djm wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 02, 2022 10:25 pm

SS Great Britain by Len Deighton. Decent enough alternate history / crime novel.

Have you read The IPCRESS File?

That's one of the scarier aspects to me, though. Putin must've known about these levels of corruption...in some ways, he designed it that way and benefited from it at every rung. But he chose to pretend it didn't matter. I just hope he won't fall for his own propaganda. Well, yes he did, partially ...

He sees that Putin is relatively weak now so he's trying to make his public image distinct from him. (I wonder if this could be the groundwork for a civil war, but I guess it's unlikely.) I mean, his whole posture was that he was the son of a Chechen separatist who was given broad powers to run Che...

Russia. My reasoning is that Putin is banking on extreme economic stress in Europe and thereby indirectly on the US (if Europe is falling apart, it's a cause of concern to the US government) forcing Ukraine to negotiate. Without western support Ukraine can't sustain a war for long even if Russia is...

I guess everything would change if Russia accidentally blows up Zaporizhzhia as they try to connect it to their grid. They just abducted the main guy there. I think Biden said NATO would get directly involved of radiation spread to NATO territories. That's the biggest worry for me, accidents leadin...

On the other hand, Russia still has several possible responses -- mass mobilization, totally cutting off energy exports to Europe, stirring up some crazy nuclear powerplant blackmail (already in the works), becoming China's bitch for life, and mutual immolation. More or less in order of effectivene...

I was reading some linguistic topics and came across the concept of backslang, reversing words to encode them: https://victorianweb.org/history/slang2.html I'd heard of verlan in France and lunfardo in Argentina but I didn't realise there was a similar phenomenon in late 19th century England, one of...

I've been hybrid, 2-3 days in the office, 2-3 days at home, depending on the week and what meetings I have to attend. Recently I have been full time in the office more as it has good a/c.

Regarding Russian numbers, a general mobilization would solve some of Russia's limitations. The fact Putin hasn't done this yet suggests some degree of reluctance to do this politically. Sending muzhiks from Siberia is a different proposition to sending Muscovites and St Petersburgians into the meat...