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Bean a while since I saw Fully Charged. I wasn't sure if it was still out there. I guess it is.

Evidence is coming forward that the protesters that are causing problems have a significant number of people who are not students at the schools where the protests are happening. What to know about 'outside agitators' cops say are co-opting Columbia protests Outside 'instigators' and...

We were talking hypotheticals. There is pretty much nobody in the Israeli government today who would be a true liberal about Palestine. And my point was that even if there was a liberal government who would move towards a two state solution, the next conservative government would probably undo...

The Middle East was relatively peaceful when the Ottomans controlled it. But it takes time and a lot of effort for long standing, sworn enemies to settle their differences and live in peace. The tensions we are seeing today go back about 100 years to when the Zionist movement was picking up...

Japan has a lot of differences with Gaza. Japan was a sovereign nation before the war with a long history of being an independent entity. They both had a strong cultural identity and experience managing themselves. The country had a fairly high level of basic education too. Culturally the...

The other day someone in the Israeli war thread was contending that Hamas was the worst group in the world today. They are a nasty piece of work, but they have a lot of competition unfortunately. History has shown that attempting to demoralize civilians by attacking them with strategic weapons...

Elon claims he goes to the fundamentals of things and rebuilds from there. He did with cars and rocketry, but he hasn't with history and culture and it shows. He's working from the Russian talking point that the native Russian speakers in Ukraine are on Russia's side. The native Russian...

I'm very cautious about Chinese stocks.

The Ukrainians still have MiG-29s and Su-24/25s. Buying those from Kazakhstan will help keep those flying. With the other aircraft there might be enough working parts between them to cobble together some operational aircraft.

Among the lowest quality traditional media sources. Only undercut in poor quality by some of the absolute bottom of the barrel scratchers online.

Oregon was founded as whites only, but that is pretty diluted there today. Most of the population is west of the Cascades and most of it is very anti-racist. In some places going a bit too far to the politically correct end of the scale. American Nations is not about politics, it's about the...

Putin believed he was going to be able to capture Ukraine and all he would face would be some condemnation from the west and some sanctions. Russia partially occupied Moldova after the fall of the USSR, then Putin invaded Georgia in 2008 with just words and some sanctions. Next he took the...

By a battery do they mean one launcher or the whole system. A Patriot installation has generator trucks, radar sets, command module, and launchers. Note the first link points out that the cost is $400 mil for the battery and $690 mil for the missiles. In war stuff gets lost. You have to...

I live near Portland, OR. The nearest university is a branch campus of Washington State that is, as far as I know, 100% commuter. There are no protests going on anywhere in the Northwest as far as I can tell. The nearest protest apparently is at Cal Poly Humbolt. When did Cal State Humbolt...

Journalism is changing. The state of "mainstream" journalism in print media, TV, and radio is declining. There is a new journalism cropping up online which is a mixed bag. Some of it is very good while others are propaganda channels pumping garbage into the media stream. Some online media...

There are reports of Kinzhals being taken out with Patriots. The Kinzhal is just an air launched Iskander. The "hypersonic" claim is typical Russian overhype. A large number of missiles achieve hypersonic speeds at some point in their flight profile. There were missiles in the 1950s capable...

Because I know most of them were never taught that history. In the US each state sets its own education policies. Some states have good standards for teaching history and civics while others are terrible and have been for a long time. My partner was in a Zoom book club with a group of women...

The answer there is to integrate the drone into the tank rather than make a humanoid to drive the tank. Without a human crew a self autonomous tank could be much smaller and carry the same punch. Just as drones are much smaller than manned aircraft. Putting a human in a plane requires a lot...

I won't post it here because it was also political, but I saw an interview with Frank Bruni the other day. He's currently teaching at Duke University. The host had recently taught a seminar at USC. Both reported that the bulk of students at both universities are just trying to get through...

I agree. It's also possible that the representative of Hamas was just saying that so Hamas looks like the reasonable party. They have become very good at PR.

Humanoid drones will probably consume a lot more energy than the quadcopters in use on the frontline now. It's almost like comparing the energy consumption of a laptop to an EV car. Carrying a large enough battery to keep going long enough might be difficult. Also charging them near the...

As bad as Hamas is, they have a lot of competition for the worst group of humans in history. There have been some pretty despicable groups through history. I don't think Hamas should be allowed to have any power in any future government, but if they are willing to lay down arms and accept a...

I thought it was going to post the entire thread, but only one follow up past was included. This is the relevant one The data used for the map was concentrations of one Y chromosome haplotype type across Europe. These maps can be used to track migrations of populations over time. The "I" Y...

I suggested to my partner that there may have been a US military rep "holding on" to the missiles in Ukraine and as soon as they heard the bill was signed they handed them over to the Ukrainians in the field. The US has done several authorizations totally about $41 billion. Each time money...

Biden is a master at getting what he wants from Congress. Last year Biden laid out a $104 billion aid package for Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, as well as refugees, He got $95 billion of it and he was willing to compromise on the border bill to get it, but in the end the border bill died along the...

This reminds me of the US Civil War. A lot of European observers showed up to watch the war unfold. They took their lessons home and developed new tech based on what they learned. A lot of that tech was introduced to European battlefields in the First World War. The Spanish Civil War was a...

I know Greece and Turkey have a long history and are constantly worried about war with one another, but realistically I don't think it's likely. At least not in the near term. Turkey has enough problems with Syria and ISIS and Greece doesn't seem interested or really capable of starting...

No POTUS has ever talked about a dictator like Trump did. Many of the extreme right in the US are also Evangelical Christians who have a thing about Israel and supporting it. But going into that is a major tangent. There are different ATACMS. The first ATACMS was a cluster munition that has...

The far right wing of the party is extremely isolationist. The defense oriented Republicans are still in favor of supporting the US's allies, but they have been beaten down by the far right. There are quite a few who are not running for re-election because it's become too stressful dealing...

How the Ukrainians got a hold of the Russians latest drone jamming tech Ukrainian Troops Staged A Daring Three-Night Raid To Steal A Russian Tank Fitted With A New Drone-Jammer Someone geeking out on Russian tank storage numbers This is a recent picture of the condition of a bunch of T-72s in...

For a little light relief. A press release from game maker Activision

I'm not sure what exactly changed Johnson's mind. It happened after an intelligence briefing that really rattled him. My partner saw something today that the CIA chief briefed the Gang of 8 in Congress (the party leaders in both houses and the top two people from each house's intelligence...

Ukraine had a lot of S-200s left over from the Soviet era that were pretty much out of service at the beginning of the war. I wonder if they have updated them in some way (possibly with western help). I've seen stories of them being used a fair bit lately. Over the biggest hump! Hopefully...

I do sometimes look at what's trending on Twitter just to see what people are talking about, but when I want actual news, I seek out the source rather than let it be pushed to me. The only value in getting the news that's trending on social media is to educate yourself on what other people...

Jake Broe has a YouTube channel and is a military vet. He has done a fair bit of reporting on Ukraine and done some interesting interviews. I have seen a few of his videos. His content is fairly good quality. I don't think that any more Senators will turn against Ukraine aid. Unlike the...

MIke Johnson gave a news conference today where he did a 180 on Ukraine. He mentioned that there was a recent intel briefing he got that convinced him that we need to get aid to Ukraine. I don't know what it was, but I saw a snippet of the news conference and he seemed shaken. He mentioned...

Anyone who knows how Washington works has said that any reasonable Ukraine bill that made it to the floor of the House would pass easily. There were rumors that Johnson was going to put a bill up that had amendments that the Democrats couldn't accept just to kill the bill and claim the...

My partner came across something about why the Russians are not restoring the T-72s. Apparently there are some brass and copper parts in the T-72 that are unique and long out of production. All the T-72s had those parts stripped by profiteers and sold on the scrap metal market. So the...

In WWII there were light, medium, and heavy tanks. Light tanks proved to be highly vulnerable and of limited value from fairly early in the war and they moved to limited roles such as recon (where speed was an advantage) or supporting light troops like air mobile. After the war advancements in...

Unless Russians are going to fly those Su-35s, it's going to take a while to train Iranians to fly them. There are a lot of differences between a 1970s vintage American fighter and a more modern Russian one. Observations of coms chatter from the attack launched over the weekend, it became...

I'll only believe it when it lands on Biden's desk. Johnson has been trying to play Lucy and the football with Ukraine aid ever since he became Speaker. For those not familiar with the American comic strip Football gag

It has come out that he received campaign contributions from Russians Konstantin Nikolaev—the Putin ally behind Mike Johnson campaign donation

It also showed that some Arab states would side with Israel against Iran if Iran was the aggressor. Jordan had a valid reason to contribute since I believe their air space was violated. Saudi Arabia had no reason to participate except to send a message.

I would not call the guys who do the All In podcast a reliable source. David Sacks frequently repeats Kremlin talking points. The inflation rate in the US is generally fairly low and the economy is recovering well. Consumer confidence is a lagging indicator. The prime rate is higher than...

Biden, the Democrats, and even most Republicans want to help Ukraine. Biden has asked for $60 billion for Ukraine. The current Speaker of the House wants Biden to lose and is doing everything he can to decrease Biden's chances of winning. The best thing Ukraine can do is to hold off on...

The US does not have clean hands. The US has caused a number of the world's problems, or contributed quite a bit to them. The regime in Iran came about because the US and UK interfered in Iranian politics in the 1950s. Not all of the world's problems came about because of the US. The...

Worst case would be early January when the next Congress is seated. There are a number of Republicans who feel strongly about funding Ukraine. We're right around the deadline now for a special election to replace any Congress people who quit. A resignation of a handful of Republicans after...

Strange New Worlds scratches the itch for the fans of TOS that hasn't been addressed by any of the spinoffs. I'm a smorgasbord ST fan, I have liked elements of all the series, though Enterprise was pretty bad the first two seasons. Like many early Gen X and late Boomers I grew up watching the...

Oi! If Ukraine was trying to end the war by conquering Russia, yes, it would be impossible. But they very much have what it takes to get their borders back. I wonder which Russian oligarch is giving him campaign contributions? His math is very bad here. He's basically arguing that the US...

The Germans did attack the US in late 1941 and early 1942. Within a day or two of Pearl Harbor the Germans declared war on the United States so the u-boats which were on the way into US coastal waters could operate "legally". The US was sending a lot of oil to Britain. The tankers would load...