FaibleEstimeDeSoi
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User ID: 2072
So a new peace treaty for Ukraine war just dropped .
Trump’s proposed Ukraine peace plan would recognize Crimea as Russian, accept Russian control over parts of Donbas and southern Ukraine, and offer Ukraine vague European security guarantees, unfettered access to Dnieper partial territorial returns, and U.S.-backed reconstruction. It also includes U.S. control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant and a U.S.-Ukraine minerals deal. Vance said that the deal is final and in the case of rejection US will stop being a part of peacemaking process.
I think it's basically a great deal for both sides(I admit my bias cause for me any peace would be better than war). Ukraine loses nothing that it de facto has right now and gains territory in Kharkov, it can finally heal and maybe with some smart leadership, international investment and membership in EU it can rise to the heights of neighboring Poland, I doubt that it will and I already written on the motte why, but some chance is way better than no chance.
For Russia and specifically for Putin this is a way to claim victory after his many failures including starting this retarded SMO. Maybe for Russian state it would be better to deal with this close of an enemy once and for all, but it will not happen under current leadership and Putin is no nationalist, so even with total victory we would see semi puppet state in Ukraine that would break of as soon as possible. We are talking about person who still haven't annexed Belarus for christ sake.
I think kremlins are ready to accept this and even slightly worse versions of this deal, cause they already shown signs of it throught whole war, starting in March of 2022 and dictators are more likely to seek limited peace anyway. On the other hand Europe is actually putting some effort into its militarization, I'v seen news about new German ammunition facilities, and could collectively decide to continue the war even if US fully withdraws after rejecting the deal(which is in my opinion unlikely). That could prolong the conflict by another couple of years, probably lead to the Ukrainian territory gains but I can't see how it's worth the devastation that it would cause.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Commonly, in discussions of abortion, a divide appears concerning what sex is about, how important it is, whether it's sacred or whatever, etc. I feel like a common perspective that is expressed by pro-choice folks is that it is wayyy less important/sacred than they think their opponents think it is. This opinion piece talks of competitive swimming, but I recall people saying that sex is like a tennis game. It's just a fun recreational activity that a couple of people show up to do together; they both consent to playing tennis; they just have some amount of fun; then nothing particularly interesting happens. In the era of ubiquitous birth control, they think that sex is totally just like this.
I don't know how many people agree with me on this but I do believe that Sexual Revolution didn't go far enough, sex is just a physical activity similar to tennis and the only reason it is not treated the same way is because prudes still have their way. More over puritan factions won in both the right and the left in spite of proclaimed commitment to the principle of sexual freedom in the latter one. Technology did solve issues that come with unrestricted love-making, we just need to wait for the culture to catch up(just in time for some other tech to disrupt it again). Some niche cultures are already there and make polyamory work quite well.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Problem is "self-control or exercise" is not a solution to fatness in modern food environment like it maybe was for some king or rich merchant in the past. General populace just can't beat hyperstimulus, not without semaglutide at least. Fat shaming is bad because it isn't solving the issue of population becoming more and more obese it just makes lifes of unhealthy people more miserable.
[Disclaimer: I think that this post maybe too low-effort for Culture war thread but other ones don't look appropriate to me]
Can you do too much noticing?
Fallout series released not too long ago and as a fan of games I was reasonably interested, especially after mostly good reviews came in. But while it has quite many political themes I will not talk about them, instead I will focus on some much less important and meaningful thing - casting and specifically race of the actors. Generally I don't want to spoil myself too much, so I ignore teasers, trailers and, of course full-blown reviews, even if they promise to contain no spoilers at all. So at the time right before series release I knew two facts about it, which were gathered from two old stills: protagonist is a woman vault dweller and there was also ghoul sheriff character. Yesterday when I finally had enough free time to comfortably marathon watch it(my preferred way), I saw a third one with a black character that was a member of BoS and my first thought was: "Oh, so it's mc's love interest". And I was right, like I was with similar predictions many times before.
I can easily see how the white woman/black man pairing become so wide-spread in recent years. You don't any conspiracies from 4chan white nationalists imagination, just brutal logic of the modern social justice thought. If you're making action movie, you need an action hero, obviously it should be a woman to combat harmful stereotypes. You can add some other traits: disability, PoC status, mental illness; but most often being a woman is enough for mc so we just return to default, white and pretty. Then you need to add some diversity in main cast, who is the most diverse and minoritiest of them all? - Black people, specifically African Americans. And we already have a woman, why not this one be a man. And if the cast is small or filled with mentors, monsters, villains and characters too young for romance, why not pair up the first two that we designed?
In many ways this is continuation of my previous post because anytime I notice one of the signs of this ideology dominant among American media creators and therefore their creations I feel robbed of enjoying perfectly adequate television because I for some reason decided to read about American politics. While being blissfully ignorant I thought that African Americans constituted at least a quarter if not the third of US population and movie demographics seemed absolutely normal in this light. I, like majority of Eastern Europeans don't have anything to dislike about people of African descent, those few who do live here are students or children of students, are not part of some diaspora and assimilate quite well(though obviously people will look differently at the black Ivan, or Stefan, but it's curious look, without animosity). I compared this feeling to watching soviet-made movies as an American businessman at the time of the Cold War(which of course vanishingly small number of them actually did). You notice propaganda against small bourgeoise like you, but why would it matter if USSR is very far away and communists that you know about are all educated intellectuals obviously against any kind of violence?
One thing that I don't understand is why nobody "inside the kitchen" don't notice how weird their attempts at propaganda seem. I think there wouldn't be so many far rightists in hypothetical America where there is much less to notice. IMHO, Hollywood elites aren't black supremacists and majority of them don't consider themselves in someway being against white race, they are true believers, who try to promote DiversityTM in their media because they think that it will make its viewers better people. My guess is that they do notice, but because of the implication of noticing being bad in itself, there is no one to say: "maybe better make him Asian this time".
So there is one thing about both sides' media coverage of Russian-Ukranian war that bugged me for the last two years - accusations of deliberate targeting of civilian buildings, specifically non-military hospitals, schools, malls and houses. Am I wrong in thinking that regardless of evidence in specific cases probability of this happening is so low that we should expect to see almost zero cases of it?
I specifically talking about deliberate strikes because there are many alternative explanations revolving around mistakes, negligence, and faulty weapons. Of course all blame for this still lays on the initiator of the war but I think claims of deliberate hits are generally explained by these reasons.
Specific targeting of civilians is not new to wars, it was done quite often for loot and plunder in the old times and with mass proliferation of planes and missiles it, and Douhet's doctrine were at its height in WW2. Strategic bombing(e.g. targeting general use infrastructure and in some case industry somewhat related to the war) never went out of fashion and was used in almost all wars where the participants had a large enough air fleet since. But terror bombing(e.g. striking civilian targets for the purpose of lowering the enemy morale) is generally not used because time and time again it was proved ineffective and even damaging to its goal. I can't recall any country that engaged in the open terror bombing campaigns from, again, WW2, and if you decide to go this route you should be open about it. Main effect is on morale, it should be supported by propaganda and fiery speeches of inevitable death in case of continued defiance. I was quite obviously wrong about this(Thanks @ymeskhout for the correction). There is a modern tendency of doing things almost in the open and then fervently denying that you did them, that Russia follows often(recently with Prigozhin's untimely demise). What I wanted to communicate is that terror bombing needs to be open, or almost open because this doctrine by necessity requires large parts or even majority of your air force to have a desired effect.
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I'm interested in the process that happens before such strike as imagined by people who disagree with me. Does Russian/Ukrainian command has a secret policy of terror bombings but to keep it secret limits it to some fraction of its forces? What do they or some random rogue commander hope to gain from it? How do they justify wasting precious ammunition on targets that aren't relevant to the war effort?
I don't think that on any side of the barricades there exist some human-hating berserks that can answer "blood for the blood god, skulls for the skull throne!" to all of these questions and even if they did exist we would expect them to not have any power from the evidence we see.
How can you prevent segregation and why would you do it?
I was spurred to ask this question by this article and especially this paragraph where author builds logical sequence connecting segregation with various social ills:
"These segregated schools ruined children's educational and economic opportunities. They achieved much less academically. Because of this segregation, many more dropped out. Many fewer went to colleges. Those that did were disproportionately likely to enroll in less rigorous institutions, like for-profit community colleges. Because of this segregation, they earned lower incomes as adults. They were more likely to end up in jail. Their health was worse. In the end, these 100,000 are much more likely than their peers to emerge as the most economically disadvantaged members of society — whereupon the cycle will likely repeat with their own children."
Author doesn't spell out what is the main cause here but we can guess. It can't be money related issues, because they could be solved without integration with a different tax scheme. It can't be some institutional racism cause he does provide examples of black charter and views them as failures. No, in my understanding the single most useful benefit that black children lose out here is diversity in itself. Obviously there is a question of white and asian kids faring pretty fine without it and also the counterargument along the lines of DR slogan "you don't have right to a white people", but let's accept their premise as true. There are after all many instrumental benefits to your populace not being concentrated into the ethnic enclaves, assimilation is useful and if Romans could do it with the Gauls why Americans can't. What you can do to integrate schools once and for all?
The solution preferred by author - the repeat of the policies of forced integration doesn't work in the context of liberal democracy with freedom of movement and widespread desire to avoid "bad" schools i.e. schools with poor black people in them. 60s policies just kicked the can down the road and led to the white flight. Modern one that tries to do the same will end up similarly, maybe with much stark division in the end.
Successful desegregation should make resegregation not illegal but not desirable or simple. In the search of the solution, I think it's wise to try to emulate post-soviet conditions, because despite large immigration from much poorer countries generally Russian cities were resistant to segregation, the most ethnic districts in Moscow range from 20 to 50 percent of immigrants and not for the lack of them. What causes this? Multi floor apartments/soviet block housing allows for diverse quality and quantity of housing at the same place. Poor migrants often rent or buy small one bedroom flat to retrofit it into something more fitting for the Hong Kong, working class citizen or a student will live in similar one if alone or slightly bigger when married and/or with kids, middle class can afford to have good amount of square meters per person and each child will always have their own room, upper class will have can easily have double the space of a middle one and has option of uniting several flats into one. And all of them can live in the one building, use the same parking space and their children will go into the same school(private schools that cater to rich people exist but not everybody cares enough to opt for them).
Then we have widespread public transport that by existing devalues personal car infrastructure and makes getting into the city from some suburb much harder even in the smaller towns. And what maybe considered the most important part by people here is the law enforcement that while far from perfect for example both in Poland and in Russia(still much worse in the latter) does work at keeping streets safe, public transit clean and gangs non-existent(apart from the ones that get in with the government but that's a different story). I think democratic politicians can achieve this kind of integration and they have reason to do it, YIMBY i.e. urbanist faction becomes more powerful by the day in the local elections and I can see some of the people affiliated with it succeeding in the desegregation maybe without even make it a goal. But ideological solutions from people who do make it a goal can sink it all again.
Prigozhin's death was quite an expected event, it is rather surprising that it happened now, two whole months after the failed coup. But I suspect his story is not over yet. Ignoring Yevgeny's personal qualities, he was not a stupid person, and therefore, even if he believed in the secret agreements that was made on June 24, Prigozhin necessarily kept or created an additional reason not to kill him, and soon we will find out about it. The reason may be some compromising material, military secrets, or, if he had confidence in the loyalty of his people, the threat of a second "march of justice" from the Wagner PMCs. The latter scenario is unlikely, further complicated by the death of Dmitry Utkin, but according to the rule of "interesting events" in Russia it may very well happen.
It is also interesting how exactly the "plane crash" occurred. Stories about bad pilots or incredibly successful Ukrainian terrorists may of course appear in the Russian media, but it is obvious to everyone who is responsible for the elimination of the mercenaries leader. From the point of view of constructing plausible deniability it would be much more correct to kill Prigozhin during his stay in Africa, recent one or in the future. There you can find hundreds of different convenient culprits with motivation and weapons: from the French to the Islamists. Instead, his plane "crashed" in the middle of European part of Russia, not so far from Moscow.
Plausible deniability is bad in one case - when you want to convey a message by your action. This is what the kremlins most likely planned. As many said at the end of the deflated coup: "if it turns out that you can occupy one city, march in columns on Moscow, and then if you fail you will not suffer any consequences, then there may be many who will want to try to do this themselves. No harm if you failed in the end." The message from the ruling clan concerns the second part - the consequences will be much more severe than mere exile to Belarus. The official version will still find a way to declare Prigozhin's death a "fatal accident", but the real message, barely fitting between the lines will be visible to everyone.
Will the death of the former chef become a last note in his life story or just the beginning of the third act? - we'll find out soon.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Navalny is dead.
IMHO it is stupid to seriously discuss the circumstances of his death, especially after Litvinenko, Nemtsov and Navalny himself in 2020. He was killed and many new details that are brought in every hour only prove this more. Prison conditions as a reason are not an excuse, especially when we can see yesterday's Alexei, looking unhealthy, but not at all near death. Prigozhin's fate only further confirms the presumption of guilt.
His death is the right choice for the regime. Navalny posed a much greater threat to them in prison than abroad, and no possible reaction is scary enough to keep him alive. The authorities hope that in the current conditions there will not be a new leader in the opposition who will be able to unite the disparate dissident branches. This is quite likely, especially considering that the deceased did not have a successor (official or informal).
The opposition has lost its head, and the FBK have lost the remnants of their legitimacy. This tragedy for many will be a time of opportunity for others. Surely the next leader is already here, although I hope we wouldn't need to wait too long. In his posthumous address that he recorded for the 2022 film, Alexey asks Russians not to give up and I am sure that no one is going to do this. As a Russian I can say that as long as Russia exists, there will always be people willing to risk their lives for freedom and truth.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
Dehumanization is a very old and popular practice among homo sapiens sapiens. It is closely connected with tribalism, with the division into ingroup and ougroup. These concepts can quite reasonably be considered part of human nature, or rather neurology(Dunbar number). To think about the number of people exceeding the Dunbar number by several orders of magnitude, stereotypes, generalizations and such abstract concepts as "nation" or "people" used, which is why many racists can have friends of another race, communists may not have problems with a businessman they know personally, and Hitler respected his Jewish doctor.
The current situation around the "special operation" is therefore not at all unique, but rather normal for any conflicts in history. Just as state propaganda in the participating countries in World War I presented their enemies as monsters on posters, today's propaganda shows opponent`s soldiers as orcs and pigs. Propaganda, like advertising, works for most people, and while avoiding its harmful effects can be easy for some, the problem is that few people try. Now a large part or maybe even most of Ukrainians and Russians hate each other, along with this, real Russophobia is widespread in many Western countries - this is an inevitable consequence of unleashing "special operations" and nothing can be done about it yet. I think it is wrong to dehumanize people in return for theirs dehumanization of ourselves. Of course, after reading hundreds of comments by Ukrainians about stupid orcs without culture, who need to be forced to pay tribute and decolonize their "Рашка"(disparaging nickname for Russia coincidentally having the same name as medieval Serbian principality), average Russian can be filled with desire to write about stupid grunting piggies and their Khokhlostan, but this desire is worth overcoming in oneself. He should think about how the "Khokhols" came to such a life: are they themselves do not consider that the "Rusnya" was the first to start? Almost everyone is sure that their hatred is just and reciprocal in its own way, this is perfectly cultivated by propaganda that specifically chooses what to show to its target audience. For this to stop working, people need to stop thinking that the answer to hatred should be the same blind hatred.
It should be clarified that here I am talking about specific xenophobia of a general nature, of course, strongly disliking army of the country that destroyed your house is completely different. But to transfer these emotions from the army, from politicians, from specific criminals to gigantic groups of people consisting of millions of individuals is stupidity. At the same time, one must understand that average commentators and couch experts who succumb to propaganda are not doomed to maintain their opinions for the rest of their lives. Germanophobia in Europe after the First and Second World War did not last so long, as well as Anti-Japanese sentiment in the United States. As in the past, propaganda will shift its focus to other things, and the majority of people will gradually lose their radical positions. Of course, some parts will not be forgotten for centuries but it will not be the full-fledged xenophobia of today. I think Orwell written about it brilliantly in relation to his own time`s big war here - https://orwell.ru/library/articles/revenge/english/e_revso
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Is it rational to care or even know about propaganda in otherwise good media?
Imagine a person who doesn't know anything about Soviet Union and the concept of communism that decides to watch some movies from there. In the process of watching soviet cinema he will encounter not only direct propaganda of communism and Soviet Union itself but something more subtle, small, background details that show when and where this film was made and that it passed the eye of always hard-working socialist censors.
I think some already guessed where it goes. I was this person in relation to modern American progressive liberal views that are so common in Hollywood and general intelligentsia of United States. Without knowledge of internal us politics your mind just skips over all of the deliberately put messages in movies: specifically chosen race and sex of good characters and of evil ones, non spoken but painfully obvious and politically compliant moral of the story, slogans and signs hidden in plain sight. Many parts of it can be seen without the deep dive(the existence of same-sex relationships is the big one), in Russian, word "повестка"(agenda in English) come to represent all of the most obnoxious signs of progressive propaganda(or again just the existence of gay characters, there are living strawmans and steelmans like in any other social group), but majority of local and subtle things go over the public heads.
Of course there is a big difference here - modern progressive censorship and propaganda is not(at least not directly state-based) it emerges from a self organizing space of intellectuals who are very close to each other ideologically, but this is not very important to me personally if the outcome in the media that we consume is the same. From society-level point of view I am very grateful that there is little to no threat of state censorship in the US and America became the global cultural hegemon, not China or USSR/BigAutoritarianRussia.
And after I started noticing propaganda I saw small signs of it in almost every high-budget product. I am not only talking about the cinema here. To the point that I started to asking myself this question: "Was I wrong in learning this new information about american coming and goings if this information is useless to me and at the same time genuinely negatively affected my ability to enjoy modern media?"(As an example I can bring up Spiderverse films). Is it better to just ignore other cultures' political context to peacefully enjoy their best fruits? Knowledge is valuable by itself but the question is how much?
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2yr ago
But you can't expect much from the majority of people, they are easily mislead and believe all sorts of stuff. Are Americans as a group to blame for war in Iraq and should be hated for it because majority of them once supported it? I don`t think so. And I don't think that majority of Russians will support SMO in the next 10 years.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
You can phrase everything like this. Oh, can't imagine people spending hours at a time contracting their muscles presumably for fun, instead of enjoying gathering new knowledge or engaging in the debates with educated people from around the world. But I can imagine, it's quite easy to understand that people have different preferences.
How to overcome your extremely low conscientiousness?
TL;DR: Basically the question in the title.
I have a problem that I believe is somewhat common among people here, at the least I'm definitely sure that, for example, @self_made_human mentioned something like this about himself - high intelligence(Hadn't taken any official test in psychologist office, but Raven Matrices or Mensa Norway test show 135+ IQ) hindered by low conscientiousness. It is monstrously hard for me to do anything other than to procrastinate, the only things that can motivate me to do something are the deadline tomorrow(even then I thinking about waiting till the next day's morning), need for a life necessities or a sudden bout of inspiration. Of course I still did and do things required from me by the society, like getting useless degree to secure myself from military conscription but I will always do the basic minimum, late and with much struggle.
I have a very nice remote relatively high paying job so I theoretically could just accept my own weakness in that department and live a life of enjoyable hedonism. But sadly in my mind mythical laziness lives together with countless ambitions and planned great lifepaths that I should immediately start working towards. Of course it sounds like self-imposed problem but I am genuinely at an impasse here. I tried the whole standard motivation spiel, dividing my goals into smaller ones, scheduling my tasks, being mindful and grateful(whatever it truly means), etc., and nothing worked.
I want to spend additional time to talk about currently popular notion of dopamine fasting: restricting yourself from the wonders of civilization and plain old masturbation. It also hasn't helped but I think my case slightly unique here because I was doing the opposite of restraining myself from hyperstimulation my whole life. From the moment I became literate, I read something basically every waking hour, I mean it quite literally, I woken up and then the first thing that I did was picking up a book that I was reading while falling asleep, after I would be going around doing my morning routine like brushing teeth, while holding it in my left hand. I even read on the go, nowadays with smartphones it's really common, but I'm emphasizing this so much cause I never met a person that did this thing with printed books. I'm continued this tradition to this day and majority of my procrastination consists of reading, mainly useless information that is not in any way related to my job, degree or surroundings. This became especially apparent when I learned enough English to read in it, I probably know much more about US politics, culture wars and general trends, than of my country's. I did try to limit myself, both in electronics and in the other things, nofap included. In the end it became clear that even in the absence of any stimuli I would still rather lay down and think about ideas for articles, posts, videos, memes, novels, businesses and world domination instead of actually doing something in that direction.
I have had some amount of success with a YouTube channel, several blogs on different platforms and meme pages, but it was always limited(4k subscribers not 40k) and this is always limited my motivation. Most of the time when I start and complete a project it's because I was inspired in that particular moment and finishing it brings me joy every time. Almost always reception to them is very good. Across all of them I have hundreds comments thanking, complimenting me or asking for more and it is great to hear. But these positive emotions just aren't enough for me to motivate myself.
I already got distracted several times while writing this so I sum up my problem: I want to do things, but I also can't force myself to do them regularly enough to reach some level of success and this situation is eating me alive.
P.S. Forgot to add this - I tried the medical route, but I live in the country where psychostimulants that work are prohibited and what was proscribed to me had either zero or no effect.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
9mo ago
Again, please write something that strengthens this parallel other than that she is relatively young compared to other politicians. What issues can be her Perestroika, her Glasnost, her liquor ban?
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
2mo ago
That's why you can't have massive deportations without authoritarianism, even if they are supported by the majority. People go to the US for the better life that's just too of a empathetic reason for the public to not be sympathetic to them. Yes, this line of thinking logically leads to de facto open borders and hundreds of millions Africans and latinos going to US but that too second order for common folk.
Either that or public stops being empathetic to anybody but their tribe, but I don't think that's very likely in America.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Reading something on the Internet is quite popular activity indeed. As is reading books that is also today involves "staring at a screen".
Currently playing Diablo 4 and this cutscene genuinely stunned me in the sense of how it unintentionally conveys perspective of religious reactionaries so well(maybe I wrong here of course, can't read creators' minds). There is plenty of modern mainstream woke stuff in the game. racially diverse cast with good roles for minority characters, angel that was mostly good in lore previously was made into a selfish coward, et cetera. But here we have demonic figure offering freedom from religious obligations and societal constraints, freedom that leads to the brutal killing of a priest who was the one man who resisted the temptation, freedom to be beautiful in sin. That could have been short story told in a tweet by an anon with 5k followers, instead it's a main plot point in AAA game. And normies don't see it, because idk, priest was mean. I am not in any way religious or conservative, but it's interesting to see their views being represented even most likely without them being involved in production.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
The next decade will be quite "interesting" if political assassinations became as common as they were in 19th century. Japan, Slovakia, who's next..
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
If you add up Israel and Palestine population Jews and Arabs are basically equal in number, so I don't think that this arrangement will lead to genocide. In the current circumstances the most humane thing for Israel would be to just annex Palestine, create some kind of reconstruction zones and to deradicalize Arab populace. Politically Jews can make an alliance with Arab Christians. This move also will stop far-right israelis from getting power so I guess we won't see it.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Actually, technologies allowed us making many terrible choices that in the past would have surely killed us. I'm certain that people became more care-free outside and at various worksites after consequences of unlucky cut changed from likely gangrene or tetanus to basically nothing.
Conservatives of course are for all technological wonders apart from the modern ones. Virtuous(ones who got lucky at genetics roulette) people will lose their status gained from being able to remain fit in the modern food environment and these disgusting(visually ergo personally) fatsos will get help to adapt their brains evolved for completely different circumstances to the food abundance of current time. Horrible! I will tell you more, when new drugs appear that will directly boost your metabolism rates and not making you want to eat less, people, regardless of their virtue, will become more hedonistic, healthier and happier, as they already did many times before.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
4mo ago
Dothraki are feared for the same reason that similar nomads wrecked Eurasia from the taming of horses up to 19th century. Mounted warriors are very powerful both with bow and melee weapons and in nomadic tribal social structure almost every man can take on that role if needed.
Braavos is clearly modeled on Italian merchant republics, specifically Venice and to a lesser extent Genoa. I would recommend Roger Crowley's "City of Fortune: How Venice Won and Lost a Naval Empire" to see many problems that rich navally dominant city with mercenary military can have in maintaining its dominance. In short enemies can build fleet too, you are reliant on your trade partners and it's not always easy to translate your wealth into military power.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
4mo ago
"they" that you talking about is an abstract nation-state entity called "Ukraine" and/or its rulers. We peaceniks don't mean them when we say that immediate ceasefire is in everyone's interest. We talk about actual everyday people who suffer, who are locked in this country and are forced to fight. I don't see how nationalists' tears about lines on the map or pride of a certain someone are worth hundreds deaths every day.
If Ukrainians actually want to fight to the end then open the borders, make army volunteer only, maybe pay enough to recruit people willingly(which is still terrible because this willingness both in Ukraine and Russia comes from the utter poverty that its rulers are responsible for). If the problem is with security after the war then you can either get it with joining Nato or at least adjacent web of alliances or you don't and continuing the war won't solve this.
I think it's insane that US makes hiring lookalikes illegal. People writing about "owning their own likeness", but the existence of this law proves that it wasn't theirs to begin with. Scarlett Johansson was just one of the women who looks and sounds generally like her to become famous. In the alternative reality person who voiced gpt4o was famous and SJ was hired because she sounded similar enough.
I am not even remotely some kind of libertarian, but what is the actual harm to society this regulation prevents? People who look like other people always existed and if you obviously can't stop some man eerily similar to you from acting in a hardcore pornography I don't see why SJ should be granted anything here.
FaibleEstimeDeSoi
1yr ago
Actually compared to Eastern and Central European neighbors Russian Empire wasn't particularly bad, and there were a number of improvements, in no small part thanks to the some in the past that were similar to Navalny. Of course after First World War and revolutions everything went to shit for the next century.
Why I don't think that Ukraine has bright future ahead
Disclaimer: This is not an anti-ukranian or pro Russia post, I wish only the best for Ukrainian people and Russia has most of the same and many unique problems.
Ukraine in 1991 was one of the richest countries in Eastern Europe, being on par with Russia and above such countries as Poland and Belarus. The crisis of the 90s escaped Poland, but was shared by the rest, after which Ukraine lagged behind its neighbors in development. We can say that this is due to such factors as Poland's membership in the EU or the presence of oil in the Russian Federation, but a noticeable lag even behind Belarus shows that this is not the sufficient explanation.
Such estimates of GDP PPP per capita in this context are often criticized for ignoring the problem of the shadow economy or, in plain language, "envelope wages". Only this problem is not unique to Ukraine, but a common feature of the CIS countries, and in it, it is more pronounced than in Belarus or Russia, but not enough to explain such a large gap.
Also, quite often one can hear about the supposed difference in the distribution of economic development in the Russian Federation and Ukraine, allegedly in the second there is greater decentralization and a smaller difference between regions. But in terms of GRP per capita, excluding, for obvious reasons, oil and gas regions like Yamal, in both countries one can see approximately same and strong difference between the capital and the poorest regions. This is also true for Belarus. Similar trend can be seen in HDI ranking - Russia standing at 52nd place, Kazakhstan at 56th Belarus at 60th and Ukraine at 77th.
There are many possible reasons that could explain such an outstanding backwardness of Ukraine even by the standards of the CIS. From crazy theories about the genetic or cultural inferiority of its inhabitants to a more adequate analysis of the particular corruption and arrogance of the elites. I won't pretend to know the right one and I don't even need to find some exact answer to this riddle. It’s enough to ask the question: “Why and what will change or has already changed in 2022, which has not happened in the history of this country?”.
War that will make patriots out of corrupt oligarchs? It started in 2014. A new president who promises to fix everything and fix corruption? It's happened so many times it's not funny anymore. Additional grants/loans/Marshall Plan 2.0? Didn't billions of dollars and euros already have go one way into Ukraine? Where did they go? They will go there the next time if there current corrupt system remains. European integration? It has been talked about since the 90s and European leaders are now talking about "the long road ahead for Ukraine", the status of a candidate is not at all a guarantee of an early entry, ask Turkey, Serbia and Montenegro. Why would EU want the poorest European country after Moldova, with the highest corruption and similar to Georgia problems(that of course could be theoretically solved in the near future but this is beside the point)? EU had enough of one Hungary with Orban stealing economic aid with his cronies, it doesn't need a second one. These internal problems will have to be corrected on their own, before, and not after, entry.
But there might be not enough time to for solving them. Ukrainian demographics are awful, a very old population with average age much closer to western countries and not states with similar economic development, which, at the same time, also has the opportunity to relatively freely leave for better countries. For the same reason that Ukrainian patriots in Canada still not returned and will not return in their entirety to help their homeland, major part of today's refugees have already found or will find work and will remain in Europe, having made a reasonable, rational choice.
P.S. It is more my personal pet peeve and not part of the argument but I think that this and similar economic deals that still going on are very strong evidence of some corrupt dealings going on between oligarchs from both sides.
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