kanisatha

In the US Congress any individual member (in eother house) can submit a bill for consideration, even without the support of their party leadership. However, other than in some very narrow circumstances, all bills must go to their appropriate committee and pass in committee, and then be brought to a floor vote by the majority leader (senate) or speaker (house). So the vast majority of bills proposed simply die off and never see the light of day. But members propose them because during election time they can run ads saying they proposed X, Y, Z, and they would technically be telling the truth. In the cases of designating Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, or officially labeling the carnage in Ukraine as genocide, there is quite a bit of support for those positions across both parties, especially in the senate. However, Biden has publicly stated he doesn't agree with those approaches, for exactly the reason some others have brought up, which is that it would likely result in a break of dimplomatic relations with Russia which of course the US foreign policy Establishment does not want or support. But those bills do put pressure on the Administration to get tougher and tougher with Russia, especially rhetorically and diplomatically.

Now that the network shows have premiered, any thoughts on new shows? I'm watching Quantum Leap (NBC) and Alaska Daily (ABC), but still on the fence about whether I want to keep watching. My only returning show is La Brea (NBC), so I need new shows to watch (that are not on streaming services).

Yup. They're part of Russia's Strategic Aviation Force. Also, Shaykovka is quite far from Ukraine. So that's a huge feather In Ukraine's cap. But the flip side of it is that Russia will retaliate hard for Russian soil being targeted.

Nice to see a bit of discussion come in on Turkey and Greece. Been very closely following that side of things for some months now. Obviously the Russians would love nothing more than a Turkey-Greece war that divides and paralyzes NATO. But would Turkey and Russia actually end up on the same side? https://warontherocks.com/2022/10/why-erdogan-might-choose-war-with-greece/

He's not necessarily wrong. Some very well regarded experts on deterrence theory have, in the past in the abstract, said similar things. One way or another, deterrence theory may be getting a serious workout soon.

Haha. Good ideas. But it's also an original IP.

Very excited about CDPR's future Witcher franchise games. But also very curious about what "Hadar" will be. We know it will definitely be an RPG, and it will be "distinct from Witcher and Cyberpunk." So sci-fi?

In there recent statements they did say the next Witcher game would be part of a trilogy.

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.