One immediate difference is that the mountains of Afghanistan are very ill suited to fighting a conventional artillery centered war, unlike the steppes of eastern Ukraine.

Also I disagree with the second paragraph. As our (inshallah) future president says, “you exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you”. Ukraine’s decision making is dependent on the internal politics of the US and to a lesser extent the EU. I kinda doubt the EU by itself could handle supplying Ukraine if America elects trump and tells them to take a hike). Shit, we are seeing europe turning to fascism before our very eyes now that they’re experiencing real inflation since the Russians cut off their cheap gas.

I am very worried about how that will affect Ukraine aid as europe turns inward and starts focusing on rooting out the evil immigrants who are apparently to blame for all their problems.

Despite all that, as a Russian and a socialist I do hope Ukraine isn’t conquered and the Russian pseudo monarchy has a revolution and is replaced with something more democratic. I just don’t see a clear path to there with how things are going in the world.

If things somehow went very south for Ukraine and they were at risk of losing significantly more territory (not a +1% gain) and Trump gets reelected and the alliance fragments, then perhaps they’d try to negotiate

Shouldn’t it be obvious that at that point, Russian high command would see no point in negotiating much of anything? The best time for Ukraine to negotiate and sue for peace is when they have the initiative due to some technical/strategic innovation that leads to short term battlefield success (at least until the Russians adapt). The gains following the introduction of HIMARS back in 22 are one example. But himars is a child’s toy compared to real military innovation, which was already done in 1945 and we’ve been living in low key terror ever since.

But besides jokes about letting Ukraine have nukes again, I cannot see them ever winning a conventional war of attrition. They simply lack the manpower.

Discord also has an option to pay for server boosting (increased bandwidth and storage limits) which is a much more reasonable thing to pay for imo

Man I remember reading about them in wired back during the bush administration nope it launched in 2010

https://youtu.be/_574Rxxez2c

Varoufakis (Marxist econ professor and also briefly the Greek finance minister) wrote a book about this called “the adults in the room”. He’s biased of course but I respect him a lot

might have something to do with being a (former) colonial empire and having a habit of looking down on other cultures. I’m Russian and we have the same problem

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iirc some phone keyboards autosuggest emoji when you type a word, op probably just didn’t bother to remove it

Could you use a slide rule for that kind of multiplication?

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Yeah point 1 is why I support a peace deal along current lines, maybe with a dmz with UN peacekeepers or something idk. Ukraine is the one getting invaded, they need time to breathe far more than Russia does.

Even if you think Russia can’t be trusted and will invade again a few years of peace is better than ceaseless war

Somehow missile flight time to St Petersburg (also happens to be where I’m from) weren’t an existential threat that lead to an invasion back when Finland joined NATO. Maybe there’s some other factor?

Why did they still lose, was it like a gerrymandering thing?

afaik they can’t do any business with Russian customers since March 2022 because of the sanctions

Semantic/licensing quibbles aside, these futo guys seem pretty based (affectionate). They even use the word “normies” in their goals/value statement.

Seriously tho, with power/wealth as lopsided as it is in america, we really need capitalist class traitors to get anything done and I’m glad people like this exist

That just sounds like a saturnalia

I’m biased but I thought it was pretty clear with portraying Truman as an unambiguously bad guy and Oppenheimer as decent but failing at a critical moment and then regretting it later

What do you mean nobody controls the information? We’re sitting here talking on lemmy, but most people (or at least most vooters) get their information from capital intensive sources controlled by the ruling class. Television is captured and subject to manipulation, mainstream “algorithmic” social media is captured and subject to manipulation, independent (local) print media is dead. I get really depressed when I think about it

That’s not the criteria, the criteria is whoever is the loudest in criticizing the status quo. And the far right is the loudest

The far right would make everyone poorer but wouldn’t change the class structure, so they are allowed to exist while the left gets suppressed. See for example how many of the titans of industry in west germany who supported the Nazis got off scot free (or with much commuted sentences) and got to keep their assets. The system works :)