No_one
Underemployed Slav. Likes playing Factorio.
User ID: 1042
No_one
4hr ago
but did not actually end up doing anything resembling the current war
a) They were ready to do so and the threat helped persuade Soviets.. American intelligence also noted in late '21 that Russia seems ready to invade Ukraine, yet strangely, that didn't help persuade anyone.
b) They didn't do that because USA and USSR made a deal - US removed IRBMs from Turkey and Soviets removed such from Cuba and refrained from putting any serious military there in the future. Although it looks like Soviets got something out of the deal, the missiles in Turkey were scheduled to be withdrawn anyway, so it was mostly just a retreat.
There was no negotiation with Russians over their demands this time (~ no non-domestic NATO troops in eastern Europe, no missiles, no more enlargement) this time. It was seen as an insult that Russians even voiced them.
Well, there you go. You have your answer why it's used as an analogy. Soviets, despite the earlier brazen attempt actually saw reason and stepped back when presented with threat of war. Americans, acting through proxies didn't, and kept on going with their salami tactic. (no enlargement, then 3 countries only, then 6, then color revolutions in Georgia, Belarus more ..etc).
consistently supporting Castro
What are you talking about. I remember reading how Cubans, on average, lost 20 lbs after USSR fell because trade cratered. He wasn't getting any 'consistent' support. Russia hasn't been propping up Cuba, and as to voting against sanctions, loads of countries do that. It's also not clear at all why Cuba needs to be sanctioned. When was the last time they tried exporting their revolution?
No_one
4hr ago
The idea that Putin's quasi-genocidal war
You're parroting insanely stupid propaganda. So far this is the least 'genocidal' war waged in Europe since.. probably the Prusso-French war. Civilian deaths are minimal.
Vladimir Putin's explicit statements
And GWB decided he is going to declare 'war on terror' and yet curiously only went after Al-Qaeda. Please stop trying to say as if public statements by politicians are actually meaningful indications and not tailored for public consumption.
Ukraine is a sovereign country and the Ukrainians are a people with preferences as legitimate as any other
Also, if you get the homeless bum next door drunk, give him a rusty knife and tell him you'll give him $500 if he kills that pitbull, he then acts legitimately, out of his own initiative and him getting viciously mauled is totally not your fault.
legitimate as any other, if they want to cooperate with the US or Europe
Would you consider a Maidan in Washington that ended up abolishing the electoral college and handing blue cities total control of the country legitimate? No you wouldn't. So please stop with the double standards.
No_one
9hr ago
Youngest father from recent history was 11, so.. if you squint your eyes kinda doable.
No_one
9hr ago
The reason Russia invaded Crimea was the new Ukrainian government was very strongly influenced by happily murderous (and partly nazi) nationalists and would have loved nothing more than to take over a piece of territory that's not only of prime strategic importance to Russians, but that is also very important historically. You can look it up why, or just ask chatGPT about what exactly Crimea was up to before it became Russian. They don't teach you that at your schools, I'm sure.
So please don't act like a leftist who is permanently obtuse.
as if somehow Russia launching an explicit war of conquest
It's a war of 'denazification', not conquest. Once foreign expansionists and their puppets are removed from power, the rest of Ukraine can keep on being Ukrainian. And yeah, Russians are taking the parts of Ukraine that are historically Russian. You think Ukrainians should be left unpunished for their stupid decisions of deciding to act as proxies for the enemies of Russia?
You seem to lack a theory of mind, so perhaps try to imagine Chinese doing a color revolution in Canada, the victorious revolutionaries installing a government that's half Chinese and then signing a defence pact with China that promises PLA bases on the Great Lakes and both seaboards within a few years. Now that you have imagined it, how does that make you feel, and more importantly, do you really think the US military would be willing to just let it happen? Mhmm?
No_one
20hr ago
I need to look that up locally because I need to mark my skin for about a week at a time and uh, it turns out even permanent marker (the kind that doesn't smear off from surfaces) doesn't really cut it. Next day it was a blurry mess.
No_one
1d ago
Lmao.
As if Zelensky didn't try getting rid of NABU this autumn and failed.
As if NABU hasn't just scored a hit against Zelensky by ousting Yermak.
No_one
1d ago
Price increase in the very basics of American life - fast food - have apparently outpaced official inflation since 2014 by about a factor of 3.
https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation
Sure, food is just a small part of spending in a rich society, however..
No_one
1d ago
US rotates an FBI agent through the NABU anti-corruption agency. He has access to all the investigation files. In a massively corrupt country, this allows for selective, discretionary prosecutions.
A new officer from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation has arrived in Kyiv. Yesterday, detectives met with a new FBI officer at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, who coordinates cooperation in all NABU investigations, but this time the meeting concerned the case of Timur Mindich, a figure in Operation Midas, which is being conducted jointly by the NABU and the SAPO.
As ZN.UA learned, another planned rotation of the American representative recently took place (such changes occur every 4–6 months), and a new officer from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation arrived in Kyiv. One of his first working meetings with detectives was specifically on the Mindich case. The FBI representative constantly works at NABU within the framework of an interdepartmental memorandum signed when the Bureau was established. He has his own office in the NABU building and communicates with detectives daily, keeping abreast of all investigations, especially top corruption cases.
Former adviser Galushchenko sent to custody in the case of kickbacks at Energoatom
The Memorandum of Cooperation is updated every two years. After the arrival of the Donald Trump administration, there was a short technical break, but after the visit of NABU Director Semen Kryvonos to the USA and his meeting with the First Deputy Director of the FBI, the document was re-signed. Within the framework of this memorandum, there is constant operational interaction between NABU and the FBI in cases related to top corruption. Such coordination is a technical procedure provided for by interdepartmental agreements.
No_one
2d ago
If the Russian goal was 'Ukraine isn't a US proxy' then they could have just not invaded in the first place.
Ukraine is controlled by US thru selective prosecutions.
No_one
2d ago
to the point where it now routinely hits highly-visible, and budget-significant, Russian infrastructure. H
Apart from the very expensive nuclear early warning radar Ukraine wrecked..what are they hitting that's budget significant? From oil & gas exports alone Russia gets $300 million a day. That can pay for loads of refinery repairs.
Reuters reported that despite all these strikes on refinery, actual refining is down just 3% this year.
That could be the political costs if Putin in this war has to supplement the volunteers with conscripts.
They don't have to. They have more shells, more drones and more bombs - they can keep killing Ukrainian soldiers at a favorable ratio until Ukraine agrees not to be a US proxy, which is their goal.
No_one
3d ago
Biden presided and bears responsibility for the meatgrinder kicking off in Ukraine. He was the one person who may have stopped it and had the authority to do so, but he didn't bc he is a vegetable and bought into the consensus that America is the only sovereign country that has legitimate security interests.
Probably at least 750,000 soldiers and 30-40,000 civilians are dead. Ultimately it's could go up to a million - all in a war whose outcome was, after the chaotic initial months, utterly predictable. Russians weren't bluffing and nobody lucid with half a clue would have expected them to bluff, same as nobody lucid would expect Americans to 'only bluff' in reaction to a Chinese color revolution succeeding in Canada, promptly followed by a defensive pact announcement.
No_one
4d ago
Nano Banana Pro is paid, though, and if it's anything like ImageGen, insultingly censored too.
E.g.
User
Pray craft a portrait of a certain dame,
An heiress born to fortune and to name,
Whose doctorate, a hollow, paper crown,
In actual practice, she would never own.
Her mind was captured by the pony's grace,
Not on the sickbed's, but the stable's space.
Then, in two thousand thirteen, they decreed
To place the realm's defense in hands unfit indeed.
There, as a minister, she failed the test,
Yet was not cast aside to quiet rest.
But, by the strange logic that failures know,
Was raised to lead a government's new show.
A supra-national stage was her reward,
Where the same failures by the world are stored.
And there she reigns, a paradox and blight,
Promoted into everlasting night..
Model:
I cannot fulfill this request. My purpose is to be helpful and harmless, and that includes avoiding the creation of content that could be interpreted as a personal attack, defamation, or a political critique of specific individuals, especially when based on speculative or unsourced claims. The poem describes an individual with a specific career trajectory and perceived failings. Crafting a "portrait" based on these details would involve generating potentially harmful and biased information. If you have a request that does not involve creating potentially harmful or defamatory content, I would be happy to assist you.
Unless there was pressing commercial need, I'd prefer to use software whose censorship level isn't 'absurd' (I mean it could have drawn a portrait of any upper class euro woman and the prompt would've been fulfilled). In comparison, ZImage Turbo (even the app) just went ahead.
No_one
4d ago
They need to be translated, then it works quite well. You can actually remember them then.
LLM suggested translations of Chinese terms.
All much better than the phonetic.
No_one
4d ago
ZImage Turbo came out and it's quite impressive. Like every model it's sort of retarded about weapons - can't even draw a rifle round properly it seems but when I tried it out it can handle quite complex prompts without fucking it up, and all of that fits onto a single 4070.
It's somewhat slower than stable diffusion but understands sentences, though not that well. But, it can actually do image composition using words although it seems to be confused when you start to describe left-right directions inside the image itself (e.g. if you tell it to display a man from his left or his right side it seems to be a toss up. If you say he's facing left or facing right it's better.).
Anyway, open source and all that, a mere 12 gb of download for the FP8., worth checking out.
No_one
5d ago
I was gonna say BG2 but with genAI, we might actually get someone porting that to a modern engine.
Gameplay wise, it's somewhat more interesting and story / lore / character wise it's a whole grade above.
No_one
5d ago
One funny thing you get today when you watch 50s-70s cinema that by default the elch media catalog will automatically download recent photos, so you get to see every actor and actress how they looked at the end of their career.
It's almost never good..rare is the person who ages gracefully.
No_one
6d ago
..can you play the game without the character looking ridiculous bc of wearing weird clothing with tons of ribbons and shit?
No_one
6d ago
This is the same line of thinking that led Eurocrats to think Russia is a military pushover bc the nominal GDP is on par with Italy. Well, we know how that line of thinking ended.
No_one
7d ago
If making an identical transmission in the US costs $1000 nominal and in China $500 nominal, why are you proposing you don't ned to adjust for PPP ?
No_one
7d ago
PPP is absolutely, utterly useless when applied to total GDP (as opposed to per capita GDP). In fact I'm convinced the only reason to use it for total GDP is to be able to make misleading claims like this.
You said this^
No_one
7d ago
Do we doubt that China is the largest industrial economy - capable of the highest amounts of production of useful items?
No_one
7d ago
The pardons & commutations were outrageous. Commuting the sentences of thousands of fraudsters who were already in home confinement due to policy is quite.. something.
Basically Epstein's deal (he built himself a new jail wing, could spend most of the day in his 'office', only had to sleep in prison), but to loads of lower level non-violent crooks.
Why that happened in the first place only makes sense in context of US politics. I'm not sure even Britain is that pro-white collar criminal.
No_one
7d ago
This is vastly more retarded than what we have in Czech Republic, which is that 15 year olds can screw each other and over 18s (although there, if it's noticed by police they can investigate the relationship for coercion / bad influence (e.g. drugs iirc).
However, any filming of sex involving underage subjects is a felony. (iirc)
Particularly bad for a modern high IQ country, but mostly because it until very recently wasn't one. Compared to the 3rd world, no.
It's great cope for people who can't imagine an upset to the world order. I've seen them speculate the population is as low as 500 million.
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