kanisatha

The latest on the possibility of life on Enceladus: https://www.iflscience.com/more-evidence-saturn-s-moon-enceladus-has-all-the-elements-for-life-65417

On the Kherson battle: https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2022/10/03/russian-forces-poised-for-major-defeat-in-kherson-says-dod-official/ On possible Putin escalations as his army gets defeated in Ukraine: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/03/politics/ukraine-russia-putin-nuclear-weapons-us

Hoping Ukraine can liberate Kherson before winter: https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-kherson-collapse-counteroffensive-lyman-war-1748281

It is interesting that even though we now have a corps headquarters (V Corps) forward element based in Poland, the Army has chosen to set up a second forward element for XVIII Airborne Corps in Germany for coordinating Ukraine military assistance. So maybe V Corps is exclusively for planning warfighting against a possible Sovi... erm, Russian attack?

Very heartwarming to hear. Thanks for sharing. Now I hope someone inside Obsidian, even if not JES himself, will regain the passion for creating a PoE game. With MS money, a lot of the core problems and limitations with PoE2 can very easily be surmounted, providing for a really good game right from the get-go and not two years after launch.

Hehe. Yeah. If anything it's the Ukrainians who're going to benefit from the onset of winter and the Russians who are going to face even more battlefield hardship.

Indeed. High-ranking US officials have been saying off the record after Putin's speech that they now believe Putin is deranged in the clinical sense. I personally couldn't help drawing comparisons to how Hitler looked and sounded in his late-1944 speeches. And this guy has his finger on thousands of nukes. Let's hope there is a Brutus somewhere within that regime.

I have to be honest. I am utterly shocked, and confused!, that the vote wasn't 120%.

Nuclear weapons experts have been saying this about Russia's nukes for quite some time, and including back in the Soviet days. But ultimately, even if 99 out of a hundred of Russia's nukes "fail" for whatever reason, what does that matter if one works? This is why it was believed the Soviets built up such a huge arsenal, and had dozens of warheads targetted on each US nuke asset, because they themselves did not trust the techinal efficacy of their own systems. But, relatedly, one awesome silver lining to this war on the US/NATO side is that our battlefield intelligence systems have proven to be excellent, both technically and operationally, specifically US/NATO electronic and signals intelligence, warfare, and countermeasures capabilities.

Sadly, although quite a few would-be newcomers are looking to make cRPGs, not that many are RTwP. The RTwP games I know of are: Black Geyser (already released); Alaloth (now in Steam EA); and Dark Envoy (for 2023 from the guys who made Tower of Time). For TB cRPGs (not an exhaustive list; only the ones I'm following): Solasta (awaiting its 3rd DLC); and Vendir and Zoria (both scheduled for 2023 releases).

Zoria, a cRPG being made by a 3-person Romanian team, has just launched a Kickstarter campaign. They're only asking for around $33,000, just to polish up their game which is 80% complete. I've backed it, and figured I'd post it here for any of you who may be interested: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ansharpublishing/zoria-age-of-shattering

Re. Tibet, though technically there are key differences (Tibet in 1950 was not recognized as a sovereign state by other states, and was not a member of the UN), I'm well-known as a hardliner in support of a free Tibet. I've made remarks to that effect in public academic settings, have a sign on my office door at my university saying "free Tibet," and give money every year to a free Tibet activist group. That's why I can never travel to China because I am sure to be on one of their blacklists and would be subject to persecution.

The US just delivered the first batch of NASAMS.

Hardly anyone will recognize the sham referenda. Even countries that abstained in previous UN votes will reject these sham referenda because otherwise they would be supporting one country unilaterally using force to take another country's territory which will surely come back to bite them on the ass at some point in the future. So even countries like China and India will not accept Russia forcibly taking territory that everyone in the UN recognizes and accepts as Ukrainian territory. They're not gonna' want to see a similar situation vis-a-vis Taiwan or Kashmir.

Well, according to the official Russian government line, this is NOT a general draft or conscription. Under Russia's preexisting system, anyone who served in the military in any capacity and for any length of time and then left the service is in the "reserves" until a certain age is reached (40 or 50?). Russia has, on paper, 900,000 such "reservists." It is these reservists who are being "mobilized," which is to say being called back into service, and, according to Putin's and Shoigu's statements, only a select number of them accounting for one-third of all those available. Then, of the 300k being called up, the expectation is that only about 10% will be available for combat duty (so, excluding those who are physically unfit, ill, more useful in the civilian economy, better used for some non-combat role, etc.).

With respect to the mobilization numbers, I read somewhere that the Russian government itself has said that 300,000 is the number of conscripts eligible for mobilization (former service members called back to active duty) under the announced plan, but that they expect only about 10% of them will end up being usable for combat duty.

I also expect (hope?) the Russian nuke threat is just political theater. But Putin himeself, plus others (including the Serbian president?) have said since in public statements that Putin is not bluffing about using nukes to defend annexed "Russian territory." As for these mobilized geezers, yeah it boggles the mind to think Putin believes these losers can turn the tide on the battlefield. They just lost the last of their T-72 force, abandoned in Izyum. They're now relegated to using T-62s and BMP-1s taken out of storage since the 1960s. Meanwhile, Western arms supplies are only increasing, in both quantity and quality, right now. Even the Biden Administration is supposedly still, in secret, working through the details of giving the Ukrainians Patriot and F-16s. This is why Medvedev again today doubled down in the Duma saying the US is now almost a combatant in Ukraine.

Has there been any reason given for why gold dragon is being abandoned in this way?

Called it. Medvedev said in the Duma today that once the referendums are held and those territories become a part of Russia the strategic equation in the world will change because Russia will be defending Russian territory and Ukraine will be the invader. He also then added that Russia can use "all means available" to defend its own territory. So Putin's last, desperate plan is: Hold referenda in which 110% of the people vote to become part of Russia. Pass laws annexing those territories. Declare that Russia is now merely defending its own territory, and Ukraine is the invading aggressor. Demand that Ukraine stop its invasion of Russia or else Russia will use nukes to stop the Ukrainians. Count on the West not having the guts to follow through with its promise that Russia crossing the red line of using nukes would result in NATO being drawn into the war.

I think the referendums are an attempt by Putin to mollify China and India by being able to try and tell them he is only fighting to protect Russian territory and not invading Ukrainian territory (since they both are veru concerned about sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine). It's silly, though, because not even Xi is going to be fooled by any of this. Smacks of desperation in Moscow. Edit: Posted at the same time as @Elerond. We're essentially making the same point.

Same here. I also like Civ 5 and still play it, having skipped both 4 and 6.

Back on the Chain Gang is one of my all-time favs. The guitar riffs are pure awesome! Was listening to my Best of the Pretenders CD just the other day.

Interesting stories about increasing frustration with Putin in Beijing and New Delhi: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/world/europe/putin-modi-war-ukraine.html https://www.ft.com/content/48301890-c8b2-4ed9-b977-b28d52d51f02

Today NATO released an assessment that Russia's most elite and premiere large-scale army formation, the 1st Guards Tank Army, operating in the Donbas, is now effectively a ghost formation with no military capability, and that without 1 GTA Russia no longer has the capacity for conventional military operations against NATO now and for several years to come. WOO-HOO!! All you good folks in the Baltics, Finland, and eastern Europe can now relax and breath easy.

Indeed. The Ukrainian strategy here is brilliant. Gievn RU softness currently in the Donbas the UA is hitting them hard there, including the new offensive now into Luhansk. But the Donbas is what Putin and co. have been insisting the war is ALL about now for months. So how can they justify losing the Donbas while holding onto Kherson and the southern areas? So I now fully expect the Russians will have no choice but to pull out a lot of their forces in the south, including their best forces there, and move them (back) to the Donbas. And the instant that happens, based on that awesome real-time battlefield intel from the US, the UA will launch a big push in the south to take advantage of the Russian pullout. But even in the Donbas, those RU reinforcements will end up being too little too late (and they will take a pounding from UA artillery as they move). Many Western intel analysts now say RU has lost the ability to mount large-scale offensive ops, and can barely handle large-scale defensive ops. This is why all of this could be the endgame for the war ... and maybe why Lavrov yesterday finally came out of the hole he's hiding in to say that he was 'ready' for negotiations with the Ukrainians whenever they are willing to talk. Side-note: We can now also see in Libya, Syria, and the south Caucasus anti-Russian forces on the move because they all sense Russia's conventional military weakness.