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Dont forget those white, socialist, self-hating, pseudo-slavs living in Western countries who blindly repeat all the Russian propaganda and still parrot this invasion was justified and about "denazification " We mustn't forget those white people

You can influence it culturally - this one is very long process and hard to do, you can invade it and change government and laws and have standing occupying army(this proven not very effective - see afghanistan), you can ignore it globally and hope they will realize they are isolated because they are the dumb ones - this would work if everyone would agreed on it but we all know China can't wait to buy Russia after war is over

Hey I had one of those once!

This is one of the most interesting and balanced links I have ever read about the numerous failures of the Russian military campaign in Ukraine. In summary these failures from the article include logistical failures and planning lack of morale and true belief in the campaign from Russian conscripts corruption within the Russian army losing the global media and information war the reality of underestimating the Western sanctions and the damage done the Russian economy

It does change, but the parallels are spooky. A German named Herbert Backe divided much of Russia into "surplus" and "deficit" zones in his planning. The idea was to take the surplus zone (much of which was in Ukraine, btw, because of its extremely rich soil) and disregard the deficit zone. As the Germans themselves wrote in the minutes of the big meeting concerning this, "as a result, x million people will doubtlessly starve, if that which is necessary for us is extracted from the land" (translated from the German, obviously, for everone's convenience). In may 1941, they also had an official document called Guidelines for the Behaviour of Troops in Russia, which stated, for example, that everyone suspected of working against German interests were to be tried on the spot and shot if found guilty, regardless of whether they were soldiers or civilians. All of this happened such a short while ago that there are still people alive from that time. The remarkable thing is that at least two countries that have committed terrible atrocities have taken a serious look at themselves and made profound changes: Germany and Japan. While there is almost certainly at least some somescreening involved in this, I have no doubt that genuine progress has also been made. The depressing thing is that nothing like this has even been attempted in Russia. Consider how Hitler is viewed in Germany, and then consider how Stalin is viewed in Russia. There is a world of difference right there. It is true that Russia is full of cenotaphs and other memorials with a plaque saying something along the lines of "No one has been forgotten, nothing has been forgotten" (a translation from a fairly poor memory, please don't put me down if this is somewhat incorrect, but I'm certain it is not totally incorrect). But this is not true at all: Russia's memory has been selective in the extreme. Everything inconvenient has been forgotten and deliberately suppressed, and right now we are in a situation where if you bring any of it up, you're facing up to 15 years in jail. Historians had a terrible time in Russia even before this most recent period of atrocities. Along with so much else, Russia is also suffering from a terrible curse of resources: it doesn't need societal change. It doesn't need development. It doesn't need better universal education(*). It doesn't need the kind of society where ideas are thrown around and discussed and criticized and occasionally implemented, too. It has resources. It sells them. That's enough, financially speaking. This is extremely bad for Russia. (*) In the US, much of education can be dreadfully poor. But some of it is also almost certainly the best in the world -- as a late friend of mine, a professor from Iowa, said to me, "All the stereotypes about the US are true, but their opposites are also true". Russia has good education in some areas, especially some natural sciences. But not the kind of culture that leads to a flowering of ideas.

TNG "Journey's End" While I understand wanting to give Wesley a different fate than being an ensign again, why did they have to do so with such a terrible story? Why did Jean Luc's family from France suddenly become Spanish Conquistadors? Why did they not reference a specific tribe but just refer to the settlers as 'Indians'? Why did the Traveler disguise himself? Was there a point? Why is the Enterprise, flagship of Starfleet sent to do this task and what happened to Starfleet's ambassadors? Why does this kind of stuff keep being given to Picard? Troi offers no real insight to the proceedings, which is another missed opportunity to use her skills. And the biggie...why wasn't the option for the settlers to stay under Cardassian rule not ironed out as an option during the negotiation? It seem like a blindingly obvious idea that was missed by Starfleet. The whole episode's main story is pointless.

According to local military specialists, of whom I am not one, the attempted attack on Kyiv was so hopelessly poor in both its planning and execution that it would have got a resounding F in any proper military academy, had someone suggested that in a strategy test. Not quite idiocy but close to it, anyway.

Terrible reportage coming out of Borodianka, a smallish settlement not that far from Kyiv. One cannot help but admire the courage of the mighty Russian army: it takes heroic bravery and guts to mercilessly attack civilians and deliberately destroy their homes.

The civilians are probably helping Ukrainians with intel in any way they can, so when the Russians go from door to door searching for Nazis or collaborators the answer is probably that everyone is "guilty". It's not unlike how the Germans were ordered to shoot Jews and commissars on sight, and pretty soon everyone and their grandmother was a Jew or a commissar.

Film Of Prince At Age 11 Discovered In Archival Footage Of 1970 Mpls. Teachers Strike

I know, the threat of white genocide is real!

Extremely badass photos of war criminals on this page.

Well, there goes my idea of getting some sleep before midnight for a change. Time to watch. edit:

Well, don't really have to imagine Nazis on social media...

This article provides the gritty, horrific details of what the Russian rabble did to civilians in Bucha, directly from the words of the people who got to witness these things being done to their loved ones: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/04/russia-bucha-killings-war-crimes-genocide/629470/?utm_source=feed

Race Report! It was about 50 degrees out in the morning as I set up my transition area and got ready to swim, so not too cold. I went to bathroom, put on my wetsuit, walked to the beach, and immediately had to go to the bathroom. Ah well, it was going to have to wait. I know some people can pee on the swim, but I have never mastered that skill. We lined up in pens based on our expected swim time and slowly filed towards the starting line. It is a staggered start, with 5 athletes going every 5 seconds. The surf was pretty big, with 4-5 feet waves coming in sets of 3. I ran in somewhat cautiously and started duck diving. I was really focused on my breathing at the start. It can be extremely hard to catch your breathe on the swim. I used some breast stroking to get out past the waves, but after about 100 yards I was able to settle into freestyle. It was a bit hard to sight the buoys. It was choppy, it was overcast, there was a ton of swimmers everywhere, and one side of my goggles kept filling with water. But I made it out to the first big turn buoy and kept a decent line after that as we made our way towards the harbor. I swam it in just over 36 minutes. I was struggling with the cold by the end, and I had a few heavy kickers in front of me, but my time was good enough to crack the top 3rd of the 300+ people in my age group. Once I got out of the water I hit the bathroom and started to try to get ready for the bike. I have a bit of an issue with transitioning after a cold swim. My body doesn't cooperate. So I took 15 minutes getting my wetsuit off, putting on wool socks and my vest, and basically just shivering. But hey, I'm not a professional, so I'd rather get on the bike comfortably. The bike takes us through Camp Pendleton for most of the race. It is a pretty unique place to ride. There were marines everywhere, tank crossings, and lots of helicopters. It was also a very bumpy course with some sharp turns and 3 decent climbs. I probably could have used my road bike. I had a good speed going, keeping it around 20 mph average. I lost my water bottle and half my nutrition about 3 miles in. I was in good company, there were water bottles and nutrition all over the ground. I came around one turn and saw about 6 cyclists getting bandaged up, so I was trying to keep the rubber side down. There were a lot of flats being repaired as well. I enjoyed the climbs, but I love climbing up hills. I kept my pace where I wanted for about 45 miles, but started to struggle over the last 10 miles of the course. Overall I had a 19.1 mph pace, which was good, but it dropped me into the middle of my age group rankings. I managed to get water from the aid stations and ate a bit, but I knew I didn't do well enough on nutrition. I started the run and it was still pretty cool out. It was probably perfect conditions for most, but I think I do better in the heat. I felt decent as the run started, but my legs were pretty worn out from the ride. My plan was to push from the start and slowly pull back as needed. I started out at a 7:45 mile, then 8:15, 8:30, 8:45, and 9:00. By mile 6 I was settling into a 9:15 pace and I kept that for a few more miles. Mile 10 and 11 were hard and I had to walk for a bit, but I got back to 9:00 for the final mile of the half marathon. I ended up with a 2:02 total time on it. I was hoping to go sub 2 hours, but my legs were beat and I was also pretty nauseous. Nutrition is always my bane. Some friends were near the finish and let my know I had 3 minutes left to keep my time under 6 hours, so that motivated me to run the last stretch hard. I ended up with a 5:58 time, which is smack dab in the middle of my age group. I didn't throw up afterwards, so that was good. My kids actually found me at the finish too, so that was awesome. I spent the race a bit worried about my wife and how she was doing. The swim was not easy and she doesn't love the ocean. But she got through the swim using backstroke, and got on the bike for the full 56 miles. When she got in to run, they told her she missed the time cut off. She was devastated. The run is her best part. She still had almost 3 hours to finish the run, but they took her timing chip and told her she was done. It was tough, I didn't know quite how to comfort her. She was going through all of the stages of grief. The next morning she decided to go for a run. I tried to go with her but I was a mess. She ended up running the full 13.1 miles the morning after the race, and I had the kids meet her with my medal at the end. So super props to her for finishing the full distance despite the race directors. Honestly I'm a bit turned off by the whole Ironman way of running things. They are a big brand, but I think they focus more on the bottom line than the athlete experience. I guess they have to in order to have these huge events, but I think I'll stick to smaller local races for a bit. There were 2800 people racing yesterday and over 400 did not finish or were disqualified. Considering the training and investment people put in for these events, that seems like a shame. They should have encouraged her to run until they had to shut down the run course. Anyways, it was a good challenge. We've got a small local race coming up in May that is much shorter, so I've already got a reason to keep on training. Edit: Oh, her run time was 2:30 for the half marathon, so she had the time to finish. This is her working through the anger stage.

Another reality from Putins War is the ending of the suggestion that the Russian army would defeat the US in war. Obviously their wont be a war between the US and Russia, and Putin can be grateful for the reality of mutually assured destruction by nukes, because I dont think the Russia military would last a month against the US military in a "normal " war

Maybe one day that Loom sequel will be made.

Interesting new base builder game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1284190/The_Planet_Crafter/

I don't know, what would you consider strange? You've watched all episodes of Star Trek Discovery and I think it's strange that it continues to exist.

More and more observers inside and outside Ukraine are beginning to say what happened in Bucha was not the actions of rogue soldiers or even a rogue unit of the Russian military, but rather the deliberate and premeditated actions of the Russian military based on orders that any Ukrainians who did not warmly embrace the Russian troops were "dirt" that needed to be "cleansed." https://www.reuters.com/world/russia-waged-deliberate-campaign-commit-atrocities-bucha-blinken-2022-04-05/

Ron Gilbert has stated MI3 remains canon. Interested to see how that remains consistent with this new one being a follow up to the first two, maybe time travel or multiverse shenanigans?

I can get behind that. I'm not getting all the time back I've spent having to support systems with AMD (or prior to the buyout, ATi) trash in them. Guess things changed in the past decade or so and the hardware works fine and the drivers won't crash more often than they work, but as in this famous movie poster: God forgives... I dont.

venison sloppy joes is pretty much the same as our ordinary sloppy joe recipe (which replaces green bell pepper with jalapeño, but is gonna otherwise look similar to just about everybody else's sloppy joe recipe,) with one change: bacon. venison is sooper lean. once you brown ground venison, it loses a whole lotta its flavour save for a bit o' background gamey. ½-1 piece o' thick cut bacon per pound o' venison, chopped, reintroduces missing fat w/o being overwhelming. recommendation: do not cook the bacon to death as that would defeat the purpose o' adding the bacon. ... am s'posing the bacon fix would work if we had to make sloppy joes with particular lean ground beef, but am not a complete savage, so have never yet been so estranged from the civilized as to find our self faced with such a dilemma. HA! Good Fun!

Thanks! I originally followed your drake ambassador build (with some tweaks) and then your note about using black sanctuary, so indeed i owe you thanks! Looking forward very much to avowed, sounds amazing. Im glad it will occur in the pillars of eternity universe. Cheers

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-bodies.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes It seems that Russians for some reason let Ukraine/US framing/decor teams to set up scenes of civilian massacre weeks beforehand as it is seen in satellite images that shows the prop bodies on Bucha's streets for weeks (appeared in images between 9th to 11th of March)

Scientists Have Finally Sequenced a 'Gapless' Human Genome | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine

"Hardware Vendor #3" Jensen hates AMD so much he won't even name them.

Yes anyone can "prove" anything if it fits their narrative. White Western extremists and morally bankrupt Redditors hate Russia, I get it, no sense trying to convince people otherwise if they've made up their minds already. Since the play by play will remain woefully inaccurate for the time being, I'll just post some badass pics in the meantime. Russian tankers near Izyum, very 'Tankie'.

The irony is that Curse is IMHO the best Monkey Island. Anyway, I wholeheartedly welcome MI6.

Things you can do when you are a virtuoso-level musician: That's gotta be the weirdest guitar I've ever seen, and I don't mean the dragon claw design. 3 necks: A 12-string guitar half fretless horizontally. A regular 6-string guitar. A 4-string bass guitar half fretless vertically. Plus, an invisible drummer!

Works for me. Funny how many times "nazi" is being mentioned. If you drink everytime they write the word "nazi" or a derivative of it, you'll die of alcohol poison once you're at the end of the article.

In my country, we start studying a second language on third grade and a third language on seventh, at the latest (often fifth). Many if not most study three foreign languages by the time they're on 8th grade. So, people tend to speak multiple languages. I speak five, to varying degrees of fluency, and on top of that I know something about four other languages but could not read a New York Times type quality newspaper in any of them, so there's no real fluency there. English is not my first language. We're up here in the North of Europe.

Here's more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/02/ukrainian-children-used-as-human-shields-near-kyiv-say-witness-reports Here's hoping someday soon we can identify these war criminals by name and face.

After Groznyi and Aleppo, this is hardly a surprise. However, it is heartbreaking. As the saying goes, barbarism begins at home. Child abuse in Russia is routine -- the numbers, if you consult the studies on this topic, are chilling. Given the nature of Russia, its institutions are also exceptionally cruel and conducive towards abuse. An awful lot of "hazing" and extremely serious physical abuse in the armed forces; the 200th Brigade is especially notorious for being internally violent and low on morale. (My understanding is that the brigade has now been largely obliterated in Ukraine, but not sure about this.) All of this takes a very real human toll on the whole society: health and happiness levels plus trust in others plus life expectancy are all remarkably low. Russia is not a happy place. So, not surprising that there is an awful lot of excessive cruelty and, shall we say, lack of what would be regarded as "proper" behiaviour, to the extent that such exists during wartime.

Yes exactly. Yesterday Reuters went to these villages and towns and took photos of everything, not just for news purposes but also for war crimes prosecutions. HRW, AI, and the ICC prosecutor's office are also on the ground documenting everything. The photos will tear your heart in two. Children burned to death in their mothers' arms. Young men and boys tied up and shot and buried in shallow mass graves, their hands and feet poking out of the earth. Bodies everywhere. And many bodies, along with streets, homes, and debris, boobytrapped with mines and bombs. In village after village after village. In Bucha alone 300 murdered civilians currently identified with more to come. These are not professional soldiers. These are cowardly psychopath rabble in uniform, the kind that would be groveling for their lives on their knees if they're ever confronted by NATO forces. https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/03/ukraine-apparent-war-crimes-russia-controlled-areas

Elerond can you think of anything worse than using children as human shields? Like I said earlier, just when I think the Russians cant be worse in their military strategy they prove me wrong and do something worse They learning from the Russians Their have been numerous stories of mass rape and civilians being executed At the end of Putins War some of these will definitely be true and thats where the War Crimes charges will come from

A German pal sent this to me. A piece on the one General who has as much to do with the Ukrainian armed forces' success as Zelenskyy. Machine translation as follows, with emphases mine:

Targeting Russian oil facilities: not a war crime.

I have found tweet about a video of official Ukrainian reaction to Belgorod "accident". It was not only denial, but blatant and masterful trolling 😄 And another Ukrainian official response to Belgorod.

But the bottom line still remains, if it is the case that the Ukrainians did it, so what? Russia can attack and systematically destroy Ukraine, but Ukraine is not allowed to strike back at Russian territory?

She is 19, she is from Doneck Oblast, and city close to Kramatorsk. Pretty close to People's Republic "borders". Their city is pretty safe so far, but according to current army movement, it looks like, that will change sooner or later . She studied acting in Kyiv, and she managed to travel by bus from Kyiv to Chop and then by railways to my homecity, where a guy from Mariupol living here introduced her to us. And the situation in Mariupol seen from the videos, which the guy showed us, it looked even worse, than from the news reporting... Especially, when he said "On this street, I was walking almost every day. Do you see this window with a flames lashing out of the window? It is my good friend's apartment, where I was visiting him often"... 🤷‍♂️

It was pretty close to Blitzkrieg in the south for a week. Considering Ukraine had 8 years to fortify Crimea- which is naturally about as bottlenecked as you can get- the progress from there was extremely fast. They just didn't have anything to follow up that success with because it was all stuck pointlessly in a traffic jam, swamp and forest on the wrong side of the Dniepr north of Kiev. Whoever decided sending 50k troops along a single road that decamped straight into an extended urban area of 3+mn population was a good idea is an idiot (and as previous, I'd put a lot on that being Putin since it smacked of a political rather than military decision). Have those troops pretty much anywhere else and things would potentially be a lot different. Now the best they can do is send them all along the same single road back into Belarus.

Analysis of the conflict from the CSIS: Russian Casualties in Ukraine: Reaching the Tipping Point

Yep, I've also got the game downloaded but haven't even begun to play it yet. Will be happy to wait until at least early summer.

I backed the game and have had it since the beginning of EA. But I am yet to play it as my MO is always to wait several months before I play a new game, so that most bugs and other issues will have been ironed out by then. Have never ever felt a need to play a game on Day 1.