I think that the data Ukraine has on Russian losses is better than in any previous conflict. The drones are constantly flying over the battlefield recording.

I also think that Ukraine has significant political reasons for attempting to be reasonably accurate. They rely on NATO for money, weapons, and supplies. They need to provide an reasonably accurate representation of what they are doing with the resources to keep their suppliers happy.

It doesn’t need to be exact, just a reasonable estimate made in good faith.

Followed by your grandfather’s favorite Nirvana!

Record high estimated numbers of Russian casualties reported on the same day as well.

🤔

I upgraded from Windows XP to Vista after the 2nd servicepack fixed most of the shit. By that point it was a tolerable OS.

I am currently hoping for a major service pack next year to fix all the stupid shit they did in Windows 11.

You know kind of like when they fucked up windows 8, attempted a quick fix in 8.1 and finally fixed it in win10.

Of course they are at 4 major updates with win11 and it’s still shit so the hope is very thin.

LMAO. I did have some fun making this one up. Like any good but fiction it’s a mixture of facts and fabrications to make it believable.

Well…spit… growing up on the ranch we had between 13 to 18 horses around all the time. Everything from Arabians to some workhorses.

100% true. I even sent a nice loogie to get into character.

Now we only shoed them in late summer for the fall when we were working cattle.

Partially true - we shoed them in late summer as it was our pack train for guided hunts etc. we only used the 3 quarter horses to work cattle with. Those we kept shoed year round.

Now swimming is an interesting topic. During the hot days in the summer we would hop on a few hoses bareback and race across in the ponds.

Fabrication. The ponds were all spring fed and came out of the ground at 40F. The ponds held a 50F temperature all summer. Nobody swam in them other than a few dares. We did stock them with trout.

You would think the massive workhorses with their oversized hooves would win. Poweful, strong animals with big flippers on the bottom. Unfortunately they were the slowest in the water. They were stiff and inflexible, dumb and slow. They tended to swim a few feet, decide it was too much work, turn around and find some nice grass to eat.

This is one of my better fabrications. I used the personality of the Belgium’s we had. They were slow and powerful and always eating. However I never once saw them swim. We used them for trail clearing and pack horses in the woods.

Now the Arabians with the smaller stature and dainty little hooves were by far the fastest in the water. The fastest was horse named ugly. He was a swayed back ill tempered little guy with a massive chip on his shoulder. He just had to be first everywhere. He was almost as vicious as the Spawn of Satan aka “Shetland pony”. Now Spawn of Satan didn’t like the water because brimstone and water don’t go together so we never got him to swim.

Mix of fabrication and truth. Ugly was an smaller appaloosa whose name started out as chief. So we called him Chief Ugly then just Ugly. The Spawn of Satan was really called “Cookie” but if you know anything ponies the Spawn of Satan is more apt.

What’s curious is after they were shod and their hoofs trimmed down, they all seemed a wee bit faster. I guess the smaller hoof works better for their swimming mechanism.

Total bullshit. I have no idea what makes a horse swim faster or not.

Well…spit… growing up on the ranch we had between 13 to 18 horses around all the time. Everything from Arabians to some workhorses.

Now we only shoed them in late summer for the fall when we were working cattle.

Now swimming is an interesting topic. During the hot days in the summer we would hop on a few hoses bareback and race across in the ponds.

You would think the massive workhorses with their oversized hooves would win. Poweful, strong animals with big flippers on the bottom. Unfortunately they were the slowest in the water. They were stiff and inflexible, dumb and slow. They tended to swim a few feet, decide it was too much work, turn around and find some nice grass to eat.

Now the Arabians with the smaller stature and dainty little hooves were by far the fastest in the water. The fastest was horse named ugly. He was a swayed back ill tempered little guy with a massive chip on his shoulder. He just had to be first everywhere. He was almost as vicious as the Spawn of Satan aka “Shetland pony”. Now Spawn of Satan didn’t like the water because brimstone and water don’t go together so we never got him to swim.

What’s curious is after they were shod and their hoofs trimmed down, they all seemed a wee bit faster. I guess the smaller hoof works better for their swimming mechanism.

How to create a baby boom in Russia or any country.

Step 1: Stop the wars of aggression.

Step 2: Increase pay so that one person can provide for a family.

Step 3: Open borders for trade and travel.

Step 4: Create housing for families do that they can afford.

Step 5: Free quality healthcare and childcare.

Step 6: Invest heavily in schools and pay living wages.

Step 7: Promote massive immigration from countries with a higher birthrate. The citizens of your country know you are full of shit and ain’t falling for it

Long range attacks are about knocking out supplies, the ability to produce new supplies, and the ability to get supplies to the front line.

Say Russia is getting more newly made artillery shells to the front line. The best way to fix this is to blow up the factories.

If you can’t take out the factories directly, take out components that the factories need to operate: ore processing, fuel refineries, electricity grid, etc.

The problem is all the critical targets are a long ways from the front line and Ukraine currently has limited capacity to hit them.

Meanwhile Russia is targeting all of Ukraine’s internal infrastructure constantly.

Long wars are won by the production capabilities of the groups involved as much as the front line troops.

Medical privacy ends when the condition may cause detrimental effects to other people. It’s not that difficult of a concept to understand.

Somebody who has epilepsy is not allowed to drive vehicles or fly a plane. They might have an episode while operating the vehicle and kill/injure others.

Somebody with a confirmed deadly disease is not allowed to wander around spreading it to others. Their decisions to ignore quarantine restrictions will kill/injure others.

I like to hear the howl of the coyotes and the hoot of the great horned owl nearby at night. We have no issues with cats roaming the neighborhood.

My personal theory:

First off, raw milk does taste noticably different than pasteurized and homogenized milk you find at the store.

Pasteurization: heating the milk triggers the unfolding of proteins (Denaturation). This is what kills the bacteria but can also change the flavor of the milk.

Homogenization. This process breaks up the fat into smaller segments so they stay in solution in the milk. The result is a less creamy flavor.

People instinctually associate flavor with nutritional value. They think that better flavored food = better for you. This sort-of works in tomatoes and a few other fruit/vegetables. However taste perception is a complex blend of genetics, environmental conditions, and psychology. So the results are inherently unpredictable and completely unreliable.

The unpasteurized crowd all fall for the 'it tastes better so it must be better". They then make all sorts of excuses to justify their instinct. " Big corporate milk is evil!!" Blah blah blah.

Large corporations rarely innovate and try new things. Most innovation comes from smaller players with limited market share taking risks.

Large companies buy out smaller ones who create cash cows from taking large risks. The large company then milks the cash cows until they are completely dead.

The consolidation of studios to a few megacorporations has led to this inevitable end. The solution is simple: break them up. If we have 30 or so similar sized studios competing, we will get better movies/TV again.

For many religious groups it’s common for teens and even young adults to not have a clue where babies come from. The biological urge to have sex is still there. So teens experiment around and figure it out but often don’t understand the consequences.

Teens are going to have sex whether you teach them anything about or not. Comprehensive sex ed reduces teen birthrates and STD transmission. It also delays the age when they initiate sex.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1525/srsp.2008.5.3.18

I am of the opinion that most “supply” issues are due to investors. Except in certain geographic areas we do not have a shortage of actual physical housing. What we have is a shortage of available housing at a mixed pricepoints for purchase.

All housing that investors purchase for rentals removes it from the supply.

Traditionally investors have sought out entry level housing for rent. They invest in building rental complexes. They make all cash purchases and then rent it out to people who otherwise would have been first-time homebuyers. Investors used to be the low end offer. Blatant price fixing has increased rent outrageously. Now investors are the high end offer and removing supply constantly.

With AirB&B, the middle and even upper range market that traditionally has had less investor competition is now a major target. This has led to price wars for investment purposes on previously safe segments.

The first solution to the housing supply is simple: taxing income from rent so that selling the property is financially more lucrative. It will have to include a prohibition against rental increases to cover the taxes as well.

The second is to mandate zoning and new construction to match the market needs not the needs of the investors.

Last would be to create a program where builders who focus on entry level housing receive incentives from governments (also include hefty penalty for substandard construction).

Well it does correlate with my estimated percentage of people who are assholes. So there is that…

Windows did a few vital things that Apple failed miserably on in the 90’s.

Mac dropped support for legacy software and hardware on every new OS in the 90’s. Microsoft maintained backwards capability. It was a major reason windows was more resource intensive and had more bugs. It was a smart move because windows OS was able to handle more software and hardware than Macs. This is the top reason why windows demolished Mac in sales.

Microsoft’s business model allowed greater range of pricepoints. Most users in business or at home do not need the capabilities of the lowest priced Mac model. You don’t need much to check e-mail, browse the web, and do some basic word processing. Apple did not service this largest section of the market at all.

Iceland produces most of their cucumbers in high tech greenhouses using geothermal energy for heat and light.

Greenhouse cucumbers grow best in temps around 25-35c. Since the ambient temp in Iceland is usually cooler than this, venting the greenhouse is uncommon.

As the plants use CO2 in photosynthesis the levels of CO2 in the air decline and the O2 levels increase. The lower levels of CO2 drastically slow down the cucumbers growth. The growers often supplement the plants with CO2 from tanks.

Well they rise up until they mysteriously fall out of a window.

You want to really get worried?

Everything we produce in agriculture is constantly fighting off plagues. From insects, bacterial, fungal and virus infections. It is constantly under attack.

In crops on average farmers have to change to new varieties every 10 years. In some species it’s every 3-4.

Global warming is also making it much harder for agriculture. Higher temps = diseases come earlier in the season and last longer. Pest populations are not reduced as much over the winter.

We have also reached the limits of traditional breeding in many species for disease/pest resistances.

There is ways we can prevent the pending collapse but not without some massive investments, a complete overhaul of the laws, and fundamental changes in how we do agriculture.

A long time ago I was the guinea pig/first user for a company developed system.

I often had my 1 year old at the time son with me when I worked on the weekend. He had a great time smashing buttons on the keyboard and randomly clicking the mouse on the test version. He found most of the bugs.