Don't Judge Me
Yes, the 'Metro' newspaper - allegedly - makes medium quality cat-litter tray liner and Conrad used to pick it up on the bus purely for the Cryptic Crossword when I was traversing the urban dellscapes into Gomorrah-on-the-Irwell. Art!
Dog Buns, Conrad was kind of aware about Gene passing, but didn't want it confirmed so brutally. I like to remember him as the worldly, cynical yet idealistic sheriff in 'Mississippi Burning' and the frantic escapee wearing drag in 'The Birdcage', to say nothing of Popeye Doyle.
ANYWAY we are here to look back in both anger and umbrage at Pyotr Kurzin's retrospective on the war in Ukraine, having done a brief overview yesteryon of his analysis via the 'Global Gambit'. Go check it out. And no, that is not a suggestion.
SO. PK took a look at where the Special Military Operation has ended up, in terms of technology and innovation, after 4 years. Art!
Those are not the webs of Ukrainian spiders as big as dustbin lids - although yesteryon I did see a video clip of some evil swine who attached a spider puppet just that size to his pet dog and let it ramble across the neighbourhood - rather they are the latest iteration of drones, using fibre-optic cable to guide onto target, because they are immune to electronic warfare. Art!
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| Courtesy Clement Molin, excellent Twitter poster |
What you're looking at now is the newly-christened 'Grey Zone', which way back in the First Unpleasantness was known as 'No Man's Land', where neither side holds sway, yet which is contested to seek to overturn this status quo.
PK doesn't mention it, because the info is ages old, but waaaaay back at the start of the Special Idiotic Operation, Ukraine used Bayraktar drones to devastating effect. They helped to paralyse and decimate Ruffian vehicle columns invading Ukraine, and were used in what became the siege of Snake Island. Then the orcs developed the EW chops to put them on the fritz and they left the battlefield. Art!
Which is why fibre-optic drones are now de rigeur for both sides. Well, kind of. Again, because news moves faster than Youtube updates, PK was unaware that China, which supplies Mordorvia with fibre-optic cables, has just upped the price from between 2.5 to 4 times the original cost, and Putin will just have to grin and bare it. Or bear it. You know, Mighty Ruffia and all that.
ANYWAY AGAIN these fibre-optic FPV drones with a great big spool of cable have a range of up to 50 kilometres, meaning a team sitting 1 kilometre behind the front lines can hit enemy targets 49 kilometres away. In reality, this has created a 'Grey Zone' up to 30 kilometres deep, where manoeuvre warfare has been supplanted by positional warfare, again very reminiscent of the First Unpleasantness. This multiplicity of drones threatens supply chains, evacuations, troop rotation and night movement. Art!
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| Spot Ukraine |
Ol' Pyotr points out, if it needs pointing, that Ruffia's battlefield performance does not match it's progress on the battlefield, and that Mordorvia is now weaker than at any other time, waging an attritional conflict that is now beginning to impact Ruffian civil society, a consequence that Putinpot has sought to avoid above all else. PK's contacts inside Ruffia - family, friends and acquaintances thanks to the ancestral tree - confirm that, rather than a systemic collapse, there is a gradual erosion of society, which bears up partly to the 'Endurance' myth generated by the Great Patriotic War. That is, orcs are willing to put up with appalling squalor and suffering, because they might win in the end.
Or - they might not. Willing to put up with or win in the end? Quite. This is the calculus that Putinpot is trying to resolve.
LATE-BREAKING NEWS: Ruffian mil-bloggers are reporting that the 'crests', or 'Khokhols' or 'tufties' - all Ruffian hirsute envy of Ukrainian cossacks - are now using miniature drones less than 5" across with rubber rotor blades, which are utterly silent and cannot be heard until so close that orc is bork. Art!
Ol' Pyotr also looked at the previous inviolability of Ruffia, which since the time of the Tsars has prided itself on being able to avoid terrorism that plagued the decadent West. Except not really. Since 2022 we have seen increasingly regular drone attacks on Moscow, which shut down air transport and cost tens of millions on every single occasion. There have been car (and scooter) bomb assassinations, not to mention scions of the Putinpot regime simply being shot dead. On an ironic note, it's entirely possible that not all of these were the Bloodseekers Of Budanov Bringing Bloody Blessings, but rather Ruffians falling out with each other over -
Money. You know, the stuff that makes up the sinews of war. Because being as patriotic as you like will not make up the shortfall in your pension, nor the bankruptcy in your oblast's budget. Another Kutzinism comes to mind; "Time favours the side willing to suffer the longest".
Who in Mordorvia is assessing the willingness of the orcs to suffer endemic poverty, squalor and death? because you can push sheep only so far until they shed and become wolves. See 'Iran' for details. And possibly Pink Floyd and 'Animals'.
More Of Pumpkinhead
As you should surely know by now, Conrad likes to collect ghastly pictures of Donnie Dorko where he has been pictured out of his corset, hairdo, makeup and flattering lighting, or even with any of the above, just done horribly. Art!
As I already put, HIS CHIN IS PREGNANT! and as others have pointed out, there is that hideous scrofulitic outbreak beneath his ear. You know, the ear that was shot off but grew back again within two days. I am minded of that 'Starry Trex' episode 'Miri', about the life-prolongation project that goes horribly wrong. Art!
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| "He could have been number 48 -" |
More Of Mendacious Mechanics
If there's a common theme here, it's that misogynistic mechanics might manipulate male-minus motorists. As in scammers looking for a free lunch might well target a female motorist, seeing them as woefully ignorant about cars and how they operate. Hmmmm well, include Conrad in that demographic, as I have no idea how cars operate. God invented mechanics so that I did not have to. Art!
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| 1876 BHP 2,700 RPM 37 litre PDKNCKR |
It is unwise to try and scam a lady with quick wits, and still less so when they had taken their car in for a full service just a couple of weeks prior, with full knowledge of what had been done. You see - Art!
- our narrator had been to their local auto-shop and had a full list of service options carried out, before they went to 'Canadian Tire' as said company was well-known for various rip-off tendencies. They were only there to get a free oil change, courtesy of that cultural icon, a 'coupon'.
Well. The shop contact was full of bad news about how dangerous their car was, that it was too dangerous to drive and need thousands of dollars worth of repairs before it would be safe to leave the shop.
UNfazed Canadian Legal Expert, hereafter UNCLE, challenged the Canadian Tire rep, stating that they were going to contact the auto-shop that did the initial checks and declare they were suing for fraud, as Canadian Tire had informed that the previ -
Suddenly the automotive problems vanished and UNCLE went on their merry way, just with an everlasting hatred of Canadian Tire.
O Boy Do You Want A 50,000 Word Monograph On This!
As you should surely know by now, Conrad is a bit of a buff on the war in North Africa during the Second Unpleasantness, especially during the first nine months when it was just Perfidious Albion and the Rather Rubbish Romans before the Teutons put in an appearance. Art!
In fact the total was more like 240,000, and they were facing 70,000;
What can possibly go wrong?
Finally -
From my 'QI Book Of Banter': "When in doubt, have a man come in through the door with a gun in his hand" - Raymond Chandler.
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