IsItPleasing
15d ago
Personal trainers are financially motivated to keep you coming back, it's a pretty perverse business model. I'd recommend avoiding it entirely. I say this as someone who briefly was a personal trainer.
If you want programming there are apps for that. If you want someone to motivate you it's far better to get a friend to work out with you. If you don't have friends who want to work out, join a Crossfit gym and now you do.
IsItPleasing
18d ago
I'll add a third point, that Ukraine holding ground is beneficial to NATO countries in the Black Sea. If Russia had pushed to Odessa early in the war, it would have had significant naval control that would heavily impact counties like Romania and Bulgaria. Instead, with Western support, Ukraine has destroyed (last I heard) about a third of the Russian Black Sea fleet. In fact, Ukraine is shipping more grain now than before the war, despite the 'grain deal' being ended, because Russia can no longer affect trade in the Black Sea. This is a major benefit to Eastern Europe as a whole.
IsItPleasing
18d ago
It's not 'the current narrative'. It's been the truth that Russia tries to influence Moldova for many years now. Specifically recently, Moldova banned a pro-Russia political party for corruption, and the people from that party have just now reformed a new group funded by the Kremlin.
Probably your mistake is thinking that only troops on the ground matter, when in reality Russia's most potent strength is their disinformation and influence capabilities.
IsItPleasing
18d ago
Finland is a different situation from European countries generally. Russia is actively taking refugees from the middle east and elsewhere and shipping them to the Finnish border where they are provided with bicycles and told to cross. This is a deliberate attack on Finland. Their decision to close their borders to Russian asylum seekers is a response to this abuse of that system by a hostile Russian government.
IsItPleasing
18d ago
In every region in the world the prevailing culture is 'free' to do what's normal in that culture. The question is whether you're free to behave counter culturally. Russians can do many things that are in line with that culture, but if you oppose the prevailing order (esp. Putinism) you are at risk of violence, that's why it's considered less free.
IsItPleasing
18d ago
That's a feature not a bug. The purpose of these grants is to give money to people or causes without saying that's what we're doing.
To add on to the other responses, there is a subset of evangelicals who are anti-Catholic because they believe that certain Catholic teachings contradict the gospel. In particular, Catholicism teaches that you need both faith and good works to be saved, rather than just faith (although it's actually much more complicated than that). I've known people who think Catholics do not even count as Christians based on this criteria - because true Christianity is unique in being a religion where you don't get saved by doing good things.
My church happens to have a lot of ex-Catholics, including myself and also several of the pastors - for those guys, converting Catholics is not very important, not nearly as important as spreading the gospel to unbelievers. But they will certainly preach in such a way as to correct what they see as the false teachings of the Catholics.
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