Gurgeh

There are all sorts of rumors flying around. - the Germans wont budge unless the US sends Abrams because... they want a united front? Seems a bit fishy, as if the Germans allowed it, there's probably at least 3 other countries who'd send Leopards so it wouldn't just be the Germans anyway - the US wont send Abrams because the Ukrainians don't have the infrastructure to support them. Perhaps a better excuse, but it hardly seems an insurmountable problem. - several European countries are fed up of all the dancing around and will send Leopards to Ukraine with or without German approval. This is probably some kind of breach of contract but I'm not sure the consequences will do much to stop a transfer in the short term, given Poland shares a border with Ukraine and with most of the countries who want to ship Leopards to the war. Aside from the lack of tanks there's been a large amount of equipment promised to Ukraine from various countries, including lots of artillery pieces and almost a hundred APCs and IFVs other than the Bradleys and Marders announced earlier.

IIRC the recent wargaming about a conflict around Taiwan had the US and allies beating back China, but the navies of both sides were almost destroyed in the process. In the second world war, the industrial might of the US allowed it to outproduce Japan, so whatever shortfall the US might have had after Pearl Harbor was more than made up before Japan could take enough advantage of it. By the end of the war the rate of US warship production was ridiculous. Today, China has a significant edge in warship production, bearing in mind that most of their navy is so new they haven't reached the stage of having to maintain lots of older ships. At some point they'll have to slow down so they don't make more ships than they can take care of. Their missiles were designed mainly to keep US carriers away from the Chinese coast before they had created a significant navy.

Took my wife-then-fiancée to one, the food was fantastic but we figured a short holiday would have provided more fun at about the same price.

There's a few countries that would very much like to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, and there are ten times as many Leopard 2s out there as Challengers. But none of the countries can do so without the Germans agreeing to it, and they've been dragging their feet for weeks, so hopefully this will nudge them into action. And on the crazy front: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/14/ex-russian-president-suggests-japanese-pm-should-ritually-disembowel-himself-dmitry-medvedev-fumio-kishida Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has accused Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida of shameful subservience to the US and suggested he should ritually disembowel himself...Rather than demanding US repentance, Kishida had shown he was “just a service attendant for the Americans”. He said such shame could only be washed away by committing seppuku – a form of suicide by disembowelment, also known as hara-kiri – at a meeting of the Japanese cabinet after Kishida’s return.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/11/ukraine-military-denies-russian-forces-have-captured-soledar Footage posted from Soledar by a Ukrainian soldier from a drone unit – identified by the call sign Maygar at 10am on Wednesday – suggested heavy clashes were continuing but Ukrainian forces were still holding positions... Accounts from Ukrainian soldiers on that sector of the front suggested Russia had moved Wagner fighters from Bakhmut to focus solely on the battle for Soledar. ...While western military analysts have geolocated Wagner units in the centre, where there has been heavy fighting for the main administrative building, Russian claims to have taken the south-west of the area – where Ukraine had recently been mounting a defence close to the saltmines – appeared more questionable. ...Some prominent Russian military bloggers have urged caution about the situation in Soledar and said intense combat in the centre and outskirts continued during the night. The Institute for the Study of War was also cautious over the Russian claims, noting that the fall of the city might prove to be of limited value in the fight for Bakhmut. “Even taking the most generous Russian claims at face value, the capture of Soledar would not portend an immediate encirclement of Bakhmut. Control of Soledar will not necessarily allow Russian forces to exert control over critical Ukrainian ground lines of communication into Bakhmut,” the US thinktank said.

Looks like they might have taken it. It's questionable whether it's of "huge strategic importance" though; it makes the defence of Bakhmut harder for sure, but not impossible. It's more likely the standard Wagner group strategy of seizing natural resources wherever they are deployed, just as they've taken control of mines and oil fields in Africa. Head of Russia’s Wagner group says his troops have taken control of Soledar | Ukraine | The Guardian The head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has claimed his forces have completed the takeover of the Ukrainian town of Soledar, which if confirmed would mark Moscow’s first major battlefield success since last summer... Prigozhin said on Tuesday Ukrainian troops were surrounded in the centre of the town and “there are street battles ongoing. The number of prisoners taken will be announced tomorrow.” ...there was no confirmation forthcoming from Ukrainian officials of Prigozhin’s claims, but there had been suggestions in Kyiv and western capitals over recent days that the fall of Soledar was imminent.

Maybe we should get an AI to call our plays...

More Blondie from even further back...

Ukraine says forces closer to recapturing key eastern city of Kreminna | Ukraine | The Guardian The regional governor of Luhansk, Serhiy Haidai, said fighters in part of the city controlled by Russian command were forced to retreat to Rubizhne, a town a few miles to the south-east, as a result of Ukrainian military pressure. “The Russians understand that if they lose Kreminna, their entire line of defence will fall,” Haidai wrote on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday. “The Russian occupation troops managed to build a very powerful defence in a month, even a little more. They are bringing there a huge amount of reserves and equipment. They are constantly renewing their forces.” Kreminna is about 30 miles north of Bakhmut, which the Russians have been trying to take for months.

That carrier was always more of a status symbol than a useful asset. If a country is serious about operating aircraft carriers, it needs at least two, because every 4 years or so your carrier will need an overhaul that lasts 9 months, which would be an inconvenient time to need one. The Russian surface navy was designed around loading as many missiles as they could fit onto a ship to try and sink US carriers and defend against their aircraft. They knew they couldn't match the US spending on planes and carriers, so they focused on the missiles to take them out. Putin, of course, has different ambitions and would very much like the force projection that carriers provide, but unless the Chinese build him some (which is highly unlikely) it's not going to happen.

Epic stage invasion once the song gets going

One of the great videos

‘Losing the plot’: Trump mocked after announcing superhero card collection | Donald Trump | The Guardian Donald Trump walked into a comic-book universe of internet mockery on Thursday, when in a carefully trailed announcement he introduced his “official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card” collection with a picture of himself in superhero costume, cape and “Trump Champion” belt. ... But when the announcement came on Thursday, Trump said he was merely offering supporters “limited edition cards featur[ing] amazing ART of my Life & Career”, which he promised would prove “very much like a baseball card but hopefully much more exciting”. “GET YOUR CARDS NOW!” the 76-year-old former president commanded, above the picture of himself standing in a ring for boxing or wrestling, muscles rippling under a red leotard and wearing high blue boots emblazoned with “45” (his presidential number) and an American flag as a cape. The cards, the declared candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024 said, cost “Only $99 each” and “would make a great Christmas gift”. “Don’t Wait,” Trump added. “They will be gone, I believe, very quickly!”

What enabled the big boost in fusion energy announced this week? | Ars Technica "Before we get to visions of fusion power plants dotting the landscape, however, there's the uncomfortable fact that producing the 2 megajoules of laser power that started the fusion reaction took about 300 megajoules of grid power, so the overall process is nowhere near the break-even point. So, while this was a real sign of progress in getting this form of fusion to work, we're still left with major questions about whether laser-driven fusion can be optimized enough to be useful."

EDM from the 1930s...

Some weird stuff was tried with weather "Operation Sober Popeye ... was a military cloud-seeding project carried out by the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War in 1967–1972. The highly classified program attempted to extend the monsoon season over specific areas of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in order to disrupt North Vietnamese military supplies by softening road surfaces and causing landslides." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye

Up until the 90s, in the FA cup if the game ended as a draw, they'd replay the game a few days later, and keep replaying it until someone won. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2009/nov/21/oxford-city-alvechurch-longest-fa-cup "We played each other six times in less than three weeks - Saturday, Tuesday, Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, Monday - and four of those games went to extra time. Plus we had a league game in between, and we all had full-time jobs as well. Then we had to play Aldershot in the first round proper on the Wednesday, two days after we finally beat Oxford, by which time we were on our knees." Couldn't do that in the world cup of course,

It was almost certainly unintentional, in which case Poland will probably activate Article 4, which will trigger some kind of increase in allied defence of their territory. The obvious choice would be an immediate beefing up of missile defences along the borders. The Russian reaction to it seems quite panicky to me, not what I'd expect if this was some really stupid idea of theirs to warn Nato off.

The problem with Henry isn't that he can't build a successful sports franchise - because he clearly can. It's that with him, it's all about the money. He sticks with something as long as it follows his financial projections, and once it fails to do so, he bails. With Liverpool, it's not about it being a down year after a successful rebuild, it's about the government blocking the plans to form a European Super League which would have made Henry huge amounts of money. With the Super League cash gone, he's selling up, whether Liverpool win or lose. His interest in Washington is about how much money he can make, taking over a franchise that should be extremely lucrative in the hands of a competent owner, and getting said franchise at a bottom dollar price. If he takes over, we'll be better run and very likely more successful, but he won't be doing it for the love of the team, or the game, or even winning. It'll be about his bank balance.

Russia’s loss of Kherson signals change in Putin’s strategy | Ukraine | The Guardian When Ukraine launched its counteroffensive against Kherson at the end of August its military knew it lacked the combat power to storm the city. However, strikes on the bridges over the Dnipro limited Russia’s ability to supply its troops with heavy equipment, while the river protected Ukrainian forces from counterattack. This favourable battlefield geometry allowed Ukraine to create a killing area in which its artillery could inflict heavy casualties on Russia’s most motivated and competent units. ...Abandoning the city also had implications for Russia’s strategy to occupy Ukraine. Without a bridgehead on the right bank of the Dnipro, Russian forces will not be able to threaten offensive operations in the spring against Mykolaiv, even if it does generate new combat units from its mobilisation. The defensibility of the river, which Russian forces are counting on to stabilise their casualties, also ensures that Ukraine can shift resources from this axis and offers security to Ukrainian industries on its southern coast. Despite these considerations, the Kremlin eventually concluded that it could more easily weather the political fallout from an orderly withdrawal than from eventually abandoning the city after months more of losses. In doing so Putin has approved a shift in Russia’s strategy; one that seeks to wear out Ukrainian offensive operations against a newly constructed defence line, letting economic warfare exhaust western will and munitions stocks, while regenerating new forces for next year. ...Kherson is a step towards victory and demonstrates what can be achieved if there is a steady supply of western military technical assistance. It also underscores the importance of convincing the Kremlin that a managed withdrawal offers better prospects than eventual defeat.

I hope it doesn't happen, but I can definitely see the Russians blowing up the dam and flooding the city once they've pulled back. Both the Soviets and the Nazis did it in WW2, and thousands died in the aftermath - anywhere from 20,000 to 100,000. From what little information there is, it seems the Ukrainian army broke through at Snihurivka, a town on the edge of the Inhulets river west of Kherson. The Russians have destroyed bridges across that river as they retreated, but there's not a lot between the Ukrainians and Kherson now. Although of course, crossing 30 miles of open terrain isn't exactly safe. If I was the Ukrainians, I would almost be reluctant to enter the city in force. There'd be house-to-house fighting, constant shelling and the destruction of buildings from the Russians on the other side of the Dniepr, and the risk of that dam upstream being blown up and wiping out any troops in the city.

He's selling up at Liverpool FC because the authorities blocked the attempt to form a breakaway European league. That would have destroyed the structure of the game, but earned the already-wealthy owners of the elite clubs vast sums of money. So he knows how to run a sport franchise, but IMO he's much more interested in making a profit than winning. Not the worst owner we could have, but not the best.