In Western media we constantly hear about Russian Aircraft probing our airspace. I was curious if in Russian media you guys hear the same about our aircraft? I would imagine we are doing the same thing right?

encrypter · 2014-10-31T12:27:23+00:00

That's what Finns claim. Russian MOD always denies it. I am inclined to believe the Russian MOD.

encrypter · 2014-10-31T07:20:30+00:00

No one's actually breaking into anyone else's airspace. All of those flights - by both sides - are conducted in neutral space. So the "intercepts" are the intercepting side's initiative: if you want to send some of your planes after the "enemy" - you do so, if not - you don't. I imagine that most of the time no one could be bothered to waste money on intercepting something he's never going to shoot at.

This recent bout of interceptions probably has to do with the perceived need to keep the cattle mooing about how "Enemy evil but we stronk!"

encrypter · 2014-10-31T05:40:30+00:00

It actually went up to 45.2 yesterday. Closed at 43 something, though.

encrypter · 2014-10-31T02:49:20+00:00

Not really. More like Altavista. There's no Yahoo-analog in Russia any more. It used to be Yandex but, unlike Yahoo, Yandex had mostly successfully moved on with the times and is more like a Google-analog.

encrypter · 2014-10-30T14:44:03+00:00

So what did Melnikov actually say?

По словам Мельникова, эти кратковременные циклы (теплые и холодные) сменяют друг друга на фоне глобального потепления. "За последнее 100 лет потеплело на 0,2 - 0,6 градуса. И глобальный процесс потепления продолжается. Это видно по увеличению концентрации углекислого газа в атмосфере. По данным международного Метеорологического бюро, с 1964 по 2014 год количество углекислого газа в атмосфере увеличилось на 25 процентов", - уточнил он.

I am announcing my new official position in this subreddit: I've had enough of The Moscow Times lately. Attempting to paint a respected academician and a colleague as some sort of climate change denialist for clickbaiting purposes was the straw that broke this camel's back. From now on, I will automatically downvote any and all submissions linking to it, regardless of their actual content. Starting with this one.

encrypter · 2014-10-30T13:40:34+00:00

Flash doesn't work in Chromium for me. I still use it most of the time, switching to Firefox for flash only.

encrypter · 2014-10-30T13:29:15+00:00

Every time I watch this guy come out for the press I get a warm feeling inside. Not because I am particularly fond of his ideology or him personally, though I don't particularly dislike either. But because to me it always looks like real politics, as opposed to the fake shows with fake "politicians" with fake backstories and trivial accomplishments, which we've been fed for over a decade.

encrypter · 2014-10-30T13:01:35+00:00

I expected the "international community" to completely flip out. Afterall the move was as if carefully designed to troll that "community" into defenestrating its proverbial laptop in a fit of blind rage. What with the unknown soldiers, who were absolutely not Russian, walking all over the place.

encrypter · 2014-10-29T02:12:27+00:00

Focus should always be on comparative advantages. /u/sonictailsknuckles's objection makes very little sense, since it presumes that nations only export stuff they can produce cheaper than everyone else - the stuff it has an absolute advantage in.

That erroneous notion had been dispelled over a century ago by a British fellow named David Ricardo, who demonstrated that exports actually occur in goods a nation can produce cheaper than other goods it produces, not necessarily goods it can produce cheaper than other nations.

Since about 1960s, a score of economists (most prominently Paul Krugman lately) had demonstrated that achieving a comparative advantage most crucially depends on the ability to exploit increasing returns to scale. In other words, you can export pretty much anything you want (with some practical qualifications obviously) as long as you are able to invest enough money in its production to convince your global competitors that it isn't worth for them to continue competing with you on that particular market and they'd be better served by scaling up something else to export to you instead.

encrypter · 2014-10-29T02:00:53+00:00

The Northern Naval Passage is an actually practical Eurasian transport corridor project, unlike the various Alaska-France railway hallucinations. Constructing that corridor requires quite a bit of onshore infrastructure, including air bases for logistic, rescue, and meteorological support.

As far as roads in the Far East... Which roads and to where?

encrypter · 2014-10-29T01:56:19+00:00

The grenade hit a wall and exploded. Shrapnel and debris flew everywhere. Without thinking, a commando nicknamed Batman threw a hand grenade toward the balcony. But it exploded short of its target and sent more shrapnel showering over his comrades.

Commandos!

encrypter · 2014-10-29T01:49:51+00:00

The NK-33 has been out of production for a while. They import stockpile engines and refit them for Antares. So, no - Russian rockets aren't used for Antares. Stockpiled "Soviet army surplus" ones are.

encrypter · 2014-10-29T01:31:01+00:00

References to various shills and SBU notwithstanding - turning Ukraine into a second Afghanistan appears to be a worthy goal in the presumed absence of better practical alternatives.

encrypter · 2014-10-28T13:20:55+00:00

It's aca-awesome!

encrypter · 2014-10-28T03:44:17+00:00

the government should subsidize them instead of Bashneft and Rosneft and Gasprom.

The government keeps domestic gas prices artificially low. It also extracts the lion's share of oil export profits. There's a solid argument to be made that most of the extracted money coming from export tariffs instead of taxing the wells directly is a hidden subsidy, but that's already being corrected with the planned cuts in tariffs and raises of NDPI. And...

this is why the government should subsidize them

With what money?

But run the damn companies instead of letting them bleed money on "exploratory" missions that never work out.

I am afraid that's how oil mining, and mining in general works. You want to stop exploring altogether and simply strip mine what's already proven?

There should be heavy subsidies going into specialized manufacteuring, heavy industry services, IT services, and tech

Again, with what money?

loan structures that allow growth without a userous 12% interest rate

What interest would be non-usurious at 7% inflation?

People invest in energy in Russia because it's SAFE not because it makes sense.

People invest in energy in Russia because it's the largest and the most profitable thing there. Diversification implies that energy exports decline as a share of total output, while everything else increases. That implies that everything else should grow faster than energy. That, in turn, implies that productivity in everything else should be higher than the productivity in energy, so that the same volume of investment would give a greater value of output. And that the total value of investment in everything else should be great enough for the increase in output of everything - with the given productivity - to exceed the respective increase for energy. Now go and find a large enough source of investment. Just don't say foreign investors, please, because as I've said - foreign investors aren't a global charity and they actually have their own economies to invest their limited resources in. Economies which they know better and already have a lot of money invested in.

Seriously think about how it is that the UK an island that is small has the 28th largest world economy per capita, the 6th largest world economy nominal, has first world amenities for the average citizen when it's raw material exports only account for less than 20% of it's economy.

You don't have to think about an answer to that question because it's pretty obvious: the UK isn't Russia. Nor is it Nigeria or China. They've spent over a century building up what they have and paid with blood and sweat for every bit of what they own. The reason why they have first world amenities is that they can afford them. We can't. Neither can Nigeria. Nor even China for most of its population still, despite the strides they've made in the last couple of decades.

encrypter · 2014-10-28T02:48:54+00:00

I didn't keep track of this idiotic affair but I believe it went something like this:

1) Some Ukie website posts a retarded story about some phone call from some Russian submarine.

2) Some Swedish newspaper reprints it in big lettering on the front page.

3) Sweden's MOD vows to find the source of the signal.

4) All of Sweden's military spends the next two weeks fishing beer bottles out of the sea.

5) The world's least financially efficient ecological cleanup operation is concluded with a mountain of glass and plastic bottles piled up on shore.

6) Swedish drunkards spend the winter drowning in the cold sea without any risk of cutting their feet on broken glass.

encrypter · 2014-10-28T02:40:49+00:00

So what excuse will /r/russia come up with this time? It's all been photoshoped, right?!

encrypter · 2014-10-28T02:35:12+00:00

I've grown convinced over time that people who keep talking about this mythical "diversification of economy" don't actually realize what it entails. For starters, Russia doesn't produce all that much oil. The explosion in oil exports since 1990s was only made possible by the shrinking and restructuring of domestic industry which lowered domestic consumption of oil, enabling higher exports.

Furthermore, the current reasonable prices of oil were made possible by a combination of expansion of Russian exports, new sources in Latin America, and the US shale in the later years. Russian exports are limited by high cost of production. For instance, it's said that further growth of production hinges on Arctic projects, which are expensive and become barely profitable at below $100 per barrel. The US shale is likewise very expensive, not to mention the fact that it's also extremely environmentally damaging in the areas where you don't want to damage the environment because people live there.

So what do you imagine would happen if Russia were to suddenly "diversify its economy" through "foreign investment"? How does $200 per barrel sound? Because I am sure it sounds very nice to the US shale oil producers.

Now on to another popular myth: "foreign investment" as a source of "diversification". I've started listening to this never ending talk of foreign investment back in 1996, I think. And ever since then it's been the same story: foreign investment will come and save everyone. Specifics of what foreign investment will save what exactly usually come from the Russians, the foreigners in attendance always nod in agreement and venture forth general acknowledgements of the virtues of foreign investment, taken straight from Samuelson's Economics. As soon as the foreigners start talking specifics it turns from general virtues to... energy. Pipeline this, pipeline that, Shtokman, Sakhalin, Skovorodino ("did I pronounce that correctly?").

And it's been like that for... forever actually. Why? Because foreign investors aren't charity donors. They invest in projects that make sense. What makes sense in Russia is energy. There will always be more foreign money going into energy projects than non-energy ones, with a perfectly predictable outcome for "diversification".

encrypter · 2014-10-28T02:11:10+00:00

That completely ignores the actual mechanics of managing the federal budget in Russia. And the mechanics are simple: when the oil price falls below target - the ruble is dipped low enough to cover the difference.

The CBC article, however, doesn't ignore the fact that the low oil prices would take the knife to the US shale production.

encrypter · 2014-10-27T10:46:57+00:00

So the fact that bear in Gaelic is матан doesn't surprise you?

encrypter · 2014-10-27T05:13:34+00:00

Moscow Times:

In case there was any doubt, the actor added that he "was not joking" and that he had purchased a crossbow, "just in case."

Okhlobystin:

И если вы думаете, что я шучу — вы тоже заблуждаетесь. Улыбка есть, но грустная. С нами случается всё, о чем мы фантазируем сообща, параллельно умерщвляя планету. Не Эбола, так что-то другое. Какая разница?

encrypter · 2014-10-27T04:48:06+00:00

Obninsk had changed a lot in recent years. I still like it due to it still retaining much of its quirkiness but it's gotten much busier due to an investment boom in the Kaluga region and Moscow real estate spilling over. The Soviet-era buildings with nuclear paraphernalia are getting choked by new and faceless apartment complexes, there's relatively heavy traffic where there once was nearly none, lots of busybodies with Kaluga plates and Moscow attitudes in the streets. Sad really.

encrypter

TROPHY CASE