No_one
Underemployed Slav. Likes playing Factorio.
User ID: 1042
By 1911, around age 36, after seven years of low wages as a pencil-sharpener wholesaler, Burroughs began to write fiction. By this time, Emma and he had two children, Joan (1908–1972), and Hulbert (1909–1991).[15] During this period, he had copious spare time and began reading pulp-fiction magazines. In 1929, he recalled thinking that:
"[...] if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, that I could write stories just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines."[16]
The mediocrity of the books makes sense in context, I think.^^
SM Stirling wrote a peculiar homage to that idea of Mars that's both cringe ('hero' getting saved by the princess yawn, strong womyn chars) and kinda awesome for the worldbuilding & and the unimaginable amounts of low-key heresy(explaining why the womyn is so strong) for which he wasn't cancelled. Spoilers on the link. A good read I think, Stirling can write adventure stories just fine.
No_one
12hr ago
without consequence, because Ukraine and Russia are irrelevant just as Sudan is irrelevant.
Russia being irrelevant implies that the whole of Europe is irrelevant which .. I'm not decided on but is probably true. After all, it's China that matters now. The developed world is no longer just Europe + Northern America and Chinese outsize those two regions by a factor of 2 in workforce and probably more in other ways.
No_one
12hr ago
Was there a serious core of people who believed in a Ukraine victory though?
Western establishment has been knowingly going along with project THD despite knowing it's ultimately futile ?
No_one
12hr ago
Dean isn't wrong.
There's always going to be 'will to fight' in Ukraine because the alternative to almost certain death on the front is getting dumped in an unmarked grave by the military administration.
Except they're going to run out of people to busify eventually.
No_one
12hr ago
If you insist on PPP then at best 20%
And yet, despite being 1/5th of the population and 1/5th of the economy, they're still winning what EU leadership is painting as an existential conflict.
What, does it say about the EU that it can't win a war against a foe 5x weaker ?
No_one
12hr ago
for the lethal force crackdown that Yanukovych and the Russian-aligned interior ministry had attempted to initiate.
I ask you again, does the initial shootout on that last day that saw 20 wounded riot cops, who mind you, were wearing assault-rifle proof plates vs 10 wounded 'protesters' look like an 'attempted lethal crackdown' or more like unprepared riot cops attacked by a stronger force amply armed with assault rifles and worse. (.308 /7.62x54mm rifles also feature in the testimony iirc).
The difference is in whose false-flag agents they were, and the intended result of the orders.
Given that Yanukovych was content to wait out the protests, and did not need the massacre, and given the timeline on the day of the massacre given by Ukrainian themselves first shots around 5 am, then a lop-sided exchange between riot units and the 'snipers' which saw the riot units retreat bc they incurred 2 dead, 20 wounded despite having serious body armor. Mind you, the 'snipers' were not very discriminate, as in, BBC published a video of their crew under fire.
local party mayor withdrawing city riot police from the conflict area
That's a novel claim that the police withdrew because of an order by a .. local city mayor, and not because they were facing a pretty serious gun battle during which they incurred, what, 20 wounded and 10 dead were somehow in the chain of command of Berkut, which was run by the ministry of interior, which, for Americans is the ministry that runs law enforcement, prisons and so on.
No_one
2d ago
Being ignorant of absolutely everything else, I have heard vastly more false predictions from the pro-Russian side.
Are you any idea of what a 'selection effect is' ? What gets covered, what gets pushed in the media?
Completely forgotten evergreen hits such as 'Russia is running out of missiles', washing machine chips , 'Crimea beach party' (the 'summer offensive' of 2023), 'Russian economy will collapse bc of sanctions (any year, really) etc?
No_one
4d ago
What are the Ukrainian people afraid of, being conquered by Russia?
The Western part simple- nationalism. It's a very powerful ideology, derived from the tribal instinct. You can't discount it, and it's why Russia never intended to conquer all of Ukraine. Basically the interesting parts (strategic, resource, industry) are east of Kiev.
Lot of the people in the eastern part of the country were never that invested into the whole nationalist LARP. You can find videos of Ukrainians executing those traitors weekly. (nsfw, obviously. Two old people and a small dog getting blown to bits trying to cross the front line)
No_one
4d ago
Why do you believe the EU is broke?
It's not 'broke' as say, Argentina (of big countries, France seems irreversibly doomed), but the outlook is very grim.
- high energy prices, world's worst regulations, abysmal demographics EVEN if we got rid of the welfare migrants.
- elites are wholly Renfields, totally subservient to Americans. Odds are, replacing aging out workforce with robots won't be possible even if there's money for it.
- total loss of competitiveness in heavy industry, only thing that still is are some specialty firms like ASML or Carl Zeiss. For now, in 5-10 yrs, Chinese will make do then it's over.
- EU is committed to the insane decarbonisation program that is worse than useless.
No_one
4d ago
I must have hallucinated the Russian Tanks rolling into Ukraine originally, were those a CIA op?
The tanks were downstream of the coup, which was downstream of the bloodbath at Maidan, after which every major western government demanded Yanukovych steps down. The coward he was, he did so, thus in a way, bears partial responsibility for the utter shitshow that followed.
Who do you think asked for the bloodbath at Maidan?
You should read the narrative of it, even the semi-official one.
The riots units initially, despite having plate carriers and body armor suffered 2x many casualties as the 'peaceful protesters', to the point they retreated despite having partial cover. Then they got the whole of blame for the massacre of the protesters on the square despite being outgunned, withdrawing etc. As mentioned previously, even the obviously not very neutral Ukrainian court found that some of the dead protesters were shot by other 'protesters', and not by accident, deliberately.
No_one
4d ago
sent in various paramilitaries to remove sections of civil society and kill chunks of them - it seems like they wanted a literal decapitation of civil society so that the puppet regime they installed would last and be able to become another Belarus
[citation required]
Arresting foreign funded activists is obviously the right thing to do, but it's rather easy to expel them and massively less problematic. That said, I've never seen a single indication they had a naughty list. Although it'd make sense for them to have one, after all that has happened in Ukraine.
No_one
4d ago
Automating making 155mm shells is really rather easy. In comparison to cars, it's a very, very simple product.
E.g. I know that French plants for that are basically automated (saw some video), just low throughput.
No_one
5d ago
Ukraine.
By now, wise people, people who avoid reading the newspapers (newspaper generally lie) have noticed that the news out of Ukraine is bad. After years of relentless and very stupid propaganda, even 'The Sun' ran an article which was basically fine. Torygraph ditto. A bit of lying around the end, some lies by omission but generally thoughtful and not grossly incorrect.
That's means something. Not at all clear what. Obsessive observers of the war believe Ukraine is likely to hold out until end of '26, early '27. However:
1- There's a financing issue, sure - Americans, unwilling since Trump inauguration to keep paying for what they started now only want to deliver weapons if Europeans, who were against it initially, pay for them.
Europe, as everyone knows, is mostly broke, with the exception of Germany, which isn't only because it typically doesn't shower money around. Paying through the nose for overpriced weaponry like e.g. Patriot or Aster 30 missiles ($ 2mil per unit) which then are going to be fired, best case, at cruise missiles of equal worth doesn't seem like a winning strategy, especially with the Geran spam being able to destroy anything that doesn't have a rare cannon SPAA sitting on top of it. If there's 50 of them in Ukraine, that's probably too much.
There was a plan of 'magicking' up money by making a loan to buy more weapons, covered by the frozen Russian assets, thus 'risk-free' because 'Russia is going to release those assets as war reparations'. Belgium, which would have ended up having jurisdiction over it refused to go along..
2- Materially, it's bad. We know the gist of the situation: Ukraine has too few men -line infantry is at 20-30% staffing , is outmatched in drones, artillery and air attacks. Russia, being larger, is able to mobilize troops and sustain operations. There is shortage of everything on the Ukrainian side. Civilian cars, drones, men. -save perhaps small-calibre ammunition which is barely used in this war. (allegedly <5% of wounds are from gunshot). Why there is a shortage of cars seems.. mysterious. Germany surely should be able to keep Ukrainians knee deep in cheap trucks. E.g. Dacia Duster cost €20k and there's 100k made per year. A mere 2 billion € a year could give Ukraine 1 4x4 car for every 5 servicemen. What gives?
Ukraine drops some bombs using their few planes, possibly even daily , but Russians sometimes delivers up to 300 a day, although the mean is 160 in 2025. Any bunker, HQ, supply dump close behind the front can be hit. That's pretty modest- just 40 sorties in an Su-34. Ukraine doesn't have what to use - France supplied 800 glide bombs... for the whole of 2024. Promised 1200 for 2025. 4 a day. If Americans have given more, we'd have heard about it. If GDP so high, why so few bombs? Where's the American UMPK? Does US have no huge pile of old bombs you can stick sheet metal & gps modules to? Are cheap, effective, good enough weapons only something despotic alcoholic nations can make ?
The true rate of attrition is unknown. Ukraine armed forces, internally seem to believe it's 8 Ukrainians for 10 Russians or something along those lines, if we go by the testimony of this International Legion guy who deserted earlier this year after being allocated to an especially dire 1st rifleman battalion with 50% odds of surviving one rotation. (or so he says). In any case, as Europeans and Americans have shown themselves unwilling to go and risk death, the required rate needed to have been something like 2:10 just to break even, demographics wise.
3- the front. right now, a some amount of troops is encircled at Pokrovsk. Supposedly very few (AMK_mapping, an autist who follows the war hourly says Ukrainians mostly withdrew), but then, it's unclear how dire the situation is, however GUR fed their spec-ops team to the front near Pokrovsk, in an effort to make evacuation easier, to probably little avail (there is an FPV montage of these guys getting blown up already). They operate 3 Blackhawk helos, one of them was apparently downed.
Overall, as you probably know, the situation on the front is bad. Ukraine cannot hold territory, cannot counterattack effectively. Previously, Russia was only being able to push one place at a time, now it's multiples. If you want an overview, here's an interview of AMK_Mapping, a rare pro Ukrainian OSINT account respected by people on both sides. Honestly he seems autistic. The 'mapping' means he's one of the people keeping track of the war online by obsessively reading Telegram channels, geolocating etc. The interviewer is pro-Russian, somewhat overly optimistic I think.
Going by the aphorism 'If you're reading this, it's for you', it looks like the American press is preparing the public for a closing act of the majestic capeshit arc that started with the Maidan massacre. Ukrainians are generally eager to negotiate, nobody believes in winning anymore, though the demands Russia has are not viewed as acceptable. I wonder what the frontline troops and officers would say in private.
No_one
7d ago
The Man in the High Castle
The Pilot was great but the show wasn't. A grade or more below True Detective or Fargo. Gave it up after 1st season.
No_one
9d ago
There isn't high quality video of most of these boats. We don't know if they're actually all drug runners.
No_one
10d ago
IMO, it's quite stupid behavior. Upsets the normies worldwide.
If you want to do a show of strength, you can always stop these boats, board them, videotape the cargo and sink them. Blowing them up only looks good to a certain segment of male populations.
Maybe it's a way of putting pressure on a subset of Venezuelan drug smugglers (as I understand they also use planes ).
No_one
12d ago
She's a lot more than a pretty face. Consider her early photos. People may think looking good can get a girl far, but unless her ambition is being a trophy wife, that's not true at all. Lot of hard work and scheming involved.
No_one
12d ago
This is likely a hostile summary.
No, it's not. He said as much. Not just last month.
It's a hobbyhorse of his, probably smelling gigantic contract opportunities.
No_one
12d ago
This is too much of a galaxy brain take, to believe men who don't instinctively consider women during sex to be mere masturbation aids.
Or that 'being animalistic ' helps in intragroup competition..even among unorganized savages the successful leaders were some combination of aggressive and charismatic.
No_one
13d ago
If someone's idea of the pursuit of happiness is hundred buttholes a month, who are you to prevent him from going in there?
The Bible? Pfft, it's 1980, not 1890.
No_one
13d ago
Might be true for you, certainly there's enough erotic content in that vein, but a lot of people are mere animals in this, and a lot of other people treasure the connection and pleasure someone else appears to obtain from the coupling.
No_one
13d ago
Ezra Klein, the prototypical liberal has all the responsibility here.
With advances in crime prevention and detection, if it weren't for liberals, it'd be entirely possible to simply suppress pornography the way it's child variation is suppressed.
To the liberals who derive status and satisfaction from liberating people from tyrannical rules, the idea of having societal constraints on the production of fake stimuli associated with reproduction because we may desire that people pursue reproduction instead of satiating themselves with fakery..that was just something to be fought.
They successfully contested it and they won, and now there's PMV super stimuli so people with almost completely burned out reward systems have something to frack dopamine with.
What part of
Is hard to understand?
More options
Context Copy link