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I heard that the main purpose of the royalty in the UK (and why the death of Queen Elizabeth was so big) is that the nobility was primarily cultural- to be beyond politics and given a traditional example to aspire to. I think this was the case in Europe until the 20th century. (pre WW1) However without any nobility and tradition, everything is left up to pop culture, the market, politics etc.

Cyberpunk 2077 also has a Blade Runner easter egg. I remember those trench coats. They looked familiar.

^ It's politics, it's not supposed to make any sense! Trump doesn't want to come back to twitter. I think it will be at his loss. Elon will certainly give him a lot of freedom to project soft power.

The war has moved East now. Reports of Approx. 30,000-20,000 Russian airborne, marine, and army units are being re-deployed in the Z-Oblast and the Donbass. The Ukrainians have moved 40,000-25,000 troops to the Z-Oblast. Russia expects an increase in pressure in this area. Russia has been on the offensive for over a week in the Donbass back to August 2022 levels and Ukraine is more on the defensive now. Russia completed the training of 2nd Guards Motorized Division in Belarus, and is likely going to deploy it. If they integrated reservists into this formation, instead of several BTG it would mark the first doctrinally correct use of fighting unit, in large-scale warfare mobilization. It remains to be seen if the training was successful or not: It is composed of 2 rifle regiments, tank regiment, self-propelled artillery regiment, recon battalion, Air defense regiment, engineer battalion, logistics battalion, communications battalion. I've been waiting to see a combined arms Russian division in action since Feb 24th but the Russians never deployed any in the offense. It is something I am most curious about.

oh my how the tables have turned LOL

oh god, so much entertainment has opened up now. The memes:

2

Joy's abs, wow

^ thanks .. s

who is this?

FTX is the most stupid financial disaster I've ever seen ^^

Mike O Hearn is one of the weirdest fitness personalities. For years he keeps on claiming that he's natural, no steroids. He should just keep quiet about it but he keeps on trying to 'convince' people that he is natural.

Ronnie Coleman's diet, protein protein protein protein...

He's rather likeable. His supplements have his catchphrases ("lightweight baby", etc.) He was a police officer and was winning Mr. Olympia.

Putin's biggest failure of the war was to get mobilization started 7 months after his enemy. If he did partial mobilization months before the war, the Russians would definitely be in much better strategic situation. At the very least all 4 Oblasts (K, Z, D, L) would be completely under their control with Ukraine's army in tatters. Instead his failure to maneuver Russian politics towards greater war support allowed Ukraine to amass many multiples numerical superiority in conscripted manpower and replace their 6-figure human losses. I've been watching the Russian partial mobilization for the past 2 months. It reminds me of WW2. The US, British, and German army had good tactical and unit training but the Soviets were shoddy in this area. The Russian reservists right now are getting mediocre training at best, 2 months of refresher training in their districts and then they are shipped to units for further training. The training in Ukraine looks relatively local and improvised. The 100,000 men already shipped to Ukraine are going to very useful in the defense but less so offensively. The Ukrainian reinforcements are even more poorly trained. The NATO trained 70000 only have up to platoon level, the rest are conscripts improvised training. The Russians conducted sophisticated large scale maneuvers with Eastern Military District (50,000 men 6000 armored vehicles) and are planning big maneuvers in Belarus. This leaves 300,000 new troops in the interior without higher level formation training. Last week they inducted conscript class 2022-2023 with 130,00-120,000 men. The previous year (160,000-140,000) is already fully trained and with their units but are legally not allowed to be used in the war (yet!).

Politics is aways a part of war. US wars have heavy political influence, and so does the war in Ukraine right now (on both sides). The problem is that the politics can strongly interfere with military reality, and lead to disaster. Stalin's problems in 1941 was that 1. he purged the army, but likely not to the extent popularly believed 2. no retreat policies, leading to huge defeats 3. misjudged the political situation and allowed the Russian army to reorganize. The Germans attacked when their motorized forces were half-formed and trying to train/assemble into cohesive units. Hitler from 1943 onward was doing the same thing with no retreat policies. Although for Germany by 1943 they were so massively outnumbered that they had no chance of winning.

Indy Jones 4 was so bad that I couldn't finish it. Also Ford could barely talk in Star Wars and Blade Runner. His vocal cords aged so much. And his acting wasn't good. It's kind of weird that he keeps on wearing the same clothes in the film lol.