dan/california

Smallpox, measles, and tuberculosis conquered the Americas, the fighting was barely a rounding error by comparison. Also a demonstration that disease resistance is probably the single biggest evolutionary driver in the short to medium term. The black plague in Europe in the 1200s is the other truly well known example. But epidemics also probably had more to do with the fall of theRoman Empire than anything else.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5048219/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4389623/#RSPB20150339C40 6000 years ago a relatively homogenous group of farmers on the very southern edge of Europe figured out something, and and took over most of the continent rather quickly, and rather thoroughly. My money is that were not very nice about it, but the evidence either way is sort of sketchy. Then three thousand years ago people who spoke the ancestral language to about every European language except Basque moved in from the Steppes in a similarly swift fashion. These events show up clearly in the genetic data, as well as the archaeological record. Studies above, and their footnotes list a hundred more. This is a very active field of research, the ability to extract and read DNA has been improving exponentially. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/magazine/ancient-dna-research.html?searchResultPosition=3 https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/science/from-ancient-dna-a-clearer-picture-of-europeans-today.html?searchResultPosition=4 Edit: One of the many sad things about this war is that there are some important sites from both periods in Ukraine. https://www.nytimes.com/1966/06/08/archives/5000yearold-house-found.html?searchResultPosition=4

I got nothing, and to the best of my knowledge he never gave a twitter account or anything else. It is a real bummer, I miss having our very own custom translations.

I remain concerned that this approach assumes a finer degree of control than we actually have. It is also getting a lot of Ukrainians killed. But maybe it is the least bad available? Hitting the airfields with only one or two drones seems like a case in point. It is more of a message than anything else. Edit: cross posted to the minute with The_Capt.

The regime vs country dynamic is stark here. A perfectly executed three day takeover of Ukraine would have been a net negative for the Russian people. Every day of the current train wreck is beyond a disaster for Russia as a whole. But for the REGIME, a successful coup de main would have been a huge win, and admitting defeat now after so much blood and treasure has been expended is regarded as suicide. So it will go on, until it just CAN'T.

So they will have to dragoon trucks from other parts of their economy for the aforementioned food distribution, and all their problems just spiral. A poorly planned reversion to a semi communist economy is a bad thing. It would be a bad thing with competent administration, with the shambles that is Russia....

Two things about the airbase drone attacks. First they were fifty feet, and one sympathetic explosion away from doing a LOT more damage. Second, and perhaps in contradiction to my first point, maybe the U.S. asked them not to do an overwhelming strike the first time to allow for some diplomatic maneuvering. "Look Vlad, this is going very badly for you, but it can go much worse, on last chance to fold in a controlled way" or words to that effect.

Production and distribution are two different issues. At the micro level Russia was a market economy with a very small safety net nine months ago. War and sanctions are degrading that market economy at a fast, and probably exponentially increasing rate. So they may have enough grain in silos somewhere, but they are going to have to revive a more or less Soviet system to get it baked into bread and distributed, or a bunch of people are going to get very hungry. And even the ongoing fiasco that is the Kremlin knows that it will be bad if there is no bread at the end of the bread line.

The first organisms that secreted oxygen as a byproduct would like a word. I thought there was real depth to the writing, but the books were also really depressing. The guided tour of the Cultural Revolution made its point, and then went on for another hundred pages. A lot of science fiction postulates civilizations that don't see the value of coexistence. https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/steve-white/in-death-ground.htm This is a classic example of the genre. I would almost argue the Russian took it a bit too seriously. Always three choices, destroy them, educate them, or lose unpleasantly. The three body problem does have some interesting spins on the genre. And I like the idea of reading Chinese authors to understand the Chinese viewpoint. But if that is the Chinese viewpoint the defense budget needs to be doubled, and trade with them just shut down. And the bleep of it is that really might be the case.

Outstanding as always, was out of likes. I would argue that actual engineers at place like the Skunkworks are even more important. This is a technical problem, with a technical solution. I suspect the cost to completely revise every air defense system in the Western world is going to be substantial though. I REALLY want to know what the radar return from these low speed drones look like to an AWACS. The balloon mounted radars are going to get a lot more popular too.

There needs to be a serious medium term effort to increase Taiwan's air and missile defenses to the point the Chinese don't even consider it. I mean Taiwan makes the chips that run it all, and that really is the hard part. As this thread lays out nicely rockets are pretty much rockets, except for the brains at the front end.

Even the Arabs seem to have decided the Russians are losing and, that they might be dealing with Biden for a while. Ukrainian farmers and their tractors are already a meme. I wonder if they could do a more organized version of the John Deere brigade to keep stuff moving through the mud and snow? It might be that last piece to dislocate the Russians completely.

https://www.firstpost.com/world/taiwan-to-develop-100-plus-radar-killing-suicide-drones-by-2025-11662241.html Taiwan's version is WELL underway , but they probably can't just staurate China with them in quite the same way.

Well the 1000 km range that seems to be the new standard for an improved Shaheed something...something would reach from well into Hunan Province, or well north of Shanghai.

Hopefully there will not be a little test some time soon in the Taiwan Strait. BTW Taiwan REALLY needs to worry about these new model buzz bombs. If Ukraine thinks they can push as soon as the ground is hard I am 100% certain they will. But most of the land bridge is about as wide open as wide open gets. outside of Melitopol. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yasne,+Zaporizhia+Oblast,+Ukraine,+72342/@47.0277055,35.6478743,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipOHwbUMJmmk87kg6ordMKFQsds7celf2TkbOie3!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOHwbUMJmmk87kg6ordMKFQsds7celf2TkbOie3%3Dw203-h152-k-no!7i4032!8i3024!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x40c2b1e224ede523:0xa1e1e16ff3a2914a!2sMelitopol',+Zaporizhia+Oblast,+Ukraine,+72300!3b1!8m2!3d46.8550216!4d35.3586996!3m4!1s0x40dd50083d378c2b:0xcc4f4fc9e91a1e6c!8m2!3d47.0277218!4d35.6478882 was hoping the picture would show in the thread, sorry

I have assumed these were coming for months now, but it is a shame the first announcement wasn't Russia's strategic bomber fleet going up in flames, followed by their AWACS equivalents. I wonder if Nato leaned on them to make a public announcement and give the Russians one last chance to talk sense, step one of which would be abandoning every square inch of Ukraine at speed. And I suspect Ukraine engineered theirs to work in the cold. Edit: it would also be hilarious if that range were understated just a bit. Edit 2: Everybody who thinks they have a military needs a counter for these things, and rather soon.

Perspective can be a tricky thing, but that looked like it came from above the chopper. That would imply it was something bigger than a manpad. Buk/Iris-T/NASSAMS?

Good one! There is a great one liner in the middle, worth the ~90 seconds.

I will just remind everyone that their was almost certainly a coordinated info op a few months ago where absolutely EVERYONE mournfully announced that Kherson was the only place that Ukraine could manage an offensive. Then the Kharkiv push changed the entire tenor of the war.

Steve covered this extremely well, but I just want. to reiterate that the Ukrainian General Staff does not go off half cocked. The next offensive will come when they are READY, as they define ready, and not before. My suspicion is that they have a lot of units up towards Belarus training as hard as they can stand and acting as an operational reserve for that front while they do it. And they have a plan, and we will learn what that plan is in due time. There are perhaps some advantages to "disposing" of the extremely obvious and publicly hated collaborators during or immediately after the actual fighting rolls through. Several members of the Kherson collaboration government seem to have had this happen to them. Although it is in dispute if the Ukrainians did it, or the Russians were tying up loose ends. Most of the time though it is far better to have an actual judicial process, as well as an assessment from the relevant intelligence agencies. You can always shoot them later, or throw them in a prison that will make them wish you had, if they actually deserve it.

I suspect we will have a conclusive answer to that question the day after spring mud season ends if we don't before. My suspicion is that the Russians won't like the answer much, but we shall see.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/world/europe/ukraine-kherson-evacuation.html?action=click&algo=bandit-alpha-decay-0.4-eng30s-shadow-lda-unique&alpha=0.02&block=trending_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=627931637&impression_id=2446627d-736f-11ed-abef-632a64b2cb28&index=2&pgtype=Article&pool=pool%2F91fcf81c-4fb0-49ff-bd57-a24647c85ea1&region=footer&req_id=610391436&shadow_vec_sim=0.2518985097807295&surface=eos-most-popular-story&variant=2_alpha-bandit-decay-0.4-eng30s-shadow-refined-lda-unique Ukraine has called for civilian evacuations on the left bank of the Dnipro. It is unclear if this is the lead in to a real attempt to cross in force, or just an info op to make the Russians keep more forces there.

Intelligence is not a requirement to work for the Russians, rather the opposite actually.