I know that here on Mastodon there are plenty of lefties, socialists, anarchists, etc., and their viewpoints are certainly worthy of consideration and discussion.
But I hope everyone keeps in mind that a number of these people are not who they seem to be.
My rule of thumb is that, if they just spew anti-Biden mumbo-jumbo, without any logic or intelligent thought, they are probably working to get trump elected, and are NOT on the left.
Whatever is going on right now in #Russia, I do note this: #Twitter is now useless at tracking this. Junk accounts everywhere, no verified accounts, swarms of sketchy bluechecks.
The ONE thing that place was good at was breaking global news. But not now.
Knowing US MAGA Republicans, Donald Trump, and House Speaker Mike Johnson have procedurally blocked all US military aid to Ukraine, Putin is depleting Ukrainian Air defenses by overwhelming it with missiles; 110+ Russian rockets last night alone across Ukraine!
Putin and the Republicans will leave the Ukrainians defenseless against the Russian barbaric onslaught!
Many people seem convinced the #drone attack on the Kremlin was a false flag operation. I have doubts because:
The incident is embarrassing for #Russia's air defense. It's weird to make a false flag operation that makes yourself look incompetent and the enemy look strong.
The Russian media have a pretty calm reaction. It doesn't look like a coordinated information operation.
The claim that the drone was defeated with electronic countermeasures doesn't fit the video.
After we had a very interesting discussion with @AdeptVeritatis on modeling the #Russia#Ukraine war from economic perspective, I declare to write about the model by Peter Turchin.
Turchin is a scientist working in the area of complex systems, which in the past gained some publicity as “chaos theory” - modeling systems so complex internally that their states are usually only described in statistical terms and their behaviour is described as “chaotical”, even when it really isn’t. Such as societies, economies, political systems etc. In 2020 Turchin made some fame when people dug up his 2010 prediction that in a decade US may be hit by a wave of large civil unrests. He came to this conclusion based on modeling a combination of numerous economic and social factors which seemed to converge to a state usually resulting in unrest.^1
Turchin has been also attempting to model the war started by Russia and his team created a mathematical model that includes economic (military industry output) and demographic parameters (number of soldiers).^2 The model has evolved over the last two years but the latest version is probably best described, including its limitations, by this article^3. I was surprised to see people like MacGregor and Ritter quoted there, but Turchin seems to use them as the proponents of the most possibly cynical scenario for the purpose of modeling. But if you read the whole model description, which I encourage everyone to do, Turchin’s assumptions are quite impartial and as realistic as a simplified model can be.
The baseline scenario is quite pessimistic: to make the long story short, Russia has economy and population so large that it will simply not deplete before Ukraine’s does. That’s as cynical as it can be, and as a matter of fact this is the core argument Russians are always raising: they’re just too big to lose and therefore they always win.
However, Turchin also looks at alternative scenario where Ukraine’s economy (represented by ammunition production rate) is really equivalent to the whole EU and US, in which case the roles reverse.
The model in theory should not be interpreted as a real-world forecast, as clearly stated in the article’s disclaimer. But you really can’t not do it, because all the time it refers to actual numbers of actual people.
The primary issue I have with it is the inconsistency of the predicted human losses with reality: Ukraine’s losses after two years reach almost 300’000 while Russian are 3x less. This, if anything, is the opposite of real estimates.
The secret really lies in two factors: the number of shells fired (function of economy) and the “casualties per shot”, which is kind of arbitrary and set to 1/30. The number is, again, kind of estimated based on real Russian loses, but then, on page 8, there’s a key phrase “I set d2 = d1”. This try statement essentially assumes that Russian losses per shell are the same as Ukrainian.
If you try to play with these parameters in the live model^2 you can actually get losses modelled closer to the real estimates. Of course, this model’s deficiency is prominently mentioned by Turchin in the article. The primary Turchin’s conclusion from the model’s outputs seems to be that the critical condition for Ukraine’s victory is economical and industrial support of its allies. Which was only days ago sadly demonstrated by evacuation of Avdiivka.
I would add that the losses ratio is also a critical parameter, because while Russia may have population 4x larger than Ukraine, losses at ratio 1:13 (confirmed armour losses) or 1:7 (declared by Ukraine) aren’t sustainable even for Russia. Which clearly hints that any strategy that incurs such losses at Russia is preferable, which most likely implies a defensive strategy.
Also, in terms of model’s parameters, as Turchin himself notes, human losses suffer from very high uncertainty as both sides actively obscure them. At the same time, OSINT provides equipment losses which were in the past confirmed to cover up to 80% the actual losses, which could make the case for further improvement of the model’s output.
To understand the full scale of #Prigozhin#Russia semi-coup yesterday, here's a summary from "Baza" media. While analysts say Prigozhin failed to secure support from majority of Russian army, I do believe the weight of his arguments gave him (read: GRU) whatever he wanted. And it's not Prigozhin who capitulated here.
"Baza": More than a thousand pieces of equipment of the Wagner PMC were moving towards Moscow via the Voronezh Region. Among them were tanks, rocket launchers, trucks and cars.
According to the "Base," the first convoy of about 350 units of equipment crossed the border of the Voronezh region just after midnight on June 24. The column included nine tanks, four Tigers, a Grad launcher, a cannon, dozens of trucks and hundreds of cars. It was this convoy that later brought down a roadblock of trucks and construction equipment at kilometre 590 of the M-4 "Don".
Around 5am a second convoy drove into the region. It was even bigger - in the preliminary 375 units. The convoy drove towards the town of Buturlinovka, where the military airfield of the Ministry of Defence is located.
At 7am the third convoy of equipment comprising about 100 units arrived on the territory of the Voronezh region. Among them were three tanks, two anti-aircraft guns, buses, trucks and cars. The convoy travelled along the M-4 "Don" motorway.
At 9 a.m. a fourth convoy of military equipment, totalling 212 units, crossed the border of the region.