Relevant text:
Ukrainian crews say the fundamental problem is that the Abrams were built for advances aided by air power and artillery, which Ukraine lacks.
Russia, meanwhile, continues to make heavy use of drones in its attacks, which the Abrams struggle to defend against.
Just finished V Rising. I really liked it. For those who don’t know and are curious, it’s one of those games where, if you can’t beat a boss, you just have to get better. There’s some small things that make a fight easier, but it basically comes down to you understanding the enemy and learning to play better.
No particular order, but it seems I hit quite a few different genres.
Same with golfing, bowling, darts, etc. I think part of the enjoyment of these types of sports/games/competitions is to see how close to perfection you can get.
Relevant section of the article where it lays out what has been changing and what still needs to change:
… graft has been all but exterminated in some of the worst affected areas - for instance, government services such as issuing passports, permits and licences.
He also tells the BBC that significant progress had been made in reforming education and police.
Problem areas
Mr Kalmykov admits, however, that the government has been less successful in eradicating corruption in using natural resources (e.g. in mining and forestry), regulating monopolies and in large infrastructure projects.
“Progress has been slowest where big interests and big players meet,” he says.
According to him, “in the next five-ten years the government should focus on cleansing the judiciary, which will make the general system of public administration healthier”.
Relevant sections of the article:
The EU Council finalized the agreement earlier on May 21, which would provide Ukraine with between 2.5 billion and 3 billion euros ($2.7-3.26 billion) annually, with most of it allocated to Kyiv’s military needs.
The European Commission then announced later in the day that the “resources will be available to support Ukraine starting from July 2024, with bi-annual payments.”
The distribution will be reviewed on an annual basis.
My understanding is that some of the benefits China would get from invading Taiwan is the control of Taiwan’s world-leading semiconductor industry. So making it public knowledge that any invading force (i.e. China) would not be able to take over their production capabilities is a small deterrent.
Good news we are increasing the percent from renewables. The pace leaves something to be desired though:
23 years to increase 12% (2000 to 2023, 18% to 30%)
12 years to increase 10% (2011 to 2023, 20% to 30%)
6 years to increase 5% (2017 to 2023, 25% to 30%)
Based on the charts and write up, it seems like China is the main driver of us even making significant progress.
I’d like to be optimistic but 6 years to go 5% will have us totally renewable in 84 years (2023+[6x14]=2107).
To add on to what NegativeInf said and linked, “0.25” is a weird way to say a quarter of a day. It makes more sense, to me, that the zero at the front was left off and it should read “0.25-6 hr per day”.
A bit disappointing, was hoping for a bigger milestone but this is still a positive.
Relevant Text:
California has set a benchmark for renewable energy, with wind, solar, and hydro providing 100% of the state’s energy demand for 25 out of the last 32 days (and counting).
Added context is that it isn’t for the full day, only needs to be part of the day (ex. 15 minutes), where renewables provided all of the electricity needs for the state.
Besides the additional Norway airplanes, this was new information to me:
The primary bottleneck to the Ukrainian Air Force’s fielding F-16s in quantity is not limited numbers of airframes but how many combat pilots and ground crew Kyiv can spare from the actual war, to train on transition to the F-16, Cavoli said.
According to Ukrainian mil-bloggers, the first six F-16s with pilots and ground crew will reach Ukraine in June or July. Earlier deadlines had predicted the arrival in April or May.
That’s a good point about disease and I think it could be a potential cause of the low genetic prevalence.
I don’t know about your roaming free option. I think if that were true, there would still be wild packs today or there would have been roving dog packs mentioned in historical text (possible but I don’t recall any mention of them). Alternatively, they would have inter-breed with European varieties and had a more significant impact on genetics, but that’s not seen.
While I agree that Europeans liked to remove/exterminate “uncivilized” things, that mostly applies to people. I suspect if the American dogs were significantly useful they would have made use of them.
This conversation allowed me to recall that the plains tribes utilized dogs as pack animals. Then once horses made their way onto the scene those tribes switched from dogs to horses for that role. I’m not sure what other “jobs” American dogs performed but I suspect if they were significantly utilized as pack animals they were probably breed for such and with that niche gone they may not have performed well in other “dog” tasks, compared to European varieties.
To conclude, for American dogs to be such a small percent of the current dog genome, I think, the European varieties had to significantly outlive their American counterparts. Whether because they were replaced by better performing European varieties/horses, because they died from European diseases, or a combination of those options.
Relevant section:
According to Zelensky, Ukraine needs 25 Patriots to cover the country completely but Kuleba said he is initially focused on securing seven. This would be enough to protect Ukraine’s largest cities and leave at least one battery to be closer to the battlefield.
Kuleba said that his team identified over 100 available Patriots abroad, adding that he “struggles to understand” why some countries refuse to transfer at least one of their systems to Ukraine.
After the arrival of Europeans, native American dogs almost completely disappeared, leaving a minimal genetic legacy in modern dog populations.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7116273/
I did not do a very deep dive but it looks like there were “domesticated” dogs in the Americans prior to Europeans, but they were almost completely replaced by their European counterparts. This leads me to believe the European versions were far superior for the intended usage. If the American version was indeed significantly inferior for their intended purposes, they may have been at or below the effectiveness/usefulness levels of semi-domesticated animals, like foxes.
Edit: The_Sasswagon brings up a good point about the effects of potential European diseases on American dogs.
Mods, perhaps a weekly post like this would be beneficial? Lowering the bar to entry with some available support and helping to keep converts.
3 Buyan-class Corvettes Cost (yr. 2016): 27B rubles. 65R:$1 US (2016). Each Corvette costs ~$138M US (2016).
Added context from OP article: "the fire had “disabled” the ship and that "its means of communication and automation were “completely destroyed.”
OP Article Text:
The Russian missile ship Serpukhov, which was docked off the exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, was set on fire on April 8, Ukraine’s military intelligence claimed.
In a post on Telegram, the agency said that the fire had “disabled” the ship and that "its means of communication and automation were “completely destroyed.” The military intelligence also shared a video appearing to show a fire breaking out on the ship.
A source from Ukraine’s military intelligence confirmed to the Kyiv Independent that its operatives were behind the fire. It was the first such attack on Russian naval assets in the Baltic Sea.
In recent months, Ukraine has intensified its attacks on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet targets in occupied Crimea, successfully targeting several ships and forcing some Russian vessels to redeploy to safer waters.
Dmytro Pletenchuk, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s navy, said on March 30 that the Russian Navy had withdrawn nearly all its major ships from ports in occupied Crimea as a result.
According to the website of the Russian Navy, the Serpukhov is a Buyan-M missile corvette, and is 74 meters long (242 feet), and contains a variety of different weapons systems.
Russian authorities announced earlier on April 8 that the Russian ice navigation vessel Katerina Velikaya caught fire while undergoing repairs at the shipyard Dalzavod in the far eastern city of Vladivostok.
One person was killed, and three others were injured, Russian authorities said, adding that the circumstances of the fire were under investigation.
The cost of one “Orlan-10” drone is estimated between $87,000 and $120,000, as reported by the UK’s Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.
The 7 listed aircraft are from the Yeysk air base only.
For the curious:
The Beriev Be-200 Altair is a jet-powered amphibious flying boat designed for fire fighting, search and rescue operations, and maritime patrol, as well as freight and passenger transportation.
Interesting article. Relevant section below:
The HUR thinks it can disable the bridge soon. “We will do it in the first half of 2024,” one official told the Guardian, adding that Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the main directorate of intelligence, already had “most of the means to carry out this goal”. He was following a plan approved by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to “minimise” Russia’s naval presence in the Black Sea.
Over the past five months Ukraine has sunk seven landing boats and large ships belonging to Moscow’s Black Sea fleet. The latest, the Sergei Kotov, capsized in March after a night-time raid involving 10 Ukrainian Magura V5 amphibious drones packed with explosives as it was on patrol south of the Kerch bridge. HUR officials indicated this was a “shaping operation” prior to another attack on the crossing.
Another interesting piece of the article:
Pro-Kremlin Russian channels last month released an intercepted phone call in which high-ranking German military officials discussed the capabilities of Taurus. The experts estimated that 10 to 20 missiles would probably be enough to destroy the bridge.
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