Or are you saying they just took Tether's word for it?
Yes.
Learn some accounting. They go through significantly more scrutiny when you buy a house. Tether has been shown to double or quadruple count assets in the past. Tether has been shown to literally make things up. Plenty of other friendly actors move 10x the assets into an account then remove it the day after.
From the end of page 1, halfway down through page 2 it lists all the things they did. They checked over the blockchain records, they got confirmation letters from banks, looked for the collateral in the loans... Not what I'd call 'confirming that Tether claimed things'.
That was a hit piece against Tether you know. They investigated it and found large amounts of bs and contradictory flows, not BDO.
Tether published a self-proclaimed ‘verification’ of its cash reserves, in 2017, that it characterized as “a good faith effort on our behalf to provide an interim analysis of our cash position.” In reality, however, the cash ostensibly backing tethers had only been placed in Tether’s account as of the very morning of the company’s ‘verification.’
It disappeared the same day.
In march, Tether claimed 4.96 billion in "other investments (including digital currencies)" when the crypto market was over 2 trillion. After it dropped under 900 million a few months later, Tether claimed 5 billion. The numbers they claim are verifiable bullshit.
veqq
1yr ago
I recently shared this video with a friend: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AtMdM4j5N20
"Yeah, I spent some time in the Ukraine."
"You can't say the! It implies imperialism! But Ukraine is a real country not just "the borderland!""
"But that's how we say it!"
"Doesn't matter! Shame on you! Follow the current thing!"
In English "the" often indicates a region: The Rockies, the Balkans, the Mississippi, but we say the Congo for the country and don't say the Livonia for the region. Our ancestors said "the Yemen", the "Sudan", "the Lebanon".
In Russian and Ukrainian there are no articles. Instead it works like this:
na = on
v = in
Note that In English, we have in, on and at. Some words use both e.g. sitting na lake but swimming v lake.
There are many specifics and exceptions:
-
na: post office, factory, beach, dacha, city square, stadium, kitchen, East, North, activities (work, lessons)..
-
v: used with countries (because they contain you)
But we're talking about places, Ukraine:
-
na used for geographic things you are on (islands, mountains) and regions (Caucasus, Carpathians, Kuban)
-
v with some regions like Siberia, Polesia or the Carpathian region (uses both)
-
v with places ending in -landia (Iceland, Ireland, Curland, Ingermanland, Scottland, Livonia (Lifland) although they're islands
-
Sicily and Sardinia use v 1/3 as often as na (from google search hits), Corsica gets 5% (most islands never use v). Other trivia like na Malta country/island, but v Malta a village in Irkutsk...
Ukrainian culture warriors say v Ukraine while Russian warriors says na Ukraine. Others fill the middle ground, squeezed between both, while older literature and old ladies do the darnedest things.
But it goes deeper. Other Slavic languages have the same issue. In Poland, they shifted to w Ukraine in the 90s. But if I ask google translate: na Ukrainie. Asking friends:
if someone says w ukrainie, It's a mistake. it's hard to change because we have many cultural stuff that include "na ukrainie". In the song Hej Sokoly we find the line "Na zielonej ukrainie".
Indeed, the Polish national epic starts: "O Lithuania" here referring to the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. It's title features: na Litwie. With na! (In the verses, w is also used.) Now, Lithuania has many Poles. Anna Pieszko shows how Poles and Lithuanians fight this war:
Poles in Lithuania incorrectly use na with Lithuania, because it implies it's part of Poland like na Kresy. [I highly recommend Kate Brown's A Biography of No Place about the Kresy, to learn a lot about the USSR and nationalism,]
The Lithuanian Algimantas Zolubas believes if "a Pole considers himself a Polish in Lithuania, not a Lithuanian Pole, he's a guest" [not a citizen. An anti-Polish cultural organization Vilnija of course believes usage of na "threatens the integrity of the Republic" in "non-compliance with the constitution."
But Poles also say na Slovakia, na Latvia, na Belarus, na Hungary (Poland's honored brother). Does this imply that Polish na doesn't carry a regional distinction? Either way, the Polish position is continuity with tradition. The New Dictionary of Correct Polish says:
the use of the preposition "na" with the names of certain geographical regions and countries is motivated by a centuries-old tradition, which there is no reason to change, and does not mean treating them as politically dependent territories, and especially dependent on Poland.
Impressive cultural steadfastness. In English we no longer use the article and many Russians have moved to v Ukraine. While we say Germany instead of Deutschland and Türkiye probably won't gain much circulation, Myanmar is gaining on Burma and we have stopped saying Bombay, Ceylon, Siam, Persia (for the modern country), Kiev. (N.b. Peking and Bejing transcribe the same word, just with different systems) And often people don't care: What Italian complains about our Florence, Venice etc.?
In Serbo-Croatian (also outside of Serbia): na Kosovu, but all other culturally relevant regions I could find are u (like the Banat, Vojdovina, Srem, Raška...) except na Balkanu. Friends could not think of more.
The historian Timothy Snyder says names are part of an overreaching colonial process. But how much can it matter? What's in a name? Do Slavs think worse of the Germans who they call mute (Nemcy, Lenard Nemoy's last name means mute)? Do we think worse of the Slavs whose name gives us slave?
Above I wrote "continuity of tradition." What does that really mean across the vagaries of the years of centuries? The Hebrews called Southern Ukraine "Ashkenaz" but as Jews came into Europe (from the Mediterranean Northwards) Northern France and Western Germany came to be the Ashkenaz, Iberia Sepharad and the Slavic lands Canaan. Eventually those Ashkenazi Jews were pushed Eastwards, merging with those in Canaan - the new new Ashkenaz. It stayed this way as borders ebbed and flowed, nations rose, fell and rose again (Poland and Lithuania).
In 1919, the Karaite Adolph Joffe, a Soviet Bolshevist, running negotiations after the Polish-Soviet war with the Baltic countries, found himself negotiating with Max Soloveitchik in Yiddish. Max, the Lithuanian diplomat, asked for what they Jews called "Lita", that is: the whole of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
veqq
1yr ago
rating systems out of 5 stars and anything other than 5/5 threatens the driver's longevity on the platform. I think at one point, ~4.7 was the cutoff
I considered that academic scoring could potentially play a big role. In the French system, getting a 20 is extremely rare. It'd be like a 14 year old wrote publishable research. A score of 13 or so is considered fantastic. An Iranian friend applying for US PhDs had an issue where enrollment offices just turned her score into a percentage, giving her a 2.something GPA yet a 170 GRE score. Eventually we got it sorted. The UK has a similar thing too, if I remember correctly. Finland doesn't have such a range however. Germany also only uses 1-5 and expects near perfection.
veqq
1yr ago
Ukrainian identity is being based on 19th/early 20th century style blood and soil rhetoric
No. Though some splinters remain (some very obvious nazi groups), the model the diaspora coalesced on by the 50s, which became state policy 8 years ago, is a multi-ethnic national state. Rudnytsky, Hrushevsky, Lypynsky etc. are taught in school... Dontsov and his ilk have no cachet today. But yeah, sure, obsess about a few hundred (surviving) neonazis in Azov.
N.b. Kiev already had quite a lot of Afghan and Iraqi refugees. Already by 2017, most drivers couldn't speak Russian, Ukrainian or English.
Primarily Russians, Poles, Jews, Tatars, Greeks, Romanians, Hungarians etc.
Historically, the key event which formed Ukraine was the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth forming in 1569 (from a centuries long personal union). Poland and Lithuania continued to have different legal codes etc. but this shifted the border of Poland East, making the modern day Lithuanian-Ukrainian border to the North and the Russian-Ukrainian border to the North East. (Eventually, Ukrainians and Belarusians would have different national geneses due to different cultural contexts after this point, namely the Lithuanians not being exposed to the following.) Note, Lithuania was primarily an Eastern Slav state, using a legal code written in Church Slavonic etc. but the upperclasses started Polonizing in the 1500s.
Now become Poland, the South East of the commonwealth was flooded by rich Poles (only Lithuanians could own land in Lithuania) and Jews. They brought Polish methods of farming over, namely serfdom (a different form existed further East) to sell grain westwards. Many Eastern Slavs followed suit, adopting Renaissance learning, Catholicism and the Polish language. Many others were able to stay free, but didn't enjoy rights. Poland was rather democratic at the time, with the nobility (making up 10-20% of the population) participating in representative democracy. Outside of the nobility, even the "registered cossacks" couldn't make full use of the courts etc. To the South were the Ottomans (the Crimean Khanate (a mongol successor state) shifted in and out of their sphere) who often launched slave raids on the coasts and southern steppe. In a war in 1648, discontent at getting enserfed, at not being able to use the courts etc. boiled over and the cossacks rebelled. Somewhat losing, they then signed a treaty with Russia, which didn't go well. A lot of interesting stuff happened (Polish nobility converted to Protestantism, then back to Catholicism, part of the Orthodox church went into communion with the Catholic church, Ukrainian churchmen brought scholarship to Moscow, Lazar Baranovych came up with the 3rd Rome story etc.) Then Russians came under Catharine, who settled the steppes and coasts, which were primarily empty (fear from slave raids) or inhabited by Turks (Tatars) so Russians came. Greeks had been living on the coasts the whole time under the Turks at this point (Athens got its wheat from Southern Ukraine).
In the 19th century, looking at all of this, inspired by the German national awakening which threw off Napoleon, the Hungarians, the Croats/Serbs etc. etc. further West in Europe, many theoreticians of Ukrainianhism appear. They worked to fight Polish landlords (for reasons). Whereas other nationalists came up with historic narratives, made notes of the nobility's roots etc. to justify their people, the Ukrainians didn't have these things. Others had ruled them for many centuries etc. But there were a lot of them, speaking the same language(ish). Wasn't that enough?
Well, to answer your question, finally: Hrushevsky tried the traditional method, writing massive tomes of past history describing the existence of the Ukrainians or their lands from time immemorial (until the 1660s). He tried to provide a legitimizing context, showing the people's engagement in politics, what they were doing etc. If Hungary had a king ruling by divine right, the crown's actions described the nation. But if Ukraine doesn't, you have to describe the people's actions, customs, social history etc.
Now that's all fun and good, but how is a state supposed to form? How are the peasants supposed to conduct trade, pay taxes etc. when the cities are primarily filled with others? Should Ukraine be the countryside while the cities are not Ukraine? Lypynsky answers: Hell, even our fairy tales have Tatars, we've had these others here for ages! They belong here. Indeed, he wanted the Polish and Russian nobility to stay and guard the Ukrainian people, he was a monarchist... If Polish nobility existed in Russia under the Tsar and Austrian Kaiser, why couldn't they under a Ukrainian Hetman? Hrushevsky adopts this. Of course, his past work included many "non-Ukrainians" and besides, what is a Ukrainian? An Orthodox Eastern Slav? How's that different from the historical Lithuanians or the Russians or? It's different because we have this land touched by so many foreigners. The Russians in the East lived centuries under the mongols, they had serfdom for much longer, they didn't have nobles with rights or property, but we got Western serfdom, we had scholars of Greek, thousand year old cathedrals, elections etc.! And from those in the North, they didn't suffer under the Polish landlords.
(A lot happens. Austria-Hungary fell (where Ukrainians throve and fought Poles), independent Poland gained control over millions, removing their rights (universal male suffrage in Austria-Hungary's lost), famines, wars, mass murder, communism, fascism (everyone but the Czechs were Authoritarian to fascist in the 1930s...) The same bad things happened in most of Eastern Europe, with huge ethnic cleansings, expulsions etc. resulting in today's rather unmixed states. Anyway...)
Rudnytsky continues this further. He studies in Poland, a multiethnic state desiring a Central European union of sorts (as a bulwark against Germany and Russian imperialism, some of the minorities called this Polish imperialism), then Nazi Germany (weird, eh? Still trying to understand these points visawise), but leaves to Prague (still during the war) fearing being caught as a Jew. He eventually finds himself in the US. There, he writes many articles for a dissident Polish publication in Paris: Kultura. These Poles get read a lot by Polish dissidents - and have specific policy pieces. One of which is accepting Vilnius and Lviv as Lithuania and Ukraine (and not Poland, saying no to territorial disputes). When socialism falls, their policy suggestions are implemented immediately in Poland. As are Rudnytsky's in Ukraine. Writing to the Ukrainians diaspora, he said Ukraine shall be a virile push into the future, not dwelling in the past. Instead of Lypynsky's loyalty to the Tsar, loyalty to the Ukrainian people! And everyone who's loyal to them is Ukrainian! (Who's American? The Americans! That guy waving the flag with a slight foreign accent who came last month, what about that guy [insert politics you don't like]? Still American, technically. Embracing it makes you one, being there also does etc.
(For whatever reason, many Ukrainians ended up in the Canadian plains. They were sort of an incubation chamber for Ukrainianism, in communion with ideas from Austria-Hungary and then the 20s USSR, but not being exposed to famine, war and genocide. Many were also in the North Eastern US. They would sort of move into Ukraine in the 90s, but their influence was spotty in a way I don't fully understand. In constant contact with other diasporas, they largely maintain a bit of Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, so you don't get too many ethnopurists.)
Now, Rudnytsky's family language was Polish, their mother's family language was Yiddish, Dontsov's brother was a Russian bolshevik. Lypynsky was a Pole. (Hrushevsky seems fully Ukrainian.) They all just embraced and made Ukrainianism. This was common in Hungarian, German, Czech, Finnish and Russian nationalisms too, where e.g. a Swedish speaking Ethnic Swede would compile the great epic of Finnish literature or German factory owners (like emigrated from Germany) would research the origins of Hungarian and make their kids Hungarian politicians. (Hungary's great project was to turn everyone they could into a Hungarian through forced schooling, much like Argentina in the late 19th century did with the Italian etc. immigrants.)
Contrary to this, in the interwar Poland great resentment appeared, where in some provinces in the 20s regular assassinations of government officials took place. (This stopped in the 30s after people saw what was going on in the USSR, so less rights in Poland than in the past under the Austrians was still better than... Yeah.) In this milieu you get guys like Dontsov. He quit socialism before it won out in Russia, and thought Hitler was the bomb. Obviously independent Ukraine failed after WWI because of the minorities. When the Nazis appeared, many of this ilk in Poland joined in the killing of Jews, and Poles. Similar happened in Lithuania. Much was less than ideological and just police continuing to police under the new leadership, just with different commands. (These guys also disliked the Czechs and wanted to incorporate Rusyns, who are sort of Eastern Slavs further West than Ukraine.)
So, did they just cleanly disappear, these guys who genocided 200,000 Poles for the Nazis? Oh no, their plans succeeded. They won. The USSR pushed Ukraine West, expelling a few million Poles, beyond their greatest dreams. (Ukrainians still in Poland were either sent to Ukraine, or sent to resettle the lands taken from Germany in 1945. Socialist Poland was fixated on the Polish ethnicity, declaring the country purely Polish in the 70s. Thus the Kultura Poles, opposing socialism, also opposing such mononationalisms. Socialist Romania and Bulgaria were also extremely nationalist, deporting a few million Germans, Bulgarians etc.) Some survived the war, floated around the diasporas etc. but all the far right parties in Ukraine get less than 1% of the vote now.
This is the Ukrainian narrative, generated from talking to Ukrainian friends, living there, reading 6 books, seeing some lectures. My personal thoughts are a bit different, mostly boiling down to: All Slavs (at least Eastern Slavs) should speak one language, all Romance speakers should also etc. (more cultural connections for better literature, maybe), but many states. 1000 Slavic states! (Many courts to patronize poets...) Nationalism distracts from poetry.
veqq
1yr ago
tl;dr: Yes, Russia made everyone choose a side and the masses clearly chose Ukraine, including the vast majority of Russian(speaker)s. The war is daily souring impressions further, making people transition to Ukrainian more and more. Ethnic purity is literally irrelevant, buy in for the anti-Russia project counts. See many Russian dissidents who moved to Ukraine and became Ukrainian citizens in the past years.
Also quite a lot of Turks (ie just Muslims). Very significant parts of Western and Central Anatolia are full of ethnically cleansed people of Bulgaria.
Yes, very much so.
But the resulting country is clearly rather shit and Russians aren’t integrating so voluntarily.
Well, that's not true.
People of Ukraine are being forced to choose a side
They've clearly chosen one. The 20-30% of the Donbas still living there don't speak well for Russian rule. In the past, I was antimaidan (primarily for cultural reasons), I knew many who'd gladly have integrated into Russia in 2015 or so. [3] But time changes things.
Something like 10 million Russian speaking Ukrainians moved Westward as a result of the war, just further to the West or into the EU. I've seen a few online showing support for Russia, I know a few who used to live in Ukraine in the past or who went to the Donbas in 2014, but literally everyone else is strongly pro-Ukrainian. No one cares about "ethnically pure" because it's impossible. Everyone has Russian and Polish ancestors, generally grandparents. Many in government, in the military etc. continue to use Russian day to day (weird instances like the Mayor of Kharkov's fine aside).
I lived in Kharkov, Kiev and Odessa at different times, viewing them as nice Russian cities where I nearly never encountered Ukrainian. I was there not too long before the war too. Hell, just go to Ukrainian subreddits. Plenty of Russian is used. Plenty of Russians use it in Ukraine. Denying that's just a blatant lie [7], whether from ignorance or something else. Well, what is a "Russian"? That's the hard part... [4] You can change languages quickly. See Svyatoslav Vakarchuk (singer of a big rock band), Volodomir Rafayenko (a big novelist) or Zelensky [5] himself. They all primarily used Russian and were very popular in Russia. At different stages, they became unwelcome in Russia - not because of their Ukrainianness, but because they didn't support the Donbas or such. Volodomir for example quickly learned Ukrainian and started writing novels in it instead.
Kharkov and Odessa aren't suddenly speaking Ukrainian (although many people are changing their correspondence to Ukrainian - I've had some friends stop talking because they no longer feel comfortable speaking Russian, associating it with the people shelling them for months - and we share no other language. In the Summer this was higher [2] , but then people shifted back to Russian a bit.) This is what time changed. Russians in Ukraine saw life in the Donbas go from the wealthiest places in Ukraine to a mafiarun hellzone where bandits force people to sign property away at gunpoint, like a far worse version of the 90s. That's what "Russia" means now. Not culture, freedom of language, becoming another Chelyabinsk etc. but the destruction of everything built in the past decades. This is not Russian vs. Ukrainian but Russia vs. Ukraine, two East Slavic states speaking extremely similar languages. The difference is in government, economic outcomes.
------ random links etc -----
Note, no census since 2001. I believe Ukraine's population is quite low now, perhaps even under 30 million (the Donbas is certainly under 2 million): https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/ymryp5/credibledefense_daily_megathread_november_05_2022/iv97rtc/?context=999
[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/ze65px/credibledefense_daily_megathread_december_06_2022/iz7tc06/?context=999 and https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/u0g54m/ukraine_conflict_megathread_april_10_2022/i45tf36/?context=999
[4] censuses in the whole region are deceptive. E.g. the terms translated as "native language" don't refer to the language(s) you grow up speaking, but what you believe your ancestral language is. Many will declare their native language as something they don't speak, especially in Russia and Kazakhstan.
This may interest you: https://old.reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/comments/yom5fv/credibledefense_daily_megathread_november_07_2022/ivi3blh/?context=999
Also n.b. I'm pro-Crimea not being in Ukraine. E.g. https://old.reddit.com/comments/45tl6z/_/d00bq3i/?context=999
If you want, pm me and we can talk on telegram. Perhaps you can speak to many Russians in Ukraine/Russian Ukrainians or however to phrase it.
Note, I say Russian and Ukrainian are nearly identical, yet it's uncomfortable for me to try to understand Ukrainian or to Ukrainianize my speech. So the differences are there in practice but they feel small. Really it's a sign of weak friendship, eh?
[5] Zelensky being pro-Russian language: http://news.sevas.com/world/zelenskij_o_zaprete_vezda_rossijskih_artistov_v_ukrainu
Also note Zelensky's corruption shown in the Pandora papers.
[7] but there's a lot of uncomfortable space re: language laws. But every article about "Russian being banned" exaggerate much smaller steps.
veqq
1yr ago
After the fall, Poland enacted far-ranging, unpopular economic reforms--the Balcerowicz Plan--the essentially transformed the economy from a state-run one into a "free government w/ some government intervention" type. Similar reforms were attempted in Ukraine, but leadership balked in face of how unpopular these measures were. As a result, Poland economy was able to grow at a higher rate than Ukraine's, so the two became less alike as time went on.
During Solidarity, emigré publications like Kultura were read through and discussed in Poland, with the anti-communists reaching a clear consensus of what to do. Upon coming to power, they had coherent policy already drafted and prepared. Elsewhere, only after the Warsaw pact or USSR fell were they able to start discussing policy etc. but were then under pressure of momentary politics, corruption, people fiefdoms etc. This is how Poland was able to immediately sign treaties with Ukraine and Lithuania, abandoning revanchist territorial desires - they had already long since decided on this.
There's this incredible segment by Tucker Carlson that basically lays out a theory Nixon was not as big a crook as we think, and that he was set up because he tried to keep the government subordinate to its notional head.
This is honestly fascinating. It demands further research.
I see that a certain Geoff Shepard's written a few relevant books.
The best short thing I found: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/06/20/watergate_at_50_revelations_from_newly_declassified_evidence_147766.html
Here's the tape recording of Nixon saying he knows who shot Kennedy: https://rogerstone.substack.com/p/nixon-threatened-to-reveal-the-cias
But so much of it seems like pure paranoia e.g. here Nixon claims everyone was out to get just him: https://nypost.com/2022/06/16/watergate-gave-rise-to-the-culture-war/ besides how aggressively partisan they are, not digging into the actual topic, but primarily using it as a quick thing to besmirch various actors, to influence current perception. Stuff like:
Sound familiar? Those same dark forces will continue to wage ruthless war on anyone else who challenges their unaccountable power and corrupt status quo.
really weakens a piece and narrative.
veqq
1yr ago
He has had a tv show for ~ 10 years, which he's surely more famous for than being arrested when his front door jammed.
Also many reasonable positions which support trusting him:
The enemy of individuality is groupthink, Gates says, and here he holds everyone accountable. Recently, he has enraged many of his colleagues in the African-American studies field—especially those campaigning for government reparations for slavery—by insistently reminding them, as he did in a New York Times op-ed last year, that the folks who captured and sold blacks into slavery in the first place were also Africans, working for profit. "People wanted to kill me, man," Gates says of the reaction to that op-ed. "Black people were so angry at me. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good black people. The world just isn't like that."
veqq
1yr ago
the history of the reparations movement
Gates, the guy speaking:
The enemy of individuality is groupthink, Gates says, and here he holds everyone accountable. Recently, he has enraged many of his colleagues in the African-American studies field—especially those campaigning for government reparations for slavery—by insistently reminding them, as he did in a New York Times op-ed last year, that the folks who captured and sold blacks into slavery in the first place were also Africans, working for profit. "People wanted to kill me, man," Gates says of the reaction to that op-ed. "Black people were so angry at me. But we need to get some distance from the binary opposition we were raised in: evil white people and good black people. The world just isn't like that."
It's rather even handed. He doesn't support the reparation movement!
veqq
1yr ago
Actuary tables put the (economic) value of a life at somewhere under $10 million: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States
veqq
1yr ago
designed to use asbestos for fire protection. Asbestos was banned right after construction started
Asbestos was used! Near 2000, they were supposed to start removing it. Some of the conspiracy theories focus on the owner destroying it for insurance money to avoid paying for the modifications, with the port authority buying it and paying or... Something. I don't remember. But removing asbestos plays a roll!
veqq
1yr ago
This is a really cool feature/stab at crowdsourced modding! Well done!
I find it really fun to use, too.
veqq
1yr ago
Relatedly, the internal boarders of the commonwealth between Poland and Lithuania from the Union of Lublin in 1579 are the current border between Belarus and Ukraine.
Ukraine has a deep ethnic split between Ukrainians and Russians
This dichotomy lost its importance by 2016. Having lived in Eastern Ukraine, everyone lost any faith in Russia seeing the Donbas turn into a looted mafia run hellhole, with militias forcing people to sign their assets away etc. Culture, language etc. are meaningless compared to not wanting to be impoverished worse than the 90s. The Ukrainian army is very happy to use Russian, Azov's main language was Russian and had many Russians from Russia in its ranks. Many are now switching languages, building negative associations with Russian, due to the war.
One confounder is Zelensky himself, commonly found on Russian TV, who ran on a campaign to ease tensions and move on from the Donbas conflict. In spite of this, he surprising ended up not vetoing (middling) anti-Russian language laws. I haven't been able to determine why he switched then - but it does echo popular opinion in the East too. Here Zelensky sings on a Russian New Year's special: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lkdDQX06ISI The channel currently does nothing but war propaganda, featuring some audience members.
I've written about identity in Ukraine in other posts: https://www.themotte.org/post/269/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/50553?context=8#context
veqq
1yr ago
Consider half the country uses Russian as their main day to day language, but not even a fifth claim it as their native language (which also means something different than in English), and 57% of that less than a fifth of "Russians" have an opinion on a poll? That's less than 10%. Of the "Ukrainians", you'd be hard pressed to find any (besides in the far West) who don't have a Russian grandparent (or 3). Along the same lines, even in Siberia or Vladivostok, half the people you find will have a Ukrainian or Polish grandparent. This does not impact what ethnic identity they write in surveys.
veqq
1yr ago
Tangential and beyond this, many Muslims (especially in their countries) are really receptive to manosphere and incel type texts. I've recently been befriending Pakistanis, Saudis and such on facebook and they all share the most cringe inducing things by western influencers. It's really disappointing, honestly.
It would be nearly impossible for mass incarceration NOT to lower the crime rate.
Very easy to imagine a society where half are incarcerated for things which have since been legalized etc.
There are many hypotheticals like arbitrary imprisonment of random people etc.
In reality, our model arbitrarily imprisons certain demographics in certain areas, randomly enforces some laws in certain areas, randomly ignores certain criminals in certain areas, randomly believes crime shouldn't be punished in certain areas... So it's very difficult to actually map.
We have countless true stories of people in Alabama or whatever being in prison for 20 years for stealing 5 dollars, or for people falsifying evidence for decades etc. We also have countless true stories of rabid monsters committing 500 crimes while people wax poetic to free them immediately.
veqq
1yr ago
In the 911 call, he's asking where the capital police are since they normally protect his wife. I guess they just protect her? Or he gets a minimal detail, someone went to the bathroom or... Who knows
They clearly have cameras since we can see the security footage of him hammering his way in.
veqq
1yr ago
His 911 call sounds a lot like someone who has dementia
He seemed normal to me.
The context of the call is baffling. Why would this guy let him call? Clearly Pelosi was trying to get the police to come without saying "HELP" while the responder seemingly had no clue what was going on (for most?) of it.
veqq
1yr ago
Yes it is. We've all just clicked the link and seen it. Are you lying here?
veqq
1yr ago
Polygyny, as practiced by Mohammad, who is considered as example of how Muslims should live, inevitably creates incels. As was already noted in this thread, nice if you building society to go to war and use incels in a war.
Yes. And? I don't understand how to respond to your comment. It doesn't seem to logically lead from what I wrote nor to itself. They're parroting western manosphere personalities, complaining about liberal women etc. in Pakistan. What do you mean what do I mean?
Should I clarify that "tangential" means loosely related or "cringe western (manosphere) influencers" are guys saying you should migrate to the 3rd world do find submissive women?
veqq
1yr ago
That's almost literally my entire approach. My taste stupifies me in its shallowness. Whilst I can wax lyrical on other aesthetic themes, discerning various movements and approaches, describe my personality and character ideals, how they developed, who I know that embody such aspects etc. when it comes to physical beauty:
booba
is all too accurate. It feels like there should be so much more... Alas.
BDO:
They just confirmed that Tether claimed they had so and so assets on paper - not whence and why. It's literally meaningless. But sure, avoiding an audit for 5 years, and changing their claims of holdings many times is totally a string of bonafide grade-a deeds of trustworthiness!
If you collate redemption events with outside events, it's rather clear most is just drawing numbers down entirely. SBF's plots alone involved billions of Tether which were wiped off the books without fiat appearing. Tether created the tokens out of nothing and then wiped them later. Now, I don't just mean a few billions. Alameda and Cumberland received 70% of all Tether. There are concrete examples like 3 Arrows "redeeming" more than 2x the Tether it supposedly had accumulated around May. Now, in March it continued receiving more Tether - but directly on exchanges instead of its historical wallets.
There are many fun treatments like: https://protos.com/tether-papers-crypto-stablecoin-usdt-investigation-analysis/
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