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What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
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| 🦋 |
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15 | 3.71% |
| 🦇 |
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115 | 28.47% |
| 🪰 |
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12 | 2.97% |
| 🐦 |
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67 | 16.58% |
| dragonfly |
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94 | 23.27% |
| 🦟 |
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14 | 3.47% |
| 🐝 |
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87 | 21.53% |
| Total: | 404 votes | ||
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Frosted Flake posted:
We used to make things...
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Nov 9, 2022 22:26
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I'm the two random corpses in the foreground (wtf frosted flake)
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Nov 9, 2022 22:28
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Danann posted:Ukrainian victory in Kherson came at the cost of a mountain of bodies, lost equipment, and loss of electricity. Compared to Kharkov where it was dashing valor and strategy, winning Kherson was meatgrinding and in the end it was on Russian terms effectively. FWIW the Russian-friendly talking points at the time of the Kharkhiv counteroffensive was that Ukraine was making those gains at the cost of a mountain of bodies and lost equipment too, and that there's no way they could sustain offensive operations at that rate. Maybe it's more true in Kherson than it was then, but I think there's reason to be extremely skeptical of either side's assessment of the other's losses.
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Nov 9, 2022 22:29
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calibanibal aka two bloated crackers
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Nov 9, 2022 22:29
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Calibanibal posted:I'm the two random corpses in the foreground (wtf frosted flake) They died of excessive relaxation.
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Nov 9, 2022 22:30
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Dr Kool-AIDS posted:FWIW the Russian-friendly talking points at the time of the Kharkhiv counteroffensive was that Ukraine was making those gains at the cost of a mountain of bodies and lost equipment too, and that there's no way they could sustain offensive operations at that rate. Maybe it's more true in Kherson than it was then, but I think there's reason to be extremely skeptical of either side's assessment of the other's losses. It's more true in Kherson because Ukrainians been pilling up their army around it for months. Kharkiv last all of 2 or 3 days?
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Nov 9, 2022 22:31
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Turns out precision weapons that aren’t effectively targeted seem to do bad things to bridges compared with artillery units 80 years ago facing counter-fire. Hell, destroying bridges proved hard for the USAF up through the end of the 1970s and led to specific requirements for more precise weaponry.
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Nov 9, 2022 22:33
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Lostconfused posted:It's more true in Kherson because Ukrainians been pilling up their army around it for months. Kharkiv last all of 2 or 3 days? I'm not doubting that there are more losses, just any kind of certainty about the enormity of the losses and what it says about their continued ability to fight/the Pyrrhic nature of their victory.
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Nov 9, 2022 22:34
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Dr Kool-AIDS posted:I'm not doubting that there are more losses, just any kind of certainty about the enormity of the losses and what it says about their continued ability to fight/the Pyrrhic nature of their victory. I assume that's the fog of war part, nobody knows when will one side surrender and stop fighting.
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Nov 9, 2022 22:38
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Ardennes posted:Yeah I agree it isn’t the driving motivation here, it was an settle the brewing proxy war with the US. The denazification thing is accidental since the US has clearly been backing far-right groups who were more motivated to fight in the Donbas: and regardless of whether they're portraying themselves as antifascist or going all on the right wing stuff as dominionist protectors of christianity or neomonarchists or whatever, their primary complaint isn't the current economic system, it's that they're not the ones in control. in that frame, arguing about whether they're less evil is like arguing whether it's better to shop at target or walmart
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Nov 9, 2022 22:38
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iCe-CuBe. posted:Al Saqr predicted this... and NONE of you listened he is our cassandra
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Nov 9, 2022 22:38
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Dr Kool-AIDS posted:I'm not doubting that there are more losses, just any kind of certainty about the enormity of the losses and what it says about their continued ability to fight/the Pyrrhic nature of their victory. The evidence used tends to be showcasing cemetery videos and the usual Ukrainian insider telegrams stating overflows into hospitals and blood drives. Could also try to compile the Russian MoD's claims if you're up for it.
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Nov 9, 2022 22:40
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Frosted Flake posted:Shoot me if I ever decide to pull out of a Brigade Box.  how do you think they decided who had to place the bridge footings? miss me with that job.
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Nov 9, 2022 22:40
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Azathoth posted:he is our cassandra That explains a lot about Cassandra.
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Nov 9, 2022 22:40
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I mean, if this is a preview of what right wing nationalist vs liberal conflicts are going to look like, with one state willing to arm to population on the first day and then have the economy and civil society destroyed, while the other isn’t even willing to risk professional soldiers in battle, NATO objectively made the right decisions in Georgia, Ukraine and the Baltics and the only danger is that this will cause a swing like that in Russian society. Incidentally, the Imperial German High Seas Fleet had prepared for “Der Tag”, a dramatic showdown with the Royal Navy to determine control of the North Sea, in which they might all be killed, since its inception. Every German sailor expected they may die to end a blockade. Why else had so much blood and treasure been invested in a battle fleet? When war actually came, the German leadership was too timid to actually commit them, breaking off engagements at Heligoland Bight, Dogger Bank and Jutland. To the politicians, the High Seas Fleet was too precious to risk, too expensive, too much risk of demoralizing the population. As a result, it stayed at anchor while Germany starved. This led the senior leadership to take a dramatic swing towards what I suppose might be called the right wing and the sailors towards the left. While in port sailors talked to the civilian population suffering from the blockade, and the local SDP, which caused their officers to confine them to their ships, which caused them to become even more furious and hard to control. The officers were in contact with Army officers ashore who had become more or less proto-nazis and were involved in various right wing plots and conspiracies to keep Germany in the war. When Germany started collapsing the officer corps agreed on what was conceived from inception as a suicide mission to redeem their honour. By this time, the civilian government was too weak to restrain them. The sailors, who had been eager to fight for four years, knew their lives would be completely wasted too late to effect the outcome and mutinied. This kicked off the Kiel Mutiny and dissolution of the German Empire. A year later, the fleet was scuttled while interned at anchor in Scapa Flow during peace negotiations, as much to spite their own civilian government as the British. The point being of course that it’s dangerous to use the right wing for their tenacity to fight, as that will erode civil society, but also a civilian leadership unwilling to use a military will likely find it used against them for the purposes of installing the right wing. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 22:49 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Nov 9, 2022 22:43
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biden alone is 666 on a scale of evil. it wouldn't even take that many bidens to get to 10000 putin? half that, at best
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Nov 9, 2022 22:46
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It's time we gave peace a chance
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Nov 9, 2022 22:46
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Seatbelts posted:I love this style of storytelling; I wish more modern historical events where captured this way. I like the guy with the biggest hat who's gesturing to the dudes carrying the planks like: "There! There! Right at the end of the bridge, that's where they're needed!"
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Nov 9, 2022 22:46
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Azathoth posted:yeah, nazis find significantly less purchase in Russia than elsewhere, what with the legacy of ww2 and all. it just seems to be a weird distinction because russia has zero problems with a variety of other rightwing shitbag ideologies which while not quite as bad as naziism are still pretty loving terrible. Well I would say also it really changed 3-4 years ago when Nazi related symbols started to disappear entirely due to a pretty broad backlash. Even graffitied swastikas started to be covered over and eventually all you could really find them would be carved into tables occasionally. It was pretty total. It wasn’t really replaced with much either, modern day Russia is practically a political dead zone. It isn’t that people don’t have ideas but they sort of gave up on making them part of every day life. I don’t think the Russian government is left wing by any stretch but their motivation seems mostly concern about the US specifically and to retain their dominance in the “near abroad.” Admittedly, before the Orange Revolution, tensions were fairly minimal. Anti-imperialism was mentioned before and I would say, the Russians do actually have a point in wanting to keep the US out of Ukraine beyond wanting to retain access to the Ukrainian market. The US is uniquely aggressive and hegemonic and a state either has a decision to fight it or accept it. It doesn’t mean Russia is ideologically Leninist but they do have a logical motivation. In the case of Russia, they are just doing it as poorly as one could imagine. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 22:58 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Nov 9, 2022 22:48
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Calibanibal posted:I know its hard out there for a tankie right now, you're losing and you're scared and defensive. But I promise you will not lose your online leftie credentials by acknowledging that authoritarian capitalism is worse than liberal capitalism it's all authoritarian capitalism OP
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Nov 9, 2022 22:50
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Frosted Flake posted:the only danger is that this will cause a swing like that in Russian society. This is already happening. People think Russia was fascist before? Ukrainian separatists and russian volunteers are just getting more bitter and upset at their ruling class for the poo poo show they're dealing with and they've been doing it since this war started. The first stab in the back was the retreat from Kiev, and they've been getting more paranoid since then.
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Nov 9, 2022 22:52
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Lostconfused posted:This is already happening. People think Russia was fascist before? Ukrainian separatists and russian volunteers are just getting more bitter and upset at their ruling class for the poo poo show they're dealing with and they've been doing it since this war started. The first stab in the back was the retreat from Kiev, and they've been getting more paranoid since then. It is just amount of Russians who care about this war, beyond not wanting to be apart of it, is fairly small and it is doubtful they could mount a putsch. For the most part, it seems like people are shrugging their shoulders and going about their lives.
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Nov 9, 2022 22:54
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Azathoth posted:yeah, nazis find significantly less purchase in Russia than elsewhere, what with the legacy of ww2 and all. it just seems to be a weird distinction because russia has zero problems with a variety of other rightwing shitbag ideologies which while not quite as bad as naziism are still pretty loving terrible. Russia used denazification the same way we used fighting terrorism. it’s a vague goal that has some incidental truth to it when actual Nazis/terrorists are killed but it’s an open ended causes belli that can be exploited for geopolitical reasons no doubt there’s sympathy for Russian speakers in Donbass but Russia let them get steamrolled and let Donetsk get terrorized by legit fascist militias for 8 years. some of the most brutal videos I’ve seen in this conflict have been ukranian fascist paramilitaries like the Sich battalion, Kraken, etc enact revenge on the DPR/LPR troops since they’re seen as traitors and collaborators…I stupidly saw a video where 2 of them raped a DRP soldier and I nearly vomited
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Nov 9, 2022 22:59
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Ardennes posted:It is just amount of Russians who care about this war, beyond not wanting to be apart of it, is fairly small and it is doubtful they could mount a putsch. I still think Frosted Flake is right that it seems like a bad idea to undermine the morale of your army and give bitter radicals a free reign with it.
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Nov 9, 2022 23:02
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Lostconfused posted:I still think Frosted Flake is right that it seems like a bad idea to undermine the morale of your army and give bitter radicals a free reign with it. It is a bad idea but it is in the same vein as starting a war you don’t know how to win or appointing your cousins to the admiralty.
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Nov 9, 2022 23:05
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Russia's definition of nazi seems to have transitioned to being specifically anti-russia since their ruling class is about as anticommunist as the rest of europe at this point, which serves to basically just make everyone else think they're full of poo poo and also make the word meaningless (but this has been true everywhere for a while now anyway) There's been a serious effort on both sides of the war to carve out the antisemitic portions of the local flavors of naziism since that turns it into a more palatable flavor of deranged nationalism that fits in just fine in a world order run by a bunch of other deranged nationalists
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Nov 9, 2022 23:05
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Pistol_Pete posted:I like the guy with the biggest hat who's gesturing to the dudes carrying the planks like: "There! There! Right at the end of the bridge, that's where they're needed!" When you got the hat you make the rules
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Nov 9, 2022 23:07
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Lostconfused posted:This is already happening. People think Russia was fascist before? Ukrainian separatists and russian volunteers are just getting more bitter and upset at their ruling class for the poo poo show they're dealing with and they've been doing it since this war started. The first stab in the back was the retreat from Kiev, and they've been getting more paranoid since then. It’s not paranoia, they are being failed by the same civilian leadership that sent them to war not having the resolve to win, at times even fight, it. They know civil society isn’t mobilized, industry isn’t mobilized, reservists have scarcely been called up. It’s a dangerous situation that only grows more dangerous daily. It’s why war is supposed to always be a last extremity and not this safe, cheap, expeditionary thing. 1991 and on has made expeditionary warfare seem like a low risk, low cost diplomatic tool in the liberal societies. War has always been known to unleash dangerous social forces and the delusion of The End of History is that they can be minimized if not avoided outright. It was as tantalizing in Russian society as our own. So what the Russian ruling class have done is set themselves up for a situation where they are the impediment to victory, as well as responsible for starting and losing the war, as a result of managing it in their own best interests and ironically in such a way calculated to rock the boat as little as possible. It’s sort of reminiscent of Obama deciding on a troop count for Afghanistan guaranteed to not win, and in fact eventually lose the war, all because the “smart” political decision was by far the worst military one. Deciding on half of what was asked was worse than either leaving or committing the unpalatable amount required for a good result. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 23:11 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Nov 9, 2022 23:09
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Lostconfused posted:I still think Frosted Flake is right that it seems like a bad idea to undermine the morale of your army and give bitter radicals a free reign with it. i agree with this take too. there’s no anti-war coalition in Russia because what is there for the average Russian person to look to? the west has completely isolated them, and even if some neo-yeltsin comes back, why would anyone want to recreate the 90s shock therapy of western invtervention? Russian liberals are the worst off because they’re hated by both Russians for fleeing and the west for being Russian - they have no home
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Nov 9, 2022 23:09
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Frosted Flake posted:
Gonna agree with FF here, it may be charmingly whimsical but it’s no way to win a war. 
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Nov 9, 2022 23:14
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dk2m posted:i agree with this take too. there’s no anti-war coalition in Russia because what is there for the average Russian person to look to? the west has completely isolated them, and even if some neo-yeltsin comes back, why would anyone want to recreate the 90s shock therapy of western invtervention? Look at the state of liberalism in Europe in 1913 and then 1919. For whatever reason everybody thinks they can “just” go to war and the problem is, no matter how delicately you manage it, the stakes at the sharp end are life and death and slowly the feeling of life and death struggle will circulate around civil society. Liberalism exists to conceal contradictions and war makes them most visible so that instead of being reassuring signs of normalcy, eventually the sight of generals in chateaus and ladies and gentlemen strolling around the capital and taking tea as always becomes nearly as hated as the enemy itself. It’s not all to the benefit of the right wing, the same failure of liberalism in wartime ignited the Paris Commune and October Revolution, but the right wing is as or better positioned to take advantage of it. Historically what made sailors side with the left and soldiers with the right was proximity to and contact with the civilian population, and as these small professional armies are probably about as separate from the population back home as it gets, it’s not a great omen. Which is another irony, right? The professionalization of armies was done to minimize the effect of domestic antiwar movements but it creates the chance that there will be a bloc of hardened fighters out to oppose liberalism as an impediment, which is exactly what happened in Ukraine from 2016 on with the Veterans Movement and Azov. You get that hard core seeing everything is business as usual at home at the cost of winning at the front, you’re teeing yourself up for upheaval. e: I wish I had them in front of me but one example would be that German soldiers at home on leave in 1944 and 1945 were causing trouble to the point where it became a public order issue. They thought the home front of the Third Reich wasn’t sufficiently committed, and that’s after major cities had been bombed into rubble. Soldiers started to beat up (or worse, obviously) party officials and other political and civil authorities in the last months of the war, and there was an explosion of violence in the last month so that the army was the only functioning institution in Germany. People like to say the Germany Army remained disciplined and organized until the bitter end but it came at the expense of everything else. Again, that was Nazi Germany, which I’ll wager was more resilient that contemporary Russia, Ukraine or western Europe. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 23:28 on Nov 9, 2022 |
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Nov 9, 2022 23:22
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the bitcoin of weed posted:Russia's definition of nazi seems to have transitioned to being specifically anti-russia since their ruling class is about as anticommunist as the rest of europe at this point, which serves to basically just make everyone else think they're full of poo poo and also make the word meaningless (but this has been true everywhere for a while now anyway) The word “fascist” in Russia always sort of meant enemy: both against Russia and in sort of a global sense. It is also a word that can cause an instant fight out of nowhere. It is a bit complicated but certainly the Russian leadership is anti-communist but the memory of the war is a big deal. That said, the actual word Nazis just sort of gets confused looks. Fascists are enemies of Russia and the swastika is the symbol of the fascists but you would get a confused look if said the “the whites were pretty fashy!” because fascism was never about political ideology to average Russian. It isn’t a recent thing either. I am sure there are anti-semites various militias but it really isn’t a big force in Russia today. There are a lot of Russian Jews in Israel with family still in Russia and that doesn’t seem to be the big hang up. I would say racism against central Asians is a magnitude greater issue.
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Nov 9, 2022 23:23
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dk2m posted:Russian liberals are the worst off because they’re hated by both Russians for fleeing and the west for being Russian - they have no home some sort of...rootless cosmopolitan
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Nov 9, 2022 23:27
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Pistol_Pete posted:I like the guy with the biggest hat who's gesturing to the dudes carrying the planks like: "There! There! Right at the end of the bridge, that's where they're needed!" Laborers stay warm from how hard they are rolling their eyes
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Nov 9, 2022 23:28
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OhFunny posted:Do they? Doesn't the water supply flow from a dam near Kherson?  It flows from the Kakhovka hydro dam reservoir, so I guess Ukraine could blow up the dam, but it seems at worst Russia is just going to have to put a hardened pumping station there. dk2m posted:Russia used denazification the same way we used fighting terrorism. Except Russia didn't finance the founding of Azov afaik. Frosted Flake posted:right wing nationalist vs liberal conflicts Both the USA and Russia are right wing nationalist liberal democracies. Frosted Flake posted:It’s sort of reminiscent of Obama deciding on a troop count for Afghanistan guaranteed to not win, and in fact eventually lose the war, all because the “smart” political decision was by far the worst military one. Deciding on half of what was asked was worse than either leaving or committing the unpalatable amount required for a good result. You, personally, losing in Afghanistan was a good result.
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Nov 9, 2022 23:32
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dk2m posted:my only comment to this is that this war has kicked off the multipolar world where US hegemony has weakened considerably by showing how easy it is to have your foreign reserves confiscated and creating the conditions needed to have bilateral trade in local currencies, like the ruble/rupee. yes, exactly, though, the war is a consequence of the reorganization, i.e., the recession of productive forces, rather than the cause of it. the root of all this is that the USSR provided a key constraint on the maximization function of cybernetic capitalism, and with the removal of this constraint, capitalism entered a runaway growth phase that necessarily led to its growing increasingly unstable. systems where everything is connected to everything are highly prone to cascading failure. when there are no internal constraints, no internal structures to contain error, it may spread freely through the entire system until the failure state becomes global and irreversible. at that point, it dominates system behavior. thus, where all the bourgeoisie were as one in growing the global system of Capital, now the recession of productive forces causes the bourgeoisie undivided to fracture and splinter, in turn causing the preservation of their self-interests to spur conflict between capitalists acting to stabilize their local systems both within and between nations. in many ways, it's a similar dynamic to how the highly interconnected economic systems of the late 19th and early 20th century led to the world wars. we even had a pandemic! pandemics are cascading failure incarnate: too much interconnection literally leading to unbounded spread. here, too, China provided an extremely strong contrast in how they were and remain able to systematically contain the problem by acting on multiple scales with a high level of granularity, such as locking down a neighborhood, a city, a region, etc. until containment succeeds, and likewise have no need to rush on the Taiwan or any other issue.
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Nov 9, 2022 23:33
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Russia must be surrender to Ukraine, or there is no real peace.
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Nov 9, 2022 23:34
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Weka posted:You, personally, losing in Afghanistan was a good result. Insofar as it created "reading books" as a job for me as opposed to "reading manuals", I suppose so.
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Nov 9, 2022 23:36
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dk2m posted:Russia used denazification the same way we used fighting terrorism. it’s a vague goal that has some incidental truth to it when actual Nazis/terrorists are killed but it’s an open ended causes belli that can be exploited for geopolitical reasons I understand your point but nazis are a real thing in Ukraine and Russia really killed them whereas the War on Terror was a little bit more disingenuous in labeling people and who was killed like if the USA said that it was starting a war on nazis in a place where nazis were and then killed nazis in that particular place that would be analogous . this has happened but not recently . not in any of our life times . the war on terror encompassing say IRAQ of all places is not the same for example it may totally be the case that Putin et Al do not actually care about killing nazis in Ukraine.
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Nov 9, 2022 23:36
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Frosted Flake posted:Insofar as it created "reading books" as a job for me as opposed to "reading manuals", I suppose so. they might have won if you weren’t goofing off
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Nov 9, 2022 23:42
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