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It's on their border, and there is a high probability some of that Ukrainian shelling may have crossed over, all bets are off in your phony little "morality" play here. You really are quite the desktop warrior, eh?
There's this insistence on the "high probability" of a possible act that could tenuously be considered provocation for some sort of Russian military action, followed by absolutely no real world evidence of Ukrainian shelling over Russia's border (during the pre-2022 era) in the huge number of posts that followed. This was a common tactic in the thread, introduce arguments and then never mention them again - after they fall flat, though there were a few loyally carrying the Ukrainian nazi argument to ludicrous levels. The real argument was a repeated baseless accusation that I was somehow repeated mass media claims, or western propaganda and lies. And of course, the usual idiotic conceit that if they had ever presented a rational, well-informed argument, it would go unappreciated on me, the sole reader of SoylentNews.
My take is that when all the terrible reasoning and arguments are on one side, maybe it's because the side is deeply flawed in some way. I think for this war it's because the pro-Russian side can only hold its viewpoint via a complete abandonment of reason and morality.
Second, for an example of what we can learn from biased media sources, the Kherson counterattack appears to be happening - both Ukraine and Russia have claimed it is ongoing with very different spins on how well it's going down. But there's a few things I can figure out from this even in the presence of such a fog of war. First, it's a hugely telegraphed and slowly implemented attack by the Ukrainians. That's usually a very strong indicator for failure. If the Russians can't take advantage of that, then they are really terrible even by their past performance in this war. Also, the Russians must really be in a weak position, if it's even possible to get to this point where a snail-paced counterattack can go this far. They might really be terrible enough for the attack to succeed.
We're also starting to see signs of terribleness elsewhere. For example, the US is thought to be running low on supplies of ammunition that they're providing to Ukraine like the HIMARS rockets. I think this illustrates the terrible nature of US military procurement. I think other countries face similar trouble. The military industrial complex is great for sponging up public funds, but not so great for supplying a significant war. Maybe this war will clean out some of the glaring weaknesses in various western militaries, including Russia's, but I'm not hopeful.
Added: Ukraine is tight-lipped now (September 2). My bet is that if they were rolling up Russian lines easily, they'd be non-stop talking about it. So this is an indicator that things probably aren't going well. Absence of propaganda is another way one can use a propaganda source to glean genuine information.
Finally, there's the lunacy of Russia's actions have disrupted the world and status quo in ways that harm billions of innocent people: threatening the food supply and bringing humanity to the brink of nuclear war. My premise is as follows:
- There were peaceful, beneficial ways for Russia to pursue its interests. But that would run into the inherent contradictions of the Putin regime, such as trying to build a powerful Russia while simultaneously robbing it blind.
- Just because someone has an existential concern, doesn't make it a serious one. It should pass a rational person test - would a rational person believe the same in the circumstances. For example, it has been claimed that Russia needed to invade Ukraine before it was invaded by NATO - to avoid the "Stalin mistake" of not invading Nazi Germany before Nazi Germany invaded them. Well, that fails the rational person test. Even now, with Ukraine fighting with NATO weapons, there's no move to invade Russia.
- Threatening with nuclear weapons over penny ante shit. Sure, if Russia had a reasonable existential concern, then they could at least have a reasonable pretext for such a threat. But just mooching some Ukrainian land? That's garbage.
On that last bit, do we really want to live in a world where nuclear threats are an automatic i-win button for stealing shit? There should be consequences else we're just paying the Dane (no offense to modern Denmark, but some of your ancestors were a bit scruffy). - Is it too many to expect that rivals play smart and employ peaceful means to overturn the status quo/unipolar/hegemony rather than kill large numbers of people in venal and often counterproductive conflict?
You can whine about how unfair the mass media, western propaganda lies are, but well, there's this serious problem that we need to do something about before it tears apart our world. My take is that with a focused effort on development, most which doesn't even need to involve government action at all, we can make everyone in the world vastly better off. But the Russian invasion and its tremendous fallout helps hold that back. It makes the world a more terrible place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 05 2022, @04:53PM (7 children)
So Runaway is aristarchus? Weird, why would someone bother? Performance art, or /. troll? Or is it as simple as trying to make a caricature from the Ivory Tower Elitists? Wish we could get MDC back, at least his crazy was palatable. Side note, should you be divulging such info, or is aristarchus so far under your skin you don't care anymore? Also which comment are you referring to, because at first I thought you meant my AC comment, but not being aristarchus or the azuma copycat I presume you meant another but going through the thread there ain't much. Hopefully you're not using IPIDs again since those are shared frequently by people using VPNs and TOR.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday September 06 2022, @05:20AM (6 children)
It will obviously surprise you - but aristarchus' IPIDs tend to be unique. Nobody else has ever used them to contact SN except for aristarchus and his positively-identified sock puppets. We don't care who uses them for connections to other sites, we only look at the connections to our site. If the community shared the same TOR exit nodes or VPNs with others it would make life harder for us, but aristarchus doesn't. Runaway has not used a sock puppet for almost a year.
But we have other ways of identifying his accounts which are just as effective, but then he knows that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 06 2022, @11:52PM (5 children)
Well you are incorrect in your assessment, not aristarchus. I do love how frequently you're wrong, sadly I can not prove it to other readers so they'll probably assume I'm aristarchus just trolling you instead of you being wrong. It is cool though, you gotta manage turds like ari and runaway, no wonder you're paranoid and short tempered.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 07 2022, @12:25AM
Indeed, you can't prove false things. Of course, if you were to give yourself over to honesty and spend more time proving and less time exploring the consequences of your fake claims, you probably wouldn't have this problem.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Wednesday September 07 2022, @06:26AM (3 children)
1. I didn't say you were aristarchus.
2. There are several ways that we can identify accounts.
3. I am not paranoid or short tempered. What gives you the impression that I am? But the person behind the aristarchus account - and many, many other accounts (see 2 above) - is getting very frustrated and has recently started pleading with admins to revert the ban on ACs posting on the front page stories without having an account. The ban on ACs posting on the front page has removed almost all of the rubbish in front page comments, the rest can be managed by simple moderation. There are fewer comments, but only because we have removed the worthless posts that we driving people away from the site. We have achieved exactly what was intended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2022, @06:29PM (1 child)
1. Yes you did, was my or runaway's comment. That is the fun part of knowing my own AC pists and watching you hypothesize who I might really be.
2. Well use them instead of making false accusations, really troubling that you regularly make false accusations though as I said I'm the only one that gets to 100% know that.
3. Are you kidding me? If you were not paranoid you wouldn't make false accusations, and if you weren't short tempered you wouldn't have even reacted. Clearly this on going drama has you on edge, and it should since at least one real person, me, gets to know you are either lying or vastly over confident. Both are bad.
99. I've seen you claim many times that you do not care about people's identities, yet you have outed AC posts repeatedly in the past and you feel very comfortable throwing out false accusations. Now you admit you track users with other methods than the hashed IP? Eek buddy, you're never too old for therapy, or self help meditation whatnots.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 07 2022, @11:56PM
Note that "outed AC posts" just means linking an AC with pseudoanonymous accounts from aristarchus without revealing the identity of aristarchus. So peoples' identities, particularly that of aristarchus have not been revealed. Second, no evidence of false accusations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 07 2022, @06:32PM
Also, I applaud removal of pure AC though I'm happy to point out the hypocrisy from "free speech" defenders.