You'd Probably Frown A Bit
Except no, because February is a dry month for me. No, it isn't a typo either. It's a portmanteau word coined by the author Joe Haldeman, combining 'Collapse' and 'Star' together, to convey the concept of a black hole acting as what we now call a 'wormhole' in space, allowing transit of enormous interstellar distances that consume nil time. Art!
The best cover picture for the novel
Yes, we are talking about 'The Forever War', a sci-fi novel informed by Joe's experiences as a grunt in Vietnam and the effects of relativistic travel on both warriors and society. Yes, I have read it several times and have the triple-volume Marvano comic adaptation to boot. Art!
If there is one thing to take away from this Intro's intro, it's about the methodology of travelling between stars thanks to the collapsars, which act as a link.
HOWEVER you are very much mistaken if you think we're here to postulate on military sci-fi, because Conrad is here to talk about another <ahem> Starlink. Yes, Elong Tusk's internet baby powered by hundreds of orbiting satellites, able to provide secure, timely and redundant internet capability to those with access. Whee doggy. Art!
Elong Tusk
Ol' Tusky was originally quite pro-Ukrainian, until the FSB showed him what kompromat they had on him, and he recoiled. Probably not taking his library books back on time or passing port to the right, that kind of caddish behaviour. He also turned off Ukrainian Starlink in 2022 to hamper drone operations, citing humanitarian reasons. Then, for the next 3 years, he was perfectly happy to allow Mordorvia to use it's illegal, unregistered Starlink terminals to carry out drone strikes and as an operational level comms tool. Art!
Say hello to Dobbinternet
Then, a week ago, Elong - actually the head of SpaceX rather than him - agreed to disable all Ruffian Starlink terminals. Conrad was baffled at this turnaround and wondered if Budanov had acquired even more eye-watering kompromat than the FSB.
Well, no. it transpires that Donald Tusk - his real name, honest - the PM of Poland, jibed at Tusk - the pseudonymous Tusk - about inflicting brand damage on Starlink by complicity with Ruffian war crimes. SpaceX owns Starlink, you see, and SpaceX is going to move from a private company to a publicly-traded one on the stock market later this year. Art!
This cutoff has come as an hideous surprise to the orcs, as Starlink is heavily embedded in their comms systems for use at the operational level, i.e. well behind the front lines. They have no substitute. None. The people who might have been working on a Ruffian equivalent all departed Mordorvia in 2022, going to work in NATO countries. The irony, it explosively deflagrates. The orcs are going to have to go back to radios, which are far easier to jam or intercept, or even <shudder> mobile phones, which are also easy to intercept and jam, and which helped to pinpoint Ruffian generals at the beginning of the SMP. Art!
The orcs have also been installing Starlink on drones, as it gives them Beyond Visual Line Of Sight, extending range to up to 500 kilometres. That capability is now gone, as is their speed, which is now restricted to 50 m.p.h. and which causes the terminal to continually reboot, killing connectivity. Ooops.
As mentioned above, the orcs used Starlink as a comms system behind the front lines, rather than in them, being used by headquarters, senior commanders, logistics hubs, arsenals and ammunition dumps. Overall, the number of Ruffian attacks has fallen by over 50% as they cannot communicate or co-ordinate, and we have already seen friendly-fire incidents where units have moved into target zones without anyone higher up realising. Art!
As a measure of how desperate they are, Ruffians have been trying to pay Ukrainian turncoats in order to register their orcish terminals and enrol them on the whitelist, for which they are willing to pay a whole $240. The Ukrainian authorities chillingly explained that this was treason, punishable by 15 years to life in prison if caught. You might think that there wouldn't be many takers for that kind of money. Stick around. Art!
Ever quick off the mark, the Ukrainian 275th Cyber Security Division, with the aid of some Ukrainian hackers, put up fake 'Starlink registration' bots, which scammed Ruffian frontline orcs out of €6,000 as they tried to get connectivity back. Over 2,000 orc positions were precisely l
ocated, and 31 Ukrainian turncoats were identified. Oooh-err Matron! Art?
That word 'desperate' keeps cropping up here. In order to establish daisy-chains that allow Wi-Fi to function, Ruffians are trying to place repeaters on any high structure, such as the pylon above. There are two disadvantages to this: any node knocked out immediately kills the whole chain, and the orcs themselves are horribly vulnerable to drone attack. The one above has about 5 seconds left to live.
Hmmmmm welllll not everywhere. Inevitably, orc blatherers like Solovyov feel slighted and their delicate feelings are upset, so they instantly resort to nuclear fantasies. Art!
Yes, Vlad, keep taking the medicine
We haven't even begun to deal with Telegram or WhatsApp yet. I bet you can hardly wait.
Ghostly And Ghastly
We have been putting up horrible photos of King Piggy since the New Year, and I am delighted to share a new one with you all, revealing what the Boorish Orange Oaf Himself looks like when he's not stuck his face in a gravy-trough. Art!
He looks positively anaemic but, I think, a lot less of a sight than his sepia-tinted facespray. O and a Norwegian posted a wicked caricature of him. Art!
This brought about screams of hatred and streams of invective from the MAGA crowd, all trying to say nasty things about Norway and failing because 90% of them couldn't find it on a map with GPS and a bloodhound.
'Gold Brick'
How very apt after an item on Fat Caligula. Conrad had heard this expression in South Canadian literature but had no idea what it meant, as the contexts assumed one was up to speed on the definition.
'Brewer's Dictionary Of Phrase And Fable' to the rescue! Art?
It dates from the Gold Rush days of the 1840's in California, when a scammer would sell a fake or real gold brick to his victim, substituting a fake one for the real one in the latter instance. Then to depart at speed for far, far away, before .45 calibre justice intervened.
By the Second Unpleasantness the term 'gold-bricking' had come to mean being incorrigibly lazy and idle, seeking to get others to do one's hard work.
This Cannot Be!
Just picked up on an item in my news feed that took me aback, rather. Art!
ANYWAY I have to rebut this assertion, because otherwise it means the TARDIS and the Time Tunnel don't exist, nor did Catweazle ever make the transition from the Middle Ages to today. Art!
He was a magician, you see, transported from the 11th Century to England of 1970, who was forever trying to get back to his own time. I don't know why he'd give up medicines, flush toilets and Vimto for leeches, a privy and water flavoured with algae. Still, each to their own.
Finally -
From my QI book.
"I eat at this German-Chinese restaurant and the food is delicious. The only problem is that an hour later you're hungry for power." Dick Cavett
If you're reading this in the Allotment Of Eden, you may not be familiar with Dick. He was a South Canadian talk-show host and you can find clips of him interviewing celebrities on Youtube. Art!
Ant and Dick
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