goes looking to see how hard it is for Russia to replace losses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhoi_Su-25

In early August 2008, Russian Su-25s attacked the Tbilisi Aircraft Manufacturing plant, where the Su-25 is produced, dropping bombs on the factory’s airfield.[49]

Well, that sounds like it’s probably not going to be very conducive to receiving further aircraft for multiple reasons.

https://www.scramble.nl/military-news/georgia-announced-the-restart-of-production-of-the-su-25

24 February 2021

Georgia announced the restart of production of the Su-25

The candidate for the post of Georgian Defence Minister, Juansher Burchuladze, has stated that Georgia is about to restart the production of military aircraft.

https://www.blogbeforeflight.net/2021/03/georgia-first-restored-su-25-takes-flight.html

On March 6, 2021, Georgia’s first restored Su-25 (or Je-31 Bora) ground attack aircraft performed its maiden flight, according to the Georgian Military Department.

The restoration and modernization of the aircraft was carried out by the local firm Tbilisi Aircraft Manufacturing (TAM). The aircraft will be used for combat and training missions.

The project does not envisage the complete production of fighters, but the restoration of the platforms built at the time of the USSR. It is currently unknown where Georgia gets the components for the aircraft, as deliveries from Russia are completely excluded. Previously the nation had said it was looking to get engines from France and the United States. Rumors also say that Israel has offered its support for the project. Israeli firm Elbit already produced a prototype of a modernized Su-25, called Su-25 Scorpion or Su-25KM, in 2001.

TAM began manufacturing Su-25s in 1978 until Moscow imposed a total ban on exports of Russian military components to Georgia following the 2008 conflict between the two nations. TAM is currently the only manufacturer to have all the technical documentation for the type and has a stock of 50 aircraft.

So Georgia is basically doing refurbishment, and it doesn’t sound like they’re going to be exporting to Russia any time soon.

Apparently Belarus announced early last year that they were wanting to produce it:

https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2023/02/21/belarus-to-make-su-25-attack-aircraft-as-russia-eyes-industry-takeover/

WARSAW, Poland — In another sign of tightening defense ties between Belarus and Russia, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has announced his country’s defense industry is ready to kick off the manufacturing of Sukhoi Su-25 ground-attack aircraft.

Some analysts suggest the move could be related to Moscow’s plan to streamline Minsk’s defense industry capacities toward its war against Ukraine.

The authoritarian leader made the announcement during a Feb. 17 meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow’s Novo-Ogaryovo suburb.

“As I was informed by the [Belarusian] government, they are ready to start producing the Su-25 aircraft which has proven itself well in Ukraine as an attack aircraft, a workhorse,” Lukashenko said, as quoted in a statement released by his office. “They are ready to produce it even in Belarus with a small amount of appropriate technological support from the Russian Federation.”

But I don’t see any news subsequent to that.

Oddly-enough, it doesn’t on lemmy.today’s Web UI, but it looks fine on beehaw.org’s Web UI. Not sure if there’s some sort of problem with propagating updates, or if it just takes a while, but I reckon that you’ve done the right thing if it looks fine now on the instance hosting the community.

Thanks!

Tales-like

I’ve been kind of out of the RPG loop for a while, probably not the best person to suggest, and haven’t played the series, but I’m thinking that if you could expand a bit on that, it might help provide suggestions…I mean, not clear to me what you’re looking for that’s specific to that relative to other RPGs. Similar setting? A long-running RPG series with many entries? The combat system (absent the real-time aspect)?

You mention “depth of story”, so maybe something with a similar level of storytelling?

&

OP, you might want to manually clean that up.

I wish that the Lemmy Web UI “suggest title” code would do one of:

• Translate HTML entities to their Unicode equivalent, which is what the Web UI actually wants in that field

• Change the Lemmy Web UI’s title field to support HTML entities.

I have to manually clean up titles myself on a not-irregular basis, usually because of various dash-like characters, like em- or en-dashes, or typographic quotes.

I’d also add:

• All three BTRs are converging on what appears to be a gas station. Not sure if that’s where I’d want to be heading if I were in the middle of a firefight.

• The two BTRs that smacked into each other both appear to have been heading for – and wrecked – several feet away from what looks to me to be a large propane tank. Short of actually hitting the propane tank, that seems like probably the worst place to be heading for at said gas station.

The thing says “video unavailable” for me, but this YouTube video from Associated Press seems to have at least the same frame shown in the thumbnail:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUE7_rlO2RM&list=RDNSyUE7_rlO2RM&start_radio=1

Where traffic lights were dark, drivers treated the intersections as four-way stops.

Good job, North Carolinians.

My local experience has been that when traffic lights are dark, drivers – who have a questionable understanding of “traffic takes turns a car at a time in clockwise order at a stop sign”, much less “treat a flashing red signal as a stop sign”, much less “treat an out traffic signal as a stop sign” – just enter a state of total confusion and start randomly driving however.

I mean… fuck around and find out?

If you mean Hezbollah, sure.

The IRGC guy who was working with Hezbollah here is gonna be Iranian intelligence, though, and I doubt that Israel specifically is going after the IRGC. I mean, Iran’s ultimately involved in all this, sure, but aside from some missiles that we and Israel mostly shot down, it has mostly acted against Israel via proxies. Like, if Israel wanted to nail the IRGC, they’d probably have hit stuff in Iran.

I don’t think that Israel’s likely to initiate against Iran directly, though I did just read some news discussing whether Iran might initiate direct hostilities against Israel, and then we might go after Iran, which I think is probably a more-likely route for the IRGC getting hit than Israel specifically acting against Iran directly.

digs up page

https://apnews.com/article/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-war-pagers-920ced5349562163eeb96d6a5a768e89

Hezbollah, however, is Iran’s chief ally and proxy group, and Tehran may have to respond to retain its credibility with its partners in the axis.

“Iran is very much in a policy dilemma right now,” said Firas Maksad, of the Middle East Institute. On one hand, clearly it very much has wanted to avoid an all-out and direct confrontation, given its long-standing preference for asymmetric warfare and using proxies.

“But on the other hand, a lack of a worthy response given the magnitude of the event will only encourage Israel to push deeper past Iran’s red lines,” he said. Not responding also sends a signal of weakness to its regional proxies.

Any direct Iranian involvement risks dragging Israel’s chief ally, the U.S., into the war, just over a month before the U.S. elections and at a time Iran has signaled its interest in renewing negotiations with the U.S. over its nuclear program.

EDIT: And I’m skeptical that Iran’s going to get directly involved here. The Iranian government issued a statement, and it wasn’t “we’re going to clean Israel’s clock”, but just generally urging Muslims in the area (not, like, Iranian Muslims) to fight Israel, and explicitly put Hezbollah at the forefront. So I suppose they probably aren’t looking for a direct conflict with Israel:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-khamenei-calls-muslims-confront-israel-after-nasrallah-killing

Israeli “criminals must know that they are far too small to cause any significant damage on the strongholds of Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Khamenei said, adding: “All the resistance forces in the region support and stand alongside Hezbollah.”

He also urged Muslims to stand alongside the people of Lebanon and Hezbollah and support them in “confronting the usurping and wicked regime.”

“The fate of this region will be determined by the forces of resistance, with Hezbollah at the forefront,” he added.

When I first played Riven in 1997, it was a series of static images.

In 2024, it’s an interactive 3D world.

All these game publishers keep talking about how they’re gonna incorporate AI into video games.

Should be an exciting future!

“Don’t trust Google! It shows you the bad stuff! Only trust Truth Social for your information!”

While it’s not directly-related to this news item, I was reading the text, and the next news item in the CNN feed on the conflict has Iran warning Israel that it cannot attack Iranian diplomatic facilities, as they are inviolate. That caught my eye:

Iravani also “strongly” warned against “any attack on [Iran’s] diplomatic premises and representatives in violation of the foundational principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises.”

I think, from memory of reading the Vienna Convention for some other conflict, that that’s not an obligation on parties other than the host state. The host state (the Lebanese government) commits to not entering Iranian diplomatic facilities when it permits establishment of same, but I don’t believe that other countries hold any obligations towards Iranian diplomatic facilities in Lebanon.

kagis

https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf

Article 22

1. The premises of the mission shall be inviolable. The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission.

2. The receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the premises of the mission against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity.

3. The premises of the mission, their furnishings and other property thereon and the means of transport of the mission shall be immune from search, requisition, attachment or execution.

kagis more

This Reddit comment from several months back does seem to agree, and is talking about this conflict:

https://old.reddit.com/r/internationallaw/comments/1btv5f7/embassy_protections_in_war/kxpg19y/

First of consulates and embassies are protected under different Vienna conventions, respectively the Vienna convention on Consular Relations of 1963 and the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations of 1961. They confer broadly similar, but not identical, protection to embassies and consular premises.

Both of theses conventions confer on the receiving state an obligation to protect the embassies and consular premises cf. on diplomatic relations art.22 and 45(a), on consular relations 27(a) and 59, but impose no duty on any third party to protect or respect these premises.

Therefore Israel has no obligations towards the Iranian embassy/consulates other than those conferred generally to civilian objects under Jus ad bellum and IHL. Neither IHL nor Jus ad bellum has any special protection of embassies or diplomats.

Regarding locations in third countries it would be a violation of the sovereignty of the third country to conduct millitary operations on their territory (definition of aggression (A/RES/3314, as reflecting customary law art.3(b)). An embassy could be a legal millitary target under IHL, but attacking it would constitute a violation of the sovereignty of the third country.

On the other hand allowing your country, including embassies on your territory, to be used for acts harmful to a country, outside of those acts generally accepted under under customary law applicable to neutral states, would be a violation of the sovereignty of the country injured. Those two countries have a duty to peacefully resolve that conflict and not resort to armed conflict. It could, if severe enough, constitute aggression on the part of the state hosting the embassy cf. A/RES/3314, as reflecting customary law art.3(g and f).

Israel would be obligated to not violate Iran’s embassy in Israel, though (though I doubt that those two have diplomatic relations).

kagis

Yeah, looks like they don’t have diplomatic relations:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Iran

Following the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the two states become hostile and the current Iranian government does not recognize the existence of Israel. The back covers of Iranian passports read: “The holder of this passport is not entitled to travel to occupied Palestine”. Both countries have severed their diplomatic and commercial ties with each other. Iran does not recognize Israel and refers to it as a Zionist entity or a Zionist regime.

So the Iranian-embassy-in-Israel situation probably wouldn’t come up; no Iranian embassy in Israel for it to affect.

That being said, if Israel were to hit Iranian diplomatic facilities in Lebanon, it’d presumably tick Iran off, but I don’t believe that it’s an issue from an international law standpoint; it’d be like any other building in war.

The prophecies say that one day, all vehicles in the region will be parked at the Pawnee County courthouse.

Note, just to be clear, that this is federal legislation, not Oregon state legislation.

Ah, okay, fair enough.

It’s not in some counties in Nevada.

But everywhere else in the US, this is a no-no.

Yeah, I have family who say that they’re gonna be out for an estimated three days. But, hey, that’s doable. They’re gonna lose climate control for a few days, lose stuff in a refrigerator or freezer. But it’s not too bad.

I’m assuming from the fact that you can post that you still have some form of Internet access going. IIRC cell towers have diesel generator backups that come on automatically. And a lot of folks out there have some kind of emergency inverter generator, cars can provide a small amount of accessory power (maybe 100W or more) and lithium batteries, and small solar panels are more widespread than they were just a few years back. Not enough to do a lot of things, but getting light and communications is a lot easier, even in power outages, than it once was.

Hmm. I haven’t been following it, but was Hezbollah really that centralized? It seems like a super-bad idea if you’re aiming to fight guerrilla war.

EDIT: This says ~300:

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2024-09-28/ty-article/these-are-the-command-centers-and-buildings-attacked-by-the-idf-in-beirut/00000192-385f-dc91-a1df-bedf69f10000

The Israeli army carried out an airstrike on Hezbollah’s central command in southern Beirut on Friday, killing its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, along with approximately 300 people, including other members of the group.

I mean, that’s obviously still a really successful strike, but you’re talking maybe an order of magnitude fewer people.

I don’t know whether Altman or the board is better from a leadership standpoint, but I don’t think that it makes sense to rely on boards to avoid existential dangers for humanity. A board runs one company. If that board takes action that is a good move in terms of an existential risk for humanity but disadvantageous to the company, they’ll tend to be outcompeted by and replaced by those who do not. Anyone doing that has to be in a position to span multiple companies. I doubt that market regulators in a single market could do it, even – that’s getting into international treaty territory.

The only way in which a board is going to be able to effectively do that is if one company, theirs, effectively has a monopoly on all AI development that could pose a risk.

https://viewer.weather.noaa.gov/water#layers=42904+40090+42133+41707+41708+41709+41631&x=-92.96832&y=40.68848&z=8.4&panel=legend

Has kind of a nice visualization of the flooding and related information.

I’d guess that they mean that they reliably show up in an assortment but aren’t many people’s favorite.