theSinisterMushroom
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User ID: 3332
I have never seen The Last Jedi. Instead, I have consumed probably twice its runtime in YouTube reviews demolishing it and had an absolutely fantastic time.
Even better than RedLetterMedia's MrPlinkett review (which is excellent btw), is this deliciously merciless deconstruction from E;R. Great to watch at 1.25-2x with some beer and friends.
What is the source for that promise?
I can't find a direct source. Still am 90% certain that there were demands/promises high up in the RuAF to take Pokrovsk by the end of the summer offensive. I actually think this was the hope during Trump's 50 day deadline
theSinisterMushroom
18d ago
From what I remember this was a very common confusion between Ukrainians reporting casualties (still probably overestimated, but not really that egregious) and some newspapers reporting KIAs
Get over yourself dude. Necessity is the mother of invention, and if the Ukrainians had decided to keep them, and the Russians/Americans invaded, they could have had two dozen hacked up nuclear ICBMs launched in days.
Edit: That said, they were never going to keep them, as never in their wildest dreams would the Ukrainians of the 1990s have predicted that Russia would be the one attacking them. And also, if the Russians had attacked, many soldiers would have refused orders to launch. But some still might have. Would you have taken the chance were you Russia?
Ukraine didn't have the ability to launch the weapons so their leverage was not that of a proper nuclear power.
Oh, come on. It was Ukrainians soldiers and scientists that maintained these weapons. Yeah, they didn't have the launch codes, but it would have taken them less than a year month to hack a solution to make them operational.
Edit: just to reiterate, since I drastically adjusted my estimate, the Ukrainian nuclear forces had full physical control over the ICBMs, had detailed plans for these weapons, had been maintaining them for years. The only thing they did not have were the launch codes
Ukraine most likely will never gain back any clay lost, that is true. However, what it can do is intensify its economic damage to Russia, in the hopes that it can keep its sovereignty, and make continuing the war unappealing for Russia.
Remember that it was Russia that rejected Trump's peace plan, which included international recognition of Crimea as Russian, no NATO membership for Ukraine, and Russia gets to keep captured territories, including the land bridge.
Piggybacking on this comment, there's an interesting discussion on what will be done with all the veterans of the war. This Russian economics professor believes they will not be allowed to return, but will be given land in conquered Ukraine https://youtube.com/watch?v=GCalxQCXt7A (turn the infernal youtube auto-dub off)
Re: a more credible report on the state of the frontline comes from Michael Kofman https://x.com/KofmanMichael/status/1989384479098679688. TL;DR: bad but not dire for Ukraine, mobilization is an issue, no signs of impending operational breakthroughs or accelerations in Russian gains.
Notably, Russia promised it would have Pokrovsk (and much more) by the end of the summer. They may or may not have it by the end of the year. Kofman believes Ukraine may suffer some setbacks but will stabilize over winter.
theSinisterMushroom
18d ago
They evidently can't win this.
citation needed
neither Euros nor Ukie radicals want any concession.
oh, I see, the concession required is just a small thing called loss of sovereignty.
theSinisterMushroom
18d ago
They worked out a solution where Cuba got to keep their communist Soviet-aligned regime but didn't get ICBMs? Great, let's do that for Ukraine now.
theSinisterMushroom
18d ago
If the Ukrainians can claim victory, which at this point may be just keeping their identity and an independent state, they could conceivably go through a reconstruction boom (baby and economic). Few things catalyze identity formation like resisting a bully.
Why, say, should the key takeaway from https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/three-four-russians-expect-military-victory-over-ukraine be that 7% more Russians want peace talks than last year? "As in past surveys, three in four support the continued military action in Ukraine" seems just as relevant?
Because, in Russia, disparaging the SMO is punishable by being sent to the gulag, so every poll/interview is full of equivocations, "we fully 100% support great leader Putin and the SMO, we believe 100% in inevitable total victory over the khokhols, but perhaps the czar should consider thinking about, if it pleases him of course, making steps toward peace."
All your link says is that the EU has 'agreed' that frozen Russian assets should be sent to Ukraine. But they can't actually figure out a way to do this for fear of legal/reputational risks. Nations will understandably have some difficulty trusting the EU with their money if the EU can just take it and give it away as they please. It's just talk until they do it.
I will put down (up to) $5000 that money from frozen Russian assets will be used toward Ukraine by the end of 2026. Will you meet me?
Your link saying North Korean shells have a failure rate of 50% comes directly from Ukrainian intelligence.
There's plenty of Russian army telegram channels complaining about the shells. Is it 30% or 50%? I won't litigate this, so willing to concede this point.
There's a huge disparity between these strikes. The Russians have far more missile striking power, much bigger warheads on Iskander or Kinzhals than Ukraine has with their measly drones.
Yes, there's a huge disparity in the strikes in that Russia has kind of run out of high value targets within easy reach in eastern Ukraine. Unless they're going to strike Ukraine's benefactors in the West, or get their missiles on Ukraine's arms factories in western Ukraine (which they don't seem to be doing much for some reason) then Ukraine's puny and sparse drone and cruise missiles will keep doing outsized damage to Russia.
It's no good to just shine a spotlight on every Russian shortcoming, real or imagined, the situation needs to be considered in aggregate.
I agree, my post was an overreaction to an infuriatingly bad and partisan post not worthy of The Motte. Sadly two wrongs don't make a right, I apologize for taking the bait and not raising the discourse level.
I'm quoting such pro-Ukraine sources as Putin, Izvestia, Moskovsky Komsomolets, and Komsomolskaya Pravda
said what he meant
he concern trolled without abandon, built consensus and had so many air-quotes he may as well have been winking to his pro-Russian fanbase over here.
theSinisterMushroom
20d ago
Strange that the nearly word-for-word identical pro-Russia post didn't pass your screed bar.
But yes, I think Ukraine will accelerate its economic damage to Russia in 2026.
Not sure about the deboonkings you're talking about, pretty sure there's an open source database with video or picture proof of the tens of thousands of destroyed Russian hardware.
China would also like to stay on Europe's good side presumably. Still, it's funny that we're back to accepting Russia-Ukraine as a proxy Chinese-European war.
theSinisterMushroom
20d ago
this was it, thank you!
Edited for correctness, clarity, and tone...
With apologies to the motte for the tardiness on this, I've been recovering from an injury.
A reply to https://www.themotte.org/post/3359/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/381026?context=8#context
Russia.
"We will eat grass rather than become a Russian colony again" — Polish FM Sikorski (and every other sane person in Eastern Europe)
Not to worry, the Russophiles may have a counterproposal, "Your country
and women will be raped anyways, wouldn't you rather spend your few
remaining years in a nice camp in Siberia rather than the frontlines?" —
@No_one, probably
By now, wise people, who read the newspapers (Russian newspapers generally never lie), have noticed that the news out of Russia is bad. After years of relentless and very stupid propaganda, even 'Izvestia' is running articles such as "Nearly 7000 transport companies in Russia on verge of bankruptcy" and "The share of companies with overdue loans reached a record one in four." A bit of lying around the end, "there is no recession, but of course there are negative trends." (https://youtube.com/watch?v=xbTDbAosRVM)
'Nezavisimaya Gazeta' ditto "the total volume of mutual trade [with China] continues to decline. […] imports of Russian oil decreased by 21%." (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Vs2xNro016M)
That means something. Not at all clear what. Obsessive observers of the war believe Russia is likely to hold out until end of '26, early '27. However:
1- There's a financing issue.
Sure, the Chinese may be willing to keep buying Russian crude at obscene discounts of nearly $20 dollars per barrel (https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-Sanctions-Widen-Russias-Crude-Discount-to-20-a-Barrel.html) but will that be enough to keep financing the war?
Russia, as everyone knows, is mostly broke, with the exception of oil and gas revenue, which is only because Europe propped them up. Paying through the nose for overpriced recruits like e.g. convicted criminals and 50 year old grandpas (2 million rubles sign-on bonus, 5 million first year salary) which are going to be used as meat assaults for a gain of 2 meters of frontline doesn't seem like a winning strategy, especially when $500 fpv drones being able to destroy them.
Unlike Ukraine, which will be getting direct Russian cash (which will be replaced by zero-coupon AAA bonds for Russia to pay reparations out of after the war lol) https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/eu-finance-ministers-agree-using-frozen-russian-assets-most-effective-way-to-fund-ukraine, Russia will be resorting to raising money from its Chinese handlers (except because of the sanctions, China can't participate) in Yuan-denominated domestic bonds. https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/11/12/russia-to-issue-first-yuan-denominated-domestic-bonds-on-december-8/ Russia-Ukraine watchers will be paying close attention to the interest rates on these.
2- Materially, it's bad.
We know the gist of the situation, Russia has too few IFVs, AFVs, tanks. After losing upwards of 60% of their gigantic pre-war stockpile (the remaining ones being rusted out hulls with their insides scrapped or sold by corrupt base managers), Russian forces are resorting to using donkeys and camels to resupply their frontlines. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-depletes-tank-reserves-due-to-wear-and-tear-in-ukraine/ar-AA1JRlKJ https://www.newsweek.com/russia-deploys-donkeys-camels-ukraine-amid-resupply-struggles-2037097
There is a shortage of everything in Russia, petrol (https://youtube.com/watch?v=CSK7hPhwQl0), bread, potatoes, milk, even vodka (https://youtube.com/watch?v=HncXBqcedCg), but also cars too (https://youtube.com/watch?v=xt6_axtjJMs). Why there is a shortage of cars seems… mysterious. China surely should be able to keep Russians knee deep in cheap trucks. What gives?
There is even a shortage of artillery shells, Russia famously resorting to using North Korean bottom shelf products with 50% failure rates. Not to worry, I'm sure their drones will be way better. https://www.newsweek.com/half-russia-north-korea-made-artillery-shells-do-not-work-vadym-skibitsky-1873612 https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/north-korea-runs-out-of-shells-for-putin-1763159907.html
Russia drops bombs using their many planes daily, but Ukrainians
sometimes deliver up to 300 drones and ballistic cruise missile strikes a day.
Any refinery, power plant, supply dump even far away from the front can
be hit.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/11/14/ukraine-war-kyiv-hit-russian-attack/
https://i.redd.it/zxpc8b6p9b1g1.jpeg
3- The front.
In 2025, Russian forces have made significant territorial gains in Ukraine, capturing approximately 165 square miles in the four weeks leading up to November 11, 2025. At these rates, Russia should be able to take all of Ukraine in a few decades. https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-11-2025
Overall, as you probably know, the situation on the front is bad. Russia is trading immense amounts of blood and treasure for small territorial gains, and patting themselves on the back for it.
Going by the aphorism 'If you're reading this, it's for you,' it looks like the Russian press is preparing the public for 2-3 more years of depression (https://youtube.com/watch?v=z3BVZ66KcrE), a closing act of its imperial ambitions that started with the little green men invasion of the Donbas. Russians may or may not be eager for peace, "61%, up from 54% in 2024 believe it is time to start peace negotiations rather than continue military operations in Ukraine," (https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/three-four-russians-expect-military-victory-over-ukraine) but unfortunately they have chosen a strong man as a leader (https://youtube.com/watch?v=rXwuLlZeIN0) that has tied his political fortunes to the result of this war, claiming such things as "Russia's border doesn't end anywhere" (https://youtube.com/watch?v=fWaXH7N__LU).
Some time ago (years?) either here or on reddit (on the motte or ssc) someone had posted about daily affirmations inspirational/motivational quotes that their mother packed into their school lunch. These passages seemed to have a profound impact on their life, even if received with eye rolls at the time (C'mon mom, don't be so lame/cringe).
They were (all? mostly?) quotes from an athlete (not Yogi Berra). I really thought they were down to earth and insightful/deep, but I can't find them or the athlete in question anymore.
So, daily quote thread. For your kids, for your self, friends, enemies. Do they work? Any good ones to share?
For posterity, I was thinking about Sleeper Agents, https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05566 and more recent developments like AdvBDGen: https://x.com/furongh/status/1846999547836264459
These backdoors evade current defenses. Unlike traditional ones, fuzzy backdoors adapt, making them extremely hard to remove by usual methods.
theSinisterMushroom
10mo ago
If most trafficking has to come by boat or plane I'd be ecstatic. I see your point about scope creep, seems like a trap the US has fallen for before.
The Chinese have what they consider an entire secessionist province with substantial foreign smuggling and arms trafficking as a neighbor
The Taiwanese are either scared shitless and hoping for more status quo or resigned to an eventual Chinese takeover, maybe with a newer, shinier pinky promise about one country two systems. Taiwan would never dare to provoke the mainland by allowing any serious smuggling or arms trafficking. But I wonder, when they look at America, do they see a strong horse or a weak one?
theSinisterMushroom
10mo ago
I realize now that DeepSeek is pretty much the perfect Chinese game theory move: let the US believe a small AI lab full of cunning Chinese matched OpenAI, with a tiny fraction of the compute budget, with no ability to get SOTA GPUs. Let the US believe the export regime works, but that it doesn't matter, because Chinese brilliance is superior, demoralizing efforts to strengthen it. Additionally, it would make the US skeptical of big investment in OpenAI capital infrastructure because there's no moat.
The report is quite detailed and the process supposedly cheap enough that we should get easy confirmation if it works.
If DeepSeek does have access to much more compute (smuggled in or otherwise), then maybe the thought is they may have an o3-level model in-house. The actually paranoid thought is that the released models may be compromised. I'm not sure how easy to tell if there's a SolidGoldMagikarp in it. But a US-based company could run the training to check if it's actually $5 million.
theSinisterMushroom
10mo ago
The moment the cartels hit united states politicians or citizens will be an inflection point, for sure. It won't end well for them
I acknowledge my mistake of your intent, and will simply adjust by noting I consider this a terrible idea. Providing global audiences, including competitors, skeptics, and wavering audiences, documentary evidence of American war crimes is quite appreciable downsides for American efforts globally, particularly when trying to hide behind false-flag islamic terrorism in a region that notably has a lack of it (because the cartels have a history of not tolerating it).
In the released video, maybe add a short video snippet of the victims of their crimes. Or don't release anything, maybe legends will spread of the ghosts of cartel victims taking out entire bases.
And this is without the issue of the intervention being framed on principles that the intervention is supposed to mitigate, not perpetuate. The propaganda of 'American gangsters are moving in' practically writes itself.
Any news stories about American gangs invading would die down quick enough. Obviously the stories of Mexican gangsters moving into the United States don't upset them too much.
But yes, if the Mexico-US border is such that there need to be gangsters running it, then those gangsters should understand that there are certain limits to what behavior can be tolerated. If that is unacceptable, they decide to go to mat for fentanyl and reorganize to insurgent activity and accept Chinese military support and we lose, then it's better to get this metaphorical American Century of Humiliation started already than keep pretending.
Hence why it is critical that any intervention be with the consent / support of the local government, and not in contemptuous indifference to their position, as the OP took.
Yes, this would be ideal. Will it happen? Maybe the government declares an emergency following a newly surfaced/resurfaced video of cartel violence and forms an agency nominally under the president's control, that would be kinda cool. Maybe some respected or shadowy Mexican agency or the army just takes credit? Just spitballing here
For a basis of comparison- the US costs in Japan and Korea from 2016 to 2019 were less than 40 billion USD, or 40,000,000, 000. For the cartels to have resources a dozen orders of magnitude less than the resources the US uses over multiple years as part of treaty commitments, the Cartels would need to spend less than $1.
I think the mistake was quantitative rather than qualitative. The overmatch is still brutal. Would spending $20 bln on an anticartel op or two not be a drop in the bucket? Let's see how far that can get us towards stamping out fentanyl moving in from Mexico. Maybe it's worth the investment. How much is continuing to push fentanyl on America worth it to the cartels? How much is stopping it worth it to us?
And your view on the historical patterns of when the 'Don't just stand there- do something!' instinct in the face of bad things is mixed with policy proposals to attack outsiders because internal reforms are dismissed as 'too hard'?
Yes, the US needs to work on itself too. Still, it's a low hanging fruit to insist that your neighbors stop breaking into your house to sell fentanyl. It's too profitable to stop? Let's make it unprofitable. No sorry tell your addicted sister to fix herself doesn't warm my heart.
theSinisterMushroom
10mo ago
I don't like falling in the same camp as the 'China is the source of all evil' people but there is a good chance that the Chinese state is smiling on people exporting fentanyl precursors to the US. "Try to wreck our high-tech industries with sanctions and keep us in the middle income trap? Plant COVID on us (note that China also has an official history that the US used bioweapons against them in Korea)? We will bury you in narcotics, we'll wreck your high-tech industries with IP theft and industrial policy."
Their beef should be with Britan, we didn't do the opium wars, no fair!
You send stealthy long-loiter-time surveillance drones over mexico. You use them to ID organized Cartel activity, cross-referencing electronic intel from the NSA. When you locate a concentration of Cartel activity, a stealthy plane drops a container from 35,000 feet, which pops open at 30,000 feet and spills out a hundred small anti-personnel drones. These drones fly down to the target area and messily unalive selected targets in the strike zone, recording high-quality video of exactly who they splatter in the process. No hellfires, no demolished buildings; half-pound directional frag charges, with close range and wide-angle video record of exactly who was hit and what they were doing.
I remember seeing a video of those military drone swarms in action a few years ago. Wish I could find it again
Maybe it's still not worth the effort. I am a fairly committed non-interventionist, and there is certainly a strong non-interventionist argument to be made here. But these are in fact some of the most vile people on earth, the harm they cause is considerable, and they're right fucking there. Maybe we really do have to just put up with them indefinitely as they rape and murder and torture and poison and corrupt both our biggest neighbor and our own citizens. But then why the fuck does this argument not apply to China or Russia?
theSinisterMushroom
10mo ago
There's only so many evidence chain manufacturers, plus it's a adversarial process you don't want to fuck up. Then you also have to try to arrest them. Of course, the cartels don't bother with any of that, they just kill you.
During my recent downtime I had the choice between playing BG3 and Cyberpunk. I chose BG3 and it was an enjoyable experience, the other mottizens have covered its strengths and flaws quite well.
Having now started playing Cyberpunk I think it has more interesting things to say. It's not quite the same genre, but if you haven't played either, I'd say Cyberpunk has more relevant ideas to explore.
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