sun_the_second
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User ID: 2725
sun_the_second
1yr ago
The problem with that metaphor is that in human experience, you are actually supposed to catch up to your father one day. Even in a patriarchal society. He will teach you all he knows, and then he will be old, weak and mind-addled (if he lives that long) while you are young, strong and wiser than you were.
sun_the_second
1yr ago
Boy-coded, maybe.
sun_the_second
1yr ago
Also the most popular Vtuber in the world is a woman who acts like a man.
Which one is that again?
sun_the_second
1yr ago
If God's interventions can be predicted to happen even slightly more often in some conditions than others, then we would be able to derive those conditions, isolate them, replicate them and see if there really is an intelligence behind those events that resists being tested. If it doesn't resist being tested, cool, more reliable miracle healings for us. One might wonder, of course, if perfectly predictable faith healings are "interventions", rather than being as much mundane facts of the world as things falling down.
If God intervenes completely randomly or in a way that's indistinguishable from being random, then we again run into the "why call it God" question.
Religion claims more than "there are beings one cannot reliably detect or explain using the mainstream framework". It claims absolute metaphysical significance. Not merely that 0,1% of experiences that seem to fall out of the materialistic framework do really fall ouside its jurisdiction, but also that they are 99,9-100% of what really matters.
The audacity of such claims is why my prior would be "aliens" or "I'm crazy", not "Lord God Almighty". Granted, if I get multiple people to confirm that someone within my circle of acquaintances really came back from the dead, I'll probably act as if that did happen (while acknowledging that no one will believe us).
sun_the_second
1yr ago
Obviously the helicopter pilot was murdered, he was shot. The question is who was responsible. The number I gave you is the baseline number of projected deaths. If you're not old, your probability to die goes down. If you were doing something detrimental to your health (besides opposing Putin) - such as doing heroin, the probability goes up.
After looking it up, I do admit that Kuzminov was likely a big enough issue to be made an example of, but hardly someone Putin would be paying attention to personally, definitely not an election issue.
About 60 million people are projected to die during 2024, worldwide. I don't know how many Putin dissidents there are that would make the news if they died. As a low ballpark, 10% of Russians would could themselves among the opposition, and assuming they are evenly represented among the famous... 0,1% of those would both make at least local news and have said something bad about the regime at least once? That's about 15 thousand.
60 million divided by ~50 weeks in a year, multiplied by 15000/8000000000 is 2,25 deaths we'd know about. The numbers are obviously pulled out of my ass, but hey, that's within an order of magnitude of 3 deaths in one week.
In any case I don't see how killing a random photographer and a minor defector would be useful for preventing unrest during elections, unless you just count everything Putin does as somehow mastermindedly directed towards any goals he might have. Protests are prevented through very obvious, above-board crackdowns on gatherings in public places (he does that too), not through the kind of massively plausibly deniable assassinations that you'd only be scared of if you see a FSBshnik with novichok behind every corner. The rank and file opposition isn't afraid of assassinations, nor should they. They should be afraid of cops coming for them openly and jailing them for army discreditation, LGBT propaganda or extremism. And they are.
Well now that's just sloppy. Surely, if Putin was aiming to show off his power by killing Navalny and a few random minor dissidents exactly a month before the elections, he'd whack the pilot (literally who by the way? You're assuming I know every defector or critic ever by name) on the same day as well, not 4 days earlier?
Markov is known to me to have made exactly one (1) photo that made news as Putin regime criticism. You think Putin has a randomizer with tens of thousands of dissident names, and he just picks a random one when he feels like FSB doesn't have enough to do? I'm sorry, I can't explain your willingness to believe all those deaths have Putin in common in a more charitable way. Large business leaders, sure. Generals, why not (typically done after the war). Virtually no-name defector abroad or a photographer I never heard about? Are you aware there are other big opposition speakers besides Navalny? Why not them?
sun_the_second
1yr ago
I don't get that impression. There isn't really any speculation or suspicion even from ardent anti-government sources. Based on what I could scrounge up about any possible non-violent death causes, it could have been drugs. He was reported to have overdosed 2 years ago.
sun_the_second
1yr ago
I'm not convinced that elections with Navalny dead a month before are going to be a substantially calmer affair than elections with Navalny alive. Nor that Putin would think yet another "sudden" death of someone who was already imprisoned would be a deterrent. He'd be throwing a spark into the crowd, not cowing them.
I give it about 50% "unintentional negligence", 50% "intentional negligence".
sun_the_second
1yr ago
There's an argument that your unsecured body flying around the car interior/out the windshield endangers others.
sun_the_second
1yr ago
That's your observation. I'm asking for your explanation of it.
sun_the_second
1yr ago
I'm a complete layman at trading. Can you at least provide some context on what, exactly, was significant about that market flip and what kind of event you've surmised that would connect "market flip" and "election fraud"? Since you've mentioned that, it must've been even more convincing than "ballot counting centers reopening without Republican watchers" alone. But so far, I'm just baffled.
Also, isn't market data public? And wouldn't you need some kind of source besides your eyes to see counting centers reopen in several cities at once?
sun_the_second
1yr ago
Is this going to be propped up as another example of "guesswho baiting people with bad faith" and used against him, while right-wingers say more vile shit on the regular and stay untouched just because their opponents don't flip out on them?
sun_the_second
1yr ago
I've heard enough from libertarians about "positive freedoms" to refuse that. They have the freedom to choose from the options they're given with regards to how much they let their kid be unsupervised. What others are allowed to do is not within the realm of "freedom".
sun_the_second
1yr ago
I would assume both your parents and your country (in general) are too far above the minimum acceptable level of "good" for you to consider not loving them.
I value the cultural connection to my people, and begrudgingly grant that having our own state is better for our culture and our people than not having one, much like having abusive parents is still often better than an orphanage. That does not mean I feel obliged to grant any warm feelings to my country as a political entity. Lately especially, it is far too focused on supporting its expansion at the expense of its people.
sun_the_second
1yr ago
Does the Catholic culture not teach that God sees all, even your private life, and that it is God's judgment that matters, not the public's?
sun_the_second
1yr ago
Regarding 2, I see Christians perhaps not arguing, but casually stating that Christianity is literally true, quite often. In fact, the two groups I observe here are the church-as-pragmatic-social-grouping folks and the Jesus-is-king folks. None of the "casual Christians" who basically believe in all the same generic good things a generic atheist believes in, but call it God.
sun_the_second
1yr ago
Recently updated to a stationary PC after years of laptop gaming, so I'm working through my backlog. Currently playing DMC5. Dodging is notably harder than I recall from playing DMC3 a long time ago, but maybe I should just try it on a controller and see how it goes.
sun_the_second
1yr ago
The "red" ones are cop prisons. Gang prisons are "black".
sun_the_second
1yr ago
Kotodama, a hard-scifi near-future spy adventure romp about two space habitat-born people trying to survive amid multi-directional political plots that revolve around one of them. There are various hijinks around Terrans fumbling around in zero-G society and vice-versa. Despite being faithful enough to its hard scifi label, it is fairly lighthearted and plays on many tropes such as literally isekaiing into a Japanese school (we Russians love our weebery). Linking it in case someone wants to brave it with the latest LLM translator.
sun_the_second
1yr ago
I'm reading through your journal at the moment. It's quite interesting, though I can't help but notice you often insert small nods and nudges that seem to say "see, it's not as bad as foreigners think!". It looks out of place for a letter to the family. Do you always write like this, even when not recounting your experiences in countries often blamed for censorship?
Re: reunification, the word itself does not hold much good vibes behind it to me. According to Russia, what it's doing right now is reunification with Ukraine, for example. Some say they wish to restore Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood, others claim that there should not be such a thing as Ukraine.
At least one major Russian mass media outlet. I googled Ann Coulter and she is labeled as "a conservative columnist". I must remind you that there is no such division in official mass media as there is between Democrat newspapers and Republican ones in USA. You get pro-government TV and mass media, and nuts on telegram of various sorts.
Apparently, in late 2013, in an auspicious coincidence with Ukrainian Maidan troubles, RIA Novosti was directly reorganized by Putin's edict, and since then there has been a trend of anti-Ukrainian messaging.
edit: does Dmitry Medvedev, ex-chairwarmer for Putin of 2008-2012, count as a nut on telegram or as an Ann Coulter? He does post on telegram, and he does sound like a nut, and his posts are similar to what you quoted. I could dig some up if you're interested. You know, when Putin doesn't outright say "we really should paint Ukraine our color on the map and call Ukrainian 'an outdated Russian dialect'", but everyone around him says so, it gets one thinking.
sun_the_second
1yr ago
For the record, I don't believe Russian bombing ought to be considered genocidal at the current rate. Its insinuations towards "destroying Ukrainism", however...
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