someone_from_poland
themotte.org was entertaining for a while but for me it just proves that contrarianism for sake of contrarianism is a bad strategy.
Contrarian is far more likely to be wrong than correct or useful.
User ID: 2097
People think that if the U.S was invading Ukraine they could do it in a matter of months, spoiler: they can't.
Well, if USA would invade Ukraine then large part of population would be really happy and even larger part would immediately start to think how to profit from that.
Even if we assume that Ukrainian military fights as much as it can, then we get Gulf War rerun.
the number of americans willing to die is a scarcer resources than in authoritarian countries.
Still larger enough to maintain military.
Anti air such as S-300s have broken the economics and impact of aviation.
not sure
Secondly ATGMs have broken the economics of tanks.
Definitely not true.
This is it, we can no longer make disruptive military attacks
And that is why Kharkiv offensive has not happened.
bio-weapons
that is a dead end as far as military use goes, mentioning them seriously is really weird here
The only remaining "hopes" for military tactical disruption
Or proper use of existing tools. Assuming no nukes, USA would be able to simultaneously take Kyiv and Moscow and all major cities in both Ukraine and European part of Russia. Even if Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Finland and Baltic states would be hostile to USA.
If USA army would deploy in Ukraine (and gremlins would steal Russian nukes) then the war would be over within months - and that is only because Crimea would be really annoying to retake without heavy casualties.
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
Oryx is deemed very unreliable by the pro-Russian side
I wonder what this people think about Russian MoD claims :)
Has Big Sergei made fun also of all Russian MoD claims that were equally suspect as Oryx listings?
And is rejection of Oryx based "he refused to list 'destroyed' HIMARS" or anything more serious.
as people took a look at his claims and found he'd verify a loss based on a photo that was e.g. not even from the war,etc..
Is it just me or
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is displayed?
I seem to remember that ArmchairW was definitely not some epitome of high quality.
And overall I expect that in thousands of cases some sneaked through, Oryx is quite good but not some god. Definitely at least some checking is done, many many claims were rejected as invalid or pointed out to be duplicates.
I would care more about response to discovered problems and is it something systematic.
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
It is a sufficient explanation, not the only explanation.
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
I feel like Poles need to recuse themselves from talking about Russia entirely.
I can do it in exchange of Russians recusing themselves from invading countries in Europe (I am single person but just recusing from specific way of murdering other people in specific part of the world is much smaller sacrifice, or at least it should be).
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
Actual rape results in a bad unjustified consequences for someone who was raped, for start.
(there is a good reason why writing or painting media showing or describing rape is considered as distinct from rape)
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
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I do not believe that what you describe happened
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If it actually happened then it is outlier of the millioner-with-private-rape island variety
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If it happened then "WAT", especially at anyone staying there. I took emergency exists from less degenerated events.
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I will close Motte tabs because that is not even entertaining unlike bad takes on Russia
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
Phrasing this as "consequences of this precedent would be horribly bad and really unwanted" would be a better phrasing.
"there's no limiting factor" is clearly false, for start it hits one of theoretical extreme limits at conquering entire humanity. You cannot extort for example Jupiter or gravity with nukes.
No, it is false.
NATO giving Ukraine funds used in part to pay its soldiers does not make them mercenary.
In the same way as me putting money into household budget does not make my wife a prostitute.
Someone fighting because they are paid (mercenary) is highly distinct from soldier being paid some wage.
In similar same way as prostitutes in are highly distinct from wives, despite that sex and money is involved somehow in both cases.
Or rape victim getting monetary compensation for what happened does not make her or him a prostitute.
(yeah, some overlap may happen - not applicable in this case, there is exactly 0 NATO mercenaries in Ukraine as far as I know, and as far as I know there is 0 NATO mercenaries worldwide).
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
GIVEN PUTIN DIES in the next 5 months: 80% the war continues into 2024 in some regard
that seems quite high
unless you mean that 20% if for every single Russian soldier leaving Ukraine and avoiding even border accidents
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
the US military is actually now talking about how they're going to have to pull back out of the Ukraine
[citation needed]
Which US military would be even pulling out of Ukraine?
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
Yeah, I meant Shahed-136. Probably should refer to it as a drone like everyone else rather than argue that it is closer to shitty cruise missile than shitty drone.
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
USG
What you mean by USG here?
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
I am curious if this happens to other people.
Happens for me with alarms triggering at specific times.
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
Still, I would expect at least some to not be turboleftist. Even more in adjacent more rural areas.
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
e.g. relatives, friends
beware of risk of people starting to queue for handouts - may be nice to do it anonymously
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
If mosquito nets or Guinea worm vaccination or whatever can improve lives so cheaply how have they not been 100% funded by now?
(1) People do not really care about poor people in Africa so much.
(2) Malaria and worms suck on a large scale[1] and you can (even efficiently) shovel much money into it before problem disappears ([1] about 1/3 of all people who ever died were killed by malaria - though that has massive error bars).
but I do still worry about supporting wokism
Depends on whether "helping poor people in Africa" counts as supporting wokism or "fuck you bunch of lying liars, I have done more to help poor people in Africa than 99.99% of wokes"
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
Handing out free 3D printers to people wanting one is probably far more altruistic than giving the same amount of money to a charity that will shovel it into a bottomless pit.
And to enable more sharing - maybe give fund to random hackerspace that has an idea how to use it.
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
Entrepreneurial charity...
(...)
Something that doesn't involve interacting with any institution at all? Should I just straight up send people cash?
Invest in promising business, also ones unlikely to take off and become multibillion companies (that is covered by VC chasing another Google)?
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
I’m not sure turning Russia into a wreck is a win-win
Depends on comparison
do we really want a de stabilized nuclear power
They already destabilized themself by invading Ukraine, preferably they would not be also victorious.
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
Russian state TV had claims that Poland will partition Ukraine, though they were rather lying about plans to cooperate than accuse. I think.
There were also unverified but relatively credible claims that politicians in Poland had offers from Russian officials about participating in invading/partitioning Ukraine, for many years.
Obviously that would be idiotic for multiple reasons. At least it turns out that sometimes people manage to learn something from history, even politicians.
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
As I understand, vast majority of what is supplied to Ukraine is either
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intended to fight Russia in the first place
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scheduled to be disposed or would be decommissioned soon
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without clear purpose anyway (for example confiscated smuggled weaponry)
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send as live testing of previously untested weapons
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send to demonstrate just how great USA weapons are (speculative, but that may be one of reasons for HIMARS)
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in multiple above categories
someone_from_poland
1yr ago
He wanted Russia to be accepted into 'the West' (or I should say NATO).
Obviously. Given that purpose of NATO was to counter Russia[1] (for very good reason) and Russian aggression, especially in Europe, then getting fox into henhouse and wrecking it would be a great idea. For Putin and Russian imperialism.
Fortunately it has not happened.
[1] At least from perspective of Poland.
but as a peer
Have you read source that you provided? This is untrue claim and contradicted by your own source.
Only ukrainerussiareport will show the true Ukrainian military hardware losses which is necessary to have predictive power and when/if its defense capabilities will break down.
Individual videos are generally utterly useless for that. Or multiple individual videos without broader analysis. Except cases of extremely rare kills. For example Russia unable to show single attack on HIMARS is a good indicator of 100% survival rate. Or video of Moscov being towed to the port after sustaining damage in storm sinking after Ukrainian rocket attack. War is large and looking at biased sample of 100 videos showing attacks on something is not giving significant predictive power about overall defense capabilities of either side.
Only systematic collection of data on larger scale is useful for predictive power as far as tanks/IFV go. Ukrainian official data is propaganda a bit based on facts. Russian official data is useful only as jokes. Oryx is not ideal but at least reality adjacent. Other sources are not available for randos discussing on the internet.
Maybe someone researched this already - can you recommend decent way to donate funds to Ukrainians?
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