bugarup

There's also Nikita Khrushchev's territorial redistribution in the sixties, but it would be even harder to pin that on Ukraine than pacts of Sovietistan's collapse. Although Gorth seems to think that "referendum" with Russian military present in Crimea was fair and square () and has this theory that Putler is an anime girl who only went criminally insane after mean girls of West kept blocking his heartfelt, earnest efforts to be accepted as part of the "West mean girls" club or something, so maybe things really look upside down from the distant Down Under. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Halfway into second season of "Stranger things". More Stephen King references than you can shake a roque mallet at, which is a good thing, but too much soap opera otherwise. Perpetually heightened emotions, people being oblivious, blase or just plain careless about cryptic sh†t happening, so much high school teen drama, bleh. The kids are alright though.

So I, uh, made a new friend: Keeps following me around, isn't doing much else, but then there are no enemies on the level no more. I'm a bit wary given his notorious reputation.

That's one good looking merchandise, but the red thing with CDs on the right thwarts the view. You should post another picture without it.

France and Poland had pretty famous insurgencies during the World War 2. Seem to be doing fine in the West.

I think that at least a part of it can be explained by choice between accepting the truth and realizing you suddenly are a citizen of twenty-first century's nazi Germany, and nobody wants to one day wake up as a nazi German, least of all a russian. A very, VERY big part of soviet identity that's been inherited by post-soviet russia is its victory over the third reich. So big in fact, that soviets appropriated a large chunk of Second World War, called it Great Patriotic War and they did it not only because they wanted to avoid the uncomfortable truth of stalin's russia and hitler's germany being bosom buddies before hitler backstabbed his mustachioed comrade by attacking Sovietistan mere months before its own planned attack on Germany, or because they wanted to minimize the role of Western Allies, but because nazi germany left a truly abysmal trail of atrocities as it went in and then got pushed back, much crueler than what it did on its Western front, and victory over such a monstrosity naturally made people feel accomplished and proud. Also, that's exactly the reason why russian propaganda keep throwing nazi and fascism terms like confetti right now - to trigger those decades of conditioning. Also2 that's why I keep my fingers crossed that cognitive dissonance keeps at least part of russian soldiers unmotivated, because nazi crimes did not differentiate between russia, Ukraine and belarus, and now when russian soldiers go to Ukraine and receive orders to bomb civilian objects...well, for anyone half-decent and with half-a-brain it should cause certain parallels.

Mayor of recently occupied Kherson informs that the occupant army brought about ~60-80 agitators for Crimea to pose with Russian army as "Khersonians tearfully thanking their "liberators" for propaganda cameras: https://t.me/khersonskaODA/48 I probably ruined a post from comrade yellow with this. Oops.

"Those evil nazi Ukrainians raised exaggerated alarms because of mere administrative building fire in the big nuclear plant! The nerve of these guys, amirite? How dare they discredit glorious Russian army, the most peace loving army in the world!" - some dumbass tankie somewhere Meanwhile, the most peace loving country's in the world "Parliament" just fully approved the law criminalizing, well, saying anything different than official state propaganda: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-duma-false-news-war-law-invasion/31734629.html Up to fifteen years for "false news". Like for murder. The only thing this law needs now is the signature of septic tank in human form...oh, pardon me, comrade yellow, didn't see you there. Ahem. " The glorious peacekeeper, the sole saviour of the world from putrescent miasma emanating from decadent USA and its nazi fascist allies, may his botox reserve stay bottomless forever!"

I'm not, because when did they not play the blame game? "It's Ukraine's fault we invaded them because they were going to attack us so it was all self-defense!", "We are threatening to nuke the globe because some American official said mean things about us!" Like, of course this justifies everything you did, Russian warship, and port of Fornicate-Yourself is that a way.

Georgia is European too, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan, all Caucasians. And according to ol' Soviet definition of races, they, along with yes, Chechens and also Turks, Iranians, Iraqi, Syrians, Indians and other "brown people", are classified as "Europoid race" aka whitest whiteys that ever whited. Race theories are interesting like that. Also, is comrade yellow's tankie arse aware just how proudly racist his adored Russians very often are?

Whiffs of whataboutism are a bit in odds with your usual analytical approach, Zooraptor. Also, I think the situation when countries care much more about what happens right next to their border than what's going on across a continent and a half can be explained in different terms than "racism", which nowadays gets applied so broadly it starts to approach generic and therefore weightless Internet insult territory.

Find a guy named SInful SInew, poses as a wounded crusader on location called Crimson Dust, bit SW from Drezen. Buff like there's no tomorrow as he's one of those "do him in the first round before he does you", reap 10K+ XP.

in somewhat related news, Russian official media and its watchdog forbids to use word "war" when talking about Russia's invasion in Ukraine, insisting the correct term is "special operation". Russian denizens of the 'net discuss merits of Lev Tolstoy's famous novel "Special operation and peace" and argue which part of "Star special operations" saga is the best.

So it appears that Khuilostan was so certain about its victory it scheduled the following propaganda piece for 26th of February and forgot to take it out for a brief while. Google translate does a decent enough job. https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20220226/rossiya-1775162336.html @Pidesco, he's quoting Khuilostan state media. Decide for yourself how much do you want to trust it.

I've been reading anti-Putin Russian media and their version of why Russia attacked Ukraine with old rust buckets as opposed to what it shows in military parades is simple yet plausible - corruption. Like, everyone there knew that a big part of defense money "were going to deposit as new fat rolls on faces of generals", but appears they didn't anticipate just how big. Anyway, even if so, those parade machines do exist, and even if 4000+ soldiers were killed, there are 100K more and not all of them are cooks, drivers and unmotivated 20yr old conscripts so nothing is set yet. Still, hype balloon has absolutely been popped and I hope the thought of buying into it will make certain decision making people very angry. Also, Lexx, even if news will be slowing down, the fact itself that Europe has a new Hitler will be a bit harder to un-remember. Not to mention re-allocation of defense budgets and sh†t. Did you guys notice technology spurt we had since Cold War was over? Wel...yeah.

What Rathe said - there is difference between meddling (see Russian bot farms activity in social media) and forgery (see any Russian "elections" of past decade at least) . Anyway, political humor, well, differs in quality recently, but I think this one's not that bad:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-no-longer-needs-diplomatic-ties-with-west-ex-president-medvedev-2022-02-26/ Quote of the ducky house owner from there: "He condemned as "really unfair" a decision by the Council of Europe, a rights watchdog, to suspend Russian membership, but added the move provided a good reason "to slam the door" for good on the organisation, giving Russia an opportunity to restore the death penalty for dangerous criminals" So a way to spite vile foreigners is to start killing own citizens. It's so...Russian.

Kadyrov's Chechens are not Dudayev's or Basayev's Chechens. They can probably use madskillz they developed by torturing gays and raping teenage girls somewhere along the war line, but they still have to arrive there. Did anyone than Assad express support to what that shriveled voodoo doll made from boil ridden rabid pig's scrotum is doing? My LOL of the yesterday was Taliban's note of concern and call for diplomacy.

Lets start calling things by their real names perhaps? It's not a conflict. It's a f†cking war.

You seem to believe the creature who gives commands to Mordor troops is capable of rational thinking.

I like this one better:

Who did that sh†tstain of a degenerate fuhrer with botox for brains addressed his rant at? Nobody sane in the world would buy it. There shouldn't be that many subjects of Mordor with brain completely consumed by propaganda, right? But then, what do I know, because here we are - Europe, quite ahead into twenty-first century, with a rabid animal at a helm of a nuclear state.

That's the one! Kinda got him half right on sinew part. And the ghost was just hanging there complaining about getting flayed if you clicked on him, this dude sprung out of the "wounded" guy.

Nah, he was on tiny map a la random encounter, somewhere southwest from Drezen methinks, but am not totally sure. There's a cart, some dead guys, a ghost and seemingly wounded guy, you click on him and whoops, an ambush. Haven't been to Wintersun yet, I'll be on the lookout for this Siabre. Been to the longhouse, nasty ugly annoying enemies, no clue why Cardi B graced them with a song, did not even pay attention to skill XP because it's usually peanuts. Blightmaw I got on my other party, and then on all the following ones I took through Chapter 2 after I compared his XP with his summoner's. Him being easier to kill but giving 5 times bigger XP is one of those Owlcat things I guess. Niiiiiice ring. Me and Ember are both rocking Salamanders, it's a good, useful ring, but this one with its golden words of "Not affected by target's spell resistance" will sure come in handy too.