This makes sense to me, I just finished Jurassic Park for the first time a little over a month ago. Lots of similarities, cool premise, I don't care much for the characters so far.
The current Russian regime uses heavy Anti-Soviet messaging, and demonizes socialism as much as American conservative politics. The USSR wasn't great for a lot of Russians.
Also they say they don't like government to control things
I think emphasis here needs to be on "they say", yet most non-economic policy American conservatives tout (aka the culture wars) is about injecting more government intervention in the day to day lives of Americans. Ex: Christian Prayer in schools, banning books from libraries, anti-drag bills, banning racial-inequality education, anti-gay legislation, the list goes on and on. American conservatives would love as much control over their population as Russia exerts on theirs.
They hate on NPR and call it state sponsored
Which fits their narrative, when in reality NPR only receives around 5% of government funding. They don't like NPR because they aren't easily able to be bought due to being largely crowd funded and won't immediately parrot their talking points. They would love a state funded media company that parroted their talking points which Fox News comfortably does.
If American conservatives actually believed the their talking points then yes they would be vehemently anti-Russian, but they don't. They're only pro-power which the Russian government has figured out within their borders.
I just finished Jurassic Park, and similarly the plot was fun but the characters were fine. The only character that's somewhat fleshed out is basically a stand-in for Crichton himself and actually has multiple almost chapter long monologues talking about the "arrogance of science."
Which is confusing as hell as the character is supposedly a world-renown and respected mathematician and basically all of the criticisms Malcolm throws at "science" and "scientists" (as if all science and scientists are some unified bloc) would apply directly to other areas of academia....like mathematics.
I didn't even touch on the thematic confusion of pro-corporation messages while the villain is corporation-personified.
I say all of that to say Crichton in my experience is great at finding interesting scenarios and plot lines to explore, and not much else.
I'm not saying Ukraine should/shouldn't be in NATO, but if Ukraine was in NATO would Russia have invaded?
Don't larger military alliance disincentivize violent conflict?
I understand if a conflict were to break out it would be much larger, but we can't know the extent of the smaller conflicts that have not happened due to the existence of NATO.
Healthy habits stack, and maintaining a streak can be a great way to keep good habits going. If that's what keeps you going, keep doing it!
However, don't deprive yourself so much that when you do slip up you say "Fuck it" and go on a binge and eat a Taco Bell 12-Pack.
Give yourself permission to eat food you enjoy in moderation, and have a plan in place to prevent a full fall-off-the-wagon moment when you do eat some pizza and tacos.
Yeah, I still don't know what the fuck that movie is. I've been thinking on it and reading other people's interpretation of it for over a week. I'm still stumped.
I don't know any Korean, but the Korean alphabet is by far the best writing system I've seen.
The characters make the shape your mouth makes while annunciating that letter. It's ingenious.