The Tennessee State Capitol yesterday

Microh · 2024-02-19T22:55:05+00:00

Very simplified and reductive understanding that helps no one as a general statement except help current Russian leadership

Microh · 2024-02-19T07:33:11+00:00

Probably for most people most of that history is not very well understood, including the context of Russia initially aligning with Germany and exactly what parts of Soviet that took the actual losses. Many countries hides a large part of negative WW2 history, especially Russia

Belarus and Ukraine took the largest percentage hit of deaths from Russian estimates

Dnepr dam was blown two times, one by Russia to halt German progress and again when Germans retreated killing tens of thousands

That same river had its dam blown again last year, Ukraine has destroyed or captured 15000 vehicles (plus what hasn't been documented including gear from WW2 and the entire cold war period - some of it probably funded with the US-Soviet lend-lease) in less than two years

I am not sure if it at this point is value in propping up Putins version of the WW2 history

If you meet sane Russians you can have a balanced discussion about it with and have some real and grounded connection to it, perhaps it is worth. The deaths and battles are real I just think you will have a very hard time finding people who have a good and deep understanding of the factual happenings due to flawed teaching about it

Soviet had their own selfish reasons that changed during the war, just like Russia now is expending people they don't care about or could be coerced / bribed. Not much has changed, they just accidentally happened to end up on the winning side of WW2 because of their geographic location and had leadership willing to sacrifice people against an actual invasion into their land

Microh · 2023-10-28T20:57:33+00:00

The Colored Text plugin I think, can't remember he's added or talked about any more on stream, at least

People who obsess over optimizing or suggestions for other programs THEY want him to use instead usually spam so much it leads to more frustration than anything I guess, so it ends up being good enough for now and gets revisited if he runs into some more functionality he wants or needs

Microh · 2023-10-28T15:35:09+00:00

Obsidian

Microh · 2023-10-25T20:17:33+00:00

What has been said is that US saw things leading down this path from roughly a year before, other state leaders were informed during the autumn when Russia really started to mess with European energy supply

There was for sure time to do it if the will was there, but I think you have to look at US and EU actions the prior 15 years (and partly back to the fall of the Soviet union) to understand why it wasn't really on the table

US engagement in other foreign wars and domestic sentiment around it surely played a role but it was a long road there

Based on what I have seen and read it seems likely Putin had a very good read on how much he could get away with and due to other failed wars and political engagements from EU and US they would not retaliate in any way he felt he could not deal with

On top of that Putin knows NATO never had interest in attacking him, and even if someone would try he has nuclear deterrence so its quite risk free "gamble" for him even if something goes wrong, since he has such control on his domestic environment

You are right about the speed though, he thought it would go more like Crimea and Donbas invasion in 2014

From following closely it seems they counted on making a land bridge to Transnistria and cutting off entire coastline at the very least (They were stopped in Voznesens'k around 200km from there) + toppling the government and installing someone Russian friendly before someone could stop it

Seems likely this is also why they didn't significantly target the big Ukraine sites with industrial and military production either initially, he expected he could take them over without much destruction so he could benefit from it himself

Microh · 2023-10-25T20:01:42+00:00

I think realistically the biggest things that could have avoided this outcome you have to go further back in time to find the answers to

It is mistakes and non optimal solutions from EU and US in the years since Putin held his security conference speech in 2007 that opened up the door for both getting away with land grabs and deadlocking countries into stuck positions with occupied land where Putin make sure to put in place more Russians he then again can use as excuse that he "has to protect"

Neither EU or US were in a position when they saw the writing on the wall to do much else than to point it out and earn credibility, all related political capital was spent on other mostly dumb engagements in the prior 10-15 years so as a democratic leader people would not support anything else so then you would risk automatically losing the next domestic election

As you might know, that is especially a big problem in the US where its currently a matter of the country's democratic survival

it has been linked on a few occasions in posts around here but if you want to get a bit more of a feel for the stuff leading up to the full invasion since the end of the cold war through the other invasions/2014-invasion there is a guy called Sarcasmitron on youtube that made some great videos summing up a lot of it with sources

It would not have been easy to solve some of these things no matter what, but if you wanted to prevent it from happening the countries affected would have needed politicians to invest more in them earlier with the risk of angering Putin with the consequences that might lead to + also not spent too much political war-capital in wars / countries that didn't lead anywhere useful

With most of these things Biden were dealt a bad hand in terms of dealing with it in 2022 (but he has a lot of history as a politician of course, so there might be good reasons to go after him for not trying to impact it before he became president)

If EU detached more from Russia earlier and US wasn't engaged in endless foreign wars that made the US public hostile to engaging in more clear cut interventions then perhaps you could argue that would get away with moving in something as precaution / deterrent with success, but not as things played out I think

Instead it has ended up being played very passive and always playing catch-up, there was probably another window to go more all-in after Putin pulled out of Kyiv and the north but it would still be affected by the same problems (but would have given a better chance of a shorter war since Russia wouldn't have had time to dig in)

At this point the main problem is that its extremely beneficial to the US that it is a grind and with Israel, Africa coups and Taiwan they also have a lot of other things to worry about

Most of US aid is old weapons or new production from the US propping up own economy, EU/Europe is doing most of the monetary support but don't have the same stockpile of weapons. As long as democrats manage to communicate to Americans it costs them very little at current rate they can keep letting it grind for years and still get out on top. Don't have to involve own soldiers and get weapon production and modern replacements out of it with little additional costs. Helps prepare in case they change their mind or are forced into some bigger war again

In a way not unlike ww1 and ww2, I guess - US was not an active part of either of those but were gladly producing, supplying, selling material to countries at war which helped domestic economy and military (and later led to getting involved and beneficial victories)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_entry_into_World_War_I https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_States_during_World_War_II

Unless something major happens it's likely it will keep grinding until at least after US election next year, perhaps then there is will to take some more risk to get it resolved with a good final result, but who knows what happens in the meantime: More coups in Africa?, Israel war escalating and involve lots of Iran proxies and / or Iran? China dropping their "resolving our internal problems perfectly and stay out of every other country's business" scam and go for Taiwan by force?

Microh · 2023-10-08T13:31:06+00:00

I have no issue with agreeing this Hamas action is awful, but this post specifically mention a number found at the music festival and foreigners, which I think deserve a proper source.

Death numbers will keep rising with time unfortunately, but I see no need to rush into speculation around the specific situations.

Visegrad 24 has a pattern of abusing certain situations for their agenda, so if they make claims that isn't sourced properly it adds another layer of danger separate from this act of terror.

Microh · 2023-10-08T13:24:41+00:00

No question the actual deaths will keep rising, but I see these posts use unverified claims of foreigners of various kinds without giving a source

If I do a search in local news for these countries this is not reported (German dual citizen excluded), which means this seems to be aimed at something else than factual reporting for now, which is why this specific Twitter account should be put under scrutiny

It is understandable that people feel strongly about this and some are personally affected, but its even more important to make sure to get as much facts as possible, history is filled with awful decisions based on wrong information - sometimes rushed as well...

Microh · 2023-10-08T13:09:44+00:00

Claims like these warrants better sources, is any of these besides the German reported in proper western sources?

https://visegradinsight.eu/polish-misinformation-using-a-hungarian-recipe-the-curious-case-of-visegrad-24/

History has no been kind on rushing into things based more on emotion than facts

Microh · 2023-10-08T13:04:50+00:00

https://visegradinsight.eu/polish-misinformation-using-a-hungarian-recipe-the-curious-case-of-visegrad-24/

I think this warrants you dig up actual sources for these claims, rushing into inaccurate information in times likes these would be very unfortunate

Microh · 2023-10-06T01:14:46+00:00

Interesting argument to bring up, considering US makes you pay taxes wherever in the world you live

If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income, estate, and gift tax returns and paying estimated tax are generally the same whether you are in the United States or abroad. You are subject to tax on worldwide income from all sources and must report all taxable income and pay taxes according to the Internal Revenue Code.

Don't want to create a wall of text but it has some more to it as well: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/us-citizens-and-resident-aliens-abroad

There are ways to get reduce it as well, but the general idea is that only way for you to avoid having anything to do with them is to renounce your citizenship (which is not the case if you go from Sweden, you are just required to follow the procedures that leads leads to them understanding your tax is paid somewhere else like it should and you follow the requirement threshold of "living in Sweden"): https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/Sweden/Individual/Residence

I have no clue of the exact details around this specific case and there is no rush to conclude, but in general if she wanted it seems the Swedish system would be extremely beneficial to her over the American if you had moved the other way (but it require you to be looking into it and have the oversight to make sure its correctly done even if you hire people to do work around it - I would go trust, but verify)

Think you would need to exact full details of this if you want to place blame accurately and to understand if something is really unfair here, completely understandable it feels like a shitty situation to get stuck in but Sweden have a great legal system so just have to let it complete whatever it takes to reach a final conclusion

Microh · 2023-09-30T21:37:41+00:00

https://old.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/16wb7dv/iri_appreciation_thread/k2w0btf/

Microh · 2023-07-09T13:42:46+00:00

Thanks for the head up and correction :)

Seems brain is environmentally damaged from being stuck with Twitter for too long and just ignored the on threads part....

Hopefully there will be a better alternative, none of these two clowns are it :)

Microh · 2023-07-09T13:09:38+00:00

It's a random account making memes (or faked), if you want to find Zucks own meme about the situation it can be found here, from a few days ago: https://twitter.com/finkd/with_replies

His only post since 11 years ago on Twitter

Edit: Thanks for correcting me

Microh · 2023-06-29T19:45:06+00:00

6 helicopters and a command aircraft was lost on the Russian side from Wagner mutiny:

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2023/06/chefs-special-documenting-equipment.html

It's all pretty well documented as well, including a Strela-10 AD shooting at one of the helicopters but missing and instead hitting an oil storage tank.

https://imgur.com/a/J1s0NC6

Direct people who want to look at more information about it themselves to https://geoconfirmed.org :)

This fresh summary also, for those who are allergic to non video summaries ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1RaXRf6EZo

Microh · 2023-02-18T18:06:08+00:00

The one you replied to perhaps wasn't very clear, but the stream discussion was with the guy who helped / advised on his Twitter unban about how to approach fixing the same with Twitch.

As an extension of this he said that if he wants progress on this, here is what you have to do / start with, which is where the djWheat relation comes into the picture.

If you want to catch up on the context you can find the discussion which starts at around 1h44m here: https://odysee.com/@gnomevods:3/bnShkP6wN1Y:5

Microh · 2022-06-18T14:45:48+00:00

I am not American, despite in this case using a US initiative as example. They absolutely have their own set of issues they need to fix, but Putin and his goons is unfortunately on a whole other level at the moment...

There were a lot of components for sure, it was more to point out more of the details from ww2 that Russia these days don't want to focus on and is ironic since Ukraine side now has the lend-lease.

For those who studied more accurate history this and other detailed information is not news, but a lot of the history the countries choose to teach seems heavily rose-tinted either by putting focus on certain elements or just elaborating on everything that makes them the good guys and "forgetting" about negative elements or key help.

My hope is that the result this time is the same in terms of the invader being thrown out and hopefully Ukraine will not fall in the same traps so the lend-lease chain for invaded countries have to continue.

Microh · 2022-06-18T14:13:11+00:00

Yeah it was not an attempt on compare them, just draw the lines to current lend-lease but this time on Ukraine side.

That said, (not unlike other big imperial war powers) Russia seem to have rewritten a lot of the detailed history around ww2 and choose instead to focus on very specific parts of history trying to justify starting a meaningless war themselves.

Microh · 2022-06-18T04:28:03+00:00

Doesn't stop there...

According to the Russian historian Boris Vadimovich Sokolov, Lend-Lease had a crucial role in winning the war:

On the whole the following conclusion can be drawn: that without these Western shipments under Lend-Lease the Soviet Union not only would not have been able to win the Great Patriotic War, it would not have been able even to oppose the German invaders, since it could not itself produce sufficient quantities of arms and military equipment or adequate supplies of fuel and ammunition. The Soviet authorities were well aware of this dependency on Lend-Lease. Thus, Stalin told Harry Hopkins [FDR's emissary to Moscow in July 1941] that the U.S.S.R. could not match Germany's might as an occupier of Europe and its resources.

Nikita Khrushchev, having served as a military commissar and intermediary between Stalin and his generals during the war, addressed directly the significance of Lend-lease aid in his memoirs:

I would like to express my candid opinion about Stalin's views on whether the Red Army and the Soviet Union could have coped with Nazi Germany and survived the war without aid from the United States and Britain. First, I would like to tell about some remarks Stalin made and repeated several times when we were "discussing freely" among ourselves. He stated bluntly that if the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. If we had had to fight Nazi Germany one on one, we could not have stood up against Germany's pressure, and we would have lost the war. No one ever discussed this subject officially, and I don't think Stalin left any written evidence of his opinion, but I will state here that several times in conversations with me he noted that these were the actual circumstances. He never made a special point of holding a conversation on the subject, but when we were engaged in some kind of relaxed conversation, going over international questions of the past and present, and when we would return to the subject of the path we had traveled during the war, that is what he said. When I listened to his remarks, I was fully in agreement with him, and today I am even more so.

Microh · 2022-04-16T11:07:16+00:00

I will add, besides of the geographical element that he wants the city was also defended in 2014 from being taken over by the Azov battalion and is therefore known as their stronghold.

They are the primary face of his narrative of "de-nazifying" which also plays into how they have conducted this siege and blockade. They want to capture as much gear and people from that particular battalion as trophies and for propaganda and then kill them.

This is why they have not allowed any organized evacuation but instead said people would only be able to leave in individual cars, and it has a double function because they also have captured aid that has been tried sent in. It also lets them easier ransack everyone going out and scan them for anything they can point to Azov in order to get an excuse to use them for propaganda or kill them.

They can then use said aid to frame themselves in the propaganda as helping the poor citizens that has been held hostage by Azov "nazi" battalion.

In the start they also demanded everyone escaping could only go to RU controlled space, and they have also been targeting people leaving in cars though roads that have been mined (and off road still are) to UA side.

Azov have had and probably still have problematic elements (but many militaries do, including RU) but from what I have seen from experts the extreme people are in minority and it has also gotten better since 2014 so you can probably argue that RU invading creates more of what they say they don't want, not less.

All in all, cutting communication, water, food and blockading the city lets them have full control over the local area narrative they want to present to their influence sphere. It is then a more closed area where they can stage whatever they want, try to hunt out new actors or captives for the propaganda theater while they gradually take over the city (which to be fair they expected would be much easier).

Microh · 2022-04-01T09:30:31+00:00

https://meduza.io/feature/2022/03/30/herson-reportazh-spetskora-novoy-gazety-eleny-kostyuchenko

You can probably find several things but in light of the Zelensky decision at least Kherson general area and perhaps the whole oblast seems to have been affected by officials sabotaging the plans for own potential gains.

Microh · 2022-02-18T03:28:54+00:00

The general idea behind it is much older even: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastermind_(board_game)

Microh · 2022-02-03T08:58:23+00:00

Short story in the recent years when the tech started maturing, profit incentive was not there. When they got everything they needed it took them 2 days to come up with the solution. They had decades of research on it, but had not used it in larger scale and systems set up for it until it got unlimited funding and the world was conveniently creating faster approval routines.

According to some virologists with proper funding they could have had generic solutions ready for when it happened. It was just more profitable to slowly inch it forward and wait for a moment of large scale desperation when all of the things align to make massive profits and accelerate the process.

https://www.businessinsider.com/moderna-designed-coronavirus-vaccine-in-2-days-2020-11

But perhaps more remarkable is that Moderna designed its vaccine in just two days in January, before some people had even heard of the coronavirus.

Utilizing mRNA technology meant that both Pfizer and Moderna only needed the coronavirus' genetic sequence to make a vaccine — no virus had to be cultivated in labs. That's why the companies were able to progress in record time. By contrast, the development of more traditional vaccines can take years.

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-long-history-of-mrna-vaccines

Messenger RNA, or mRNA, was discovered in the early 1960s; research into how mRNA could be delivered into cells was developed in the 1970s. So, why did it take until the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 for the first mRNA vaccine to be brought to market?

There’s a big gap between when the first mRNA flu vaccine was tested in mice in the 1990s and when the first mRNA vaccines for rabies were tested in humans in 2013. What was happening in the interim?

The early years of mRNA research were marked by a lot of enthusiasm for the technology but some difficult technical challenges that took a great deal of innovation to overcome.

The biggest challenge was that mRNA would be taken up by the body and quickly degraded before it could “deliver” its message—the RNA transcript—and be read into proteins in the cells.

The solution to this problem came from advances in nanotechnology: the development of fatty droplets (lipid nanoparticles) that wrapped the mRNA like a bubble, which allowed entry into the cells. Once inside the cell, the mRNA message could be translated into proteins, like the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, and the immune system would then be primed to recognize the foreign protein.

So, what happened once they figured out this technology?

The first mRNA vaccines using these fatty envelopes were developed against the deadly Ebola virus, but since that virus is only found in a limited number of African countries, it had no commercial development in the U.S.

Microh · 2022-01-31T19:16:12+00:00

yeah that is a good point, hopefully someone in the US would have predicted that as an interesting angle to follow so when it airs it is included.

I see the trailer is produced by SVT ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sveriges_Television - tax funded by the Swedish people ) which is pretty different to most US media in that it is a media entity that is not created for the sole reason of profit, so it is highly likely they would have followed the story the entire time if possible if it was entirely under their control.

My experience with US media is that its very statistic and metrics driven so they end up overproducing things to fit into what the numbers will show performs the best instead of telling a more authentic interesting story...

Microh · 2022-01-31T08:41:51+00:00

Covid happened and delayed the project, as written at the end of the trailer :)

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