DDE

Mudskippers are evolution's gift to evolutionary biologists. They're basically Amphibia, take two, a form of fish that have developed adaptations for an almost entirely terrestrial lifestyle (their gills are mostly non-functional), but completely independent from the original amphibians, and using very different solutions. These solutions allow them to be a lot faster than our tetrapod ancestors, which is important because they're not nearly as alone on land as they were.

Oh, wait until I fetch you US's first UCAV. Same energy

Until individual tank ECM and micro-flak are perfected, nerds are going to be subjected to aesthetic suffering That thing looks like solid sheet metal, not nets

Shower thought: the Halo franchise has plenty of AIs, but there's not even a whiff of humanoid robotics - only incorporeal avatars. In fact, UNSC seems to have more "smart" AIs than they have Spartan-IIs, and they have no trouble putting the AIs in charge of extremely powerful armaments. At the same time, their power armor tech suggests a pretty extreme level of robotics-adjacent technology. So why bother with the ethically dubious Spartans at all when you can build AI-driven Myrmidons? It's particularly laughable in hindsight, when you know that the later armor variants are able to accomodate both the wearer and the AI melded with their mind. Why even bother when you can have an extra set of metal hands? Morning edit: to clarify, I don't even mean "human-passing" androids. When UNSC committed to superhumanly tall - never mind socially stunted due to abnormal upbringing - Spartans and power armor tech, they gave up on blending in with humans for infiltration purposes.

Well, by that definition, we get to Rutland of Jutland

Meanwhile, we had to consider whether we needed to move the middle cat back to town about 40 miles away because he wouldn't let his claws get trimmed...

My father apparently had something of roughly this category rigged into one of his first, late Soviet cars, alongside a loudspeaker under the hood (an Oka had a lot of space under the bonnet next to the anemic engine). Then of course there's this classic.

I realized there's one thing that's particularly endearing even over CoD2 - the loading screens. CoD2 started to style them like diary entries, whereas CoD1... And for the D-Day missions, entire obsolete sections are crossed out and replaced with hand scribbles.

And smoke. An immediate thought is that this would make aircraft devastatingly effective unless one combatant had VT fuses. Main gun fire would usually sweep away or kill anyone manning the open anti-air mounts.

How to taunt a cat owner: (not mine, because some people got confused in the past)

Meanwhile, I'm playing Call of Duty. And I mean the one that didn't have a number to hide.

https://www.foxnews.com/health/eye-injuries-solar-eclipse-surge-following-phenomenon Speaking of staring at the sun...

Well, Nammo's dead-set to fit a ramjet into a 155 mm howitzer shell, although IIRC the US cancelled their development order.

Well, at least those had a decent run... on Lake Ladoga.

I know, but that's an ATGM option, not a simple attempt to cram more velocity. Good point. Reminds me of the Gyrojet's problem. Hey, don't knock the bean counters. They're quite important when acquisition numbers run into the tens and hundreds of thousands.

Speaking of dumb questions: why is no-one trying to bolt a ramjet onto an APFSDS anti-tank dart? This seems like a natural combination. A search yeilded a couple of patents, including one by people well-placed to do something about it (a munitions subsidiry of Roscosmos) https://yandex.ru/patents/doc/RU2724626C1_20200625 Bonus: they use a drop-down nozzle with attached fins. Earlier proposals seemed to make do with a much smaller combustion chamber and a rather ordinary dart, but the patent description cites poor Isp and loss of the fins' function when they find themselves in the exhaust stream.

This does leave a gao in the form of isolationist / secessionist social groups. They'd have to have the necessary resources and not be verboten, but it doesn't sound too impossible. Something like... Yeah, I got ninja'd. That just brings us to the topic of Russia's Northern Thebaid. Granted, the fortress-monasteries involved were by far not the first human settlements, but they emphatically were an anchor for further colonization.

https://www.navalnews.com/event-news/sea-air-space-2024/2024/04/leidos-concept-turns-oil-rigs-into-mobile-missile-defense-and-supply-bases/ Eat your heart out, Toyota.

I suspect it's bevause of the taxing and devastating nature of a modern, mass-mobilization war. The last fifty years (probably more) saw the rise of the post-modern war, what Eugene Messner called the insurgency war and Valery Gerasimov called the hybrid war. However, this state of "not-quite-war" turns out to have a way of turning back into a modern industrial war many seemed to assume was gone for good (hurr-durr, fourth and fifth-generation warfare!)

...and an ICBM launch from Kapustin Yar. Looks like everyone's celebrating Friday, so no ID on the type of missile. Edit: are, here we go, a video. Looks like a Yars to me. https://t.me/fotozak/6480

I think it was. Today's world is rather small and cluttered. Back then, the Eurasian interior was terra incognita and so Rome and ancient China could peacefully coexist, despite both claiming absolute power over the known world.

And if you thought Leodr would miss the date, you'd be wrong. Astrogator 12042024

Nani?

Fun fact: "USSR" on Gagarin's helmet was added impromptu on launch day. It's not present in most of the official press photos. https://t.me/sashakots/46066