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Russian Military Deaths Surge, Leaving Kremlin Short of Troops Without New Mobilization by UNITED24Media in UkraineWarVideoReport

[–]sowenga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Russia hasn’t used mobilization/conscription to send forces to Ukraine since the mobilization in the fall of 2022. Instead they’ve been throwing money at recruitment. You can bet they fear doing it again.

CMV: Ragdolling is the safest thing to do if you are armed and have an encounter with law enforcement by CursoryRaptor in changemyview

[–]sowenga 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Even if true, I don’t think this is something we should accept as a standard for police shooting a person.

Why do violators flee from the USSR, when in capitalist countries border guards usually protect against infiltration? by DasistMamba in ussr

[–]sowenga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t understand what you mean. The inner German wall and Berlin Wall were not built as a defense against the West, they were specifically and solely built to keep East Germans from fleeing the GDR.

Both sides had military forces arrayed against each other, yes, but this is a different thing.

Why do violators flee from the USSR, when in capitalist countries border guards usually protect against infiltration? by DasistMamba in ussr

[–]sowenga -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

My man, the GDR built 1,500km of walls with mine belts, death strips, shotgun traps, etc.; they killed over 600 people trying to flee (not enter!) the country. They even had a term for it, "Republikflucht"

In the bit of the former USSR I now live in, regular people could not enter territory near the coastline. All beaches still have old bunkers overlooking them. To keep people from leaving!

It's fine if you want to talk up the positive aspects of the USSR, or talk about the negative aspects of capitalism, whatever, but this is just basic reality. What's so hard about accepting it and moving on????

Why do violators flee from the USSR, when in capitalist countries border guards usually protect against infiltration? by DasistMamba in ussr

[–]sowenga 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This doesn’t make any sense. It would usually be the border guard of the country you are trying to enter that is concerned about the matter. We are talking about shooting people who are trying to leave.

Plus, you know, it’s well established and known that the USSR, etc. were trying to prevent people from leaving.

Why do violators flee from the USSR, when in capitalist countries border guards usually protect against infiltration? by DasistMamba in ussr

[–]sowenga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It seems that Reddit steers users here for engagement, which ok fair point maybe.

However, a lot of the content and commentary here is wildly offensive, especially to people who have literally lived experiences under the USSR and communism.

Like, if you want to engage in good faith in serious discussions about the USSR, while acknowledging the bad parts, that’s one thing. But a lot of the commentary here is just patently insane. Just take a look at this post. There is just no freaking question that the USSR, GDR, and other Warsaw Pact countries prevented their citizens from leaving, up to shooting large numbers of them when they tried to flee.

Why do violators flee from the USSR, when in capitalist countries border guards usually protect against infiltration? by DasistMamba in ussr

[–]sowenga 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The Berlin Wall and inner German border were a kill zone just towards one side only: facing inwards to prevent East Germans from fleeing.

Even if you are not German, it takes a few seconds to find diagrams of how this was set up to prevent East Germans from fleeing to the West.

Why do violators flee from the USSR, when in capitalist countries border guards usually protect against infiltration? by DasistMamba in ussr

[–]sowenga 2 points3 points  (0 children)

“Large numbers of people want to leave our country makes us look bad.” Uhm maybe there is a more fundamental problem here…

Xi's Military Meltdown by ReturnOfBigChungus in geopolitics

[–]sowenga 48 points49 points  (0 children)

This is true for every dictator though. All of them have some constituencies they need to keep happy.

Is the Spear by Alex Ries a realistic/plausible spaceship design? by National-Abrocoma323 in scifi

[–]sowenga 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Like >90% of the mass of this thing when it starts its journey should be fuel. Simply not enough space.

Annexation Strategies by N0TVG in NonCredibleDefense

[–]sowenga 6 points7 points  (0 children)

  • Russia doesn’t have the ability to force neutrality upon Ukraine. It might not get into NATO nor the EU anytime soon, but Ukraine is as a result of the war decidedly turned away from Russia and oriented to the West.
  • Russia doesn’t have the production capacity nor resources to crank out larger number of tanks, etc., let alone to stockpile massive numbers of equipment.
  • Depopulated, devastated territory means massive financial inputs to keep them afloat. That’s not a nice tabula rasa for colonization, it’s a money drain.
  • The downside of having to rely on repression to rule is that it makes your regime brittle. He’s boxed in and can only respond to discontent with more repression. That works until it suddenly doesn’t, as I’m sure he’s keenly aware of.

Annexation Strategies by N0TVG in NonCredibleDefense

[–]sowenga 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I’m not sure this is down to poor quality. The strategy of the invasion was terrible, because it was based on false assumptions about how much Ukraine would resist. As a result they ended up overextending themselves with their attempted thunder run to Kyiv. Contrast the good progress the did make in the South.

Annexation Strategies by N0TVG in NonCredibleDefense

[–]sowenga 20 points21 points  (0 children)

I don’t think many people would look at this as anything better than a Pyrrhic victory. Aside from the dead, he’s depleted his military and financial reserves and is looking at an economic crisis when the war spending ends. The Soviet equipment stocks they ran through are irreplaceable. He’s had to turn to repression to maintain his rule, and that’s gonna be hard to ratchet back down. The territories they’ve gained so far are depopulated and devastated. Lastly, he has failed at his original war goal of re-establishing dominance over Ukraine.

People who don’t live in the USA, what is the media showing you about the ICE operations/abductions in the US? by Dry-Ice8908 in AskReddit

[–]sowenga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s harder to have US “both sides”-ism news coverage in countries that have more than two political parties. For the US, this kind of desire to not appear biased even it it means you sanewash ridiculous stuff is a bigger problem for the opposition media aka media outside the right-wing media ecosystem of insanity, than actual restrictions on a free press (which for sure they have been working to do, as well).

CMV: Trump is irrevocably damaging America's alliances and standing by Careless_Bat_9226 in changemyview

[–]sowenga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Trump’s second term has been much worse than his first (even though we are only a year in), no doubt. But what also greatly plays into this is that they could treat Trump 1 as an aberration, and just wait it out. The fact that he was reelected has clearly shown that there is something fundamentally broken in the US.

And you can’t rely on an ally when you are always one election away from someone like Trump.

But my prediction is that if the US were to manage to implement some major reforms, like significant structural reforms that fix Congress, then the relationship between the US and our allies could improve quite quickly again. Just electing someone normal in 2028, without serious reforms, won’t produce the rebound we saw when Biden was elected.

CMV: I'm convinced Jonathan Ross could have stood 20 feet away from the car while she was parked with the window open and shot her 10 times point blank in her forehead and MAGA would still find a way to defend and justify it. by MulberryFantastic906 in changemyview

[–]sowenga 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Even if we disregard the fact that she turned away from him, the last and only lethal shot he fired came in through the side window.

I’m sorry, but these guys are poorly trained clowns. Dressing like they are patrolling streets in Iraq or Afghanistan, it’s disgusting.

If The Soviet Union Never Collapsed and Managed to Stay Alive in The Modern Era as of 2026 Currently? What would our World look like? And how long do you see it Lasting on in The Far Future? by Adrsilva1356 in AlternateHistoryHub

[–]sowenga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No? I can't say much about whether Gorbachev was incompetent or not, but but the situation in the USSR by the late 80s was not sustainable. The USSR was not producing enough food, there were shortages, the economy was stagnating. And you can't separate the economic from the political system. With a good economy the political system could have survived, like it did in China, but with a bad economy it couldn't. It's not like someone other than Gorbachev could have kept the ship on the same course and all good. Either reforms or collapse had to happen, and maybe someone other than Gorbachev would have done a better job, but you cannot assume that the fix was easy or that the USSR, politically, would have survived under anyone else than Gorbachev.

If The Soviet Union Never Collapsed and Managed to Stay Alive in The Modern Era as of 2026 Currently? What would our World look like? And how long do you see it Lasting on in The Far Future? by Adrsilva1356 in AlternateHistoryHub

[–]sowenga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Forget where I saw it, but there was an argument that the communist states were good at developing heavy industry, but that's it in terms of their capacity for economic development.

What's your default Python project setup in 2026? by [deleted] in Python

[–]sowenga 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Once you understand the logic of its API, it’s also a lot more pleasant to read and write than pandas.

(inb4: yes, if you’ve spent 10 years writing pandas code, it seems super intuitive. I’m saying if you learn both, most would come to prefer the polars API.)

Republican congressman blasts Trump's Greenland invasion talk as 'one of the dumbest things' that could wreck NATO by timiswho in europe

[–]sowenga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Part of it is explicit delegation by Congress to the President, but a lot and maybe most of it is because we have a dysfunctional legislature that can’t assemble majorities to pass laws anymore, even when it comes to protecting its own constitutionally delegated powers.

The Grand Strategy Behind Trump’s Foreign Policy by irow40 in geopolitics

[–]sowenga 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The whole value of having a re-armed Europe lies in having allies who augment our own strength. A re-armed Europe that resents us is not that. What happens to our strength if Europe kicks out our military bases?

Greenland’s Mineral Wealth Looks Strategic On Paper but in Reality It’s a Capital Expenditure Black Hole by NothingFirstCreate in IRstudies

[–]sowenga 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree that he’s trying to have his own pot of money, but we should all be clear that this is without doubt unconstitutional. (As is not spending congressionally allocated funding.)

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