Sociotard

Tonight is the 4th District Congressional debate here in Utah. Three candidates have been invited to participate: Democrat Darlene McDonald, United Utah Party candidate January Walker, and incumbent Representative Burgess Owens, a Republican. The first two have confirmed their participation; Owens has not. Owens skipped the Republican Primary debate earlier this summer on the advice of the Chair of the Utah GOP.
 
Local news outlet KSL published this bingo card for tonight's event:
 

In these grim times of desperate need, we do not rejoice in the violence but recognize it as...
 
Wait, it was on Putin's birthday?
 
BWHAHAHHAAAHAHA!
 
 

Re: Does "must pass through intervening space" give "safe blind" teleport for free?
 
Good question!
 
The Limitation Must Pass Through Intervening Space (-¼) does not grant a character the Advantage Safe Blind Teleport (+¼) “for free.” All standard rules apply to such forms of Teleportation, and if a character wants to have Safe Blind Teleport for it he has to pay for it (or any other Advantage) just like usual. As you observe, it’s easy to think of a “special effect” for how someone might hurt himself moving through the intervening space — he could run into something, trip and fall, or what have you.

It's not good, but it's still Italy. Odds are her government collapses in less than a year.

It could be a color calibration difference, but it looks more like mud to me. On my monitor, it shows as the same color across the weapon, with a few spots that could be surface rust. However, the metal of the upper receiver/dust cover doesn't appear to be pitted or rusted in any way. 
 
The same thread shows conscripts who were issued Mosin Nagant rifles that are even older, and those don't appear to be dirty or rusty. Russian surplus weapons are packed away in copious amounts of Cosmoline to preserve them. So, even if that is rust, it's unlikely something freshly issued to conscripts.
 
Without a translation of the audio, we can't put that video into context. It could be someone taking video of an abandoned weapon left in the mud, for example. We don't know that it's conscript issue.
 
Really doesn't matter much at the end of the day, though. Russian conscripts are not going to be worth anything on the battlefield as anything other than cannon fodder to use up Ukrainian resources fighting them. If the forces currently in Ukraine couldn't hold gained territory, more conscripts won't help, even if their gear is shiny and new. This stinks of a desperation move, an attempt at intimidation that can't be backed up.

I am compelled to acknowledge you are probably right.
 
 

The story of an Evangelical pastor who found his church subverted by Trumpism.
 
The Pastors Being Driven Out by Trumpism - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
 
Dean Shomshak

I am compelled to acknowledge you are probably right.
 
 

Let me see if I've written this up correctly,
3d6 Minor Transform (classified documents into unclassified documents) +1 BoECV, +1/4 Invisible Power Effects (documentation-related skills), -1/2 No Range
45 points
Kind of weird and I'm not sure I'd allow it. I'm not sure documents have an Ego stat, even top secret nuclear ones.

Well yeah, technically you could hand them all sharp sticks and consider them 'armed'.  It's even possible Russia has 300,000 Mosin-Nagants in storage somewhere.  What the Russians do not have is adequate numbers of the missiles, tanks, armored vehicles, and trucks that are necessary to wage modern warfare.  And most of all the Russians are desperately short of the communications and command structure that it would take to actually use 300,000 infantry effectively.
 
So whatever percentage of those reservists that don't flee Russia or literally cripple themselves to get out of serving, will be handed some museum piece weapon and put on a one way train to Ukraine to sit in a trench and wait to be killed.  It might slow the inevitable Ukrainian advance a bit, if they don't break and run away like they did around Kharkiv.

Oh, piss nuggets.
 
Russia announced a partial mobilization, which means 300,000 reservists.
 
https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-717706
 
In better news...
 
On the 17th Russia tried crossing the Dnipro with a barge loaded with soldiers and weapons. Ukraine sank it. On the 19th Russia tried it again. Ukraine sank that one too.
 
I assume Russia has had successes too, that weren't listed, but it still gives me hope.
 
https://en.defence-ua.com/events/ukraines_military_sank_the_second_barge_with_russian_troops_during_their_attempt_to_force_the_dnipro_river-4280.html

Catholic priest resigns after falling in love with author of Satanic erotica novels.
 
https://www.irishpost.com/news/catholic-bishop-resigns-after-falling-in-love-with-satanic-erotic-fiction-novelist-219653

Catholic priest resigns after falling in love with author of Satanic erotica novels.
 
https://www.irishpost.com/news/catholic-bishop-resigns-after-falling-in-love-with-satanic-erotic-fiction-novelist-219653

This is Election Day in Sweden, for local, regional, and national representatives. I'm off to the ballot box in a little while. 
 
This time, for the first time ever, I'm more voting against than for something. And this thing is the Sweden Democrats (SD) -- avowedly national conservative by their own description, founded by actual Nazis. Their party program has passages lifted almost verbatim from Mein Kampf and speaks about "peoples' essence". They admire Victor Orbán and Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian right-wingers. They are populists, and say what they think will get them elected. They invent problems, or wildly blow them out of proportion. They are for "law and order", but no other party comes even close to having as many convicted among their representatives and party functionaries -- law and order for thee, but not for me.
 
That's the bullet points, and I think you can imagine the rest. On their own, they wouldn't be that much of a problem; they got 17.5% of the votes in the national elections four years ago, and hold 62 seats out of 349 in the Riksdag. They poll below this as of today.
 
But they are not on their own. The Moderates and the Christian Democrats (more garden-variety conservatives, of the fiscal and the social kinds respectively) and the Liberals (once actual liberals, but nowadays seems to me more of "We need to have a seat in the government or fade into oblivion!" desperates than anything) are ready to form a government with the support -- or with the actual participation -- of SD.
 
Riding a tiger and all that. I smell a von Papen moment coming along if the blue-brown block gets the upper hand.

Yeah, let's talk about the new female ruler of that offshore western island. Is she going to reduce the VAT, cap energy bills, or invade the Undying Lands? 
 

Naturally because Pennsylvania was with the Union not the Confederacy.

Sounds like an origin story to me...
 

In case you were wondering, the text in the orange banner says "German style" and that's the Spanish flag.  
 

We've been drinking seltzers instead of sodas for years now.

They could be clones of Rambo and Russia would still have nothing to arm, transport, or feed them with.  It'd be like Stalingrad, where you issue one Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle to three guys and they take turns picking up the rifle as each one gets killed.