Kinophile

Interestingly, I read many years ago that large wars often lead to extreme winters, Esp if campaigning began early and finished late, throwing a lot of particles, debris and aerosols into the atmosphere. WW2 had some unprecedented winters, as did WW1. Shorter wars like 1870 not so much. I don't know what the threshold is but I'd say the correlation is statistically significant. So it's possible this winter in UKR could be heavier than expected but, with climate change, shorter. Then a very heavy rasputitsa from the excessive snow melt. A UKR winter offensive might be crucial to achieve more gains before a really bad spring shuts everything down for longer than usual.

Right!? Holy crap, The Fall just blew me away. And the Crucifiorm, what an idea. The Tesla Forest! The Shrike! Kwatz! Even his understanding of military strategic deception, by the AIs, leading to catastrophic misallocation of Human forces....wow. 3BP isn't remotely in Simmons wheelhouse, it's in the bilge playing footsie with the dock rats.

Well... Prig is already doing that with Wagner, no?

LMAO what an ironic farce

"Wagnerites roasting, on an open fire, HIMARS slamming their HQs... Youtube rants uploaded by cold Mobiks Ukrainians dressed up like Eskimos Everybody knows a Tupolov hit by drones Helps to make the evening bright Deadly SOF with their NVGs all aglow Will find it easy work tonight They know that Biden's on his way He's loaded lots of Ammo and MREs on his planes And every Babushka's child is gonna spy To see if T-72s really know how to fly And so I'm offering this simple phrase To kids from one to ninety-two Although it's been said many times, many ways Komrad Putler, **** you And so I'm offering this simple phrase To kids from one to ninety-two Although it's been said many times, many ways Komrad Putler, **** you!"

Read the Hyperion series, my friend, then tell me if there's any character in 3BP as remotely intriguing, humanist or layered as Col. Kassad.

You're comparing some pretty extreme extremes here...on the one hand a country that covers not even 4% of its planet's surface with a civilization able to harness all incoming solar energy/radiation. Collective will is not a resource, its an idea, and even then it's on a sliding scale of effectiveness. There's plenty of civilizations that have arose with some pretty half-assed organizational principles (human sacrifice, for one) that nonetheless pushed forward into local and regional dominance. Give the Aztecs metal weapons instead of those obsidian make-dos and you've got no European conquest Central America but you do have a lot of very anxious Christian POWs. Collective Will etc is certainly a cultural resource (as a very powerful self-organizing principle). Yet Russian elites have had ample access to knowledge of democracy, etc and obvious examples abroad to pull from but have time and again fallen into autocracy as a default. But I don't know if Putler sought more collective willpower- he was already essentially unbound in ambition. Did he really need/sought more? He still had to negotiate with internal power structures the surround & enable him, to a degree, but this war seems to very much be his war, his ego involved, his personal perspective on history devolving to his "legacy". He drove its creation and maintains its progression. Without the West involved he very likely would be "winning", as he sees it. For him to succeed it appears he only needs the support (partial-Collective Will) of a tiny percentage of the Russian population. Pretty efficient as a ruling mechanism, albeit inherently unstable. And yet, even though the assholes at the top can change/swap out, the Russian system of governance has almost always been autocracy, autocracy, autocracy. Brief interludes of demos which are swiftly squished under the steel-toed jackboot of yet another incoming autocracy. I'd question weather lack Collective Will is a deficiency - its absence hasn't stopped Russia's rise to superpower status, its conquest of a significant portion of the northern hemisphere and its maintenance of local hegemony. Fun conversation btw.

Yes, he created the Deus Ex Machina of the destruction of the TriSolarian system to artificially push the "aliens" out of their environment, with Sol being the closest & best option for them. Essentially they force a war of extermination as a means of civilizational survival, when cooperation would have lead to mutual benefit (and indeed does, in his books, after the first war). The TriSolarian autocratic regime(s) constantly view civilizational advancement in zero-sum frameworks, whereas Earth is a more cooperative/diplomatic and "honest" culture. Interestingly, and as per your note about reading your opponent's literature, I've read regularly of how Chinese society views Americans/Westerners as extremely aggressive and self-destructive, destroying as we absorb and so always wanting more, which is what "truly" drives the tension between East & West. Supposedly. So then viewed through that fractured lens then the West is TriSolaris. To come back to the topic at hand (no, really) there is a strong apocalyptic thread in the modern Russian narrative about Ukraine, that it must be absorbed and subsumed to ensure the survival of Russia as a social construct because...Jewish Nazis? EH, ok... anyhow... Fundamentally Russia has every resource it needs to survive and thrive, so it is the politically created perception of vulnerability and external threat that drives the aggressive push to subjugate the near abroad. An ideology constructed, maintained and expanded by a fascist/imperialist ideology whose true benefactors are the elite at the top (as with all fascist states). I'm curious what non-propaganda literature is coming out of Russia these days...

Chimps raid, and it's horrifically barbaric. Like, pile-on and rip their jaws off is a standard tactic, I was once told. But that's more raw opportunistic violence than a structured approach to conquest. I...did not care for that book series. The basic logic was brutally sound - treat the universe as a jungle that will kill you, so kill anything you meet because it is impossible to tell who is truly friend or foe and the penalty for not being zero-sum is the destruction of your entire civilization. Some scenes/set ups were interesting. But holy crap was he unutterably bad at characterizations (especially women), had no clue about human society under pressure and ridiculously, RIDICULOUSLY chauvinistic and paternalistic. Aside from that basic concept, T3BP read like an old sci fi book from the 50s. And not a great one. Give me Simmons, Asher, Greg Bear (RIP) any day.

Tsk tsk O ye of little faith Hast thou forgotten these past many months of Igor Yevgenyevich Konashenkov and his baldy-faced gibberish?

Humans stay the same, the tech evolves. Until we develop true biotech that affects us on a genetic level, generation to generation (a la Dan Simmons' Ousters) we'll always bash each other with the latest in stone clubs / HIMARS for the same selfish short-sighted reasons.

What's scarier than that is that you conceivably, in large country like the US, launch drone attacks from within your opponents territory. You don't even need to be there, just containerize a few hundred drones, activate and target remotely. Gawd WW3 will be just awful, everywhere.

They cant be in that dire straits that food rationing is a potential future thing...can they? I mean sure, sanctions are grinding in like dog **** into a white carpet, but Russia can feed itself. I think?

Jesus. Spare knickers time!

ALT POV: Engels has nukes stored, no? So... Wot Air Def doin', boychik?

RUS pulling back from the bank to towns south just invites UKR light forces to cross and roam? Everytime the Ivan falls back the Ukrs follow close behind, staying right on their ***. When they thin out a line and repo forces back/away the ZSU infiltrate with light/SOF forces, penetrate and constantly degrade LOCs using LRFs and tactical superiority, until the defence is Swiss cheesed. If RUS does fall back from the bank then a localized UKR "offensive" could steadily develop over a couple of months, looking to isolate and destroy individual RUS garrisons. Defeat in detail, etc. It's a dangerous area to let any UKR presence develop.There's already a decent partisan movement in the region, albeit probably somewhat suppressed right now, but obviously latent. A UKR force across the Dniper south of Enerhodar is a stumbling block in the Spring that the AFRF cannot ignore.

Dimitri is still tracking RUS supposed withdrawal from ZNPP. Im curious... Should not Russia fortify/at least fight to hold the left Bank? Falling back from the Dniper is a binary decision, no? Once you let the Ukrs across then you're fighting on the defense in a topographical plain, in winter, against a mobile enemy, and your lines are still not usefully shortened. Also RUS's throttled logistics would be now made far worse by letting HIMARS across the river. Of all the decisions RUS could do right now, pulling back from the Dniper seems like an extremely bad one. Unless the intention is to pull all the way back to Crimea and to West of DLPRs, ie deliberately splitting the front. This could help with concentrating RUS forces in the Donbass while turning Crimea into a fortress. Avoiding inflicted defeat and destruction in the open country from Melitopol to the Crimea could be a good operational move.

Interesting gossip but... I'm always highly ware of anyone who paints supposed emotions onto world figures. Eg "Putin was upset". Sure. Just one adjective and an exclamation point away from raw, below the fold clickbait. If an author is willing to embellish with that then....

Including our friends Zeleban et al.

****ing Putin.

My sympatheties. Last winter in Toronto /Ontario we had a 3-5 day run of no power mid winter. Thank God for gas heating, plus we have a fireplace. Having a working chimney as Back up for winter outages was a deliberate factor in taking this place. Which is nuts, when you think of it. A modern, well run city with no extreme events to really worry about ( quakes, etc) yet having a functional fire pit was on my mind. And I'm in Forest Hill north! Fancy white person hood. The absence of power was unnerving, esp. by D3

@The_Capt Following from his/her note, via Ukrainian Volunteer blog:

https://mwi.usma.edu/a-firsthand-account-of-the-battle-of-mariupol/ MWI is excellent.

Mendacity is the perfect word. Nice.

Re editing rat brains, you guys are playing with fire! Just gonna future proof myself for after the inevitable Man/Machine Apocalypse and state for any Rodent Researcher reading this forum that I, FOR ONE, WELCOME OUR FUTURE CYBERNETIC RODENT OVERLORDS. TAKE THE OTHERS, THEY'RE ALL ANTI-RODENTISTS! Call me Quisling, I dont care. When all you numbskulls are chewing on each other's diseased toes I'll be warm and dry at the feet of the Digital Rat God, happily nibbling my Grade A Soylent Green, 700 feet under ground. Yep, yep, yep we'll see who's laughing then!