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I think it would be a good rule to generally post a reason why you are posting an article. Just throwing in a context-free link or quote doesn't engender discussion much, and it raises the bar for posting things, but not by very much. "Why is this interesting / useful?" is a question one should be able to answer, and if not, it's probably not a good post. I usually read the wall of text stuff if it's interesting, especially if it's translated from languages I don't speak.
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Mar 8, 2023 23:16
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notwithoutmyanus posted:Not to try to distract, but I felt people were specifically curating parts of articles that helped me understand the content without dealing with paywall hassles. Plus your own massive threads of news updates were always pretty helpful even though you did tiny summaries per article, Cinci. What I care about here, again, is to avoid incentivising people to guess/ignore stuff, or the thread to develop a reputation that this is where people pirate this or that journal. Curated parts are fine, that is what I meant with (3) in the previous post – curation shows effort. As for the summaries that I'll be eventually asking be for – I think that “summary” is not the most precise term. What I'm really after is proper introductions for the things you share – so that it consistently is obvious what is in the link, why did you bring it here, and in whose interest it would be to click on it. All of this, in my mind, can be explained in a sentence or two for 90% of the links posted. Just slightly longer than the tiny snips you recall me doing, which were tiny because these summaries took me 10 hours per week, all things considered. Maybe, for a hands-on example: a future poster posted:Here's a piece summarizing Ukraine's strategic planning for the upcoming counter-offensive. Interesting to see numbers given to their reserves, up to 60k being kitted out with predominantly western gear. https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/03/06/ukraine-is-building-up-its-forces-for-an-offensive Also, as an administrative post-scriptum, I would like to reiterate that this is not a rule I'm pulling out of my rear end, but me simply making a decision to drop an exception to an established D&D rule in this thread.
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Mar 8, 2023 23:31
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For paywalled stuff, you could use offsites like Pastebin to dump lengthy texts, and just post the link.
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Mar 8, 2023 23:37
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HonorableTB posted:There is definitely going to be the issue cropping up of selective editing to present things out of context or intentionally misconstrued as mr anus just said. There will not be any way of really verifying or fact checking that unless posters go out of their way to find a non-paywalled version and read it, and by the time they've done that and posted, the thread's moved on. Anyways last I will say about it to not continue the derail What I find boggling in this all reaction that basically ate my whole evening is that full-text articles in this thread overall have been more so an exception, rather than a rule, for the way the posts are normally made here. But yes, half of the point here is explicitly to get posters to “go out of their way” and engage with content because otherwise we get giant multi-day derails with people screaming about poo poo they didn't even read through while perfectly normal posts get ignored simply because posters cannot be arsed to click any links, and not just those that may or may not have a lazy paywall in front of them. Also, misrepresenting your source has always been against the rules, and making a vague post in front of the full wall of text in that regard is not better than selectively misquoting a part of it. That said, while the feedback is noted and while I do hope that Koos opens the feedback thread soon enough for any further thoughts on this, I would like the thread to return to the topic. cinci zoo sniper fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 8, 2023 23:40
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For what it is worth, as a lurker, I actually did really appreciate the news round-up posts. Obviously, you have a much better perspective on if it actually helped improve post quality, but it definitely improved thread quality for me - I'm an ignorant American and generally don't have much to contribute, but having quick roundups to catch me up and give me a framework helps me avoid disinfo and gives me the tools to parse whatever bad posts may crop up
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Mar 9, 2023 00:19
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The "Ukraine affiliated group blew the pipeline" angle seems odd to me, because why deal with underwater explosives when you can just blow up the many pipelines on the ground that go through Ukraine? Are those still running or am I incorrect? Was the NS pipe just that much bigger and better a target? edit- And for the news round-ups: I also enjoyed them and read through them, but often did not reply. They were usually good sources and I just didn't have anything to add to them.
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Mar 9, 2023 00:35
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ummel posted:The "Ukraine affiliated group blew the pipeline" angle seems odd to me, because why deal with underwater explosives when you can just blow up the many pipelines on the ground that go through Ukraine? Are those still running or am I incorrect? Was the NS pipe just that much bigger and better a target? Ukraine gets precious foreign currency with which to fund the war from their own pipelines. Destroying their own would be insane I'm pretty skeptical that anyone but a government would be able to pull this off, but there are certainly people who would if they could.
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Mar 9, 2023 00:38
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ummel posted:The "Ukraine affiliated group blew the pipeline" angle seems odd to me, because why deal with underwater explosives when you can just blow up the many pipelines on the ground that go through Ukraine? Are those still running or am I incorrect? Was the NS pipe just that much bigger and better a target? All I've seen is that they've tracked a boat rental from a place owned by a Ukrainian. That's as far as "Ukraine-affiliated" goes. The evidence is very thin and circumstantial. Don't take it very far.
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Mar 9, 2023 00:40
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Pope Hilarius II posted:I think you're conflating a couple of things - while WW1 was horrifying, most bombed-to-poo poo areas got rebuilt pretty quickly. The countryside's depopulation is what caused some communities to disappear, not the material war damage. It's true that farmers, rangers and builders still find unexploded bombs from that era though. It's also one of the reasons why, while the Belgian armed forces aren't particularly impressive, they are very good at de-mining. Well, in this case, I'm thinking of the 'zones rogues' that got assessed as unrecoverable after the war, defined in stark terms as nonviable for human life. while other zones with lesser designations did get cleaned and repopulated fairly quickly, the red zones were mostly just closed off and made off limits for any kind of occupation, farming, or even tree collection. I think they are far smaller in range than they used to be but the areas that were hit the worst (and still remain closed off) seem pretty bad.
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Mar 9, 2023 01:03
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Well, if it's true I hope for an Ocean"s Six movie about it. 
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Mar 9, 2023 02:43
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BougieBitch posted:For what it is worth, as a lurker, I actually did really appreciate the news round-up posts. Obviously, you have a much better perspective on if it actually helped improve post quality, but it definitely improved thread quality for me - I'm an ignorant American and generally don't have much to contribute, but having quick roundups to catch me up and give me a framework helps me avoid disinfo and gives me the tools to parse whatever bad posts may crop up Basically the same here. As long as people aren't totally unreasonable about length I would generally prefer more content to less. That said, archive links are perfectly good workarounds for paywalled sites, so also good to use those rather than copy/pasting every single word every time. Just be reasonable, no need to get out the cudgel for people earnestly contributing to the conversation. Low-quality clickbait/tabloid articles (such as would be posted on Reddit and in GBS; "Putin has tummyache! Details inside!") are way more annoying to me. Vox Nihili fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 9, 2023 03:31
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FMguru posted:Shifting away from Bakhmut for a bit, is it just me or has Russia all but completely wound down it's campaign of launching waves of drones and cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities and electrical power stations? If they have diminished or abandoned those strikes, can anyone hazard a guess as to why? Just a couple days early with this comment. There's a massive missile wave tonight, per twitter.
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Mar 9, 2023 03:40
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Jokes aside, how is the war going generally? I understand that this thread is pretty overwhelmingly pro-ukraine and that's cool but I'm interested in a more objective picture. On one hand it seems like Russia with their massive military should have had no problem with this. And the fact that this has not turned out to be the case is kind of nuts. But they're also effectively fighting much of the western-world and their hardware and (more importantly) logistical support. Will Russia take Odessa and make a land-bridge with transnistria and call it a day? Moldova and Romania don't seem too keen to get involved but they also might have cause to? Will Ukraine push Russia out entirely but for the small regions that are overwhelmingly pro-Russia anyway? It's really hard to tell because there's next to no news or information to base one's opinion on that isn't so drenched in propaganda that it can effectively be discarded. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 9, 2023 05:26
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Avian Pneumonia posted:Will Russia take Odessa and make a land-bridge with transnistria and call it a day? In a trust vacuum you've started to hallucinate. None of these hypotheticals have any basis in near future reality. All sides agree the front is currently frozen except for fractional gains and losses. I would suggest if you're going to think about this conflict any further find some sources you do trust and stick with them rather than the shadows playing on the cave wall of your mind. fez_machine fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 9, 2023 05:37
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Avian Pneumonia posted:Jokes aside, how is the war going generally? Russia has overwhelming systemic issues with their military that they are unable to rectify in time to matter in this war, from mobilization to equipment to sanctions and manufacturing to import substitution to literally everything. Ukraine never had enough of things to begin with, but western weapons and aid have made such a difference that Ukraine is winning the war in sense of they are actively retaking territory (they undid an entire year of Russian gains around Kharkiv and Kherson in 3 weeks), and now the Ukrainians have held off another major Russian offensive. The next action is likely to be an offensive by Ukraine aimed at severing the land bridge to Crimea and likely targets are Melitopol and Mariupol.
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Mar 9, 2023 06:07
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Avian Pneumonia posted:Jokes aside, how is the war going generally? Well, yeah, it's hard to tell. Because on top of everything you just said, the war appears to be at a turning point: Russia has been launching a months-long assault at Bakhmut that appears to be on the verge of succeeding, at considerable cost, and it remains to be seen what comes next. Did Russia exhaust too many of their forces, leaving them vulnerable to counteroffensives there and elsewhere? Did Ukraine exhaust too many of their forces, allowing Russia to break through and start making real advances? Did both of them exhaust themselves, leading to an even bigger stalemate? Any of these things could be true, and at this point trying to figure out which one is basically reading tea leaves. I think there are a fair number of signs that Russia at least has pushed their forces to the breaking point but the state of their reserves remains a wild card; they've thrown a lot of mobilized troops into the meat grinder but they still have plenty of them left, and theoretically have been training that portion up while the others have been plugging gaps and stopping bullets.
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Mar 9, 2023 06:48
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Avian Pneumonia posted:Will Russia take Odessa and make a land-bridge with transnistria and call it a day? Given that you believe Russia is capable of blowing open the Ukrainian lines and driving hundreds of miles to the Moldovan border, I don’t think it’s pro-Ukraine propaganda you need to worry about. More seriously, Russia never had the overwhelming advantage again that they did in the first days of the war because Ukraine mobilized almost its entire military-age male population, while for over a year Russia tried to fight with an army at peacetime manpower levels, then badly bungled a partial mobilization. If anything Ukraine has a manpower advantage and continues to do so; Russia’s advantage has been in raw firepower ie number of tanks and artillery, which NATO aid has been steadily negating.
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Mar 9, 2023 06:53
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Avian Pneumonia posted:Jokes aside, how is the war going generally? Go to the original thread and read the first 2-3 days of the war. It goes quickly from “wow what the gently caress, Russia is actually doing this, gently caress those assholes” to “holy poo poo they’re right by Kyiv, this is really bad” to “omg lol the airport has been taken back and Russia is stuck in the mud and losing armor and troops left and right” to “wow Kharkiv and Kherson were just taken back” and now we’re kind of at a stalemate until the next offensive. Ukraine has absolutely out-performed any and all expectations because who would have thought they didn’t want to face extermination? And now all the weapons, armor, and aid are rolling in.
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Mar 9, 2023 08:54
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https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1633727866562027525?cxt=HHwWioCxode1lawtAAAA Big missile attack, targeting power plants and infrastructure once again. https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1633720627075985409 Another temper tantrum?
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Mar 9, 2023 08:56
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Avian Pneumonia posted:Jokes aside, how is the war going generally? The pessimistic take would be that Ukraine has been bleeding almost as much as Russia, and while Russia clearly has problems with coordinating and supply lines, they have like 3x the population base and can therefore afford to send a lot more people into the meat grinder and push forward through attrition. I think reality is closer to the former than the latter, though. You see Russia getting increasingly desperate with armored vehicles, for instance, where T-62's now are common and they're starting to use those troop carriers with the ancient naval guns stapled to the top. Meanwhile Ukraine is getting some western tanks and IFV's, plus the upgraded T-72's coming out of Morocco+Czechia. As long as the West keeps up the deliveries of ammo and vehicles, it seems like time probably favors Ukraine.
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Mar 9, 2023 09:32
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One definite consensus point we can be confident on is that, regardless of foreign aid, Ukraine has responded to the expanded invasion way beyond virtually everyone's expectations. The combination of preparation and military infrastructural realignment from Ukraine and incompetence on many levels from Russia has allowed a sustained conflict between a relatively resource-limited, economically depressed East European nation and a huge chunk of the conventional forces of one of the biggest powers on earth- with the latter now, visibly, far smaller than they would have seemed had they just not tried to re-invade.
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Mar 9, 2023 10:07
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Talking of needing vehicles... https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/1633696626962210825
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Mar 9, 2023 10:12
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Avian Pneumonia posted:Jokes aside, how is the war going generally? I’m kinda curious- if you’re worried about the news being soaked in propaganda, who DO you trust? Who COULD you trust? And for that matter, why come to us and trust us? Where do you think we’re getting our sources from? Aside, “fighting much of the Western world” is a fairly Russian narrative. Ukraine’s definitely getting a lot of aid, but they’re only just starting to assemble coherent units of Western armor and IFVs, and it remains to be seen if they can be trained up to NATO standards quickly enough to matter this year. Meanwhile they’ve gotten sweet gently caress-all for Western aircraft and while some noises are being made in that direction there’s nothing concrete on the table and given lag times for training at best they probably won’t be in play until next year at the earliest, assuming they ever are to begin with. Of the toys that HAVE been sent, there’s been a limited supply of the fancy stuff like HIMARS because unsurprisingly the donating nations want to make sure their national militaries aren’t too weakened. And of course, Ukraine isn’t about to get any significant manpower from NATO aid. You’re right that the logistical side of things matters, such as ammo and personal equipment, but this is very much a fraction of NATO’s combat power arrayed against Russia and halting it in its tracks, and even then a lot of the credit for that is down to Ukraine’s own prewar preparations and stockpiles given that Western aid took a while to ramp up and the Ukrainians had to do without heavy support for the critical early months.
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Mar 9, 2023 10:31
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cinci zoo sniper posted:“Too much text to scroll” is not really my concern here, but I would argue that it's not an entirely invalid premise either. In general, not all people are interested in all posts. More specifically, consider this post: Who can't read that in 5-6 minutes? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 9, 2023 10:37
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WarpedLichen posted:https://twitter.com/NOELreports/status/1633727866562027525?cxt=HHwWioCxode1lawtAAAA Yes looks like they scraped up some missiles to bomb some homes in Lviv again among other things: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64897888
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Mar 9, 2023 11:01
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Charlz Guybon posted:It was a great article with a lot of interesting information about the Russian government and it's failure to follow through on its promises. Who wants to read a random five million word article when the OP can't even be bothered to summarise why it's worth reading? And if it really was of interest, then why is it that no one here discusses or quotes its contents? If it's not to be discussed then it might just be a link, articles are nicer to read in their original formatting anyway.
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Mar 9, 2023 12:44
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the holy poopacy posted:Did Russia exhaust too many of their forces, leaving them vulnerable to counteroffensives there and elsewhere? The answer is yes, because all assaulting forces eventually exhaust themselves, even when winning hand over fist. Knowing when to dig in and go on the defensive to rest and replenish is a lesson that was slowly learned by Soviet and Nazi alike in WW2, leading to (as one example) the first, second, third, and fourth battles of Kharkiv between 1941-1943 as the city repeatedly changed hands when offensives ebbed and counteroffensives flowed despite the overall strategic trend. It's been going on for a month, there's been no noteworthy rotation of forces beyond feeding new units in when existing ones cease to be combat capable, and then merging successive dregs to send back in again. If they truly have no operational reserve like ISW is suggesting then another solid Kharkiv 2022-like punch should shatter Army Group South and leave the new Ukrainian mechanised units with all the space in the world to maneuver. NTRabbit fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 9, 2023 12:44
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Cicero posted:The pessimistic take would be that Ukraine has been bleeding almost as much as Russia, and while Russia clearly has problems with coordinating and supply lines, they have like 3x the population base and can therefore afford to send a lot more people into the meat grinder and push forward through attrition. The relevant figures are mobilized manpower - where Ukraine has a large advantage - and military equipment - where Russia has a large advantage. Total population is irrelevant in the current conflict. Until losses go into the multiple million range that will not change.
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Mar 9, 2023 12:50
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Not sure if I should ask this in the EE thread or here, but since most of his videos are explicitly about the war, this thread seems more appropriate. What do yall think of Vlad Vexler's stuff? I've been watching him talk about the russian mindset and his analysis of Putin's regime and it seems pretty reasonable to me. I like how he's careful to stay out of subjects where he doesn't consider himself an expert, but I don't actually know how comprehensive his expertise is or what others think of his analysis. Found him relatively early on because I was absolutely sick of reading Putinology written by brits and americans who *very clearly* had no idea what they were talking about and sounded like they had never spoken to anyone from EE at all or ever been to russia.
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Mar 9, 2023 13:33
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One thing I really don't understand is why Russia seems to be only committing a very small part of their... Um, armed force? Sorry I don't know the right word to use. Surely, if they wanted to, they could just pour in a very large volume of men and material and 'win' quickly. What am I missing? Is it just limiting escalation because of fear of this turning into something big?
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Mar 9, 2023 13:36
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Lampsacus posted:One thing I really don't understand is why Russia seems to be only committing a very small part of their... Um, armed force? Sorry I don't know the right word to use. Surely, if they wanted to, they could just pour in a very large volume of men and material and 'win' quickly. What am I missing? Is it just limiting escalation because of fear of this turning into something big? They committed virtually all of the army.
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Mar 9, 2023 13:39
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OddObserver posted:They committed virtually all of the army. This isn’t an exaggeration, I saw an estimate (from UK MoD, I think?) that somewhere around 95% of their entire army is in Ukraine.
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Mar 9, 2023 13:41
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The most capable troops are in Ukraine, in the bases around the country only poorly trained newbies are left and the strategic reserve (troops in case of war with NATO) Another wave of mobilization could get more feet on the ground but they have no capability to equip or train them in substantial numbers
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Mar 9, 2023 13:42
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Lampsacus posted:One thing I really don't understand is why Russia seems to be only committing a very small part of their... Um, armed force? Sorry I don't know the right word to use. Surely, if they wanted to, they could just pour in a very large volume of men and material and 'win' quickly. What am I missing? Is it just limiting escalation because of fear of this turning into something big?
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Mar 9, 2023 13:46
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Lampsacus posted:One thing I really don't understand is why Russia seems to be only committing a very small part of their... Um, armed force? Sorry I don't know the right word to use. Surely, if they wanted to, they could just pour in a very large volume of men and material and 'win' quickly. What am I missing? Is it just limiting escalation because of fear of this turning into something big? Russia has been throwing everything except the nukes at the Ukranians. What happened is the Russian military has turned out to be the equivalent of a truck which has got a really loving nice paintjob but the undecarriage is rusted through and now the axles are about to snap.
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Mar 9, 2023 13:53
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DTurtle posted:I see this argument again and again. It is simply not relevant. Neither Russia nor Ukraine are in any way constrained by their population. Both world wars showed how capable countries are at fighting despite huge losses. Germany and the Soviet Union both lost somewhere around 10% of their total population (that is 20% of all men) as dead and missing soldiers in World War 2. And they were still fighting up to the last day with huge militaries. I'm not sure this is quite as simple as that. Yes, Ukraine currently has an advantage in mobilized manpower, but it sounds like they've mobilized just about everything they COULD mobilize. Meanwhile Russia's half-assed mobilization was a joke in many ways, but they still have reserves of manpower they could draw on if they decided to mobilize further. This matters because just plain having more divisions in the field would be an advantage when they could threaten Ukraine anywhere along the line and force them to spread themselves thin while being able to more easily contain any Ukrainian breakthrough. The problem isn't that you'll literally kill off every fighting man of the enemy, the problem is that being able to field greater numbers creates major headaches for the enemy. How then isn't Russia's greater population not relevant in the long-term when the threat of a full Russian mobilization is constantly hanging over the heads of the Ukrainians? I'm also not sure WW2 is really the best backing for your argument - Germany famously had issues with manpower severely degrading their combat capability as well as their home front as nobody became available to work or fight. Yes, it's possible to drag out an inevitable defeat if you're willing to burn an entire generation but that's a far cry from "Achieving anything that might be termed a victory," and it's not exactly what I'd call an ideal model for Ukraine to follow. Lampsacus posted:One thing I really don't understand is why Russia seems to be only committing a very small part of their... Um, armed force? Sorry I don't know the right word to use. Surely, if they wanted to, they could just pour in a very large volume of men and material and 'win' quickly. What am I missing? Is it just limiting escalation because of fear of this turning into something big? What exactly makes you think they're only committing a small part of their military?
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Mar 9, 2023 13:54
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ummel posted:Just a couple days early with this comment. There's a massive missile wave tonight, per twitter. Putin confirmed as a goon. He read the OP and was like “oh yeah the missiles”
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Mar 9, 2023 14:08
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Lampsacus posted:One thing I really don't understand is why Russia seems to be only committing a very small part of their... Um, armed force? Sorry I don't know the right word to use. Surely, if they wanted to, they could just pour in a very large volume of men and material and 'win' quickly. What am I missing? The Russians scrapped the bottom of the barrel so hard they sent their training units to go fight in the trenches. The only way to commit more would be to train more units, which they don't have a lot of capacity to do because of the above.
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Mar 9, 2023 15:08
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saratoga posted:The Russians scrapped the bottom of the barrel so hard they sent their training units to go fight in the trenches. The only way to commit more would be to train more units, which they don't have a lot of capacity to do because of the above. They could commit conscripts, but I don't think Putin is feeling brave enough to go there.
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Mar 9, 2023 15:11
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I'm no expert but I assume a part of it is that they need a standing army incase anything else happens. If they commited 100% of their forces to Ukraine China could just be like "oh wait, our border is actually supposed to be 100 miles north of here, oopsie".
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