xzar_monty

I used to have hopes of something analogous to this happening in Russia, but apparently not. The "apparently" has been reinforced by a number of Russian historians and writers who point out that this is just not how the Russians behave.

Off topic, but this reminded me of David Foster Wallace's superb essays on tennis and the fact that there's an indelible blemish on them caused by his blatantly obvious personal dislike of Agassi. I can't bring my head around to why he felt something as petty as that was worth writing down. In general, I find it extremely difficult to figure out why people get so worked up about athletes; why on earth would someone bother to hate Novak, or C. Ronaldo or whoever... (I'm writing from the premise that she doesn't know Novak personally, which would be a different thing.)

One potential difficulty is that those who are against Russia might not want to be so obvious or vocal about it, whereas with the West/US the question is much more neutral and safe. But it wouldn't be a good idea to speculate on this basis, other than saying that this phenomenon probably exists.

It would be interesting to know the extent to which this is generalizable like this, i.e. which percentage of Serbians constitute this "we" that you use. Insofar as the "we" means the nation as a political entity, the use is probably justifiable.

It's not entirely unrelated, in the sense that at least here in the north of Europe a curious overlap was noticed on the net at the start of the war in Ukraine: suspiciously many antivax posters suddenly turned pro-Putin. This was first noticed by some who followed the antivax rhetoric and then by the posters themselves, after which there was an effort to make it less obvious. This was a fairly clear indication that at least some antivax rhetoric was fuelled by Russia in the spirit of "Let's disturb 'the West' in any way we possibly can", as per its modus operandi.

This comment is just to wonder if it's nasty to speculate about the possible correlation between @Chilloutman's moniker and the content of what he has recently posted.

Interesting stuff on Austria:

The stated losses in terms of Ukraine vs. Russia alone make it dismissible: 160K Ukrainian, 18K Russian. That's ridiculous. The Ukrainian numbers may be near enough, but the Russian... The site itself looks awful and hopelessly undependable; I checked the front page. Not as bad as ZH but nothing like professional, either.

@Gorth: Stuff like this always reminds me of that wonderful quatrain: “There is a dreadful Hell, And everlasting pains; There sinners must with devils dwell In darkness, fire, and chains.” The icing on the cake is that it comes from a book called Divine and Moral Songs for Children (by one Isaac Watts). Kids these days, they don't even get to dig any good tunes.

Have you ever bothered to go for the so-called secret ending? There obviously is one, but after checking out some of the details, it seemed to me that it was a bit too tricky to actually get. Tricky in the sense that if you just play the game, like I prefer to, you're really very unlikely to make the kind of choices that would give you the possibility of getting there. And some of the things that lock you out of it seem a bit mean to me -- you really have to make the right choices even though you probably won't know when you're making them.

I don't know if you've read much Robert Sapolsky, the well-known researcher on stress, but one of his more salient points is how economic inequality really is bad for everyone, in terms of quality of life as measured by stress levels and such. In the US, the struggle of the poor is obvious. But the rich almost have to isolate themselves from both the poor and the average person, which is very bad for both your stress levels and a general sense of trust in society, which affects everyone. The rich tend to live longer, though. As for money and quality of life, it goes something like this: starting from zero, the more money you get, the more your quality of life improves until you reach a point where you have a home with no debt and you can manage your ordinary bills and living expenses without any trouble (and pay for your children's education, if you live in a country where that is necessary). After that, extra money has almost no effect at all on your quality of life. (I think it was Sapolsky who also pointed out how average income is funny in countries like Mexico and Russia because although it obviously and mathematically exists and has to exist, no one actually earns that kind of money in these countries. Most people are much, much poorer, and a select few are ridiculously rich.)

Not sure about that specific drumcam, but I have seen him perform, for sure. He is brilliant indeed. I don't dig the music all that much, but he is brilliant. Are you aware of Kai Hahto's work in Rotten Sound? I couldn't care less about the music itself, but the drumming is sensationally precise, fast and imaginative.

Yeah, I agree it's not obscure -- my wording wasn't precise there, the "other" is badly placed, for which apologies.

And an absolute tin ear when it comes to dialogue. But to be fair, I think he recognized it himself. (The reason may have been autobiographical: too much of a loner.) Currently reading God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. It's ok, but not one of his best. Some of his trademarks sometimes look like mannerisms; for instance, he likes to front nouns (persons, books, events, etc.) by two (not one, not three) adjectives, as in "the deplorable and untrustworthy Bill Clinton", and so on. It gets tiresome after a while. I also disagree with him at least in the sense that one thing religion does not poison is church architecture. It wouldn't exist without religion, and it is often quite exquisite.

The "radical left" is one of those things that people like Jordan Peterson like to throw around with essentially no justification or veracity. It is lol indeed. It's interesting, btw, to compare the various rights and lefts and their positions to one another. Like, the American left, such as it is, is fairly right in Scandinavian terms, etc.

Being a fairly capable drummer myself, I have a soft spot for drum cam videos. I think this one is delightful. The singer is no Dio, of course, and the general sound quality could be better, but Vinny Appice does a great job on the kit. Such joy!

It has been said of the actor Errol Flynn that he was entirely trustworthy: if you made any kind of deal with him, you could trust with 100% certainty that he would betray you. Putin is trustworthy in precisely the same way.

The whole relationship to military matters. Having been born at the time that I was, with some major wars just distant enough, it was possible to get the sense that an essentially pacifistic outlook was possible and then make choices on that basis. However, Russia has recently demonstrated that pacifism simply isn't possible to anyone who lives anywhere near Russia: pacifism is likely to get you killed, and if you happen to have family and/or other loved ones (as I do), pacifism just isn't possible. There is no question that if Russia had/has the opportunity, none of its smaller neighbours are safe, and the looting, raping and murdering will be just as merciless as it is now in Ukraine. I remember watching the quiz show QI and hearing Jeremy Clarkson (someone I certainly do not respect) say something along the lines of, "Pacifism is all well and good until someone like Hitler comes along". I reflected upon that a bit and recognized that he was correct. But that was an abstract realization which didn't immediately make me recognize that I myself had made idiotic choices and based them upon utterly childish premises. It was only this war that really brought home the fact how completely wrong I was. That was a bitter pill indeed.

@BruceVC: You mentioned "bitter pill" above. I have had to swallow one bitter pill after the start of this war, and it was very bitter indeed. Life-changing events such as these are not easy to take on board.

It is not a rule as such, but it is well known that after a certain age, people tend not to change their views. In fact, even in a realm as objective as physics, Max Planck has pointed out that science progresses one funeral at a time. What he meant by this was that a new scientific truth does not take over by convincing its opponents, but rather because these opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with new insight. So even if you prove that someone is wrong, that may not amount to much, or even anything. We know almost nothing about consciousness, but I suppose the relative inability to change one's viewpoint must have something to do with the way personality, thoughts, beliefs and such are physically manifest in the brain, and how the brain, once it ages, becomes more fixed in its ways. Children are much more malleable in this respect, and of course in many other respects, too: they tend to love many fairground rides that make adults nauseous. The apparatus related to perception, balance etc. is not as fixed in children as in adults, and therefore children tend to enjoy a bit of disequilibrium, whereas most adults have a hard time not feeling it as "wrong". Dancers, skydivers and such are often an exception to this rule, but they have made an effort to be. In cognitive therapy, for instance, it is something of a given that changing a negative pattern of behaviour often takes at least about six months of daily effort. So, for example, if you want to stop being a príck in your dealings with other people, you must pay very close attention to your reactions and words for at least six months and accept that you're almost certainly going to fail and feel discouraged quite a few times -- it's just not reasonable to expect anything else. NOT changing in this regard, however, is the easisest thing in the world. I would assume that taking stock of one's beliefs, biases etc. in the political sphere would be a comparable endeavour, i.e. not very easy. Btw, in the past two weeks or so, I've occasionally wondered (when on the forums) what @Darkpriest thinks about all the predictions he has made on the various iterations of this thread. I questioned his sources a few times (they were, quite frankly, essentially worse than useless), and it seems to me that pretty much everything he predicted has gone horribly wrong -- but of course I understand that the war is not over, nor is even the winter. I may also remember some predictions wrong.

I can't help but think that anyone who takes the 88 symbolism seriously has fallen into some sort of magical thinking or has perhaps read way too much Jung. It is there if you want to see it like that, no question, but given the number of variables in an endeavour of this size, it wouldn't be all that difficult to find other obscure references, too. Makes me think of the design in the (Nike?) sneaker and the furore caused in parts of the Islamic world by the fact that if you really wanted to look at it that way, the squiggle could be seen as the name of god. I think this was in the very early 2000s -- I'm pretty sure at least some forum members will remember this.

It is one effective way of demonstrating who you support. (It may also be, among a few other things, an effective way of demonstrating extreme cynicism in general.) As for the potential bafflement that overt support for Russia may cause, it's good to remember that pretty much any movement / ideology / whatever will have a number of people who genuinely support it. Obviously I haven't witnessed the discussions in person, but it's rather sobering to study the accounts of people who sincerely regard the 9/11 terrorists as heroes, for example. There's a bit of a shiver along the spine when you also delve into some of the psychological work done on people like this and recognize that by and large, they are not crazy, deluded, sociopathic, psychopathic of whatever; they're ordinary men. Indeed, one of the most chilling books you can read is called precisely that, Ordinary Men.

I think I have previously said that Russia, as an entity, looks like a self-pitying murderer who laments the injustices it constantly faces. Well, here's a new example: the Russian foreign ministry has informed Finland that it is astonished at and disappointed by the way Finland decided to ruin the relationship between the two countries basically overnight by joining outside forces antagonistic to Russia. In saying this, the Russian foreign ministry makes no mention that anything untoward might be happening in Ukraine. Russia also brings up things like "psychosis" and seriously doubts Finland's capacity to make its own decisions. Meanwhile, various things in Finland have been and are being cyber-attacked by Russia (with negligible but not meaningless consequences). You couldn't wish for a better neighbour.

Hmm. This sounds both like an astonishing admission and too big, as a number, so it raises doubts. Interesting nevertheless.

I don't think there's any question as to who's the best healer.