Loge
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Haven't listened to AM radio for decades. The pulled the plug here in 2015. (Well, that's what Wikipedia says. I didn't notice at the time.) FM was supposed to have been phased out in 2012 in the EU, but they cancelled those plans as the successor, DAB, wasn't very successful. So they created a new digital standard, DAB+, which is no supposed to succeed FM. It's mandatory in cars.
AM radio was a thing in the cold war, because radio waves don't stop at the border. Western radio and TV were important to people stuck behind the iron curtain. We don't really have their equivalent anymore.
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13 hours ago, LongRider said:
27 August 1883
The biggest explosion the world has ever known – an estimated 13,000 times greater than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima – happened on this day as eruptions of the Krakatoa volcano reached their climax.
The biggest volcanic eruption on record is the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1815_eruption_of_Mount_Tambora
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Found a source after all, albeit in German:
QuoteSchuld treffe den polnischen Kommandeur Andrzej Blasik, der mit 0,6 Promille Alkohol im Blut trotz Warnungen der russischen Flugüberwachung die Piloten zur Landung gezwungen habe, sagte die Luftfahrtexpertin Tatjana Anodina bei der Veröffentlichung des russischen Abschlussberichts.
Blasik habe laut Stimmenrekorder direkt im Cockpit Druck auf die Piloten ausgeübt, sagte Anodina. Auch Kaczynskis Protokollchef habe sich vorschriftswidrig in der Pilotenkanzel aufgehalten.
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11 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:
You fly the plane, you are in charge. (Not) Flying to the alternate airport was the decission for the pilot. Arguably not a good career move, but crashing the plane wasn't a good career move either. Ultimately it was his decission to try that difficult landing at an airfield he was not familiar with.
True, but tell that to an old general who grew up in the Soviet / Warsaw Pact system. Taking no for an answer from a mere captain probably isn't something they're accustomed to. Of course the pilot should have stood up to them, but that may have ended his career, too. This seems to be a wider issue in post-Warsaw Pact forces, BTW. The older, and more senior folks still follow the old rules.
Anyway, the story may have been retracted, as I can't find a good source anymore. It definitely was run by a reputable source a couple of years ago.
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10 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:
Yeah, nevermind the official report (co-authored by Polish and Russian investigators), because the folks from piss party with the remaining half of the clown twins is promoting some conspiracy theory, they regularly use for political gain.
Wikipedia link. Just scroll down, they have links to the official reports in Polish and English.
Long story short. Unsafe low visibility approach by the pilots caused this crash.
Can't find a link right now, but from what I remember, the pilot (an Air Force captain) was bullied into the reckless landing attempt by his big shot passengers, particularly the Air Force Chief of Staff. It was the Poles, not the Russians, who wanted the truth suppressed and blame it on the pilot alone to avoid embarrassment.
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Russia's recently launched Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed on the moon.
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1 hour ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:
What are the problems involved in that? The record for staying in space is 437 days, by cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on the Russian space station Mir. A quick search says a Mars journey takes seven months so a round trip would be on the same order of magnitude as has already been achieved.
I’m likely missing something here so please enlighten me!
Mir was in a low earth orbit. So is the ISS. Those low orbits are protected by the earth's magnetic field. Once a spacecraft is more than 1000km away from the earth's surface it get exposed to a lot of radiation. Depending on the solar activity, a flight to the moon can already be deadly.
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15 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said:
What about imbedded links here?
That's still visible. You just can't go there to read the replies.
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27 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:
Anybody else having problems accessing twatter pages with Musk apparently trying to force you to sign up to read content there?
Which is most def not happening.
It looks like it's completely impossible to access any Twitter content without signing in now.
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2 hours ago, Toth said:
Seems like you've already stated yourself why it's in Russia's short-term interest to use the dam as a roadblock. Also the mines shouldn't have enough of a punch to crack the dam like this. There is one video from 2022 circulating where the Russians on their retreat already tried to blow it up and it barely made a dent:
They blew up a small part of the dam, which was enough to prevent the Ukrainians from using it to cross the river. They didn't attempt to blow up the whole dam, though people feared they might. That they eventually did it therefore isn't really a surprise.
There is footage showing an explosion in the power station. It's possible that they didn't expect that to destroy the whole dam, but it looks like that is what happened.
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8 hours ago, Kalnestk Oblast said:
That's not really accurate with modern airplanes and modern runways. It's true for the migs that the Ukrainians are using. F16s need significantly better runways and repairing it isn't like a pothole.
The F-16 may have more delicate landing gear than the Soviet era fighter planes Ukraine currently operates, but filling a hole in a runway can't be particularly hard or expensive. Unlike, say, repairing the Kerch bridge.
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ESA's JUICE mission is due to launch in five minutes.
Underway now. Now we need to wait till it reaches Jupiter in 2031.
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A preemptive strike against the US and its allies is a great way to start WWIII. Also doesn't really agree with the narrative that China is just taking back its territory. The US defending Taiwan is one thing. But China attacking US bases in Japan means all-out war. What is to keep the US from attacking the Chinese mainland?
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5 hours ago, Clueless Northman said:
So far, I still consider the Baltics deciding to ship some of their very own weaponry to Ukraine to be the craziest decision of the war (only topped by launching the initial invasion, obviously). Czechia or Romania doing it, I can understand, but countries who are the most at risk, are neighbours and pretty much targets of the bear, and whose only defenses are NATO membership and a modest amount of military stuff as deterrence and actual defense, that's really out there for me.
Their main defence is the presence of troops from other NATO countries. Any attack on the Baltic states is an attack on all of NATO because the Russians would be fighting a multinational force.
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Putin wants the Soviet Union back and then some. (All of the former Warsaw Pact states). It's not about Russian populations, it's about being a world power. The Soviet Union was one, Russia in its current borders is not. With Ukraine, access to the Black Sea and through it to the Mediterranean is also a factor. That's why he wants Crimea so badly.
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Russia won't be able to replace all that soviet gear with modern weapon systems. If it were it would already have done it. But Putins wonder weapons have showed up on Red Square only, not on the battlefield. And the economy needed to support a large modern army just isn't there. Russia started this war in an attempt to become a world power again but it has only accelerated its decline. That seat on the UN security council and the nukes still give it some relevance but it reamsins to be seen how much longer they can hold on to those.
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6 hours ago, Gorn said:
Yeah, the problem with waiting until your army improves is that your opponent's army will do the same.
Ukraine has a window of opportunity during the next month or so, before Russian Army and Wagner replenish their losses with a new wave of mobilization. I'd be very surprised if they don't take it.
They have to wait for the ground to dry. It's way to muddy now.
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20 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:
When the Russian tactic is to abuse and terrify the civilian population into capitulation rather than actually being effective against the opposing military that tactic makes a certian cold sense. T-55/T-54’s suck against modern militaries but they’re still effective at terrifying captured or threatened populations.
Both Russians and Ukrainians use tanks for indirect fire. It's an old soviet tactic. Same as tilting your helicopters nose up before shooting with unguided missiles. Increases the range, which means they won't be fired at by the enemy. Not very efficient in terms of ammo consumption, though.
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16 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:
These will do nothing against modern tanks. Their cannons are too small. I guess they could demolish a few more houses, which is the Russian specialty anyway.
There hasn't been much tank on tank warfare of late. Actually, of all the videos of exploding tanks I have seen since the beginning of the war, I don't remember a single case of one tank destroying another in frontal attack. It's usually artillery fire or drones. On the other hand, a 100mm gun is still a valuable asset on the battlefield. You may find this video interesting:
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Angela Cullen is no longer Lewis Hamilton's physio. The reasons for the split are unclear.
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7 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:
Are MIG-29s 4th generation fighters?
They are from the same era as the F-16, i.e. they were designed in the 1970s. Not sure if they got any upgrades, though. The F-16 certainly have.
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From what I read, Charles plans to cut Andrew's "annual grant" and he won't be able to pay for the upkeep of the Royal Lodge without it. So Charles offered him Frogmore Cottage, as that's cheaper to maintain.
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7 hours ago, Werthead said:
They were Su-27s, which I suspect would last about 0.3 seconds in a dogfight against an F-35, so yeah, a mistake or a particularly elaborate form of suicide.
I wouldn't be so sure. Actually, the Su-27 would probably win. The F-35 isn't supposed to get into dogfights and isn't very good at it. The F-22 is a different story. Ars Technica had a story on it a while ago.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/04/sitrep-is-the-f-35-now-officially-a-failure/
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19 hours ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:
So, the re-run of the Berlin state election didn't go well for neither the SPD, nor the FDP.
Greens are roughly level with their annulled result form last year, which may or may not be enough to finish 2nd ahead of the SPD.
CDU managed to win that election.
Libertarians (FDP) possibly/probably below the 5% threshold.
Linke relatively comfotably above it. I assume, they kept Wagenknecht away from the campaign trail. Lederer is distinctively not Wagenknecht.
SPD with their worst result ever in Berlin. Not sure who was hurting the SPD more on a polling level, Scholz or Giffey. Giffey even managed to lose her own district, which she won quite comfortably last time.
Berlin is is pretty much split between the center ("S-Bahn-Ring"), which votes Green, and the rest of the city, which has voted CDU this time. SPD, Linke, and FDP are losing relevance. AFD is halfway holding up but not doing particularly great either. Technically, the old senate could continue, but that may cost them at the next election.
As for why, I won't pretend to fully understand it, but the performance of the incumbent senate hasn't been particularly great. And that didn't start with Giffey. The same parties were already in government during Müller's second term, and that went so well that he didn't even run again.
The really big change from 2021 is the result of the CDU, which is probably thanks to Merkel not being around anymore. It certainly isn't because Wegner is so brilliant, because he isn't.
ETA: Here's the map
International Events Next-
in General Chatter
Posted
Looks like the war is over and Azerbaijan won. Probably for good. Russia did nothing.