420blazeit69 [he/him] @ 420blazeit69 @hexbear.net

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1

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505

Joined

4 yr. ago

Plenty of people do hobbies because they want to do hobbies, not to find someone to date. If you date someone from your hobby group then break up, it can fuck up your hobby group. Same risk if you ask someone out and it's poorly received. Depending on the hobby it's harder to find new people for that than it is to find someone else to date. It's similar to dating someone at work in a lot of ways.

The big benefit to online dating is that people are there because they want to date someone.

"Why are you always talking bad about Ted Bundy?"

I don't know, we really have to look at defederating from some of these hostile communities. That rude user just told me to kill myself, whereas my polite Hexbear comrades would only send me an emoji of pig shit if we had a serious disagreemt.

My understanding is that while Russia annexed Kherson, they did not annex Kharkhiv.

I'm very confident the parts of Ukraine that have been trying to leave since 2014 mostly want to leave. I know ethnic Russians and Russian speakers are most heavily concentrated in the east, not just in the pre-war separatist regions but surrounding them, too. I'm sure war breaking out caused a lot of people who were on the fence to pick a side, and I can imagine someone who speaks Russian at home but wasn't radical enough to be part of a pre-war separatist movement throwing in with the much stronger country, that speaks their language, that doesn't have troops running around with neo-Nazi patches and flags.

all data I have seen (I can dig some up if you'd like-do not have it to hand) indicates strong support for the Ukrainian govt against the invasion

What I've seen is breakdowns of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers, which are predominantly in the east. I've also seen pre-war election results that show these eastern regions disagree with western Ukraine on national politics.

I also don't think we're going to see industrial development on par with WWII. My point is that during WWII:

• The USSR suffered something like 25 million deaths, orders of magnitude above even the wildest propaganda about current Russian losses
• They still had the labor power to not only run their industrial base, but to build much of it from scratch

It's a country of around 143 million, and I saw an (undoubtedly cautious) estimates of 11 million+ military age men. They had something like 1.2 million military personnel before the war.

Just a basic understanding of demographics and even one historical example should tell anyone that "they are so short on people they can't even run their industry" is absurd.

It's very much worth a read. The broad strokes are:

• There's a notable difference between the attack towards Kiev and the attack in the separatist regions (it also talks about attacks in southern Ukraine outside the separatist regions, but I think it says they're basically similar to the Kiev attack).
• The attack in the separatist regions were to hold territory with an amenable population. So you have a lot of troops, tons of artillery, and they dug in elaborate fortifications that they will actually stay and defend.
• The attack towards Kiev was an opportunistic raid to divert troops from the main thrust of the attack in thr separatist regions. The article talks about similar raids the Russian Empire did in the Napoleonic Wars, the Union calvalry did in the U.S. Civil War, pretty sure it mentions a Soviet one in WWII, etc. It involved much less artillery because it wasn't intended to hold ground and they wanted to avoid unnecessarily antagonizing civilians they didn't want to govern anyway.
• On that last point, the article also talks about how Russian missile strikes have largely avoided the most damaging civilian targets. It gives an example of striking an electrical substation that converts electricity into a type usable by trains instead of striking electrical infrastructure that is more general purpose (and would shut down broader civilian electricity, too).

The Kiev attack's goal appears to have been "disrupt, divert, and if you see opportunities, take them." I bet if the Ukrainian government had shown signs of folding or if the defense of Kiev had been weaker they would have pushed for more, but that didn't happen, the separatist regions were taken successfully, and the Russian Kiev column had no more reason to be there.

Disgusting is cheerleading who knows how many more deaths that if anything will only weaken Ukraine's bargaining position.

Assessment of Ukraine’s counteroffensive suggests it has retaken 253sq km (98sq miles) of its territory since June.

Less than 100 square miles.

No 69 unfortunately 🥲

No sources on all those questions, then.

So you're saying that it's cheaper for Russia to import from China than keeping production inside? How is that supposed to work?

Jesus Christ... Russia is a big country. Mines and mills are expensive and undesirable to live by so they don't build them everywhere unless it's necessary. Ore deposits are not spread evenly throughout countries, nor are mills. Unfinished products are not very economical to ship long distances. So Russia could have all the (for example) steel production capacity in the world, but if its capacity is mostly in Western Russia and you have a factory in Eastern Russia right across the border from a Chinese steel mill, it's probably cheaper to import than buy domestically.

That was in a day and age where people still had children, and it's no wonder it exploded it was pretty much at zero during Tsar times.

People have kids today you doofus, and not only running production capacity but building it all while fighting a war is an even greater indication of their labor availability than if they had started with a strong industrial base.

What about artillery attrition? Logistics in the rear? What's the average time between Russians setting up an ammo depot and it getting blown to bits? Conscription getting riskier and riskier for Putin? How many reserves have the sides committed to the front?

Do you think you know the answer to any of these questions? I don't see any sources. The bottom line is that Russia has shown the ability to hold its territory for quite some time.

Europe will continue support indefinitely

Lol let's see if Europe's support will last another winter of higher energy prices. The U.S. is the big spender, anyway.

...at a state where Russia, Russia, is importing metals from China

This paragraph is so mind-meltingly stupid I hardly know where to start.

• Countries regularly import metals, metals, from other countries. That's because whether to import is a business decision based on price, not whether you have domestic access to an item.
• It is utterly preposterous to believe Russia is lacking workers. Soviet industrial capacity exploded during WWII, a far larger and more destructive war.

• The front has not moved in most of a year, which includes the recent failed counteroffensive.
• Russia views this as an existential threat. NATO will pay the bills but not indefinitely. Ukraine at some point will tire of a train of body bags with nothing to show for them.
• Russia has much shorter supply lines than NATO.
• NATO pulled out its economic Trump card at the beginning of the conflict and yet here we are.

China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis

Because it's about ending the war, not getting Russian leadership to subscribe to an abstract and unevenly defined principle.

The funniest part of this comment is the idea that Russia will get so desperate for troops that they'll be unable to operate mines

Soviet industrial capacity greatly increased over the course of WWII

It's going to be hilarious in a year or so when we'll have LLM bots churning these types of articles out even at respected news outlets, and all critics of this narrative will still get smeared as being bots themselves

I think a firm majority of people in the annexed regions want to leave Ukraine and are at least fine with joining Russia.

you made no actual argument on why I should believe so

Would anything convince you?

And yes, bringing up allegations of war crimes is a total non sequitur in a discussion about whether the war itself is winnable for Ukraine. No war crime is excusable, but every side of every war commits them.

I said the war is lost and Ukraine should negotiate. You said:

It's not in your hands whether they fight or not, and their motive is just, so why not help them?

I pointed out how ridiculous it is to say "why not help them" is to someone who just said they believed the war was lost. Rather than continue this conversation, you went off on a tangent. Brilliant.