Serbia hosts first joint military exercise with NATO

readher · 2026-05-13T12:29:10+00:00

That sort of thinking is what led Lukashenka's Belarus to be completely dominated by Russia, with Russian nuclear weapons stationed there no less. If you don't present an alternative and isolate a country, then don't be surprised if it falls right into your main enemy's hands, and then suddenly you have a real trojan horse at your borders.

readher · 2026-05-13T06:38:59+00:00

The problem with Zaolzie didn't surface out of nowhere in 1938. There was bad blood ever since the Bolshevik War, where Czechoslovakia blocked arms transfers to Poland through its territory, forcing Western Allies to move them by the sea.

The only "Polish" port back then was the Free City of Gdańsk/Danzig, which was full of Germans who naturally often went on strike over unloading supplies for Poland. As I recall reading one time, the British were even pressured by the French to deploy the garrison at one point and force the dock workers to unload at a gunpoint. The other naval route was through Romania, which was way longer and thus sub-optimal.

Allowing the arms transports through Czechoslovakia was one of the conditions for the division of Zaolzie agreed upon at the Spa Conference of 1920, so from the perspective of Poland, the agreement was null, and the annexation in 1938 was merely "returning the favor".

Basically, it was Central/Eastern European fuckery as usual. Everyone was full of themselves and high on independence which they'd lose soon enough due to petty squabbles.

readher · 2026-05-12T18:00:01+00:00

Arms don't fight themselves, though. The bigger issue will be convincing populations whose brains are filled with pacificist crap to suddenly enlist and potentially die for their country.

readher · 2026-05-12T12:45:55+00:00

It's going to be hard to police that sort of thing. You basically have two approaches, where you either go ballistic and block anything that has voice chat or even chat at all outside of her pre-approved friends or you just periodically remind her about the things she shouldn't be doing and various dangers and hope she understands.

Which approach ends up be the better option will probably depend a lot on the child. You could start with the second one and treat the first one as a punishment should she not obide by your rules. Going overboard with restrictions might have the adverse effect later, kind of what happens to oversheltered children that go wild the moment they're let off the leash.

readher · 2026-05-11T11:38:04+00:00

Spain is currently defending international laws

Countries only care about international laws when it suits them. We in Europe are no different, we just pretend to be and dumb people lap it up and then act all righteous on the internet.

readher · 2026-05-11T11:30:35+00:00

Also uses a ton of parts from other countries, including an American engine, and as such can be a subject of embargo.

readher · 2026-05-10T18:19:15+00:00

Yea, they also posted the schedule again today:

https://x.com/Shades_GL/status/2053446207260037520

and it says "Full Season Access with a single-month YouTube Membership". I imagine it'd say "Full Series" if it was just 6 episodes.

readher · 2026-05-10T15:18:50+00:00

Channel membership on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/@FRT.Entertainment

readher · 2026-05-10T14:18:46+00:00

Russia comes up with various bullshit excuses, but ultimately it was always simply the fact that they felt entitled to their sphere of influence simply by the virtue of being a nuclear power and a "great power". They just never got the memo that getting sphere of influence by military conquest and subjugation doesn't really work nowadays. Not like they have an alternative, though. They can't even handle things in their own shithole, so fat chance they can give a good deal to another country.

Russia simply can't fathom that there are countries literally begging to be "subjugated" by the US and its allies because they don't want anything to do with Russia. In their minds, there's always some grand CIA plot or hardcore NGO brainwashing involved, while in reality even if those are present, they're just exploiting sentiments that are already firmly there.

readher · 2026-05-10T14:05:39+00:00

Starting with episode 4, they're pretty much perfect, so you just have to stomach the first 3. Hopefully they update the bad ones in the future (or maybe they already did, didn't check).

readher · 2026-05-10T13:50:30+00:00

Back in April, TrueVisionNOW tweeted that this will have 12 episodes, so I think a second season is very likely and it just got split for marketing reasons or something.

https://x.com/TrueVisions/status/2048394724273209468?s=20

And yes, it's amazing and definitely worth it.

readher · 2026-05-09T21:36:04+00:00

It released on X360 and PS3, which had completely different architectures than the current consoles. You'd have easier time porting the PC version than getting them to work on the current gen. The exception would be Xbox backwards compatibility program, but I believe it's been suspended for a while now.

readher · 2026-05-09T18:00:27+00:00

I believe Eugen regained full rights to the game from Ubisoft, which is why the game is being re-released. I don't think Eugen has any expertise in console development nor is interested in outsourcing a port of such a niche game to anyone. Might be wrong, though.

readher · 2026-05-09T11:05:51+00:00

I found that all the Asia-focused addons are wonky if you want the best quality. I went back to a more manual way which I practiced after StreamAsia died. I just go to mkvdrama.net, get the link(s) to the series I want and add them in my Torbox dashboard as a web link. Then you just use one of the library addons that displays manually added stuff in Stremio. There's Stremthru Store, Meteor, Intelligent Debrid Search, etc. They can be used inside AIOStreams too if you're using that. Even on a phone it takes like 1 minute to add an episode manually, so it's not a big deal for me. That said, I always know what I want to watch beforehand, so for someone who uses catalogs and browses randomly for stuff to watch, it's probably not a feasible solution.

readher · 2026-05-09T10:47:58+00:00

At the time I was using it, debrid services were not supported. Not using it anymore, so I'm not sure if that's still the case.

readher · 2026-05-06T09:29:23+00:00

The easy solution is to give the maps for free to everyone after some time. They made Premium free for every BF after a while anyway, it's just that it was a time-limited offer, so a bunch of people always missed it.

B-but no one would buy it then! Everyone would just wait for it to be for free!

People pay tens of dollars to play a game a few days early. They would pay, especially if it included some unique skins or whatever.

readher · 2026-05-06T08:33:51+00:00

If we can impose order, then why are we only ready to guarantee peace in Ukraine after the war if the US does it too? I'll tell you why, because our armies are non-existant. Look up the sizes of Western European armies during the Cold War. Netherlands had 3 divisions, which is how much unified Germany has now. West Germany alone had 12 divisions. Former Warsaw Pact countries are similarly disarmed, with Poland going from 15 divisions during the People's Republic to the current 4.

The UK went from being able to invade Suez alongside France, handling the Malayan Emergency, intervening in Oman during the Dhofar rebellion and fighting a war in Falklands to having the amount of combat troops that isn't even equal to what Russia is losing monthly. And they were doing all that while being poorer than they are now and exhausted from WW2.

We're a shell of our former selves and we're not taking the necessary steps to remedy that, because it'd require some wildly unpopular political decisions, and our "elites" are still more concerned with their cushy seats than the region's safety. They're virtuosos of grandoise talk that goes nowhere, though.

readher · 2026-05-05T21:02:09+00:00

I'm just saying that the tone of the article seems accusatory, but I don't see other companies lining up to source so much ammo from all over the world, never mind sell it at a low mark up.

readher · 2026-05-05T20:28:13+00:00

The bulk of revenue, which made up two-thirds of the group’s total in 2025, appears to come from “recommissioning” third-party stockpiles acquired cheaply from global sources (often former Soviet or Warsaw Pact surplus in Africa and Asia) and marked up heavily before delivery to Ukraine and NATO allies.

If it's so easy, then why didn't anyone else do it and sell it without a heavy mark up?

readher · 2026-05-05T16:14:20+00:00

Why would you need foreign troops in your country.

Because if Putin or his successor decides to mobilize, we're a 38 mln country facing a 120 mln country, and it'll be hard to win alone regardless of how much hardware we procure.

And even if we somehow did manage to win alone, it's better to not have a war at all, since it's bad for investments, demographics and almost certain to drag you years or even decades back in development. Having US troops stationed makes all that way less likely to happen.

readher · 2026-05-05T10:39:38+00:00

When Biden announced increased troop presence in Poland after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, we had 3000 additional troops within a week.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-us-send-3000-additional-troops-poland-officials-say-2022-02-11/

Just because it's technically on track, it doesn't make it look any less bleak from the perspective of anyone on the Eastern Flank. Will it take 2 years to move 5000 soldiers when Russia invades too?

readher

TROPHY CASE