Maithanet

He's even terrible at Would You Rather.

It's the annual conscription, not (as far as I've heard) a new mass conscription like they did in fall of last year. From what I've read this probably means that they will rely on the men they get from the annual conscription until at least January, and possibly until after the sham Presidential elections on March 17. If that proves to be the case, it is yet another example of Putin putting politics over good military sense, because they are going to need more troops than they will get at the annual mobilization. However, it is a fact that every round of conscription is harder than the last. Each successive round has to draw deeper into men with productive jobs and from richer metropolitan areas. I'm not saying it's the death knell or anything, but Russia's economy is already straining, and the more men in uniform and not working in useful civilian jobs, the greater than strain will become.

The Bucks are definitely better, I don't know how you can even argue that. Holiday and Dame are the same age, and Lillard is more likely to age gracefully than Holiday. Plus Lillard is and always has been better than Holiday. I have always liked Jrue's game, but let's not get crazy, Lillard is a great player. The Bucks are a team with actual balance. Their floor spacing and playmaking is way stronger with Lillard. Their defense will regress, but not to some ridiculous degree. Basically every year except 2021 the Bucks have been eliminated because thier late game execution fell apart against playoff defense. It is almost impossible to imagine that being a problem now, with Lillard suddenly having more space than he ever has and Giannis having another deadly shooter to kick out to. The Suns are different, I think its marginal whether they are better or worse. They needed to ship Ayton out though, so that is one item off the to do list.

There's also plenty of human intelligence as Russia is operating in Ukrainian territory, and no doubt many of the locals who do things like prepare meals, empty trash, etc, are not happy with their new Russian overlords. In addition, reports of Russian artillery losses continue to increase. In the first year of the war artillery losses were approximately 150-200 per month. That increased to nearly 700 per month since May of this year. September is the worst month yet, with over 800 losses and the month isn't even over yet. Ukrainian knowhow plus western weapons is winning the war against russian artillery.

Agreed. I would even go so far as to say that if there were a case where a state wants to have a showdown with the Supreme Court, it probably isn't this one. You'd need something that is both more popular locally and easier to understand. Something like gun control in CA or anti-immigrant legislation in FL or TX.

It was always ridiculous and brazen for AL to just ignore the Supreme Court and then reappeal with basically the same case just a couple of months later. Any result other than this would have been a huge shock. Good news that black voters will be better represented in Alabama.

The scuttlebutt yesterday was that the administration was still waffling about ATACMS. Today (according to unnamed sources claiming to be in the room), Biden told Zelensky in their private meeting that the US would send ATACMS. No official announcement has been made. The problem is that "unofficial sources" have said that the US is either about to send or has decided to send ATACMs for at least 6 months, and there still hasn't been anything official. Which is no doubt very frustrating for Ukraine.

Democrats should already be asking for his resignation. Al Franken was run out for far less.

I dont know why the Biden admin continues to waffle on ATACMs. These would have been a HUGE factor last summer, and a big factor 6 months ago, but at this point Storm Shadow + Ukrainian long range stuff is doing ~ 75% of what ATACMs could do anyway. Why not just hand them over? They cost basically the same to decommission as it does to give them to Ukraine.

Giants experimenting with the naked bootleg while leaving Bosa uncovered. Bold strategy Cotton.

What you are describing is what they have been doing for the past several weeks. But even pushing east and west, rather than south, is slow going and challenging. It looks like the slog south is resuming, and hopefully the Russian defenses are getting weaker, as the time for tanks/IFVs to exploit a breakthrough may be coming to a close.

Interesting. Much of my information comes from Thomas Thiener, a former NATO defense guy living in Kyiv. He has been pretty well informed on Ukraine matters, but his takes on the Nagarno-Karabakh conflicts feel very simplistic and anti-russian. Is the fear of a genocide perpetrated by the Azeris well founded? Because the local Armenian government in Nagarno-Karabakh has sounded the alarm about genocide, but is this is just political posturing? Because wanting to get rid of the separatist government operating on your land is VERY DIFFERENT from wanting to get rid of all the people on the land. The former is what basically any country on Earth would be expected to do.

I have trouble finding good information on the causes and responsibility of this war. It's interesting because there are several experts that I pay attention to on Twitter and elsewhere for their expertise on the Ukraine war that are quite opinionated about this, but they often have a pretty clearly biased perspective that I do not trust. The argument seems to go that Russia supported the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh statelet as a way of expanding its influence in Armenia and exerting control over Azerbaijan. This is fairly similar to the Transnistria and DNR/LNR statelets that only exist due to Russian support. But (as someone who doesn't know much about this conflict) that narrative makes me uncomfortable because it turns Armenia into mere puppets of Russia, when I know that there is significant popular support for Nagorno-Karabakh within the country. Nonetheless it is good that Russian influence is waning in the region. It looks like everything is moving back to the internationally recognized borders, which also is usually a good thing. I hope that in the long term peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan is possible, and that this isn't just another chapter in what seems to be a growing enmity.

Finished the Perun video (from my last post). A few more items: - The notable exception wrt Russian production is drones. Russian drone manufacturing is exploding, because drones can be made in huge quantities for relatively little money, and drone parts are simple enough that you can easily get around sanctions. Drone production is going to be dramatically expanded by 2025, and Ukraine needs to be prepared. - From what can be gleaned from publicly available data, it is clear that Russia is not even close to producing all that it needs to fight the war. If it is going to continue at this level of intensity, that shortfall can only be made up with foreign imports and weapons in storage. - The weapons in storage are basically removed in order of how useful they are, so Russia is probably already getting diminishing returns (BMP-1s are not as useful as BMP-2s, older artillery has less range and is more liable to fail, etc). There will not be a point at which the Soviet stockpile is "totally exhausted" but instead it will be just less and less meaningful as the most usable equipment has already been removed. However, from what we're seeing, it is fair to assume that the Soviet stockpile will be a much smaller factor in the war a year from now, and even less so by 2025. It is vanishing at a rapid rate. - Once that happens, the only way to make up the shortfall will be foreign imports. We're already seeing that be an important factor for things like drones (Iran), artillery shells (North Korea) and body armor/medical kit (China). However, all of those items are relatively small and comparatively inexpensive. Russia is less likely to be buying fleets of artillery and tanks because those are incredibly expensive and difficult to hide politically. Thus there are certain holes that can really only be filled with domestic production. - The key caveat of the "how long can Russia keep this up?" question is the level of intensity. If the war continues at the intensity we've seen in 2023, then Russia is likely to have real sustainment issues within a year. However, it is fair to question whether Ukraine can continue at this level of intensity either. If US military aid gets slashed in the budget showdown over the next few weeks, then that means Ukraine probably won't be able to mount a 2023 offensive at the same intensity level of 2022. This is basically Russia's win condition, that the war gradually loses intensity, and becomes refrozen, similar to the Donbas war in 2014-15.

Latest Perun video on the war in Ukraine. This week's subject is "Russian Defence Production 2023 - Can Russia keep up with equipment attrition in Ukraine?" It is, IMO his best video in some time on where the war stands. I'm only halfway through but it has a lot of really interesting stuff that he can glean from publicly available sources. - Russian defense industries put out information on their revenues and employees. From this you can see that Russian military contracts went up in 2021, down in 2022, and are now up at ~ 20% higher than 2021 levels in 2023. A 20% increase is a pretty substantial increase in peacetime, but it's actually pretty small for a war. You certainly cannot double tank and artillery manufacturing with a 20% increase - it simply cannot be done. - Russian economic data likewise tells a similar story. In a war, many things get more expensive. Soldiers have to be paid more and you need more of them. Maintenance facilities need to work overtime. Logistics and training infrastructure need to be expanded. All these things cost money, and we can see that the Russian economy is struggling to pay for it all. In 2023, military expenditures are up, but maybe not as much as you'd expect, and actually not as much as security state expenditures (police, Rosgvardia, etc). - This is NOT to say that the Russian economy is nearing collapse. That isn't really the subject of this video and that's much harder to determine from public data anyway. Instead, it's just that the Russian military is doing a lot of "making do" because they cannot afford anything better. No doubt they would prefer to be using exclusively the newest T-90M tanks, but there just aren't enough of them rolling out of the factories these days. - The most widespread "make do" that the Russians have been using since the initial blitzkrieg to Kyiv failed is to draw down Soviet stockpiles. You can see this happening in satellite photos where approximately 50% of the tens of thousands of tanks, IFVs and artillery pieces that were stored out in the open have disappeared. We can safely assume that those vehicles were used to fight Ukraine (one way or another), and that Russia made use of the best maintained/least rusty pieces first. - You see a pattern emerging with tanks and IFVs where the newest equipment has pretty consistent rates of attrition across the past 20 months. That is because this equipment is being repaired and replaced with new pieces. Equipment from the 90s and 00s had huge losses in the second half of 2022, but that percentage has actually dropped in 2023. What is replacing it is Soviet era stuff from the 80s and earlier. BMP-1s are IFVs produced from the mid 60s to early 80s. They made up only a small fraction of losses in the first few months of the war, but losses have been steadily increasing since. They now represent 44% of all losses in May-Aug of 2023, higher than BMP-2 or modern BMP-3. The only reasonable explanation for this is that Russia has exhausted its store of usable BMP-2s in storage (and remember that BMP-2 started production in 1979). Thus they are turning to the BMP-1. Some of those vehicles are getting a quick battlefield refresh like better comms and optics, but not all. Even the most modern BMP-1 is more than 40 years old. - The story for tanks and artillery is similar - share of losses of equipment from the 90s and 00s is dropping, almost assuredly because that equipment is getting destroyed and worn out. So the Russian army is increasingly making up for the losses with Soviet era stuff. - That cannot last forever, or indeed, all that much longer. No stockpile lasts forever, and the quality and reliability of the equipment that remains in storage gets worse every month. This strategy is already running into diminishing returns and that will only get worse.

I fully expect Bobert to get voted out in 2024. She barely survived in 2022, her opponent is well funded, and it's been nothing but bad news for her since then.

How bout that ending in Denver? Seems so fitting to have Wilson's prayer answered only to lose on the very next play.

Sort of. The Chechens could absolutely be fighting harder in Ukraine, and I've no doubt that Putin wishes they would. So the status quo isn't exactly the best case scenario for Putin here. Does replacing Kadyrov with someone else carry significant risks? Absolutely, I would go so far as to call it a stupid move. But there is potential upside there, and Putin has made a lot of stupid moves in the past 20 months.

As with anything Russia, you can immediately jump to speculation, because the quality of information is always so low. Has he been poisoned or otherwise incapacitated by Russia? Arguments for this would be that he's a relatively young man (46) with access to good doctors, so just falling into a coma is fairly unusual. People falling ill under strange circumstances seems to happen kind of a lot in Putin's inner circle. Perhaps they are hoping to replace him with someone more loyal to Putin and more willing to use Chechen troops in Ukraine. Arguments against this is that Kadyrov has been fairly loyal to Putin, and pissing off the Chechens right now isn't in Putin's interest at all. While perhaps he could be replaced with someone more to Putin's liking, there's always a risk that Putin's preferred successor either fails to take control or proves untrustworthy, in which case Putin would be worse off than before. The last thing that Putin wants is to suddenly have another Chechen uprising on his hands. The Chechens have been derided as "TikTok soldiers" in the Ukraine war, but when fighting to defend their homes they proved a huge problem for the Russian army in the 90s, in spite of a population less than 2 million.

Not necessarily. I have definitely seen teams playing tough road games (particularly outside the conference) where a playoff team will just wave the white flag and rest a bunch of guys. If a team like the Clippers or Lakers lose a road game to the Bucks it's hardly the end of the world for them, although any Bucks fans who bought tickets to the game would obviously be pissed.

I suspect it will result in fewer complete throwaway games where one team is resting 3+ starters. That's probably a good thing. Instead, you will probably see players encouraged not to rush back after minor tweaks. I could easily see Lebron or Embiid taking a full week off in January for "hamstring tightness", when normally he'd just rest one night and be fine.

Aaron Rodgers was only in for four plays. That's only three more than Abe Lincoln.

Mitt Romney not seeking reelection for Senate. I can't believe the Republican party is so dysfunctional that I'm actually sad about this.

Jordan Whitehead had an incentive in his contract for 250k if he got three interceptions this year. He hit it on opening night.

I mean, trading away a ton of draft capital and pinning all your hopes on an injury prone 39 year old was always a pretty big risk. There's a reason other teams didn't really want him.