Maithanet

Seems that the Ukrainians have shifted from targeting command posts to targeting ammo dumps with thier best weapons. There have been several big ones that have gone up on the past few days. Supplying the troops in Zaporihzhya is much harder than the Donbas, and the supply lines are under increasing pressure. Could see an ammo shortage impacting the fighting soon.

I don't really understand why the suns would want beal. The thing that beal provides is playmaking and shooting. That is also what their other two stars already do (and better). Beal is a lackluster defender, with a huge cap hit, and injury concerns. Now that he's on the team they have even less room, and far less cap space, to improve thier depth and defense, the two things they lacked in the playoffs. This is a trade that makes both teams worse. Beal to the heat made sense. They have good role players, great defense, but lack punch on offense. Beal provided that.

I knew the wizards weren't going to get a great package for beal because of his terrible contract, injury history and no trade clause. But this is just peanuts. They couldn't even swing a single first round pick?! They do know that they're the wizards, and therefore pick swaps are basically worthless because they pick #8 every year. Anyways, I guess the rebuild is finally on in Washington. This is a great example of how to do a teardown completely wrong.

The strategy with the kerch bridge is interesting. Some people think that Ukraine should try and drop it, because it would make holding crimea much harder. Other people say they shouldn't do it, because it would make leaving crimea much harder. Regardless, damaging a big bridge like that to the extent that it cannot be used is not easy. The Ukrainians were able to do it on the Antonovsky bridge in kherson, but only with a lot of effort, and that bridge was dramatically closer to the front lines.

Not passed yet, but it looks like Atacms might be on the way.

This is a noob question, but what am I supposed to do with these caches? They always seem to suck when I open them. Am I doing something wrong? Why are these even a part of the game?

But we see a lot of locations beyond just the First Crusade on the march. We see inside a great many different cities, and surely there are women there? We meet Serwa in The Judging Eye. It is certainly strongly implied that she's a badass in book 1 - she's the leader of the witches, and is one of only three sorcerers who can teleport. I'm not sure she does all that much badassery in the first two books. I thought that the broodmothers were only revealed at the beginning of the final book? They definitely weren't in the PON trilogy. I cannot - I got bored halfway through Dune Messiah.

Yes, if it is Biden vs anyone else, the situation changes significantly. Biden's age becomes more of a factor if he isn't running against someone who is basically the same age (Trump is only 3 years younger and less healthy). I would be pretty surprised if the tipping point state wasn't one of WI, PA, GA, AZ and NV. There are other states taht could flip (NC for dems, MI for Reps), but they still aren't likely to be the tipping point if they do.

But you can be shocking and horrific in any number of ways. Why choose this way? Serwa appeared 3 books prior to the brood-mothers. But yes, the original Prince of Nothing trilogy definitely got pushback on how Bakker created and portrayed women characters. As I remember it, it was along two lines: 1. All three of the women POV characters use sex to get what they want. This is common in sexist men's writing, but fairly uncommon in the real world. If it was just one character doing it, that's fine (like Cersei) but if Arya and Brienne and Catelyn and Sansa all did it, that would be pretty awful. 2. Women are strangely absent in this series. In PoN there's the three women POVs (one of them is technically a space alien monster), and then...not a lot else. The next largest woman's part in the trilogy is like...a camp follower with just a handful of lines. Why, in so many different locations, are women just...gone? Bakker did a bit better (still not great) on these two points in the second trilogy, but he also introduced a lot more problems, like the whale mothers.

Bakker's answer just feels clueless and unhelpful. This isn't a complaint that the Bashrag should be blue or something. Bakker made the conscious choice to have the Dunyain women be reduced to nothing but their wombs as deformed broodmares with no agency. Why was that choice made and what purpose does it serve? Does it make sense for the Dunyain to do this? It is clearly an error in terms of furthering their overall goals, as eliminating half of the population of potential recruits is stupid and Serwa clearly demonstrated that even a half-Dunyain woman can be astonishingly powerful. But is it presented as an error? It doesn't come across that way in the text, it feels more like just random worldbuilding. Like a lot of Bakker's pushback against criticism, he seems to act like he is operating at some incredibly high level, but ignores the implications of what a simple reading of the text really means.

There is reason to think that Biden is a weaker candidate right now than he was in 2020. Could he turn it around? Absolutely, but at the moment he isn't polling all that well, his age is a bigger concern, and the economy is a mixed bag (unemployment is great, inflation not so much). There's every reason to think that 2024 will be a pretty similar election to 2020, and with polarization getting worse and worse, will probably be stomach lurchingly close. But there are a few things that give me at least a little hope that 2024 will be a more difficult climb than 2020 for Trump. 1. The federal indictments, combined with Jan 6, serves to make Trump a weaker candidate in 2024 than 2020. 2. Trump is not president, and will not be able to abuse the power of incumbency to steal the presidency. 3. The electoral college had the most bias in our nearly 250 year history in 2020. The tipping point was Wisconsin, which was 3.9% to the right of the country. Historically that has not shown any correlation election to election, and with AZ and GA moving left, it's unlikely it will be so bad for democrats again. It will probably still be bad, but 1-2% is more likely than 4%. 4. People born after 1980 dislike Republicans by a historically large margin. That group is making up a larger and larger portion of the electorate every year.

I guess, but that team hasn't had Leonard and George healthy together for any significant time in several years, which is why nobody really considers them a first tier team. Even if they were healthy, I doubt they would have beaten Phoenix (and definitely not Denver).

There's reporting all over the map on Delimkhanov. Some say he was injured, some say injured severely, some say killed. Kadyrov says his dear friend is "cannot be located" and is asking Ukraine to tell him the coordinates of their missile strikes so they can help find him. I'm sure the Ukrainian military will move heaven and earth to make sure Delimkhanov can be located. There was also another screwup by the Russians around Kreminna. Apparently one of the less talented Russian generals brought a bunch of troops together to give an inspirational speech prior to a big attack. The Ukrainians spotted it with a drone and immediately sent a bunch of artillery their way. Reports of hundreds of casualties in just a few volleys.

One thing to say about this year's playoffs is they were remarkably injury free. Obviously there were a few issues, Chris Paul got hurt (probably didn't matter), Giannis wasn't 100%, and there were a few other guys that missed a game or two. But there wasn't a single injury that meant "well that team is finished". Which is nice, so many years that is a dominant storyline.

Have you dug back through the forum to try and find the posts he made after TUC? There were some, and I imagine the brood mothers would have come up (although I don't remember). Overall, his posts were more frustrating than illuminating, because they showed some serious blind spots WRT his own work.

I don't know how seriously to take it, but the war of words between Shoigu and Prigozhin is escalating to dangerous levels. Shoigu and his allies have been making statements that Wagner was receiving illegal quantities of fuel in the war zone, which is seemingly setting the stage to declare Wagner guilty of theft. I haven't heard of any actual fighting beyond the little skirmish last week where Wagner captured and tortured a Russian Lt. Colonel for "shooting at Wagner troops". Shoigu can't easily oust Prigozhin without Putin's go ahead, and Shoigu is not a popular man at the moment. Not clear where this goes from here, but Shoigu has been the consummate survivor in Russian politics, and this kind of conflict (as opposed to the actual battlefield) is where he excels.

Both sides are trying to get the other side to deploy (more of) their forces, because once deployed they can be destroyed with artillery. So it's a strange poker game between the two sides as Ukraine is trying to push hard enough to demand Russian reinforcements, but with as few of their best units as possible. Ukraine is making the most of its qualitative advantage in artillery to be able to suppress Russian artillery and advance without deploying significant forces. If this first week is anything to go on, this counterattack is going to take many weeks, if not more. But the fact remains that Ukraine is moving forward and is doing so with a significant reserve of troops available to reinforce when the time is right.

I ran into the Butcher once and I'm level 25, but I was able to run away no problem once I ran out of heals (he was at maybe 40% health). If I were playing hardcore, I would just book it out of there as soon as he arrived.

More and more indications that the offensive is just getting started, and that already the Russians are struggling. Most of the new Ukrainian brigades are still waiting to deploy.

Ukraine is definitely advancing, but they have not had a breakthrough. There are still well fortified Russian positions in front of them across the entire line.

I've found that account to be reliable. That is good progress, although it's impossible to say how costly it has been to make those gains.

One thing about these pictures of destroyed Bradleys that the Russians have been so proud to release. Yes, it's like 8 destroyed vehicles in one small area (a minefield). But the hatches are open and there are no bodies, which indicates that the infantry inside survived and will fight another day. For the Russian ifvs assaulting Vuledar this winter, it was a very different story. This is what those vehicles are supposed to do. Move infantry around and protect them. Sometimes protecting then means sacrificing the vehicle, and that's exactly what happened. You would rather not lose the vehicle, but you'd rather not assault a minefield either. Sometimes the mission sucks and you just do your best.

I will go so far as to say that IF Biden wins reelection then I think that Trump will go to jail for these charges. Maybe not for very long, that's still TBD. Obviously if Trump wins or even some other Republican in 2024 then he'll just get pardoned (or self-pardon) and be free and clear.

When you're attacking well prepared enemy defenses, you are going to have losses. Nothing we have seen is at all surprising, and does not tell us anything about whether the offensive is going well or not. We just have to wait.

I have a (kinda?) fun Jerry Falwell story. He founded Liberty University and in 2002 their ultimate frisbee team hosted a tournament. My team attended, and we were a coed team. The Liberty team seemed like decent enough dudes, the only weird rule was that we ABSOLUTELY could not go into the adjacent dorms to use the bathroom or anything. Anyways, we played a couple of games and in the middle of the day there was a parade through campus featuring Jerry Falwell riding around and waving. We were just sitting there between games, whatever. But some of the Liberty crowd took real exception to the fact that we were a coed team, and particularly that one of the women players was wearing only a (modest) sports bra, just like 19th century prostitutes used to wear. Anyways, apparently this got back to the campus higherups and the Liberty Ultimate team was disbanded for several years. So that happened.