The Russia-Ukraine Situation

[snickersnack]

tens of thousands of different genders.

I'm going to reply to your whole post at some point, but I wanted to point this part out. I've heard some people, some on podcasts, who talk about long lists of pronouns, but I wasn't sure if this kind of scale is serious. Is this hyperbole, or do you mean that somewhat literally?

 

[Dredd]

Absolutely!

Also, add me to the PM list please!

@snickersnack Yes, Leo and I are excellent judges.

Now, I have my own criticisms of Zelensky's attire. I think it would be far more fashionable to be painted in the blood of my enemies while wearing a belt of their shrunken heads. Surely someone could have scrounged up the necessary bits.

In all seriousness though, my heart goes out to both the citizens of Ukraine as well as Russia. They will suffer immeasurably and for no reason other than to satiate the ego of one ex-KGB pig who dreams of rebuilding the Soviet Union. **** him. I hope somebody puts a bullet in his brain (along with his billionaire bootlickers that enable him).

 

[snickersnack]

Depends. Could you send a pic via PM? To Dredd, NOT to me!

So.... I started looking for images of Picts for a joke, but then I started thinking, why do they all have tiny, tiny penises? Does the prospect of war have a shrinking effect? Then I gave up.

 

[snickersnack]

@snickersnack Yes, Leo and I are excellent judges.

Now, I have my own criticisms of Zelensky's attire. I think it would be far more fashionable to be painted in the blood of my enemies while wearing a belt of their shrunken heads. Surely someone could have scrounged up the necessary bits.

In all seriousness though, my heart goes out to both the citizens of Ukraine as well as Russia. They will suffer immeasurably and for no reason other than to satiate the ego of one ex-KGB pig who dreams of rebuilding the Soviet Union. **** him. I hope somebody puts a bullet in his brain (along with his billionaire bootlickers that enable him).

Perhaps a String of Ears?

Yeah; it's a tense and difficult situation. I try to consider Putin's perspective, mostly the historical one, but more and more, I see him as not too dissimilar from Hitler in his goals and methods (well...... if my history is right, Hitler was much more competent at war, at least for a while). I read another article today about how Putin wants to deNazify Ukraine (which I now see as projection), and then a bit later one about how Russian troops are moving Ukrainian women and children into Russia. I won't be surprised if we eventually find that they've been killed.

I definitely hope that China doesn't work more closely with Russia as that would extend the war. They may well do that though, as Russian gas is super cheap now.

Edit: Oh, also, there is a standing 1 million dollar reward for Putin's arrest/capture. One of his former oligarchs is now a successful businessman and the US (I think) and he put out a "dead or alive" reward offer, but in interviews, he stresses that alive is muchly preferred.

 

[Glurin]

I've heard some people, some on podcasts, who talk about long lists of pronouns, but I wasn't sure if this kind of scale is serious. Is this hyperbole, or do you mean that somewhat literally?

You know what? I'm not even sure myself anymore. New pronouns and genders are added to the list every single day, and I have actually heard the sincere claim more than once that the number of genders is infinite. It's gotten quite ridiculous with genders like "bugself", "kittenself", "princess", "vampire", "demon", "deer", "aliagender", "novigender", "trigender", "transfeminin", "demigender", "aporagender", "agender", "alexigender", "ambigender", "amicagender", "cloudgender", "colorgender", "boyflux", "demifluid", "genderfluid", "nanogender", "deliciagender", "quiogender", "vapogender", "magigender", "genderqueer", "mascgender", "heliogender", "genderwitched", and on and on and on and on.

We haven't even gotten to the random substitution of consonants and vowels yet.

But what's really sad here is that the vast majority of them are utterly vague and meaningless. They share definitions, refer to wildly obscure momentary feelings that everybody has once in a while, or simply make no logical or scientific sense at all. Yet if you use the wrong one, the alphabet mafia behaves like you've just bitten the head off of their favorite pet.

However, perhaps the most tragic part of all of this is that it diminishes genuine gender dysphoria. People who are actually, truly struggling with their own identity and are not simply looking for an explanation for feeling depressed or following the gender fad for social status. These people, with legitimate gender related issues, are getting swept up into it all with those who are so desperate for any kind of validation that they want to push hormone treatments onto first graders.

I trust you can understand now why I find the whole situation to be quite irksome.

 

[Dredd]

Gender seems to be a topic of interest for you @Glurin and that's fine, but would you mind making a separate thread for it? I'd like to keep this one on topic.

 

[Glurin]

He asked, I answered. That's all there was to it. It was never my intention to turn this into a full discussion on that specific subject.

 

[Glurin]

So I just happened to look on Humble and saw they are doing a Ukraine charity bundle right now, if anyone was interested. Looks like close to 90 games, including Satisfactory, Back 4 Blood, and Fable. Plus a handful of roleplaying books and comics, some game development software and a handful of 3d printable models.

 

[Leopold Stotch]

Perhaps a String of Ears?

I will raise your String of Ears and present a a necklace of human tongues made by the Sweetheart of Song Tra Bong.

 

[krischan]

A seemingly independent Russian agency has stated that 80% of the Russian people are behind the invasion. So if that's true, then F*CK you, Russia! You have as much of an excuse as the Germans had when... well, you know what I'm aiming at.

 

[Noodle]

I couldn't support that statement more, krischan.

 

[Glurin]

Reports coming out of Ukraine now that say they've taken back the Kiev region and pushed back the Russian troops. Good for them if that's the case.

Those same reports are detailing Russian war crimes though. Apparently they've just left a lot of corpses in civilian clothing all over the place. Some of those corpses have their hands tied, meaning it was an execution. They are also booby trapping the bodies and mining residential areas.

Some of that could easily just be Ukrainian propaganda, but then again this is Putin we're talking about. A man who has proven he's not above poisoning his adversaries, among other things. So I wouldn't be surprised if he was guilty of this as well.

The casualty numbers are also interesting. NATO estimates Russia has suffered 7,000 to 15,000 dead. A little over a week ago, a pro-Kremlin outlet leaked the total was close to 10,000, but that was quickly removed and replaced with the "official" number being less than 500. To help put that in perspective, the U.S. lost around 7,000 in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan since the War on Terror began. Russia lost that over the course of just one month. At this rate, in a little over three more months, Russia will have lost more soldiers fighting Ukrainians than we've lost to suicide alone in the last twenty years.

By the way, wounded, the kind that can't just get right back on the line, typically number twice the number of dead. So if we use the 10,000 number, that means a total estimate of 30,000 troops either dead or otherwise out of commission out of the initial ~150,000 - 190,000 invasion force. Just since the end of February when the invasion began.

 

[Noodle]

You must be torn up thinking about all their gender identities that obviously led to their deaths.

 

[snickersnack]

Here's a thought: putin invades Ukraine because he sees the US as weak. The twist is that he's right: we are more politically divided than we have ever been*. Hundreds (or was it thousands?) of US citizens attacked a joint session of congress in order to stop the certification of an election at the behest of the person who lost that election. We are not militarily weak, but the increased polarization that leads some in the US to think we are because of "woke culture" is a symptom of the weakness that we actually have, a weakness that Russia has been working to enhance for years.

Yesterday, 63 house Republicans voted against a bill supporting NATO. I haven't read the whole bill, but I did notice that the word "democratic" shows up a lot. I would not be at all surprised that that's the cause of those 63 votes. That's weakness.

* post civil war, obv.

 

[Glurin]

Hundreds (or was it thousands?) of US citizens attacked a joint session of congress in order to stop the certification of an election at the behest of the person who lost that election. We are not militarily weak, but the increased polarization that leads some in the US to think we are because of "woke culture" is a symptom of the weakness that we actually have, a weakness that Russia has been working to enhance for years.

Not to mention the years of vilification of those people that ultimately led to said riot (which really barely even qualifies for the word). The demands to impeach a duly elected president for the crime of being elected. The eventual impeachment of said president based on knowingly falsified evidence purchased from the Russians. The hundreds of BLM riots resulting in thousands of shootings, assaults, murders, looting, billions in property damage, the attempted annexation of sovereign U.S. territory, fraud, the list goes on, all of which was either ignored, encouraged, incited or praised by powerful figures on the left. Charges against those rioters were being dismissed en masse while efforts to punish the Jan 6 rioters cross the line into outright persecution for what ultimately amounts to criminal trespass. Relentless race baiting and accusations of racism over any and every disagreement. The blatant censorship of non-woke opinions and cancellation of individuals who express them. By the way, half of democrat voters, VOTERS mind you, now think it would be acceptable to use imprisonment as punishment for the crime of daring to question the party line. You know, that thing that is expressly forbidden by that pesky little detail called the first amendment.

Don't even try to claim this polarization is all or even mostly caused by the right wing of the political spectrum. The vast majority of those responsible generally don't vote Republican.

Yesterday, 63 house Republicans voted against a bill supporting NATO. I haven't read the whole bill,

Typical.

I haven't looked at it yet either, so I'm not passing judgement. A cursory search tells me that it's one of those "Think of the children!" acts though. "Pass this bill right now and if you don't then it can only be because you want to watch little children suffer and die!" That sort of thing.

 

[snickersnack]

Don't even try to claim this polarization is all or even mostly caused by the right wing of the political spectrum. The vast majority of those responsible generally don't vote Republican.

So don't even try to do the analogue of what you're currently doing? See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You post like you're angry with me when you don't know anything about me aside from some posts on the internet. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

What about my post places any blame at all? Hmmm? I indicated that what you posted previously is the result of a symptom.

 

[snickersnack]

@Glurin Also, what do you think about what I actually said? Is it possible that political instability is the weakness that putin sees? Can we keep this on topic?

 

[Glurin]

What about my post places any blame at all?

Oh? So you didn't intend anything by giving as the only evidence of your claim the Jan 6 riot with exactly zero context indicating you meant it as anything but putting the blame on Trump supporters for all the polarization going on? And then doubled down when you called out 63 republicans for voting against a bill you haven't read but it has a nifty "democratic" title so it must be good?

Is it possible that political instability is the weakness that putin sees?

Whatever gave you the idea that it wasn't?

 

[snickersnack]

Oh? So you didn't intend anything by giving as the only evidence of your claim the Jan 6 riot with exactly zero context indicating you meant it as anything but putting the blame on Trump supporters for all the polarization going on? And then doubled down when you called out 63 republicans for voting against a bill you haven't read but it has a nifty "democratic" title so it must be good?

You're silly. You're choosing again to argue with me about something that I don't care about. I didn't blame Trump supporters. I described an event that happened as accurately as I can. I said that the polarization is the problem and I named some symptoms. I specifically said that these aren't causes. What don't you get about that? When I wrote the following, I was meaning to convey political instability in a general sense:

...the increased polarization that leads some in the US to think we are [weak] because of "woke culture" is a symptom of the weakness that we actually have...

You don't think that what happened on 1/6/21 had much to do with political instability? So what on your earlier list do you think is most indicative of political instability?

Whatever gave you the idea that it wasn't?

If it's your position that I shouldn't have posted at all, you could have just said that to begin with.


Also, this is off topic again.

 

[snickersnack]

@Glurin Also, to be clear, which of those things would be most notable to putin? You know, the topic.