xzar_monty

Nothing, in terms of hard evidence, as that's essentially impossible to get. Just the sense that in the long run it's less strenuous to be deluded than a liar, and the fact that prolonged lying can eventually delude a person. But of course I may be wrong, no question. (In Trump's case the idea of him being deluded looks even more likely. Not sure what you'd make of that.)

Since you clearly know quite a lot about the game, definitely a lot more than I do, would you agree with this experience of mine: in Act V you start to seriously suffer from a phenomenon easily described as "I have tons of money but there's nothing worth buying"? Pretty much everything that I see anyone selling is like, d'oh. I already have better stuff in use.

Putin's speech about not having lost anything and not going to lose anything was indeed quite hilarious. I cannot conceive of a meaning for "anything" that could possibly make that statement reasonable -- I mean, even if I was a staunch Putin supporter I could list an awful lot of things Russia has lost since the war started. This, once again, brings up that age-old question: is he deliberately lying or does he sincerely believe in what he says? I believe it's more the latter. There was a very interesting transcript of a telephone conversation between Putin and a European president where Putin stressed that Russia is only interested in liberating this city and the other, mainly Mariupol and other places in that area. In response to this, Putin was asked about Kiev -- what about the assault on Kiev, for surely that had nothing to do with what you're talking about. Putin didn't say anything, he was just silent for a while and then continued on as if the question hadn't even registered. Quite interesting.

@Gorth: Would love to hear your thoughts on the writing in WotR, so far. I returned to the game after several months' pause (family responsibilities and all), I'm somewhere in Chapter 5, at level 20, and I find the game to be quite a slog at this point: hordes of enemies coming my way, not proving much of a challenge (on Core difficulty) but not providing much substance or excitement, either. I may finish the game just to see how it all ends, but boy the writing is silly. Not one of these characters has more depth than a cardboard cutout, and not one of the narrative turns has been a surprise. (Like, there's one character whose alignment remains undetectable for quite some time. Hmm... I wonder what that means. Does that person turn out to be good, neutral or evil? I'm pretty sure essentially 100% of the players will know that before it happens. And so on.)

Indeed, Gazprom has apparently published a video describing the forthcoming cold winter in Europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeB2trkdhP0 The most fascinating thing about this, for me, is the fact that Gazprom essentially abandons all its European customers and burns its bridges for good. Now, this is something that is likely to happen or to have sort of happened already, so in that sense it's understandable. But it still looks quite foolish to me, from a let's say diplomatic point of view: there is no coming back from this. Companies just don't do this kind of stuff, normally.

Speaking of classical, this is as beautiful today as it was back when Wagner wrote it. I mean dang that's some finely written stuff. "Awesome" is a word used far too often, but this does fill me with awe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NvUyCdKAxM

What about grammar and vocabulary? I don't really speak German well enough to say anything about that stuff.(*) The reason I ask is that in my country, it is astonishing to see how bad the writing can sometimes be in those circles, strictly from a linguistic point of view: poor grammar, plenty of elementary mistakes, needless repetition in word choices, and so on. All the things that instantly make you think "poor education, lack of knowledge". (*) It's funny how the understanding of a foreign language proceeds in fairly clear steps. At some point, you learn to communicate, to get along, in everyday life. Later, you learn the language well enough to read and appreciate good literature in it. And then, finally, after quite some time, you start to recognize puns quickly, you learn to understand when someone uses the language poorly (in a stylistic sense), you become able to tell whether a piece of prose or a newspaper article is written well or not, you recognize the cliches and bad choices instantly, and so on. But getting to this last stage really takes time. I read El Pais but I can't really say whether a particular article is really good Spanish or not. I couldn't recognize a stylistically superb journalist in Spanish, I'm still at the level where I just get the information, not the subtleties.

Indeed. Bold elements and exclamation marks immediately signal rank unprofessionalism. I hadn't visited zerohedge before, but I did after this post of yours, and the bold elements (that are all over the place) made me quit before clicking one single article. The site is almost certainly rubbish. I mean, it's possible that they both produce excellent content and edit it to look like third-rate sophomore stuff, but it's very, very unlikely. (Btw, professional outlook is not a guarantee of proper content, either...)

A friend of mine switched his major from psychology to physics simply because of this problem: there are so many variables and unknowns that it's fair to ask whether psychology is a science at all. (Well, heck, psychology relies on consciousness, and we have NO idea what consciousness is, there's not one good theory around.) He's now a pretty renowned cosmologist, although not on a global scale. The mathematician N. N. Taleb pointed out that once you take a look at the underpinnings of the Big Five "personality theory" in psychology, astrology starts to look like hard science. The problem of course is that we can't avoid psychology...

Russia buying weapons from North Korea looks like some kind of desperation in the sense that once you're at that level, you probably don't have many worthy allies. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/05/us/politics/russia-north-korea-artillery.html EDIT: And speaking of Russian weapons, here's an interesting thread:

Yeah, exactly. Also, any newspaper that has exclamation marks on its front page is definitely rubbish. (This does not apply to Pravda, of course, but to a certain class of newspapers that are identifiable by this simple point.)

Btw, I find it really interesting (read: a little baffling, actually) that there's a Pravda in Ukraine as well. I associate "Pravda" so strongly with the Soviet Union, so it has an ominous sound. Yes, I know what the word means, and I am not aware of the specific history of the newspaper, so it may well be justified. But it does ring some strange bells. It's like if some German financial company used the motto "Arbeit Macht Geld". It just wouldn't be ok. (Ok, fair enough, that would be a lot more serious.)

Peskov has suggested that Russia won't reopen Nord Stream 1 after the "maintenance" is over, which strongly implies that the counter-attack in the Kherson area has been successful enough to strongly affect Russian supply lines. Russia is aiming at further slowing down German help to Ukraine, which may well turn out to be a counterproductive move, as Germany will essentially go, "Right. You're stopping the gas, so we're sending all we can to Ukraine." Of course this is not the only way it can turn out.

Waiting for confirmation from elsewhere (a party not directly involved in the war), but looks like excellent news.

Hmm. I'm not sure who's in the right here, but I'd definitely want to see some proper documentation. Along with @Chilloutman and @Lexx, I also haven't seen anything about men being sent back. Do you have any reliable links about them being sent back? You said "by the droves", which should mean that it's a pretty substantial phenomenon, but I haven't seen anything about it.

I wouldn't have much faith in him having any knowledge of history outside the most superficial one. Seriously.

Here's something impossible to satirize: Russian TV presenter arguing that Soviet concentration camps were better than German ones. The other stuff is fairly rich, too. Presented with a straight face, it's quite a sight to behold.

Why was that? Btw, Oded Galor, in his book The Journey of Humanity, presents many good reasons why "just switching to democracy" often doesn't work -- and why "the west" has been quite naive in this regard. There are so many variables to the issue, so many historical, geographic and other factors to consider. The book is recommended reading.

The amount of usable source material is so scant here that an awful lot has to be invented no matter what. It seems like it would be a lot easier to just create a world and write good stuff for that world instead of making up stuff for Tolkien's world. But of course there's that world "Tolkien" which spells, at the very least, interest, and, quite possibly, big bucks.

Yeah, and this stuff runs deep. There was an interesting period before WWI when Russia was sort of vacillating between supporting Bulgaria or Serbia, and it might conceivably gone either way. That would probably have changed the relationship a lot. But it did go Serbia's way (and of course this had a lot to do with politics of all three countires, so it was complicated).

I'm with @Mamoulian Waron this, nothing is too absurd for Russia / FSB. However, this doesn't mean that it wasn't an accident. It might have been. You know, as they say, the fact that you're paranoid does not itself prove that they are NOT out to get you.

One of my all-time favourite musical pieces. Mathematical, haunting, beautiful, hell to play, at least on the drums, at least for me (starts with 17/16 with the hands on top of 4/4 on the bass drum).

Interesting to think that the Russian way of rule still has support even in Europe (widespead support in Serbia, for instance, and not as widespread elsewhere). I mean, it's really hard to find the bright side in a culture where people are actually and continually murdered for just voicing an opinion that does not toe the line. The idea of simply obliterating "lesser" cultures has also been there for quite some time. For instance, in the 1930s, Ukraine had 260 well-recognized writers out of whom 223 were shot, Gulagized or exiled, 8 committed suicide and 16 simply disappeared.

Oh, of course -- that was well known. He's also not the first Lukoil bigshot to be so unlucky. Another one died of some kind of toad poison in May (if memory serves).

Defenestrative developments in Russia: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/chairman-russian-oil-producer-lukoil-dies-after-falling-hospital-window-source-2022-09-01/