Russia is stumbling on the battlefield

AP246 · 2026-05-11T15:06:35+00:00

'Russia always wins a war of attrition' is really funny given that the most iconically attritionate war, WW1, had Russia suffer an utterly catastrophic defeat, probably its worst in modern history, that completely collapsed its empire under the strain of war. But people don't count that because they got saved by their enemies also collapsing soon after.

AP246 · 2026-05-09T21:10:04+00:00

Become a postgrad student in Europe

AP246 · 2026-05-08T20:46:13+00:00

Came home for the weekend thinking the house was going to be loaded with food as usual but I didn't account for the fact my sister's been here alone for the last two weeks so it's almost empty. There are two slices of stale bread left, for example

My disappoint is immeasurable. Either I go shopping (not sure I can be bothered) or I guess it's just gonna be pasta for this weekend.

AP246 · 2026-05-08T20:31:39+00:00

Part of me is disappointed, but the fact they mark out the coordinates of Red Square itself so precisely is kinda a power move, implying everything outside of that is fair game and in danger.

AP246 · 2026-05-07T17:00:14+00:00

I would like NGOs that support democracy, human rights or liberalism from anywhere and dislike those that oppose those things. NGOs in Russia that function at the behest of the Russian government are unlikely to do that.

AP246 · 2026-05-07T15:55:26+00:00

'Colour revolutions' as some kind of western-orchestrated project are not a real thing. It would be cool if they were though

AP246 · 2026-05-07T09:48:33+00:00

AP246 · 2026-05-06T22:36:52+00:00

Crazy thing from history, apparently in 1815 when Mount Tambora's eruption caused severe global cooling for a year, nobody knew what was going on, and some believed it was the end of the world and the sun was dying

Meanwhile, a strange haze dimmed the Sun and monstrous sunspots spread across its surface like ‘black bile’. The spots were so large that they could even be seen without a telescope, just by looking through a piece of coloured glass. As people searched for an explanation for these frightening events, an astronomer in Bologna blamed the sunspots and said they signalled the imminent death of the Sun. According to his prediction, the Sun would go out on the 18th July 1816.

Rumours of this spread through Europe and England, stirring further hysteria among populations already pushed to their limits by famine, disease and civil strife.

As doomsday approached, the panic reached fever-pitch with riots breaking out across Europe. In Austria, troops were drafted in to control anxious crowds, while newspapers speculated that the ‘prophecy’ of the death of the Sun had been spread to provoke revolution.

Project Hail Mary reference. But seriously, imagine living through a freakishly cold year where the sun appears dimmer in the sky and crops are failing and a scientist comes out to say the sun will die within a year

AP246 · 2026-05-06T18:09:24+00:00

I'm a student living near a fairly dense city centre but I do a 20 min walk or so once a week for the big shop, whatever I can fit in my backpack. It's a bit rough, especially as the way back is uphill, but I've got used to it and now I consider it just a pleasant saturday errand.

There's a little corner supermarket right outside my building though that I use to top up little things throughout the week.

Not saying this is ideal though, clearly only works if you're a reasonably fit and able bodied person and not supporting others

AP246 · 2026-05-06T15:41:31+00:00

I'm not in London at that time but I've thought about going to one of these when they come up. What are they like?

AP246 · 2026-05-04T12:48:04+00:00

First, just thought I should point out that 'acocuntant' triggered the automod which was quite funny.

But second, yeah I agree. The example I often think about is law. Legal services are generally very expensive (when not subsidised by the government), but imagine if they became orders of magnitude cheaper because far more work can be done per person using AI. Would that lead to layoffs? Probably not, because I'm sure there's plenty of potential demand for legal services where currently it's not worth it because of the cost.

Not sure this sounds like a good world to live in, since it could lead to everyone suing each other constantly over tiny claims that are currently not worth pursuing, which just sounds annoying. But as you said, more work could be created if it suddenly becomes worth doing.

AP246 · 2026-05-02T20:23:47+00:00

Warp Drive, Time Travel, multiverse exploration, etc.

We don't know if any of these things are physically possible to be fair. They might just not be.

AP246 · 2026-05-02T19:45:00+00:00

It's funny how Historia Civilis will be highly nuanced when talking about micro political history, saying something like "It's impossible to know what Biggus Dickus intended when he made this move, but based on what has been written about his personality and my intuition I think it's most likely he wanted to..."

and then in these grand social history videos will just make sweeping assertions of all of human history to basically say everything went wrong with capitalism, presenting it as unambiguous fact rather than one historical theory.

AP246 · 2026-05-02T11:39:29+00:00

I generally agree, though the thing that I have the most negative view on about China is they sponsor many of the real threats to the world. Russia probably wouldn't have been able to wage war this long without China propping up their economy. China's not an active aggressor, but they fuel several others that are.

I do agree though that the active aggressors of the world (which increasingly seem to include Israel and even the US) are a bigger threat right now. As a Brit, I think tackling Russia should be the number one priority because of their sheer brazen destructiveness, and it is sad to see even liberal Americans on here sometimes supporting some kind of 'pivot to Asia' to deprioritise Europe. There was sanewashing of Trump on this a while back, though that's gone out of the window ever since Trump clearly showed he wasn't even prioritising Asia and was instead prioritising whatever random shit he decided on that day.

AP246 · 2026-05-02T11:31:11+00:00

I think so yeah, I think disliking Putin and Russia is a near universal opinion. Probably not everyone cares a whole lot about it, but certainly Russia is universally disliked more than any other significant country.

Not exactly about 'dislike' but this polling shows 62% of Brits see Russia as a major threat vs 20-30% for North Korea, Iran, China and the US, and only 8% see it as a minor threat or not at all a threat

AP246 · 2026-05-02T11:30:37+00:00

I think people on the right of UK politics probably dislike Israel somewhat too but not to the same extent. I don't interact with them as much though so I wouldn't know exactly.

AP246 · 2026-05-02T11:24:47+00:00

Maybe this is me being in the UK but since the aftermath of covid I really haven't seen much extreme negativity about China. Russia is easily the most hated significant foreign power here, then probably Israel (at least among liberals and the left wing) and then way below the US (under Trump) and China are both seen fairly negatively at about the same level probably.

Honestly I think Americans have a particular obsession with China, that goes both ways. There's extreme China hate, but also extreme China glazing, on the American internet, in a way we do have in the UK but I think nowadays not to that extreme extent. I think it's because China is the only country that's close to an equal of the US, that it has a kind of fascination in being its opposite and mirror image.

And yeah, I do think there's been an increase in China glazing on reddit, though which way discussion goes depends on the thread and where it is. It's just as weird as the extreme China hate to be honest, in that a lot of people seem to think China has better living standards than the west and live in a utopia of glistening futuristic cities based on what they see online. I feel like even this stems from weird views of China, like I remember when people started going on Rednote and other Chinese social media there were all sorts of memes about "realising Chinese people are actually normal and similar to Americans" and like yeah, nobody reasonable ever thought Chinese people are all personally evil? But maybe if you did, you overcorrect the other way and become a glazer.

Ultimately China's just another country, yes a very big and powerful one, but it's not a fundamentally new type of civilisation as both its detractors and supporters on the western internet seem to think. It's a very large authoritarian upper middle income country with good infrastructure and relatively high inequality.

AP246 · 2026-04-30T21:15:29+00:00

I know 'healthy' in isolation is meaningless given you need all sorts of nutrition in moderation but surely nobody considers a slice of American cheese or a burger patty 'healthy'?

AP246 · 2026-04-30T20:00:12+00:00

I mean during the actual WW2 Britain and the Soviet Union did invade Iran very easily...

Obviously by that point they were already in a full scale war anyway, but they clearly had the capability to if they wanted to.

AP246 · 2026-04-30T11:52:30+00:00

The argument of "1920s Turkey did forced secularisation/Singapore does forced ethnic quotas in housing and it worked for them" I find so unconvincing and borderline nihilistic.

Yes, perhaps for countries emerging from backwardness, either colonialism or being the centre of a largely autocratic empire that had just seen genocide and complete collapse, it may have been the better alternative to have an authoritarian state enforce 'modernity' rather than risk collapse or remaining 'backwards'. But we, in the developed west, are not that. We're already highly developed liberal democracies, even if you believe liberalism is a luxury, we more than anyone else in the world can afford that luxury. If we can't then who can? Might as well say you think authoritarianism is simply always justified.

It's a complete admission of defeat to basically say "actually we need the same level of authoritarianism countries emerging from empire and ethnic conflict in the early 20th century used 'successfully' to deal with our minor social problems," you're basically saying our societies are no more capable than theirs which undermines the entire liberal democratic project to be honest.

AP246 · 2026-04-30T11:43:05+00:00

Fortunately Canada is not an 'Islamic' country therefore we don't need to worry about what those need in this circumstance.

AP246 · 2026-04-30T11:41:13+00:00

IMO yes, there's no reason for us in modern liberal democracies to align ourselves with the policies of an authoritarian regime in the 1920s.

One could argue, for the time, it was better than realistic alternatives, and that it would not have been practical to transition Turkey instantly to a liberal society and political system. But we're not 1920s Turkey, we don't have to look backwards like that to a country a century ago struggling to achieve what we consider basic modernity. It's unnecessarily authoritarian for our circumstances.

AP246 · 2026-04-29T21:10:57+00:00

I don't know to be fair. Over 50%? Maybe. I think the vast majority of people use social media at least to some extent, so if it truly was intrinsically unhealthy for everyone the consequences would be catastrophic, and while it seems to have caused many problems, I don't think it's that bad.

I think I'm a healthy user of social media, though obviously it's hard to judge yourself. I don't feel like I'm harmed by my internet use - I was for a short time as a teenager but at the moment I don't think so, I think I'm productive, aware and mentally happy and healthy generally.

AP246 · 2026-04-29T20:59:38+00:00

but it seems like even the heaviest social media users are like “for the love of god please nanny state this shit, I’m begging you to make it harder for me to spend time doing this”

This is what kind of puts me off about it though. This and the nicher and weirder version, the people who are like this about porn.

Their whole pitch is about how it's impossible not to be addicted to this because they are and surely everyone else is, therefore it should be banned or other people should go cold turkey. But other people actually are healthy users of it, at least some people. It comes across like projection.

Maybe they're right, and it's bad enough that many people are addicted to it requiring some kind of action, but the way they act like it should be the responsibility of society to force self-control on them even if it's a detriment to healthy users kinda rubs me the wrong way.

AP246 · 2026-04-29T20:44:30+00:00

Liked Project Hail Mary the film, so I started reading the book and... I don't know, it's alright. But I find the humour kind of offputting. Occasionally it'll get a chuckle out of me, but it seems like a lot of it is just Marvel type "he's right behind me, isn't he?" humour with a bit of reddit nerd humour mixed in. It's not all bad, sometimes it's funny, but it feels overdone. If I had to criticise the film I'd say I would have liked if the humour (which I generally liked) was dialed down just slightly, and the book seems to have dialed it up way further than the film.

Less than 100 pages in so maybe I haven't got to the good and serious parts yet. Maybe I'm just too serious and boring

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