Zoraptor

Doubtful even the 2014 Ukraine army would have outright lost by now, assuming everything else stays the same, as the initial Russian plan was too unrealistic. What the Russians were banking on was lack of will to fight, which they shouldn't have been since the Ukrainians actually had plenty of that in 2014- you can compare the Donetsk Airport Cyborgs with Mariupol, for instance, and most of their military disasters there came from not wanting to retreat when they ought to- and that they'd be as badly led as then. There's a decent amount of evidence that the Ukrainians were badly led now too in places, such as the Russians strolling out of Crimea like it was a picnic, but that was more than balanced by the Russian strategy being hugely... over ambitious in other areas. Kiev urban area is 3.2 mn people. You couldn't take that (quickly) with the entire Russian invasion force unless close to literally no one decided to fight back. As it was they dissipated all their momentum in the south too trying to achieve the unrealistic in the north. Russia actually is across the Dniepr anyway, it's a bit of a silly milestone. Being across the Dniepr north of Kiev was disastrous, and they've been across the lower Dniepr for 2 months at Kherson (and Nova Kharkovka for that matter). Yep. Erdogan went from 'personally ordering it' to it 'all being a US/ Gulenist plot to bring him down and sour relations with Russia' in a year. Russia even outright blew up 33 Turkish soldiers with nary a peep of criticism of them from Turkey. That's diversionary- on both sides- as it strategically unimportant. If nothing else the Russian border is right there, even if Russia withdrew without a fight Ukraine would still need to keep most of its troops there or risk having the Russians walk back in later. Ukraine has made no progress around the areas that might actually threaten Izium though because there the western Russian defensive line is along highly defensible river and swamp.

Not really alluding to anyone, except nebulous 'people' in general. And to be fair to people in general, rather a lot of them wouldn't even have been born in 1999. Thing is though, Putin's Russia has been so stable, relatively speaking, that people in general do forget how unstable it was under Yeltsin. Apart from the bankruptcy in 1998 he also had 5 Prime Ministers in 4 years from 1996-99, as opposed to 6 (including of course a certain VV Putin for 4 years) in the next 22 after he'd gone. He'd got rid of the VP, he was beholden to a load of oligarchs whose power makes the current crop look like children, he didn't have a succession plan, he didn't bother building a Party at all, and he really was a few vodka shots away from a drug/alcoholic coma for pretty much his entire time in office. We only knew who his successor was for sure on 1 Jan 2000, since after his resignation he literally couldn't fire Putin any more. Allegedly, the reason Putin was picked so far as Yeltsin was concerned was extremely simple; he promised not to go after him once he'd left office so his family could keep all the money he stole and he could die in peace. He'd never have got the same from Zyuganov or Zhirinovsky who outright hated him and may well have formally brought back the death penalty just for him. And his approval ratings and those of his political friends were subterranean- 2%- so there was no point any of them standing. If Putin dies Mishustin takes over temporarily, that is known. It's also very strongly suspected that he won't be the successor but just interim. There will be a successor who stands in the election after that, and one who has already been decided on. But there's literally no point in saying publicly that it's say, Medvedev, (who it likely isn't either) because all it does is 'reassure' westerners and make him a target immediately. Really though, most of the 'concern' from the diplomatic/ media side of the west is, basically, concern trolling. "Russia is so unstable, I wish we knew who Putin's successor is [and as above we actually do, at least in the interim] so maybe it wouldn't be quite as bad, but we don't, so you can see how unstable Russia is" sort of thing.

People tend to forget how quickly Putin himself came on the scene. August 1999 was when he was appointed PM, prior to that he was unknown at a national level; not much over 4 months later Yeltsin resigned. And Yeltsin was extremely paranoid about succession, so much so he abolished the VP position. Last thing I'd be worried about is no succession plan, because it would be stupid to have a public one. The succession plan failing on the other hand could be a disaster, but at least the British Tabloids assure us that the Russian nuclear arsenal doesn't work, so there is that.

You've left out the other part of Ukraine that she didn't acknowledge Russian sovereignty over, Rostov. As above, happened, though I tend to see it as the geopolitical equivalent of karma farming/ virtue signalling rather than a serious statement of intent. It's just that a lot of the metaphorical upvotes for their statements actually expect them to follow it as policy (lord knows why, given their history of promises). I'm mostly amused that it's the UK saying it though. 13-1 vote against them on the Chagos from the ICoJ (in 2019, so not exactly back in the bad old days of colonialism), violation of Resolution 1514 in splitting them off from Mauritius in the first place, forcibly deporting the entire indigenous population of two thousand people (having claimed that they didn't exist and the islands were uninhabited) to Mauritius and managing to get a princely 5 (no typo, five) supporters in the UNGA for their position- all for a military base to blow brown people up from with no chance of retaliation. Slight whiff of hypocrisy there.

Particularly funny when Britain has depopulated islands half a world away to hand over to the US for a military base (the one they've spent the past 20 years droning civilians in the Middle East from) and refuse to hand it back to its rightful owners. Still that forced depopulation was long ago, back in the dark ages of, uh hmm, 1973. The people of Britain also aren't responsible, unlike Russians they get to vote in democratic elections for their leaders and this means they aren't responsible for their leader's actions unlike the Russians, who for some reason are. But hey, demand someone hand back land full of Russians who want to be in Russia. It's particularly stupid for other reasons too, per bottom. There isn't going to be a general mobilisation, nukes are actively more likely. Some sort of limited mobilisation or proroguing of the current conscript intake's term though is a lot more likely. There's a risk in that for the west as well though, tied up with demands like 'hand back Crimea'. What happens if they, well, don't end up handing back Crimea? You've knocked the spigot out on western arms deliveries and... nothing has changed on the ground. You've shown what your conditions are for victory, and haven't achieved them- that means you've, well, lost, doesn't it? All those years supplies of western wunderwaffe NLAWs/ Javelins/ PanzerFausts/ Stingers/ Starkstreaks etc and you didn't achieve your goals? Will the west recover from this massive collapse in their credibility, and why would anyone want to buy arms from them when they can't win against cheap Russian tat? You've essentially got two options; the war aims are meant to actually be fulfilled, whatever the cost and whether it takes, say, two million Ukrainians dead. In which case Alexander Boris de FFeffffel is literally doing the fight to the last Ukrainian thing and because western prestige must be protected at all costs. Or they're not meant to be fulfilled and just make the west look weak when they aren't. And ironically, Russia made exactly the same mistake a couple of months ago. Half their 'prestige' problems come from implying that they'd roll straight over the Ukrainians and be in a position to take Kiev and replace Zelensky etc and not doing so. If they'd been more realistic their prestige would be in far better shape.

The Orville cast has been released from their contracts. Sadly that's about as close to confirmation it's the last season as you can get short of an official announcement. MacFarlane and Grimes supposedly have a new series for NBC/ Universal already as well.

D/LPR leadership has never been stable. All the old leaders are literally dead except Strelkov/ Girkin (Givi, Motorola etc). The obvious comparison to Kadyrov was never really appropriate, as he has actual leverage. The only potential Kadyrov type figure would have been if an oligarch like Kolomoisky had flipped, and for that they would have needed Mariupol in 2014. Haha no. People may make jokes about a lot of the equipment being sent going because it's cheaper to get the Russians to blow it up than to scrap it at home, but with Germany's 'heavy equipment' that seems to literally be the case. Their Gepards have been doing the proverbial sitting around in a shed for ten years. Or 12, depending on source. I'm not particularly critical of Germany when it comes to Ukraine but the Gepards are... virtue signalling. Plus of course Germany is a proud country that can't be blackmailed and won't pay in rubles, their private companies will instead.

Yeah, my expectations are not high either. The actors at least were fine (Mount better than fine) in Discovery S2 and they managed to avoid the somewhat 'pod people' feel a lot of its cast had. But that's irrelevant if the rest of the problems with nuTrek aren't addressed. I did actually read the article Shady linked and there was one quote that stood out: "In short, it’s designed to appeal to people who, when asked what their favorite live-action Trek show is, unironically say The Orville." No, not that one, that just makes me smile because I'm exactly the sort of person who'd unironically say that The Orville is the best Trek series out there and feel incredibly smug while doing so. "Sadly, it’s trapped in the usual mix of faux-melodrama, clanging dialogue and dodgy plotting with the usual lapses in logic. Many writers are blind to their own flaws, which is why it’s so amusing that this is what Kurtzman and co. feel is a radical departure from their own work." That's the one. They either cannot fix the actual problems or worse, don't think the problems are problems.

Embracer/ THQNordic have been one of the better publishers. No idea where they're getting their money though, they've bought more studios than Microsoft over the past few years. They're a lot more likely to accept that maybe 5 million copies sold isn't the absolute disaster Square always seemed to think it was and not waste time with garbage Marvel microtransaction delivery vehicles that are meant to sell 20 million copies (but don't). Or NFTs/ blockchain, since apparently that's where SE wants to invest the 300 mill they get from the sale...

Let me guess, all the same problems Discovery and Picard have, but less serialised? As predictions go I suspect that is close to 'sun rises in morning' tier. It's on free to air (well, free to internet) here so I may as well see for myself.

Simple answer is a complete lack of critical thinking married to an intense desire for 'their' side to win. And if you start out believing it you'd feel kind of dumb if you were wrong, so it can 't be wrong. Fortunately that doesn't really describe many people here, but it describes an awful lot of people, in general. Plus some media actively promoted the story as true for clickbait eg the Mirror; though I'm definitely not linking them to avoid giving them clicks. Unfortunately, those sorts of media are also where a lot of people get their 'news'. You'll still find some people who think Jessica Lynch fought off waves of Iraqi fedayeen while critically injured because they believed it and the alternative is that the US government made the story up- and that's despite her always maintaining that the initial story was a load of old bollocks and saying so pretty much from the instant she got rescued. [And on the subject of propaganda: Sarex mentioned a claim that the Chief of Staff of the Russian Army had been injured. Ukraine has confirmed that Gerasimov is fine. But they've upped the deaths caused from 20 to 200 to compensate...]

Ukraine confirms Ghost of Kyiv didn't actually exist. Not so much relevant here, but good lord there were a lot of people who thought any hint he wasn't real had to be Russian disinformation. Think Ukraine (and the Beeb) got tired of him being killed off more times than Shoigu's been arrested/ sacked/ had a heart attack just so the British tabloids could sell more copies. Best article quote, and approaching peak passive aggressive: "Military experts told the BBC they doubted that one pilot could have downed as many as 40 Russian planes"- oh, really? [The Daily Mirror (British tabloid) killed him off two days ago, and that's where the 40 Russian planes shot down quote got published]

There are two factors at work there- you only tend to hear about police work when it goes wrong. That's especially true if it involves a foreign police force, when it generally has to go spectacularly wrong to get attention. Second, yeah, police forces have considerable influence in how they're portrayed on TV. Even here* back in the 90s we had a police commissioner order a halt to cooperation with a TV production because it wasn't showing police in a good light (for bonus points, the show was actually a satire sketch show whose biggest crime against police was depicting them as being mildly stupid and utterly humourless; go figure). To this day you still get a massively disproportionate number of plainclothes officers portrayed on NZ TV so that the Commissioner can't pull the cars or uniforms if he doesn't like how they're portrayed. *where police totally don't frame people for murder** or lie about the circumstances they shoot people in, never happened once. Or at least when we do it doesn't make it out of the country. **personal favourite, the Police Commissioner going to the funeral of a bent cop (Bruce Hutton) because... one incident of framing someone for murder doesn't outweigh all the good he did as a police officer. To be fair, that was back in the bad old days of, uh hmm, 2013, when a bit of light framing people for murder was still tolerated no doubt things have changed in the intervening 9 years.

It isn't particularly noticeable here, though there is a bit of related stuff- "The Russians are barbarians, they did this to Finland in the 1700s" --> The British are Barbarians, they starved tens of millions of indians to death and fought a war to sell opium to the Chinese in the 1800s (and depopulated Diego Garcia plus merrily tortured their way through Kenya and other colonial possessions well within living memory). It's mostly on the internet in general (and broadcast media) where official says --> media report --> it must be true! happens. But I don't really want to get into that specifically because it's been done to death and even I get bored of it eventually. Publishing most certainly does imply belief*, the way that those claims are published. It's like asking someone if they think the opinion- and what is opinion on such things, but weighting of facts?- they're stating is the correct one; of course they think it is, or they'd state a different opinion. Journalists are people and will always frame it as stuff they believe vs stuff they think is false, and 'unnamed US official' pretty much always seems to get treated as truth, even when stating things that aren't consistent to even a cursory examination. And the people publishing know that many will simply repeat those claims as if they're true because they see them on the news. For the point above there's also a very strong irony/ dichotomy and indicator in that. The 'mainstream' media shouts loudly about how terrible it is that alternative media gets believed over them and how there are a lot of idiots around who have fallen down the rabbithole or whatever, but try to have their cake and eat it to by saying that they don't influence people to their beliefs but just do 'the news'/ 'the facts'. *ok, it doesn't for trash/ agenda media, unfortunately just about all media can be trash media- and especially agenda media- under the right (wrong) circumstances.

When it comes to Ukraine it happens pretty much everywhere, and for everything. The US even admitted that it was releasing low confidence intelligence- ie stuff they either suspect or know is garbage- and it still gets repeated acritically (I mean, that's literally in the article numbersman linked). But hey, I'm sure those 2 Il76s Marco Rubio swore were full of paratroops and got shot down really did, despite there being literally no evidence of them for 2 months and all the others being brought in by helicopter... (I gave the example of the cruise missiles but of course I only used two parts of that and there actually is a 3rd- their failure rate is super duper high. So not only have they run out of them yet are shooting them at homes for orphaned bunny rabbits but the Russians have managed to selectively fire working ones at said kitten hospitals. Extra bonus if the evidence for the high failure rate provided is... a smersh rocket engine, which isn't meant to explode)

UN sanctions aren't unilateral since- at least in theory- the sanctioned party is obligated to obey them as well. Sigh. Haven't we done this exact same thing before? (0) it's not a treaty and no one has treated it as if it were (1) even if it were a treaty the EU is not a signatory and (2) the US (and UK, ie the actual western signatories) abrogated the memorandum as well, to whit parties should "Refrain from using economic pressure on Belarus, Kazakhstan or Ukraine to influence their politics" Just say it's against the UN Charter, using the Budapest Memorandum as if it means anything is reddit tier. And really, I'm going to have to start charging people for reading international agreements and correcting them. Nice easy way to tell if you're being fed propaganda: if you replaced 'unnamed US official' with 'unnamed Russian official' how much weight would be given to it? If you're not even willing to put your name to something it's 90% chance it's bollocks. Especially when they're mutually contradictory at least half the time: (1) US officials insist Russia is running out of precision munitions like cruise missiles, since week 1 (2) Russia is also using cruise missiles to indiscriminately but specifically target non military targets just to cause civilian casualties. You can believe one, or the other, or neither; but not both. Though there's a kind of amusement watching the sort of people who think all Russians are braindead and lack critical reasoning proceeding to believe and repeat without question everything they're told by their governmental officials.

I've never seen that picture either, and my skepticism of it is... high. The latter rumours were all of Iraqi misconduct though, not US, as the Iraqis were the ones that hanged him. The decapitation was definitely real- and absolutely deliberate- though possibly more humane than the alternative 'mistake' 'accidentally' used when hanging someone you don't like. I'll spoiler it for safety:

Not that funny really, 'international justice' being a joke isn't really funny. And sadly, it isn't very surprising either. The number of things the international justice system has already managed to legalise in defence of western geopolitical aims is pretty staggering- and all done without thinking about the consequences more than two minutes ahead. Want to take action over, say, ethnic cleansing in Ethiopia Western Backed System of Rules? Sorry, you can't any more as your verdict on Operation Storm legalised it- well, if it actually were a system of rules instead of a system of patronage. And as it is patronage those type of names who held those sorts of positions being involved in defending a western client is simply inevitable.

Ah ok, apologies for the snark then.

Yes, I too managed to find the wikipedia article for the Moscow Times, though it was certainly a struggle. Doesn't really dispute anything I said though, does it? To whit: "Chinese military bases are purely defensive, and only built with the permission of the countries' governments. Why is the US so concerned? After all, the US says nato bases 800km from Moscow are nothing for Russia to worry about and purely defensive, and their deployments are entirely between them and their partners, so what's the issue with a Chinese base 3000km away from Canberra approved by its partners? The US has 700+ overseas bases, including multiple in countries that don't want them there." Thankfully here in NZ we have the Auckland Bugle, a genuine Kiwi journalistic institution since 1992 (OK, it's never been owned by actual New Zealanders- but it's had english translations from Chinese for the past two years! That makes it kiwi as pavlova and buzzy bees!) which has the bravery to publish this truth instead of what the NZ Government wants them to... Yeah, nah.

Of course they would. The Russians think that Ukraine and Romania are going to invade Transnistria, not the other way around. If they were going to invade from Transnistria they would have back in February when it may have made a difference. Yep, this is Day 0 stuff/ military logic 101 type stuff That's why I thought they were there too. Basically just throw in all the talking points even if being a pro gay anarchist fascist neo nazi makes no logical sense at all. Haha no. BBC Russian is as genuinely Russian as the 'Moscow' Times, and that isn't Russian either. The Moscow Times is, and always has been, a publication aimed at people with english as their first language, ie not Russians. Anyone care to guess when it got an online edition, in Russian, as a paper called the Moscow Times? It was... 2020, and they had 4 years where there was literally no Russian language version of the paper at all. It's target audience is, was, and always has been foreigners, not Russians, despite its name.

Said it before, but I seriously do blame von der Leyen. Non stop virtue signalling on every issue; and everyone knows she's German. If- god forbid- she were Chancellor she'd be doing the exact same things as Scholz for the exact same reasons though, same as Merkel. Funny really, after years I still don't know who the EU 'foreign minister' is* because he's been such a non entity; last time around it was the von der Leyen's predecessor who I had no idea about for ages (Jean Claude Juncker, so I did eventually manage to remember, though it may have actually been after he left office) while Mogherini was far more visible. von der Leyen seems to insert herself into literally everything though. *I do, but pretty much literally the only thing about him I can remember is the infamous incident in Turkey where they only provided one chair between him and von der Leyen**. **... ok, that was actually Charles Michel, apparently. So I can't remember anything Borrell's done, and I like to think I pay at least passing attention to foreign affair type stuff.

Yeah, personally I'd add that the Direction for them seems to be awful, too. The ones who did well with what they were given tended to be the more senior pros of the crew- Captain Malfoy, Pike, Georgiou, Saru. Most of the younger ones... I doubt they're all bad actors, but they consistently have a weird uncanny valley effect about them, like they've been CGIed in and their expressions animated by pre Gollum tech. It's so consistent that I don't think it's their fault, but the only younger actor who (mostly) escaped it was Tilly's. Unfortunately there really isn't much point speculating on answers to the spoiler questions- I very much suspect you've already given far more thought to those characters than the writers did. And sadly, that's a literal statement, the whole thing was set up for the future skip (and potential spin offs) and who they as writers wanted on the crew.

It's kind of funny, they managed to keep most of the issues with continuity and consistency that the more standalone episode Trek series had despite moving to a strongly serial format and having fewer episodes per season. It's understandable having some issues when you have to write 26(for TNG?) episodes over a year with lots of different writers and a very tight filming schedule; not so much when it's half that number. Makes it very obvious they had no proper planning going on*. Case in point from S2: if you're going to have a tragic storyline about a bridge crew member it helps- a lot- if they've been, well, developed above more than a cardboard cutout or glorified extra outside that episode. Otherwise you end up with what we got, being told how important she was and how you should feel about it and how much the crew loved her rather seeing having seen it yourself. Sad thing is that much like a lot of Discovery it didn't need that much change to make it work a lot better. As it was the whole thing came across as nothing more than an excuse to up the angst scale to 11. *or perhaps more accurately but more critically: deciding to write all the 'cool' scenes, and not knowing/ caring how to connect/ set them up properly and whether they made sense in context.

At least this time only 8.5% of people bothered to turn up just to spoil their ballot, that's 1 in 12 instead of 1 in 8 last time. I'm still quite impressed that that many people would turn up to make a paper airplane from or draw smiley faces on the ballot paper instead of just... not turning up. Though of course the number who didn't bother voting went up by 2.5% in absolute terms, so you had almost exactly the same historic high level of disengagement in total.