No need whatsoever for humanity to have a killing device like that. Absolutely none. Saw a tweet about it heading that way and keep checking to see if there's a tweet about stopping it.
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This is true. A flight from Moscow to Kaliningrad now has to go around Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. I don't know what the normal route was, but I assume it wasn't like this.
Gazprom's financial director found dead in St. Petersburg, apparently by suicide.
Edit: possible I've been had on this one, seems like it might be fake.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Last edited by CorsiHockeyLeague; 02-26-2022 at 01:54 PM.
Saw an interview with her yesterday. She is one badass mofo.
I know this location well. Best donair in the city, in one of the richer areas in the city. Last time I was there a homeless lady through a packet of mayo on the road and it blew up on my leg. Good times. Go get 'em Kyiv.
Unreal we are watching this play out in real time like this.
Spoiler!
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So stemming from all this entire conflict one thing hasn't been really clear is Putin's mindset, interests and motivations for the war. With new analysis coming out its becoming increasingly clear that this entire invasion of Ukraine is really just to protect Russia's, and by extension Putin and the Russian oligarch's, geographic strategic defensibility and economic positions in their country.
RealLifeLore has an extremely detailed analysis on the underlying issues behind Putin's invade and the demographic projections that probably led it. Basically it amounts to a cold war era mindset centered around an inevitable armed conflict with the West. Viewed in this lens, Putin's actions make perfect sense.
Underlying strategic issues:
Putin sees NATO and the West through a cold war lens and treats us as an enemy, so is limiting the number of geographic fronts he has to defend Russia on by limiting assess to the strategically vulnerable Russian plains. Ukraine in NATO's sphere of influence would be an impossible to overcome strategic handicap from a geographic standpoint.
Russia is one of the largest petrostate in the world with more than 30% of its GDP and half it's annual budget coming from sale of LNG/Oil mostly to customers in Europe via various pipelines the largest of which is being tariffed by a hostile Ukraine.
Huge offshore natural gas and oil fields outside of Crimea in 2012 had reserves that would have challenged Russia's petrostate supremacy and it is why he chose to invade in 2014 as by seizing the Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk. In that incident he also seized all of the Ukrainian offshore oil drilling eq/facilities and most of their maritime access to these oil fields crippling the western friendly Ukraine economically and scaring off any foreign investment. This leaves Ukraine poor and unable to challenge Russian petrostate supremacy.
Sevastopol is Russia's only warm water port and is located in Crimea and was least to Russia. A hostile Ukrainian government would cut the lease off
Why he chose to invade:
Demographic problems w/ lowest birthrate in Russia ever recorded mean if he waited longer it may no longer be feasible
Water access to Crimea is critically low and reserves are at less than 7% with Ukraine cutting off access to water to the peninsula following the last conflict.
Zelenskiy and Ukraine's statements that they would be seeking to recapture Crimea stoked fears that they would eventually get NATO/Western ally support in that effort
Possible endgame goals for Putin from this conflict that are likely dependent on how the war goes:
Secure strong defensive lines for Russia up to the Dneiper river with extended borders for Donetsk, Luhansk, and water access for Crimea and Russia's only warm water naval base
Full southern takeover of Ukraine to link up all the way to Transnistria, effectively making Ukraine completely landlocked and cut off all Ukrainian access to the Crimean offshore oil fields while uniting all "Russian" territories
Full takeover of Ukraine and later invasion of Moldova to fully secure Russia's defensive lines against NATO up to the Carpathian mountains
Last edited by FlameOn; 02-26-2022 at 04:50 PM.
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You can actually see anti aircraft weapons firing on Lviv live streams.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Yeah they know to stay away from windows, lights off. Whatever they can do, they are. If anyone knows any good tips, by all means I am open to passing it on to them.
Lots of relevant war survival stuff in this pdf copy of the US Army Rangers handbook. Download it for reference before cell reception/internet is lost.
Lots of relevant war survival stuff in this pdf copy of the US Army Rangers handbook. Download it for reference before cell reception/internet is lost.
Russia is one of the largest petrostate in the world with more than 50% of its revenue coming from sale of LNG/Oil mostly to customers in Europe via various pipelines
All the more reason why humanity needs to wean itself off fossil fuel depenency as quickly as possible.
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All the more reason why humanity needs to wean itself off fossil fuel depenency as quickly as possible.
Seeing the posts blaming electrification and renewable energy as cuasing this make mu head spin. I mean, if Russia had no oil/gas blackmail options available this would be quite a different conflict
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Really annoying how cable news is devolving into the usual cycle of just kind of talking generally about stuff that has happened some time in the past 48 hours as "breaking news", trying to pass off hours old video as live, and generally just not providing any actual news.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
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Aren't these basically the same thing that the Americans called "bunker busters" for destroying caves in Afghanistan?
The classical bunker buster are built like super-sized battleship shells, very heavy and dense weapons with a hardened cap (with only a modest amount of high explosives) designed to punch through metres worth of concrete before exploding. Thermobaric weapons (earlier they were often referred to as fuel-air explosives) are more like a flamethrower.
Really annoying how cable news is devolving into the usual cycle of just kind of talking generally about stuff that has happened some time in the past 48 hours as "breaking news", trying to pass off hours old video as live, and generally just not providing any actual news.
Breaking news has lost all meaning
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