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I do hope the Russians get "debacled", to quote a not so bright person.

Hell of a month for Ukraine, hope they can keep it going

Ukraine not resting on the last victory. On to the next city

Edit: Progress near Kherson, maybe:

On a more serious note:

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/how-the-war-in-ukraine-might-end

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Goemans, who now teaches political science at the University of Rochester, wrote his dissertation on war-termination theory—that is, the study of how wars end. A great deal of work, Goemans learned, had been done on how wars start, but very little on how they might conclude. There were, perhaps, historical reasons for this oversight: the nuclear armament of the United States and the Soviet Union meant that a war between them could end human civilization; not just some dying, but the death of everything. The study of war during the Cold War thus gave rise to a rich vocabulary about deterrence: direct deterrence, extended deterrence, deterrence by punishment, deterrence by denial. But the Cold War ended, and wars kept happening. Goemans saw an opportunity for an intellectual intervention.

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The other factor that had been ignored in the literature, according to Goemans, was domestic politics. States were considered unitary actors with set interests, but this left out the internal pressures placed on the government of a modern nation-state. Goemans created a data set of every leader of every war-fighting country between 1816 and 1995, and coded each according to a tripartite system. Some leaders were democrats; some were dictators; and some were in between. According to Goemans, democrats tended to respond to the information delivered by the war and act accordingly; at the very worst, if they lost the war but their country still existed, they would get turned out of office and go on a book tour. Dictators, because they had total control of their domestic audience, could also end wars when they needed to. After the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein was such a leader; he simply killed anyone who criticized him. The trouble, Goemans found, lay with the leaders who were neither democrats nor dictators: because they were repressive, they often met with bad ends, but because they were not repressive enough, they had to think about public opinion and whether it was turning on them. These leaders, Goemans found, would be tempted to “gamble for resurrection,” to continue prosecuting the war, often at greater and greater intensity, because anything short of victory could mean their own exile or death.

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In a terrifying blog post, Goemans’s former student Branislav Slantchev laid out a few potential scenarios. He believes that the Russian front in the Donbas is still in danger of imminent collapse. If this were to happen, Putin would need to escalate even further. This could take the form of more attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, but, if the goal is to stop Ukrainian advances, a likelier option would be a small tactical nuclear strike. Slantchev suggests that it would be under one kiloton—that is, about fifteen times smaller than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It would nonetheless be devastating, and would almost certainly lead to an intense reaction from the West. Slantchev does not think that NATO would respond with nuclear strikes of its own, but it could, for example, destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet. This could lead to yet another round of escalation. In such a situation, the West may be tempted, finally, to retreat. Slantchev urged them not to. “This is it now,” he wrote. “This is for all the marbles.”

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Goemans was feeling more worried. Once again, his thoughts took him to the First World War. In 1917, Germany, faced with no hope of victory, decided to gamble for resurrection. It unleashed its secret weapon, the U-boat, to conduct unlimited operations on the high seas. The risk of the strategy was that it would bring the United States into the war; the hope was that it would choke off Great Britain and lead to victory. This was a “high variance” strategy, in Goemans’s words, meaning that it could lead to a great reward or a great calamity. In the event, it did lead to the U.S. entering the war, and the defeat of Germany, and the Kaiser’s removal from power.

In this situation, the secret weapon is nuclear. And its use carries with it the risk, again, of even greater involvement in the war by the U.S. But it could also, at least temporarily, halt the advance of the Ukrainian Army. If used effectively, it could even bring about a victory. “People get very excited about the front collapsing,” Goemans said. “But for me it’s, like, ‘Ah-h-h!’ ” At that point, Putin would really be trapped.

For the moment, Goemans still believes that the nuclear option is unlikely. And he believes that Ukraine will win the war. But that will also take a long time, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.

Fog of war today, different reports of amounts of Russian troops, who controls what. But big picture, Ukraine seems to have taken Lyman, and the Russian army is fleeing/dying. I think we'll see another big surge in the Northeast of Ukraine, Russians are getting pushed out.

If they lost 3k troops in a day.... wow

https://twitter.com/i/events/1575199014169067536

I don't know if this is totally accurate, but here's hoping...

Edit: Another one

How nice it must be to have a pass rush

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-man-lit-himself-fire-protest-putin-draft-1746397

A Russian man reportedly lit himself on fire in protest of President Vladimir Putin's mobilization announcement to draft some soldiers to fight in the ongoing war with Ukraine.

In a Telegram post, local Russian news outlet YA62 also shared the video and wrote that the man lit himself on fire at the "Ryazan bus station" and "shouted that he did not want to participate in a special operation in Ukraine."

While Newsweek was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the video, the Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, reported that the man who set himself on fire had burns over 90 percent of his body.

In addition to reports that a man setting himself on fire, another incident occurred earlier on Monday with a man shooting a Russian draft office in protest of the mobilization.

In a post on his Telegram channel, Igor Kobzev, the governor of the Irkutsk region, wrote, "A young man fired at the military registration and enlistment office.

https://i.imgur.com/CtkE4f7.mp4

6 mile backup at the Georgian border right now, around 10:15 PM in Russia

https://imgur.com/gallery/WZesy0v

https://imgur.com/gallery/k8Dakbk

https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-iran-dubai-united-arab-emirates-5897d601151beb0f01353dd83e405d7d

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The scope of Iran’s ongoing unrest, the worst in several years, still remains unclear as protesters in at least a dozen cities — venting anger over social repression and the country’s mounting crises — continue to encounter security and paramilitary forces.

To prevent protests from spreading, Iran’s biggest telecom operator largely shut down mobile internet access again Thursday, said Netblocks, a group that monitors internet access, describing the restrictions as the most severe since 2019.

An anchor on Iran’s state television suggested the death toll from the mass protests could be as high as 17 on Thursday, but did not say how he reached that figure, adding that official statistics would be released later.

In a country where radio and television stations already are state-controlled and journalists regularly face the threat of arrest, the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard urged the judiciary on Thursday to prosecute “anyone who spreads fake news and rumors” on social media about the unrest. Widespread outages of Instagram and WhatsApp, which are used by protesters, also continued Thursday.

Picking up the old "fake news" mantle.

Edit:

https://i.imgur.com/7rNfXBS.mp4

"The angry people of Babol city have set Ali Khamenei's billboard on fire."

I do wonder if he's been told to try to set this up as an innocent mistake. "Oops, I thought they were declassified. My bad!" So much has happened with no appreciable consequence. Please this time let him not wiggle out of it.

I know there have been flare ups in the past. We'll see if this time is different

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/tehran-governor-accuses-protesters-attacks-least-22-arrested-2022-09-20/

Quote

Protests raged for a fourth straight day across Iran on Tuesday and authorities said three people had been killed during unrest over the death of a young woman in police custody.

The death last week of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini who was arrested by morality police for "unsuitable attire" unleashed a flood of simmering anger over numerous issues including rights, security and an economy reeling from international sanctions.

 

It is some of Iran's worst unrest since street clashes last year over water shortages. The Iranian government accuses foreign agents and unspecified terrorists of instigating the violence.

In an apparent effort to defuse tensions, an aide to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei paid condolences to Amini's family, saying that Khamenei was affected and pained by her death.

https://i.imgur.com/5DXOGB0.mp4

https://i.imgur.com/ATdjFMc.mp4

https://i.imgur.com/Rp2ChSm.mp4

1 minute ago, TradeTheBeal! said:

Garbage time td or nah

Oh, yeah, if there's anything Kirk is great at, it's the garbage time TD

Would have been crazy if the blocked ball hit the drone camera. Do something, Minnesota.

The article was posted to an image sharing site:

https://imgur.com/gallery/AnmRF6c

I don't know that a new influx of personnel is going to do a lot for them at this point anyway. All they have left is spite artillery/missile strikes, and hopefully they won't even have that soon.