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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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RWA has some comedy takes on twitter but one I thought insightful was that Putin and the Russian "street" (as opposed to bloodthirsty nationalist twitter posters most of whom probably don't live in Russia) have been pretty reluctant to get on board with even the independence of the DPR/LPR, let alone annexation. While they don't want NATO on their doorstep, their relationship with the likes of Strelkov and Givi were never all that warm. What Putin really wants, and their ideal endgame at least at the beginning, was a return to the status ante ante bellum pre 2014 and a pro-Russian government in Kiev. Minsk 2 would have left the Donbas a part of Ukraine, but no legitimately popular Ukrainian government that included the Donbas could be pro-NATO, Zelensky certainly was not elected on that platform. So given that there's no possibility at this point of going back to 2013, and the Russians have already failed. Even if they completely turn the situation around and take Kharkov and Odessa, they're going to have decades of costly reconstruction and a wall of hostile neighbors to the west.
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Nov 12, 2022 00:47
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There was some anthropologist who studied conflict in agrarian vs pastoral societies but I can’t remember what the conclusions were off the top of my head. If I remember, the stakes for losing in agricultural societies are much higher, losing food production that can’t be carried off as opposed to having to find new pastures. So, there’s the baseline differences, Afghanistan resembles the Caucuses more than anything, and there is still lots of bad blood in Dagestan and elsewhere, but also Ukraine is not a traditionally organized society, so looking to how disputes were resolved in the past isn’t really helpful. In modernity ideology, nationalism, blood and soil, has raised the stakes significantly.
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Nov 12, 2022 00:51
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Throatwarbler posted:RWA has some comedy takes on twitter but one I thought insightful was that Putin and the Russian "street" (as opposed to bloodthirsty nationalist twitter posters most of whom probably don't live in Russia) have been pretty reluctant to get on board with even the independence of the DPR/LPR, let alone annexation. While they don't want NATO on their doorstep, their relationship with the likes of Strelkov and Givi were never all that warm. What Putin really wants, and their ideal endgame at least at the beginning, was a return to the status ante ante bellum pre 2014 and a pro-Russian government in Kiev. Minsk 2 would have left the Donbas a part of Ukraine, but no legitimately popular Ukrainian government that included the Donbas could be pro-NATO, Zelensky certainly was not elected on that platform. Yeah. From the very beginning it has been pretty unclear what strategic victory for Russia would like here. The only way this war ever made any sense to start, was if they thought they could achieve a quick and relatively bloodless victory, install a friendly government, and not suffer any significant blowback. How anyone ever came to be convinced that would be the case, I have no idea. But it explains why they were operationally not prepared to fight any substantial war, and it explains why subsequent recalibrations and mobilizations have been pretty half assed--they are in a situation where the war they wanted to fight doesn't exist, and the political objectives they wanted to achieve don't seem attainable.
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Nov 12, 2022 00:56
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Morbus posted:How anyone ever came to be convinced that would be the case, I have no idea. we've been saying this a lot, so it feels like a broken record, but i think it's a combination of: - massively underestimating ukraine's resolve - massively underestimating the level of western support if russia had been correct about either of those points, I think we'd be seeing drastically different results. Ukraine's resolve alone (without western support) or western support without resolve, very different scenario
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Nov 12, 2022 01:00
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You gotta hand it to the taliban
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Nov 12, 2022 01:02
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owned   
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Nov 12, 2022 01:02
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Regarde Aduck posted:lol the taliban are saints compared to Ukrainian soldiers ive got to admit i wasnt expecting this take
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Nov 12, 2022 01:05
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Majorian posted:I think it's fair to be suspicious. Just don't let that lead you into too much theorizing without evidence. What are you considering "theorizing" here? Because "doubting Ukrainian claims" is intrinsically "theorizing that the most obvious alternative happened." I agree if you're referring to actually saying "this was definitely done by the SBU (or whatever)," but there's some level of "theorizing" built into the very act of doubting a particular narrative. edit: Frequently what happens is that a "main narrative" is put forth (primarily derived from claims by the Ukrainian government), and directly arguing in support of that narrative is considered acceptable because it's considered the baseline/default one. No one considers it war crimes denial if you agree with such a narrative, even if it implicitly carries the exact same "denial of the alternatives" (which is used to justify the idea that advancing alternate claims constitutes war crimes denial). Majorian posted:I think it's fair to rely on the commonly-understood definition, ie: those who descend largely from what were previously known as Ruthenians, who make up the ethnic majority according to census data. However, it is important to remember that the Constitution of Ukraine specifies that "Ukrainians" refers to all of the country's citizens, regardless of ethnic background. I don't think that "identifying as an ethnic Ukrainian" implies being descended from any particular ethnic group. From what I understand, Russians are also descended from Ruthenians, depending on what definition of Ruthenians you use (but it's also been used to refer specifically to the people of the Galician region, which would be distinct from Russia but also obviously not a majority of Ukrainians). I imagine that most people probably consider themselves "ethnic Ukrainians" if they trace their family back to living in the region of Ukraine (which is mainly a cultural thing given a history of moving borders and intermarriage). Ytlaya has issued a correction as of 01:12 on Nov 12, 2022 |
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Nov 12, 2022 01:09
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Is Ukraine unilaterally declaring itself part of the EU again?
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Nov 12, 2022 01:09
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Ytlaya posted:What are you considering "theorizing" here? Because "doubting Ukrainian claims" is intrinsically "theorizing that the most obvious alternative happened." That's what I'm actually saying, yeah: speculating that one side or the other did [insert atrocity here] without evidence. Doubting the official narrative is welcome. quote:I don't think that "identifying as an ethnic Ukrainian" implies being descended from any particular ethnic group. From what I understand, Russians are also descended from Ruthenians, depending on what definition of Ruthenians you use (but it's also been used to refer specifically to the people of the Galician region, which would be distinct from Russia but also obviously not a majority of Ukrainians). Yeah, that's probably a safer way of defining it.
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Nov 12, 2022 01:13
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speng31b posted:ive got to admit i wasnt expecting this take I'm choosing to read it as "the taliban are very good" instead of "Ukraine is very bad" and it's much funnier/less stupid
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Nov 12, 2022 01:14
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Ytlaya posted:What are you considering "theorizing" here? Because "doubting Ukrainian claims" is intrinsically "theorizing that the most obvious alternative happened." in my personal opinion, pointing out that the overwhelming majority of the media constantly just passes through "ukrainian government official says X" as "X is true" without any analysis at all is ok. speculating much more than that probably doesn't lead to many useful discussions.
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Nov 12, 2022 01:14
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mawarannahr posted:owned as epic as a Munsk tweet
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Nov 12, 2022 01:15
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NeatHeteroDude posted:You gotta hand it to the taliban yep. god bless em
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Nov 12, 2022 01:18
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WaryWarren posted:as epic as a Munsk tweet If only Ukraine had signed the Munsk Agreement 
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Nov 12, 2022 01:18
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NeatHeteroDude posted:I'm choosing to read it as "the taliban are very good" instead of "Ukraine is very bad" and it's much funnier/less stupid im just glad FF took it as a serious discussion prompt
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Nov 12, 2022 01:18
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lol at this noble savage poo poo. the taliban executed collaborators on their way to kabul too
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Nov 12, 2022 01:25
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WaryWarren posted:as epic as a Munsk tweet Oh no Kherson is a crumbling cliff!
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Nov 12, 2022 01:27
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Majorian posted:That's what I'm actually saying, yeah: speculating that one side or the other did [insert atrocity here] without evidence. My point is that if the news reports "Russians did X" and then the corresponding article cites only "claims by the Ukrainian government," someone doubting the accuracy of those claims is implicitly speculating that the alternative is the case (because there's only two reasonable possibilities for such a thing). By saying "this might not be true," you are indirectly speculating that the alternative might be true. I think that directly asserting is wrong (like someone making a post saying/implying that it was obviously/definitely Ukraine that did ______, which has happened a few times in this thread), but speculating (which I'm defining as "acknowledging that ____ might be the case") is impossible to avoid. And as I think I mentioned in the edit to my previous post, this reasoning is usually one-sided and almost never applies to agreeing with the default media narrative - no one is going to get punished for "speculating about doing atrocities" when they assume that some article consisting of nothing but "Ukraine claims X" as evidence is true. That's really the danger of drawing these hard lines of decorum surrounding ongoing issues with immense uncertainty inherent to them - it tends to implicitly support mainstream narratives (because any alternative constitutes "speculation about war crimes denial" or whatever, essentially allowing the mainstream narrative to go uncontested until years in the future when more concrete evidence can finally be accessed - if that day ever comes at all).
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Nov 12, 2022 01:27
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speng31b posted:ive got to admit i wasnt expecting this take Me either. I'm just getting caught up on things.
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Nov 12, 2022 01:29
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Ytlaya posted:My point is that if the news reports "Russians did X" and then the corresponding article cites only "claims by the Ukrainian government," someone doubting the accuracy of those claims is implicitly speculating that the alternative is the case (because there's only two reasonable possibilities for such a thing). By saying "this might not be true," you are indirectly speculating that the alternative might be true. the implicit alternative to "this article might be wrong, and draws on no credible sources" isn't "it's a false flag" though. people can say stuff like "this reporting sucks, and i don't believe it," and just leave it there. happens all the time
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Nov 12, 2022 01:31
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Ytlaya posted:My point is that if the news reports "Russians did X" and then the corresponding article cites only "claims by the Ukrainian government," someone doubting the accuracy of those claims is implicitly speculating that the alternative is the case (because there's only two reasonable possibilities for such a thing). By saying "this might not be true," you are indirectly speculating that the alternative might be true. Yeah, but I think there's a clear enough line between saying, "I'm going to reserve my judgment on this until I hear it from a more trustworthy source" on the one hand, and "I not only don't believe this, I believe that the side making the claims of atrocities were the ones who actually committed them" on the other, especially without evidence. "Speculating" may have been too broad of a term on my part, but I think you and are basically drawing the same line between showing healthy skepticism in the face of a claim, and automatically assuming that a claim is false and therefore the opposite must be true. As you acknowledge, that does happen occasionally ITT, and I'd like to discourage it, preferably without using my mod buttons.  You make a good point about the automatic acceptance of mainstream narratives in discussions about complicated, emotionally fraught issues like this one. But I think for the most part regulars in this thread do a good job of asserting, "This is what country X/newspaper Y claims happened," as opposed to, "Here is what actually happened." I'll try to be more proactive in encouraging that going forward, though. FWIW I rarely want to draw hard lines on how we discuss this war, because I think there are a lot of topics that deserve to be discussed, even really ugly, controversial ones. But it's helpful to lay down some guidelines that I think most of us can at least tacitly agree upon.
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Nov 12, 2022 01:38
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speng31b posted:we've been saying this a lot, so it feels like a broken record, but i think it's a combination of: iirc FF made some good points a while back about how Russia seemed to not understand how much Ukraine's military has been improved and reorganized since 2014. That would make a big difference.
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Nov 12, 2022 01:40
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Thread really broke out the calipers today huh
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Nov 12, 2022 01:42
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Regarde Aduck posted:lol the taliban are saints compared to Ukrainian soldiers been saying this
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Nov 12, 2022 01:46
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Southpaugh posted:Thread really broke out the calipers today huh dead-racing ukrainians. shameful
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Nov 12, 2022 01:47
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tristeham posted:been saying this taliban ftw
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Nov 12, 2022 01:49
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That was not a take I was expecting to read today.
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Nov 12, 2022 01:50
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F Stop Fitzgerald posted:taliban ftw
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Nov 12, 2022 01:50
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slava talibani
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Nov 12, 2022 01:55
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F Stop Fitzgerald posted:taliban ftw speng31b posted:slava talibani Can't argue with this.
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Nov 12, 2022 01:55
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I just want to clarify and say that any modern society, with formal dispute resolution mechanisms like police and courts is not going to resolve breaches in civil society by drinking tea. That’s the tradeoff of modernity. Where different Afghan tribes could trust an Imam as the ultimate arbiter of disputes, the Orthodox Church hasn’t had that ability in Ukraine in hundreds of years, at least above the neighbour, maybe village level. Moreover the Galicians being Catholic, have been outside of that for I don’t know how long, and their formal dispute resolution systems and traditions were created under Polish-Lithuanian and Austro-Hungarian rule. The only universally recognized authority and dispute resolution system that encompassed east and west, Catholic and Orthodox, across languages and “ethnicities”, however we want to define that, was created under the USSR. Obviously that’s not going to be turned to here. So, we don’t know how the Ukrainians will reincorporate citizens after a fracture in society, we would have to see how Soviet-era judicial and law enforcement practices have been perpetuated and look for consistency across changes in government. If Ukrainian courts and police, including the internal security services, function as they did in 2009, 1999, 1989, 1979, there would be little to worry about as there would be a common authority trusted by all parties to have a degree of impartiality and an interest in healing societal wounds. If there has been some sort of radical change, we can’t expect the even application of a universally recognized justice.
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Nov 12, 2022 02:10
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they tried to make me feel bad for afgan women being barred from the amusement park this week but think about how much more fun those kids are having with only lax dad supervision all day
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Nov 12, 2022 02:11
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Frosted Flake posted:Pashtuns, for what it’s worth, have a code of honour, the Pashtunwali - whereas neopagans and nazis do not, for all they use the language of tradition.  The taliban castrated Dr. Najibullah and his brother, and dragged their bodies around the city. They should have been crushed by the Saurites.
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Nov 12, 2022 02:14
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America's economic war continues to go as well as Russia's physical war: https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1591228390274744320 quote:The existence of the cap would give India, China and other major buyers of Russian crude leverage to push down the price they pay to Moscow, Yellen said. Russian oil "is going to be selling at bargain prices and we're happy to have India get that bargain or Africa or China. It's fine," Yellen added. America's not mad that everyone is continuing to buy Russian oil while promoting the development of systems outside western control. They're totally fine with it.
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Nov 12, 2022 02:15
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Real hurthling! posted:they tried to make me feel bad for afgan women being barred from the amusement park this week but think about how much more fun those kids are having with only lax dad supervision all day liberal society pretending they care about afghan women’s rights when our liberal government is literally trying to starve them to death makes me real mad
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Nov 12, 2022 02:15
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Frosted Flake posted:Pashtuns, for what it’s worth, have a code of honour, the Pashtunwali - whereas neopagans and nazis do not, for all they use the language of tradition. I'm not certain if that applies broadly, or even specifically to people in the taliban.
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Nov 12, 2022 02:17
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F Stop Fitzgerald posted:taliban ftw
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Nov 12, 2022 02:17
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gotta say, not a fan of the taliban
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Nov 12, 2022 02:19
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F Stop Fitzgerald posted:taliban ftw i cant agree with this
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Nov 12, 2022 02:25
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