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Werthead

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  1. Ah, the hit on the Kherson barracks was carried out by stand-off French-supplied AASM-250 Hammer bombs, with a range of about 45 miles. Very difficult to intercept. Perun on the challenges faced by defending the Baltic States:
  2. Ukraine has hit a swathe of targets across Kherson Oblast (the occupied bit, obviously) and Crimea, hitting EW stations and even individual houses being used as barracks by Russian soldiers. Interestingly, very little AA or anti-drone efforts to stop them. You sometimes see these efforts only being partially successful or even wholly unsuccessful, with missiles shot down by Russian air defence or portable anti-drone systems leading to shoot-downs. This latest swathe of attacks seemed to be meet very little resistance, the same with the last few hits on Russian refineries and power plants. In fact, one drone flew behind enemy lines and bombed an EW station that seemed to be trying to shut it down and having no impact. One possibility is that Ukraine's new "AI control system" is now operating, which helps complete missions. When EW shuts down direct control, the AI takes control and completes the mission. The other is that Ukraine's boasts about having new control systems that Russian EW is ineffective against are correct, despite some scepticism in some quarters. The other is that Russia's own stock of EW and AA systems along parts of the front has run so dry that Ukraine can operate with increasing freedom.
  3. Keaton was 38 when he made it so that tracks. Bale was 31 when he made Batman Begins.
  4. Yes. Vastly so. Kevin J. Anderson makes Benioff & Weiss read like fucking Proust.
  5. According to Frank Herbert, his original plan was for Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune to be the full story, and Dune Messiah was at least partially written as part of the writing for Dune and might have been intended to be part of Dune itself (hence why it's so extremely short), but had to be cut out for space reasons. Herbert may have rewritten it for publication - that would explain the four-year-gap from Dune to Messiah despite Messiah being very short - but the narrative was apparently originally intended. Children than rounded off his original story arc, and was supposed to conclude the narrative for good. He only wrote God-Emperor and the latter two books after the publisher reversed up to his house with a dump truck full of money.
  6. Excellent. The BSG video uploader now seems fully functional. Just a shame it can't handle 4K.
  7. There was an analysis a decade or so back which showed that historical Conservative economic performance was horrendous, and as a whole was largely outperformed by Labour economic policies (when equalised, given the Tories have been in power for twice as much as Labour in the last century). However, the Tories have had several strokes of good luck which have delivered good economic performance on their watch, such as inheriting various low-hanging fruit situations they can exploit (Thatcher selling off council house stock built up over many decades, for example, or winning the Falklands War). Labour has also had awful luck in some of their timing, such as both the 1970s economic meltdown, partially caused by things like the Yom Kippur War and high oil prices, or the 2008 economic crash. Tory policies are usually ideologically-driven rather than practically-driven, though, basically falling into the category of, "We say this is a good idea so it inarguably is, even when we enact it and it torpedoes the economy." That makes it incredibly hard for them to about-face when things are going bad (having the foresight to boot out Truss rather than grin and bear the resounding chaos that would have followed is a notable moment of good sense from the modern Tory party). The main problem modern Labour has encountered that, as politics lurch further rightwards, they have followed, putting them either more in the centre (under Blair) and the suspicion that Starmer could even be just right-of-centre, and thus mostly doomed to following Tory policies-lite. This might be better than under a Conservative government, but things might not get noticeably "better" overall, because that would require policies that Starmer does not seem to want to enact (despite embracing some of them just a few years ago). Blair did have big ideas and talked a big game in 1997 and these helped him win, despite the economic rebound of the prior couple of years meaning that things we actually already improving under Major. In 2024 Starmer's ideas seem to boil down to, "We probably won't suck as much as leaving the Tories in charge." For the Conservatives, opposition might be a good time to regroup. Something they probably need to tackle is that, manifestly, going further and further to the right on social issues doesn't actually seem to be nudging the dial with the country as a whole; Britain is not inherently a bastion of super-liberalness but I do think it has a deep-set attitude of "Meh, whatever, live and let live," which seems to be getting more and more annoyed with some Tories banging on about some of these issues, not to mention inherent Tory-voters amongst minorities getting alarmed at some of their rhetoric and decamping to milquetoast-Labour.
  8. Final confirmation that Patriot can take down Zircon hypersonic missiles: two were shot down before they could hit Kyiv this morning. That's a major blow to Russian prestige, as the Zircon is supposed to be a "proper" hypersonic weapon unlike the Kinzhal, which is a bit of an interim bodge job. Ukrainian drones hit the Novocherkassk power plant in Rostov, disabling two power units. That's quite heavy damage.
  9. Ukraine has been threatening this, and I think the threat is keeping a lot of Russian troops and material tied down in Crimea. In particular, Russia keeps putting S-400 systems and much more expensive, complex mobile radar systems in Crimea to take up the slack and these keep being destroyed, and Russia is running out of both capabilities relatively quickly, and as they go down Ukraine is able to exploit gaps in the coverage to then hit Russian targets further east. In some respects the threat of a Ukrainian assault on Crimea is causing as much logistical damage to Russia in Crimea as a full-scale assault, for nothing like the cost. Logistically, Ukraine could try to invade Crimea and that capability is not non-existent, but it would be a massive throw of the dice. They would have to mount a seaborn naval invasion on a massive scale, with the only equipment being available being river landing boats, with limited air. They'd initially enjoy strong artillery cover but that would fade as they pressed on into the Crimean interior. The topography of Crimea is a bitch to fight across (ask French and British military historians about that), and Sevastopol is a very heavily fortified city from both landward and seaborne attack. Ideally Ukraine would also need to fully breach the Dnipro line and cut Crimea off from the land bridge to set up a land-borne resupply route, which is quite hard (Ukraine would also need to bring massive defences with it and fortify the ground to the north to prevent a flanking relief effort). Such a gambit failing could damage Ukraine's capabilities so much it could lose the war as a result.
  10. I can't find out old dedicated wargaming thread, so I thought this might be of interest here. Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 co-creator Rick Priestly (who was in charge of the lore, the writing and most of the rules) on the creation and early history of Warhammer 40,000 and Games Workshop (he has another two videos on the history of fantasy Warhammer on the same channel).
  11. Without Verstappen, you could see it was a more interesting race. Leclerc, Piastri, Perez and Norris all briefly looked in contention for the lead, at least potentially until Perez damaged his floor (or rather apparently got something stuck on the floor, which destroyed the airflow). Leclerc probably had the best shot, the McLarens tripped over one another a little and once the Ferraris pulled ahead they probably dialled down their engine, which is a shame but understandable. Norris did at least keep them in sight for quite a while though. Sainz did do what he needed to do but he did seem to drop pace towards the end; some suggestion both Ferraris were also told to dial down the engine and cruise them home once clear of the McLarens, and not fight for the lead. Hamilton does have a slight tendency to go into cruise control if the car is not to his liking. It's not unusual but it is a little disappointing. Still, the Ferrari looks to be on a much better trajectory than the Mercedes, which is a dog's dinner of a car. Surprisingly strong race pace from the Haas, again, and Tsunoda running rings around Ricciardo. Tsunoda not being eyed for Red Bull is very silly indeed, with the new rumour being that Ricciardo could be out midseason, Lawson in and if Lawson does well, he could be in the Red Bull in 2025. But on current form (and Red Bull seem to genuinely agree that Perez's issues today were technical) Perez might be breathing easier than he was before. At the moment I believe Tsunoda could win the next race in reverse gear and Horner would still not consider him for the Red Bull drive. The long run simulations do seem to agree that the Ferrari was much, much closer to the Red Bull than at any point since the start of 2022. Melbourne is more representative of a bunch of other tracks than Singapore, where Ferrari won last year, so interesting to see if Ferrari can get into a position to take on Red Bull in a straight fight.
  12. Two more big landing ships in Sevastopol apparently damaged. More information now claiming one aircraft destroyed and two damaged in that big attack on the Russian airbase a few days ago. Ukrainian artillery has been hitting Russian targets in Avdiivka, apparently targeting artillery that Russia has brought forwards to take cover in the ruins.
  13. Russia hitting Ukraine with missiles, mostly intercepted. But Ukraine has been hitting back, destroying the Black Sea Fleet communications hub in Sevastopol. Three Storm Shadows hit the building within the space of about five seconds, not leaving much of it standing. They also hit a major fuel depot in Hvardiis'ke, Crimea, which burned for hours. Russian air defences seemed slow in responding, with return fire only beginning after the first couple of impacts. The Kuibyshev refinery near Samara was also hit yesterday.
  14. Pffft, easily doable. I mean, Herbert Jnr. and Anderson straight-up admitted in an unguarded interview that they made up 99% of the shit in their drivel. The only thing that Herbert's one A4 page of notes had was "Maybe bring back Paul, Chani etc as gholas?"
  15. You don't need to make comparisons with China, that's a bit extreme, and the Chinese are discovering that their approach is total dogshit which could seriously damage their economy ("We'll loan money to all these poor countries the nasty west won't support!" "Great idea! By the way, all these poor countries the west won't support can't afford to pay us back. They say sorry about that, kthxbye,"), both in terms of internal development and external development. But it's true that Britain does seem less nimble an economy even compared to EU countries, which are not exactly not in love with bureaucracy and red tape. Some of that is down to the size of the country versus its population: we're a small country with a massive population and that severely complicates where we can build things*. The likes of Norway and Sweden are fucking massive countries with comparatively tiny populations, which gives them a huge amount of flexibility. Even France, with a comparable population, has twice as much land to work with; Germany and Italy do have more limitations comparable to ours. *From my days in the Department of Transport, a daily occurrence was someone grumbling, "Why can't we build railways that work like in France and Germany?" and us coming up with some variation of, "Well, we could deploy ten thousand B-17s and Lancasters to renovate the UK transport network from scratch, but that might be controversial."
  16. Everyone at Ferrari and all the Tifosi: "Wheeeellllp." Major case of sellers' remorse going on there, I think. Perez might have gotten away with that though. What could have been a nail in the coffin of his career was offset by apparent damage to the underfloor of the car, which explains why he went from beasting half the field to suddenly being 3 tenths off the pace within a few laps despite new hard tyres. A day, and maybe a season, for Mercedes to forget.
  17. I'm not even sure if you have to appeal to the MMT as a means to an end (by which I assume is the "if you have your own currency you can summon money out of thin air as long as you also avoid inflation" approach, which is both correct and also not without risks). If a government invests in services and people, it usually gets a return which dramatically improves upon the initial investment. The problem in the current situation is starting on a bad foot (unlike 1997 when Blair inherited a significantly improving economy and nothing like the current national debt, which meant opening the floodgate of spending was much easier to sell to the public) which makes that look almost irresponsible in the short term despite being almost inevitably successful in the long term, and frankly it is necessary at this moment. The damage heaped onto the British economy since 2010 (following on from the systemic shock of 2008) by austerity is unsustainable without doing fundamental damage to how the entire country is financed and operates. One of the big problems we have in the country is that in 2010 the coalition successfully sold the idea that national finances are just like household finances and need to be treated the exact same way (tighten your belt and then tighten some more, cut up your credit cards, don't take on more debt), when this was, never has been and never will be remotely true. The problem is that that was a very simple message and getting into the weeds of how national finances work is complex, long-winded and requires some degree of specialist knowledge, messaging which is almost impossible to get across in the current media environment. I suspect current Labour planning revolves around this and knows that long-term repairs to the economy require at least two terms, but if they go in all guns blazing in the first term, the Tories will be able to claim Labour irresponsibility and try to win back into power in the second term, undoing whatever good work is done in the meantime (assuming they can achieve that, of course, which is not a given, although the fruit is hanging very low).
  18. Putin is repeating the line that the attackers were trying to escape towards Ukraine, but he does not blame Kyiv directly. He might still do that, but he hasn't pressed that button yet. The UN has also pinned the blame on ISIS, and noted that various major countries have taken their eye off the ball on the threat from that area whilst they jockey for position.
  19. Oh yeah, that's a good point. Regarding the Arbiter: The Halo series is weird in being mostly basic space opera guff to excuse lots of shooty shooty bang bang, with far less narrative than say Mass Effect, in which you can at least Talk To The Aliens. But the lore is surprisingly developed. The tie-in novels are above average (mostly) and even Proper SF Author Greg Bear came on board to flesh out a lot of the lore and write a trilogy of novels about the backstory. As a result, the changes are not going down too well with the fans, even moderate ones who expected fairly significant changes because you can't adapt a first-person shooter faithfully to the screen, there's not much narrative to tell there. The main complaints are too much focus on brand new, fanfic-style characters, with a common argument is that if you can't remain focused on Master Chief constantly, then you can focus on the Keyes, Halsey, Johnson, Cortana, the Reach characters etc, without going down the whole new character route quite so heavily. There's also too much uninteresting bullshit: Soren's family being kidnapped is "Perrin's wife being kidnapped" levels of tedium, though fortunately resolved a tad faster. Pacing I think is also a complaint. It took one-and-a-half seasons to reach the events of Reach and then undersold them, then another half-season to reach the events of Halo: Combat Evolved, but they've mixed things up by not doing as much as they could with the Forerunners (I don't think the name has even been mentioned) but introducing the Flood too early. The familiar "eight episodes isn't enough" refrain is also there, although I disagree. These are pretty short games and I think you can adapt them in that timeframe, much more easily than a lot of these other shows which are struggling.
  20. I believe ISIS-K members have even agitated for attacking China in revenge for their treatment of the Uygher (and they have access via the remote border regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan), but even their leadership has hesitated over that so far. These are the guys who really do not give a fuck what they do or the consequences of their actions. The religious-political angle is very complex, but you have essentially a lot of Muslims from the Caucasus region who were very angry at the Chechen War, and even angrier at its conclusion when they believe - correctly - Kadyrov sold the Chechen people out to Putin in return for personal enrichment, gold toilets etc. Even after the end of the Second Chechen War and its prolonged aftermath (when fighting in the north Caucasus continued for many years after Kadyrov signed up to Team Putin, in one year almost killing a thousand Russian security personnel), you had Caucasus-based jihadist groups continuing to target the Russian government. When the conflict in Syria started, the Russian government offered these groups something of a bizarre amnesty, releasing some from prison and allowing others to leave Russian territory unharmed to fight as part of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq (presumably hoping they'd target US and allied forces). Whether the Russians realised they themselves would be engaged in that conflict shortly thereafter is unclear. However those groups still retain a hardcore element who want to liberate Chechnya and the north Caucasus and create an Islamic Republic in those areas, and have carried out occasional attacks to this end. In some cases, yes, it's likely the attacks have been inspired by the stalemate in Syria and maybe anger at Ukraine and Gaza taking the eyes of the world off that conflict. ISIS-K are also very, very unpleasant, to the point that it's believed the US has provided the Taliban with intelligence on ISIS-K operations in Afghanistan because, as problematic as the Taliban are, they're easier to deal with then these fucking total lunatics. Some Russian sources are still blaming Ukraine outright. One Russian security report even says the attackers planned to cross the border into Ukraine to escape, with the help of the Ukrainian intelligence services, so I'd hold fire on that for now. There are some in Russia agitating to make this part of the Ukrainian conflict.
  21. The first one did see the biggest shift to Labour in electoral history, exceeding the swing in 1997 that delivered Blair his landslide victory. As was noted at the time, getting an even bigger shift to win a majority outright was almost completely demographically impossible, so complaining about that feels a bit churlish. As it was, that success plunged the Tories into a full-on crisis lasting until the next election. However, he did completely screw the pooch afterwards. Some of the complaints are valid - it was interesting seeing the absolutely titanic assault on social media of US-style advertising basically claiming that Corbyn was going to sell the country to communists, or something - but ultimately Corbyn lost because the Tories threw everything into the election on the basis of Brexit-delivery and Corbyn could not deliver what he clearly personally wanted, Labour supporting Brexit fully, but could not bring himself to whole-heartedly oppose it, so his messaging became incredibly weak, confused and incoherent on that issue. Everything else his policies seemed to resonate as well as they did in 2017, but the Tories very successfully pivoted the argument away from those policies. He fought the battle on ground of the enemy's choosing and did not show up with a viable strategy.
  22. Some reporting that the ISIS claim has come through a fake account, but the BBC and several US news networks are saying that their sources they have that are long-affiliated with ISIS, or affiliated with affiliations of ISIS (that's a thing, apparently), are all confirming that this was an ISIS strike. The US is also saying it had firm intelligence of ISIS planning attacks against Russian interests and did directly inform Russia several weeks ago under its legal obligation to do so.
  23. OSINT sources saying the Russian police have put out an arrest warrant for five men from Ingushetia, although this does not appear confirmed yet. Interesting if this is the "North Caucasus" group rearing its head again. This was a jihadist organisation that fought alongside the Chechens during the Second Chechen War, then went solo in Ingushetia and Dagestan. They halted operations in Russia to redeploy their assets to Syria to fight Russian forces there. They've been a generally low-key group of limited importance, but there has been concern over the fact they contain Russian citizens and can speak Russian, so could operate in Russia itself relatively freely.
  24. The US issued a warning two weeks ago that "extremists" were planning terrorist attacks inside Russia, including targeting concert halls. It went under the radar at the time but has come up again now. Russian news sources saying that up to 40 are believed dead. Ukraine has issued a denial that it was involved, and the US concurs there is no intelligence chatter supporting Ukrainian involvement. Even Russian news and government sources have hesitate to point the finger at Ukraine. This seems to have genuinely come out of nowhere to Russia (but possibly not US intelligence).
  25. It was. Some nice video game callbacks. The twin Needlers gag I think is a solid reference to a lot of people in the games, and a nod to the fact that nobody in the Halo universe goes into battle with remotely enough ammo for whatever mission they are facing. ETA: Oh nice! It's Harry Lloyd playing
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