Posted by RescueMe1060 can't read the NYT article w/o making an account.

isn't that annoying as fuck?

at this point (3-6-22), i have no idea where he is going with this farcical invasion. We're at the 10 day point and he has not taken any meaningful goals. And now, as these big nasty sanctions are starting to bite the rich and powerful, he's threatening to up the ante and go full-on world war 3? What the utter fuck?

i mean, i get ego, but jesus fucking christ, this is going full diva here.

I’m afraid the worse things get for Putin, the more brutal and unpredictable he will become. An, “if I have to suffer, everyone will suffer,” mentality.
He will give zero fucks about any of us, including his own people, if it gets bad enough for him. This is partly why a nuclear war looks so much more like a possibility now and not just a distant, fringe, alarmist possibility.
That said, what do I know (not much), and I hope I’m wrong.

Not to belittle the ongoing humanitarian disaster, but Russia's economy is going to be fucked, fucked, fucked for the foreseeable future. Seems everybody and their brother is rushing for the exits.

https://12ft.io/pr...ounterparts-has%2F

Posted by Samurai isn't that annoying as fuck?

Try this site, Sam. It's not perfect but it gets around a lot of paywalls.

https://12ft.io

Posted by Emperor Wang Try this site, Sam. It's not perfect but it gets around a lot of paywalls. https://12ft.io

very much thank you!

Occupations are bad and don't work and the Russian government is straight up Fascist.

However, the amount of war cheerleading and willful ignorance of the deep flaws in Ukraine's government are giving me serious 2003 "FUCK YEAH IRAQ WILL BE THE 51St STATE IN THREE WEEKS" vibes.

War is dumb and bad and mostly hurts the people that want nothing to do with it. I can't stand all the shitty memes acting like is a fun action movie. Especially the theatrical bits painting Zelensky or any representative as some kind of hero.

Posted by RescueMe1060 can't read the NYT article w/o making an account.

open paywall articles in incognito

Netflix has released "Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom" not just onto their own service, but free on YouTube https://youtu.be/yzNxLzFfR5w. It's a documentary of Ukraine's Maidan Revolution https://en.wikiped...olution_of_Dignity that occurred in 2014.

It's obviously limited by its singular perspective, and does not encompass other very relevant recent-ish events, eg. the Orange Revolution (2004)... but I think it paints a good picture of the will of the Ukrainians to stand up to Putin and his proxies.

Posted by uLiveAndYouBurn Occupations are bad and don't work and the Russian government is straight up Fascist. However, the amount of war cheerleading and willful ignorance of the deep flaws in Ukraine's government are giving me serious 2003 "FUCK YEAH IRAQ WILL BE THE 51St STATE IN THREE WEEKS" vibes. War is dumb and bad and mostly hurts the people that want nothing to do with it. I can't stand all the shitty memes acting like is a fun action movie. Especially the theatrical bits painting Zelensky or any representative as some kind of hero.

PREACH IT

Posted by uLiveAndYouBurn willful ignorance of the deep flaws in Ukraine's government

That's gonna need some clarification, dude. Being an old fuck I have no idea what's going on in the "meme-sphere" (and I'm perfectly fine with that).

All I see is decent white folks fighting for their lives and their right to run their country as they see fit. If they're willing to accept help from the west to achieve those aims, who am I to complain?

Kindly elucidate.

Posted by Emperor Wang That's gonna need some clarification, dude. Being an old fuck I have no idea what's going on in the "meme-sphere" (and I'm perfectly fine with that). All I see is decent white folks fighting for their lives and their right to run their country as they see fit. If they're willing to accept help from the west to achieve those aims, who am I to complain? Kindly elucidate.

Ukraine's modern history is quite the hot mess as far as democracies go. Not that it justifies at all the Russian invasions... but I kinda have to fan myself like a Southern belle overwhelmed by titillation.

https://en.wikiped...history_of_Ukraine

Zelenskyy is a hero and could very well become a martyr. I'm not interested in your opinion just as you aren't interested in mine so I'll leave it at that.

well that escalated quickly.

Posted by Samurai well that escalated quickly.

Zero clue where that came from.

Stolen from Reddit:

This is inconvenient (Chernobyl experiencing a blackout) but will not cause a safety issue.

First of all the Chernobyl site has 3 offsite power supplies, 750kV, 330kV and 110kV. According to current media messages they only lost one so the site should still be on a normal offsite power supply.

Now even if the media reporting is incorrect and they've lost all 3 offsite power supplies they still have emergency diesel generators which can provide atleast 7 days of power each.

If those diesel generators are lost too they're on batteries which will die within hours. They have mobile diesel generators they can connect in order to keep them charged.

If these mobile diesel generators also fail they'll be without power if the batteries die. In that case they just lose monitoring systems which means they'll have to inspect the various waste storage facilities locally.

The spent fuel in the Chernobyl site is atleast 22 years old which means they no longer require active cooling. If all cooling were to be lost the water in the spent fuel pools will not exceed 70°C and thus will not boil off. So the facilities are safe even without power.

Posted by Emperor Wang That's gonna need some clarification, dude. Being an old fuck I have no idea what's going on in the "meme-sphere" (and I'm perfectly fine with that). All I see is decent white folks fighting for their lives and their right to run their country as they see fit. If they're willing to accept help from the west to achieve those aims, who am I to complain? Kindly elucidate.

Posted by dtewsacrificial Ukraine's modern history is quite the hot mess as far as democracies go. Not that it justifies at all the Russian invasions... but I kinda have to fan myself like a Southern belle overwhelmed by titillation. https://en.wikiped...history_of_Ukraine

To further this point, I was talking to my father today and he informed me (in furtherance of what I knew) that Ukraine is currently the only European nation in which the Nazi party is not outlawed. This is because while it is patently clear that while Zelensky and his government are far, far from Nazis, and of course Putin's "de-Nazification" claims are utter bullshit... Ukraine does actually have a Nazi problem.

https://www.nbcnew...im-war-ncna1290946

(I will assume that there is no law against Nazis because enough Nazis and sympathizers are present to constitute a political force.)

I am also told that Ukraine is a destination for far-right white-supremacist groups for this reason. They also have a legitimate national guard battalion (Azov Battallion) that is led and populated by neo-Nazis to the extent that the U.S. government has a specific carve-out so that Ukrainian aid doesn't go to them.

*****

He conveyed the opinion (uncertain if it original or cribbed) that barring hard-to-foresee developments such as coups, the most likely outcome is for China's Xi Jinping to step-in to talk Putin into a (relatively) face-saving exit. China's current relation with Russia is obvious, but prior to that it was also on good terms with Ukraine.

Posted by WarBird69 Stolen from Reddit:

The International Atomic Energy Agency has lost their connection to the remote Chernobyl monitoring system. Assuming the communication system is intact, that implies a total loss of power.

https://12ft.io/pr...monitoring-lost%2F

Posted by Samurai at this point (3-6-22), i have no idea where he is going with this farcical invasion. We're at the 10 day point and he has not taken any meaningful goals.

Too much emphasis on the huge attack convoy currently stalled outside Kyiv is diverting attention from significant and strategic Russian gains in south Ukraine. The port city of Kherson, at the mouth of the Dnieper river on the Black sea, fell some days before this was written.

Mariupol, the last Ukrainian hold on the sea of Azov, is besieged and is being indiscriminately pounded as we speak. In encircling the city, the invaders have linked their Crimean contingent with their forces operating out of Rostov-on-Don (via the disputed Donetsk region); they have already established effective control over the sea of Azov.

A little further west, the "Z" are now about 150 km from Odessa (Ukraine's most important sea port) and 200 km from the Moldovan border. If they succeed in closing this gap, Ukraine will be effectively landlocked – even if Odessa resists under siege for some time,

Putin will try to claim these conquered coastal territories, as well as Donetsk, Luhansk – and untold sundry demands – in any upcoming "peace" negotiations. Meaning: he might not need to subjugate Kyiv in order to reach what may be have been his primary strategic objective all along.

Posted by uLiveAndYouBurni War is dumb and bad and mostly hurts the people that want nothing to do with it. I can't stand all the shitty memes acting like is a fun action movie. Especially the theatrical bits painting Zelensky or any representative as some kind of hero.

You're right on this, as you often are. It's terrible, unconscionable, no fun at all. I'm not idealizing the Ukrainian government or glorifying Zelenskiy – even though most in his position would have gotten the hell out of Dodge a long time ago. Hero or not, this former comedian is acting every bit the part of a leader, while "strongman" Putin cuts an ever more pathetic figure in his Kremlin.

You and I agree that war is senseless. It's also morally defensible to protect one's life, home and "freedom" – perhaps even country – from unprovoked and brutal assault. That's why I'm showing my support for ordinary Ukrainians, for their struggle and for the continued existence of their country – flawed though it may be. Life could only get worse under the domination of a renewed Russian empire: most Ukrainians seem to recognize this all too well.

Posted by Emperor Wang All I see is decent white folks fighting for their lives and their right to run their country as they see fit. If they're willing to accept help from the west to achieve those aims, who am I to complain?

I don't see what their being white has to do with it.

Posted by Samurai well that escalated quickly.

I have a video for these occasions:

Posted by roue_libre I don't see what their being white has to do with it.

It just struck me as odd that the whole of the western world freaked right the fuck out (and justifiably so) in response to this atrocity. While the folks most affected by other wars in recent memory have been generally "off-white", and our collective response to those events seemed to have been more on the 'meh' side.

The skin-tone of the victims here seems preceptively related to the degree of of moral outrage shown from the rest of the western world. That's all I was trying to point out.