StopSpreadingBullshit
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User ID: 1472
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
Baader-Meinhof phenomenon? When you are terminally online and submerged into Culture War, you will perceive all Culture War related things more acutely.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
Theft is immoral. And something given has no value.
Those two are normative statements.
You will not reduce poverty by gifting the poor the rich's wealth.
And this statement is positive, and it doesn't follow from those before it.
It doesn't work.
That's what almost every state in the world does (except Haiti, maybe). Including Singapore, Nordic countries, United States... Or are you a hardcore libertarian who is against taxation?
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
How would you go about resolving this disagreement?
A large number of gender reassignment surgeries, for example.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
Let's not pretend that for Eastern European aficionados of American Culture War it is something more than a hobby and an outrage porn. Slovakian politics, I would presume, is just boring in comparison to American.
arrive in few years even to remote rural Slovakia.
I don't believe it's true, but that's what they like to tell to justify them participating in Culture War. The general advise "to touch grass" still applies.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
I was never asked about NATO membership, would vote against it.
Knowing your kind, people like you rarely ever vote, and know culture war figures from the US better than their local representatives. "Local corruption? Nah, what about transsexuals in Virginia?"
Roughly 40% of Slovaks agree with me.
Less than the support of Tiso party in 1938 elections? Good.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
Don't thank me
Yes, no need to thank a fifth columnist.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
I agree with Scott on this one
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/conspiracies-of-cognition-conspiracies
If you hate "global elites" (or your image of them), it's convenient to have specific conspiracies at hand ("they want to force us to consume bugs and sleep in pods, while they eat expensive steaks and drink Chardonnay in their mansions and laugh at us!") instead of vague "they are evil neo-liberals who hate us!"
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
Yes, yes. Why would anything be wiped from the internet? Kolomoisky is investigated.
It's there for anyone to see — like the fact that Slovakia is one of the most corrupt states in Europe — worse than Georgia or Rwanda. Nothing wrong with it — you made a great progress since mid 90s, being in EU and all that.
Now, Slovakia isn't a normal country, but at least half of the parties wouldn't tolerate something like this, and it definitely wouldn't fly anywhere in western Europe.
But that's interesting — right? The only people who like to talk about Ukrainian corruption or Hunter Biden so much are Orbanites from Hungary, russophiles from Bulgaria, Slovakia in your case, MAGA people (who are linked to Paul Manafort — one of the most corrupt people in recent Ukrainian and American history), Trump himself — all exemplars of honesty and incorruptibility. I find it hilarious. Clean your own stables.
But thanks for Zuzanas.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
in less asthetically pleasing ways than most fish
Maybe due to familiarity bias? People see fish rostrums every now and then, but those of insects only in documentaries and books, usually in relatively late childhood.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
Imagine powerful right wingers from around the world, many in government
Some powerful right wing leaders attend Davos though (like Morawiecki), so it's not an exclusively neo-liberal coven. And there were conventions sort-of like what you are describing (e.g. CPAC Hungary) — left wingers were losing their minds over it, but I don't think there were any conspiracy theories around it (though Orban said some controversial race-related things).
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
In any normal county, a politician whose junkie son gets $50k a month from a sinecure in a famously corrupt country overseas would instantly be embroiled in a huge scandal.
Says a person from Slovakia 😩
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
What oil? There is less oil reserves in Ukraine than in Belarus.
Export of oil and fertilizers is a huge source of Belarus income. Cheap oil and gas from Russia are necessary for those industries to be viable, and are de facto subsidies from RF to Belarus. Lukashenka's regime , despite being much more brutal than Ukrainian even during Yanukovich times, ensured that most enterprises were state owned, and larger share of profits stayed in Belarus (unlike Ukraine, where whole industries got privatized, their owners through lobbying avoided large taxes, and profits were rerouted to tax havens somewhere in Cyprus and later used to buy mansions in Nice).
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
No, that disproves your assertion that Shokin was fired on behest of Biden Sr because the latter wanted Shokin not to investigate his son. Of course, you could say that it WAS the real reason, and Biden just used reputation of Shokin being a corrupt prosecutor for plausible deniability in getting him fired. But then argue accordingly, not just put it as an undeniable fact.
Also Hunter Biden didn't commit any crime according to Ukrainian law by working there. Zlochevsky, the head of Burisma, most likely did - but then it was during presidential term of Yanukovich, a figure very much beloved by some on American far right and far left, deposed by the evil CIA.
... you think it's normal that Biden bragged about having Ukrainian prosecuted fired for investigating Burisma, the company that was paying off Hunter Biden ?
Probably Bundestag MPs also had their children employed by Burisma.
And some guy from SBU who accused Shokin of corruption and demanded his resignation also had dealing with Burisma.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2015/11/12/7088525/
And members of Kharkiv Human Rights Group...
https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2016/01/7/7094715/
And dozens of Ukrainian MPs...
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
It's already in PPP terms, cost of living is adjusted for.
OK, I didn't check your link. Anyway, I cannot speak for everyone, but this difference of 20% is pretty negligible in comparison to living in a country where I wouldn't be beaten by riot police if I'd decided to attend an anti-government demonstration. If you post on this forum, you supposedly value such freedoms (yes, yes, Ukraine is far from perfect when it comes to civil rights, but we are comparing Ukraine and Russia, not Ukraine and Denmark).
That Ukrainian oligarchs were enriched during this process does not mean Russia...
Russia was actively corrupting Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs through its gas, check RosUkrEnergo for example, they weren't just passive bearers of gifts like you want them to present here.
...Soviets was evil for providing all these steel mills
Stop this Soviet-built-Ukrainian-industry bullshit. Ukraine, for example, had a major role in developing Russian oil industry in Western Siberia during Soviet times.
That doesn't make any sense.
I phrased it poorly. Many countries like Cuba, Mozambique, India and such were major borrowers from USSR. They went on becoming borrowers from Russia, not Ukraine or any other post-Soviet state.
If Russia gets 75% of Soviet assets and Ukraine 15% but Russia pays all of Ukraine's share of Soviet debt
From a purely mathematical standpoint — not necessary. If the total assets, for example, were 250 bn USD, and the total debt was 25 bn USD, it would be beneficial for Russia to repay those 25 bn instead of Ukraine, in comparison to the scenario of Russian/Ukrainian split of 70%/20%, but Ukraine repaying all of its supposed share (5 bn in this example) themselves. Don't forget that Russia got all the nukes, most of the Black Sea fleet and all other Fleets, Soviet gold reserves, property abroad like embassies etc.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
I am staying in Dnipro for a few weeks, and heard a loud "bam" several hours ago while being in my work office. Turns out, it was a result of a missile hitting an apartment block just by the riverside.
Maybe a thermal powerplant was the real target, there is one just a kilometer away, I don't know. Looks like Russia started to target not just substations, but generating capacities as well, this photo from the recent attack was published.
Also it's not far from a student dormitory where I used to live back in my student years. I wonder whether it is dangerous to work near the windows, as a strike near the office building would probably shatter them and make glass fly. But I generally don't take a lot of precautions — probably the danger to die from a missile strike in the rear areas is somewhat similar to the danger of being hit by a car (though the probability of the latter increased significantly, as power outages mean street and traffic lights not working occasionally). Or should I? It reminds me of COVID safety theater — everyone wearing masks, pouring antiseptics on their palms, but then abandoning most of it after a few months (at least it was like that here in Ukraine). The same with going to a shelter, or at least to your bathroom when the air raid siren starts ringing — almost no one does that. Maybe it would've saved people in this apartment block? But what about psyche of people, or damage to the economy if everyone went to a shelter several times a day?
Meanwhile I'll just focus on preparation for a couple of Azure exams that I need to pass if I'll be switching fields, even though I feel more motivated to keep working on my little pyGame project. Thankfully the war didn't affect me mentally too much.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
Adjust it for the cost of living which will make the difference negligible (of course, the war made everything costlier, but Russia can make drop a few nukes on Ukraine to make life there completely miserable).
Consider also that if it weren't for Russian aid and debt relief, Ukraine's situation pre-2014 would've been much worse.
Russian "aid" enriched Ukrainian oligarchs, barely anything of it dripped down to the general population, and reliance on Russian gas made investment in domestic production unprofitable. People talking about Russia relieving Soviet debt apparently forget the fact that Russia got most of Soviet assets, but also a lot of countries had debts before Soviet Union — now they had to repay Russia.
Yeah, yeah. Median monthly salary in Russia is around 400-500 USD
https://tass.com/economy/1301957
Just a little lower in Ukraine. Somehow this huge GDP and revenues from exporting raw materials didn't translate in passable living standards for people outside of several large cities.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
In the thread down below memory palaces are discussed, but I wonder whether there any benefits to mastering mnemonics apart from getting good at memorizing vocabulary, learning trivia, and mastering some tricks like memorizing thousands of digits of pi, or decks of cards?
Most of mnemonic techniques use "encoding" — you associate whatever you want to memorize with an image, or a place. Some knowledge is easily encoded this way: kanjis, for example, can be split into "primitives", those "primitives" can be associated with images, and a story can be constructed around those images. For example, a kanji for "tea" (茶) can be split into "grass" (艹), "an umbrella" (个), and "a tree" (木). The same with the reading — it is phonetically (and in this case, etymologically) similar to "cha" — "tea" in multiple Slavic languages. But even if you don't know Slavic languages, you can associate it with a "chalice" (imagine drinking tea from a chalice), or any other word with "cha" syllable in it.
The same with lists (of presidents, or historical events, or bones in your body) — you construct a dictionary (key:value pair) of sorts, then link it through a story. There are alternative methods — like using acronyms (e.g. HOMES for Great Lakes — Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior), but they still use a hook of some sort.
Also digits — you can associate each one (or even a double-digit number) with an object, and then build a story with those objects. Cards. Names.
Less pliable are mathematical formulas, proofs, formulas of chemical compounds, programming syntax, general concepts and definitions. Sure, you can use the methods mentioned above for it — but it looks unnatural and just not practical; just look at some suggestions here
https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/memorising-maths-formulas/27834/14
At some point you might start thinking whether it'd be worth to construct an intricate series of associations for a single formula, or just to spend 10 minutes over several months using Anki, or even — gasp! solving problems — though, to be honest, I couldn't even memorize the formula for the square or the cube of a binomial back in school despite using it a thousand times, I had to derive it every time. And many would criticize such methods for substituting understanding for rot memorization.
Of course, mathematics, chemistry, programming — all of them already deal with more or less structured information. Knowing that a carbon atom might form only 4 bonds in an organic compound is already sort of a mnemonic. Or the names for standard methods in programming — it's "insert()" and "pop()", not "sldhslfjgfoophs()" and "fhsjhdyfty()". Do you really need tricks to supplement those in-built mnemonics?
Besides, is any of it really relevant in the modern world (apart from learning languages, and maybe some trivia)? In the age of GitHub Copilot and Wikipedia? Sure, you need to memorize the core concepts, but it can be done in sufficient time through the regular studying, practice and spaced repetition. After that, one might think, the memorization brings only diminishing returns. Are successful people in their fields — do they use mnemonics and make a significant effort to memorize things (apart from doctors and lawyers preparing for their exams)?
What are your thoughts?
Are you about that?
https://lb.ua/economics/2014/12/28/290814_donbass_zadolzhal_byudzhetu_bolee_1.html
Forcing Ukraine to pay for amenities it had to buy from Russia, and then had to transfer to Russian-occupied territories?
Also:
The occupying power has the duty to ensure that the adequate provision of food and medical supplies is provided, as well as clothing, bedding, means of shelter, other supplies essential to the survival of the civilian population of the occupied territory, and objects necessary for religious worship (GCIV Arts. 55, 58; API Art. 69).
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
By the way, how people live in Donetsk and Luhansk now? Good? Did they benefit from all those oil money? I guess people like a former MMM conman made governor, or a former bank robber made military commander did. Can they express their position freely, and not to afraid of reprisals from MGB/FSB, or "podvals"? I guess it's Russia now, life should be great.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
Luhansk ukrainophobe who rarely interacts with his former compatriots apart from on FSB controlled imageboard tells someone from Eastern Ukraine what's the general attitude of people there. Priceless.
less crime
Check the statistics?
better infrastructure and government
Authoritarian government led by a 70-year old KGB completely detached from reality hyena?
But I think that having the opportunity to choose and not being afraid of reprisals from the SBU
Dude, you live in a country where FSB can just force a kettlebell in your anus in the presence of your girlfriend, because you recited an offensive verse. Lack of self-awareness on some people, geez.
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
It would have remained a mostly peaceful special operation if the US and EU had not meddled like they did in so many other countries in the last few decades.
No, more probable that it would have been an even bloodier affair, possibly even bloodier, and the fight would be in the urban areas of Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv. With the same consequences as the siege of Mariupol.
Ukraine will be very gay and very African or it will not be.
What's your obsession with Africans? It's fine to tell, I won't kink-shame.
There is not.
Lithuania, Estonia and Denmark are probably getting punished as well?
StopSpreadingBullshit
1yr ago
Probably the exact opposite is true. Russians will not be cruel to the local population no matter what, because they consider the local population to be Russian.
Evidence suggests otherwise.
None of the countries with police and a penal system eliminated crime => We should abolish police. QED
Where does paying for commons end and unjust redistribution starts? Public schools? Public infrastructure in some Podunk and rural areas where just a handful of people would benefit from it at the expense of urban folk?
Also oftentimes "libertarians" (not necessarily you) forget their opposition to redistributive "theft" as long as their favorite topic is concerned. Ah, so great for Orban to implement policies that might increase fertility, like cash payments to young parents! We should subsidize local businesses to compete with China! Veterans should have access to cheap healthcare and education!
And some might say that not giving when you are able to is evil
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%2022:9&version=KJV
I am not an advocate for redistributive policies, but I don't find "you will not reduce poverty by gifting the poor the rich's wealth" argument persuasive.
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