Image is of Jeff Daniels in The Newsroom, giving a speech (parodied below) about how - gasp - America sucks. But in a patriotic way.
And you - general megathread poster - yeah - just in case you accidentally wander into the news megathread one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest megathread in the world.
We're seventh in citations, twenty-seventh in accurate predictions, twenty-second in effortposts, forty-ninth in non-mainstream article posting, 178th in guessing when wars will start, third in powerusers, number four in dialectics, and number four in megathread exports. We lead Hexbear in only three categories: pointless infighting, number of adults who believe Putin is based, and copium manufacturing, where we produce more than the next twenty-six lemmy megathreads combined, twenty-five of whom are full of delusional liberals. None of this is the fault of any Hexbear user, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST-period-GENERATION-period-EVER-period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest megathread in the world, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about! Jokes about whether they got a Zionist's semen in time?!
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
how do these 'simulated' actions work? are planes readied to put air defense on alert and then they don't do anything? or do they actually take off? in the latter case i have to question if the cost to the enemy for a false alert is higher than what it takes to deploy a 'juke'
The planes usually take off and practice launch maneuveres according to the air raid channels. With aircraft like Tu-95M strategic bombers that launch the Kh-101 missiles, their movement is usually monitored, they are large and hard to hide. With something like the Su-57, the most you'll get is a take off and general estimated location (example, airborne over x oblast), it's a stealth fighter after all.
The value of these simulations I'd imagine is training and experience for the flight and ground crews outside of actual combat so that they're ready for it, and it does keep the enemy on it's toes. There was even a simulated Oreshnik strike a few days ago. These large air attacks are quite complex, the launch timings of the cruise missiles, drones, ballistic missiles, etc have to be exact and at certain intervals for the desired result to occur. So training on this is always useful.
i hadn't really considered they'd have training value, tbh good point. guess i assumed the russian air force was more or less the same size/personnel as it was at the beginning of the war, lol---has it expanded very much/have they had to do many replacements? my brain has russian air filed under 'uncontested supremacy' vis-a-vis ukraine so i didn't really pay attention
Russian Air Force when directly compared to the Ukrainian Air Force yeah pretty much uncontested. MiG-31s and Su-35s can fire R-37 missiles from much longer ranges than Ukrainian aircraft can return fire with their own R-27 missiles. Su-35s also make very capable escort aircraft for Su-34 bombing missions, the Su-35 can carry R-37 BVR long range air to air missiles, R-77 medium range BVR air to air missiles, R-73 short range infrared heat seeking air to air missiles, and Kh-31 anti radiation air to ground missiles, all simultaneously. So an escort capable of dealing with all possible threats at the same time. The Ukrainian F-16s are deployed in a defensive posture, not an offensive one. But Ukraine has plenty of air defence systems capable of taking out Russian aircraft, Patriot and S-300 being the highest level ones. So Russia can't just fly over Ukraine, they could only do that at the beginning of the war. The only Russian aircraft you'll hear of or see operating behind Ukrainian lines is again, the Su-57. There was a video of one shooting down it's S-70 drone companion within Ukrainian airspace after losing control over the S-70.