Nothing locks up like a stolen $300,000 John Deere combine shipped by Russian invaders to Chechnya.
What would be best would be if these stolen vehicles could go on some sort of Killdozer rampage. Or just burn themselves up. But turning themselves into bricks is a nice start. Sure, the thieves will simply take them to a chop shop and make some money on the spare parts (something Russian farmers are going to need since doubtless John Deere customer support is likely thin on the ground in Russia these days), but they won’t do near as well as if they’d had functional equipment.
This sort of thing is not new… I recall seeing drones like this being used like this in the middle east a few years ago. I imagine China is thrilled that they are unwittingly serving as arms dealers for the forces opposing Russia… and giving ideas to those who may soon have to face Chinese forces.
Also notice: that looked like it was, before the invasion, a pretty nice house. Russia will have one *hell* of a reconstruction bill when all this is done.
Come Back Alive fund showed work of Mavic 3 drone which they upgraded. (It costs only $3000).
The fund not only bought 17,000 body armor, 3,500 optics, 77 vehicles and more since 24 Feb but also created many IT and technical upgrades for🇺🇦armyhttps://t.co/o77FjneGq2pic.twitter.com/u0RZqqTv9b
I suspect the bomb that was dropped was a fairly simple explosive, basically a hand grenade or small mortar round.For anti-infantry purposes, this works: the video shows one guy likely killed, another guy crawling away and then stopping, either injured or dead. What you *want* is a weapon that injures as many as possible, but not necessarily kills. The dead are dead… but the injured are costly liabilities, requiring resources and personnel to take care of.
But imagine if it was a shaped-charge warhead, perhaps taken from an RPG… and smuggled into a port city such as Sevastopol where cruise missiles are being loaded onto submarines. Poke a few holes in a surfaced and docked sub and boy, you might really make a mess. If you can penetrate the torpedo compartment (honestly, I suspect it would take a fairly massive warhead to do that, but who knows) or zap a cruise missile… scratch one sub, and block one dock.
🇷🇺submarine stroke Ukraine with cruise missiles. Reportedly this is the 1st time🇷🇺military used submarine strikes agst🇺🇦–Reuters
A satellite image collected this morning revealed the loading of probable Kalibr missiles on Kilo-class submarine in Black Sea Sevastopol port @Maxarpic.twitter.com/7n1CQR5GxJ
An armor-penetrating bomb would be useful for taking out tanks like this one that spent a good long while destroying a building that apparently had a number of civilians sheltering in the basement:
🇷🇺tank in Mariupol destroys residential building where ~20 civilians hid in basement; then, occupiers herd survivors in unknown direction
"A visual explanation why Mariupol civilians R afraid to leave basements, don't believe 🇷🇺 on safe evacuation from the city" – Azov Regiment https://t.co/2wyLwhdwcv
The news out of China, in particular Shanghai, is just bizarre. The governments extraordinarily draconian lockdown just doesn’t make sense on the face of it. It seems nuts. But the video below presents a few theories that *do* make it make a bit of sense. The first is that Xi is simply stubborn, and that saving face – either of the man himself or of The Party – trumps reason. But the last theory is the most disturbing… and it seems pretty believable: the havoc and despair produced by these policies is intentional because it’s a test. If China invades Taiwan like Russia invaded Ukraine, the worlds response would be similar: an economic lockdown of China. How would China’s cities respond to suddenly no longer having income? When all the factories shut down and nobody is working, how bad will it have to get before the citizens rise up or die en masse? China is also hoarding food supplies as if they are preparing for something major.
Some people wonder why the West should give a damn about Ukraine. *This* is part of the reason why: if large dictatorships see that they can invade and conquer without meaningful pushback, they’ll do it again and again until they *do* get pushback.
The best of the Russian military seem to be getting smacked about by *farm* equipment. I saw these sort of vehicles all over rural Utah; they are great for tooling around farms, ranches, small towns. And now it seems like they’re great for mounting smallish anti-tank missile launchers and crew served machine guns and harassing million-dollar main battle tanks.
They’re cheap, fast, maneuverable, cheap, maintainable/repairable and cheap. Being small, they’re probably a *little* hard to hit. And I’ve little doubt that rural Ukraine is as filled with them as rural Utah is.
#Ukraine: A curious buggy (all terrain vehicle) armed with a Stugna-P anti-tank guided missile was recently destroyed in the vicinity of Izium, #Kharkiv Oblast. Such vehicles are currently used by many Ukrainian hit-and-run and raid teams in the region. pic.twitter.com/6JW9FbDpLB
— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) April 28, 2022
The uncomfortably-named “Padraig Belton” who works for the BBC came to the US and forgot that the US doesn’t have British power outlets, so he went to WalMart. He reported on twitter his findings.
There are times when I really, REALLY miss Utah. Where the local grocery store sold ammo and magazines, but if I wanted pistols, shotguns and AR-15s I’d have to walk all the way next door to the Ace Hardware.
What kind of father wants his son to reject masculinity? A bad one. But at least in this case this weak man bends to his childs wishes and lets his son actually be a boy. This kid has an uphill battle to reach manhood with a father who is as strong as a damp Kleenex. The kid will very likely begin to assert his own power at some point, and if his parents aren’t able to impart the manly virtue of self control, we might wind up with yet another anti-social monster.
Ghostbusters 2016 is a terrible film. Part of that is of course the toxic nature of the people responsible for it, but the film itself is crap regardless of the culture-eroding behavior of those responsible. If the universe was a good and just place, GB16 would be utterly forgotten by now… but here we are, in a world filled with famine and disease and earthquakes and Bernie Bros, so GB16 remains a blight on the ass of society. Fortunately, when it is discussed these days, it is largely discussed in terms of just how awful it is and what makes it awful. The following two-part video does a good job of breaking down the terrible decisions that led to that cinematic trainwreck. It is vastly more entertaining than the movie itself.
I have hopes that at least some of these – Star Wars and Star Trek – can be returned from the dead. But to do so would require both a virtually complete change in “leadership” (i.e. those who are currently in charge of the IP’s) and an adequate passage of time. They should be left to sit quietly for a few years, in which time the hatred that recent misadventures have engendered in the fandom could cool off, and better ideas could be gathered.
I remain of the opinion that what the owners of Star Trek need to do are two main things:
1) Gather all the rights back into one place, allowing *real,* and not “25% different,” Star Trek to be made.
2) Create an anthology series. But *not* one helmed by a bunch of suits. Instead, open it to the fandom. Have anything from lone writers to whole amateur production teams (“Axanar,” “Continues,” etc) give them pitches. Those that seem pretty good get funded to make a small number of episodes… one to four, say. Something that could be a series. Then make a season with up to perhaps ten wildly different stories. One set on a ship at the same time as TOS, using actual TOS designs. One set in the movie era. A Klingon or Vulcan-specific yarn. A post-Voyager show. What-the-frell-ever. If, out of those ten shows, one is a smash hit? It gets turned into a full series. If three or four of the stories are wildly popular? Then great, now you can have four series that are popular right out of the gate.
Sure, there are counter-arguments. One big one is that ten wildly different stories would require ten wildly different sets of costumes and props and actors and starship bridge sets. Granted. But: do them sequentially and repurpose as much as possible. Do as much as you reasonably can with virtual sets. Don’t go nuts with the budget; let it be known right up front that the budget for these sort of things is limited. The fandom will accept that, and perhaps embrace it: I will die on the hill that TOS 1701 is the best starship design to date, and that both DS9 and Enterprise showed that the old-school bridge – which can be rented in New York State, IIRC – still looks awesome. You don’t need STD-level production standards for these little mini-shows. Because what you’re selling isn’t the effects; nobody complains that STD or STP have crappy effects and production standards – you’re selling the concept, the characters, the plots. If just one of these lower-budget short subjects knocks the viewers socks off with characters on par with Kirk and Spock and McCoy, *then* you can lavish an effects budget on it reasonably secure in the knowledge that things should go well.
Hell, I even wrote a short story a year or so ago set on a Klingon tugboat. Is it good? Dunno. Probably not. But if those in charge of Star trek seemed like they actually cared about Star Trek again… hell yeah I’d turn it in. There’s even my odd little “Artifact L-374-Alpha” thing from… holy crap, exactly one year ago today. Weird. OK… Anyway, that would likely make a poor basis for an ongoing series, but a season-long miniseries? Maybe.
Is such a thing likely? Sadly, no. So we’ll have to live with murdered franchises for a while, being dangled before us on strings like marionette zombies.
