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647
Joined
1 yr. ago

  • But the thing is that Ukraine is getting worn down as well, and the longer this drags out the more emboldened Russia will become, not to mention the fact that right now Ukraine doesn't have the capacity for retaking territory – if the war ends with Russia making territorial gains, you can bet your ass this won't be the last Russian invasion in Europe in the near future.

  • Oh it absolutely will hurt them plenty even if they "win" this war, but the problem is that the more of their strategic aims they accomplish the more emboldened they'll be. Sure, it'll take them a while to regenerate their forces (and their demographics being what they are it won't be easy), but I don't think that they're nearly as screwed as commonly assumed.

    Russians are no strangers to misery, and the masses are generally more than happy to live with a boot on their necks as long as they believe they have their boots on somebody else's neck as well. Casualties (wounded or dead) really don't factor into it, especially considering that it's the non-ethnic minorities who are dispropotionately getting the short end of the stick in the war – which is how it's always been with Russia starting from imperial times. It's a colonial empire but with contiguous borders, and they have no compunctions about throwing minorities in the meat grinder.

  • Oh yeah every place has its bastards, but like you said Bristol should be OK. I honestly remembered it was Birmingham or something, heh

  • Hasn't moved yet. I did a quick search and turns out he's moving to Bristol so it's not as bad as it could be, I had a vague memory it was more up north

  • People often say that seems to be the rationale, but I don't quite buy it. Artificially prolonging the war has much bigger risks involved as it lets Russia not only learn from their mistakes (which they have been doing, regardless of what people often seem to think. Not that they've suddenly unfucked themselves but still), and it also gives them time to regenerate their forces and move their country more and more towards a war economy.

    If the assumption is that EU and US leaders are just cold and calculating but still want Russia to lose, it's hard to imagine they'd choose this drip feeding tactic

  • Seriously, it feels like many "western" leaders want Russia to win. The aid we've collectively given Ukraine is comparatively pitiful, compared to what the risks are if we fucking let Russia win. Unsurprisingly the countries that are doing the most to help Ukraine are the ones that have had to live under Russian occupation.

    Yes, it's great that Ukraine fucking finally got some F-16s, but the total amount pledged is absolutely pitiful and a lot of them won't even be arriving until a few years from now

  • If you’re 100% white you probably won’t notice.

    100% white, cis, and straight.

    There's this transmasc / enby / bigender "influencer" (Eddie Engels) who's planning on moving to the UK (and not exactly to what anybody would call a liberal-minded area either iirc) to be close to his currently long-distance boyfriend, and I feel sorry for the guy. He's just such a quintessentially queer character that it's likely he's actually not going to be safe there, and I really don't know if he's thought this thing through too well…

    the things we do for love 🤷

  • The question is do they even have the capacity for taking schooling "seriously".

    Some probably do. A lot of them don't – there's are multiple empirical scientific studies that show conservatives are more likely to be… well, in a word, stupid. Here's a study I saw someone quote on Lemmy earlier:

    • Does Lower Cognitive Ability Predict Greater Prejudice? [T]here exists a solid empirical paper trail demonstrating that lower cognitive abilities (e.g., abstract-reasoning skills and verbal, nonverbal, and general intelligence) predict greater prejudice. We discuss how the effects of lower cognitive ability on prejudice are explained (i.e., mediated) by greater endorsement of right-wing socially conservative attitude. […]

    Right-wing ideologies offer well-structured and ordered views about society that preserve traditional societal conventions and norms (e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). Such ideological belief systems are particularly attractive to individuals who are strongly motivated to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity in preference for simplicity and predictability (Jost et al., 2003; Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). Theoretically, individuals with lower mental abilities should be attracted by right-wing social-cultural ideologies because they minimize complexity and increase perceived control (Heaven, Ciarrochi, & Leeson, 2011; Stankov, 2009). Conversely, individuals with greater cognitive skills are better positioned to understand changing and dynamic societal contexts, which should facilitate open-minded, relatively left-leaning attitudes (Deary et al., 2008a; Heaven et al., 2011; McCourt, Bouchard, Lykken, Tellegen, & Keyes, 1999). Lower cognitive abilities therefore draw people to strategies and ideologies that emphasize what is presently known and considered acceptable to make sense and impose order over their environment. Resistance to social change and the preservation of the status quo regarding societal traditions—key principles underpinning right-wing social-cultural ideologies—should be particularly appealing to those wishing to avoid uncertainty and threat.

    Indeed, the empirical literature reveals negative relations between cognitive abilities and right-wing social-cultural attitudes, including right-wing authoritarian (e.g., Keiller, 2010; McCourt et al., 1999), socially conservative (e.g., Stankov, 2009; Van Hiel et al., 2010), and religious attitudes (e.g., Zuckerman, Silberman, & Hall, 2013).

  • It just irritates the fuck out of me when people write an obvious swear word but either omit letters or "censor" them with eg. , like that somehow makes it not swearing even though EVERYBODY KNOWS WHAT THAT FUCKING WORD IS.

    Either don't swear if you think it's so bad, or just write the naughty words out instead of pretending "fck" isn't a bad evil naughty word because you hid one letter like a fucking mentally deficient child.

    FUCK.

  • They've been to the same schools and have access to the same information we all have, though.

  • Make blatantly false misinformation illegal

    Notably that'd only help if the majority of misinformation is coming from somewhere your legal system can reach

  • Just goes to show that conservatives are the single biggest threat to civilised societies everywhere.

    How do we deal with them? It should be obvious by now that something needs to be done, but the rest of us can't just go full conservative and shove them in extermination camps like they'd do to us

  • Sour!

    Well, at least the "hard radiation" part: Louis Slotin, one of the victims of the demon core, reported a sour taste when the screwdriver he was using to hold the halves of the core apart slipped and they slammed together and went supercritical.

  • No no, it's a lie. Definitely a lie. Not going to tell you why it's a lie, but it's a lie.

  • Yeah funny how conservatives tend to gravitate towards leaders like that…

  • Heh, yeah I guess it's different if you have to read it for some assignment. I sort of enjoyed it in a masochistic way, although I definitely skipped parts (especially the repeating crap) and like I said I wouldn't call it a good book by any stretch of the definition

  • Oh my post isn't OC by any means; I'm way too lazy to actually make memes, I just repost them like the thief I am

  • Yeah, but tentacles can't see. They're firing blind based on instructions only.

    Since when did spray and pray stop being a valid tactic?!