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Gravy Train

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Posts posted by Gravy Train

  1. 1 hour ago, BamaATL said:

    Unverified rumors swirling of media blackouts in Ukraine.  Information might be sparse for the next bit, but something is up.  Plus glsdbs in action

     

    Same thread shows one of our RQ-4B Global Hawks spending its entire range encircling something from the Black Sea Fleet, while a report from the account states that 5 vessels from that fleet are carrying a total of 32 Kalibrs set to volley into Ukraine over the next 24-72 hours.

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  2. 23 minutes ago, FORTY NINE TO ZERO said:

    Wait do people here really not care where the fucking virus that killed millions of people and shutdown the world came from??

     

    what the fuck, how do you hope to stop future outbreaks if you don’t study the sources of current ones.


    it’s the god damn fbi and national labs saying this, not fucking Alex Jones. 

     

    We've all established the novel coronavirus originated from China, be it wet market or virology lab leak.  Several other pandemics originated from China too, including variants of the avian flu and a swine flu with human pandemic potential.

    Like Covid-19, China's response should be enough for us to continue our decoupling posture from China.  Their officials knew of the outbreak weeks prior, but travel associated with the Chinese New Year really kicked off its global spread.  What's changed since?

     

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  3. 13 minutes ago, SL Xpress said:

    A quick google search claims 8 million Ukrainians have fled the country. Anyone who thinks all 8 million are returning are kidding themselves. I don't think anyone believes that. So absolutely, some of them are never returning. But some of them will. It's just as farcical to claim all 8 million will never return.

    So we're on a continuum. What are the factors in this continuum?

    First, moving your home is underestimated as a stress factor in our lives. Even for people who have moved. Research has shown it's up there as a stress factor with losing a job, a death in the family, divorce. Economists want as much freedom of labor movement as mathematically possible, whereas actual people want to be in one location and raise their family there. 

    For the people who have already moved, there's a certain inherent stickiness in having already left the country. That much we know.

    But what did they leave? What are their current circumstances? If they were a professional whose certificates/licenses etc. no longer apply in their new country, there's a greater chance they'd move back to some degree. If they perceived their standard of living - whether economic, emotional, or what have you - as being better in Ukraine, they're likelier to return.

    If they're exceptionally patriotic, or otherwise identify with Ukraine in a deep way, are they finding that filled with a diaspora Ukrainian community? Or do they feel the need to return? Are they scared their children will no longer identify as Ukrainian? 

    Those hypothesis go way further than necessary.  With accession into the EU, with border security, Ukraine is ripe to become the union's biggest trading partner.  Economic development opportunities are incredible, from precision manufacturing, to shipbuilding, to petrochemical... and those are the trades they're already good at.  I have an old Ukrainian software engineering contact who's since started his own firm.  They are a bright, crafty bunch who just need security and an honest seat at the table.  

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  4. 1 hour ago, Schulz2.0 said:

    Chineses just chasing Ruble on this but I wish Western media would put their shit on blast and sanction Chinese industry which operates close enough to military industry for the CCP to realise we're watching their shady asses.  Aren't we all watching them closely for action upon Taiwan within the next 2-3 years?

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  5. Putin is losing respect in the Kremlin, which leads to more leaders falling down stairwells and out of windows, as they're burdened with the blame or seen as potential opposition threats.  Unfortunately, as more damages mount, the more extreme Putin's response may be, especially once the security of Crimea is threatened:

    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-rebellion-russia-ukraine-war-failures-6tw7mrqh0

    Quote

    In February last year, as President Putin announced his invasion of Ukraine with a chilling televised speech, the Kremlin was so confident of success that the first wave of Russian troops were ordered to pack special uniforms for a victory parade in Kyiv. It did not take long for Putin’s plans to unravel.
    Almost a year into the war, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed, hundreds of thousands of men have fled the country to avoid conscription and some Russian regions bordering Ukraine are coming under almost daily shelling. Over the past two weeks, Russia’s forces have suffered their highest rate of casualties since the war began, according to the British Ministry of Defence.
    In place of triumphant speeches in the Ukrainian capital, Putin’s image as a master strategist has been shattered, leaving him arguably weaker than at any time during his 23-year rule. His failure to secure a swift victory has cost him the respect and unquestioning loyalty of top officials, said Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB colonel and ex-Russian MP who lives in exile.
    “Putin can’t rule the Kremlin like before. He has made lots of stupid mistakes and everyone from the general staff of the armed forces to the leadership of the FSB [security service] to his close aides understands this,” he said.
    “[Officials] are becoming bolder and brasher and infighting has escalated. There is no longer the subordination to Putin that there was a year ago,” said Gudkov, who cited conversations with relatives of Kremlin insiders, aides to political figures in Moscow and unnamed Russian tycoons. “This is a quiet rebellion against him.”
    Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian political analyst whose research focuses on the Kremlin, said that while there was little chance that officials would be brave enough to directly criticise Putin, many were disillusioned by his disastrous handling of the war. “Lots of them used to respect him,” she said. “Not anymore.”

    Aside from humiliating reversals on the battlefield, Russia’s economy is also straining under the weight of western sanctions, including a price cap on Russian oil. Last month Russia recorded a budget deficit of 1.76 trillion roubles (about £20 billion), its biggest for January since Putin came to power in 2000. Sanctions have also deprived members of the Russian elite of foreign assets, including property in Europe, while making it much harder for their children to study at prestigious western schools and universities.
    Yet Putin remains assured in his belief that he is fulfilling his “historical mission” to bring Kyiv under Moscow’s control, said Fyodor Lukyanov, who heads Russia’s Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, which sometimes advises the Kremlin. The council is not thought to have been consulted about the decision to invade Ukraine, with the key decisions being taken exclusively by Putin and a small group of hardliners.
    Despite the setbacks his army has suffered, Putin appeared at ease with himself when he answered questions at a forum in late October, according to Lukyanov, who moderated the discussions. “He was confident and relaxed as never before,” he said. “There was no irritation at all, whatever questions were asked. He seems to be 200 per cent sure that what he is doing and what Russia is doing is necessary and that it was inevitable. That we are on the right side of history, whatever happens.”
    Lukyanov also revealed that many Russian politicians were puzzled by why the Kremlin had not retaliated “properly” against the supply of western weapons to Ukraine. Putin warned at the start of the war that western countries that tried to come to Ukraine’s aid would “face consequences greater than any you have faced in history”. He has also threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend occupied territory in Ukraine that Russia claims as its own.

    The Kremlin’s nuclear rhetoric was a key factor in the recent decision by a panel of international scientists to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock, which illustrates threats to humanity’s existence, to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been to zero hour since it was established in 1947.
    “Russia could have retaliated not just with nuclear arms, but with massive cyberattacks or by targeting supply routes [for western weapons],” Lukyanov said. “The problem is that the longer Russia doesn’t respond, the more likely it is that this response will need to be extremely powerful to demonstrate commitment. That it will use the ultimate argument.”
    Suggestions that Putin is being misled by his advisers about the grim realities of the war appeared to be off the mark, Lukyanov added. “He didn’t look like a person who is not aware of what is happening. He looked like he has [correct] information. But this information doesn’t bother him too much.”

    Once portrayed by Russian propaganda as a straight-talking man of the people, Putin is an isolated figure. On Orthodox Christmas Eve, he attended mass on his own at a Kremlin cathedral that had been cleared of all other worshippers. In December, he abruptly cancelled his annual press conference and yearly televised question-and-answer session with the Russian people, as well as his state of the nation address to parliament. Critics allege that Putin is reluctant to answer tough questions on the war because he knows he cannot provide meaningful answers.

    “A year on, Putin has nothing to reply to the main question: ‘How does he see a way out of the situation he created?’,” Leonid Volkov, the former chief aide to Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned Russia opposition leader, wrote on social media.
    “This question is being asked by generals and businessmen: Putin’s entourage does not understand what all these losses and deprivations were for. But Putin has no answer. The silence is deafening. And it will get louder.”
    Putin spent much of the pandemic holed up at his residences near Moscow and in Sochi. Visitors were obliged to pass through disinfecting “tunnels” before entry and officials were ordered to quarantine for up to 14 days before they were allowed to meet the president. The self-isolation order is thought to remain: Andrei Bocharov, governor of the Volgograd region, had not been seen in public for almost two weeks before he met Putin this month.
    The measures coincide with continuing speculation about Putin’s health. Ukrainian military intelligence told ABC News recently, citing unnamed sources, that the Russian leader was terminally ill with cancer. The Kremlin insists that Putin is in good health but he has been seen limping in public and gripping the sides of tables with his right arm during talks. Before the war, he was reported to have been visited dozens of times by a cancer specialist. He was also thought to take baths of blood from deer antlers, a traditional cure in southern Siberia’s Altai region for a number of ailments. There are fears for Putin’s state of mind. “He is reacting to pictures in his own head,” Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin adviser, told The Times at the start of the war.
    During his televised New Year’s Eve speech, traditionally delivered against a backdrop of the Kremlin, Putin stood instead in front of a line of people in military uniforms. The Kremlin said they were soldiers but at least some were believed to have appeared in public with Putin in the past in other roles, prompting suspicions that they were Kremlin security agents.
    One blonde female “soldier” appears to have posed previously as a camper, an ice-cream seller, a fisherwoman and church worshipper during Putin’s public appearances over the past few years.

    Putin’s private life remains secret. Officially, he has been single since 2014 when he divorced Lyudmila, a former Aeroflot stewardess. Unofficially, Putin is believed to be in a long-term relationship with Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast who was appointed the head of a pro-Kremlin media company in 2014. Kabaeva, 39, has been sanctioned by Britain, the European Union and United States. Last week she described Russian state television as a “weapon of war” that was comparable in its power to the Kalashnikov assault rifle. “Let’s work!” she said at a media event, a pro-war Z symbol pinned to her black business suit.
    Putin’s two adult daughters from his marriage to Lyudmila, Maria Vorontsova, 37, and Katerina Tikhonova, 36, were both sanctioned by western countries last year. The Kremlin has never publicly acknowledged their relationship to Putin, but the US said there is evidence that those around them have profited from their status. Tikhonova was previously married to Kirill Shamalov, a businessman whose wealth rocketed after he became Putin’s son-in-law in 2013.

    Putin is also believed to have three children with Kabaeva, but their identities have never been confirmed. The Russian leader is also believed to have a teenage daughter named Elizaveta from an affair that he had during his first term of office with Svetlana Krivonogikh, a former cleaner from St Petersburg. Krivonogikh, who became massively wealthy after her relationship with Putin, was sanctioned this month by Britain.
    There is little hope that Putin will cut his losses and withdraw from Ukraine, said Stanovaya, the political analyst. Cornered and resentful, he is convinced that he has no choice but to try to crush what he sees as the unacceptable threat to Russia of a pro-Nato government in Kyiv, she said. In Putin’s worldview, the West bears full responsibility for provoking the war and the end of the conflict is only realistically possible, if western countries abandon their support for Ukraine.
    “Putin and the Russian elite see this war as existential. If Russia loses, if there are strikes on Crimea, I think that they are psychologically prepared to use nuclear weapons,” Stanovaya said. “Putin thinks that he gave Ukraine too much time to arm itself. He believes now that if he does nothing, Russia will cease to exist in a few years. His only regret is that he didn’t begin the war earlier.”

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  6. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64647267

    Quote

    Russian journalist Maria Ponomarenko has been jailed for six years for posting on social media about a deadly attack by Russian warplanes on a theatre in Ukraine.

    The court in Barnaul in Siberia found her guilty of spreading "fake news", under laws introduced aimed at stifling dissent about the invasion of Ukraine.

    She was also barred from activities as a journalist for five years.

    Hundreds of civilians died when the Mariupol theatre was bombed last March.

    Ponomarenko was detained last April, weeks after the bombing, for posting that Russian warplanes had carried out the attack even though the Russian defence ministry had denied it.

    She is one of a growing number of Russian dissidents jailed for criticising the war in Ukraine.

    Some 1,200 civilians were seeking shelter inside the theatre when it was bombed by Russian fighter jets. Ukrainian authorities believe 300 people were killed but an Associated Press investigation said the number was closer to 600. Many of the bodies were found in the basement.

    Amnesty International said it was a war crime carried out by Russian forces and the international monitoring group OSCE said it had not received any indication to back up Russian allegations that a Ukrainian battalion had blown up the theatre.

    Prosecutors said Maria Ponomarenko had committed a criminal offence brought in within days of the invasion of spreading "knowingly false information" about the Russian armed forces.

    Addressing the court ahead of her sentence she stressed that under Russia's constitution she had done nothing wrong: "Had I committed a real crime then it would be possible to ask for leniency, but again, due to my moral and ethical qualities, I would not do this."

    Declaring herself a patriotic, opposition pacifist, she ended her address by saying: "No totalitarian regime has ever been as strong as before its collapse."

    The journalist and activist, who has two young children, has suffered mental health problems in jail, according to her lawyer, and last year compared her conditions in pre-trial detention to torture.

     

    Last summer, Moscow councillor Alexei Gorinov was jailed for seven years after he was filmed speaking out against Russia's war in Ukraine in a city council meeting. Earlier this week a UN working group called for his release, concluding that his detention was arbitrary and contravened the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    In December one of Russia's most prominent opposition figures, Ilya Yashin, was jailed for eight-and-a-half years for spreading "fake news" about the military after he went on YouTube to condemn the killing of hundreds of Ukrainian civilians by Russian occupying forces in Bucha, near Kyiv.

     

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  7. Quote

    THE HAGUE – The Dutch armed forces intercepted three Russian military aircraft in Poland. The planes flew in formation. Two Dutch F-35s have sought them out, identified them and escorted them, the Ministry of Defense reports.

    According to the Ministry of Defence, the Russian aircraft were an Il-20M (also known as Coot-A) and two SOe-27s (Flankers). The Coot-A was designed as a spy plane, the Flankers are more modern fighter jets. They are said to have flown from Kaliningrad to Poland and have been ‘on the border’. The Dutch aircraft escorted them ‘from a distance’ and after some time transferred them to another NATO country. According to the Ministry of Defense, they have never flown over Russia.

    There are eight Dutch F-35s in Poland since this month, four of which are deployed to monitor the airspace above the NATO country. According to the Ministry of Defense, the other four are for training purposes, although they can also be used if necessary. According to the armed forces, this is the first time that Dutch aircraft have carried out such an interception (a so-called Quick Reaction Alert) during the two-month mission.

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  8. On 2/10/2023 at 2:29 AM, Planet Houston said:

    Defender 110 should probably be on the list. 

    Goddammit. It was so easy with the Bronco. But that ship has sailed now, I’m not getting back in line or paying $10k over MSRP again. And the fact it was flipping in my wreck spooks me. Ugh. 

    Detroit-area dealers have Bronco inventory at MSRP.  Don't play dealership games, they have 8,000 competitors and archaic laws are the only thing keeping their racket alive. 

  9. 5 hours ago, Post Oak said:

    FWIW - Zeihan had something on this a few months back. My memory is hazy but what he said was that Sweden knows who did it but if they come out and make it public (it was Russia) then that is considered an act of war and shit gets turned up to 11. Then NATO is all in.

    No one wants that. That's why there has been no formal announcement.

    Some of my details may be off but that was the gist of it. 

    With its reputation of the Hårsfjärden incident, I'm not sure anyone wants to ask the Swedes what's going on in their waters.  

  10. 2 hours ago, immamac said:

    https://www.westerndigital.com/products/portable-drives/sandisk-professional-pro-blade-transport-ssd#SDPM2NB-004T-GBAND

    Your welcome for creating this. Still swappable. Have a 4 slotter with dual 20+20gbps coming soon. 

    I assume the "blade" is sealed and not serviceable internally, but swappable with other capacities?  A dual or 4-slot enclosure with embedded RAID controller would be tits.

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