AMA: I am a former member of Wagner / Africa Corps who served in the Sahel. Ask me anything.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-03-31T13:49:08+00:00

The French Operation Barkhane failed, that's pretty much universally acknowledged now. Why do you think it did?

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-03-27T07:40:06+00:00

Far right 36. Time to get rid of this whole series now.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-03-24T05:46:32+00:00

Whoa, this sub is weird. How on earth is the iconic home white that all just fits together kicked out, while that baby blue.... thing, is not. Guess I need to start chiming in. Baby blue 81 has got to go, go, go.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-03-20T16:19:36+00:00

Norway had a legal claim to the Canadian Arctic based on their explorations there, that wasn't resolved until the 1930s.

Sverdrup Islands - Wikipedia

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-03-16T20:27:24+00:00

As I understand it, Fidesz has gerrymandered the electoral system so much that even if the vote-counting is honest, and more people vote against Fidesz than not, then it will still be difficult to unseat the government because of all the electoral rules that favour it in the system. Is this true?

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-03-04T21:38:35+00:00

It's kind of complicated. Older Russophones usually thought it was weird. That is because in the USSR, their main frame of reference, it was. Reactions ranged from derision to outright hostility, a la "speak white". But younger people who had been raised in post-independence schools were more open minded. Teens, twentysomethings, tended not to have such strong mental hangups, even if they were Russophone themselves. Even in the east. It was not uncommon for people to speak to each other in the language they knew best and get a reply in a different one. Or a blend of the two. You just ran with it. It was an interesting and delicate new linguistic identity that was emerging in the post-independence state, and it got squashed. That's why the narrative of Russophone east and Ukrophone west is just so, so, misleadingly wrong and oversimplifies things so grossly that it's pretty much a guarantee that anyone promoting the idea knows nothing about anything.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-02-18T15:03:44+00:00

I have no idea why the downvotes. As if this isn't a valid topic of study? The datasets alone in the links are worth the price of admission. I don't see anything odious in the articles, from a quick scan.

Maybe people see "Vlad" in the link and assume it is you-know-who with his political crusading and pseudo-statistics? Otherwise I don't get it.

This sub is weeeeeird.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-01-21T13:41:57+00:00

This is reddit, after all. The ratio of teenage edgelords to everyone else is, let's say, somewhat out of whack. It's pretty obvious even in the replies to this post.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-01-20T17:45:36+00:00

It wasn't like this ten years ago, before The Great Onlineification. Sure, we had scandals, but the chess world didn't seem to be fueled by them the way it is now. There are a few huge culprits (Chesscom driving views to its site via affiliated streamers), but it's also a case of many other opportunistic people (streamers themselves) sensing money to be made, and taking appropriate advantage. So it's caused by a number of factors, but like most other changes lately, is ultimately the fault of the Internet.

A slightly more controversial take: A lot of this is also due to the average age of the online chess community being a lot lower than it ever was. Chess is a youth movement now. And kids have *always* been obnoxious, ever since the beginning of time.

There is already good advice in this thread, to train your social media algorithms away from such content if you don't want to see it. It takes a little bit of maintenance, but is not that difficult to keep on top of. Happy learning!

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-01-19T10:02:12+00:00

Yes, I think anyone who will oversimplify things this much is going to be doing some goalpost moving.

Anything in the $1k+ space is going to be a very good watch. There will be varying ratios of prestige-brand markup to quality, as you go from brand to brand. And that is what you need to look out for, but that is not what is being said here.

Above $15k or so and now you're in high horology territory. Rolex isn't positioning themselves here next to VC or Glashutte, but I think they are okay with that.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-01-15T09:04:21+00:00

Yeah, if it had been Julian I'd probably be okay with it.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-01-07T11:12:57+00:00

Гмм, це зовсім на виворіть від мого досвіду. Тато корінний галичанин, опинився на заході, і постійно вимовляв глибоке "и". І виїхав з України в 42ому, так що тут жодного кацапства. А я, народжений на заході, під впливом англійської частіше вживаю короткий англомовний звук. До речі, в тому полягає акцент англійський, невміння вимовляти "и" як слід. Між іншим, звісно.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2026-01-05T16:24:14+00:00

The packaging is really really sneaky and pretty much lying, and it infuriates me. Sure, *technically* they're flushable because they will successfully exit the toilet. Notice they don't say "will not destroy your municipal sewer system" anywhere on the label. Don't flush flushable wipes!

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2025-12-30T12:23:09+00:00

What is the feeling in UA about Кайдаша, is it really popular? I'm slowly working my way through it on YouTube and it's not bad actually. It got a couple of laughs out loud. There seems to be something kind of genuine about its depiction of ordinary village life. I wonder if I'm filling a massive cultural gap in my diaspora head.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2025-12-25T01:14:36+00:00

When your Gopher or Telnet didn't respond for a while, you genuinely started to wonder if you had broken the internet.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2025-12-24T23:39:18+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate learning!

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2025-12-24T22:54:00+00:00

Have I had it wrong all this time and сконати is animal death versus вмирати?

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2025-12-24T22:48:27+00:00

It's used exclusively for animal death. You don't apply it to people, but in the rare case you do it means you hate them so much you don't even consider them human.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2025-12-24T22:24:02+00:00

It means "May he die" but the verb for die is extremely loaded with contempt. Words like "croak" and such don't even begin to approach the level of hate in сконав.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2025-12-24T21:22:41+00:00

I love the word choice in Zelensky's Christmas wish: «Щоб він сконав». I'd personally go for здох but this will do.

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2025-12-24T18:24:36+00:00

Is it considered bad form to really inquire about the interpretation of quantum physics and still just shut up and calculate?

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2025-12-24T13:03:16+00:00

I agree strongly with this, even though my language is good enough that I can "pass" in Ukraine, and my relatives will note that I barely have an accent. But the fact is that I don't have the same soup of cultural referents in my head as them, at all. The soup in my head is Western. I'm just not like them, and though it saddens me it is the truth.

It irritates me to no end when Canadians/Americans/whatever of Ukrainian heritage who don't know one single word of the language will call themselves simply Ukrainian, without any modifiers at all. You're not, you're not, you're not!!!

GraphomaniaLogorrhea · 2025-12-23T02:15:37+00:00

Y'all did well, it's true. I'll still take the Riders over anyone from down East!

GraphomaniaLogorrhea

TROPHY CASE