Werthead

Ukraine hit Kardymovo in Smolensk Oblast overnight, setting fire to two oil depots. Both depots are still on fire as of this morning. Ukraine also destroyed the Novo Bryanskaya electrical substation yesterday. Ukraine also hit and damaged Russia's only 29B6 Container over-the-horizon radar system outside Kovylkino. This system can monitor long-range ballistic and cruise missile attacks from several hundred kilometres away. The facility seems to be operational, but one of the two primary antennas appears to have been damaged. This facility has been monitoring airborne activity over Ukraine but it has a major blindspot between the antennas where vehicles could approach and destroy it. The main reason it's survived so far is its distance from the front, but it is now in range of Ukraine's new long-range attack drones. Bizarre factoid of the day: after the 2014 invasion of Crimea and Donbas, under Russian pressure, the US apparently agreed to a stricture that its weapons transferred to Ukraine cannot be used by the Azov battalion due to its alleged Nazism. For some reason this stricture is apparently still in place. Ukraine has been getting around it in some ways but to not annoy the US, they're following it in the main. There's now a growing (and hugely late) movement to have that stipulation repealed, given that Azov's alleged Nazism is a thing of the past. The Russian losses at Novomykhailivka are officially deranged: Odd, as the Russians are not known for their sunny optimism.

Even more of a fun fact: in 2009 Alonso was eight years into his Formula One career.

Listening to the Rest is Politics podcast and Rory Stewart, who has contacts in various parts of the world since his days working in the UK foreign office, cited the Chinese government as being privately "alarmed" at some of the decisions North Korea has been/is taking, which is, y'know, reassuring.

Tim's videos on all aspects of Fallout are pretty good, from the original idea to them working on it for three years (an insane amount of time to spend on a video game in the mid-1990s) to how they settled on the retrofuturistic setting and absolutely horrifying Steve Jackson when he came in to play it with the level of adult content, to the point he refused to give them a GURPS licence and they had to completely rework the rules system eight months from launch. He even has a good bit about how they came up with the box art (Leonard Boyarsky created it on a whim one day and never got paid for it, as they folded it into his regular duties). There's also some interesting stuff about internal Black Isle/Interplay politics, and how he left partway through Fallout 2 after Fallout outsold initial projections several times over and he didn't get his bonus, and several other developers resigned in solidarity with him. He also has great stuff on the running of Troika and the absolute brain-numbing requirements of being the company boss, which is why they terminated the company even though they could have kept going despite the various problems Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Temple of Elemental Evil and Arcanum had.

The two statements are not incompatible I thought The Wire was the best TV show ever made (traditional, very minor Season 5 caveats aside) after first watching it, but you could say other shows were close behind it. I think now that's not so much the case. Other shows in that bracket I found were weaker on a rewatch (Breaking Bad's flaws are a lot more apparent on a rewatch, and pushed it out of my Top 5, maybe outside the Top 10).

Finished up with The Bear. Decent, a little bit overrated but when it was on fire it was really good. Other times it was a bunch of adults screaming about cheese. Another couple of episodes of Manhunt down and damn this is good. Feels like it should be getting as much talk as Shogun. Tobias Menzies is outstanding. Checked out Ford vs. Ferrari and very solid, great performances from Christian Bale and Matt Damon. Unlike some other recent-ish racing movies (like the otherwise solid Rush), the blending of real racing and CGI is faultless. Kicked off a rewatch of The Wire and I'm pretty certain this show is only getting better and better with age.

Some analysis now that Israel was targeting the early warning detection radar in Isfahan which is tasked with picking up incoming missiles aimed at the Natanz nuclear facility. Unofficial US analysis is that the radar system was completely destroyed through three direct hits from air-launched cruise missiles. Iran's AA systems failed to engage until the missiles were practically on top of the target. I've seen some speculation that the missiles were launched from inside Iran's radar detection net by an F-35, which would confirm the long-circulating rumour that Iran's Russia-bought S-300 and S-400s cannot see or lock onto F-35s in flight. But that's very speculative. It would make more sense to launch them from well outside Iran's radar. That's a lot of messaging to the Iranian regime in one strike, and of course the worry that Israel deliberately took out the radar to deliberately take out Natanz itself in a follow-up strike. That would be extremely dangerous, with an unknown capacity for nuclear contamination of the surrounding area (with Isfahan just to the south and Tehran not far to the north).

The attack was so limited that Iran seemed embarrassed by the idea of retaliating against it, which is amusing. However, the attacking drones/missiles (nobody is clear on what they were) sailed passed Iran's antique AA systems (#buyrussian) and were only intercepted apparently quite close to their potential targets (Isfahan airbase or the nearby nuclear sites), possibly because Israel had them loitering rather than proceeding directly to the target. If deliberate, that's a genuinely subtle use of military power by Israel, a sentence I did not think I'd be typing.

Maybe both simultaneously? With an S-200 does suggest the aircraft was in serious trouble anyway, that's a very old system. Ukraine has said they are using an "unknown weapon," possibly the up-ranged Patriot blamed for previous Russian losses. This is a critical moment, if Russian Tu-22 pilots start refusing to fly combat missions within range of Ukrainian AA (as it's believed many Su-34/35 pilots have after heavy losses), then their ability to send cruise missiles far beyond Ukrainian front lines will be lost and attacks like today's on Dnipro will become impossible. There is also continued US speculation that all of this is creating "elbow room" for F-16s to operate closer to the front than originally hoped, from where they can engage Russian AA systems and aircraft engaged in the glide bomb campaign. The crash footage makes it look like either a hit or the engine exploded. Ukraine has scored a big scalp, the commander of the 59th Guards Signal Brigade was killed in a Storm Shadow strike on his unit's headquarters in Luhansk. One Russian analyst, Shlepchenko, has said that he does not expect a Russian major breakthrough, and at best a very slow pushback of Ukrainian forces modest distances in some areas. His analysis chimes with a few opinions I've seen recently that both Ukraine and Russia are experiencing deficiencies in recruitment, ammunition, war fatigue, morale issues and equipment issues almost simultaneously with one another, and western political/journalistic analyses have not accounted for Russian problems in these areas whilst Ukraine is also suffering from them. He estimates that the war will continue into 2027 at this rate. Russian partisan units continuing to shell Belgorod, which surprised me, I thought that'd withdrawn. Heavier rockets were used to hit Russian military and police sites in and another the city, and Russia was force to use some pretty big AA rockets to shoot them down, which is quite expensive. A Buryatian soldier has returned home to to find that robbers broke into his house and stole everything, even unbolting and scarpering off with the toilet. His income from fighting in Ukraine for two years is basically going to go entirely on replacing his property.

The 22 episode model worked when audiences were willing to accept low-budget shows airing year round with ridiculous gaps for repeats. 22 episodes were needed so they could get to syndication within 4 seasons, and selling advert slots in the shows paid for them. That's not really the case any more. The streaming argument is that more than 8 episodes doesn't make sense economically, and with 8 episodes with movie-quality CGI it just takes a huge amount of time and effort and money to make them. Some recent network genre experiments failing (like the new Quantum Leap) seem to have reinforced their arguments.

The new regs are causing issues. By eliminating downforce (to reduce dirty air), the cars don't stick to the track as easily and without a huge power increase from the engine (which will stay the same as now, only generating more from the battery) that means the cars will either 1) go slower or 2) take off. I think the idea is that the cars will be at least somewhat lighter (due to more power coming from a battery rather than actual engine parts), which actually exacerbates the problem of the car being blasted into the air. I've seen some ideas about they maybe going in a different direction with aero and slimming the cars down to the 2010-2016 level (which look almost comically narrow by today's standards), which should reduce aero backwash from a smaller crossframe and also improve the racing at narrower circuits. Not sure how seriously that is being considered for 2026, because the design needs to lock imminently (also the dirty air problem was definitely still present before 2017, if not as bad). The active aero seems to be part of the solution, but it's also hideously complicated to get it working on both wings simultaneously, so there's some angsting about that. Sainz, meanwhile, seems to be down to deciding between Mercedes, Red Bull and Audi, with Mercedes seen more as a long shot. Audi have apparently made a money offer that Red Bull cannot match, but Red Bull's form is powerfully persuasive.

The books meander like hell through the last two (and arguably three) volumes, they can easily wrap it up in 16-18 episodes for the final two seasons without breaking a sweat. One season would have been tight, but doable. If the show ends like the books do, expecting some controversy.

The new Ukrainian bill includes provisions for more ATACMs. It doesn't require Biden to send them, but it clears the US to do so if deemed necessary. Interesting. Meanwhile, large chunks of Russian towns are going underwater. The flood has hit Kurgan, imperilling the machine building plant that constructs armoured vehicles. A weird incident in the sticks, the Chechnya Minister of Emergency Situations was stopped by police in Dagestan and pulled out of his car for unclear reasons. Whilst they were arguing, Chechen bodyguards from the Akhmat special units pulled up, pulled weapons on the Dagestani police and took the minister, apparently by force. Unclear why the Chechens and Dagestanis seemed to be at odds, and what the minister was doing. Fleeing from the Chechen bodyguards?

Cool stuff. I took my own stab at this as well.

The list of famous-to-semifamous actors in Fallout is already pretty big. Michael Dorn (twice!), Dave Foley, Ron Perlman (four times!), Rene Auberjonois, Matt Perry, Felicia Day, Liam fucking Neeson, Zachary Levi, Michael "Saul fracking Tigh" Hogan, Malcolm McDowell (as the President of the United States, kind of), Danny Trejo, Richard Dean Anderson, Tony Shalhoub, Jim Cummings, Kris Kristofferson, R. Lee Emery, Lynda Carter (I believe her nephew works for Bethesda so she has a voice role of some size or another in every Bethesda game from Morrowind onwards), William Mapother (from Lost, also Tom Cruise's cousin), The Actor Keith David, and more. Fuck, Rawls from The Wire is Caesar in New Vegas, I forgot that. Perfect casting.

The overwhelming complaint in UK public schools right now is a near-absence of discipline, kids can't be expelled even in cases of physical violence towards other students or teachers, and teachers who try to impose discipline on kids are sometimes threatened with violence from the children (and recall this can be up to 16-year-old, quite big kids) and/or their parents. Obviously caning and that level of corporal punishment - which went out the window fifty years ago - is a thing of the past and rightly so, but the pendulum has swing around to allowing anarchy free reign in some schools.

Wasteland does it a bit better with the bombs going off in 1998, although it's a bit vague if it's an alt history (well, it obviously is now, but not when the first game came out in 1988). The retrofuturistic thing is because of the legal need to make the Fallout series legally distinct from the Wasteland series (Fallout 1 was supposed to be Wasteland 2 but EA wouldn't sell Interplay the rights; the same team only finally got to make Wasteland 2 in 2014, amusingly marketing it as a spiritual successor to Fallout 1 and 2).

I think it's just UI, reactivity and graphics. It's slow and stodgy by modern turn-based standards. Even Wasteland 2, hardly the smoothest of experiences, puts Fallout to shame.

They're breaking out some casting firepower for the (very possibly final) season.

Alternatively. One of the reasons I think Fallout is really popular is that every piece of sci-fi pulp bullshit is in there somewhere.

Yes, that's one of the reasons Iran is regarded with suspicion in many Arab countries: it's not Arab but it's all up in Arab business in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. "Arab" can be a fairly broad term with very many numerous sub-groups but there is a strong distinction between Arab and Persian.

The Czech Republic has sourced 180,000 more shells and now says it believes it has created a "robust supply chain" for more artillery shells that could yield a continuous supply of not-insubstantial numbers. Which I think is code for "South Korean factories and a few others are going to start churning out supplies we can buy and send on to Ukraine." The CR was also pretty withering on other efforts to supply Ukraine which have failed, and particularly on attempts to keep production within Europe (a sideswipe at France). Good news for Ukraine, but better once the shells start arriving en masse.

There seems to be a current plan developing amongst Israeli leaders to get other western countries to impose sanctions, or reimpose sanctions in the case of those who dropped them in 2015 with the peace deal, on Iran, effectively killing the nuclear deal stone dead. If those countries do that, Israel would restrict its response to hitting Hezbollah targets in Lebanon rather than Iran directly. It sounds like that's very much an idea rather than the final plan, and Netanyahu may yet give in to the hardliners and order strikes on Iran's military infrastructure and the nuclear programme. A number of western countries have summoned their Iranian ambassadors but have so far held fire from fresh sanctions, apart from the United States which is promising a comprehensive sanctions package this week. Yes, the interaction between the Arab street and the Arab governments is always interesting, although also not as far apart as is always assumed. The average Iranian on the street, from what can be told, does not necessarily love Israel, but they're not as vehemently opposed to it as their government is, and they often take a similar view to Pakistan and Muslim countries further away from the conflict zone, they really hate the idea of fellow Muslims being killed, but they're not as invested in the situation as the people living right next door.

Huh, that should have no problem with CP77 in the slightest. Weird. Uninstall and reinstall, check all graphics drivers are up to date? Functionally unplayable today, I would say. They have not aged well, at all.