danfrodo

SSP racers, F YES! I didn't have the demolition ones shown in the video but had some other ones. And best off the logistical chain is just the rachet-cord, so could operate indefinitely behind enemy lines. As long as one has enough crew; I am thinking dozens to pull the cord.

With a nice sprinkle of Oswald Mosely.

They have a clear problem with wardrobe department in this program... yeah, kinda makes me wish I was color blind. Can't unsee that. Another RU TV atrocity. I would love to know just how many people in RU can hear this and say "yeah, that makes sense". And yet another promise to attack Poland and Germany as soon as possible. unbelievable.

Definitely a slow news week from the war. Which means really fascinating discussion of future of warfare. I looooooooooooove tanks. Yet even as one of The Faithful, I have a hard time seeing how current tanks work in a drone/ATGM world. Looks to me like we still need ~protected firepower projection devices but since vulnerable they need to be smaller and cheaper and probably unmanned. So very very very sad. I did see post where someone jumped in just to say something like "tanks aren't dead!" then jump out. Talk about bringing a stick to a tank fight. That's all ya got? It's like entering a debate w einstein and saying you just need bigger rocket engine to go faster than light and thinking you just did a mic drop. Hopefully Ukraine will soon go on a major territory-grabbing offensive and show us all how it's done.

yeah, getting back on the front page in US & EU by doing terrorist attacks is only going to get more support for Ukraine. Good god, RU has been stupid on the international propaganda front. It's not just incompetent, it's anti-competent, meaning doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing.

Any idea on quantity, Huba? I hope it's lots.

You hunt for a living? I am not a hunter but that is super f--ing cool.

I think the big picture is that it's not black and white. We will not be 100% fossil fuel free, maybe forever. So what? Reducing by 1/2 would be amazing for a huge number or reasons, some of which are looking rather existential. Solar panels are fine, they are mature enough, like ChuckDyke said. That's just old news. My neighborhood has lots of houses w solar panels. Some w panels 10+ years old, and they are working fine, the owners are happy when I ask them. And the new ones are way better. Artkin, do you not own a thermometer? Temperatures are rising even faster than 'alarmists' were predicting 10 years ago. Not making the pollution is the best thing, when it's possible. And it doesn't matter if it's not 100% possible to leave fossil fuels, what matters is doing what makes sense to reduce this. In the US everyone is driving around in vehicles that easily burn 2-3X what is needed for the transportation task. It's just insane.

Seriously, you are bringing up stuff from 20 years ago. And private planes? -- what;'s that got to do w anything? Not all electric cars are crazy expensive. There's lots of them that are built for city travel. And all those SUVs out on the road in the US cost like $50k or more. The new jeep wagoneer starts at $61k. The grand wagoneer starts at $90k. So again explain to me how electric cars are expensive? Yes, on the low end they can be, but not on the medium or high end. But the big problem is that you seem to think we can just keep doing what we are doing. We most certainly can't. So maybe look at the places where you get your information. Did they spend last 2 decades saying climate change was a hoax? Do you still keep getting info from sources that were obviously lying to you? These are just propaganda points of folks tied to fossil fuel industry. Why do so many people continue to listen to sources that have been caught red-handed lying to them about science, over & over & over? solar panels: note that for 20-25 years the person has zero electric bill, with solar paid off in 5-10. So $1200 per year electric means they've saved $12-24k over that time. AFTER paying for the panels. Geeez, Erwin, ya gotta stop repeating talking points and do some actual research into this stuff. I've seen your posts and you are way too smart to let these con men tell you what's what. Watch over this decade how the entire in-city and local distrubution truck fleets become electric. Because it's cheaper. They've (trucking fleet companies) done business studies and know this to be true. And not sensitive to roller coaster of fuel prices. And they'll use as much solar as they can to generate energy, stored in batteries. One last addition: the reason we have rolling blackouts is because of AIR CONDITIONING which is caused by THE SUN. If 10 years ago we had mandated all new construction in SW to have solar panels we'd NEVER have blackouts due to summer overload. And all those houses would be enjoying electric bill so ZERO.

wow, great post, Photon. Interesting and clever compare b/w US pacific strategy and Ukraine. Those Ian Toll books were just about the best history books I've ever read. On your item #2, I'd say Ukraine doesn't have to do what the US did to reach an end point. Ukraine doesn't have to attack RU territory at all. It just has to get RU to leave UKR territory, so this is more like a pacific campaign where the islands are the end game, not Japan itself.

Where I live, Oregon, the payments of the panels are basically same as electric bill -- but would have no electric bill. And after panels paid off in 5-10 years, then over a decade w no electric bill.

I'm sorry, is it 1999? Those are very very very outdated talking points with huge amounts of data showing it's not true. We all love our ICE vehicles, but they have a terrible cost. Electric car battery pollution during production? Yes. But compare that to ~400 or 500 gallons of gas burned per year for pollution x 10 years = 5000 gallons of gas. Plus oil changes. Extraction pollution, refinement pollution, and then huge pollution of burning of 5000 gallons of gas -- PER CAR. There's simply no comparison. And the utter simplicity of electric cars compared to ICE -- super complicated fuel system, but metal engine w tons of moving parts, and a horrifically complicated transmission (unless new CVT; note. I worked a few years at Ford Transmission Division). Plus note that any change in efficiency in electricity generation will make the entire electric car fleet instantly more efficient. Changes in efficiency for ICE cars can only come by getting new car. ANd solar cells are now rated for 25 years. Efficiency degrades over time but not so much as to make them no longer work. They are still fine for 25 years -- not a lot of stuff rated to work that long. Plus the huge pull on electric grid is for air conditioning. Solar panels not only power the AC but also reduce the solar load on the house. It's a no-brainer in southern US. Most places in US have credit system. During summer the panels pump more energy than the house needs, which goes into the grid. In winter, you get those credits back, so basically no electric bill -- if you are in good solar setting (trees, etc).

ah, the world has so many very brilliant creative people. Good to remember that during challenging times. That was great!

So seems clear that the attempt was on Dugin and his daughter was collateral, w Dugin just getting lucky. And hopefully won't recover from the stress. Spend your life promoting sectarian violence and maybe one day you'll get a taste of it.

that's why it's good to have LLF back. Some out of the box thinking. Interesting premise, that we all think international actors will be rational despite the endless litany of irrational history at our disposal. Very, very good point. Meanwhile, in other posts I see some talk of RU terror attacks in EU. This would be insane and uber-counterproductive to RU interests -- therefore, citing LLF above, it is quite possible. And something occurred to me that was probably mentioned a long time ago in forum and I've forgotten it. But when we look at all the 'whys' of Putin invading, it occurred to me that perhaps he trapped himself. He massed forces and made maximalist demands. Probably hoping to get some nice concessions and could then de-escalate w a victory. but when no one would give him anything, he was now in trap of his own making. If he pulled the troops he would look incredibly weak everyone would see it as an obvious loss, and his super-genius facade would be severely damaged. So maybe he took the big risk because he felt he couldn't back down, especially given his super-genius multi-pronged failsafe victory plan.

They are all gangsters, so maybe this is just gangland warfare. And as was mentioned in a post above , there's lots of jockeying for position in whatever comes next. So could be something big or just another murder in the organized crime world known as russian society.

First and most important, I hope the eyes of those soldiers are not permanently damaged. Second, I've been wondering when/whether Putler would engage in sabotage to try to limit supplies to Ukraine. This could be very serious, especially if there's more of these attacks. What would NATO do at this point? ATACMS? How much more non-direct escalation is there?

Maybe it's not technically ATACMS but some other, related device. So US can tell the truth while not telling the whole truth.

that was the most beautiful thing I've seen in ages

Totally cool story & screenshots, thanks for sharing this!

Dang, that would ruin me Aragorn. OKOKOK I apologize. Patton was not a lunatic. Patton was a a great general who knew that violence of action mattered in war. I will formally apologize to his ghost. Dear General Patton, I am sorry I called you a lunatic. I was wrong. You are a lovely person.. Well, ghost person. Am I forgiven? Can't believe I forgot the Dutch for CM-NATO. Now that is unforgivable.

RU exile journalist in NYTimes, behind paywall. It's about power in RU and unlikelihood of some person or faction overthrowing Putin due to the structure of the kleptocracy. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/opinion/russia-putin-corruption.html And tagging along w Steve comments above: The current, linear trajectory of events means definite loss for Putin, and badly. So the only answer will be flip the chessboard via some non-linear event. And he's got nuclear weapons to keep the western reaction within some limits. This is what scares me.

I am still, of course, your #1 supporter on most any other theory you've promulagated. Particularly your smash hit "regime change in Belarus will trigger fall of Putin". It just feels right.

DanCA, I must respectfully disagree, something I think I have not done before. Patton, IMO, was a lunatic -- he was right that RU was a threat and trouble but his solution was WW3, full land war. My father was one of the knuckleheads who fell for his nonsense, joining the 82nd airborne specifically to go fight the commies for Patton (he missed WW2 by a year). There was zero zero zero possibility of the US marching to Moscow in 1945 an even less in 1946. Didn't have the force, didn't have the supplies, didn't have an army that would've obeyed those orders, and had a population at home that would've burned down the white house had we tried based on the horrific casualites we would be incurring every wretched mile. Why would we have to directly fight Russia in the near future? Russia is busy destroying itself. We certainly aren't going to invade. If we did fight RU it would be in some land exterior to RU, like Ukraine. And where is RU gonna go now? I guess Putin could attack the 'stans, but that's a ways off considering he has destroyed his army. If he attacks NATO he'll get smashed and crawl back across the border, looking like Napolean in 1812-3. I don't see any path that would lead to US/NATO invasion. I do often wish Putin would do something dumb that triggers NATO intervention, but it would be an air attack, not by ground. I do, however, think it's vitally important for all of us to have the opportunity to fight Russia. And for Poles, Danes, Norwegians, Germans, French, etc, to also be included. Hint hint hint CM-NATO. Maybe nice Russian attack on Baltic states?

Huba bringing the goods, thanks for sharing this. So it might not be our imagination that RU simply cannot keep up its only current advantage, which is WW1 style arty destruction. They are losing LOCs, depots, barrels, and don't have the manufacturing to keep up. With RU arty levels already down ~50% of peak of 12k per day, this is looking good.