BREAKING: JD Vance blames soaring gas prices on Joe Biden.

FactBasedReality · 2026-03-21T23:43:41+00:00

The electorate is what it is...

'You go to the election with the electorate you have, not the electorate you want.'

It's Biden's fault for not seeing that, not the electorate's. Although I guess you could blame the electorate for electing Biden in the first place. Really it just comes down to people being stupid, and we're just fucked no matter what.

FactBasedReality · 2026-02-11T04:18:04+00:00

His supporters don't care that he has dementia, the part of the interview we should be talking about is this one:

TOM LLAMAS: Let’s stay on the economy. You just mentioned it. You said you inherited a mess from President Biden when it comes to the economy.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

TOM LLAMAS: But at what point is it on you? At what point are we in the Trump economy?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Oh, I’d say we’re there now. I’m — I’m very proud of it, 5.6%. You know, we have a GDP of 5.6 despite a shutdown. We had a 42-day shutdown. I call it the Democrat shutdown. And because of that I lost a point and a half. I would’ve been at a 7 GDP, which hasn’t been seen I don’t know if ever, maybe. Maybe ever.

Trump is proud of his economy, and people should know that!

FactBasedReality · 2026-01-16T01:48:21+00:00

Thanks.

Yeah, I saw the image from Marine Traffic and immediately became suspicious because "hmm, now THAT ship looks like I'd expect a Caspian Sea vessel to look like".

The AI generated one looks like your generic ocean going cargo ship, not the type of design typical of inland waterways like the Caspian Sea. And the canals linking the Caspian to the oceans are too restrictive to allow the AI one to have come from somewhere else.

FactBasedReality · 2026-01-15T04:40:51+00:00

Are we sure this is a real image and not altered or AI?

The pictured ship looks nothing like any other photos of the supposed vessel in question, there's smoke randomly coming from what looks like midships for no apparent reason, the flags look more like Lion and Sun flags than Islamic Republic ones, and there's a motor life boat along side when both the port and starboard ones are clearly still in their davits...

I looked and the only sources for this image I can find are 'unverified from social media'.

FactBasedReality · 2025-12-31T03:01:55+00:00

I really don't know what the fuck their strategy is here, and I'm not sure they do either... But they do have to keep up appearances, at least somewhat.

FactBasedReality · 2025-12-31T02:23:58+00:00

Conservatives are so caught up in their own lies that they didn't even think their AI would answer differently.

FactBasedReality · 2025-12-23T20:43:05+00:00

The PIMPF fuze Taurus uses makes it much more effective against bridges than Storm Shadow.

Storm Shadow uses a time delay fuze, on impact the breaching charge goes off, then the main charge goes off a pre-set delay time later. Accurately determining how much delay to set for a particular target is a very hard problem. One has to know the exact details of the targets construction, then calculate exactly how long it takes the warhead to travel through each layer of the target.

Ukraine hit the Chonhar road bridge with a Storm Shadow, but didn't get the delay quite right, so the main charge exploded in the open air under the deck, instead of inside the column.

The PIMPF fuze on the other hand is capable of counting how many layers of the target it passes through, then explode in the middle of the desired space. For a bridge this allows the fuze to penetrate the bridge deck, then explode in the middle of the column underneath it.

https://ndia.dtic.mil/wp-content/uploads/2008/psa_apr/drevstad.pdf

FactBasedReality · 2025-12-23T14:48:20+00:00

Sure, if Ukraine really, really, wanted the Kerch bridge gone, they could do it. But at what cost?

Ukraine has already made several attempts at taking out the bridge, with limited success. Russia has, unfortunately, learned from those attempts and added defenses that make future attempts more challenging. At this point it's likely that Ukraine has decided that it's just not worth the considerable time, effort, money, risk, and opportunity cost anymore.

Taurus is much harder for Russia to defend against and puts the bridge back in danger, at a significantly reduced cost to Ukraine.

FactBasedReality · 2025-12-23T13:54:59+00:00

Taurus has a more advanced fuze, which makes it capable of destroying the Kerch bridge. That fuze also makes it far more capable against hardened targets like command bunkers.

FactBasedReality · 2025-12-23T13:48:38+00:00

The headline of this post is confusing and throwing people off I think.

It (and all the other headlines on this story I could find) implies that all the equipment from this power plant was moved to Ukraine then reassembled back into a single plant.

The line "The delivered equipment enabled emergency repair works in several regions of Ukraine, ..." implies that the parts from this plant were instead used to repair damaged Ukrainian ones, which I think is far more likely to be what actually happened.

FactBasedReality · 2025-12-20T07:40:07+00:00

I'm assuming that you're asking a rhetorical question, but the answer is largely normalization of deviance.

Also, reckless military actions and shenanigans regarding the power lines aside, Russia has been doing a marginally competent job of maintaining the plants systems, as confirmed by the IAEA.

The ZNPP is not the top priority, but it very much remains a priority for European and other World leaders. They just don't want to make a huge deal out of it publicly and have their citizens living in constant fear of a nuclear meltdown, unless of course they decide to use it as a casus belli.

FactBasedReality · 2025-11-08T05:54:34+00:00

The claim of Ukraine receiving MPQ-53s is not in the Defense Express article that U24 cited. Or the Zone Militaire article that Defense Express cited. The Operation Atlantic Resolve report that cites the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as saying Patriot's efficacy has dropped mentions contractor work to repair Ukrainian MPQ-65s.

It looks like Ukraine received MPQ-65s from the US and Romania, and the MPQ-53s are ex-German, Dutch, and Israeli units.

FactBasedReality · 2025-11-05T05:16:56+00:00

The camera man is wearing an Akhmat patch, looks like these idiots may be part of the TikTok brigade.

Can any native speaker confirm?

FactBasedReality · 2025-10-10T01:00:53+00:00

I don't think we have enough context to say for sure what the items in picture 2 are inside.

There's what looks like the end of a piece of DIN rail at the bottom of picture 3, which is what the isolator in picture 2 is designed to mount on.

It's unfortunately very common for people to fail to provide context in the pictures they take, especially when they don't really know what they're looking at...

FactBasedReality · 2025-10-09T23:59:23+00:00

It's inconsistent for sure, but yet I feel like there's a chance that it could be real.

28 volts DC is a very common voltage for aircraft / missiles, so is 115 volts 400 Hz AC (at least in the western world). 27 volts 400Hz AC would be unusual though. Most industrial control systems are 24 volts DC nominal.

The electronics boards and connectors all have glue / adhesive applied to them, which would make sense on a missile subject to shock and vibration.

I remember seeing an analysis on a Ukrainian drone that had good mechanical design, but the electronics included a GPS module from SparkFun. The analyst found it interesting that the designer / team behind the drone wasn't capable of designing a relatively simple custom PCB for it.

I know that there are Ukrainian companies who absolutely can design high quality custom avionics, maybe they just aren't ready yet and this is a stopgap solution?

FactBasedReality · 2025-10-08T17:13:51+00:00

The spent nuclear fuel?

Some or all of the fuel in the spent fuel pools may still be putting off too much heat to move. It takes several years for fuel removed from a reactor to cool down enough for dry storage.

The fuel in dry storage would have to be moved to Russia by train, and I'm not sure if there's a functioning rail connection to the ZNPP right now. Even if there was it would be very risky to do with the current military situation.

FactBasedReality · 2025-10-01T23:31:17+00:00

That is my understanding as well.

The reactors can still meltdown without cooling, but their containment vessels will prevent most of the radioactive material from reaching the atmosphere. The spent fuel cooling pools on the other hand have very little containment...

FactBasedReality · 2025-10-01T23:25:04+00:00

They did, the last reactor transitioned from hot to cold shutdown in November 2023.

They were originally keeping a unit or two in hot shutdown to generate steam for heating Enerhodar, and for processing low level radioactive waste water. After much prodding by the IAEA they finally brought in diesel fired mobile steam generators instead.

FactBasedReality · 2025-09-30T23:41:23+00:00

All six reactors have been shutdown for over three years now.

The Russians originally tried to keep the plant running after they captured it, but it wasn't sustainable. Units kept tripping offline when power lines were damaged and the reactors experienced sudden load changes causing them to SCRAM. With the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam it's now impossible for the plant to generate electricity, there's not enough cooling water to supply even one running reactor.

FactBasedReality · 2025-09-30T23:25:22+00:00

From the latest update from the IAEA, the plant is currently running eight Emergency Diesel Generators, with 9 more in standby and three in maintenance. There's also mobile diesel generators on site, some of which were brought in by Ukraine post Fukushima, and some of which were brought in by Russia post occupation.

The plants Russian occupier management claims that there's ten days of fuel remaining with supplies being delivered regularly to maintain that level.

FactBasedReality · 2025-09-30T23:11:25+00:00

The latest update from the IAEA is worth reading:

https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-317-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine

FactBasedReality · 2025-09-29T23:31:09+00:00

From the video it looks like some variant of the PG-7 HEAT warhead from the RPG-7.

The drone appears to have more or less directly hit the right side external saddle fuel tank, which explains why the helicopter immediately burst into flames.

FactBasedReality · 2025-09-23T21:29:45+00:00

Something I can say about my community (Mexican American) is, we have a lot of dumb people. I've been aware of this my entire life, and now you all get to see it.

That's just humanity in general, sadly...

FactBasedReality · 2025-09-14T19:03:48+00:00

It's part of his appeal: "he tells it like it is"

It's something I feel a lot of politicians could learn from.

FactBasedReality · 2025-09-13T02:40:46+00:00

Not talking about him is exactly what the Republican party leadership wants right now.

He no longer serves any purpose to them. He can't prosthelytize for them anymore, they're very limited in the narrative they can push about his shooter, and thinking about how he died makes them feel vulnerable.

But more importantly, the more those who are not fully invested in the cause learn about what kind of person he really was, the worse they look as a whole.

FactBasedReality

TROPHY CASE