GOP_Tiger

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Probably. Unless he gets a call from Oman or something asking him not to do it.

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That was even faster than I thought. Next time, we should have a betting pool on how long it will take him to cancel the strikes he promises.

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The Ukrainian advances north of Lyman are threatening to cut off a giant pocket of Russian troops. There's a real danger for Russian forces in that area, and it could (for the time being) end the Russian threat to the rest of the northern part of Ukrainian-held Donetsk.

Now, Russia is still advancing in Kostaintynivka, and Ukraine is on the verge of losing an important stronghold protecting Kramatorsk, so I don't want to overplay this and pretend that Ukraine has stopped Russia in the Donbas, but what's happening north of Lyman bears watching.

The situation for Crimea is getting very serious:

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The Russians put the pontoon bridge back in place at Chonhar to replace that bridge (which they first did when the Chonhar Bridge was taken out during the 2023 counteroffensive), but a pontoon bridge isn't a true replacement and still slows traffic down a lot.

As it happens, I just got back on Saturday from a 12-night trip with my daughter and son-in-law:
3 nights Rome
2 nights inn in a vineyard near Orvieto
2 nights Siena
2 nights Florence
3 nights Venice

- We probably averaged $40 per person per day on attractions and entertainment.

- In Rome, we used a taxi from the airport (35 Euros) and took another one to pick up our rental car (20 Euros). Other than that, we took a bus or the Metro a few times, but our hotel was centrally located, so we just walked a lot. We drove from Rome to Florence, and I got a rental for $38 per day, and it was a hybrid with good gas mileage, so transportation for those four days was about $50 per day when you include the tolls and the times I paid for parking. Our train from Florence to Venice was 44 Euros each. In Venice, the vaporettos charge 9.50 Euros for the first ride, but there's a cap of 25 per day or 35 for two days, so I'm looking at my statement now and it says that I paid $40.74 USD for myself for the time I was there, but then we also paid for a taxi to the airport, because the bus was going to be slower than we wanted, and I think that was 35 Euros.

- We were fairly frugal with our meals. Most of our hotels included breakfast, and the days that didn't, we'd just get a coffee and pastry somewhere for a few Euros. We'd usually plan to get one meal each day at a sit-down, full-service restaurant, and the other meal was usually pizza by the slice or a sandwich or even one of the "pasta to go" places, and those "to-go" meals were generally about 10 Euros including a soft drink or lemonade. And we generally got gelato twice a day at 5 Euros each time. Our sit-down meals could be very cheap, as in two people splitting a 10-Euro pizza, but we were more often paying 12-18 Euros each for our own entree at a simple trattoria or osteria. We splurged on an elegant and delicious four-course meal at our inn in Orvieto for the great price of 56 Euros per person (would've been higher in a city). We also ate Florentine steak in Florence, and the minimum cut was 1.2 kg at the price of 60 Euros per kg, so that was 72 Euros. We also did a wine and cheese tasting at a vineyard, farm, and sheep's milk dairy near Pienza, and that was 40 Euros each.

Hopefully, this will give you some ideas and help you with your budgeting process.

It sucks, but if you fly any airline with any regularity, it just makes sense to get the credit card to get the bag fees waived.

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Ukraine doesn't need to offensively drive Russia out of their territory at the cost of bodies; it just has to make it impossible for Russia to stay.

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This, of course, is what happened with the liberation of the city of Kherson in November 2022. The cost of controlling the territory became too great.

And the problems that Russia is facing are escalating quickly in southern Ukraine. There are new reports that the Russian military has ordered troops not to use the major R-280 highway, because too much is getting blown up.

Ukraine just took out the Chonhar bridge for the 2nd time in a week, meaning that vehicles have to take a two-hour detour to get into Crimea. And the lines of cars waiting to buy gasoline are already miles long in Crimea.

What's happening is that Ukraine has taken out much of the Russian air defense systems in southern Ukraine, and now Ukraine can keep very large recon drones up without risk. Ukraine uses other large, fixed-wing drones as mothers to fly FPVs deep behind enemy lines, and then the mother drone acts as a signal repeater while the FPVs attack.

Ukraine is very slowly retaking territory in this area now, but I expect the pace to escalate. Crimea has always been the key to a successful outcome of the war for Ukraine.

I live in that area and Dempsey's is my first choice for a casual meal. As others have said, their gumbo is certainly among the very best in town.

My favorite order is the "fried shrimp gumbo", which combies a bowl of seafood gumbo with fried shrimp and fried okra. The gumbo obviously already has shrimp and okra in it, so the flavors are meant for each other, and I'll use the gumbo like a dipping sauce.

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Give flowers to guys like CP3 who worked their arse off

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You think Hart gave less than full effort when he was here?

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Russian forces have withdrawn from the Kinburn Spit in Ukraine's Mykolaiv region after Ukrainian actions severed all supply routes, according to the Atesh partisan group. The 337th Regiment, already depleted by redeployments, was left without reinforcements, ammunition, or fuel, and suffered mounting losses from Ukrainian drone strikes.

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As I wrote on May 9:

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we don't talk nearly enough about the increasing dominance of Ukrainian mid-range drones. If smaller Ukrainian drones can consistently interdict Russian logistics at the 100-mile range, and if Ukraine is similarly able to maintain its recent progress in destroying Russian air defense systems using these drones at that range ... well, there are a number of implications, but the biggest is that Russia will struggle to supply and defend troops in Crimea and the "land bridge" across southern Ukraine.

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If Russia doesn't soon figure out a counter to the dominance of Ukrainian mid-range drones controlling their supply routes, this war will soon enter a very different stage.

I would say that you need to get further off the tourist trail. You've seen enough that you aren't wowed by Budapest or Prague anymore, and all the advice that people are giving you about taking your time with the destination aren't going to fix that---taking things more slowly may make your vacation more pleasant, but it won't make it breathtaking.

I just got back last night from 12 days in Italy with my daughter and son-in-law, and I completely understand your perspective. For me, it wasn't nearly as "WOW" as it had been in the past, and the trip was really only a great trip for me because I was with my daughter and son-in-law.

But my Ethiopia trip 18 months ago was very much WOW. My Galapagos trip in 2024 was very much WOW.

You just aren't going to get the same feeling by continuing to go to places like Japan and Europe. You've been there and done that.