And media outlets love reporting on them as if they’re imminent.

Do you hear yourself? What do you get out of this?

I don’t think it’s this simple. Russia is primarily relying on China as a buyer for its hydrocarbons. It has a large and developed military industrial complex. Ukraine has had to bootstrap its arms industry since the war started. Russia also imports artillery from North Korea. Europe has historically had a dearth of war material and industry, so Ukraine can’t just order a million shells from Germany or something, although maybe this is where we’re headed. Just because we don’t want Russia to win doesn’t mean they don’t have major military and economic advantages. Ukraine hasn’t gained any territory since the Kursk offensive, which was short lived, and they lose ground slowly every day. While I agree that this can go on indefinitely, I don’t think the sides are evenly matched.

This comment strikes me as incredibly out of touch and full of straw men. Nobody was impressed with the Russian military in 2022. That’s why they’ve been waging a hybrid war since before they annexed Crimea. Their economy is the size of Italy’s. Ukraine has a lot of land area for a power like that to conquer, and so it’s been adrawn-out war of attrition and slow gains. You’re asking where they are? Mostly the same place that they started, with half a million casualties and an occupied pile of rubble.

The useful idiots are the people who drag this conflict out, thinking that one side can win. We need a cease fire, the map has to be redrawn, and security guarantees need to be made to both sides regarding the region. Instead we’ll get another half million dead and a frozen conflict in the middle of the most fertile land in Europe. In the meantime we’ll keep hearing about how another 20 F-16s will turn the tide and Putin’s government is on the verge of collapse. And everyone who points out how absurd that is gets called a Russian propagandist.

They planned for Zelenskyy’s government to collapse. It didn’t. That doesn’t mean they’re unable to carry on the war indefinitely with a major advantage in manpower and war material.

Literally just drew a line in MS Paint. The kind of idea a 5 year old would come up with if someone asked them to come up with the dumbest idea they can think of.

Realizing I have better rights in an Eastern European country with a fascist prime minister is pretty wild

Artificial general intelligence built by people who don’t have any. Sounds great, give them half a trillion dollars!

It’s weird because Xi is a chemical engineer. Putin and Kim I understand being gullible and clueless about scientific matters but I don’t expect the same from Xi.

That might mean they figure out their societal problems before they try to industrialize

Makes sense. Thanks!

Could you please finish your manifesto? I want to know what happens at the end. Do we mass shoot all the boomers?

Yeah every new technological solution has its associated ecological cost. Some are better than others. Guess which ones are the most profitable.

There’s something called the Kuznets environmental curve that explains this pretty intuitively. It’s an optimistic forecast that I only buy when I’m in a good mood.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve

This is from David Graeber’s Debt: The First 5000 Years. It’s an anecdote his grad school advisor told him about a Samoan lying around on the beach.

MISSIONARY: Look at you! You’re just wasting your life away, lying around like that.

SAMOAN: Why? What do you think I should be doing?

MISSIONARY: Well, there are plenty of coconuts all around here. Why not dry some copra and sell it?

SAMOAN: And why would I want to do that?

MISSIONARY: You could make a lot of money. And with the money you make, you could get a drying machine, and dry copra faster, and make even more money.

SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?

MISSIONARY: Well, you’d be rich. You could buy land, plant more trees, expand operations. At that point, you wouldn’t even have to do the physical work anymore, you could just hire a bunch of other people to do it for you.

SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?

MISSIONARY: Well, eventually, with all that copra, land, machines, employees, with all that money—you could retire a very rich man. And then you wouldn’t have to do anything. You could just lie on the beach all day.

In modern society you either work or starve. There’s no adventurous alternative as would have been available before modernity.

I have a friend who looks like this. 6’5, Carhardt jacket, overalls, drinks Budweiser like it’s water. Hangs out with socialists. He says he got his septum piercing mainly so the alt right would leave him alone.

Was it the poet who lives on the beach? That was the only one I’d have been threatened by

Thanks, I had to research to even notice anything was wrong.

Having visited Berlin and Auschwitz, I agree with you. I just implore you not to take the perils of the military industrial complex required to defeat such evil lightly. Especially important is the alienation that it creates in its adherents, which prefigures additional evil. To paraphrase Einstein, our civilization will not survive the next world war.

Since you’re into Douglass, here’s a snippet from across the ocean. One of our greatest poets was Petőfi, who rallied the Hungarians to revolution against the Habsburgs. He died in the war but his compatriot, Kossuth, escaped and toured America, and much was written about him in Douglass’ paper.

The parallels to today are uncanny, with a war in Crimea, a divided Europe, and an overstretched Anglo empire.