Ulric

"Everything has gone wrong, the asteroid redirect mission fucked up."
-@RobotMinisterofTrueKorea
 

The Sovetsky Kerbania, my newest cruiser designed to provide logistical and long range support to Kulako and Kerbinov
 


 
Vertical Launch System
 




 
One of the two Goliath Class Heavy Mining Landers.
 

 
Nose Mounted R-7 escape system.

 
The 9MN of thrust that will accelerate this 2880 ton vessel.

 
 
 

Nice.
 
 

Harumph, I say.

It used to be that you could put out old cannons and battle flags and what have you, and you'd get the Teddy Roosevelt types who saw them as a reflection of the virile, vigorous side of war as well as Smedley D. Butler types who saw them as a memorial to violent folly.  Both views have their merits.  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.

But now?  Now there are cities where policy is dictated by people who are so petrified of the darkness in the hearts of men that they dare not even acknowledge its existence.  Pitiful.

IS-1 much balanced. It truly is the best medium tank at 5.3
 



 
 

IS-1 much balanced. It truly is the best medium tank at 5.3
 



 
 

Clearly New Jersey needs stronger gun laws, even though they have some of the strongest in the nation. Hey everyone, let's all blame inanimate objects and make up excuses to take away things from people who have not and would never do anything wrong with said objects!

Our small arms industry would benefit from some Russian influence.

Our small arms industry would benefit from some Russian influence.

So, a hidden feature in WT 1.79 patch is a top attack munition, disguised as a 165mm demolition shell. This combines the effects of auto-bounce angles and fuse delay to rain down retarded amounts of shrapnel through weak turret roof and engine deck armor.
 



 
This is repeatable as well.
 



 
And if for some reason you mess up this trick shot, you stand a decent chance of just fusing on the turret roof itself, with the most catastrophic of results. Fools who use this tank will try to go for upper glacis shots, but that will generally limit the shrapnel to the drivers compartment. The correct place to aim is turret faces and roofs, or side hull. Don't worry about fusing on tracks or skirting, the results will be the same.
 

I finally decided to unlock it.... just before the new patch drops.
 

The beautiful part is that the best game play is still in 7.7 and below, maybe even 8.0, so all these new 9.0+ vehicles are irrelevant. Sure, the are really cool, but end tier game play is nothing but campfest pixel hunt ass cancer anyways. Let the try hards have their fancy new toys, there is plenty of fun to be had elsewhere.

My first kill with the SU-100Y, a Yak-3
 

Trump issues executive orders to reduce restrictions on firing federal workers
 
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/389450-trump-administration-will-reduce-restrictions-on-firing-federal
 
The orders call for federal workers to devote at least 75 percent of their on-the-clock time to work-related purposes, direct agencies to reward "performance over seniority" and push agencies to renegotiate contracts with unions, among other provisions.
 
TYRANNY!!!
 
The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union which represents 700,000 government workers, issued a statement calling the move an "assault on public servants."
"Our government is built on a system of checks and balances to prevent any one person from having too much influence," the union's president David Cox said, according to BuzzFeed. "President Trump’s executive orders will undo all of that. This administration seems hellbent on replacing a civil service that works for all taxpayers with a political service that serves at its whim.”
 
Of COURSE the Union is upset that the gravy train is coming to an end.
 
White House officials announced the impending orders on a call with reporters. The officials said the changes are aimed at saving taxpayers $100 million per year.
 
I'm still not tired of #WINNING yet

My first kill with the SU-100Y, a Yak-3
 

Because sometimes you have to act even though you know this is what your adversary wants.
This has been a lose-lose situation for Israel from the very beginning. There was no possible way to turn this around.
 
First, it's important to understand in what cases the IDF uses the following methods:
1)Arrest.
2)Tear gas.
3)Rubber bullets.
4)Water cannons.
5)Live ammo to maim.
6)Live ammo to kill.
 
=====================================================================
 
1)Ideally, every infiltration attempt is handled by quick response units who are geared to make an arrest, even if the infiltrator is armed. In most cases they are armed, albeit usually not for the intent of killing, but that's a topic for another debate. BUT, you cannot make an arrest when there are another 20 people nearby who can assault the soldiers. This is why throughout these protests, the number of arrests has been very low. I think only 2 or 3 incidents.
 
2)Tear gas is used at any range within the buffer zone. 
 
3)Rubber bullets are very limited in their range. These sand berms are located maybe 20-30 meters from the fence. Many times going to several hundred meters. Thus normally they would only be effective against people who are already at the fence. However, they almost never go to the fence alone. These are coordinated efforts of usually dozens of men. Firing rubber on them becomes ineffective as the rate of fire is very low, and their lethality is substantially increased. When you only have a couple sharpshooters in a position and the border is rushed by 50-something people, you may not have the time to load 50 rubber bullets before it turns into a life threatening event. Thus although they are used, they are not enough in many cases.
 
 
4)Range is even more limited, and they're used almost exclusively to put out tire fires. 
 
5)Used against those who enter too deep into the buffer zone, which used to be 300m but was reduced to 100m to reduce casualties, and those who pose a high threat to soldiers - Slingshots, firebombs (aka molotovs), IED kites. 
 
6)Used only against those who are breaching the fence, those who already breached, and those who pose an immediate threat - any sort of firearm, explosive devices (IEDs, pipe bombs, grenades) etc.
 
=====================================================================
 
There's also the question of why shoot to kill infiltrators anyway instead of just sending quick reaction forces to try and catch them. The answer to that would be.... Google maps. 
 
This one is from 2014 and shows a simple map of tunnels coming out from the Gaza strip, but it illustrates my point fairly well:
 
There are villages, towns, and cities located so close to the Gaza strip that you could get to them from the fence in just a couple minutes' walk. Sa'ad in this picture less so, but Nahal Oz, Kfar Aza, and the largest of them Sderot, a city of 25,000 people, are only less than a kilometer from the Gaza border. It's even frequent for houses in Sderot to be hit with machine gun fire. When you have population centers about half a mile away from the border, and a quarter of a mile from your position, you don't take risks.
 
Even a single man carrying a knife that gets past the border fence, past the soldiers, and into one of these, could cause a massacre. Most men, however, who tried to infiltrate, weren't holding kitchen knives. They were packing firearms and grenades.
 
So when Hamas say they're going to breach the border and murder as many people as they can, well even if it's just propaganda talk to rile up the people, you gotta take them seriously, because even if they do live up to their word, they don't lose. It's still a victory for them because they need not only international support, but inner support. It's why they also decided to take the hit and admit 50 of the dead were theirs - They need to show the locals they're men of actions, whether or not that number is real or made up. And that sort of action is not viewed nicely in Israel.
 
=====================================================================
 
Some cases were reported and went viral, of fire that seemed grossly unjustified, such as the man running with a tire about a month ago, or more recently the doctor that was shot in the leg (I think that even though he was very close to the fence, it's unjustified as doctors are frequently brought there to drag away the injured). But in the end the guys holding these rifles are just normal human beings, and whose judgement and circumstances we do not know. My take from this is that overall there needs to be some more transparency, that some incidents probably should have been avoided entirely, but in a very general sense I think the IDF handled it in the closest way to optimal that it could, given its circumstances.
 
 
@roguetechie My sincerest apologies for writing this. Just try to ignore it, please.

Something that I've wanted to do for a while now.
 

Today in KSP "What if Land"
 
I put up my first permanent Space Station (on this playthrough), Skylab. For fun, I took some inspiration from the actual Skylab B and docked a Soyuz. Alas, Skylab B never flew, but it can be seen (and walked though) at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. 
 
 

Let us not forget that the Obama administration also tried to call unemployment a good thing. It was an opportunity to spend time with the family, or pursue hobbies that you had let slip by without all the stress of having to work all the time. I believe they used the term "funemployment". Also, in that article they finally point out the bullshit numbers manipulation that was happening under Obama, but claim that it's happening under Trump (and it might be, too, who the fuck knows). I'm not surprised by any of this, though, considering how much the left accuses everyone else of exactly what they themselves are doing.

Funny that you mention that, the BD armory expansion does have a "radar cross section" analysis tool. Obviously, KSP does not simulate radar returns off of spacecraft, but even something very basic (and horrendously wrong) is a neat step towards making stealth space ships.

The 1/8 scale now completes the set, only because the 2/1 scale would crash KSP and maybe even brick my machine.
 

Let us not forget that the Obama administration also tried to call unemployment a good thing. It was an opportunity to spend time with the family, or pursue hobbies that you had let slip by without all the stress of having to work all the time. I believe they used the term "funemployment". Also, in that article they finally point out the bullshit numbers manipulation that was happening under Obama, but claim that it's happening under Trump (and it might be, too, who the fuck knows). I'm not surprised by any of this, though, considering how much the left accuses everyone else of exactly what they themselves are doing.

Those of you who have heard me talk about it before (most people in this thread, in other words) know that I believe the USA is more pro-gun than ever before in its modern history. Not only that, but I think the DNC is broke, leaderless, off-message, and failing to keep together its disparate constituents as a result. Aggravating this, the Democratic leadership has chosen to make gun control a major issue for the 2018 midterms, despite it always being a weak issue for them historically. Because of this, I expect significant losses for the Democrats in November, and significant gains for Trump-leaning Republicans.

Despite these obvious (to me) facts, the American pro-gun movement has decided to entrench itself and play defense as they have always done. Much more wise in my opinion would be to go on the offense, pushing back existing gun regulations and promoting the kind of legal reforms that would be most attractive to American gun owners. Early next year, when all the fresh new pro-Trump Republicans have taken their seats, would be the natural time to push legislation for things like:
 
Deregulating short barreled rifles and shotguns
Deregulating suppressors
Formalizing an exception for shotguns in destructive device (DD) laws
Concealed carry reciprocity
National "assault weapon" legalization
NFA and GCA reforms
Opening the machine gun registry
 
and others.
 
Such a plan would use simultaneous, coordinated bills to confuse and overwhelm the antis, going behind their lines to enact reforms in their major command centers, like Massachusetts and California. Confused, discredited, and clearly incapable of any political gains whatsoever, the gun control machine would sputter and collapse, forever.   We'd call it: The Spring '19 Offensive.

Did my first interplanetary mission today!
 

The first image is of the spacecraft shortly after arriving in Eve's sphere of influence. JJ Abrams lensflare shot of the Mothership, Aphrodite. It's heavily inspired by the Apollo Applications Program manned Venus flyby vessel. Mine has an added habitation module, and a lander slung under the vessel.

Arethusa on the surface of Gilly. This...wasn't really needed other than to gather some science off this one biome. Mission was accomplished though!
 

Rendezvous was a bit tricky. I had the pilot jump and fly over on an EVA pack. The lander served it's purpose anyway.
 

MechJeb went screwy and said I had way less fuel than I thought I did. I ditched the habitation module to gain some extra DeltaV.
 

 
Beauty shot of Ishtar after a successful Kerbin capture.
 
The mothership was claimed by the Kraken on the way back from Eve. She's adrift somewhere over Kerbin. No fuel or power. No doubt a later project for me.