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Russian Nukes Ready To Deploy To Belarus This Summer

Ukraine Now Faces Same Glaring Problem That Russia Has

These Graphics Show Just How Bad Canada’s Invasive “Super Pig” Problem Really Is

Last year, South African authorities believed that convicted murderer and rapist Thabo Bester set himself alight in a prison cell and died. Now, they’ve admitted that he is alive and at large.

Horrific Tornadoes Hit Mississippi, at Least 23 Dead, Many Injured, Massive Damage for Miles

New York nears deal to ban gas stoves in new homes

American corporations gave or pledged more than $83 billion to either BLM or BLM-related causes.

Fire Log #11: Three Fires And Three People.

As a follow up to trying to get the “Bad Girl” to start her own fire, I wanted to see if she retained anything useful and if she could start a fire when she had to gather the wood herself. A good opportunity to do this presented itself in the form of a nephew’s birthday party. The property at which this party took place had more suitable woods then I own (a good part of my property is swamp) and wandering out into them was a good way to burn off some of the sugar high after the presents were unwrapped.

Two of my brothers decided to come along as well. I had thought they were just coming along to add to the pressure on “Bad Girl” but as it turns out, they wanted to try their hand at staring a fire in poor conditions themselves. As a result, there were three people of varying skill levels trying to make fire in the snow with scavenged wood for the first time.

Originally I was going to do something myself while “Bad Girl” was doing her thing, but with so many people to watch I did not really do anything other than set up an alcohol stove using the Firebox Nano stove and light it with a ferro rod. So what follows will just be my observations on the three first time fires in the snow.

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Links For Today

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 17, 2023

Arrest Warrant For Putin Issued Over War Crimes Allegations

This is a sign that American style “deep divisions” are spreading around the world. A farmers’ party has stunned Dutch politics, and is set to be the biggest party in the upper house of parliament after provincial elections.

French President Emmanuel Macron is trying to push through a pension reform without a parliamentary vote. That has triggered a political crisis

Strike grips Sri Lanka as unions protest IMF bailout Related: Sri Lanka’s Energy Crisis Is Weighing On its Economy

Berlin Seeks to Recruit Skilled Labor from Africa

For nearly 2 months, a short seller was warning on Twitter that Silicon Valley Bank was about to blow up. ‘It was sitting there in plain sight.’

Big Banks Agree To Historic $30 Billion Unsecured Deposit Injection In First Republic Bank. Related: What’s Going on with First Republic Bank?

Multiple Banks Curb Trading With Credit Suisse As Deposit Run Continues Despite SNB Rescue

When did New York start building slowly?

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RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 7, 2023

Belarus Admits Russian A-50 Radar Jet Damaged In Drone Attack

US Intelligence Now Says Pro-Ukraine, Possibly Government-Trained Mystery Forces Destroyed Nord Stream Pipelines

Taiwan’s defense minister on Monday said a sharp increase in Chinese military spending for 2023 indicated Beijing was “preparing for the use of force if necessary” to potentially retake the self-ruled island.

France braces for strikes that could bring the country ‘to a standstill’ for days on end

Iran arrests school poisoning suspects as cases top 5,000

Several other types of commercial aircraft also use floppy disks, including newer variants of the 747 and the 767, older Airbus A320s

Lynching the Deplorables Related: footage of police helping protestors was hidden for two years

Links For Today

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, DECEMBER 13

Ukrainian Military Is Targeting Russian Fuel Supply Lines As Winter Approaches

Russia, which is running out of fresh ammunition, is increasingly relying on rockets and artillery shells made 40 years ago, the Pentagon says.

Chinese, Indian Troops Injured in Fresh Border ‘Face-Off’

Late-Year Stumble for Microchip Supply

Flu is ‘eclipsing COVID as the biggest threat,’ Bay Area health officer says

Look more like sheep pens to me but what do I know. Mysterious Patterns Span The Arabian Desert, And We May Finally Know Why

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.

Old Man’s War

Ukraine as a culture and a people are going to cease to exist in a couple of generations regardless of what Russia does. It was for this reason that I did not believe that Ukraine would fight so hard against the Russians. Why would a nation that was going extinct voluntarily react so strongly to the loss of their sovereignty? I never figured that so many only sons would lay their lives down with their soon to be childless mothers cheering them on. This was one of the things on my mind when I stated in my last post that I have been almost completely wrong about the human element of the Ukraine War.

But being wrong about the human element does not change the underlying demographic realities that I based my opinion on. And those demographic realities have consequences even if people don’t react to them like I think they will.

Below is the what the current demographic structure of Russia looks like (you can click on the picture to get a bigger view). Pay careful attention to how many people are between the ages of 16 and 26 compared to the number of people between the ages of 30 and 40.

By Rickky1409 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Compare the above graphs with the one below (again you can click on it to get a better view). The below graph is what Russian demographics looked like before the Germans invaded. You can see they had a large cohort of young people just waiting to come on-line and get thrown into the meat grinder.

By Rickky1409 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0

But the above demographics are still messed up. That is because Communists are bad people and they had a great famine followed by a great terror. The below is a more natural population pyramid and it comes from 1929 which is just before the commies really messed things up with famines and terror. It still has a gap in it from Word War 1, but it is the type of population pyramid that the idea of mass conscription was built around.

By Rickky1409 – From excel file, CC BY-SA 3.0

We have been looking at Russia because it is easier to get historical data. But Ukraine is practically the same. If anything the disappearance of the youngest children is even more pronounced but that may be because Russia has more ethnic minorities still having kids.

By sdgedfegw – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

If you really want a dramatic demonstration of the destruction of the Ukrainian nation (prior to anything the Russia did) click on the below GIF.

By Kaj Tallungs – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

This is why when you see videos of the combatants in this war it is striking how many of them are in their 30s or 40s. Neither nation has a choice. If they sent masses of 18 year old’s like the US did in Vietnam, they would not have enough to make a proper army. Even Russia, with its much bigger population, would be at risk of destroying its future if it only sent young people to battle. And Ukraine likely has to destroy its future and pull in older men just to have a chance at staying in the fight.

Long term, it really don’t matter what happens on the battle field. Neither nation is going to be around (at least as we know them today) for very much longer. If you look at the very bottom of both countries population pyramids, there is next to nothing there and that will carry forward into the next generation after that and so on on and so forth. It will only take a couple of generations of that for both nations to have next to nothing in terms of population. And the war will only speed that process along.

Links For Today

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, NOVEMBER 17

China’s Zero-Covid Lockdowns Sparking Protests in Guangzhou

US blames Iran for Tuesday’s drone attack on Eastern Pacific product tanker

Amazon employees will be in layoff limbo into 2023

U.S. Diesel Inventories Hit Historic Lows At The Worst Possible Time

Gavin Newsom’s $98 Billion Surplus Went Bye-Bye

That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.