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SL Xpress

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Everything posted by SL Xpress

  1. It's not like people didn't know what they were getting into when they signed contracts purchasing ammunition and weapons from Swiss defense contractors. This neutrality thing has only been going on for 700+ years. And for @0xdeadbeef the issue isn't what Switzerland would do. It's kind of like welshing on a debt agreement. Every country has similar agreements regarding their weapons and ammunition. It's a big problem with the way the EU arms industry is constructed (I'm sure you know, but Switzerland is not actually part of the EU, so this doesn't apply to them per se) as far as this particular conflict is concerned. There are as many as 10 to 14 countries involved with the manufacture of systems and their spare parts/ammo for quite a few of the weapons utilized by NATO countries. All of them have to agree to their re-export. If a country chooses to re-export weapons in their possession without permission, they don't just endanger their relationship with that specific country. They risk being ostracized from the system itself, including countries no longer selling weapons/parts/ammo to them any more, as well as other countries sending off weapons/spare parts/ammo as re-exports without gaining permission themselves. It's the system itself that protects Switzerland more than the Swiss's overall importance in the ecosystem.
  2. Neil Hauer is claiming Syrski is an idiot. It's my opinion Syrski wanted to keep his job. It's my opinion Moskalyov was fired two weeks ago for wanting to withdraw from Bakhmut. We'll see how things work out. I always maintained I'd prefer them to withdraw from Bakhmut before the last road out came under pressure (which wasn't even paved). Bakhmut is at a lower height than the western topography. You could have withdrawn to the surrounding hills overlooking the town. I feel like Zelensky didn't want to give up any more territory. It's not over, yet. But it doesn't look like it's getting any better, when I keep hoping it will. Quantity still has a quality all of its own, even when people say it doesn't. It's not providing Russia a breakthrough, and I firmly believe Ukraine wins this war, but in this particular battle Russia being willing to sacrifice so many men, and constantly use their artillery shell bombardment on squares rather than using reconnaissance to correct their shots, is making slow, deliberate, painful progress. I understand it's not sustainable for Russia in the way it was for the Soviet Union, but if they end up cutting off the UAF forces in Bakhmut that's not going to be much reassurance for them. We'll see. Like I said, I keep hoping for a result other than Azovstal or the Donetsk Airport.
  3. Yeah, it's usually a much higher buyout for firing a coach than it is for buying out the contract if he leaves. For example. Beard's buyout for firing him was somewhere around $30m, but his buyout if he left for somewhere else was around $5 million. The first one I know about where the buyout was the same both ways was Applewhite's contract when UH named him the head coach after Herman left for Texas. But I felt like that was somewhat unusual because of how jilted they felt, plus you had Fertitta leading the way, and you had a coach in Applewhite who was pretty desperate to get the job, just in the sense he was ambitious and wanted to be a head coach. To be honest, it doesn't sound like Gates' deal is the same amount both ways in any case. He's supposedly getting paid $4m per year, with a $25m buyout. Did he sign a 6 year contract? I guess maybe he did. It's a big deal for Missouri in any case. When he was hired I read plenty of articles of Missouri affiliated bloggers talking about the Missouri athletic department not exactly being flush with cash, mostly because the attendance at their football games sucked shit out of a straw. But they are absolutely starved for basketball success. Norm Stewart retired in 1999, and it's been some pretty rough sledding since then. Probably glad to have what appears to be a winner prior to Stewart kicking the bucket.
  4. Except for OU football.
  5. I swear that kid seems like he's made of glass. I really like him as a player, but it seems like his whole career is about him going in and out of lineups because of a nagging injury.
  6. These buyouts are absurd. Kudos to athletic departments for getting these coaches to sign them. But it seems ridiculous the level of leverage the coaches are signing away. But I'm not party to the conversations they're having. I haven't noticed football having buyouts this large. Is it happening in professional sports? Or is men's basketball the unicorn it seems to me?
  7. I've always loved Kelvin Sampson as a coach. I've never seen a coach get his players to play harder consistently than he does. But holy cow is he a big whiner on the sidelines. Less now than when he was younger, but it's still bad. He used to be halfway out on the floor all the time while action was going on. Then there's the whole cheating thing. People love to be dismissive since you can do the things he was doing back then, but that's not the point. He knew he was in no contact periods, but he would lavish players with attention in ways no other coaches were doing in an effort to get a recruiting advantage, and he was able to because other coaches were respecting those particular rules. Then there's also the fact he's 67. But I really like the way his teams play. But it won't be him.
  8. Let's win tomorrow. Good things happen when we win the Big 12 tournament!
  9. I can't remember an NCAA tournament game where fouls being called tighter had a negative impact on us.
  10. How do you foul an opponent when he runs up your backside? That makes no sense to me.
  11. Don't say that. I'm going to write a novella, you're going to click open a thread and there's going to be this huge wall of text with me acting like I'm coming down from Mt. Sinai with stone tablets in my hands, and you're going to go, "this guy!" But thank you for the sentiment.
  12. How interesting would it be? Chris Beard is going to hire him when he gets the job at Ole Miss, don't you think? In any case, someone will. That dude knows his defense. Are you saying for a head job? Absolutely not. At least, not anyone even remotely legitimate.
  13. When you say doing everything in their power to get rid of him, it has almost a future tense sound to it. I don't think of that as a future tense sort of situation.
  14. It looks gorgeously designed, of course. But no.
  15. I haven't seen anything in your posts so far that merits a detailed conversation. Maybe I change my mind at some point, but right now you mostly look like a troll.
  16. When you say there's no need, I'm saying it's on an instinctual basis. I'd argue the need is rooted in our compulsion to connect. Whether rightly or wrongly, one of the most powerful connecting mechanisms is to define an other for whatever collective we're a part of. This is utilized and exploited by leaders to maintain control and power. You're arguing civilization answers the physical security need adequately by itself. My argument is that it doesn't matter. Whoever is out of power is going to try to gain power. The concept of freedom is relative, oftentimes defined by how high up the hierarchal pyramid we are. Cultivating the sense of other to band our tribe together in order to gain greater power is fundamental to our existence. That's never going away, I don't care how modern society gets.
  17. You are terrible at making your points.
  18. If Jay Wright or Billy Donovan wanted to return to college basketball I bet that happens. They won’t, so your point still stands, but it’s not like they won’t because they can’t.
  19. Georgetown Georgetown Georgetown then Georgetown. Allegedly.
  20. Well, he is a serious candidate. It’s part of why he’s not a serious candidate for me. From a basketball perspective I enjoyed last year’s team way more, because I could see a vision for what Beard wanted from his team on both ends of the floor, even if it didn’t always look pretty. All I see from Terry is go out and play hard. Not the same attention to detail any more on the defensive end. Players consistently late in rotations. Terrible perimeter defense from a roster built from the ground up to negate the 3 point line. Mitchell and Morris are the same players they started the season as. On the offensive end the ball screening and off the ball screening continues to decline. Say what you will about last year’s team - and let’s face it, the offense was boring as all get out - but they consistently earned open looks. If Terry gets the job so be it, but he’s not going to last. He’s not going to be successful somewhere else. I’d prefer to roll the dice with this hire, but if I end up having to wait a few years so be it. I’d just like this season to help make it worth it in some way with a nice run. Oh, and Beard kept saying in the preseason that Hunter and Rice were the two players he valued most in the entire portal. Hunter hasn’t had the season I thought he would, but Rice has completely and utterly saved this team’s bacon. What an amazing pickup he turned out to be, especially with the kind of one on one offense this squad devolves into consistently.
  21. Except for Kevin Ollie.
  22. I absolutely do. I also have PTSD from Wetlich, the end of Penders' time, the end of Barnes' tenure, and now Beard. But still I remain hopeful it's all going to work out within my lifetime. In the meantime I just have to figure out how to deal with the basketball fan equivalent of the loud noises and flashing lights.
  23. You may be right, but it's not like we actually know that. He was in that guest bedroom in the first place for a reason, and the reason wasn't that he felt everything was hunky dory with his relationship. According to the affidavit, what started the whole thing is that he was trying to ignore her, she didn't like that one bit, and did/said things to make sure he wouldn't. Which is not to put the blame on her. But like Bill Burr says, while you should never hit a woman, the idea that a woman has never done anything to deserve to be hit is a different conceit altogether. The blame is Beard's in all kinds of ways. I just think a lot of people are assuming he's going to stay in this relationship until this explodes again, when that's not clear to me to be the case at all. Could be. But might not be. We just don't know.
  24. Well, I'd argue the 2008 financial collapse was the unintended consequence of pushing for much higher ownership rates. I feel like a huge number of people contributed to the financial collapse, but that was the beginning of it. And yes, he was an asshole.
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