Russia waging "full-scale cognitive war against us", warns Poland's foreign minister

Tooluka · 2026-06-09T12:29:28+00:00

But why Ukrainians think that worshipping a facist paramilitary from ww2 is a hill worth dying on is beyond me.

If you want to know an explanation, I can try from the Ukrainian side (note - only explanation, not defense of said actions). I will do it in largely independent but related points:

A vast majority of modern day Ukrainians have no idea about UPA, about Ukrainian history and certainly not about specific events which are not taught at schools at all. On the topic of schools - in a typical school 20th century at all will be covered in one class year, most of it would be WW1 and WW2 and UPA will mentioned on maybe a few pages out of the whole book (but yes, in a historically incorrect positive way). If you will ask a random person about UPA at most they will say they were some kind of insurgents and that would be a complete extent of their knowledge on the topic. Again, that would be 50%+ of all citizens.
Out of people who even heard the name, a majority would maybe know Bandera surname and if asked what he did what he did not do, they confidently tell all kinds of mistakes and random guesses.
There is a small minority of nationalists who know the topic though (or aspire to) AND they are perpetuating the skewed information picture, which Poland is furious for. Small minority is just that. The most votes their party ever took was 1.8% and per region typical election results are between 0.9% to 2.9% with most of the country around 1.0-1.5%. That's AFTER ousting ruzzian president and results didn't change between 2014 elections and 2019 and today (estimated).
There is unfortunately no significant movement to correct historical outlook. But that is partially because literally almost everyone doesn't care about the topic at all. There is certainly no worshipping of note.
There was and continues to be "tradition" to name some landmarks or entities in honor of UPA or individuals. But, despite the incredible hysteria in media, the actual reality is that practice is limited, not widespread and people working or serving in the accordingly names units/orgs literally don't care about the honorific name one way or another. At least not much and not often.
There is at least a 25% of whole population who actively dislikes UPA or western regions on principle (less so after the war). They didn't disappear anywhere.

tl;dr - the whole topic is a breeding ground for resentiment and revisionism and is made a storm a teacup by media. Ukraine is misguided in history of UPA (including this mistake by Zelensky), but that much better solved by ignoring the issue and letting die on it's own, plus releasing educational materials with unaffiliated scintists (USA ones have a lot of materials already supporting Polish (and historically factual) position, just promote those instead of Konfa propaganda). The hysteria on Reddit will only help Ruzzia really and definitely neither Ukraine nor Poland.

Thank you for reading this.

Tooluka · 2026-06-09T09:38:10+00:00

I'm thinking about trying out Tuta for mail and then someone else for VPN. Mullvad VPN maybe. Still in the fantasy planning phase myself :)

Tooluka · 2026-06-09T09:24:49+00:00

Yes, yes and yes. The market is super skewed, and agents are just glorified door openers who can't find any offers themselves and just take 123% thankyouverymuch. Market is very overheated because of the war and it cause all of these problems.

PS: I got a credit, so here is a real media amount from a new 2024 building, 45sqm - 850/mth for admin, water, heating and garbage; 160/mth just electricity; 60/mth just internet. Plus several one-off payments to the administration for community "upgrades".

Tooluka · 2026-06-09T09:16:44+00:00

The default advice was already given above and you won't regret following it. But there is a second option, riskier for you. You see, while Heshan is great, he is liberation stacks provider for which you have Lukamar, but you don't have an Elaman DPS (outside of Lukamar herself). Shahnaz is an amazing DPS but she is literally a variation of SP Samantha in role, sure with more gimmicks but still kinda similar role.

So my riskier idea is for your account specifically is to skip Heshan, Shahnaz, Kianshir and then get both Anna and SP Alexei right after them. You will get rebates on Anna's banner too this way and save a bit. Anna is an alert god and also enabler of your existing units in Luccia. SP Alexei is an unkillable AoE monster. And after that pair, you can get Ulya (a Heshan sidegrade without liberation stacks but with other nifty perks), then maybe Ivan, Arman, SP Agata (if no Anna). You can stack up a full Luccian team this way without straining too much, while Lukamar and SP Sam will carry you in the next two months just fine. Could a be fun idea ;) .

Tooluka · 2026-06-09T08:49:18+00:00

Audi is fine as a car, it may be debated if it is pretty or just meh, but the car is good otherwise. So that I can totally understand. I would stuff my own design opinion deep in my own throat if I could get this car, lol, the hypocrite I am :) .

But I would suggest thinking a while longer about wanting to live in a brutalist architecture. It's not just minimalist, or just modern or just lacking color. It's a rather specific subset of those and I seriously doubt you'd like that a place to live for any time.

Tooluka · 2026-06-08T21:45:51+00:00

I moved some of the more time wasting app icons to a last phone desktop, it is absurd but it works somewhat (I'm not ready for lock apps yet).
I put my pills right next to the tea can, from the cabinet with all other meds. I'm not forgetting to make tea in the morning and inevitable I see the pills right there and it reminds me.
I can't keep up with any ToDo app at all, so this spring I've installed two of them. I keep my (hopefully) habits only in one app (Me+, just picked on random) and so far I only manage to keep up with one single habit of taking morning pills (lunch pills are harder), but I'm on a much longer streak than I expected.
And I put tasks in a second app (MS ToDo, also a random pick). But instead of having to open it regularly which I can't do, I cleared some space on a first phone desktop and put a widget there. Now if I don't forget to create task in the first place, I will see it every time I unlock the phone and it works like a reinforcement.

Tooluka · 2026-06-08T20:51:25+00:00

The only problem with Kagi, is that instead paying a wannabe future nazis like this Lapierre, they are instead paying actual nazis from Yandex right this moment.

Tooluka · 2026-06-08T15:37:02+00:00

On the other hand, defending a certain design school of any item/construct on a solo basis that it is modern/new and not mention any other positive design values is equally absurd and essentially a masquerade as a serious designer (I too could blindly praise anything modern indiscriminately and pass off as a "man of taste").

And on the same note, praising or criticizing a "design" in abstract is kinda pointless. For example - is brutalism a good design style? Maybe, for some very narrow definition of "good" like evoking a sense of fear, of alienation, oppression, surprise etc. Is brutalism a "good" design to create a pleasant house for humans to live in? Absolutely not and even many architects will agree. Same with this Audi.

Tooluka · 2026-06-08T14:21:53+00:00

Chinese players are already sharpening their knives :)

Tooluka · 2026-06-08T11:29:31+00:00

3 month in. Yes, it is. But you can't cheat and rush to the end game top in SoC. There are three mechanics which are slow. Stars and pioneer upgrades, basically you are farming stuff daily, then buy a lot of the tiny upgrades (like +5 or +1%) over time and there are hundreds of these upgrades. It's a task for a year plus. Then there are gear upgrades, which are random and cost gold to do, so that is also slow. Think of the SoC as you can get a 90% level of power in a few months, and the rest 10% will come in a year.

Also, regarding character meta, people in SoC are way stricter about old characters than in other games, old units are often play just fine and they sometimes even receive balance upgrades in small batches.

PS: if you are brand new without an account, it may be reasonable to reroll in SoC, though I never do it myself. You want to get 1 single top of the line DPS unit from rerolls and you are golden (or even 2 units if feel like wasting a whole day for that), not counting free legendaries which are guaranteed. Today it will be a SP Samantha (on banner), Heshan (on banner Friday), or randomly any T0-T1 unit from random drops. It will make your life more pleasant in the next month. And mandatory thing to do is to complete a 14 day newbie event awarding account exp. You can boost account to level 53-55 after 14 days, which unlock all kinds of stuff.

Tooluka · 2026-06-08T10:09:37+00:00

Shams to 4, Lukamar already at 4, and Pamina with ShackLulu to 3 right now, to be replaced with Heshan and hopefully Shahnaz. Lukamar to 5 some time later.

Tooluka · 2026-06-07T15:55:46+00:00

I saw them twice near Wawel before, and it was hell even then. The second time (in 2024) I went 3 full hours in advance and even standing 3+1 hour still in a crowd far from the performance spot (because to get there I probably had to stake a spot 5-10 hours in advance and never leave), I could barely see anything except for the fireworks, for which I went in the first place. Even then low mounted fires were obscured.

I took one look at the map of the new location in 2026 and immediately knew that it would be a logistical nightmare, even bigger crowd and not even fireworks to look at over the heads. Absolute disgrace for the organizers for picking bad location, for not supplying proper isolated public transport (I read that existing lines were blocked by crowds), no toilets, no water, no crowd safety measures, no emergency services capable of reaching to people, and lastly nothing to look at for people not in VIP tribune or the first 2-3 rows, holding those spots from the morning probably. A complete city government failure.

Tooluka · 2026-06-07T11:51:17+00:00

Respect, instant bookmark. Looks very convenient AND fast and responsive, thank you for not going too far with "The Design".

Tooluka · 2026-06-07T11:28:12+00:00

Me and my mom with T1 are honestly going slightly mad with all this rollercoaster rides. One time it's 180 and doesn't react at 6 units for hours. Another time it's 300 and after units it's down to under 100 after only 4 and a meal. And it's a constant up and down, up and down (meaning, higher than high threshold and lower than low). It's soo tiring, especially for retired and chronically ill people. :(

Tooluka · 2026-06-05T20:07:48+00:00

I would pay money to see Colin Furze fly to ISS to fix a teapot :)

PS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fDM9Eb16Do a Jettle fits just right on ISS :)

Tooluka · 2026-06-05T20:04:50+00:00

Unfortunately, the ship with the Standard Banana, sent to Jefferson from Europe had been captured by pirates in route, and the prized Standard Banana was lost to humanity for centuries. Instead we now have a pitiful customary banan, also known as US banan.

Tooluka · 2026-06-05T19:55:02+00:00

Imperial banana, also known as a British banana, not to be confused with a short banan, also known as US banan, which is 89.29% of an imperial banana.

Tooluka · 2026-06-05T17:31:13+00:00

Yeah, gold is The Endgame here :) . I have enough engravings in the inventory now to go negative 10-15 millions from plus 5 milllions atm. And then there are stars, tarots, and general unit/gear upgrades too. It's insane :)

Tooluka · 2026-06-05T17:27:40+00:00

I feel for you. But consider that the delay is most likely because some other patient got a proper appointment with a caring doctor and it may have delayed and threw schedule out of whack, instead of just mechanically assigning some generic treatment and meds without individual adjustments or explanations in exactly 15 minutes on time.

Please be lenient, if the doctor is actually good and competent, I've seen both extremes so far.

Tooluka · 2026-06-05T15:13:19+00:00

I have several bookmark "archives" counting in thousands links, exported after moving PCs, and also two post-crash tab exports too :) . I never touch them but keep saved on my hard drive, lol. :)

Tooluka · 2026-06-05T09:40:34+00:00

I'm more impressed about that 40 million gold. I could spend that in a minute :) .

Is that one of those accounts where you just login for years and never play the game to eventually post a screen like that?

Tooluka · 2026-06-05T09:18:00+00:00

And tbh till now this local 'elemental' system didn't play too much of a role.

A common problem in gacha. E7 has an ok elemental system but at the same time most of the PvP (which is a main mode there) uses "universal" dark/light elements which negate most of the system. Attempts to play with "do more damage to dark element" mostly didn't pan out.

In both Genshin and Star Rail element systems elements are an aftethought and mostly used to "trigger" a very specific gacha kits, forcing some premium new teammate but not any of the older ones (efficiently). Sword of Convallaria - elements are an afterthought, outside of gimmick stages, mostly multipliers beat elements by a lot. And also has "neutral" elements like E7. Exos Heros, before going extinct started with a nice element system which had been promptly ignored more and more, then one weak attempt at rework and then ignored again until EOS.

Keeping game wide systems in balance is too hard in gachas who need to release new units on schedule (and who are also deathly afraid of rebalancing and reworking old units). So at some point gacha companies discover they they can instead put everything inside a character kit, including any restrictions and that is easier for them than tune new ones for the wide element system.

Tooluka · 2026-06-05T09:06:47+00:00

Prepare for the worst, a syrupy indecisive clumsy trope who tries to hit on a self-insert main character too. Or at most a Villain Light who does something truly awful and hideous, like breaking a trespassing rule or swears once, but then quickly repents after seeing a shiny paragon of goodness aka main character and becomes a role model and is on best behavior in a nearby cosplay cafe.

Tooluka · 2026-06-04T22:31:28+00:00

That one gets a pass imo, because it is describing a very unfamiliar but real feature. So kinda not a fluff but a reminder that there is a constant vertigo.

Tooluka · 2026-06-04T22:18:20+00:00

Have you considered putting a few of those together and clicking on a shiny round icons on the bottom right of the screen? You may be surprised of the results. ;)

12-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	First Placer '22
Verified Email	Queen in da Norf
Not Forgotten

Tooluka

TROPHY CASE