear or favour. The problem is we all know it won't be applied even handedly.

Most of the 'silly nonsense' is about India and China not supporting the western position, not them supporting Russia. Unless you take ComradeYellow seriously, and you really shouldn't. Might not be relevant for India, since most western countries like to pretend it doesn't exist except to contain China, but China really couldn't care less about western impressions- after years of Yellow Peril scaremongering and trade wars what impressions are there to squander? Thinking anyone else is going to do anything to China over Ukraine is just... laughable. Most of them won't even do anything to Russia besides vote in the UNGA. I mean, if we are going to go by official statements rather than twitter scuttlebutt from unnamed sources we get: Definitely distancing themselves from Russia's position there. Once again, fighting diplomatic battles on multiple fronts at the same time is monumentally stupid, and they won't be paused just because it's convenient to the west if they are. Oh yeah. How many Important People were going to be imminently arrested/ sacked by Putin so far? Gerasimov, Shoigu (plus he was going to launch a coup...), the head of the FSB and SVR? as well... Confirmed number actually arrested or sacked so far is, well, zero?

Yeah, nah. You can argue the legitimacy of the invasion making Russia responsible and that's fine, so long as you apply the reasoning evenhandedly. Which, let's be frank, most won't since it makes them responsible for ~1 million dead Iraqis (meh, via excess deaths/ population difference, but still). If you don't apply that then you end up with the definition of military vs civilian targets, and soldiers hiding under a building makes it a legitimate target. Indeed, it seems likely that someone has pointed that out to the BBC as the bit with the soldiers sheltering under the building is no longer in the report. Yeah, nah. There's a Marine Brigade and a regular army Brigade in Mariupol. Azov won't surrender, Azov has tried to escape at least once already, the rest? The 'martyrs of Snake Island' actually surrendered rather than fighting to the death. Russia has air superiority*. I know 'experts' are claiming they don't, but that's pure propaganda. What it doesn't have is air supremacy**. The situation is murkier because Ukraine is continuously being resupplied, but... well. We've had maybe 10 TB2 videos despite Ukraine being resupplied with them at least twice- and that's less than one video per drone that they had 6 months ago, let alone including resupplies. There were days in Artsakh with twice that many. And to draw a comparison, the Yugoslavs were still flying sorties at the end of the Kosovo intervention. I don't think anyone would dispute NATO having air supremacy there though. *"degree of dominance in [an] air battle ... that permits the conduct of operations by [one side] and its related land, sea and air forces at a given time and place without prohibitive interference by opposing air forces" **"degree of air superiority wherein the opposing air force is incapable of effective interference" Both definitions are NATO definitions, incase anyone wants to quibble.

That's a really good comparison. If I had to compare my reaction to Midnight Mass to a book something like The Stand would be closest. I really enjoyed the build up, and was a bit disappointed by the ending- but I'm not quite sure whether that was because the ending was 'bad' or because it simply couldn't match the quality of the build up. Slightly OT, but literally the only ending to a Stephen King book I unequivocally liked was The Dead Zone's. I was going to say that that book doesn't make many King top 10s except mine, but apparently it makes just about all of them...

Phantom Doctrine was way too long and- for the most part- way too samey. Had some absolutely fantastic ideas though and some of the more unique missions worked great too.

It's 75% of Russia's 'deployable' army, and yeah, that's highly up to interpretation. If they dipped into reserves it's ~10%. Same type of figures you see for tanks- 10% of Russian tanks destroyed. Well kind of, it's just that Russia has something ludicrous like 10x that number in reserve. Also, Dear BBC, I'm not sure your reports on the devastation of civilian areas carry quite as much weight when you're literally following Ukrainian soldiers around and show them, well, sheltering under a civilian medium rise. Lack of progress is... well kind of. The trouble is that the lack of progress is double edged. Supposedly there are ~14k Ukrainian troops bottled up in Mariupol. And with two brigades there + Azov that figure is not overtly unrealistic (personally, I suspect it's rather less). What happens when Mariupol is taken or surrendered? That's 14,000 Ukrainian troops gone, more than twice the claimed Russian losses, at a stroke. And it frees up a bunch of Russian/ DPR troops too. Russian tactics are clearly to do exactly what worked in Aleppo, and it did work. Get the enemy to break cover and obliterate them with artillery.

'Spanish' Flu actually went back to 'normal' flu pretty quickly. Influenza is an extremely mutable virus- coronaviruses are highly mutable, but to nowhere near such an extent. To put it in perspective, Russian 'flu' (very likely a coronavirus now a component of the common cold, not influenza) lasted ~6 years in 4 waves, while Spanish Flu and other H1N1 pandemics lasted ~2 years (and Spanish Flu had 4 waves in those 2 years). So there may well be another 3+ years to go. Spanish Flu also had a very different... method than covid as it killed a very large number of otherwise healthy young people (their immune system went into a positive feedback loop, irony being that those with weaker immune systems were protected from that). Plus it occurred directly after/ during WW1, so its economic etc effects were masked both by the effects of that conflict directly, and by the press being controlled. Infecting billions makes a difference if it imparts permanent or long/ medium term immunity, but covid doesn't. Someone infected with OG covid has very little protection against infection from omicron (though will have retained some protection against serious infection)- and in the case of Spanish Flu being reinfected was for many a death sentence, per above. In Australia they're even getting reinfection across two different strains of omicron. You also are relying on the general rule that pathogens get more infectious but less lethal but for covid delta was both more infectious and more lethal than the preceeding viruses. Not really worth worrying about though, it's endemic now and nothing can be done even if there were something that could be done.

Watched Midnight Mass and Sweet Tooth on Netflix. Sweet Tooth was better than I expected really and overall pretty good. Very weird 'feel' to it though, the whole premise shouts Young Adult, but the content really isn't. Decidedly ropey CGI/ prosthetics at times, but after what high budget WoT I'm not sure there's too much scope for criticism. Also ends on a cliffhanger, which I'm not overly keen on. Took me approximately 5 minutes to work out that it was filmed in New Zealand too; obvious McSuburbs, Auckland Hospital, beautiful establishing shot of Wyoming was recognisably Beech Forest. And of course the bevvy of ex Shortland Street actors in bit parts (including the obligatory bad/ variable american accidents [accents and I was sorely tempted to leave that typo as was], and a few who'd been told not to bother even trying). Midnight Mass was excellent for the first 6 episodes, but rather fell down at the end. The acting was very good, as was the scripting; and the episodes were long but felt short which is always a good sign. Oh well, ending a series like that well is always the hardest part, and it was still a very good watch overall. Eh, that would be plagiarising Doctor Who. (And I'm not even sure whether I'm making a joke or serious there)

Got to be logged on to the codex to read the OT stuff and have a year old? account, so linking is of limited use. Could always gave archive.__'d it but meh, political discourse on the codex isn't really even worth the effort of that.

Yeah, oil isn't. USD transactions on the other hand are one of the big targets. Hence the net achievement is... making sure that the Indian/ Russian trade doesn't use USD. Whilst delivering a somewhat hypocritical lecture on how history will view things to a country that views recent history rather differently to the US.

I find it hilarious that after decades of backing their regional rival, including threatening direct intervention over Bangladesh, less directly with Kashmir and nukes the US expects anything from India apart from direct quid pro quo, at all*. It's quite clear that the US does not regard India as a 'friend', for as much as that designation means anything in realpolitik, but just as a country that is useful as it also doesn't like China. It's like you're supposed to forget anything and everything in recent history as soon as it becomes convenient for the US. I'd also have to say that for all his faults Trump's bromance diplomacy worked a lot better than Biden's pontificating on people like MbS or Modi. Who would have thought powerful people don't respond well to being lectured by people they see as their equals? *Not as funny as Britain expecting anything, but still.