The Old Hack

Two free workers is absolutely not a bad thing, especially if they can also make garlic knots. That being said, I am surprised there isn't a McDonalds around in the area, too. You'd think they would want to show their Golden Arches to the descendants of the greatest engineers and architects of the ancient world and see what they think of them.

There's a lot you haven't been telling us, Pharaoh. Like the fact that you had a Pizza Hut opened right next to the Great Pyramid. https://www.tumblr.com/geeko-sapiens/717739779218898944?source=share

I thought anarchy was what you got when you play Civilization and switch between government forms, then there's anarchy till the new one is ready.

It is apparently a growing issue.

I'd rather not be a WW1 general, thank you.

Yeah, which is a real comfort after you have taken out yourself and all your friends, too. Also I am not sure a rat qualifies as an enemy worth spending kilotonnes' worth of explosives on.

1) I believe that detonating literal kilotonnes of conventional explosives to kill a rat counts as overkill. 2) I do not believe the individual in question was in any state to reload afterwards.

According to one interpretation what Prigozhin was offering was not the location of troops but rather their leadership. The leaders would 1) be harder to find and 2) be exactly the people Prigozhin has the biggest motive to get rid of. Whether it is true or not doesn't really matter. At this point everyone in the top Russian leadership are so paranoid that they won't dare to ignore it. It will create even more friction between them. If this is an Ukrainian psyop, it was brilliantly aimed.

It may in fact be the most impressive example of overkill in human history.

I once nicknamed a bard 'the banjomancer.' To his credit he thought it was funny

And if it is both, is the result then Very Bad Things happening? On second thought, scratch that. I already have an example of that. Some guard in an Archangelsk munitions depot -- a really massive depot -- got drunk and then happened to spot what he thought was rats inside the depot. And then went hunting for them with his automatic rifle. The subsequent explosion was easily visible from orbit and for a while both sides thought it might have been a nuclear detonation. Fortunately they got it cleared up before the nukes started flying. Darth Putin said it was because of the increasing friction between Russian ground units. Apparently Aeroflot (or whatever the Russian air force is called) felt left out and started to shoot its own airframes down just to show how it was done. True. It is a little hard to focus on combat when you keep getting tossed around and have your head banged repeatedly into the sides of your vehicle.

I once had an utterly unexpected but SUPER AWESOME experience. I was riding my bicycle just south of the outskirts of Copenhagen and reached a fair sized hill. Then I heard bagpipe music. A lot of it and well played. As I ascended the hill I saw something like a dozen people standing at the very summit, all of them playing bagpipes. It was windy and they were all wearing what to my admittedly inexpert eyes looked like proper highland outfits. I stopped for a while to listen. The music sounded eerily beautiful and I really enjoyed it even though bagpipes are not normally my thing. I felt rather regretful when I finally set off again. I could understand why they picked that hilltop, mind you. The view was gorgeous and it was probably one of the tallest points in that part of Denmark, which generally is more or less as flat as a pancake.

But there is in fact more earth than sea.

Because mummies and other people covered in bandages have a lowered priority. Yes, I know this is unfair. Unfortunately the leaders of shadowy organizations tend to worry when confronted with recruits that might possibly be more ominous and/or evil than themselves.

I suspect they lived in suburban Moperville rather than in farm country. Besides, they grew up in a different time period. Their county fair exhibits would not have included scarab breeding or mummy grooming.

In fairness to the F-17, suspension becomes somewhat less of an issue when top speed is approximately 3 mph. It still sounds like something you really don't want to get hit by even when fired from a rifle. And as Darth Fluffy pointed out, accuracy. I am really impressed by those modern tanks which can fire on the move with high precision. Doing so while moving cross country must be a nontrivial problem.

So still after Renault designed his tank. I reiterate that it is hard to design for something that does not yet exist at the moment you are creating your design. A more relevant question would be when the .50 round was created if any weapon capable of sufficient muzzle energy for it existed. (Perhaps more relevant would be the 13.2 mm Tuf which was developed by the Germans specifically to counter British and French tanks and might be considered in part a response to the FT-17 itself.) Possibly also the addition of decent suspension, which is arguably also of some little importance. For the crew, at least.

...afterthought: what do you call a man like Putler who does the exact opposite of Renault in the above and commits nearly a century out of date obsolete death traps to the front lines? 'Postscient'?

In all fairness, I do not think Renault had the weaponry of a century later in mind when he designed it. And I do think the man could be otherwise called prescient. After all, I have yet to see any modern tank design that has deviated far from its basic conception: rotating turret with heaviest weapon in it, thick front armour, engine to the rear, tracked locomotion. Exceptions do exist but these tend to be specialized for nonstandard purposes.

It's a Renault FT-17, often considered the ancestor of the modern tank. The first examples built in 1917, it had a rotating turret with a 20 mm cannon and an engine in the rear end. The vast majority of all tank designs since were based on this pattern.

Technically it does, I suppose...

Russian reinforcements for the Ukraine front getting ready for action.

it's the Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging- All ready to useit's the Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging- I just need a fuse...

Well if it is antiques they are looking for, maybe they could get Chuck along with the carriage. Admittedly he is more modern than a T-54 but not by much.

No technicals? I am almost disappointed.