14 thoughts on “Random Pic”

  1. Very nice. Looks almost like a nebula, if not for that wing…
    Random bits to go with the random pic:
    -When was the last Ukraine post? We were assured months ago that Russia was going to use chemical weapons or worse…
    -My grocery store had half-empty pasta shelves today. Seems an ominous sign.
    -When was the last covid post? I thought we all agreed two years ago that excess deaths was the only way that true covid death numbers would ever be determined…they’re showing startlingly high numbers since last summer, and no one’s talking about it anywhere except nutters on substack (they’ve all been banned from twitter and other social media, of course)…

  2. You can force me to wear a muzzle and inject experimental drugs into my system.
    You can lie to me about the Ukraine and run up unrepayable debts there.
    But — Don’t Mess With My Pasta!

  3. No idea what you’re getting at Gavin. I’m unjabbed, unmasked, un-blue-and-yellow-flagged, but whether you do any of that or not you still gotta eat…

  4. Brian: “No idea what you’re getting at Gavin.”

    Just trying to be humorous about something serious. When food stops arriving on the shelf, things are getting much more serious.

    The people who did submit to the CovidScam and the UkrainianScam may finally wake up when they find themselves staring at an empty plate. Or maybe not. Time will tell.

  5. We’ve seen erratic supplies of pasta on the shelves for months at HEB. Even the base commissaries don’t have much.
    I guess that I had better stock up on semolina flour and break out my KitchenAid attachments for making it from scratch…

  6. Interesting…it’s definitely abnormally low here…I’m in central NY state, I wonder if it’s due to the insane diesel prices affecting truck delivery shipments, something else, just random weirdness, etc….

  7. RE: Ukraine, which the fabulists no longer wish to talk about. The Ukrainians have now captured Russian Frontal Aviation ground crew who were coercively contracted to serve as infantry, and sent to the front as replacements for the “ghost” soldiers that never existed in the first place. Make of it what you will, but my expectation is that if things have gotten that desperate, then the Russians are probably near culmination. They’ve actually stooped to throwing the Kadyrovites into the battle, and they’re suffering casualties for the first time.

    Next few weeks are going to be interesting. The Russians do not have the manpower or the cadre to build that manpower, and the Ukrainians are still growing their forces. My belief is that they are either going to have to start using WMD or face getting thrown out of Ukraine bodily. The conscripted males from Luhansk and Donetsk are already running low, and morale is in the crapper.

    End of the day, I remain convinced that this is going to result in a very, very bad outcome for Russia. How that plays out? No idea. But, I’m increasingly certain that when it’s over, there won’t be Russian troops on Ukrainian territory. There may not be Russian troops available to guard Russian territory; some of the projections I’ve seen done by international (not American wishful thinkers, serious dour pessimist Scandinavian types…) analysts show that they’ve burned through all their available trained infantry, and are now resorting to all kinds of last-ditch efforts to man those BMPs. As I point out in the opening, here: Capture of Frontal Aviation ground crew pressed into infantry duty is a telling sign, indicating a probable collapse in the near- and mid-term future.

    Time will tell. I said this was a stupid move, and would result in disaster back in February. I see nothing to change my mind. If it lasts much past the end of summer, I’ll be somewhat surprised that the Russians were able to keep it going that long.

    Hard to see the end of it, though… I don’t see it happening via negotiation, though. I suspect that what will happen is that the Ukrainians will throw the Russians out of Ukraine, stop at their borders, and then it’ll drag on for years while the diplomats try to come up with a formula that recognizes reality. We’ll probably be seeing NATO naval intervention by harvest time this fall, in order to get Ukrainian grain on the world market. Which almost certainly implies either the destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the retaking of Crimea, or some other drama along the way. One way or another, there will be a freedom of navigation operation to get that grain out…

    It’s possible that we may even see civil war in Russia, because I don’t think the military is going to put up with being both cannon fodder and second-class citizens next to the FSB and the oligarchs. The other very real problem is that the majority of the cannon fodder so far have been coming from the non-Russian ethnic parts of Russia, not the Russian ones. Once they figure that out, it won’t last. My predictions about the spring conscription seem to be coming true, as well. While the data is spotty, there’s apparently a dearth of new recruits showing up for duty.

  9. LOL… Ya still think Pooty-poot is “winning”? Good for you, Brian. The delusion is strong in you.

    I look at the actual indicators, and they’re not indicating victory for Russia. Watch this space, because it’s going to get seriously ugly for your baby-raping orc heroes.

  10. LMAO you’re a lunatic, I said from the beginning Russia can’t beat anyone above the level of Chechnya, you dementia addled loser.

  11. “We’ll probably be seeing NATO naval intervention by harvest time this fall, in order to get Ukrainian grain on the world market. Which almost certainly implies either the destruction of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the retaking of Crimea, or some other drama along the way. One way or another, there will be a freedom of navigation operation to get that grain out”¦”

    Here is a prediction — any direct NATO/US involvement will rapidly escalate to nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction of North America, Europe, and Russia. Because neither side can afford to back down. Recognizing this, US allies in NATO are likely to be very reluctant to deepen their involvement.

    As to grain supplies, the remaining Ukrainian Black Sea ports are shut down by … the Ukrainians. Then there is the problem of all the mines they laid, which means that shippers are going to be reluctant to send their vessels there even if the Ukrainians reopen them, and getting ship insurance is going to be next to impossible. But no matter — the port of Mariupol has reportedly reopened, and Russia has cleared the Ukrainian mines from the access to the Sea of Azov. And Ukrainian grain is being shipped through Romania. The real problem for global food supplies is the US/EU sanctions on available plentiful Russian grain — which creates a moral problem for the West: should “we” starve Africans to support Ukrainians?

    But what can any of us know? From the non-existent Ghost of Kiev onwards, there has been so much fantasy propaganda pumped out to Western media that we have to take everything with a giant grain of salt. Peering through the smoke screen of propaganda, the situation appears to be that the Russians continue to make slow progress and the Ukrainians continue slowly to lose ground. Some say that the slow Russian advance is evidence of Russian incompetence; others say the Russian aim is to destroy the Ukrainian military, not to acquire territory beyond the Donbas. Time will tell.

  14. This story is bizarre:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ousted-ukrainian-official-breaks-silence-admits-she-lied-about-mass-rape-russians
    “The top Ukrainian official who was fired for spreading misinformation has admitted that she lied about Russians committing mass rape in order to convince western countries to send more weapons to Ukraine.”
    The propaganda she led isn’t that big a deal, that’s just politics, “the first casualty in war is truth…”, etc., anyone who takes anything to do with Ukraine/Russia at face value is a fool, the weird thing is why was she fired and is now being pressured (by who?) to walk back from it?

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