kanisatha

Sanctions are the 'go-to' option for Western liberal democracies who's leaders want to be able to tell their voters they're "doing something" in the face of some despot's nasty actions even while not having to choose the option of war/military action to counter said despot. There are warehouses full of data showing that sanctions rarely ever have the desired effect (apartheid South Africa being the one notable exception). But they are loved by democratic leaders as an ideal "middle option" between war and doing nothing. At some point very soon both Western political elites as well as Western publics are going to learn that they cannot continue to have their cake (comfortable, worry-free, problems-free indolent lives in an advanced society) and eat it (standing for their cherished liberal principles and values) too. At some point very soon there is going to be a very hard reckoning that sometimes you have to be ready and willing to fight a war and suffer its sacrifices.

Excellent point. If oil and gas sales were all it took to have a great economy, Venezuela would be a paradise.

Just returned to playing Solasta after a few months' break. The updates and the new DLC have certainly improved some things here and there. But I'm increasingly frustrated that Solasta is ultimately only a D&D 5e simulator and dungeon crawler. There is precious little to story, character development, and meaningful quests.

Hehe. Thanks. It's just the culture on that forum. The mods there effectively are all close friends of each other who think they own the forum, which may be true as Beamdog has zero oversight of them in any way. So the mods make up rules as they go, and enforce rules entirely subjectively based on if you're their buddy or not, with the most basic rule (literally; this is what they openly say) being no one can ever challenge or question what a mod says, and doing so is a bannable offence. And criticizing BG3, loved by all their mods, became a cardinal sin on the forum. I refused to be cowed and kept on with my criticizing, which I did with quite civil and polite language, even after I knew a few other fellow BG3 critics had been booted off the forum. So eventually, after "warning" me a couple of times, they banned me. But of course they couldn't say they were banning me for being a BG3 critic, so instead they banned me for saying, in a thread where someone else had posted something about many people in America being whiney and entitled, to which I responded, "Yeah, I too feel that Americans have collectively lost their minds in recent years." A mod told me this was "hate speech" aimed at a group of people and so I was banned. Go figure.

I'm surprised anyone still goes to that forum. Their forum moderators blacklisted me and then eventually created an excuse to ban me for being a constant critic of BG3 (as they did to several other BG3 critics). As such I no longer have any interest in anything Beamdog.

Too bad they're not full seasons, but I'm really happy to get even a few more episodes.

It's just so utterly despicable when people are so cavalier about other people's land and lives just so they can get back to their own decadent and carefree lives. And in this case even more deplorable as they're trying to portray themselves as supporting "peace."

You can Google Steam sales and their dates. I believe they have three big ones, summer, autumn, and winter, and then a bunch of smaller ones thoughout te year (and not counting publisher specials).

We can all now breath a huge sigh of relief because France is finally fully onboard a common Western stance. Welcome to sanity, Manny!! https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-missile-strike-hits-crowded-shopping-mall-in-ukraine/2022/06/28/3141e28e-f6aa-11ec-81db-ac07a394a86b_story.html

The US govt has said they did not give any concessions or rewards to Turkey. I hope so, because I definitely do not want Turkey's return to the F-35 program as I do not trust them one bit.

Steam's summer sale has been sadly lame for me this year. I've only picked up the Solasta DLC. I was thinking of grabbing Old World and Expeditions: Rome, but then decided I'd wait until all their future DLCs have dropped and I can get a good package deal. Unfortunately, about half the games on my Steam wishlist are Early Access, and I just can't bring myself to buy an EA game.

This is just plain silly. Clearly you don't have a good idea of the kinds of things that have happened and are even now happening in the world. All the US has done is some drone strikes which wouldn't even register on any scale of crimes or atrocities. And on the other hand, by the reckoning of many African country governments and African humanitarian orgs themselves, what the US did to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa during the GWB Administration literally saved the continent. And every time there's a famine or pandemic in Africa, it is the US that has led the way in helping out. Never ever any sign of the likes of USSR/Russia, China, etc. doing a damn thing to help.

Just LOVE When the Levee Breaks. I also always felt Led Zeppelin's greatness was fusing blues to hard rock.

I was more specifically talking about not running out of munitions for your military forces. States very often spend lots of money on military equipment but then don't stock up a lot on the munitions and spare parts that make it possible to keep using your equipment during a lengthy war. And btw, I was including my country, the US, in this as well. We here are also now having a debate in Congress about how come we don't have an adequate stockpile of these munitions (like anti-armor missiles for example). If we went into a full war with China right now, we'd very likely run out of munitions and spare parts within a couple of weeks. And that's very poor planning.

What @Elerondsaid. As time passes, it will become easier to sustain the sanctions as Western states adjust to their own difficulties. And the smaller Western states have no incentive to buck the bigger states. The only way the bigger states will lift the sanctions is if they can point to "nice" behavior from the Russian side, which is just not going to happen. Western economic "pain" is a political cost already paid, and won't get anywhere near bad enough to justify abandoning a major foreign policy interest of the West. Here's another great analysis of how things are only going to get worse for Russia, and potentially better for Ukraine with the passage of more time: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/25/ukraine-russia-balance-of-forces/

All major Western states have clearly said (yes including Germany and France) that a return to the 2/24 status quo is what would justify lifting Western sanctions. Will Putin ever agree to that? No, he won't. So the sanctions will continue. My expectation of how the war ends: - Russia occupies (and annexes?) all of the two Donbas provinces and much of the two southern Ukrainian provinces - An armistice to stop the fighting, to which Russia will agree because it has exhausted its offensive forces; Ukraine may be able to leverage the return of the cities of Kherson and Melitopol - No one recognizes or accepts Russia's occupation or annexation of any Ukrainian territories or any new "independent" states - Western sanctions on Russia remain in place

Well, this should if anything raise some serious questions about defense preparedness in Czechia and other NATO countries. If you are running out of arms reserves just simply supporting another state in its war, how will you have fared fighting your own war? The Czech people should ask some serious questions of their politicians about how long their own military would have lasted facing a Russian invasion.

The scorched earth approach Russia has taken means that even the pro-Russian people of those areas will never return to live there while the areas are under Russian occupation, because there will be very minimal rebuilding. Even after the war somehow "ends," nobody will be investing in Russia itself let alone these devastated areas. They will simply be areas of minefields, barbed wire, and defensive fortifications occupied by Russian reservists. And Western sanctions on Russia will not end.

Today's interesting read: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/06/the-ukraine-war-is-bleeding-russia-dry/

I would suggest playing BG1 first anyway, exactly because it is so much shorter. But you have to keep in mind how old that game is now, and on account of having led the way in the cRPG genre it didn't get to benefit from the lessons of many other games. DA:I is also a fun game to play. Make sure you don't allow yourself to get bogged down in the Hinterlands map. And I personally liked some of the war table quests and would recommend taking a case by case approach to whether you want to do those quests.

Russia's artillery war in the Donbas: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/06/russian-tactics-artillery-ukraine/

Yeah, four is a single battery (NATO standard). And yes the Russians will be prioritizing them for targeting as well. Good thing they're extremely mobile, which is HiM- part of their abbreviation. 'Shoot and scoot' is how you are supposed to use them.

Well, yes, but they're just the first batch. And other countries have now also said they too will send HiMARS. And HiMARS is an awesome system for the Ukrainians for this one reason. The one thing that is truly hurting the UA badly right now is that the Russians are relentlessly and indiscriminately bombarding UA positions with massive amounts of artillery, which the UA cannot get at as they're out of reach. With HiMARS, not only do those Russian artillery systems come with reach, one HiMARS has the potential to wipe out an entire battery of artillery guns, and possibly even more, in counter-battery fire mode.

Damn, I really got to give massive kudos to Lithuania. Their railroad action against Russia has the whiney crybabies in Moscow going bat-crap crazy! They're literally losing their minds, because tiny Lithuania has come up with a completely legal under international law way to REALLY stick it to the Russians, and there's precious little Russia can do about it short of invading NATO territory. Every argument the Russians raise about how "wrong" this is can be turned right back around on them! Lavrov, Peskov and co. are so apoplectic its side-splittingly hilarious. I'm keeping my fingers crossed it pushes Palputin's ticker over the line. Man, Lithuania is ****ing brilliant!!

Steam summer sale starts tomorrow!