Gurgeh

I think you've just identified one of the reasons why Dan keeps failing. He takes the petty option over the smart option every time.

XFL here we come! A whole new competition for Dan to fail at.

Somewhat off-topic, but interesting in respect of how sports are run (and AFAIK the EPL is about half the size in revenue of the NFL) Football regulator: UK government confirms new independent body - BBC Sport "The main purposes of the proposed new regulator will be: Stopping English clubs from joining closed-shop competitions, which are judged to harm the domestic game Preventing a repeat of financial failings seen at numerous clubs, notably the collapses of Bury and Macclesfield Introducing a more stringent owners' and directors' test to protect clubs and fans Giving fans power to stop owners changing a club's name, badge and traditional kit colours Ensuring a fair distribution of money filters down the English football pyramid from the Premier League"

There's an unhealthy-looking bunch of half a dozen guys who protest every Thursday outside the local council offices that the covid vaccine makes men impotent. I started a conversation with one of them to explain that the so-called Chinese spy balloons were actually built by Bill Gates to spread the virus. I think the protestor was a little worried that someone might be crazier than he was.

The silence may just be plain embarrassment Three objects shot down by US jets may be ‘benign’ balloons, White House says | US news | The Guardian “We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the [People’s Republic of China’s] spying program, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts,” he said. Instead, a “leading explanation” may be that the objects were operated privately for commercial or research purposes, Kirby said, though no one has stepped forward to claim ownership. The unidentified object shot down by a US fighter jet over northern Canada on Saturday was a “small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it”, according to a Pentagon memo to US lawmakers obtained by CNN. ...“These objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the PRC balloon, and we will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on,” a national security council spokesperson told CNN. Also on Tuesday, Gen Mark Milley, the US’s highest ranking military official, acknowledged at a briefing in Brussels that the first attempt to shoot down the object over Lake Huron missed. The first missile “landed harmlessly” in the water while a second missile successfully downed the object, Milley said.

A video surfaced a few days ago that appeared to show Russian mercenaries beating their own wounded commander with shovels. There's probably been many more incidents; I can't think it would be much fun to be put in command of a squad of convicted murderers and then order them to go on suicide missions. Let's just say you're going to be leading from the back.

https://us.cnn.com/2023/02/12/europe/wagner-convicts-eastern-ukraine-pleitgen-intl/index.html Two former fighters of the Russian private military company Wagner have told CNN of their horrific experiences on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, and how anyone who faltered was immediately shot by their own commanders... “There were 90 of us. Sixty died in that first assault, killed by mortar fire. A handful remained wounded,” said one, recalling his first assault near the village of Bilohorivka. “If one group is unsuccessful, another is sent right away. If the second one is unsuccessful, they send another group.” The other fighter was involved in an assault lasting five days, through a forest near the city of Lysychansk on the Luhansk-Donetsk border in eastern Ukraine. “The first steps into the forest were difficult because of all the landmines spread out. Out of 10 guys, seven were killed immediately,” he said. There was no evacuation of the wounded, he added. “If you’re wounded, you roll away on your own at first, any way you can, somewhere neutral where there’s no fire, and if there’s no one around, you administer first aid to yourself,” he said. “One man stayed at a position, he was really scared, it was his first assault. We received an order to run forward. But the man hid under a tree and refused. This was reported to the command and that was it. He was taken 50 meters away from the base. He was digging his own grave and then was shot.”

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K... But it's probably just more balloons.

SpaceX has been in talks with the Pentagon to fund Starlink for some time. A few months back they pulled the plug on Starlink in territories under Russian occupation, only to back down a few days later after public and government pressure. But SpaceX still continued to ask for money from the Pentagon, and a few days ago those talks apparently ended with out more cash. Hence the sudden "we're shocked to find Ukraine has been using our system for military purposes, this must stop" BS they are coming out with. It's all a play for money.

It looks as if the expected Russian offensive may now be under way, pre-empting the arrival of more Western hardware Russia launches drone and missile attacks in south and east Ukraine | Ukraine | The Guardian The overnight barrage came hours after the governor for the Luhansk region said that Russia had launched a major offensive in eastern Ukraine and is trying to break through defences near the town of Kreminna. Serhiy Haidai told Ukrainian TV that Russian troops had gone on the attack and were trying to advance westwards across a winter landscape of snow and forests. There had been “maximum escalation” and a big increase in shooting and shelling, he said.

Seems like the Russians are running out of windows to fall from Notorious Russian nationalist Igor Mangushev shot dead in Ukraine - BBC News Notorious Russian army captain and mercenary Igor Mangushev has died in hospital, days after he was shot in the head at close range in occupied Ukraine, his friends have said. Mangushev's wife Tatyana described his killing as an execution. ...He took to a stage last summer holding a man's skull. In a video posted on social media in August, Mangushev was filmed saying the skull belonged to a Ukrainian fighter killed defending the Azovstal steel works in the southern port of Mariupol. Mangushev emerged from a neo-Nazi movement to co-found private mercenary group Yenot (raccoon). He was later known to have collaborated with Russia's most notorious mercenary boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as a political strategist. ...The shooting has prompted widespread speculation about who might have carried out the attack at a checkpoint in the occupied Ukrainian town of Kadiivka, some distance from the frontline... Another extreme Russian nationalist, Pavel Gubarev, said everyone knew who was behind the shooting and observed that Prigozhin had for the moment gone quiet.

From this To this 2 years later

Hard to see the point of using a balloon, unless it's just an Fu from the Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

Belgian buyer of Europe’s spare tanks hopes they see action in Ukraine | Belgium | The Guardian The hangar belongs to the Belgium defence company OIP and contains one of the biggest privately owned reserves of weapons in Europe. “Many of these tanks have been sitting here for years. Hopefully, now it is the time they finally see some action in Ukraine,” said Freddy Versluys, the head of OIP, as he toured the hangar. “Here we have the 50 Leopard 1s,” he said, pointing. “We also have 38 German Gepard tanks, 112 Austrian SK-105 light tanks, and 100 Italian VCC2 and 70 M113 armour carriers.” In total, his firm has about 500 armoured vehicles in stock, “probably the widest private arsenal of tanks in Europe,” (and now the bad news) Ludivine Dedonder, Belgium’s minister of defence, last week said it had opened talks with OIP but accused the firm of trying to make a “huge profit” from the sale. “The talks are still on, but I’m not going to pay half a million for a tank that’s nowhere near combat-ready,” Dedonder told Belgian media. Versluys denied that the Belgian government had approached him, and said it was hard to estimate the price for which he would sell the tanks. “There is no point talking about prices right now because we need to check the condition of each tank and what needs to be updated,” he said. He stressed that it could take months and up to €1m in renovation costs for each tank to get them ready for use in Ukraine. “These guys need a new engine, shock absorbers, the latest radar technology – the list goes on.”

Decent summary of what might happen next: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/27/the-big-battle-is-coming-ukrainian-forces-prepare-for-the-wars-most-intense-phase The Russian armed forces declared on Sunday that they had launched a new offensive in Zaporizhzhia region, but the Ukrainian soldiers seemed unperturbed. The frontline here has not moved for 10 months, and the Russians are hunkered in their trenches, which run across the rolling hills of black-soil farmland. They are not going anywhere soon, the soldiers said...

The feeling is that about half of the Russian conscripts were thrown straight into the fight as cannon fodder to halt the Ukrainian advances, while the other half (150k) have been undergoing training. That other half are expected to turn up any time from now until around March. How good that training has been, and what state their equipment is in, is an open question. The Russians recently sent a few of their much-hyped Armata tanks to Ukraine, but reportedly they've been plagued by breakdowns and equipment failure. Poor reliability was supposed to be one of the reasons the Russian army decided to drastically reduce the number of Armatas it would buy. Considering the general state of Russian tanks, you can only imagine how bad the Armatas must have been for the Russians to label them as unreliable in comparison.

It's also been a wake-up call for some NATO countries. Germany let it's military maintenance and procurement programs lapse to the point where it could barely field a single fully-equipped brigade. Now it's allocated over $100 billion on top of it's normal military budget just to bring things back up to scratch. Spain discovered that it's own Leopard tanks were in an "“absolutely deplorable condition” when it bothered to check how many it might be able to send to Ukraine. NATO countries in general are probably rethinking how much artillery and MLRS ammo they should stock, in case they end up in a situation like Ukraine where AA missiles dominate and we're back to slugging it out on the ground.

Given how inaccurate their weapons are, I don't give Tucker Carlson much chance if they try and kill everyone except Tucker Carlson.

Given all the press statements of the past couple of weeks, I'm pretty sure Poland has asked, along with other countries. I think what may have happened last week is that the rest of NATO said either we all send Leopards, including Germany, or we send Leopards with German permission, but the Germans can opt out. And right now the Germans are deciding whether to send their own tanks as well, or just let everyone else send tanks. I think it's got to the point where the Poles in particular are on the verge of just sending the tanks anyway, and this is about preserving as much unity in NATO as possible.

Can't really copy this research paper here, but it seems shareholders are seen as a bigger threat than Russian tanks: Less than Nine Percent of Western Firms Have Divested from Russia by Simon Evenett, Niccolò Pisani :: SSRN "Fewer than 9% of western firms have divested from Russia since it launched its invasion of Ukraine, according to a study by academics at St Gallen University and the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland... The researchers said that of 1,404 EU and G7 companies registered as owning a total of 2,405 subsidiaries in Russia in February 2022, only 8.5% had divested at least one of them by November, with divestment rates “barely changing” in the fourth quarter. "The study found that more US companies (18%) had pulled out of Russia than European firms (8%), and that of those subsidiaries remaining, 19.5% were German owned, 12.4% American and 7% are Japanese. "The Swiss researchers said their study probably overstated the degree of divestment and represented “a reality check” on “how willing, able, and quickly western firms are prepared to sever overseas commercial ties in the face of acute geopolitical risks”.