kanisatha

The whole 'alternative timelines/universes' B.S. is what made me walk away from Star Trek. Whenever a TV show (or movie) starts talking about alternative time in any form, it's a sure sign its writers don't have any creativity and have run out of ideas for their show.

Oh, okay. This I can get behind. What bothered me about what you said earlier was the "EVERYBODY else loses" part, because clearly the Ukrainians don't lose by fighting for their homes and lives. Also, I have a very strong libertarian streak myself, so I'm quite good with that. Totally agree with this too. I tend to word it as "The elites versus the rest of us," but it's the same point.

Sure. All those thousands of Ukrainians are dying just to help out our defense industries. They don't really care about someone invading and occupying their home, and are fighting the invaders only because we made them do it. If you're one of those leftists who hate our military and our defense industries, at least just come out and say so. I for one, as an American, am so very happy that we have such awesome companies as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman who are helping to keep me safe.

We've spent a lot of money supporting the Ukrainians, and that can be seen as a loss to us, as many Americans do. And furthermore, in a zero-sum way of looking at the conflict, it would be very damaging to long-term US and Western strategic interests if Russia is able to convince many others in the world that they "won" and the West "lost," as @xzar_montyhas pointed out.

Well, not quite. Yes there's a lot of pressure building up inside Washington right now to find a "diplomatic" end to the war. But high-level US officials, including Sullivan, have said the trick is to be able to ensure Russia is not able to "come back for more" later on after rebuilding their forces.

This has been and remains my prediction for how Russia "ends" the war: declare their objectives to be accomplished and unilaterally demand that Ukraine stop fighting Russia and accept the new status quo, and threatening nuclear escalation if Ukraine refuses to accept.

Because Macron gets to speak for all of Europe? "We Europeans" my ass. LOL

Here's another old-school cRPG with a release date for this year: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1159090/Zoria_Age_of_Shattering/

That was supposedly the slogan written on the messhall wall of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment ("Blackhorse") standing watch at the Fulda Gap in West Germany during the Cold War: Average lifespan of a Blackhorse cavalryman in WWIII: 45 seconds

Indeed, because it is tax month here in America.

Well, lucky for us, April only has 30 days rather than 31.

I read several articles on Russia's brain-drain earlier in the war, but I don't see those stories anymore. But the emigration data do suggest the most well-educated young people are the ones who've fled the country. As for Russia's academic community, they did raise their voices against the war early on but then several of them were made examples of by Putin and that silenced them. Don't know about other Western countries, but academic/scientific cooperation between Russia and the US is practically zero right now. But this is mainly due to voluntary shunning of the Russian side by US academia which is overwhelmingly supportive of Ukraine. There is no organized attempt to shun Russians, and certainly the US govt has not enacted any such measures. Russian students in US universities were very commonplace when I was in engineering grad school, but they're not at all prevalent in arts/humanities/social sciences fields where I am now. So I can't tell if there's been a dropoff, though I would wager they don't get to come here now, at least through official channels.

First of all, I don't at all buy that Russia has that kind of tank production capacity, or production capacity for anything, especially now under sanctions. But even if it happens, so what? Very effective Western ATGMs are a small fraction of the cost of a modern tank.

I share Lexx's skepticism. Even if they pay it, they will probably get help from their supporters to do it such that none of this ultimately truly hurts them. Meanwhile, the damage to Avellone is very real and very permanent. So totally unjust and unfair.

The false accusers should be doing prison time for knowingly and intentionally causing such irrepairable harm to someone.

Yes, the specific crime he's being charged with matters very critically here, to note he's not being charged on the basis of the thousands of civilians tortured and killed by Russian forces in Ukraine. The ICC prosecutors clearly understand the legal distinction, even if others (some here in this forum, for example) don't understand this point.

Their Hellfires would work just fine too, especially at very close range.

Yes, this. In Bakhmut it is inevitable that eventually the Russians will capture what is effectively a big pile of rubble with no population, for no other reason than because they have commited such a huge percentage of their available forces to this one battle and have overwhelming numerical superiority over the defenders. The real, meaningful battle is yet to come, when the Ukrainians launch their offensive in the south, and we will get to see if the Russians have enough capable forces left to hold their frontlines.

Yes the Russians are so delusional they actually believe it will be some sort of huge "win" for them. What a bunch of idiots and losers. It won't even be a symbolic win for them. It will be the ultimate pyrrhic win and will go into military history as the classic example of such.

All of the analyses I'm reading, from very reputable military/think-tank sources, continue to claim that Bakhmut is going very badly for the Russians and that in fact the offensive is effectively stalled, that casualties are still 7:1 in favor of Ukraine, that Russia's last remaining professional soldiers are who are dying there, and that even Russia's artillery, which was their one and only advantage, is now severely attrited. And as such, if the Russians enter house-to-house urban warfare with the Ukrainians inside the city, their forces will be completely attrited. And yes, this is deliberate Ukrainian strategy to destroy Russia's ability to carry out any offensive operations ahead of Ukraine's own offensive later this spring.

I canceled all my classes and ran all the way home to beat you!

So looking forward to Starfield. And this teaser did have a HUGE reveal critically important to me: the game can be played in third-person! Pay attention, Obsidian devs!!!!

The next big DLC for Solasta has been announced, including level increase to 16: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2100431/Solasta_Crown_of_the_Magister__Palace_of_Ice/

Strawman much? When have I ever said anything about pronouns? I was cool with people's preferred pronouns long, long before your totalitarian left decided to try and score political points with it and "cancel" people over it.

Well said.