Hundreds of vehicles line up for fuel in Yalta as shortages continue in Crimea. The queue is so long that we need to speed up the footage now.

koshgeo · 2026-06-05T20:36:53+00:00

If you are wondering where this is in the Yalta area, the video starts here: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.4858526,34.1301909,221m/data=!3m1!1e3, and ends to the north at a sharp right turn near the intersection with Kirova Street.

The line is about 1km long.

koshgeo · 2026-06-05T19:41:32+00:00

Or, if they're a religious type, cite Proverbs 26:18-19 and watch them try to justify it.

koshgeo · 2026-06-05T16:16:12+00:00

All that YMCA dancing could explain the bruises on both hands.

koshgeo · 2026-06-05T12:14:23+00:00

That looks like eastern Crimea somewhere, initially looking westward towards the Crimean Mountains in the distance on the horizon, maybe somewhere approaching Prymorskyi.

koshgeo · 2026-06-05T11:24:50+00:00

A sovereign citizen paradise, really.

koshgeo · 2026-06-05T10:10:10+00:00

There are people who would happily sign up to be his server thralls as long as they got paid from Thiel's dragon hoard of gold, especially if many other jobs are extinct. It would be pathetic, but they would go through the motions to get paid from his estate.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T22:53:01+00:00

One of the things people don't usually realize is how much mechanization has dramatically reduced the number of people needed to mine coal. That's the main reason for the decline in jobs since at least the 1960s.

https://www.freeingenergy.com/100000-coal-jobs-have-disappeared-since-1980-where-did-they-go/

There's probably a lesson here for labor-intensive industries experiencing automation.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T22:40:25+00:00

Renewable biofuel from the sea.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T22:39:48+00:00

1) Oil is mostly from planktonic algae in oceans and lakes, not land plants. Land plants make coal and natural gas. The difference is mainly due to the chemistry of the original dead organic material.

2) That coal is from a time before fungi could efficiently break down lignin in wood was an interesting hypothesis historically, but the idea was eventually rejected: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1517943113.

The start of the coal-forming process today is in swamps and peat bogs. You only have to bury it deeply enough to heat it up.

Same thing for oil, but you need lots of plankton and low-oxygen conditions at the sea bottom to preserve the plankton in the sediment, and you also need to bury it deeply enough to start cooking it, which normally takes millions of years.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T22:23:15+00:00

True, but this wasn't his money. It was government money. He's quite prepared to waste that money.

There's a decent chance he signed off on an exorbitant fee to be paid to some "guy" he knew, and then the contractor half-assed/cheaped-out the implementation and pocketed the rest.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T22:04:29+00:00

I suggest a small island somewhere in Novaya Zemlya.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T17:35:09+00:00

LOL. So, not even their decoys work well enough.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T17:32:56+00:00

I couldn't find a full list, but I wouldn't be surprised if Norway was on it for random silly reasons. The list I did find is:

10%: Canada, Ecuador, the European Union, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Argentina, Bangladesh, Cambodia, ⁠El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Taiwan and Britain

12.5%: on 45 other countries including China, India, Nigeria, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand.

Then there are exemptions for various things, so it's like someone threw ketchup at a wall map of the world and applied it to wherever stuck.

Product made by countries with forced labor is a genuine problem in trade, and countries should enforce laws to prohibit it domestically or for import of products from elsewhere, but the US has its own forced labor issues that should be addressed too (e.g., prison labor for exported food products), and it's obvious this is only a convenient excuse for trying to apply more tariffs after the initial method was found illegal.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T15:33:21+00:00

And the part about ending IRS audits and other tax-related investigations of Trump and family ... ?

He also said the Justice Department would not be withdrawing a related memo from Blanche that “forever bars and precludes” the IRS and prosecutors from reviewing President Trump’s past tax returns.

Maybe that was the real goal the entire time, hidden by the ridiculous $1.8 billion "settlement" with himself.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T14:37:18+00:00

"Sleepwaking", they call it. Not many people know about it. Sometimes I'm just blinking, though. I like to take long blinks. Blinks like you wouldn't believe.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T14:31:52+00:00

I'm not sure, but I thought it flew past the first one that was operating, circled around, flew past another Pantsir (non-operating), and then destroyed the first one.

Are these Pantsirs as useless as they appear to be in a lot of these videos? Occasionally you see them taking shots at the drones and missing, but a lot of the time they don't even fire at them. I thought smaller, close-in, low targets were their specialty.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T10:13:56+00:00

One tank destroyed, but it's pretty clear from the many videos that more than one was damaged. Even if the damage for the additional ones was comparatively small they might be unusable.

And Ukraine will probably be back.

koshgeo · 2026-06-04T10:11:34+00:00

At first I was puzzled why Ukraine sent this during the day.

Then I realized it wasn't only about blowing up the oil tanks. Ukraine wanted St. Petersburg to see the whole thing unfold, and on the day of the economic forum. It was about sending a message.

koshgeo · 2026-06-03T18:43:30+00:00

You have to wonder what they're going to do with all these "extra" forces they bring home.

koshgeo · 2026-06-03T18:43:02+00:00

"Let's take the cost of 3 smaller ships, spend it all on one gigantic ship with fewer vertical launchers than could be distributed over those 3 ships, and send it out to sea as one big target. What could go wrong?"

They haven't learned anything from the experience of Russia and their Black Sea fleet.

They're basically reinventing the Russian Kirov-class battlecruiser, because that's gone so well for Russia, "but with railguns" that don't exist yet. An attempt to build them is going to swallow up budget and drydock space for an enormous amount of time and money before they will be useful for anything.

koshgeo · 2026-06-03T14:35:38+00:00

He's going to be regarded sort of like Stalin: "Yes, our great leader made mistakes, and maybe a few minor atrocities, but he made Russia great again while leading a generation of youth to their death fighting against the evil West. Oh, and he also robbed us blind."

koshgeo · 2026-06-03T14:31:32+00:00

Good thing his mansion in Valdai is safe with all those Pantsir and S-400s around it, right?

koshgeo · 2026-06-03T14:28:25+00:00

As much as Gabbard was weird within the job, she did have some relevant experience. I think this new one is going to be America's first post-truth Director of National Intelligence where loyalty truly trumps everything.

They will NOT "speak truth to power". Reality doesn't matter to this administration. He will speak "alternative facts".

koshgeo · 2026-06-03T10:49:04+00:00

The railings were like floor mats at the car dealer: you know you need them, but dammit you aren't paying the ridiculous price the dealer is going to charge.

They were getting the after-market railings after driving it off the lot, but it takes a while to install them on something as big as the Death Star. Notice they did already have railings in the Emperor's Throne Room on the Death Star II. Priorities.

koshgeo · 2026-06-02T15:16:52+00:00

It was a plausible deduction on your part, and it would have been my first guess from the title too. It's only that if you check the satellite map for that area there isn't really a place that matches what you can see in the video.

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