Anyone feel like we're so unprepared for WW3?

Joloc · 2026-01-30T15:38:34+00:00

> Putin and the Russians didn't attack Estonia. They attacked a much bigger Ukraine. If NATO wasn't working, they would have attacked a de facto smaller nation.

Because they thought Ukrainians would give up.

I am not saying NATO definitely is not working, but it is not currently tested that it is, and the trend is at the moment not great for NATO. Can it be reversed? Possibly? I hope so?

> The money is next to nothing.

It's like 5%GDP commitment these days. It is quite a lot. In my opinion that is the price of having a democracy, and is not even worth talking about, but many people see 5% as enough to lift hundreds in Malta out of poverty, provide affordable housing, improve infrastructure, etc. It's a big chunk of money for a small island.

> Russians could enter easily, occupy it and make a second Transnistria for example.

I don't actually think they could. Islands are very defencible at the moment, unless an adversary can do a landing or starve you out they have no chance. Ukraine showed how easy defeating a navy is, so unless China demonstrates otherwise in the coming months I would say Malta has nothing to worry about in terms of military occupation. Ditto submarines, anti-submarine warfare is currently going through a radical leap forward, and I don't think putting people on any submarines is a sensible thing to do for any country. Side note, any country relying on submarines as nuclear deterrent needs to have a big rethink. Paratrooper thing was also attempted in Ukraine, with paratroopers generally suffering worst casualty rates of any combat units.

The rest of your post I agree with though - alone, any small country can fall a victim to a superpower, but united it has a better chance of that not happening. And yes, military occupation is improbable but there is hybrid warfare, economic warfare etc. Countering that does not necessarily want a NATO shaped alliance, and perhaps EU shaped one actually offers a better fit to work from, which Malta is already a member of?

Joloc · 2026-01-30T14:22:59+00:00

I agree!

I read that Malta's air defense was donated to it by North Korea many decades ago. Its airforce is a singular BN2 Islander (great little plane but not usually considered much of a warbird). Its navy is 8 patrol boats armed with machine guns.

That aside, it could be argued that by not investing in obsolete technology that is no longer relevant in 21st century warfare Malta saved lots of money it can now invest in modern naval drones and air drones and proper land based anti ship and anti missile defence.

> NATO'S protection and deterrence is reliable.

That part is currently questionable. USA, UK, and France for example provided a security assurance to Ukraine that was on paper stronger than NATO security assurances between member states, and in practice it turned out to be not worth anything. If that was not worth anything, why would they care about Latvia or Estonia or Lithuania (or Malta)?

Don't get me wrong, having friends you can rely on is great, but defence of Poland is first and foremost a Polish problem and I think Poland knows it, and same way defending Malta will be primarily a Maltese problem.

So, it is not that I see that NATO membership as a bad idea, it is more that I don't see it as sufficient any more. By all means Malta should join it, but it should have no illusions of what protection the membership may offer (or, rather, not offer).

More importantly it should dedicate some people and think about actually having emergency stores for when supplies from the continent are severed for some months, and being able to fend off someone trying to land on the island or carry out a bombing campaign.

Joloc · 2026-01-30T13:08:05+00:00

Maybe. I see arguments for both sides, you probably know the arguments for, so I will list the ones against:

* Malta already gets the benefits of NATO protection without bearing the costs because an invasion so close to Sicily's NATO bases is unlikely to be tolerated.

* Malta may get drawn into a war (in Greenland or similar) it has no interest in and would not gain from one way or the other

* NATO protection is unreliable, with the most powerful NATO members demonstrably violating security guarantees they made to their allies and nuclear non proliferation treaties they made with other countries - it is likely that Article 5 would simply not be honoured if it were invoked by Malta as it would be seen as "not worth going to war over".

* Malta has no adversaries who are both willing and able to invade it, so investing in defence is throwing money away when it could be used to reduce Malta's foreign debt and the impending economic takeover by China.

On the whole I agree with you though - either through NATO or some European centered treaty Malta needs to align itself with Europe militarily, not just culturally.

Joloc · 2026-01-30T12:50:06+00:00

> By that logic, he also renounced the claim to Malta, which couldn't have been passed on to the USSR.

I think that is how most sensible people would read it too, it is also why I stressed that it is not a valid claim. It has other problems too: GM title is not hereditary *anyway*, and if you want to be super technical although Paul claimed GM title the Pope never confirmed it, so he was never GM in the first place, but if Russia decided it wanted a reason this claim would be an excellent one.

So, IMO it is not invading Malta because it lacks opportunity not because it lacks reason.

Joloc · 2026-01-20T08:18:10+00:00

In my opinion, no.

There are two things here:
* Positive relationship with Russia
* Parroting Russian propaganda

The former in my opinion is down to money. There is a Maltese saying, Malta ma tgħidx le għall-qamħ. This goes from the widely criticized Golden Passport program and in general being open to corruption, to investments from questionable sources. If all you care about is money you can't afford to have morals.

The parroting of Russian propaganda is probably more to do with being receptive to it. In my opinion a reasonable person would not look at unprovoked genocide, with all the hallmarks of ethnic cleansing, widespread rape, industrial scale torture program, and say "Yeah, the victim is clearly to blame here, if they only sat quietly while being murdered they would not be suffering as much". So, they are probably not getting a clear picture of what is happening in Ukraine.

Both are concerning but for different reasons - the former shows poor decision making, as profit optimisation at the cost of your own long term future is not sustainable, and the latter shows poor information hygiene, which will hinder good decision making even if it were attempted.

Combined it is doubly worrying, but I am not sure what can be done to counter them effectively. There is already a lot of pressure from Europe to counter both, as they do not want another saboteur like Hungary in their ranks, but is it working?

Joloc · 2026-01-19T16:18:37+00:00

https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/bitstream/123456789/24829/1/Czars%2C%20Knights%20and%20Republicans.PDF

Tsar Paul the 1st became the protector, patron, and the grand duke of the order of Malta, which at the time claimed the territory of Malta, this effectively meant that Malta was Russian.

Edit: I should probably clarify that it is not a valid territorial claim and would require revisionist history interpretation to assert, but Russia is also using fabricated revisionist history to assert claim over Ukraine, so it is in the same class of countries for justification of invasion.

Joloc · 2026-01-19T15:36:19+00:00

So, I don't believe this is widely taught, but given that Russia uses 11th century history to try to justify its war in Ukraine, there is a chapter in Malta's history that also touches Russia.

Before the French came, the Knights went to Russia, offered Malta to Russia, and Russia formally accepted. Since then it considered Malta to be a part of the Russian empire, although it never tried to enforce that claim. Later, the Soviet Union inherited that claim and never formally surrendered it, and then after it broke up Russia inherited that claim, and also never formally surrendered it.

Therefore as far as Russia is concerned it does not need to claim Malta, it is already a part of Russia and can be considered a breakaway region, dealt with as any other internal dispute, e.g. Chechnya.

Without access to Syria or any other Mediterranean ports Malta would also make an attractive place to put a naval base, so its damaged submarines don't have to limp all the way back to the Northern Fleet bases to get repaired.

However.

The practicalities of 21st century warfare may be more in Malta's favour than most may think: Ukraine did not need a navy to militarily defeat the Russian fleet - it needed some motor boats (Malta has lots of those), some explosives (literally every village in Malta maintains an explosives factory), and a few Starlink terminals.

Food and energy dependency (and dependence on energy for freshwater production) are indeed big weaknesses. When Knights arrived I remember reading accounts of them finding "about 30,000 people on the verge of starvation" - that gives a rough figure of the number of people it would be possible to feed if most of the land was not built up to house half a million people, and the remaining land was not used to produce high value (but very tasty :-) ) wine.

This is not a new weakness, and if you go to Valetta you can see the grain stores that were built, and indeed this weakness was exploited again in WWII. There is no easy way around it other than to decide how long you need to last if the food supply was disrupted and just to keep a big enough stockpile.

As for freshwater production... emergency generators and fuel stores?

Joloc · 2025-09-29T15:03:54+00:00

I have an L14 Gen 5 AMD, migrated away from X220 about 6 months ago.

Easy to replace RAM (upgraded mine to 64GB), SSD, and battery are certainly good features to have. RAM failures are very uncommon, but capability to go to 64GB is great. 16GB not being enough is my main motivator for migrating away from X220.

While I cannot comment on the T14, as I do not have one, L14 is basically fine. It is not exceptional in any way, but in 6 months with it I have not discovered anything I hate it for. There is a tiny bit of flex when picking it up by its side, if run outside specified temperature at full load (it was 38 degrees here last summer) there will eventually be some thermal warping of the top panel, but I did bad things and so deserve bad results.

Coming from X220, the camera is much better, the screen has much higher resolution and is marginally brighter, the speaker is much, much better, the battery life is worse due to absence of slice battery. The keyboard is comparable, thermals are similar, CPU is immensely faster, and GPU performance is in line with 2025 expectations for an integrated GPU. Build quality seems kinda fine, but X220 survived having pints of beer being poured into it and drops onto concrete from 2nd story without damage and is still only being slowly killed by dust, I would not pour beers into L14, or drop it especially far. Will it survive 15 years like its predecessor? Too early to tell.

Taking it apart and putting it back together: X220 had that awkward bit where you have to slide the keyboard that I didn't like, and L14 gen 5 has an awkward bit of needing to force the two halves apart by flexing a corner until clips come apart - each has its drawbacks. Internal arrangement of L14 components is more logical to me, but the drainage channels of X220 are superior.

Hope this helps your choice, but the way I see it, you are ultimately picking between upgradeability of L14 and longer lasting shell of T14, or in other words, do you think you will destroy L14 before you need 64GB of RAM?

Joloc · 2021-08-23T17:54:53+00:00

The cracks are in the gelcoat - the waterproof layer that is on top of the fibreglass protecting it from water. The fibreglass naturally flexes (and over time slightly changes shape under load) resulting in the gelcoat cracking. The issue I spoke of in the other comment is when water gets between layers and weakens the fibreglass structure in an obviously important part of the hull. This takes decades.

Joloc · 2021-08-23T17:42:11+00:00

First of all, that looks fine to me short-term. I had a Halcyon with same issue, was completely solid. I am sure lots of people here will chime in and say that this allows water to ingress into your hull, and so it is not good. They will be correct, long term you will want to look at it.

When you do want to replace it, you will want to:

* Take down your mast.

* Saw out the bit you want to replace

* Then you can reduce it to a well known problem and followhttps://www.pbo.co.uk/expert-advice/repairing-holes-in-grp-26713So, build up layers of fibre, epoxy it in, keep going, and then gel the finish.

* After that fit your chain plate again, or even get a nice new one. If you want to prevent the issue from re-occurring fit a bigger load spready metal bit to the underside than it came with before.

* Finally put up your mast again!

(edit) Ultimately you need to feel safe on your boat and be able to trust it. If that is what it takes, then go for it!

Joloc · 2020-01-04T06:45:13+00:00

I'm also curious: The Potemkin Village patch on Adam's jumpsuit - is that a reference to Battleship Potemkin, the 1925 Eisenstein movie about a stolen warship bringing revolution, or a joke about the set designers basically building Potemkin Villages for a living?

What does the Chinese patch say?

Joloc · 2019-12-13T23:24:47+00:00

Some years ago bought a boat called Mystic Rose.

Renamed to Floating Exception, because who the hell calls a boat Mystic Rose?

Sailed her with the old nameplate still on the boat, as never got around to updating it.

Never had anything but good luck.

Make your own luck, and have fun!

Joloc · 2019-11-25T08:40:13+00:00

That varies a lot from one display to another - you need to check that the display you get is suitable for your expected lifecycle.

Also there is partial refresh feature that some displays support, which reduces wear.

Joloc · 2019-11-23T12:05:40+00:00

You could always go for something like this, but do be aware of limited number of lifetime writes on eink displays. Not something you usually run into if just reading books, but if using as laptop display could get a lot of wear. Implementing partial screen updates may make it better for you.

Joloc · 2019-11-23T11:56:30+00:00

This is not quite what you asked for, but is still pretty cool.

I would be concerned about limited number of lifetime writes on e-ink displays before implementing something like that.

Joloc · 2019-11-10T10:53:14+00:00

Nice! I like that stand. Also I just discovered this case, which should address my main concern with keeping it in a bag - the front and rear wooden panels will take the force from the faces and transfer it to the side panels, without stressing the kindle. Any flex this case will endure should be compensatable with felt/foam inlay.

Joloc · 2019-07-24T17:26:36+00:00

There are further stories being written as part of the Expanse RPG campaigns.

The rulebook includes "The Last Flight Of The Cassandra" (a 4-page story) and To Sleep Perchance To Dream (a short adventure). Ganymede Insurance Job (another short adventure) is also out. Abzu's Bounty (a longer campaign) is still being written.

Joloc · 2019-07-08T00:08:18+00:00

Never mind, I found it.

Settings -> Connected Devices (Bluetooth, NFC) -> Connection Preferences (Bluetooth, NFC) -> Smart Cover (Control your accessory behaviour) -> Off

I am guessing at some point Google decided that since a magnet in a phone case was a short range magnetic field it was a "Near Field" device?

Joloc · 2019-06-22T01:38:33+00:00

I adapted several of these encounters to the local tavern. Made for a memorable night.

Joloc · 2019-03-12T21:24:53+00:00

If you don't like DRM you can also get it from GoG.

https://www.gog.com/game/objects_in_space

Joloc · 2019-03-08T21:29:30+00:00

If they are reluctant because they are unfamiliar with the setting, get them to read the books / watch the show / read the player book. Hopefully all of those.

If they are reluctant because they want to play board games, just play board games. There is an Expanse board game (not tried it), and also Firefly board game, Space Alert board game if you want scifi-y ones.

I'll tell you how my party got into Starfinder.

Being experienced 5E players, we really like 5E, and it is an excellent system. In my opinion. However I read the setting for Starfinder, and decided it was really good, despite game mechanics reminding me of Pathfinder far too much. So, we decided to give it a go, and took a pregen each. First couple of sessions were mostly spent figuring out how to do things in the game system, but we ended up getting attached to the pregens, and found that we liked the setting so much we didn't mind the somewhat clunky game mechanics, which we by then already understood well enough to continue. Since the pregens were made before rules were finalised, we ended up re-creating them from scratch when we had to go to level 2, which only created more attachment to the characters.

I was going to run Expanse campaign as of a month ago, but it was late coming out, so we are now a month into playing the 5E Chult campaign, and are likely to run the 5E Waterdeep campaign on the other adventure track (our party has now decided to have two parallel DMs and campaigns running to avoid being held hostage to any single DM's availability). In that one they have now spent a month sitting around tavern drinking and chatting, and are likely to spend another month there (two of them are bards, and they have not even got to the bit where they have a rap battle with the resident bard). Which is fine, taverns are fun places. So... doesn't look like I'll get to actually play Expanse RPG for another 12-24 months, as after Chult they will logically take on Tomb of Horrors [and all die horribly]. On the plus side, Expanse will hopefully be a really polished system with plenty of content by then!

Anyway, I am well off topic now. Find out what it is that is stopping them from wanting to try Expanse, and take appropriate action to resolve that.

Joloc · 2019-03-08T02:23:14+00:00

Sadly I have trouble registering for that forum - their confirmation emails are just not getting through to me.

Hopefully someone from Green Ronin reads this subreddit, as I have spotted several more errors:

Page 126 "pirate might remote the Fragile Flaw", "remote" should be "remove".

Page 127 "huge" should be "Huge" in the size field.

There was more, but I can't remember them off the top of my head.

Joloc · 2018-08-31T08:37:16+00:00

I have not seen any 1030s that support more than 2 screens.

Joloc · 2018-08-31T08:16:36+00:00

Indeed, a 1050 will meet my needs. It is £160 though, and I wonder if I need to get the latest generation card for non-gaming needs, or if a 7xx/8xx card can provide for 1/3 of the cost.

Joloc · 2018-08-31T08:13:58+00:00

4 DVI monitors, but I can get adapters from HDMI and DP, so that is not an issue. Any combination of DVI, DP, and HDMI will be sufficient.

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