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RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
20m ago
Synder is, to use your preferred terminology, retarded.
https://news.err.ee/1609348263/timothy-snyder-war-should-have-ended-in-2022-with-ukraine-s-victory
Look at the things he's willing to say! It's the same old rubbish about nominal GDP magically translating into military power. He still hasn't cottoned onto what RUSI was talking about in 2022 when it comes to shell production not actually being a function of GDP. Just today he's making wildly inappropriate metaphors for it being 1938: https://x.com/martenkokk/status/1792110889841066040
A few things have changed since 1938. The global balance of power. Nuclear weapons. Military affairs generally. Russia and Ukraine being totally different to Germany and Czechoslovakia in terms of politics, aspirations, goals, geography and industrial power...
He's a fantasyland ideologue who lacks any kind of military understanding, sophistication or nuance.
Mearsheimer is overwhelmingly superior. He actually predicts things (often decades in advance) because he has strategic models that work, not just a desperate desire to say what people want to hear. He foresaw this conflict, he foresaw China-US struggle, he foresaw that invading Middle Eastern countries wouldn't work out... What has Synder ever predicted? You're smearing Mearsheimer because he cited some other people that were themselves wrong about different matters.
Did Mearsheimer say 'Russia will stomp Ukraine instantly'? No, he said the exact opposite for years. He said that Russia would struggle to conquer even the eastern part of Ukraine but that it would incur that cost to achieve various strategic goals and that Ukraine cannot win a war of attrition with Russia. That's what we're seeing, from Ukraine's increasingly desperate conscription and Russia's recent advances.
2D3D
20m ago
As long as the man is bullyable, yea the women do ok. Good church boys normally don't cause problems, and for sinics if the families/church are broking the marriage there is normally sufficient social pressure to keep boundaries adhered to. Sufficient escape valves for acceptable degeneracy (kdramas and trashy webnovels for women, dota2 and porn and drinking for men) exist to prevent overloading of resentment. The western relationship model of emotional fulfilment combined with unlimited deep diving into unconstrained (meaning not bound by externally referrable social norms) soul searching means an eternal quest for 'IS THIS WHAT I REALLY WANT' pervades western thought, much to the detriment of all parties. I will also posit that the western focus on sex and sexual fulfilment as a specific objective of relationships has also done severe damage to womens psyche, and this is the main difference between western soap operas and kdramas: the focus on sex is aesthetic instead of functional for Asians media. Sex being an assessable criteria unto itself is probably one huge reason for female unfulfilment, with the presumption that 'enjoying sex via steamy orgasm with your partner' is of paramount importance: if you want an orgasm just get a dildo. Sex with assholes is just inefficient masturbation.
Regarding whether these 'arranged' marriages work out, the constraining variable is always whether the man is inclined to cheat or beat up the woman if she strays from his own expectations, however ill articulated he communicates expectations may be to the woman or even from the man to himself. If the man has surplus resources cheating becomes accounted as inventory shrink, only reaching intolerable levels when ones own progeny are negatively impacted. This is not to say that cheating is an inevitability, only that it is the most visible form of discord in these 'arranged' marriages. Most sinic cultures have legal recourse for wife beating, so only the Indians get away with it in these parts of Southeast Asia. Malayan women tend to hit back as hard as the men, and theu have even lower expectations for ANYTHING of their men: if he's not in jail its good enough.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
21m ago
Just one of the Dem's official programs appears to have flown in 400,000 of them already this year,
Source?
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
23m ago
None? The unemployment rate for developers is very low. If the H1Bs all left tomorrow, there would not be enough developers remaining to fill their positions.
2D3D
38m ago
2D3D
39m ago
Did you realize only years later that this girl liked you? I guess asking you to prom is less obtuse than the norm, but I've had 'have you watched (scifi movie I liked) yet? i wanted to watch with (asian girl) but I watched it with my boyfriend already' said in conversation and the like 6 years later I realize I was supposed to ask (asian girl) out. Bitch, what the fuck.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
43m ago
Russia wouldn't try to conquer all of Ukraine- is precisely the kind of war Russia launched.
No, Russia did not aim to conquer all of Ukraine with the thunder run to Kiev, fielding maybe 200-300,000 men in all theatres. They hoped the Ukrainian state would disintegrate and that they could install a new government.
Put another way, Mearsheimer is someone who believes in great powers dividing spheres of influence and horse-trading power blocks, without realizing he's less an Bismark and more of a Wilhelm at coalition building.
That's an interesting choice of words. The US has, in marked contrast to Mearsheimer's proposals, created a coalition of Russia, China and Iran! Wilhelm was a strategic genius compared to what passes for American leadership. Was it truly impossible to pass up on inviting such mighty powers as the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, was it absolutely necessary to antagonize a great power with thousands of hydrogen bombs? Apparently so!
a NATO with a significantly stronger Baltic position and significantly greater available manpower and material capacity
Significantly? Finland and Sweden make up maybe 5% of NATO's military potential. This war has already been pretty disastrous for the West.
The effectiveness of sanctions has been greatly undermined. Russia and China are working together more and more. Europe has taken a massive hit to their economy, suffering at least a trillion dollars in damage. Apparently they had to spend 700 billion in subsidies to reduce the pain by 2023: https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/singapore-speech-hrvp-borrell-shangri-la-dialogue_en
Most importantly, Western stockpiles of key weapons have been greatly diminished. Western military industrial capabilities have been revealed to be shockingly weak. What good is our spending if Russia, Iran and North Korea are outproducing us in munitions? ATGMs, MANPADs, artillery shells are all important and would be needed for war with China, especially if it escalates beyond Taiwan, into Korea and elsewhere. Stockpiles have been greatly diminished for Ukraine and cannot be quickly refilled.
A multi-year period of vulnerability is opened up right as the threat from China becomes most acute. I expect some sneer about Australian bias for Asia but let's be realistic - China is the primary threat. Ukraine is not a key node of the world economy like East Asia.
Furthermore, the war is not going well for Ukraine.
Australia not in NATO
10/10 for quibbling, we still showed up to Afghanistan and Iraq. We'd almost certainly join America in any war, unlike a good chunk of NATO. We're helping in Ukraine with Wedgetails, we sent over some Bushmasters. Australia is absolutely a party to this war. Furthermore, I am also Western and have a legitimate stake in the affairs of matters that concern the West, such as the conflict with Russia and China.
Probably, among other things, that the Russians didn't have air superiority
It's interesting that you seem to think that the extensive use of Russian helicopter gunships and drones don't show air superiority. Apparently dropping glide bombs doesn't count as air superiority either. I'm sure that reassures the poor troops on the ground dealing with FABs!
If you use some niche definition of air superiority like 'controlling the airspace directly above the grey zone so much that your aircraft can fly at all altitudes unmolested by AA' then sure, I guess the Russians don't have air superiority. Though that definition sounds rather more like air dominance. In practical terms if you're being bombed by enemy aircraft much more than your aircraft are bombing the enemy, then you don't have air superiority. In practical terms, why would the Russians fly any closer than needed to an enemy with plentiful SAMs, Manpads and so on? Do they need to be firing their cannons before they have air superiority? The practical definition is the superior definition because it actually matters and is relevant to the substance on the ground. The Russians can use air power to bomb/ATGM the Ukrainians, not with impunity but with considerable effect. That's why normal people and even such revered institutions as the Atlantic Council agreed that Russia had air superiority.
What is the point of these perverse language games?
By your ! and ? and emotional tone, I suspect you feel this was obviously a bad idea. It's less clear what you think was actually the cost incurred, the chances of success, or what you'd concede were the benefits possible.
Chance of success was negligible, they were relying on 'and then a miracle happens' like the Ardennes offensive. The goal was as you say, to sever the land bridge and threaten Crimea, just like how the Germans wanted to split up the Allied armies and repeat 1940. That makes sense. But the goal was not achievable against a well-prepared enemy with superior resources. The Ukrainians should have recognized this and refrained from attacking a superior force with what they had available.
I think it is tragic that enormous costs are being incurred in pursuit of delusional and undesirable goals.
Russia can have more military power than Europe, but not more than Ukraine with European support. If Russia were to compel / achieve a victory over Ukraine, then depending on the form it could take those forces locked down in Ukraine and move them to other potential areas. If a Russian victory meant that the Russians could move through Ukraine to the Balkans, a Russian intervention wouldn't even trigger NATO depending on the country
I'm lost for words. Europe, which contains two nuclear powers, is weaker than Ukraine with European support? Europe, with thousands of aircraft, is weaker than Ukraine which might get a few F-16s to supplement a handful of remaining Soviet aircraft? Didn't you just say the Russians were a worn-out husk?
The Russians somehow move into the Balkans? Through Romania or Hungary, NATO members that decide that the Warsaw Pact was underrated and lobby to rejoin? Russia invades Moldova, another huge and valuable territory of enormous import to world affairs? Or do they teleport across into Serbia to enjoy the unique strategic advantages of total encirclement by a hostile alliance bloc? I'd say 'These words do not mean what you appear to think they mean.' But I can't even conceive of what they might mean.
2D3D
46m ago
10 hours? Coulda sworn 4. Neat!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ma3ya_lqCLM&pp=ygUgY2hpbmEgZHJvbmUgc3dhcm0gdHJ1Y2sgbGF1bmNoZXI%3D
This is the best one I can find online. Arms fairs normally have good shit at the CAIC booth, but the Chinese uploaded videos are on pure-cancer Chinese video hosting providers.
Re the AV500 vs F35, no the chinese UAV swarms are not meant to kill any F35, only fly through a hair of incoming fire. 100 F35 with max payloads is max 10 kills per sortie, and the Chinese intended conops is to send hundreds of munitions at a time.
I wanna see that chew up MLRS spam aimed at its location.
Your implication is right, it wont. I specified 4s and the short range to highlight the inability of Iron Beam to hard kill incoming saturation fire of fast movers. IAI demos show the Iron Beam focused against sUAVs and dumb rockets, not tube or stabilised munitions. Still, the cost per kill for Iron Beam is low enough that slow swarms of UAVs will be hard countered by literal beam spam.
I paint you as a miltech enthusiast, and man you cannot believe the shit out there now. We are at a strange inflection point, and the future is really grim.
Forgotpassword
46m ago
That or the adjacent 'acts like a brat in a romance novel constantly and has no idea that there's supposed to be elements of push & pull instead of 120% push and sobbing about how a guy she actually liked no longer wants to talk to her'
sun_the_second
47m ago
Proponents of capitalism tell me that when labor becomes cheaper, the extra profit doesn't all go to the executives and shareholders, but also makes the product/service cheaper.
2D3D
56m ago
There is a seperate argument that Russias idiotic revanchism was the impetus for Poland, the Baltics and even Ukraine to aggressively pursue the anti corruption, judicial reform and and democratization policies that would allow them to enter NATO in the first place. Poland in particular has exercised excessive agency in forcing their inclusion into NATO, this video at the 18 minute mark
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FVmmASrAL-Q&t=1520s&pp=ygUSc2h1dCB1cCBhYm91dCBuYXRv
documents the history of Polands active manipulation of polish american voters to force USA to include poland into NATO.
I do not mean to impugn Poland for their current status as if they were unworthy of joining NATO due to corruption, I am merely articulating the observed pattern of Mearshimers flavor of great power realism causing his disdain for building alliances against Russia. I'll find some other reason to diss poles later, wanted to mock their food but potato pierogis are just carb-on-carb hate (British toast sandwiches take the cake for sadness there) and kielbasa is the best of all european sausages, so I gotta think on it.
2D3D
1hr ago
Russia that having destroyed its modernized force is in the process of face-tanking its reactivated Soviet stocks
See this is the reason Mearshimer and the vatnik brigade was wrong in 2022: Russia did not in fact have the million man army of commie fame, it had a corrupt and underprepared army that was so incompetent Ukrainian spies in Belarus were convinced the invasion could not be real because the Russian forces and logistics were so poorly provisioned. The Kyiv thrust was so badly executed that Ritter, McGregor, Serge and all the other worthless vatniks Mearshimer cited as 'experts' had to 180 their assessment of Russian 2022 assaults from 'there are no russian losses kyiv has already fallen anf zelensky is in poland' to 'kyiv was a genius feint to allow capture of the donbass'. Most of this brigade remained continually humiliated by the Kharkiv counteroffensive (my specific introduction to this forum was seeing BigSerge cited here by someone and my supplier mocking that particular vatnik, with BigSerges 'its a genius trap!' rhetoric betraying a laughable understanding of military operations dressed up in distinctly pro-Russian dour seriousness) and the Kherson grind (where the retard brigade once again insisted that Ukraine had no chance of driving Russia back only to pivot into claiming the withdrawal was a sign of Russian genius).
2023 is when Russian force generation let it be the army Mearshimers fools imagined Russia to always be, and when more limited successes started, but that is hardly a reflection of the analytic powers of the vatniks. Russia stumbled into being the army of mass versus Ukraines army of mass, and the slow grind there still does not validate Mearshimers assessments. That Mearshimer is spoken of at all whereas Timothy Synder is ignored points to deliberate ignorance of the intellectual spheres and quality of discourse around: I hold little respect for academics as a whole but if people wish to appeal to academic authority it is necessary to parse competing academic points on their own merits. Sucking off Mearshimer tells me all I need to know and frankly the subsequent cherry picking reinforces my own suspicions: the argument for Russias inevitability is weak and those advancing it don't know enough to dismiss charlatans claiming its inevitability.
FistfullOfCrows
1hr ago
and often will in fact improve their lives through providing stuff like cheap farm labour.
If you mean crash the price of labor, than sure. Or take the H1Bs for the opposite spectrum of job sophistication. Absolutely NONE of the random Indians and Eastern Europeans imported to work in high tech jobs are strictly needed. There are plenty of capable developers at home.
FistfullOfCrows
1hr ago
Maybe he was just slow?
2rafa
1hr ago
Sociopaths are notorious for being more fond of animals than they are of people. #NotAllWhiteWomen, of course
On the other hand, isn’t one of the classic sociopathic tells that as children they torture insects or other animals, drown cats, rip wings off bugs etc? Most people who like their dog like their dog more than the median stranger, almost certainly to the point of picking the former in a trolley problem scenario (if they could get away with it).
2rafa
1hr ago
I suppose, to the extent that love and respect of our fellow humans is one of the core human motivations. You could go one step further and say “in order to secure my lineage”, or just “to be happy”. But I don’t think that’s really a conscious thought.
Felagund
1hr ago
Well, it's in the present tense (sorry to bring up tenses again), so something present definitely seems more likely to me. As well as just, are people really that likely to say that they never sinned in their lives?
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
1hr ago
My understanding of the Zimmerman/Martin case is that there are no witnesses to how the altercation started between Martin and Zimmerman that ended up with Zimmerman on his back and forced to shoot Martin, but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that it was a "fighting" situation. Clearly if you start the tape with Zimmerman on the ground then it looks like Zimmerman defending himself against a criminal attack by Martin, but there is no reason to think that Martin (who was going about his lawful business peacefully at the time, regardless of his rapsheet) would respond to Zimmerman following him in a car by hiding in the bushes on the offchance that Zimmerman came back to confront him on foot allowing Martin to jump him.
The most likely scenario and, roughly, the prosecution theory of the case, is that Zimmerman (legally but stupidly) confronted Martin to ask what he was doing, Martin took offence, two hotheads verbally escalated when they should have de-escalated, and blows were thrown. The tape starts when Martin has already won the fistfight and is trying to finish the job, and we see Zimmerman pull out a gun and finish it his way. Classical "fighting" scenario, except someone bought a gun to a fist fight. With reasonable doubt as to who threw the first punch, a clear acquittal under SYG.
2rafa
2hr ago
the rise of an authoritarianism as overwhelming as China's
Even China does not attempt to deport the Uighurs to its Central Asian allies.
Both Churchill and Stalin seemed to think Slav nativist sentiment in the Slavic lands would be common postwar and so were onboard with the expulsion of Germans in anticipation of the great power struggle over those lands. I think the Poles themselves may actually have been less concerned, but I might have forgotten.
And what would that look like in the USA and Europe?
I think large scale population transfers are possible in the EU, but only if Islamist terrorism gets much worse and more common. People at the fringes of the AfD, Zemmour’s faction in France will hint at it already. Nevertheless, there’s a long way between hinting at it and doing it, which would come with extreme opposition, constitutional hurdles and require absolute control of the political system, so I still think they’re unlikely. Also, that’s like level 10 on a menu of policy options that European countries haven’t even pursued yet after stuff like forced assimilation, banning certain religious institutions, internal population redistribution to break up ethnic ghettos, more aggressive banning of religious dress, taking children from parents to be educated in the national culture, forcing state employees and welfare recipients to show various kinds of loyalty to national identity and so on (even if you don’t think they will work, they will probably all be tried before mass deportation).
In the US they’re never going to happen. Most white Americans don’t have anywhere near the baseline racial animus toward Central Americans that many white Europeans have toward migrants from the Islamic world. Plus they’re largely Christian and don’t commit terrorist attacks (which serve as large, dramatic, visually arresting spectacles that drive nativist sentiment in Europe much more than increases in crime or general social tensions). They’re not beheading random white civilians in positions of power and yelling ‘viva la raza’ while they do it. In the UK, Australia, Canada and NZ I don’t see it happening either. These people have very little ethnic identity, even compared to, say, modern Germans and Swedes.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
2hr ago
What would you be willing to do to make it real? How many mistakes and how much damage are you willing to tolerate along the way.
"About as much as our current society is tolerating" seems like a reasonable answer. Your questions seems to assume the current system is making some sort of effort to avoid mistakes, but a cursory glance at the current state of affairs will tell you l that you could regularly ruin the lives of tens of thousands of people, and still come out on top relative to today.
And perhaps, what other qualities of this society would you be willing to sacrifice, to gain the ones you describe? (Universal suffrage, for example?)
While 2rafa fancies herself an aristocrat, I'm a pleb and proud of it, and I'd take that deal Ina heartbeat.
The whole democratic system is deliberately designed to minimize any chance the common people will have any kind of impact on policy, while insisting it is absolutely essential that they participate. At least spare me humilitiin of having to pretend I'm part if the decision making process.
cae_jones
2hr ago
Porque no los dos? It seems like most of the pre-war innovators lived in a world closer to the Family Values and Functional Civilization world than the San Francisco Bay world, sometimes in their own libertine bubbles, sometimes in structures within the more conservative ambience.
It'd be great if we could have both of these things, with the ability for them to coexist without one trying to punish the other for their different values.
Nevertheless, I wonder if, even granting the world where Familyland and Siliconland weren't at each other's throats, I'd have to wonder if braindrain wouldn't lead to the same imbalance we see today. Species can niche partition, but can civilization?
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
2hr ago
Do people really process language in this way?
Sort of yes, but not in the way I think you’re asking about. This post is about a few of the wellness-related emotion-based implications used by an unhealthy subconscious which uses “should” to smuggle a personal negative judgment in with a prioritization statement. As a person with autism, I have found that stating the exact implications of my innocuous statements can cleanly uncover my subconscious/unconscious expressing someone else’s emotions as if I’d originally generated them.
My “should” analysis hit me hard since I’ve been working on the unconscious portion of my weight problem lately with some success. I’d returned to “should” emotion-statements without noticing: “I shouldn’t eat, I’m full” instead of the decisive “I won’t eat” or the confessional “I want to eat”, “I should be able to turn down food” instead of the opportunistic framing “I can”, and so on. My own big realization struck whilst reading about someone with ADHD recounting making the statement “I should be able to focus” who was then told by their therapist ‘When you use the words “I should”, you’re silently finishing the sentence with “…in order to be worthy of love and respect.”’
Neither the human seeking of self-esteem, nor the akrasiatic self-negation of unworthiness emotions, care about the logic of inability/disability. They are of a different nature than logic.
Good! Call Synder retarded, Bloodlands is a polemic! But I never claimed he was THE intellectual authority, only that he is one of many, and stroking off Mearshimer just is an appeal to authority. Snyder is RIGHT about Russias revanchism, and he predicted THAT while Mearshimer in 2014 till 2022 was, per your OWN citation, predicting that Russia was peaceful in its intentions and should be courted as a reliable ally against China. Have you READ his shit? He treats Russia as a weak animal with no choice but to lash out in the 2015 lecture you cite. After Russia attacked and starts their insane rhetoric about nuking London and nazis is when Mearshimer goes off the deep end into supporting pro-Russia military inevitability, a laughable statement before Surovikins force generation efforts paid off in 2023.
Mearshimer is by no means a military genius, which is the criteria by which you judged his intellectual heft. Unbound to the neocon or neolib establishments that predicted happiness and sunshine for all in the wake of US 'freedom bombs'? Yes. Blind to his own hyperfocus on China as a threat to focus on? That is my assessment. Mearshimer (fuck I hate typing his stupid longass name) did your standard vatnik cope of 'Russia clearly had a grand plan when they attacked with their weak forces, look at me I'm so smart.' when the reality is much simpler: Putin fucked up, and Russia doubled down on a bad bet.
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