DDE

Mark Watney disliked that

Picture of the day: a guy, late teens, walking down the sidewalk, hobbled over two takeaway bags from not-McDonalds, desperately trying to shield them from the rain. It's +6⁰C.

The list of of alumni of Bauman* Moscow State Technical University reads like a who's who of air, space, nuclear and arms industry - Zhukovskyi, Korolev, Chelomei, Sukhoi, Tupolev, Myascischev, Pilyugin, Lavochkin, Dollezhal, Nepobedimyi... to this day, pretty much only Bauman graduates are considered for the assignment of a Soyuz engineer. * Nikolay Bauman was a small-time veterinarian and the leader of Moscow's Bolshevik cell who in 1905 got killed during a demonstration nearby; he had absolutely nothing to do with the then Imperial Moscow Technical School. There is, however, one Baumanka graduate most people really don't like to talk about: Alfred Rosenberg, of Revel (now Tallinn), a literal achitect turned writer, as well the figurative architect of the ideology of the German National-Socialist Workers' Party and the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Evidently, history likes to try to put a spoonful of tar into every barrel of honey.

Oh, I saw that article, but those too are specialized engineering vehicles - and AFAIK those dozer blades are part of a mine plough system that's been mostly superceded by rollers (which , as I hear, were at one point simply copied from a Soviet specimen supplied by Israelis).

Of bulldozers and snowploughs It's a well-known fact that tanks often remember their humble origins as tractors and carry dozer blades My question is, why aren't those blades V-shaped? It originates from the design of Soviet BAT and IMR-family engineering vehicles, whose permanently mounted dozer blades can do this: I understand that the tank-mounted designs wouldn't be as elaborate. An expanded question is whether a dozer blade specifically optimized for tearing down barricades would look any different (e.g. see "teeth" in the 40k image above), or is the same achieved just by angling the blade with hydraulics?

Steam Workshop turned up this ARMA 3 mod. Ah, the latest in military technology (no joke), but imagine seeing that and not knowing the context. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3045129955

Don't sleep four hours a day for a week, guys.

Tonight in things that've never happened at government agencies... You're assuming there was a plan. Mir was literally saved from a much earlier conversion to submarine by a shareholders' meeting of Energia. A hypothetical (i.e. Gorbachev-Sakharov) USSR reboot would likely see a program that is still Russian-dominated and cash-strapped. There would not be a Vostochnyi, because it would be in an almost-enclave as Siberian republics would be elevated to the same status as Kazakhstan. One interesting thing to keep in mind when considering the above scenario is Leonid Kuchma, chief designer and later CEO of Yuzhmash, and then the Ukrainian president in 1994-2005.

Before and after winter

"So, we're designing a social rating system everyone thinks is the most dytopian thing ever. What shall we call it to sound pleasant?" "'We'" "Subtle..." Source: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6253850

Lazar Kaganovich, a long-time №2 of Uncle Joe, personally ordered that the Moscow-Leningrad overnight 1st class express, the Red Arrow, should depart at 23:55. Why? A whole extra day of travelling allowance.

This is what peak diplomacy looked like in 1983

Most of our work with maps was, indeed, in history. Until somewhere relatively late we again had Geography and the teacher ran us through all the countries and capitals including Latin America. However, that wasn't where an internal meme originated. Instead, on behalf of our resident blonde ditz (she played the image up): "Iran" *points* "Teheran" "Iraq" *points* "...Teheraq?"

Polar bears can jump https://t.me/roscosmos_gk/11039

You need to open it as an image to get a .png link. Also, I disagree it's cursed. Honestly, I might just not care enough about the Shuttle - my space nerddom was basically stuck in Soviet past until mid-2010s - to see a familiar shape being "violated". Yandex search by "SPS HLLV" quickly turned up the source document: https://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/1981-NASA-SPS-Space-Transportation.pdf (image on page 1-30)

How do I put more than one "like"!?

"They're upgrading"

N.B. The guys wearing red are Security/Emergency Management (hence the pistol). They are very, very effective, as seen here.

The Man from Nowhere A lost cosmonaut, a Captain America-esque fake 1960s hospital, retrograde amnesia, supposed invented cosmonaut identity, et cetera et cetera. Looks like another mind-screw attempt, IDK, but it has spaaaaace.

Ka-64D Helix Longbow

You're on thin ice here, human.

My father just made a good attempt to cut his finger off. Had to put a split around it and found myself utterly inept. Hopefully the desire to attend a first-aid course isn't going directly to the bucket list...

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2307149120

[joke about American police redacted]

Hey, debate class is debate class. I wasn't going to discuss the taste of different colors of crayons, was I? Anyway, look at this dude. Look at his wheels!