Mer
1yr ago
We wouldn't have continually detonated any negotiations otherwise.
This is nonsense, the only people who seriously favoured actual negotiation were in the west, with Macron making an absolute ass of himself by trying to play the peacemaker for two sides with incompatable demands.
Russias idea of negotiating is to merely demand the castration of Ukraine through large transfers of land and assurances that nobody will be allowed to help Ukraine when they return to finish the job.
The Ukrainians recognise that Russia will not be deflected from their goal of annexing Ukraine by negotiations, and that their best chance is through battlefield victory.
Mer
1yr ago
OP's point about porn coming (cough) with a price is, I think, spot on--not to be an old man but porn used to be relatively a challenge to get one's hands on. Now free porn of almost any stripe cam be had for free as easily as literally tapping one's thumb a few times.
This remains just as true with romance novels and fanfiction. It also seems to be just as strange (if not stranger) than visual porn. I learned about this the other day and really drove home to me, someone who takes a degree of pride in my knowledge of weird internet cultures, how little I know about the female side of the internet.
Mer
1yr ago
Thanks to the US, Western Europe has been pushed into a proxy war against their energy supplier.
No this is still very much thanks to Russia, the US may benefit from this, but Russia chose to launch this utterly idiotic and needless invasion in the first place.
Mer
1yr ago
But for the encroachment, coup, and 8 years of shelling rebel oblasts, the invasion probably wouldn't have happened.
Like most wars, this one is not mono-causal
This one absolutely is, it stems entirely from a Russian inability to face reality and accept that it is no longer a great power and that Ukraine is no longer inside its orbit. If Russia was serious about the whole "multi-polar world" thing they would have recognised that their best bet was becoming part of Europe, instead they launched a war that will impoverish Russia and Europe, strengthening China and the US.
Mer
1yr ago
This whole war in Ukraine has definitely been interesting in the sense of what it has done to fringe online political communities, watching them turn on one another and split in what on the surface would seem to be unexpected ways.
Tankies supporting a right wing authoritarian invasion, Neo-Nazis cheering in support of the de-nazification of Ukraine, that sort of thing.
Mer
1yr ago
And, tbh, even other Triple-A strategy games - despite being less complex - have serious problems with the AI. Total War has good enough tactical AI but I've always heard complaints about their strategy, for example.
This argument has never really held water with me, those other games have a lot of other things to sink their budgets into, paradox games do not, the AI and how it handles strategy is the game.
Paradox are just cheap and know they've cornered a niche market and are content to put in the minimum amount of effort they need to continue milking the whales that buy their dlc.
Mer
1yr ago
English with no accent
And what exactly does English with no accent sound like?
Mer
1yr ago
If I don't know what a Torta is, then your average Britisher definitely doesn't.
Mer
1yr ago
You can use a Toyota as a troop carrier, you can put guns on it. But you'd be much better off with an actual military vehicle, something with armor, something designed for war.
Don't make me bring up the Toyota War, I will not stand idly by while one of the greatest modern fighting vehicles is slandered so.
Mer
1yr ago
But what if you're under any kind of artillery fire?
Be where the artillery isn't.
Just drive away, speed is armour.
Mer
1yr ago
I suspect that it's a case of people venting forth on topics that were previously forbidden.
It's made the motte somewhat dissapointing to open recently, as I don't particularly care either way on the matter and it feels like it drowns out more worthy topics.
Mer
1yr ago
85% of all people will believe made up statistics.
As for your original question, it really depends on what is being debated, the seriousness of the topic to the listeners and the strength of the arguments presented.
The odds of the progressive types changing their mind on such an issue over a single debate is very low indeed, as it's one of their sacred cows.
Someones willingness to research a topic has no bearing on the seriousness with which that person looks at the topic.
Mer
1yr ago
you're not going to research a topic you don't think is important
Of course you will, I'm a historical wargamer and frequently research topics of no consequence other than to sate my curiosity and interest in the given topic. There are plenty of people who will delve to incredible depths on topics for no reason other than the desire to know more.
A far greater predictor for if you will research something is interest in the subject, how important you judge something to be can play a role in that, but it doesn't seem to be a major one, given how absurdly heated people can get on topics that they actually have almost no knowledge of.
Mer
1yr ago
I agree with most of what you're saying, but I would argue that human beings are actually perfectly consistent with their beliefs and that the issue lies with the limitations of language to both rationally understand and express these beliefs. My view is that people struggle to translate beliefs (perhaps better defined as values), which are primal and instinctual, into words and concepts that the "civilised" part of ourselves can understand. This process is further complicated by the layers of self deception and censorship that accrue naturally from living with other humans.
As a consequence I don't believe anyone truly understands their own beliefs, let alone those of others. The best we can hope for is a vague approximation, good enough to inform decision making.
Everything bad that is happening in this war is the result of Russia starting the war. If the war continues, the bad things will inevitably continue. The bad things will stop when the war stops, and since Russia cannot be convinced with words, the only way to stop the war is to kill Russians.
This seems like a pretty reasonable position to take, more pragmatic than most in the west have been willing to publicly state. If this was a more commonly held belief in the corridors of power in the west, the war might have been over by now.
Mer
1yr ago
the US expanding right into Eastern Europe after Russia pulled back
Damn, how many invasions did I miss?
In all seriousness, the US (or more broadly speaking, the west in general, don't know why you're leaving western europe out here) didn't "expand into eastern europe", it was invited in, largely because eastern europe was sick of Russia and what Russia had to offer.
Mer
1yr ago
Those deals didn't specify that they had to implement mass immigration, a George Soros social policy and end up getting sanctioned by the EU for not doing things that were never in the deal
I fail to see what this has to do with the US, you're describing largely internal European matters here.
US gives countries the option of either submitting and becoming vassal states or being more or less blockaded
Oh don't be so dramatic, if you believe that all the nations aligned with the US/West are vassal states then you have an unusually broad definition of vassal state to be sure.
The point you seem to be flailing towards here, is that choosing to trade/align with someone opens you up to being influenced and I don't think that this was something missed by the leaders of the various nations that have chosen to flee "Russias orbit" in the post cold war era. They chose to align themselves with the west in general (and the US in particular) because they believe that it is a better deal than what they experienced with the Russians and I cannot blame them.
If the Russians (or anyone else for that matter) wishes to seriously challenge US hegemony, they could start by offering a better, credible alternative. The fact that so much of eastern europe is willing to fight, bleed and die in order to remain part of "Globohomo" should probably be a wake up call that Russia is pushing a seriously bad product.
Mer
1yr ago
And the reasoning of many people who call Z-Russians "orcs" is the same as yours
The reasoning behind calling Russian soldiers orcs is actually pretty apt as far as analogies go, since the orcs of the Lord of the Rings were based (in individual character and personality) on some of the enlisted he interacted with during his service in WW1 and (on a larger, more general scale) the armies of eastern despots. Admittedly the eastern despots he was being inspired by were far more likely to be called Darius than Vladimir, but it's still a surprisingly apt comparison.
Mer
1yr ago
This reply feels like a non-sequitur, I think you've replied to the wrong comment.
Also for the record, anyone bleating about how nobody has just tried to talk with Russia is either ignorant of the situation or pretending to be so, plenty of people and groups have attempted to provide an avenue for a negotiated end to hostilities, Russia has simply rejected them by insisting that the only "negotiation" they'll accept is one where they get everything they want.
If you want to bring Russia to the negotiating table you'll apparently need to pave the road to it with tens of thousands of Russian dead.
Mer
1yr ago
Russians will not be cruel to the local population no matter what, because they consider the local population to be Russian.
Unfortunately for the Russians, the Ukrainians get a say as well and it is very clear that they do not consider themselves Russians, in fact they are willing to kill and die over this very point.
The Russians will be cruel because reality conflicts with what they have imagined it to be.
But in all honesty this explanation is not needed either way, the Russians will be callously brutal institutionally and commit random acts of cruelty individually, because that is an intrinsic component of the Russian way of war. My source for this claim is the past hundred years of Russian military history and the enduring hatred towards Russia from the various peoples who have come into conflict with them.
Mer
1yr ago
This is the most public example, where Macron made an ass of himself by refusing to see that Putin was not serious about negotiating or talking on this issue.
There will be near constant back channel talks between Russia and other nations as the war progresses and there was undoubtedly a great deal of trying to convince Russia before the war (god knows the Germans and French have been trying to court Russia for long enough).
I'd stick with the best of this particular "genre", so things like Animal Farm, 1984, etc.
The books you're recommending are good and I'm a fan of both, but they are well above the level we're talking about.
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