No, but they were:

Strategic bombing of a civilian population

The most successful besiegers were probably the Romans. It wasn’t so much the act of laying siege that caused cities to surrender, it was the utter, uncompromising determination of the Romans to see the siege through to the end, and the atrocities they would commit on the surrendering population that made them so successful. Surrender immediately and you don’t get enslaved or butchered… hold out and things will go very, very badly.

I don’t recall all the details but there was one siege in western Europe where the mayor of the town declared ‘you won’t take us: we have supplies for four years in our store houses’ to which the Roman commander replied ‘then we’ll take you on the fifth year.’

Or take Masada, a supposedly impregnable fortress built on a mountaintop. First the Romans built walls all the way around it, both to contain the Jewish ‘rebels’ but also to protect the Roman siegeworks from any potential rescue force. Then they just built a ramp. A massive, massive ramp, that reached all the way up to the fortress walls (which weren’t that strong because who builds a strong wall when your fortress is perched on top of a mountain?). Then they wheeled up some siege engines, smashed their way through the walls and discovered most of the inhabitants had commited suicide rather than face capture.

Strategic bombing of a civilian population has only ever hardened that population’s resolve.

Are you including Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWBjwgxEawo

Defragged cows. System files cannot be moved.

Russia says US support for Ukraine will end as ‘humiliating fiasco’ like ‘Vietnam and Afghanistan’

Of course that Is what Russia says. They were hardly likely to say ‘That’‘s it, game over for us, we’re withdrawing all our troops now.’

Well, yeah, they don’t play cricket.

You might also want to add Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai to your list too - they’re the Kurasawa films that A Fistful of Dollars and The Magnificent Seven are western (in both senses) remakes of.

For A Few Dollars More is so-so (but I’d still watch it again), but The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly is epic.

And if you enjoy them, then take a crack at High Plains Drifter or Pale Rider which are both excellent though share an underlying theme. The Outlaw Josey Wales is also well worth a watch, as is the magnificent (and best picture Oscar winner) Unforgiven starring and directed by an older, wiser, and grittier Clint Eastwood.

When Netflix had (seemingly) everything I was totally cool and the gang with paying for that service.

Now I have:

• Netflix
• Amazon Prime
• Apple TV
• Disney+
• NowTv
• fuck knows what else

and I still can’t find the content I want to watch. I had an urge to watch The Good, The Bad And The Ugly the other day. Could I find it on any services I pay a combined £50+ a month for? Could I fuck. Why would they be surprised they’re pushing people to ‘alternative’ sources? Sure, I can rent or buy Barbie and Oppenheimer if I want, but I don’t want. What I want is access to the tens of thousands of old, excellent, films that have been made.

Aw. I was hoping to see him seamlessly fly to the Volii system, seamlessly fly to Volii Alpha, seamlessly land on the Neon landing pad, seamlessly enter the Bayu Plaza and, seamlessly interact with dozens of NPCs, many of whom have branching dialogue trees, and seamlessly loot the ever-loving crap out of hundreds of interactable objects.