As I said before, that sort of change is going to take longer than the few months we have left before the election. Right now the choice is Biden or Trump for the next term. It sucks, but that is what it is. Don’t forget the down-ticket elections too.

What do you mean the next few months? Hasn’t Biden been president for almost four years?

It’s the same thing with the Washington Generals, they’re playing their hearts out out there on the court but the opposition is both composed of better players and is willing to use every tool at their disposal in order to win.

Move the Radio Free Asia one to the good pile. I like that one.

And now, the people of Donetsk and Luhansk can live quietly without fear of nazi missiles blowing up their city centers for no reason.

This part’s not actually true yet.

The Last Ringbearer came out in 1999. It was a Russian LOTR fanfiction from the perspective of Mordor. In it the “orcs” are just normal humans who are dehumanized by the men of the west. It was a pretty big deal in the former USSR. So it probably wasn’t you.

In this war the term Orc was popularized by an english tweet from Azov about greasing up their bullets to deal with Chechen orcs. So originally the term orc only applied to Chechens (and probably other Muslims in the Russian Federation).

They’re not dying from zombie bites, they’re dying with zombie bites.

I know, he was an absolute stand-out and Canada’s standing ovation for a honest-to-god Nazi shocked a friend I know from being both anti-west and anti-Russia to being full on Death to America (and the west) mode.

I really doubt the western MIC can actually develop something like that.

I know that, my tone was probably a bit too sardonic there. I completely agree that Azov (and friends) are all Nazis or neonazis, it’s just their image in western media that I was trying to make fun of.

I was mostly looking for something else I could show to libs to prove that the west is unambiguously supporting Nazis (again). There’s something about Hunka being a member of the actual historical Waffen-SS and swearing an oath to Adolf Hitler that makes libs not be unable to deny that he’s a Nazi.

That’s Azov, they’ve had their image rehabilitated into being either not-nazis or being the good kind of Nazi (the kind that fights the Russians) depending on which lib media you listen to. I was thinking the UK had applauded one of the original members of the Waffen-SS. They haven’t yet been rehabilitated in most western countries. You also missed my favorite picture from this.

Wait, when did the UK have their standing ovation for the Waffen SS?

You should probably pay your taxes. Those bombs are largely funded by the government (really the banks) printing money. What your taxes do is prevent that money printing from causing too much inflation. That’s also the reason the US government really supports the petrodollar, it spreads the inflation out amongst everybody using the petrodollar instead of just US citizens.

Regardless, the IRS can really fuck you up. You’re just in such a position of weakness relative to the US government.

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast flag was a very nice touch.

They mobilized a mod of r/Ukraine recently.

If people fighting for their freedom against a totalitarian regime is your definition of unnecessary then maybe you should reevaluate your political opinions.

Is the totalitarian regime the side with or without elections?

A European commissioner also threatened Georgia’s prime minister with Fico’s fate.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/-georgian-premier-claims-eu-official-threatened-him-with-fate-of-slovak-leader-shot-last-week/3228665

(He was also telling me that the shed tanks are carrying diesel generators to run point-defense guns. According to him older tank’s power-plants can’t run the point defense guns so they’re using diesel generators strapped to the tanks. and this is bad because if hte generator gets hit hte diesel will catch fire and cook the tank crew alive. I’m pretty sure that’s total bullshit because tanks have been designed with protection from incendiary attacks for decades, diesel is notoriously hard to ignite and doesn’t explode, and anyway T-72s have giant barrels of spare diesel fuel attached to their rear anyway. While probably not filled in combat, it apparently hasn’t been a problem for fifty years so I’m skeptical that 10 or 20 gallons of diesel fuel in a portable generator is somehow going to cook a tank crew alive.)

This analysis is weird, what sort of point defense guns is he talking about? The Russians are mounting diesel generators to some of the turtle tanks but those are there to run the EW (electronic warfare) that’s also mounted to the top of the tank. Some of the shed tanks have the EW suite but most don’t, although one of the tanks that got popular on twitter was this type of EW tank.

Does anyone have access to any actual science on how various kinds of cage armor are performing against modern drone munitions? I’m really curious because to me this seems really straight forward - If a HEAT round can’t detonate at the proper distance from the target it can’t defeat the target’s armor. And they’re saying that’s bullshit and this is all cope and doesn’t work. And that doesn’t pass the smell test to me.

This analysis is from analyzing the effectiveness of WW2 armor skirts on panzers. The nazis added this kind of armor to mitigate damage from kinetic weapons, especially from Soviet anti-tank rifles. This had limited effectiveness against HEAT rounds and could even theoretically improve the effectiveness of a HEAT round. This is due to the jet of the HEAT round needing the proper distance to form and some HEAT rounds just weren’t long enough for this full effect.

The shed armor upgrade is mostly against drone attacks from above. It increases the distance that a HEAT round detonates from, and to a much greater degree than classic armor skirts. Not only that but it makes targeting the weak points on the armor much more difficult. It also greatly reduces of the effect of non-HEAT explosives on the tank. On the EW turtle tanks, the shed protects the more delicate EW equipment from small arms fire.

I don’t have any actual proper sources. This is a very rapidly developing area of study.

Edit: “Classic” slat armor is actually for a different purpose altogether. It’s there to crush RPG warheads and keep them from going off or at least disrupt the formation of the HEAT jet. A large part of an RPG round is hollow, this is necessary to make it a HEAT round instead of just explosive (HE). An RPG hitting correctly spaced slat armor at the proper angle will have the warhead be crushed by the slats. This will either prevent the detonate from working or just disrupt the HEAT jet.

Right, it took a decade to show that this attack wasn’t Assad. It’s going to take a lot longer for anything that’s less obvious. I’m mostly showing that there is very little interest in investigation if it can’t be pinned on Assad.

Sarin gas isn’t hard to make by the way. A bunch of Japanese cultists were able to do it. They also made VX, phosegene, and hydrogen cyanide. Apparently money and dedication will take you a long way.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) released a report this year (2024) finally saying that it was actually ISIS that did the chemical attack in Marea in 2015. So just under a decade to finally admit to something that was obvious. I guess you just need to wait a few more decades until they find out who did the rest of the chemical attacks.

https://www.opcw.org/media-centre/news/2024/02/opcw-identifies-isil-perpetrators-2015-chemical-attack-marea-syria