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What is the most powerful flying bug?
This poll is closed.
🦋 15 3.71%
🦇 115 28.47%
🪰 12 2.97%
🐦 67 16.58%
dragonfly 94 23.27%
🦟 14 3.47%
🐝 87 21.53%
Total: 404 votes
[Edit Poll (moderators only)]

 
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genericnick
Dec 26, 2012

MinutePirateBug posted:

I think a lot of people know Ukraine needs to win decisively against Russia and can't countenance anything else, because anything other than a decisive victory, there is going to be a post-war period where things get very ugly in Ukraine.

Nah, no one cares about post war Ukraine. But I guess part of the hysteria now is the euro leadership realizing that going all in with the US, but then also losing leaves them in a pretty dire situation. Can't face the consequences of their actions

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mawarannahr
May 21, 2019
Probation
Can't post for 19 hours!

Mr SuperAwesome posted:

i still dont understand this one, how do they manage to cover up this many (lets say its at least 100) officers getting whacked?

presumably they are a) from a bunch of different countries and b) have wives and families and c) at least a few of them won't want to be paid off/threatened/whatever to keep quiet, so would go public with their story of a husband getting whacked due to the neglect of whatever NATO army they are from

and yet there hasn't been a single peep

so like 100 dead officers, burials, families without a parent, and nobody says anything

and this isn't the only incident of NATO soldiers getting owned, there's the "advisors" in mariupol, the hotels with troops that get hit every now and then, etc. but the official line is still that no NATO soldiers have died in ukraine. :thunk:

Stop. You don't get to spread disinformation like this.

No NATO or U.S. troops have died in Ukraine war

www.politifact.com posted:

Claim: In Ukraine, 2,458 NATO soldiers and 234 NATO military trainers have died, some of whom are from the U.S.

## NATO and U.S. troops and trainers have not died in Ukraine war

  • There are no NATO troops or trainers in Ukraine, and no NATO personnel have been killed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, NATO said. 

  • The U.S. has sent troops to countries surrounding Ukraine that are NATO members, but the U.S. has not sent troops into Ukraine.

A tweet falsely claimed that more than 2,500 NATO troops and military trainers, including some from the United States, have died in Ukraine during the war.

But there are no NATO or U.S. troops in Ukraine, and military training of Ukrainian soldiers by U.S. troops is taking place outside of the country.

A Feb. 5 tweet included a screenshot of and a link to an article on a Turkish website called Hurseda Haber. The article claims the statistics came from Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency. We contacted Mossad for comment but didn’t immediately receive a reply.

The account that tweeted the article, called "Russian Market," identifies itself as a "citizen journalist." 

The screenshot and article show supposed statistics about the toll of the war, including that 2,458 NATO soldiers from Germany, Poland and Lithuania have died, and 234 NATO military trainers from the U.S. and the United Kingdom have died.

Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk replied to the tweet, calling it "a tragic loss of life." Later, after several users flagged the post as incorrect, Musk asked Community Notes users to correct the numbers.

NATO rebutted the claim in a statement to PolitiFact.

"There are no troops or trainers under NATO command in Ukraine, and no NATO personnel have been killed in the conflict," it said.

NATO and its allies are providing military equipment and financial and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, but are not sending troops or enforcing a no-fly zone to prevent the war from escalating outside Ukraine, according to a NATO website.

The U.S., meanwhile, has sent troops to countries surrounding Ukraine that are NATO members, including Poland and Romania. But it has not sent troops into Ukraine. A few Americans have died while fighting voluntarily in the conflict, but they were not in the country in an official capacity.

The U.S. Defense Department did not immediately return a request for comment. A department casualty status released Jan. 30 shows no U.S. deaths in Ukraine.

The Pentagon announced in December that Ukrainian troops would travel to a U.S. base in Grafenwöhr, Germany for military training from soldiers from the U.S. Army Europe and Africa Command's 7th Army Training Command.

It’s unclear how many Russian or Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or wounded so far.

U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in January that Russia alone has had more than 100,000 killed or wounded. 

We rate the claim that in Ukraine, 2,458 NATO soldiers and 234 NATO military trainers have died, some of whom are from the U.S., Pants on Fire!👖🔥

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy

Shogi posted:

nah this one isn’t about the external audience, it’s about the internal critic. you gotta resist the temptation to edit while writing and just churn out slop first then edit later. perfectionism can paralyse you no matter how low stakes the project is if you’re built that way, it takes a concerted and weirdly counter-intuitive effort to get past

quote:

I. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.

II. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.

III. In your working conditions, avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an étude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.

V. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

VI. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

VII. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honor requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.

VIII. Fill the lacunae in your inspiration by tidily copying out what you have already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

IX. Nulla dies sine linea [“Not a day without a line”]—but there may well be weeks.

X. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

XI. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

XII. Stages of composition: idea—style—writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration; style fetters the idea; writing pays off style.

XIII. The work is the death mask of its conception.

Homeless Friend
Jul 16, 2007

We are trapped in a hellworld of universal evil where America represents the best available option

Weka
May 5, 2019

That child totally had it coming. Nobody should be able to be out at dusk except cars.
https://twitter.com/KELMAND1/status/1782633138252022019

The Shanghai Adult Products Exhibition is being held in China. This is what a sex doll produced by an Indian manufacturer looks like. He reminds me of someone 🤔

VoicesCanBe
Jul 1, 2023

"Cóż, wygląda na to, że zostaliśmy łaskawie oszczędzeni trudu decydowania o własnym losie. Jakże uprzejme z ich strony, że przearanżowali Europę bez kłopotu naszego zdania!"

I really shouldn't be surprised I guess

MinutePirateBug
Mar 4, 2013

genericnick posted:

Nah, no one cares about post war Ukraine. But I guess part of the hysteria now is the euro leadership realizing that going all in with the US, but then also losing leaves them in a pretty dire situation. Can't face the consequences of their actions

Oh, I am just talking about the average liberals in dnd, gbs, or internet vfw. I'm sure all the leadership in Europe are all ghouls. But for people in the US in general there is a secularized puritanical-Calvinist-elect of god strain which associates victory with moral goodness, so contemplating defeat and the consequences will lead to Havanna-syndrome style anxiety attacks. In the end they get over it, because they don't really care about this, and there will be another war to distract them. This is all a performative display in some weird secularized Salem. At least as a disaffected former Liberal that's my personal experience.

Maybe this will hurt them more because the Ukranians are white and not brown like say the Kurds or any other group the US has chosen to screw over recently.

MinutePirateBug has issued a correction as of 11:41 on Apr 23, 2024

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
note that the Helsinki Commission is the monitoring body of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, which was arguably the first salvo in the West's weaponization of the concept of "human rights violations" as an avenue of attack against target nations

Ardennes
May 12, 2002

Homeless Friend posted:

We are trapped in a hellworld of universal evil where America represents the best available option

Did you mean Trump or otherwise…

AmyL
Aug 8, 2013


Black Thursday was a disaster, plain and simple.
We lost too many good people, too many planes.
We can't let that kind of tragedy happen again.
.

AmyL has issued a correction as of 11:51 on Apr 23, 2024

fits my needs
Jan 1, 2011

Grimey Drawer
https://x.com/Reuters/status/1782730249823768655

January 6 Survivor
Jan 6, 2022

The
Nelson Mandela
of clapping
dusty old cheeks


( o(

Weka posted:

https://twitter.com/KELMAND1/status/1782633138252022019

The Shanghai Adult Products Exhibition is being held in China. This is what a sex doll produced by an Indian manufacturer looks like. He reminds me of someone 🤔

Some poor indian r&d guy is gonna get fired when it turns out those unhinged liberals posting poo poo like ''if I found zelensky loving my wife in my bed I would salute him and suck him off so he gets his money's worth'' doesn't translate to actual sales

KomradeX
Oct 29, 2011

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Okay, well if it's not even the most powerful army in Ukraine, no intervention required, let Ukraine win her war.

You can't have it both ways.

It really just is NAFO/OSINT poo poo all the way down its absloutely insane

Cerebral Bore
Apr 21, 2010


Fun Shoe
been on a posting sabbatical and only saw that the big grift package finally got passed, but has there been anything else of note happening in the recent days?

stephenthinkpad
Jan 2, 2020

Weka posted:

https://twitter.com/KELMAND1/status/1782633138252022019

The Shanghai Adult Products Exhibition is being held in China. This is what a sex doll produced by an Indian manufacturer looks like. He reminds me of someone 🤔

It took me a whole minute to realize the guy sitting down is not an Indian sales guy but a sex doll. I am an idiot.

Cerebral Bore
Apr 21, 2010


Fun Shoe

Doktor Avalanche posted:

there could be a very ugly post-war period in the west in general, because the war has been relentlessly hyped as a "War for the Survival of Democracy"
the media is good at turning on a dime, though

what? war for the survival of democracy is evolving!

congratulations! your war for the survival of democracy evolved into meaningless inter-slavic squabble!

OhFunny
Jun 26, 2013

EXTREMELY PISSED AT THE DNC
As night follows day. FF gets a prob. The Russians get another town.

Novobakhmutivka, directly south of Ocheretyne, to be exact.

Honest Thief
Jan 11, 2009
https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1782743362094710847

fizziester
Dec 21, 2023

Source: Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-launches-military-charm-offensive-conscription-flags-2024-04-23/

Ukraine launches military charm offensive as conscription flags
By Dan Peleschuk
April 23, 20247:14 PM GMT+8
Updated an hour ago

DNIPRO, Ukraine, April 23 (Reuters) - Far from the trenches, at orderly new centres across Ukraine, civilian recruiters armed with laptops and info packs offer patriotic volunteers opportunities to join the war.

As Ukraine's efforts to conscript enough men to fight Russia are stymied by public scepticism, defence officials and military units are embarking on a multi-pronged charm offensive to recruit a citizens' army to resist the invasion.

This softer call-up is being conducted on job-search sites and outreach centres, as well as billboards and social media, and offers a wartime novelty: an element of choice.

Candidates can select their precise unit and roles suiting their skills, for instance, as well as how long they will serve.

On city streets, billboards of Ukrainian soldiers implore citizens to join up and defend their homeland, offering QR codes for convenience. Online, the 93rd Mechanised Brigade assures countrymen that "Everyone can do it!" in a glossy video campaign showing civilians, such as a chef and tractor driver, switching to analogous army roles as battlefield cook and tank driver.

Natalia Kalmykova, a deputy defence minister, said military planners recognised that in a democratic country, giving people some choice could be key in attracting them to the military.

"The people who come to defend our country now are not those who chose the military as their career: it's civilians," she said during an interview in Kyiv. "And civilians are used to being able to choose."

Kyiv is desperate to replenish its drained and depleted forces, which are vastly outnumbered and outgunned by Russia along a 1,000-km front as the war enters a third grinding year.

The initial patriotic flood of volunteers who flocked to the army following the invasion of February 2022 has dried up. The government has acknowledged its conscription drive has run into difficulties, with thousands of people evading the draft and some seeking to flee abroad rather than risk the trenches...


... Reuters is the first news outlet to detail the extent of the defence ministry's outreach plan, designed to combat public distrust about enlistment and plug a gaping hole in the military by offering recruits a greater sense of control over their fate.

Thirteen of the new recruitment centres have been opened since mid-February and the government plans to expand the number to 30 by the middle of the year, said Oleksiy Bezhevets, a ministry adviser who is overseeing the drive.

At the first centre, in Lviv, about 300 people visited in the first month, Bezhevets said, without specifying if any signed up. The defence ministry is also working with four private recruitment companies to fill military vacancies, he added.

He conceded the plans were no "magic pill" for the military, though he said the range of roles needing to be filled was so broad that it didn't matter so much what people chose.

"The main goal is to give people the opportunity to conquer their fears and enter into the military sphere," said Bezhevets. He was among more than a half-dozen people involved in the new drive for voluntary recruits who were interviewed for this article, also including recruiters and service members.

Michael Kofman, a military specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank, said the recruitment drive was positive for the army but would not be a decisive solution to a severe shortfall of troops that could only be fully addressed by mobilisation.

"It likely needs hundreds of thousands of men to sustain the fight - in particular infantry, which few are likely to volunteer for, because it's the most likely combat arm to suffer casualties," he added
.

MARINES TO MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Ukraine's conscription effort, launched in the wake of the invasion, has been hampered by local media reports of corruption, official abuse and administrative incompetence. Social media has been flooded with clips of officers corralling men off the street or barging into homes.

Common concerns about military service include inadequate training, poor commanders and the fact that there is no cap on the length of service, according to a February poll, opens new tab by Kyiv-based research agency Info Sapiens for media outlet Texty.org.

In the survey of 400 army-eligible men, only 35% said they were prepared to serve if called up...


... A handful of brigades and smaller units are launching or stepping up their own public relations drives, with more billboards promoting individual units springing up across towns and cities.

Among the most prominent is the elite Third Separate Assault Brigade, which has honed its recruiting tactics over the course of a war in which it has excelled on the battlefield.
The all-volunteer outfit has become renowned for its sleek social media presence, which includes gripping first-person videos from the front and frequent speaking appearances by larger-than-life fighters with colourful stories to tell.

Reuters accompanied some members on a leg of a multi-region tour of Ukraine last month aimed at promoting the brigade, educating civilians on military service and recruiting members.

At a social services centre in the central Ukrainian city of Kropyvnytskyi, brigade soldiers took turns fielding questions from passers-by and prospective recruits, and offered them spots on a free training course to test their mettle.

In two days in Kropyvnytskyi, about 20 people agreed to attend the week-long course, according to one of the soldiers who goes by the call sign "Loft", a heavily tattooed fighter who carries camouflage business cards with his personal number.

At a high school across town, two other burly fighters regaled the young teenage crowd with comedy, but also warned of war's grim realities and emphasized the importance of discipline and preparation.

One of them, who introduced himself by his call sign Bull, said the brigade's distinct nationalist ideology means its success in attracting recruits may not be easily replicable. But frequent and honest outreach would be key to making military service a desirable path for more Ukrainians as the war drags on, he added.
"We're playing a long game."

Cerebral Bore
Apr 21, 2010


Fun Shoe

OhFunny posted:

As night follows day. FF gets a prob. The Russians get another town.

Novobakhmutivka, directly south of Ocheretyne, to be exact.

sources tell me that they're also getting awful close to bahamutivka zero

Nonsense
Jan 26, 2007

lmao @ FF’s mighty post

genericnick
Dec 26, 2012

fizziester posted:


Among the most prominent is the elite Third Separate Assault Brigade[/b], which has honed its recruiting tactics over the course of a war in which it has excelled on the battlefield.

Which battles did they win?

Cerebral Bore
Apr 21, 2010


Fun Shoe
the battle against defenseless civilians

Dokapon Findom
Dec 5, 2022

They hated Futanari because His posts were shit.

Pomeroy posted:

The frustrated, the over-ambitious, those fundamentally lacking in steadiness of character, see the energy, the spontaneity of middle class reaction, and think they have found a short-cut past the slow, necessary work of organizing our class.

It always has ended, and necessarily always will end the same way, when attempted within the imperial core. To appeal to the most energetic elements of the middle class, in the absence of a credible, powerful working class movement, they gradually throw overboard one principle after another, anything that might alienate middle class reactionaries, until they are indistinguishable from them, and even then, to whatever extent they succeed, they have succeeded only in grafting themselves onto a class and a movement that is incapable of revolutionary action, incapable of any independent action, but quite ready to be picked up and used, put into action, by the ruling class.

If there was hope, it must lie in the proles

Ardennes
May 12, 2002
Preferably if they are illiterate

VoicesCanBe
Jul 1, 2023

"Cóż, wygląda na to, że zostaliśmy łaskawie oszczędzeni trudu decydowania o własnym losie. Jakże uprzejme z ich strony, że przearanżowali Europę bez kłopotu naszego zdania!"

genericnick posted:

Which battles did they win?

They completed the defense of Mariupol.

Well that might have been another politically enthusiastic brigade but I wanted to make the joke anyway

supersnowman
Oct 3, 2012

fizziester posted:

Source: Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-launches-military-charm-offensive-conscription-flags-2024-04-23/

As Ukraine's efforts to conscript enough men to fight Russia are stymied by public scepticism, defence officials and military units are embarking on a multi-pronged charm offensive to recruit a citizens' army to resist the invasion.

This softer call-up is being conducted on job-search sites and outreach centres, as well as billboards and social media, and offers a wartime novelty: an element of choice.

Candidates can select their precise unit and roles suiting their skills, for instance, as well as how long they will serve.

On city streets, billboards of Ukrainian soldiers implore citizens to join up and defend their homeland, offering QR codes for convenience. Online, the 93rd Mechanised Brigade assures countrymen that "Everyone can do it!" in a glossy video campaign showing civilians, such as a chef and tractor driver, switching to analogous army roles as battlefield cook and tank driver.

Natalia Kalmykova, a deputy defence minister, said military planners recognised that in a democratic country, giving people some choice could be key in attracting them to the military.

"The people who come to defend our country now are not those who chose the military as their career: it's civilians," she said during an interview in Kyiv. "And civilians are used to being able to choose."

Kyiv is desperate to replenish its drained and depleted forces, which are vastly outnumbered and outgunned by Russia along a 1,000-km front as the war enters a third grinding year.

The initial patriotic flood of volunteers who flocked to the army following the invasion of February 2022 has dried up. The government has acknowledged its conscription drive has run into difficulties, with thousands of people evading the draft and some seeking to flee abroad rather than risk the trenches...

Michael Kofman, a military specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank, said the recruitment drive was positive for the army but would not be a decisive solution to a severe shortfall of troops that could only be fully addressed by mobilisation.

"It likely needs hundreds of thousands of men to sustain the fight - in particular infantry, which few are likely to volunteer for, because it's the most likely combat arm to suffer casualties," he added
.

That won't work long term. Either their infantry units will collapse du to lack of recruit or the choice will be ignored when the demand for infantry gets higher.

Ardennes
May 12, 2002
Also at a certain point Ukraine does need some infantry that is willing to fight and it sounds like if they are joining up it is for either less dangerous jobs or political units that don’t seem that interested in it.

VoicesCanBe
Jul 1, 2023

"Cóż, wygląda na to, że zostaliśmy łaskawie oszczędzeni trudu decydowania o własnym losie. Jakże uprzejme z ich strony, że przearanżowali Europę bez kłopotu naszego zdania!"

supersnowman posted:

That won't work long term. Either their infantry units will collapse du to lack of recruit or the choice will be ignored when the demand for infantry gets higher.

In terms of bringing in motivated units basically nothing is going to work.

Even NATO wouldn't be able to supply sufficient manpower. They won't go in with anything beyond a tripwire force that Russia will just trip without much hestiation.hesitation.

I'm not actually sure what options NATO has to salvage this war besides fostering regime change in Russia to a pro-Western client state, or nuclear war.

VoicesCanBe has issued a correction as of 15:37 on Apr 23, 2024

Cerebral Bore
Apr 21, 2010


Fun Shoe

supersnowman posted:

That won't work long term. Either their infantry units will collapse du to lack of recruit or the choice will be ignored when the demand for infantry gets higher.

the moment you're in the system any promises made beforehand mean jack poo poo, basically

VoicesCanBe
Jul 1, 2023

"Cóż, wygląda na to, że zostaliśmy łaskawie oszczędzeni trudu decydowania o własnym losie. Jakże uprzejme z ich strony, że przearanżowali Europę bez kłopotu naszego zdania!"
Like there are reasons that Zelensky refuses to give the order for a total mobilization.

Nonsense
Jan 26, 2007

VoicesCanBe posted:


I'm not actually sure what options NATO has to salvage this war besides fostering regime change in Russia to a pro-Western client state, or nuclear war.

Fostering regime change in Ukraine by getting a new Guaidó to shore up cash, support, clicks, likes, and terror attacks on russia.

Zelenskyy is spent, and I'm sure a lot of Ukrainians despise him.

VoicesCanBe
Jul 1, 2023

"Cóż, wygląda na to, że zostaliśmy łaskawie oszczędzeni trudu decydowania o własnym losie. Jakże uprzejme z ich strony, że przearanżowali Europę bez kłopotu naszego zdania!"
I think the main outcome of the new US aid bill is that you'll see in increase in deep strikes for the next few months. But it won't drastically alter the battlefield situation (maybe just slow down the recently increased pace)

Shogi
Nov 23, 2004

distant Pohjola

gradenko_2000 posted:


The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses


wow, you quoted a judeo-bolshevist in the ukraine thread. that actually just happened. hello, mods?!

Starsfan
Sep 29, 2007

This is what happens when you disrespect Cam Neely

VoicesCanBe posted:

Like there are reasons that Zelensky refuses to give the order for a total mobilization.

I thought he was arguing before that he couldn't do this because then he would have to start paying all the mobilized soldiers and he's too broke to do that lol

maybe now that they have the 60 billion to splash around for the next few months..

HallelujahLee
May 3, 2009

if even 1/4 of that money actually gets to ukraine id be surprised

fits my needs
Jan 1, 2011

Grimey Drawer
so what are the top 3 spots for zelenskys retirement

Son of Thunderbeast
Sep 21, 2002

fits my needs posted:

so what are the top 3 spots for zelenskys retirement

I don't know about exact placement but they're likely underground

VoicesCanBe
Jul 1, 2023

"Cóż, wygląda na to, że zostaliśmy łaskawie oszczędzeni trudu decydowania o własnym losie. Jakże uprzejme z ich strony, że przearanżowali Europę bez kłopotu naszego zdania!"

Starsfan posted:

I thought he was arguing before that he couldn't do this because then he would have to start paying all the mobilized soldiers and he's too broke to do that lol

maybe now that they have the 60 billion to splash around for the next few months..

Lmao I think we all know that none of that money will be going to soldiers' salaries.

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webcams for christ
Nov 2, 2005


Yikes. I guess I'll see if this affects my Ukrainian coworker. Not sure when his passport expires, but I don't think the office of migration here needs a passport to renew a residence permit / work authorization.

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