Old Man

I don't really blame them for letting their military go. They couldn't afford it, or the nukes, and any kind of military aid from the West would have caused problems on Putin's doorstep. The only real threat they faced was the Red Army, and a force that could actually have held off the Red Army would have been fabulously expensive.

I kind of threw out my back getting out of my chair the other day. A few years ago I did it while brushing my teeth. Apparently it doesn't take much.

Voluntary Manslaughter

Man, you gotta put a trigger alert spoiler on that or something.

40k sounds a little low if they're including conscripts and criminals. It's hard to overstate how crucial the last Russian intervention was. The actual East Ukraine rebels are not that numerous or competent, so the Ukrainian regulars had them dead to rights, pinned down in Donetsk and Luhansk. But they naively thought that Putin might actually respect the border. When the Red Army rolled across, they caught the Ukrainian forces in the flank. The Ukrainians were first forced to retreat from south of Donetsk, and got badly mauled in the process as they had to pass through a choke point that the Russians pounded with Grad missiles. Then they got pinned down in Debaltseve and finally fled after a couple of weeks' worth of siege warfare. Debaltseve is an incredibly critical junction, lying squarely between Donetsk and Luhansk. So with these two actions, from a strategic standpoint, the Red Army not only managed to inflict heavy losses on the Kievans, but also were able to link up their two primary centers of gravity, shore up their flanks, threaten Mariupol, and cover it all with a favorably-timed (for Russia) ceasefire. Any counterattack from Kiev now would be into the teeth of 40,000 reasonably dug-in Red Army troops, and conscripts or not, that's a tall order.

I'd like to think that Rose is exaggerating, but after the exposures of the past year, can we be so sure?

Shadowrun.

Weird how they seemed to have greater penetration through denim.

Sucks gewing. Although a postcard is far more than I ever got from a job rejection. Can't remember what field you're in but keep looking.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregnichols/2015/04/10/militias-war-robots-raise-questions-about-future-of-warfare/ I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Drinks are on tkdguy! Grats!

Is that my cue to take over Wayne Enterprises?

Quota?

There might be, but electronic media hasn't been around long enough for any of it to fall into the public domain, and the corporate stooges responsible statesmen in Congress keep extending the time it takes before copyright expires. (For example, how many written works fall into the public domain this year? Zero, because we're still stuck in one of those extension periods.)

Both?

What? Don't I post here all the time?

I hope so. At the rate we're finding and analyzing exoplanets, if we haven't found any traces of life in another decade, the Drake equation is going to start looking really bleak.

Security modifications on my car to prevent thieves from driving away with it in 2015: - Alarm with ignition kill - Fuel pump cutoff - Hood lock - Pedal lock - 5-speed manual transmission

Hey that's a good sig, can I borrow it?

Finding Stormbringer usually doesn't work out so well for the finder.

Gillian Anderson could vomit in your socks and it would make you happy. And we understand. Kinda.

Willful negligence and illegal dumping of radioactive materials, at least. You could probably throw some fraud and racketeering in there as well. It's been four years and they still don't know where the corium is.

What's happening at Fukushima isn't stupidity. Not at all.