xzar_monty

This is a significant step in the North-Koreanization of Russia, which is terrible. Another equally significant step are the new educational measures being taken inside Russia. So it's looking extremely bleak right now. But hey, there's at least one person in Russia who couldn't care less!

I don't think you should go overboard with this. I.e. it's not "the whole world", and it's not "hating". But the fact is that Germany bought itself a noose from Russia because it was cheap, and now it's hanging from it. There is absolutely no one else to blame. Germany's naivety and gullibility is beyond description. It deserves flack. But it's not "the whole world hating" Germany. I do agree there's plenty of thinking along the lines of, "Germany being the shame of Western Europe, now when have we seen that before?"

I just got back from the Abyss, and I must say I am either taking a break from the game or stopping it altogether. The story is not very well-written at all. Also, as I already described above, the fighting gets very tedious. Oh well. BG2, PoE and Deadfire remain the classics of this genre. This one isn't anywhere near that level.

Somewhere in the Abyss, I found myself doing something that I have never done in any of these games before: in many a battle, I toned the difficulty all the way down to "Story" level. This was not simply because the battles were too hard (although some of them definitely were, on my previous difficulty level of "Core"), but also because so many of them were so tediously designed. Essentially, you start a fight, you notice its design and take note of what's expected of you, and then you reload your save in order to apply a good strategy to the fight. This gets very tiring. Things can get extremely difficult very quickly if you don't have the exact right strategy to start with, and it's often quite hard to change it midway through the battle. @kanisatha: I haven't purchased it, so I cannot say. However, the game itself has turned into something that has almost certainly turned me off the DLCs (see above).

I fully agree with this, and the Saudi example is particularly good. What I find somewhat baffling is the implication that I or others here support this double standard or use the whataboutism argument you describe. (Obviously I cannot speak for anybody else in here, but I haven't seen anyone talking along those lines you describe.) Just to take English football as an example: I have always maintained that Abramovich shouldn't have been allowed to purchase Chelsea. Since then, we have seen at least two acquisitions that are even more unacceptable than that, but they went ahead. It's there that you really do see some serious hypocrisy going on: accepting money was fine, and the money allowed certain people to disregard other, equally important facts.

But that's not true, either. Nor would it be true to say that no one gives a damn about what's happening in China. If you intend to say that the international response is much weaker than it should be, then that's a potentially fine argument, but it would really help the discussion if you actually made arguments that are true. Saying that no one cares at all is simply not true.

Interesting. Thanks for that! This is one of the major problems inherent in a kleptocracy: there is no trust. Vladimir Putin himself, being an out-and-out liar but not an idiot (IQ-wise), must recognize that because his regime is built on lies, this means that he cannot trust others, either. This, in turn, helps explain why he's built such massive internal security force: to protect him from his own people. The whole affair is so sad it's difficult to even express. This man had all the opportunity to at least try to build a better future for his own country and nation, but he decided not to(*). His lack of care is well exemplified by his willingness to kill his own people: the most heavily bombed city of Mariupol was 44% ethnic Russian. Putin ordered massive shelling anyway. (*) Some Russian universities have been good. Moscow University has expressed outrage at the war in Ukraine. At the moment, there are strong indications that Putin is intent on destroying education, too.

There was a very dubious-looking "article" about how the Ukrainian invasion may have failed because the Russian intelligence embezzled all the money that was supposed to be used as bribes: http://www.thelowdownblog.com/2022/03/is-putins-invasion-failing-because.html?fbclid=IwAR0xPTO7_eAiuqThICAswXkkSMfkqHVOM0YYdwJMEerAlWkSnx4h-Vdv7ss Now, there would have been nothing surprising about this scheme or its failure, as both were precisely the kind of thing you'd expect in and from Russia. But the article looked very, very dubious. However, this new article from a more reputable source suggests there might be something to it: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-purges-150-fsb-agents-in-response-to-russias-botched-war-with-ukraine-lf9k6tn6g But obviously this is far from proven as of now. It does look like a decent hypothesis, however. Military experts in my country have been completely unequivocal about the fact that the initial attack was idiotic, there was no way any sane strategist should have expected that to succeed. So, apparently, they must have expected something to happen within Ukraine.

I suppose it's just wisest to ignore it. You can see so much of it on these forums, too, although admittedly from only a few users whose idea appears to be that criticism of Russia automatically means wholesale acceptance of everything about "the West". But of course this is not the case at all. Heck, perhaps some of us have been demonstrating against "the West's" actions in our own countries. Perhaps we have been doing that for a long time. Who knows. And here, by the way, is an important difference: in "the West" we can demonstrate without facing up to 15 years in jail.

The story in Deadfire is deeply flawed in the sense that 1) you're told you are in a hurry to stop Eothas, but 2) this isn't true at all, you can take all the time you ever want, and more. And so everything is all over the place, storywise. The world is about to be destroyed, or something, and you can just sail around the archipelago. It's weird. I love the game, but it's weird.

Right. I didn't want to make any guesses, but I had a hunch it might be a country with some dodgy dictator-related history. I would assume that Chile and Argentina, for instance, also have had similar problems with and in their armed forces. Institutions are sometimes particularly slow to change, especially the more power they have or have had. Very interesting (if sad) to hear that, too, so thanks.

Where was this? In other words, who are "we"?

That wouldn't surprise me. The Russian armed forces are apparently an extraordinarily vicious place for anyone to be in -- which partly explains the morale problems the invading army seems to have. Plenty of conscripts commit suicide because of the cruelty they are subjected to in the army. Russia is someting of a totalitarian state, and has been for quite some time. This nearly always means that all the institutions are very, very cruel. Schools, too, but the armed forces and prisons in particular. There's a delightful picture right there: this kind of stuff is what the Russians do to their own people, in times of peace.

Why is dedovschina relevant here? My first thought would be that you might be suggesting he is doing something that has been done to him, but I am not saying that, I would like to hear your take on why it's relevant. And I am honestly curious. (I have not seen the video, nor do I intend to watch it. I also have no interest in any summary more detailed than the one I've already read, nor am I interested in captures.)

There is no limit. During the night of September 29, 1714, Russians killed approximately 800 people on just one Finnish island, with axes. Actually there is a limit. The Russian army will not slaughter more people than there are.

Precisely. I work in an industry where all my work goes through a two-level examination process before anything is published. It is wonderful. This is how it should be. The critical feedback I receive does occasionally hurt my feelings, but this means nothing: it is the end result that matters, and I always encourage my reviewers to be as thorough as possible and as harsh as they need to be. Because once my work is published, it is out there for anyone and everyone to see and criticize. I better be prepared. In an interview, the author Margaret Atwood once spoke about her editor and mentioned what an unflinching critic that person was. The interviewer was somewhat surprised and wanted to know whether the editor never simply deferred to Atwood's reputation and let things go unchallenged. Atwood's reply: "No. Because she's a good editor." All of the above absolutely needs to applied to the political spectrum as well.

Poor education that centers around denial ("we haven't done anything wrong") and revisionism ("actually it went like this, not like that") tends to produce something like this. I.e. people who do not understand the past and are totally unaware of the dangers it has caused in the present. The Chernobyl incident is as concrete an example of this as you can get: there is nothing abstract (like, political thinking) about a group of people ordered to dig trenches in a deadly area. Actual people are actually digging in a place that will actually kill them. The current Russia is also a perfect example of how important it is to have an opposition, politically. Even if it can sometimes degenerate into a farce (as in the US, occasionally, in the very recent past), the dialogue or even outright political hostility between the government and the opposition is extremely healthy for a country. If there is no opposition, the government isn't challenged, and if it remains unchallenged long enough, its thinking will deteriorate -- sometimes even, as in Russia right now, to a level that really doesn't qualify as proper thinking anymore.

Where is "here", by the way?

Btw, from a northern European perspective, these Russian atrocities are nothing new. This is precisely the kind of behaviour that the history of Russia would indicate. For those who have studied history at school somewhere outside northern Europe, many of these historical atrocities are quite possibly something they haven't read about at all, and fair enough: each area tends to emphasize history particularly relevant to that area. This a "fault" we all have. But here's a good example of just one thing Russia is notorious for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland_during_the_Great_Northern_War During that gruesome era, toddlers were tortured in front of their parents and parents tortured in front of their children.

Sweden regards wars as commercial opportunities for itself. See, for example, WW2 and providing iron to the Nazis.

Spring is the worst season for suicides and less obviously the worst season for anxiety. Possibly because of the symbolism ("the world is waking up but I am not"), possibly because of what the increased amount of light and warmth does to us. Hard to get to the bottom of it. But "flowers bloom like madness in the spring" (Jethro Tull).

I wouldn't say melancholy. If I were to explain it in psychological terms, it would be closer to bipolar disorder than melancholy (unipolar), although of course describing it as bipolar is taking it a bit too far. Right up in the north of Europe, there is indeed plenty of cold and darkness, but what you have to keep in mind is that there is also an overabundance of light. Many is the traveller who arrives here during summertime and cannot sleep. Going crazy about life and sex and all that during the lighter months is also not unheard of at all. So yes, the climate and the latitudes do have an effect, but it's more complex than just melancholy. Remember: if you have a one-night stand above the Arctic Circle, it'll last six months!

We can't say for sure, as we just don't know enough about this, but I wonder about the climate as well... There's the old joke: if Dostoevsky had been born in Hawaii, would the world have Crime and Punishment? I'd say pretty much everyone agrees that the answer is almost certainly: No.

This is true. There are all sorts of reasons for why nations are the way they are, as you well know. This is one of them. Another example: Switzerland. Why has it remained successfully neutral for such a long time? Well, look at geography. Does anyone even think the Swiss neutrality would have been possible if the country was as flat as, say, the Netherlands? Switzerland is a mini-Afghanistan right in the middle of Europe, in terms of geography. That helps! Likewise, Russian paranoia is definitely fuelled by the fact once you start marching east from Poland, it's essentially all flat land. Hence the historical need for a buffer zone. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any attempt to update this idea even if Russia is under no threat at all from the west.

German intelligence would seem to confirm that atrocities, such as those in Bucha, are part of a deliberate Russian strategy. There was never much doubt, I would say, but of course it needs to be confirmed. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/butscha-soldaten-besprachen-graeueltaten-gegen-zivilisten-ueber-funk-a-9e01662c-aa7e-4828-bf6f-f662d9b6164e?d=1649315458&sara_ecid=app_upd_903PVrz5TZlGJuLWLqJDVijRko558t&sara_ecid=soci_upd_KsBF0AFjflf0DZCxpPYDCQgO1dEMph It's curious that we still have people on this forum who post "badass" photos of war criminals, regard alternate narratives as "truth bombs" and seriously talk about "psychotic Russophobia" in the West.