Malazan Empire: Mentalist - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

orcs are trying to wipe out food distribution centres to force food shortages.

The mutual sea war in the Black Sea forced both sides to effectively halt grain exports. This means farmers have to sell on the domestic market, below cost, which is really bad news for their bottom line. And expect big problems for global food security, since, y'know, top 2 wheat exporters are locked out.

Kirishy was muscovy's second largest refinery, that recently reported coming back online after the June strikes. Hopefully the fresh hit shuts it down for a while.

At this point, we REALLY need to hit Omsk again, which is running at partial capacity. If it can be shut down, the fuel shortages could become critical.

UA hit Blegorod and Bryansk hard last night, targeting power infrastructure. Only a miniscule response to the onslaught that's been pouring on Kyiv and other cities. The new jet-engine Shaheds are currently outpacing drone interceptors, and the next gen that can catch them is yet to be produced in sufficient capacity. We're hearing less about ballistic missiles, which suggests they are stockpiling them for the winter. The current intel is that this time they want to aim not at power/heat, but primarilty at water/sewage infrastructure, to try and make big cities un-livable.

Macron floated the idea of next round of sanctions targeting any country that will

*checks notes*

sell fuel to Moscow.

So, we went from trying to embargo orc exports, to making sure they can't import fuel anymore.

"Gas Station with nukes" superpower, everyone.

Tsundoku, on 29 August 2026 - 08:59 PM, said:

Muscovites have been seeing "Anglo-Saxon meddling" everywhere since The Great Game.

They aren't gonna shift gears now.

Tiste Simeon, on 26 August 2026 - 11:43 PM, said:

Burnham and Macron both said they will share StormShadow/Scalp blueprints with UA, which will give Ukraine additional cruise missile capacity (in theory. In practice, they might be too expensive for UA to produce)

Moscow interpreted this as an escalation.

Wrapped up "Heart of the Nhaga".
The dialogue definitely feels stylized, and the overall action/plot doesn't quite meet my threshold for "epic".
That being said, the setting is intriguing. Gonna be on the lookout for the sequels.

Anyway, now it's back to the Dark tower. On to "Wizard and the Glass"

US doctrine relies on very heavy, very precise, and very expensive weaponry.

While the age of cheap drones seems to be upon us, the American MIC is very much in love with the idea of getting trillions to make small quantity of very expensive hardware. Until the US gets its nose seriously bloodied, leading to a wave of public sentiment and calls for modernization, I don't think there's gonna be a lot of reluctance from the executive to push against the lobbying of the weapons manufacturers.

That actually gives the EU an opening to jump ahead of the US, since they seem more willing to shift focus to high-volume weapon systems.