hydroacetylene
No bio...
User ID: 128
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
This is how Russia treats its second class citizens, yes, but eastern Ukraine doesn't actually have young people left. Western Ukraine has demographics that up until recently were at least not worse than average for Eastern Europe(that is, still quite bad). Eastern Ukraine has demographics that are Manchuria-tier. Russia's not raising a big slave army out of it, no matter how brutal their conscription laws. That's why the Russian army is increasingly muslim- same reason.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Improving things for prisoners is a regular low priority hobby horse for the christian right. They're much less loud about it than progressives but unlike the latter, they actually get around to trying it.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
I'll notice your solution is impossible to implement.
You accurately note that the vast majority of prison rape is committed by males. Did you know transwomen have the same rate of sex crimes as any other male?
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Iced tea is actually widely popular in hot countries because it tastes pretty good when it's hot outside and is easy to make, including in countries that aren't known for their tea culture. You'll notice that iced tea is popular in the parts of the US that have truly sweltering hot summers.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
I've been told, verbally, but don't totally know how to confirm this, that lots of the immigration to the new world from poorer Euro countries in the very late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was more of a policy on the part of the authorities to empty the orphanages, with immigrants sent to essentially random destinations rather than making rational choices on the basis of economic health.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
Castration was done to prepubescent boys(that is, not soldiers).
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
Russia has South Africa and Mexico tier income inequality with a mostly state controlled economy. I somehow doubt the average Russian was doing better than the average Ukrainian.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
It is instructive to watch/read/listen to Ukrainian internal propaganda. Machine translation is fine. Very much not about freedom, democracy, and minority rights. A lot about how russians are dirty mongolians that need to be kept out of the White continent.
hydroacetylene
19hr ago
There are many people who do not live in France, Germany, and the Anglosphere countries, but who would like to. On the other hand, Ukraine is a postcommunist balkans country; even the majority of its own population doesn't want to live there, because it sucks. 'Mass immigration to Ukraine' is not a realistic scenario because even the migrants don't want it. Seriously, nobody wants to live in a burnt out rubble heap with a GDP per capita on par with India.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
Are there any pre-modern wars where a soldier could be sent out to the front line, and then 2-3 years later in the war, find himself in almost the exact same spot, despite regular bursts of fighting?
The pyrrhic and second punic wars would seem to qualify, given they consisted of the armies chasing each other all over Italy.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
There isn't a singular 'Ukrainian people' now, there's a collection of different 'Ukrainian people'- and one of them(galicians) might have an above replacement fertility rate(although it's probably just below), one of the major undercurrents of the present conflict is Ukraine's attempts at turning its collection of different ethnic groups into a single ethnic group that's mostly galician aping. That's what started the donbas war.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
My experience with actual Ukrainians(and this is a biased sample but it is mostly the equivalent of normies, not actual Nazis) is that they do care about surviving as a people, and that that people is, to their mind at least, very different from Russia. Whether there's actually much of a difference or not probably depends on where exactly in Ukraine; Galicia at least is a lot more central European and less east Slavic in comparison.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
It bears repeating that Western Ukraine(Galicia) is culturally distinct and wants to be a central European country like Poland, Slovakia, Hungary etc, and Russia will not allow them to do so. Russia persecutes the Ukrainian Greek Catholic church, wants to suppress the Ukrainian language, indoctrinate their children into Russian culture with its own historical narratives, etc.
To an outsider it's probably hard to tell the difference. But it's also hard for slavs to tell the difference between the blue and red tribes; why there's so much fighting about the narrative in public schools is likely tricky political analysis for the FSB. It's also vanishingly unlikely that Ukraine will see replacement migration, even Ukrainians don't want to live there, much less non-Ukrainians.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
There's no shortage of middle income countries in the US orbit, though.
hydroacetylene
23hr ago
Have you considered that you're not really supposed to think about these things? Yes HR has picked a side but banging on and on about the israeli genocide is more than they're asking for.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
It was almost certainly impossible to make a policy choice that would avoid Covid, certainly in 2017 or whenever.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
The patio method allowed the spanish to use silver ores that wouldn't have been profitable otherwise; like all pre-industrial regimes, their ability to mobilize labour(very much including soldiers but also the craftsmen, farmers etc to equip and feed those soldiers) was rate-limited by their net production of silver coins to pay for that labour(proles in history expect to be paid in silver, not gold, gold isn't the equivalent of a ben franklin- it's the equivalent of $100k bill, basically a year's salary for the upper end of the class that does actual work. Soldiers and labourers are paid in silver alloyed coins, gold alloys are used for big budget transactions between large companies[mostly reconciling accounts] and pure gold is mostly an accounting fiction for budgets and the like). Economics is just really different in an era where the labor theory of value isn't BS. The patio method allowed silver mines which had the high value ores tapped out to be continually exploited, giving Spain a revenue stream to equip its armies better(remember the labour theory of value is actually true until ~1750) and recruit more soldiers. Most Spanish soldiers, armorers, farmers feeding their armies, etc were Germans who had to be paid in cash to prevent defection; that's not to say Spanish armies in the eighty years war were particularly well run(they were a logistical disaster, the same as the modern day Saudi army- again, this is the equivalent of a third world country striking oil and suddenly having an unlimited credit line for military equipment) but at a certain point blacksmiths can just not cooperate particularly well, you have to fork over the money. Spanish army chits were worth the paper they were printed on because Spain had unlimited cash reserves due to the ability to reopen tapped out mines with superior refining methods- even the loot from the inca and aztec empires runs out fast.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Spain wasn't a dominant power in 1480, though, was it? For dynastic politics reasons Spain happened to be in command of the holy roman empire, but it was Austria that was dominant, not Spain.
Spain was on the upswing but being hapsburgs was probably a bigger part of it than superior tactics due to refinement in battle against the moors(after all, france was also in an existential conflict during the era, as were literally every balkans country).
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Spain actually had a relatively low state capacity in the era. Spanish armies were so large because of new world precious metals flowing into the treasury allowing Spain to hire mercenaries that were not actually from Spain- it's the equivalent of if a random third world country struck oil and suddenly had a better equipped army than its rivals, no one thinks that's because of a better R&D program. Spanish taxation and conscription was pretty bad and that explains why much poorer rivals with smaller armies were able to beat them in battle so often.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but Spain proper always had a low population density, at least through the spanish golden age. Crazy-big Spanish armies were due to new world extraction that was more due to Spain happening to conquer two gigantic ancient empires, one of which sat on a literal mountain made of silver, and a technological breakthrough in metals refining allowing the spanish to exploit more marginal mines in the new world. You can maybe blame the latter on something to do with Spain but Spanish military exploits were more like a random third-world dictatorship striking oil and suddenly buying top of the line military kit for long running wars in their near abroad than anything else. The Spanish army wasn't even mostly actual Spaniards.
Catholic Spain's cultural flourishing, on the other hand, mostly was the crown. Again, Spain's native military, cultural, and technological edge was not their, most of their soldiers and inventors and artists and a weirdly high percentage of conquistadors were literally not Spanish(Holland and Northern Italy and Greece all birthed notable 'Spaniards' in the period). The decision to keep launching moonshot expeditions at conquering parts of the new world, and not start moonshot ventures at eg invading China(a real plan that was presented to the Spanish crown), was the Spanish government. The decision to import the absolute best artists and engineers was the crown. There simply weren't enough Spaniards. Spanish armies were hilariously small when they actually enforced the de jure requirement for Spanish blood.
And Latin America being like 90% Spanish speaking Catholics(until recently) was also a crown priority; they could easily have been a normal conquering empire, just give us tribute type thing. The Incas sat on a literal mountain made of silver and could pay whatever bribe. The Spanish crown just really wanted to spread their culture and religion.
hydroacetylene
1d ago
Correct, it's an accusation that Qatar is bribing someone. If you have nothing to clarify, but only a snarky comment about how yes, that is a meme, then uh, why are you chiming in on the explanation?
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Yeah, but the TLDR of that article is that canis lupus is not a grouping of common descent that includes every race of common descent from that particular ancestor. Very literally not a species under linnaean terminology. It's just a scientific name for a common name(wolf means 'big, pack hunting wild canid regardless of genetics' and that's fine, but the entire point of binomial nomenclature is to not do that)- and that genetically some wolves are more closely related to coyotes than to other wolves.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Syria wasn't able to hold Lebanon, and this is- as later history of the Assad regime shows- not due to squeamishness on the part of the former. Arabs are just a combination of incredibly fractious and bad at war without domination by a non-Arab power. No doubt there will soon be Israeli proxy forces(druze, probably Jewish settler, maybe Maronite) establishing non-state governments and mucking things up even more.
hydroacetylene
2d ago
Uh, you'd get the ottoman and persian empires reborn. Arabs killing each other would line up to be proxies for more militarily competent neighbors in exchange for influence- this is how Hezbollah came to control Lebanon- and that's how empires are formed.
Ukraine's demographics are way worse than Russias. Of course there's a strong regional aspect- eastern Ukraine is starving old people currently getting bombed, western Ukraine was doing better than average for Europe before the war.
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