Soledar has fallen:

Good news on the war front, Soledar, north of Bakhmut, has fallen to the Russians.  Adjacent cities like Krasna Hora have also fallen.  Klyshiveka, south of Bakhmut, has also fallen to the Russians, putting Bakhmut in a horseshoe.  There's only one escape route left for the remaining Ukrainians in Bakhmut, and if they don't take it, they'll lose around 60,000 men.

I'm pretty sure Ukraine will retreat from Bakhmut in the next few days, but I'm happy if they don't.  Stand and fight, be my guest.  But it isn't only Bakhmut at risk, Siversk is now potentially surrounded as well.  Russia has forces to the east of it and now to the south of it, and north of Siversk is mainly wilderness so no help is coming from that direction.  It basically only has one way out too.

Taking Soledar simultaneously threatens Bakhmut and Siversk.  Worse, it also threatens Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.  There's a highway straight from Soledar into those major cities to the west.  Basically the Russian army is now free to advance in all directions unimpeded.  This might be the beginning of the end.

Of course, it's also possible that Ukraine will back up a bit to Chasiv Yar and it will take another year to dislodge them from that city, having no privileged information about the state of the two militaries I can't make any firm predictions.  But I knew from the beginning, just by comparing the size of the two nations, that Russia would win sooner or later.  The fall of Soledar could mean Russia wins 'sooner,' but even if it doesn't Russia will still win 'later.'

The supply of western weapons and funds to Ukraine is too little too late, it can't reverse the tide of losses that far outpace the new reinforcements.  If there aren't any trained soldiers left in the Ukraine armed forces it doesn't matter what junk we offload onto them, no one will be there to wield it.  Ukraine's goose is cooked.  Russia didn't even need to start an offensive on a new front.

Generally speaking, if you have no hope of reinforcement, and you were forced to retreat from your previous fortified position, there's no reason to believe you'll successfully defend your next fortified position.  It's just rinse and repeat after that.  Ukraine isn't getting any reinforcements and it's retreating from a fortress it spent eight years building.  So what's next?  How will it ever get any better than this?  You could theoretically win a war of attrition if you caused more losses than you took before retreating each time, but that doesn't work when Russia's population is three times yours.  After all the refugees and Ukrainians who rejoined Russia, it's more like a 4:1 ratio.  Plus I don't think the casualty ratio is remotely in Ukraine's favor, so it's all academic anyway.

Once Ukraine is beaten once it's beaten for all time.  As Einstein used to say, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."  Ukraine holing up in a new city and fighting to defend it next will only be a repeat of its previous lost city.  And the city after that it retreats to will only be a repeat of the previous city.  How does this process help them?  What will change?  Einstein doesn't predict anything will change, so why does Zelensky?

At this point Russia vs. Ukraine is looking a lot like Georgia vs. TCU:  65-7.  We all knew TCU stood no chance against the SEC powerhouse, undefeated Georgia, so why did people think 'plucky little Ukraine' could defeat the nation that defeated the Mongols, Turks, Napoleon and Hitler?

Meanwhile, I completed listening to my 2-star music tier and discovering songs that could potentially be demoted to 1-star should I get my hands on newer, better songs in the future.  There are 82 such demotable songs, so there's plenty of room for new good music.  After doing all this work I certainly hope I can find new good music to take these songs' places.  My fingers are crossed for Octopath Traveler II, since most of my other favorite composers are over the hill and not producing great music anymore.

You can really tell the difference between 2-star music and 5-star music.  There are lots of songs in the 2-star where you're like, "oh, this song!  I remember this song." and get cheered up to hear it again.  But in the 5-star tier, it's difficult to feel anything but reverence.  It's hard to focus on anything but the song it's so emotional.  Mathematically speaking, I value a 5-star song 8 times as much as a 2-star song, and that's probably the proper balance.  But sometimes I feel like a single 5-star song, 'Takaramono ni natta hi', is worth as much as the entire 2-star tier.

Overall I've now scouted all five tiers for potential demotions.  The 5-star tier only has three songs that I could reasonably see demoting, but there's more room for improvement in the lower tiers.  I mostly only listen to the 5-tier music, so mostly the problem is unnoticeable.  This is the first time since 2021 I've listened to my music hall of fame in full.  It was quite a long and arduous process.  The best way I could tell whether a song wasn't worthy of the tier it was in was by comparing it to how good the songs before and after it were.  If I note that this is the worst song in 'quite a while,' well then it shouldn't be in that tier.  So in order to discover a bad song I had to patiently saturate myself in all the neighboring good songs too.  Only by listening to everything could I discover anything.