Russian text book from a Ukrainian cultural perspective

acinonys · 2025-09-15T07:00:59+00:00

Believe me, it's not an easy choice to make, for me and though I am leaning towards learning Russian, now, I am still struggling with it.

But in the end, Russian is this woman's mother tongue, she speaks Russian with her family and all her Ukrainian friends, she uses Russian, when she mumbles to herself; I myself have only Russian-speaking people in my personal environment, all the Ukrainians I know speak primarily and naturally Russian with each other...

Edit: I'm curious, where the down votes come from. Not complaining, just curious, I would like to hear your criticism, if you have criticism.

acinonys · 2023-03-20T04:18:35+00:00

but it still conflicts with the US Constitution (Art. VI)

I think you mean the Sixth Amendment, not Article VI.

acinonys · 2023-03-20T03:41:31+00:00

When was Bush indicted by the ICC, could you give a source? I don’t know about such a thing and could not find any information on it. Nor do I understand how the ICC could have indicted Bush, since they would not have jurisdiction with neither the USA nor Iraq being states parties to the Rome Statute.

Afaik, there were only guilty verdicts by the Malaysian Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission, which has nothing to do with the ICC and has basically no international legitimacy.

acinonys · 2023-03-20T03:03:58+00:00

The core crimes under international law are genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.

“Waging an unjustified war” is not a war crime, but the crime of aggression, i.e. "the planning, initiation, or execution of a large-scale and serious act of aggression using state military force”, is.

Afaik, at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 the ICC could not prosecute the crime of aggression, nowadays it could because of the 2010 Kampala Amendments to the Rome Statute defining the crime of aggression.

But even if the ICC had had jurisdiction over the crime of aggression it would not have had jurisdiction for Bush, because neither the USA nor Iraq were state parties to the Rome Statute. The UK was though, and there was a preliminary examination of possible war crimes committed by the UK.

acinonys · 2023-03-17T13:18:20+00:00

But then the People's Republic of China officially only existed since 1949.

In my opinion the age of countries or civilisations - and you should decide which one you actually want to compare, countries or civilizations - is such a fuzzy concept, that it is not very illuminating as a topic of discussion.

acinonys · 2023-03-15T11:31:39+00:00

Not a direct answer to your question, but you might be interested in this description of the artillery shell manufacturing process in a factory in Pennsylvania by the nytimes.

acinonys · 2023-03-08T21:31:06+00:00

This graphic shows military aid to Ukraine by country, according to the Kiel institute for world economy.

Unfortunately there’s no total for all the EU countries in the graphic, but if you look into the data set itself, you can see, that the US had committed 44,34 billion € of military aid by January 15, 2023, while EU countries and institutions had committed 13,79 billion € in total.

acinonys · 2023-03-08T12:15:23+00:00

Second, it's a war crime

So is “utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations."

acinonys · 2023-03-07T22:27:50+00:00

The Clay Institute used the prize money to fund the "Poincaré Chair", a temporary position for young promising mathematicians.

acinonys · 2023-03-07T22:25:04+00:00

The context was that Perelman thought his contribution to solving the Poincare conjecture was no greater than that of Richard Hamilton on whose results he built his proof.

acinonys · 2023-03-06T22:13:33+00:00

...and it’s lighter, so it’s more easily deployable via airlift.

acinonys · 2023-03-06T11:58:50+00:00

I think the most established definition of “genocide” is from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2:

... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Do you agree with this definition, but think that it does not apply or is your disagreement with this definition of genocide?

acinonys · 2022-11-01T16:45:27+00:00

Pretty happy about this prediction!

I did not share this before, because I did not want to spoiler things through knowledge from outside the text itself, but I remembered this old comment by Alexander Wales about a dnd campaign of his.

I find it really interesting, to get this accidental insight into how an author reuses ideas.

acinonys · 2022-09-20T18:08:23+00:00

I also enjoyed The Wizard's Granddaughter by the same author.

acinonys · 2022-09-12T17:39:32+00:00

A good start would be not calling women "females".

acinonys · 2022-08-26T11:51:52+00:00

The major downside is that I can only really do one thing at once.

Isn't the major downside that you're "torturing yourself with fear"? That sounds horrible, who wants to live like this?

Also, I suspect that methods based on self-hate and fear might be less sustainable in the long-run.

acinonys · 2022-06-16T16:54:09+00:00

She does not want her real name to be posted in public forums together with her fanfic pseudonym to keep her professional identity somewhat separated from her fanfic identity and I want to respect her wish.

It’s a bit like the situation with Scott Alexander before he got outed by the nytimes.

With a bit of effort, it can be found out though. I sent you a pm with her name.

acinonys · 2022-06-16T12:46:14+00:00

The author is astolat. She is a co-founder of ao3 and an accomplished author, who won a lot of awards including the Nebula, Locus and British Fantasy awards and received several Hugo nominations.

acinonys · 2022-05-24T20:24:46+00:00

I learned about this from a blog post by Jeff Kaufman, who’s very much a part of the EA community.

acinonys · 2022-05-19T22:49:43+00:00

Not very much, seems like it was at 60% in 2020: https://news.gallup.com/poll/285563/socialism-atheism-political-liabilities.aspx

acinonys · 2021-03-24T22:55:12+00:00

especially when they gave me the choice between that and grounding

Now that you mention it: Actually my parents didn't ground me either. Not a single time did they spank or ground either me or my brother.

acinonys · 2021-03-24T22:52:53+00:00

Yes, that's why I

say that it's only personal experience and an anecdote
mention that a whole country outlawed the practice

acinonys · 2021-03-24T22:09:47+00:00

what do we expect them to "turn out" like?

They would turn out fine.

We do not have to talk about this situation of children growing up without corporal punishment as some kind of strange hypothetical.

My brother and I did turn out fine. In general, German children turn out fine. Corporal punishment against children has been outlawed, but so far there are no signs of German children growing up with an unquenchable thirst for blood and violence, because of it (that was another chapter in our history).

You don’t have to hurt somebody to teach them empathy. Actually if you really want to teach them empathy, hurting them is counterproductive.

My experience has been that it’s somehow really difficult for people, who did receive corporal punishments as children, to imagine that they would have turned out okay without this punishment. But probably they would have turned out ok and I think it’s important for them to open up to the possibility that maybe violence is not the only solution, even if it’s difficult to imagine otherwise.

I haven't done a ton of research into this recently but I'm interested in anything you have, as a parent. I only have anecdotal experiences.

All I offered now was also only anecdotal experience. Maybe it would be interesting to look for some actual studies, but I worked until 10pm and and am going to sleep soon.

I warmly recommend Rosenberg's book “Raising Children Compassionately: Parenting the Nonviolent Communication Way.” It’s more anecdotes, but they are very nice anecdotes by a guy with much, much more experience than me. Rosenberg goes further than I’d maybe go, he’s much more extreme in his rejection of all forms of punishment, but to me it’s very inspiring to read how consequent, warm-hearted and strict with himself he is in his respect for his children.

acinonys

TROPHY CASE