BC WAR
Saved by @SteveeRogerr

New mass missile test of Zolfaqar and Dezful BMs, as well as use of suicide drones and Shahed-161 UCAVs.

Reporter in video claimed the BMs have ability to maneuver "outside the atmosphere" but since these missiles are quasi-BMs and don't leave the atmosphere, they may have...

 ...gas thrusters for extra maneuvering ability at very high altitudes where their control surfaces have less use in the thin air. This will make it much harder for ABMs to intercept.
Now into the images; first up is the 8x8 TEL for Zolfaqar/Dezful missiles first seen in 2019. Proof here it's operational and being made in numbers
Another video showing a lot of very precise impacts from different angles
Here are 4 (visible) targets in close proximity with missiles (numbered according to target) going for each of their designated impact points. Incredible accuracy.
There was a fifth missile as well but I couldn't see its target.
These semi-trailer TELs for Dezful indicate that either there aren't quite enough of the 8x8 TELs to go around yet, or that Dezful is now considered a strategic system and hence uses strategic basing methods, which in Iran has these semi-trailers. It's a dual launcher, too.
Commander of IRGC-ASF said that their UAVs are now using AI, which would seem to explain the close formation of these Shahed-161s and suicide drones.
Based on the timing between the impacts it would seem this video is another angle of the annotated screenshots I posted above. Can get a better look at the accuracy which honestly seems even more impressive than the previous angle.

What a fucking shot
In case you haven't already seen these
@imamedia_org video is out let's gooooo

https://t.co/HYMKHeUgxZ
4x of those 8x8 TELs present
Got a good one here. You can see the plasma (?) coming off the fins of the Dezful RV. Incredible.
Per @IanD3f, terminal velocity (impact speed) is approximately Mach 8.

https://t.co/I38L8G46cQ
https://t.co/yZf04XD0WL
I feel like at some point a drone operator smacked a Shahed-129 into the ground and now all of them have these suuuuuper bright LEDs on their gear even in the day 😅 like "DON'T do that shit again no excuses anymore"

https://t.co/4IwYv9x2Jp

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Olesya Vartanyan
Olesya Vartanyan
@Olesya_vArt
1/ Last couple of days saw first serious post-war incidents along the new line of contact in #Karabakh conflict zone.

No precise information about casualties. Social media posts combined with official reports suggest at least 8 wounded, 3 killed, 2 Arm POWs - nothing confirmed.

2/ Both locations of reported incidents are of strategic importance.

The village of Taghavard saw toughest fighting during the latest weeks of war. It is located close to the road that connects Azerbaijan-controlled areas with Shushi.


3/ Reportedly Baku is now constructing a new road to connect with Shushi. But it will take time, no one knows if it is gonna be good enough during the year, and it will still have to cross the road for a joint Arm-Az use from Lachin to Stepanakert.

4/ 2nd, and reportedly more serious incident, took place at this enclave. It was almost a miracle that Arm sustained control over this area, mainly due to the stubbornness of the local volunteers.

A larger map by @Krummapper here: https://t.co/8KrUmk8QK2


5/ No precise information whether Az troops took over one, two or all the villages in this enclave. Russ peacekeepers reportedly visited the area, which is not indicated as part of their responsibility on official maps.
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Elijah J. Magnier
Elijah J. Magnier
@ejmalrai
#Iran #Iraq #USA
Exactly a year ago, at 17 minutes past midnight (12:17), an Airbus A350 belonging to Ajnihat al-Sham flight arriving from Damascus landed at Baghdad airport with 5 Iranian commanders onboard, including Sardar Qassem Soleimani A #US SOF team was waiting close by.+

#Iran #IRGC brigadier general booked his flight under a different name. He was the first to leave the plane followed by his close companions. Abu Mahdi, along with two of his close aid-de-champ and his security trusted man (Sayyed al-Jaberi) were waiting on the runway.+

As the two cars drove away, at 12:37 (past midnight) two US MQ-9 Reaper drones fired 230 mph laser-guided Hellfire missiles, incinerating the bodies of Soleimani, al-Muhandes and all their Iranian and Iraqi companions.


A team of #US SOF guided the drones and later collected samples from the scene and took close pictures. During that day, on the 2d of January 2020, the US took unusual measures around the embassy and had more flights in the sky than agreed with the Iraqi government.

The 31st of December 2019, Pr. @realDonaldTrump called #Iraq PM Adel Abdel Mahdi and asked him to intervene with #Iran to de-escalate following the US killing of 28 Iraqi security forces at al-Qaem and the reaction of their companions in arms against the US embassy in Baghdad..
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Jonathan Ware
Jonathan Ware
@ReassessHistory
The Churchill Tank in Normandy: Part One 40-44

Ratty Relic or Bocage Buster?

How did it go from a hated, atrocious POS tank worthy only of the scrapheap to a reliable, trustworthy, survivable and popular gun tank in action?

Another pertinent tale. /1
#WW2 #SWW #History


At 38 tons the Churchill was clearly a beast but a manageable one, given concerns about railway loading gauge had informed development (even then you still had to remove the side air louvres for rail tpt).

As always, compromise & industrial limitations underpinned design. /2


Early Mk I and Mk II were respectively armed with a 2 Pounder with coaxial Besa in the turret but with differing hull armament, I - 3" howitzer, II - Besa machine gun.

88.9mm of front armour provided excellent protection for the five man crew, and WS No. 19 provided comms. /3


Other than being undergunned another problem was, they didn't work very well.

But why?

It call comes back to, you guessed it, June 1940 - at the height of that invasion-scare summer.

AFV cupboards were bare so the initial models were raced into production in June 1940... /4


there wasn't time for proper prototyping or accompanying development as the imperative to have ANY gun tank pushed Vauxhall to the limit in the race to get SOMETHING, ANYTHING into the field.

9 RTR probably enjoyed the dubious honour of the first Churchill deliveries. /5
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Alternative Reality
Alternative Reality
@IGalare
SMOKING GUN
1. In post 1991, following the victory over Saddam in the gulf war, destroying him became the project. Allegations of chemical weapon used on Iraqis was all over western medias without proof until one was manufactured in Halabja, a Kurdish town.

2.And Suleiman Doud al- Afari was made the fall guy. Piled with the WMD hoax, invading Iraq was mission accomplished. Millions dead & millions more in exile, while the missile ruins and scatters everywhere, no apology or compensation from the west, Just moved on.

3. Enter Syria. Bashar as an anti West in a region that has to be beholden to western ideals, so has to go. Allegations of a massacre in the town of Allepo was made with ''manufactured'' proofs. But to gain more traction, CSOs were funded to commence human right demonstrations.

4. Eight years later with tens of thousands dead & millions in exile plus once thriving ancient cities in ruins, no apology or compensation, Just moved on.
Enters Libya. A Quadafi spearheading an independent Arab region for decades have to be settled. Allegations of clamp down

5. on oppositions and human right violations again started. Then suddenly there was a ''massacre'' in Benghazi. CSOs suddenly sprang up everywhere well funded making spurious & confusing demands. France & Britain under the supervision of Hilary Clinton,
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DokterSpin
DokterSpin
@dokterspin
Suppose WWIII has already started, how would we notice?
My (grand) parents saw the German tanks and troops pass by their door. The Vietnamese and Iraqis knew when the bombs fell that the Americans were nearby. But bombs and weapons have long ceased to be the most important ...

....weapons in modern warfare. Information, communication and people on the street are the new powerful weapons. Big Tech is a weapon. A weapon of an invisible opponent.
Over the past 20 years, we have become accustomed to quick information and were no longer dependent ....

...on the legacy media for our opinion. My late father watched the National news (NOS) until his last days, a medium he relied on since its existence for his vision of the world. With the advent of the internet, I took a big red pill.

Where social media have contributed to a better opinion formation, it has been clear since Snowden that they are weapons. To be used by an invisible opponent. With a drag net, all information about you and everyone is collected.
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Roger Grosse
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Important paper from Google on large batch optimization. They do impressively careful experiments measuring # iterations needed to achieve target validation error at various batch sizes. The main "surprise" is the lack of surprises. [thread]

https://t.co/7QIx5CFdfJ


The paper is a good example of lots of elements of good experimental design. They validate their metric by showing lots of variants give consistent results. They tune hyperparamters separately for each condition, check that optimum isn't at the endpoints, and measure sensitivity.

They have separate experiments where the hold fixed # iterations and # epochs, which (as they explain) measure very different things. They avoid confounds, such as batch norm's artificial dependence between batch size and regularization strength.

When the experiments are done carefully enough, the results are remarkably consistent between different datasets and architectures. Qualitatively, MNIST behaves just like ImageNet.

Importantly, they don't find any evidence for a "sharp/flat optima" effect whereby better optimization leads to worse final results. They have a good discussion of experimental artifacts/confounds in past papers where such effects were reported.
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David Rothkopf
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If there is one thing I have learned it is that people love bullshit. They buy bullshit stories from professional bullshit artists, accept bullshit philosophies, purchase bullshit how-to-books, vote for bullshitting politicians.

At first, I resisted believing this because it is illogical and dumb and frankly, doesn't reflect well on the human race of which I am a member (and thus have long been hopeful that it is more of a distinction than it actually turns out to be.)

But if you actually are interested in facts you begin to notice how little most people care for them. Sometimes it is because they are heard to learn and bullshit is so much more widely and easily available. Sometimes it is because facts make them uncomfortable about themselves.

Sometimes it is because just one tiny fact will upset a whole worldview that has grown as comfortable as an overstuffed chair. (Settling into such worldviews is a lot like settling into chairs like that because the longer you're there and the deeper you sink...

...the harder it is to hoist yourself up and out of your fat-assed intellectual laziness.) But I actually think the reason people have such an appetite for bullshit goes deeper, goes to an aspect of ourselves we just can't accept.
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Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
KANAKA DURGAMMA, VIJAYWADA (AP)
#bharatmandir

Ma Kanakadurgeswari is the supreme Goddess of Andhra Pradesh, seated atop the Indrakilaparvatha at Vijayawada.
This area is called Bezawada as Shiva made a bejjam (hole) in the rocks so that Krishna river could flow freely.


Once, a Rishi Indra Keela prayed to Devi and asked her to reside on his head forever. Devi told him to wait in the form of a mountain in the holy plains of River Krishna.
Later, when Devi killed all demons, she settled on Keeladri as Mahishasura Mardini and fulfilled his wish.


In this place, Arjuna performed penance and fought with Shiva, who had appeared in the guise of Kiratha to win Pasupathastra, the most powerful weapon. So this place is also called phalguna theertha and Vijaywada on account of Arjun’s victory.


Adi Sankaracharya visited this shrine and worshipped the Devi. He installed SRICHAKRAM at the feet of Sri Kanaka Durga.

Adjacent to the Kanakadurga shrine is the shrine of the divine consort-Sri Malleswara Swamy on the Indrakeeladri.
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Tashny Sukumaran
Tashny Sukumaran
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Surendra Ananth @surendraananth, you violated my conditional consent. I assented to unprotected intimate relations with you on the STRICT condition that you tell me if you have relations with anyone else. You failed to do so, and I became ill as a direct consequence.

You refused to reveal your own STI results to me, but claimed to others they were negative and alleged I had multiple other partners, slut-shaming me. You gaslit me saying you had told me about your other partners.

You called up @justice_sisters and @SistersinIslam to tell them I was crazy, jilted. You rebuffed attempts to organise a community mediation so we could address matters. You said I was crazy for speaking to your boss and father in an attempt to keep other women safe.

You have a PATTERN OF BEHAVIOUR of misogyny, harassment and sheer disrespect for women. This was sent to a friend of mine who has never expressed interest in you and has a partner.


You think women are playthings, notches on the bedpost. You, @surendraananth, are no human rights advocate.
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Suhas S. Hardutt
Suhas S. Hardutt
@HarduttSuhas
THE BATTLE OF TALIKOTA and the destruction of Vijaynagar (Hampi)
26 January 1565

A tale of valor, deception and decimation.

A grim reminder that if we fail to protect our heritage, it will eventually crumble under the onslaught of "forces of anarchy".
(Elaborate thread)


This decisive battle was fought between the Vijayanagara empire and the Deccan sultanates resulting in a rout of Vijayanagara and ending the last major medieval era Hindu kingdom in south India.(1)

The seeds of 1565 encounter were sown more than 250 years earlier when the forces of the Delhi Sultanate, during the time of Alauddin Khilji and later Md Bin Tughlaq swept through southern India in an expansion spree.(2)

By middle of the 14th century, facing rebellions, Tughlaq withdrew to Delhi, leaving behind 2 empires, Bahmani, which ruled the Deccan from Kalaburagi, and Vijayanagara, which ruled most south India with its capital at Vijayanagar.(3)

The Raichur Doab, between the Krishna and Tungabhadra rivers, existed as a natural boundary between these two kingdoms, with wars often breaking out over control of this territory.(4)
HISTORY