It's Draining Men

I Made That Up All By Myself

Can you tell?  What we're about to cover here would normally fall under the yawn-inducing title of 'Demographics' except this is about Modern-day Mordor so perhaps 'Demongraphics' would be a better title.  Art!

Nazi orclettes

     Yes, we are looking back 80 years to the year 1945 itself, which is when Nazi Germany was in real and immediate trouble, the Allies advancing across the Rhine and the Sinisters moving in across the Polish border.  The Teutons were rather like the filling in a sandwich, and a rather measly filling at that, because what problem did you think they suffered most of all with?

     No!  Not over-engineering.  I mean, yes, it was a problem, and you can only scratch your head in bafflement as to why they ever created a motorbike-three-quarters track.  Art!

Teuton ingenuity -

 - versus South Canadian practicality

     ANYWAY their real problem was manpower, or lack of it.  Industrial capacity under the technocrat Speer increased markedly, though getting kit to the front lines was still a fraught business.  The enormous butcher's bill on the Eastern Front and the incessant losses in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and then North-west Europe all ate away at Teuton manpower.  Herr Schickelgruber refused to admit this was a problem, because there are none so blind as paranoid Austrian corporals.  Hence the initial picture on BOOJUM! for the Teutons were forced to conscript boys not old enough to shave.

     Who else is currently running out of warm bodies to wrap in a fetching camouflage suit and send to war?  Why yes, Putinpot.  Thanks to "Joe Blogs" and "Ukraine Matters" for providing an update on this.  Joe was uncharacteristically scornful over a Ruffian recruitment video, showing two orcs urinating on a burned-out Ukrainian vehicle.  O Joe, need you be so harsh?  Charlie Chipmunk Cheeks has feelings too, you know.  Art!

DON'T MENTION DRINKING WATER

     For starters, 1.2 million Russians left Ruffia at the start of the Special Idiotic Operation, and these were the kind of go-getting skilled and technically qualified people who would make good soldiers.

     Then there is the Net Balance, which is what I will call the yawning gap between the Ruffian birthrate and their deathrate.  Art!

     You can see that the long-term trend from 1950 onwards is negative, with more Ruffians dying than are being born.  This, allegedly, is one of the things that keeps Puffy-Phaced Petrol Pimp awake at nights as it's not getting any better, despite state-sponsored initiatives to up the birthrate.  Now the Mordor Diktatorship is going to make being child-free an offence against the state.  Good luck getting more babies out of couples who are behind bars!

     Then there's migration, both emi- and immi-.  Art!

     Immigrant workers from the '-Stan' nations propped up the Ruffian economy by doing all the dirty jobs, such an binmen.  The decline of the ruble made Ruffia an unattractive destination, quite besides the random police trawls that forcibly enlisted these migrant workers into the Ruffian army.  Once in uniform they are sent to carry out reconstruction work, or into the front lines; there are 10,000 unhappy serfs in Ruffian uniform at present.  Plus, the aftermath of the Crocus City Hall massacre led to a mass departure of all 'Stan workers, because nobody believed the Fun-Sized Foot Fiddler blaming Ukraine for it.

     The net migration, which is the balance between Russians permanently leaving Ruffia, and other people flocking to the Tsardom Of Barad-Duh, has plummeted.  Art!

     From a peak of over 3 million in 2007 and 2008, it's now down to 600,000, or one-fifth of what it used to be.  What 2025 will bring is anyone's guess.  Not good, Conrad hazards.

     Then there's military recruitment.  Should you thirst for Ruffian citizenship then you're going to be sent to Ukraine until you die or the war ends, whichever comes sooner.  At the present loss rate, which is around 1,200 per day, Putinpot is going to run out of soldiers or workers or both.  Since all the mobilizable male prisoners have been sent, female prisoner orcs are now turning up on the battlefield.  Art!

     Not to mention the ones aged 60+, which is Conrad's age.  People like me would be a liability on the battlefield - large, inflexible, dodgy feet and diabetic to boot.  "The money!  The money!" is a constant refrain when these characters are taken prisoner.  Yes, matey, 'the money'.  Which you have to be alive to collect.

     Georgij of UM also pointed out that the Ruffian army is still using the old Sinister method of reporting, which is to say, lying about everything.  A captain will claim to have two hundred men under his command, when in fact he only has 150.  He pockets the extra wages.  When an attack on an Ukrainian trenchline behind barbed wire and mines, mounted over a perfectly flat field in broad daylight, goes horribly wrong and only 75 men come back, what does our heroic captain do?  He lies that casualties were minimal ("Five"), pockets the increased wages for another 70 dead soldiers, and claims to have stormed the Ukrainian position.  This captain is going places!  Art?

Ruffian military ethos in a nutshell

     The colonel that the captain reports to will be lying to the general above him, who will be lying to Gerasimov, who will be lying to Belousov and Putin.  So Bloaty Gas Tout has no real idea of what's going on in Ukraine, only that it's bad and he wants it to stop, which is a whole lot easier to wish than achieve.  Art!

Ukrainian drone sanctions at work

Someone Else Is Having A Bad Time Of It, Too

Tee hee!  Don't worry, it's only Donald Judas Trump, who must be looking at the calendar with desperation.  No!  Not the election in November, I'm talking about September, which is the earliest he can sell off his shares in the Trump Media & Technology Group.  It's a grandiose name for a business with only a single asset: Truth Social.  Art!

     Ooops.  This isn't the lowest it's been, that was $22 per share, back in April, after which it bounced back to almost $40 per share.  I've not checked it recently, and the last time I looked it was at $35 per share, so losing $6 from that ain't going to cheer up DJ Tango.  Perhaps one of his minions can buy him a bucket of Happy Meals?

     To put a bit of maths behind this, the Farting Felon owns 114  million shares.  So their value just dropped by $680 million.  Once again, tee hee!

"City In The Sky"

Things are getting close to the wire for the Lithoi, as is Arcology One.

     ‘Hurry up!’ snapped Arkan, and Mirskan alongside him twitched anxiously.  The labouring technicians and mechanics swarming around the consoles backed away from the particle beam cannon’s control unit, loudly declaring it fixed.

     ‘We can’t get out,’ whispered Mirskan.  ‘There’s surface water in an ocean around the baseship.’

     The extensive, shallow water around the baseship couldn’t be called an ocean, unless you weren’t used to the real thing; a large pond or very small lake would have been more accurate.  Regardless of definition, the baseship’s exits were blocked by water up to half a metre deep.

     Diligent operators ran the particle beam’s checks with speed and dexterity.  The giant weapon came into view as it elevated from beneath an irising protective cover, angling up at the now frighteningly-close human vehicle.  Coils pulsed and buzzed, giant accumulators discharged and a searing beam of energy tore into the descending sphere.  To no effect.

     ‘Again!’ called Arkan.  ‘With more power!’

     At this range the cannon couldn’t miss and the sphere was blasted again, taking the punishment without any obvious damage at all, bar the glowing cinders of regolith.

     ‘Continuous fire!’ snarled Arkan.  By the Great Spirit, the thing was dangerously close now – they had to destroy it!

     Bit late for that now, matey.

Enough Text!  More Picture!

Okay, here's another offering from the 'Galleries' of the "Interstellar Research Centre".  Art!

     This one is dubbed the "Thousand Astronomical Unit" or "TAU", design courtesy JPL, which Conrad takes to mean 'Jet Propulsion Laboratory'.   An 'Astronomical Unit' is the distance from the Sun to Earth, for your information, so I'm wondering if this robot probe is designed to investigate the interstellar medium.  The nearest star, you see, is 40 trillion kilometres away, and 1,000 AU only (!) equates to 150 billion kilometres, so about 280x short.

      A short dig later I am vindicated.  Yes, TAU would have been measuring the interstellar medium, also getting accurate data about distances to other stars, measuing the heliopause and getting fly-by information about Pluto.  Power would be provided by a nuclear fission reactor using xenon as a propellant, accelerating for 10 years to reach optimal distance in 50.  Another My Grandchildren Will Witness It design.  Art!

NASA's JPL invents something frighteningly clever

Finally -

I've already earned my brownie points by taking Edna for a trot, whilst it was raining, foolishly thinking 'Nobody else will be walking their dogs in this weather!".  Proven wrong 4 times.