Saying one thing and then doing another in order to mislead.

Orban is in my opinion very good at gaslighting both the EU and his domestic supporters. He talks shit about the EU at every possible opportunity, but then when he shows up for Council meetings in Brussels, he’ll usually sign up for whatever he’s asked that month. Then he goes back to Hungary and immediately tells voters that he gave the EU leadership hell and that he got a great deal for Hungary. This is mostly my opinion, but I think everyone in the EU expects this conduct from Orban, and they just go along with it for the sake of progress.

His voters on the other hand genuinely think that he’s a national hero for standing up to the no good, despicable, very bad EU leftist bureaucrats who also just happen to subsidise their economy. I kind of admire his batshit approach to politics, but disagree with everything he says. Basically, he’s all bark and no bite. Just ignore whatever mad shit he’s spouting and assume he’s saying it for the benefit of his deranged supporters and won’t follow through on it.

He should probably stop trying to take Avdiivka then. At this rate, there’s only going to be 15% of his army left by the end of the winter.

Happy birthday Romania! An amazing culture and beautiful country.

I finally finished Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, after nearly 300 hours. Holy fuck, there is so much video game in that god-damn video game. It just keeps going for so much longer than it needs to. Then on top of that they went and added several new features like raiding, and a roguelike game mode which I enjoyed.

It’s a mediocre game, but it’s a fun time if you’re like me and just enjoy exploring big maps, collecting items, upgrading gear, etc. I enjoyed the DLC, but I’m not planning on picking up Dawn of Ragnarök because the mythical storyline just doesn’t interest me.

Call Me Maybe (2011) composer: Josh Ramsay, Carly Rae Jepsen, and Tavish Crowe. Lol, yes she did.

PSA Carly Rae Jepsen is lowkey one of the greatest popstars of all time. Every album she’s released since call me maybe has been absolutely brilliant. More people need to listen to Carly.

“I see nothing special in their return. Wagner is no longer a powerful force. Those who returned are far from being in a good fighting mood, as they know what to expect here,” Cherevatyi said. “Furthermore, they are now under the control of the Defense Ministry.

That’s pretty important. It seems like Wagner had an effective command structure that allowed for successful offensive capabilities. The Russian military will just mindlessly march them into Ukraine’s meatgrinder.

When I’ve been playing for 5 hours and needed a piss for 3 hours.

It has begun! Hopefully we’ll see many new trophies added to Ukraine’s armoury as they start to retake more territory.

There was such a funny quote from an officer during the Kharkiv counter-offensive last year: “we started off as an infantry brigade, but now we’ve become a mechanised brigade”.

Nice! I love seeing Ural trucks getting turned to scrap. They’re the backbone of Russian logistics, and every one they lose means a unit somewhere isn’t getting any food or ammo that week.

This indicates that Ukrainian efforts at attrition warfare have delivered over the summer, and that they’re well positioned to start up manoeuvre warfare again.

It’s worth saying that these elite Russian forces are about as well-equipped and trained as Ukraine’s offensive brigades. There were some fairly well researched reports from last year by the ISW about how these air assault divisions have been getting badly beaten up since the start of the war, and have taken significant losses on multiple occasions against regular Ukrainian troops. Not to write them off completely, but the Ukrainians are perfectly capable of taking on these guys.

None of them seem to understand that Russia can stop these attacks at any time by leaving Ukrainian territory.

XCOM 2012 is my favourite turn based stratedy game, I really like the Long War mod. Saving earth from an alien invasion is such a cool fantasy.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey because I love Greek history and mythology, so being able to explore that part of the world is really appealing to me.

Warhammer 40k Dawn of War. It’s just the best 40k game. I wish Relic would remaster it.

Sunless Sea. It’s one of my favourite visual novels, and it has RPG elements. The writing is hilarious, and weird. It’s like halfway between Charles Dickens and HP Lovecraft. Pilot a ship around a vast underground sea, fighting monsters and talking to Victorian wierdos.

Spelunky. I’ve been playing it for 10 years now, and completed it hundreds of times. I’d recommend it a lot.

STALKER Call of Pripyat. It’s an alternative history first-person shooter set in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl power plant. It’s semi open world, and unlike any other game I’ve played for its story and atmosphere.

Even better! Each one has 4 engines. So they’ll need to start working on 16 replacements. I’m sure that’ll be no problem at all with all of those sanctions and their currency becoming worthless. These daily humiliations are getting expensive.

My entire D&D group. Thanks gang!

According to the internet, that’s about $60-100m worth of airplane on fire.

Am I right in thinking that the purpose of these types of attacks are to show the Russians where they’re weak, so that they’ll need to take resources away from the frontlines in order to better protect that area?

In other news, the director of the Luna-25 mission has also had a fatal encounter with gravity.

I love seeing incredibly expensive RU equipment getting ripped apart by a $50,000 HIMARS missile.