
SL Xpress
Full Members-
Posts
4292 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Downloads
Recruiting - 2020
2019-2020 Football Season
Football
Entertainment
Sports
News and Business
Cloak Room
Transfer Portal
Recruiting
Events
Everything posted by SL Xpress
-
UT's next basketball coach - discussion/debate [Sean Miller Hired]
SL Xpress replied to alphahorn's topic in Basketball
I do not believe that even a little bit. -
Maybe it's not directly related. I just don't think it matters what job he takes, whether it's the first or not. He's not going to be married to it. He can take the first job, then take a better job later on. No need to sit out a year. That would be the main thing I was disagreeing with. As far as getting people engaged, that's his super power as much as anything else. He'll have people running through brick walls, the way he does everywhere. I don't care where he goes. And if he can put together a Sweet 16 roster at Arkansas-Little Rock in one year, he can certainly put one together at Ole Miss. Not saying he would or will, but he certainly can. Roster management is another super power. He has a lot of them, unfortunately. I wish he had a super power that kept him from getting arrested by the police for felonious domestic violence. That would be a boon right about now.
-
You have a different perspective on what happened in the Donbas than I do. I respect your knowledge and your contributions, so I'd like to seek some clarification if you get the time. Brief timeline - 21 February 2014 Yanukovych flees Kyiv 27 February 2014 little green men appear in Crimea 16 March 2014 Crimean referendum First government buildings seized in Donbas a couple of weeks later. Late March. Shortly after Yanukovych's departure anti government pro Russian protests started in the Donbas. But the actual operation to secure various government buildings was not led by a mob or sportsman. I watched on individual's hand held camera phones in real time as obviously professional operatives secured police stations, national guard offices, and internal security places without a shot being fired. Some were contested, but they were so outgunned they immediately surrendered without a fight. Many of them seemed to be willing participants in the takeover. This gave a pretext for the arming of the separatists. Could be it was sufficient arms for what they ended up bearing. I don't know. But it could very well have merely supplemented what the Russians were providing, using the arms taken from the police offices, national guard armories, and internal security buildings as cover. Certainly this was true of the T-64 tanks, of which the separatists captured 20, and then Russia began supplying them more. Even with that the eventual anti terrorism operation by Ukraine in April had initial success until it was encircled and wiped out by an invading Russian armed force. My point is I don't think it was protests that did the heavy lifting in the Donbas. It was Russian operatives in a planned operation working alongside collaborators both from Russia and inside the Donbas who took over various buildings with armaments and then moved on to administrative buildings under armed threats that created the separatist regions, without really a single shot being fired. It's not clear how strong the pro Ukrainian sentiment really was. Yanukovych's strongest political support came from eastern Ukraine, and especially the Donbas. But Russia didn't bother finding out, taking advantage of the sense of chaos within the Ukrainian government, the lack of a sense of national mandate, the hollowing out of the military, and the strong pro Russian sentiments within the security forces, until Ukrainian patriot militias along with government forces came in and started pushing armed resistance towards the border, right up until the Russian army destroyed them. I guess my question then, is this different than how you view what happened in the Donbas? What part do you feel the protests played in helping Russia secure the Donbas for their separatists? Because I don't think they played any direct part compared to the operation carried out by Russian special forces/intelligence officers. Without their intercession I do not believe the separatist movement has anything remotely close to the effectiveness it had from the outset.
-
UT's next basketball coach - discussion/debate [Sean Miller Hired]
SL Xpress replied to alphahorn's topic in Basketball
Which is not to say he interviews this time around. But with a new arena, a new AD, more money rolling in to the athletic department than ever before, with major increases from separating Moody donations from basketball and SEC television revenue, plus the robust emphasis on NIL, it does put Texas in a better spot than in the limited time when penny pinching Patterson was in charge. I don't have a strong preference who we hire, but my personal biases tend toward wanting someone good on defense versus someone who is good with offense. I know that's not everyone's predilection, but it is mine. My favorite right now is Tommy Lloyd, but if I thought we had a shot at Bennett I'd take him in a heartbeat. Hiring a championship winning coach is a home run in my opinion. I'd love to keep him as an assistant. No need to pack his office THAT quickly. -
This is horseshit. You take your brick butter, you put it on your plate. Then you pour the honey over it. Then you take your knife and mix it all up, suffering through smushing the cold hard pat of butter so that it mixes right. Thus, honey butter. It’s a crafting exercise. It’s not meant to be an automated process. This is small town Texas at its finest. Sticking it on a biscuit and putting honey on it? Might as well offshore the entire process. I’m convinced Covid came from Wuhan butter being left on a counter somewhere.
-
Heretic. You wreck that bread like a good American with your brick like butter. The good ol’ chemical manufacturing companies came up with fake butter for spreading. I feel like I accidentally walked into a room with a bunch of commies in here.
-
Graham and McCaul getting more aggressive with their rhetoric about F-16s. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3877635-graham-biden-administration-decision-to-withhold-f-16s-from-ukraine-beyond-disappointing/
-
It’s been baffling me for thirty years. I bring it up to Canadians, and it’s like it’s the first time they’ve considered it. “But it’s Canadian Tire. That’s just how it is.”
-
Well, if you don’t say “about” the right way. You don’t stick any “eh’s“ in. You say y’all even once. You ask for extra ice. You’re surprised out loud at how much shit you can buy at Canadian Tire. You act surprised because the liquor stores are all government owned. You're aggressive in any way because of perceived poor service. You indicate you don’t want to wait in this line, and what’s it for, anyway? You do anything with your phone while you’re in a car. If you’re in Ontario, you say something about how weird it is to buy bags of milk, or you barbarically store your butter in the refrigerator, rather than on the counter where it belongs. You wonder where the u-turns for the freeways are, or why it’s so far to the next exit after you missed the correct one. You marvel at the lack of billboards and businesses directly on the freeway right up to the momeht you have no idea where the next gas station is. You reference imperial measurements for something. Plenty of others, but those are good indicators for a Canadian you’re from the states.
-
Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.
-
Well, I'm sympathetic to that. Not specifically when it comes to anything about Ukraine, but certainly in general. "What gets measured gets done," with the corollary you better be sure you're measuring the right things. Heck, I get a dopamine hit when someone likes my comment on here, as much as I don't want to. It's how we're wired. You see people all the time engage in more and more extreme behavior simply to generate a reaction on social media. No doubt about it. Thanks for the explanation.
-
The Vasquez guy I just posted with his patch says his unit is being sent there. He didn't say Bakhmut specifically, but he was clearly hinting at it. I don't pretend to know all the challenges facing the Ukrainian top decision makers, but as an armchair observer if you're going to send reinforcements to shore up collapsing flanks, it feels like it could have been done sooner than it has. Specifically after the fall of Soledar when it was obvious Russia was sending so many resources in that direction. But maybe Moloskyov's strategy all along was to pull back, and now that he's been overruled by firing him, the objectives and the strategy employed has changed. The thing is at this point they're going to likely need to push the Russians back in order to keep supplies going in. I don't know. I don't know anything, really. I'm just hoping for the best without knowing what the "best" outcome really is. I just don't want the defenders being encircled like what happened in Azovstal. I also have no information regarding what options Ukraine has in the deployment of their resources. Obviously.
-
Really? I don't seem to care all that much. He's risking shrapnel going through his skull. Meanwhile, I'm posting on a forum. I find the patch hilarious. Can you elaborate a little more on what bothers you about it?
-
Has anyone ever seen this patch? This guy says CBS has agreed to embed a reporter in his unit. But he's also indicated his unit is heading to Bakhmut. I don't foresee a CBS reporter heading there.
-
This is complete projection and conjecture on my part, but I'm thinking about some of the calculus on the Ukrainian side for this battle. On the one hand, you have to prepare for the offensive in the late spring/summer, which you hope will be one of the turning points of the war. You have heavier western armor trickling in that you have to get people trained, organized into divisions, and ready to go. You want many of your most battle hardened, veteran, effective troops to take part in this offensive. You have to have enough artillery shells and other ammo for maximum effectiveness, and you can't make your own. You have a highly defensible position under massive attack, but by itself it doesn't represent a huge breakthrough by the enemy, so you've tried to keep an effective but relatively minimal force there to fend off the attacks. Which has worked for months. On the other hand you have a president who doesn't want to give up an inch of territory to Russia. You don't have the means at your disposal to mount a successful counterattack in the area, whether on the front lines directly east of the city, or on the flanks. The loss of Soledar represented a shift in Russian tactics where they have put immense pressure on both the north and south of Bakhmut, to the extent that the two main supply roads have been under heavy enemy fire for a couple of months now, with only a small dirt road being the supply lifeline to the troops in the city itself. You've destroyed the dam for a small lake to create a small creek on the north side, simply to give some kind of reprieve for the effectiveness of the enemy offensive, which takes a meter or two at a time. At this point pulling the soldiers out of Bakhmut is likely to result in massive loss of life. The enemy is too close on the flanks, the terrain is swamp. From the point of of view of my personal investment in the soldiers defending Bakhmut, I would prefer they were already out of there. It's still my best guess this is why Moskalyov was fired.
-
I love Halberstam. RIP. The guy knew how to tell a story.
-
Ukraine's commander of all Ukraine ground forces, Colonel General Syrskyi, arrived in Bakhmut. I'm sure that has to be a huge lift for the defending troops there who have to wonder what the future is going to bring, even if they're continuing to soldier on under the most challenging of circumstances. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraines-ground-forces-commander-visits-besieged-bakhmut-talk-strategy-boost-2023-02-27/ Here's a pseudo slideshow presentation I found on Youtube with some video content added. Not a big fan of this particular method of getting information, because I'd prefer to just read it in an article. But it did have some information I'm not finding anywhere else, including a focus on the 17th tank brigade providing the bulk of the armor defending the city proper. According to this youtube video, they're operating T-64 tanks which have an interesting history I won't go into here. But what I can say is those are some old tanks, which the brigade commander acknowledges in print in the video, hoping for some of the newer main battle tanks to be added to his brigade. The video is probably filler for most of you, but for those of you like me hungering for more insight into what's going on in Bakhmut, I'd recommend checking it out:
-
Apparently Parra stated in her social media feed she wouldn't be participating. I didn't see it personally. That's what someone said on volleytalk. No explanation as to why. Could be wrong.
-
I believe you and I have different perspectives. You're not wrong, because the proof is in the pudding. Basically, you're never going to be wrong until nuclear weapons are actually utilized, and at that point we're not going to be spending a whole lot of time in serious discussions about whether you were right or wrong, because both of us are posting on a relatively obscure sports forum that has a section dedicated to current events, and in there we're discussing the Ukraine war. In other words, we don't matter, and more serious shit will be going down that makes whether you were right or wrong immaterial. My perspective is that on a long enough time line, with enough different entities possessing nuclear weapons, with a technology that's now 80 years old, and a huge incentive in terms of ensuring sovereign integrity, with comparatively small consequences, the chances of a nuclear weapon being utilized at some point is 100%. Given that, rhetoric that seriously considers its employment increases that chance, not only by the people using the rhetoric, but by other entities who possess the means for whom the rhetoric creates a greater environment to normalize its potential use. So while you see all of this as bluffing that shouldn't be taken seriously, I see it as dangerous. It allows what should be unthinkable to become more thinkable, and therefore actionable. It's particularly more actionable the more desperate someone with control of nuclear weapons becomes, or the more dispersed the control of nuclear weapons that exists. That's not specifically about Putin or Russia. That's simply a general observation that also includes Putin and Russia.
-
Thanks for sharing. I love that story.
-
Gives me goosebumps thinking about him. What a hellscape. Thanks for sharing.
-
Who knows? This is probably what it takes to clear out corruption, shining a bright light and all of that. But I have to admit I cringe a bit when he goes in that direction. That kind of rhetoric can and does produce a witch hunt effect. You say he's more than earned the right to speak his mind, and that's certainly true. But he has a large global platform that gives huge weight to his words. When it veers off the subject of what he's directly involved in, it's very difficult to determine his level of expertise. He doesn't have the time or the means to go into specifics, and so the vagueness allows anyone to fill in the blanks the way they want. But there's room to agree to disagree here. I'm certainly not trying to tell you what to think. This is only my perspective. I'm grateful for his updates and for Dmitri translating them. This one included. And I like his colorfulness in describing the Russian invaders. I find him very inspiring. He is who he is.
-
I've seen him do similar things in the past. I am in complete agreement. He's not a Dale Carnegie acolyte, I can tell you that for sure.
-
It's not an equivalency. I'm not suggesting that. Both of us are bringing up references from 60 years ago. But it's not right to dismiss them the way you did, either. MacArthur was overall commander of UN troops in a full scale war on the peninsula of Korea. He was fired for his views, so obviously he didn't have final say. But if Gerasimov starts talking about the need to use nuclear weapons we wouldn't dismiss it. It would be highly alarming. IMO Gerasimov and MacArthur are very much equivalents. And while Goldwater didn't win the election, he was a respected senator from Arizona who won a major party nomination to face off against a Democratic opponent in a presidential election. That's not the same as actually winning the presidency, but he wasn't akin to an anonymous keyboard operator on the internet. He was an extremely influential politician for the rest of his career, and his views shaped the outlook of many who came after him. His impact on the US was certainly greater than any of the Russian government spokespeople you're citing. Again, what Russia is doing regarding their nuclear rhetoric is alarming and unprecedented. But unprecedented is not the same as none. The fact I have to go back 60 plus years is the most telling part, not how trivial or non trivial MacArthur and Goldwater's stances were. We're also being a bit unfair towards Goldwater here, since it's not like he was advocating nuclear strikes the way the Russian rhetoric is right now. He simply wasn't willing to take it off the table, and then the Democrats effectively emphasized that.
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!