RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive431

How was Trump any different from a neocon?
I've heard some people claim that "Trumpism" is something totally opposed to neoconservatism or is even "paleocon" and "populist" but that makes no sense. How was Trump seriously any different from Bush or McCain or other neocons? Both gave massive support to Israel, took a "tough" line on America's "enemies" (countries the NWO doesn't like), supported war against "terrorists" in the Middle East, supported massive LEGAL immigration and even wanted to increase it because muh GDP, and supported cutting food stamps to take food out of the mouths of hungry children in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Both were superwealthy members of the establishment and darlings of the WEF. Both also hated free speech and supported gay boomer crap like making flag-burning a crime. Trump may not have started any new wars, but he supported a coup in Venezuela, increased aid to Ukraine and Taiwan, greatly expanded drone strikes and would have started a war with Iran (and probably Russia and China) if he were elected to a second term. How was Trump anything other than a neocon exactly like Bush? Batgirl (talk) 07:23, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It's closer than many would have it (and there's many articles on how neoconservatism actually led to Trumpism)(, but some differences that I can spot:
 * A) Trumpism is way more into isolationism and way more friendly gestures to dictatorships with the right "cultural" values. This is most notably seen with how Trump acted with established allies (and established military pacts like NATO), and how the culture warrior right have actually embraced Russia, who is still an "enemy" in traditional neoconservative thought. Traditional Republicanism embraced globalism; Trumpism doesn't quite as much.
 * B) Emphasis on directly articulating culture war grievances with a more, er, "common man" approach. The neoconservatives certainly weren't shy about embracing culture wars, but they saw themselves as an intellectual circle, and applied their racism way more coyly. "South Park Republican" vulgarity, as well as flat out openly embracing the openly racist elements of the GOP, was beneath this crowd. It is not beneath Trumpism. Tucker Carlson actually migrated from a "intellectual Republican" writer to a populist demagogue TV host, if you want an example to compare and contrast. The one item you make you make that I don't think is quite right is Trumpism on immigration policy; from what I see, Trumpism is far more illiberal on immigration policy than neoconservatives, as the neocons did have that "muh GDP" that helped temper hardline tendencies. Trumpism doesn't as much.
 * C) The kooky conspiracy crowd has long been a sideshow of American politics, but generally speaking, not much more than that. People like Lyndon LaRouche were primarily a diversion for humor columnists back in the "good old days". Under Trumpism, anti-science conspiracies like the anti-vaccination movement are front and center. BobJohnson (talk) 13:35, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * D) Willing to directly question/overrule the mechanics of democracy. Old neocons were okay with 'playing fast with the rules' and 'having some pepper in the gloves' re: gerrymandering and similar to get/keep power but there were levels they would not go to. As I've long said, democracy dies when one [or more] of the major players no longer accept the 'rules of battle'. MAGA has not prevailed not due to 'respect for the rules', but simple weakness and incompetence to pull off 'extralegal methods' like the Jan 6 putsch.
 * [I know the balance of probabilities is that the OP is sealioning, but I actually think this is a question which developing a potted reply is worthwhile.] KarmaPolice (talk) 15:04, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The most important difference is open, continuous disrespect for democratic norms. Neocons are far from saints-they are the ones who actually did steal an election-but they are more like sociopathic opportunists than consistent fascists. Pretty much every other difference is merely theoretical, because Trumpists are pretty bad at turning their more heterodox ideas into policy. Forgive my butchered metaphor, but there is a lot more gross difference than net.-Flandres (talk) 20:10, 25 January 2023 (UTC)
 * @op well, for starters, i'm not really sure where you got the idea that "trump supported massive legal immigration" from. he was pretty hardline (by modern, 21st century standards) even on limiting legal immigration. also, would obama be considered a neocon by your definition? he supported israel, war against terrorists, and massive legal immigration; that is, he supported many of the things you highlighted above.
 * the difference, as others have stated, is that trump took a more isolationist position in international relations. and as flandres said, yes, even though neocons technically did steal an election, they did it more so legally over some high-precision hair splitting. they did not necessarily do so using outright violence, intimidation, and disrespect of our democratic norms. (well, there were riots in florida, but they were led by none other than roger stone, who would later unsurprisingly join the trump train, so...) neocons might be authoritarian, but they aren't borderline fascists; at least they have some respect for democracy (see the cheneys, for instance). The G (talk) 18:08, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Trump literally said in his state of the union address that he wanted legal immigration in "the highest numbers ever". Obama was more of a neolib, so he had a lot of policies that overlapped with neocons but used a different framework and rhetoric. Trump talked exactly like a neocon on issues like Iran (particularly the Soleimani assassination) and Venezuela, and surrounded himself with literal neocons like Pompeo and Elliot Abrams. Also, being pro-Russia is nowhere near mainstream in the current GOP. A few fringe elements Are, but most of the current GOP still prefers the neocon tack of accusing Biden of being "too soft" on Putin. Of course, I've seen some idiots claim the Tea Party was "paleoconservative" which is even stupider. Batgirl (talk) 05:02, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * spending ones time deciding who is or isnt a neo con or paleo or whatever the fuck kind of conservative, liberal, leftist one wishes to label them or the issues of the day with is more than pretty fucking stupid and pointless to boot. its always a huge diversion from actually looking at the issues in question. AMassiveGay (talk) 00:02, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Which is why I said they 'played fast with the rules'. They'll be 'creative' with interpretations and shall try to mark the deck when they think nobody's looking, but they won't outright cheat. That's why [amongst other things] Republican governors refused to fix the results in the Orange One's favour and SCOTUS has slapped down MAGA 'judicial activism'. I think most neocons get in their blackened hearts that the moment you 'ditch the rules of the game' the 'other side' shall do so too... and the loser in that situation shall be America. KarmaPolice (talk) 20:48, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * you know, i really feel like op is just asking questions, but i can't quite figure out where they're going with this. The G (talk) 03:52, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Normalising MAGA as 'just another form of conservatism', methinks. But as I said above, I still think this has value as a thought experiment, so if we encounter this question in the flesh etc we have a succinct answer[s] to reply with. KarmaPolice (talk) 08:10, 27 January 2023 (UTC)

The sky is falling
Will mention this - as likely to invite the usual conspiracy theories. Anna Livia (talk) 20:17, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * It's been reported many times before - consensus guess in places like this seems to be that it's just the second stage of the Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket venting excess fuel (liquid oxygen aka LOX). I'm sure someone will eventually run with an amusing "alternative explanation" but r/conspiracy Googles (eg ) seem meh, so far... BobJohnson (talk) 20:58, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * No it was the Bajoran wormhole from DS9. 22:56, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

What would the Indian Alt-right think of american Alt-right ?
Would they be allies or enemies? Edward the eight (talk) 21:10, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Not very well, I think. Most of the American Alt-Right has a definite White Supremacist tinge at best, as well as a fundamentalist Christian imprimatur.  The Indian Alt-right, on the other hand, is so much about Hindu supremacy, both racial-ethically and religiously to the extent that it's been suggested that mandatory sterilization of Christians be implemented to keep the religion to a minimum.  (Oh, and Muslims too, but neither Alt-Right is that concerned there.)  Nah, don't see them as being particularly buddies.  Kencolt (talk) 23:04, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Isn't the Indian alt-right also very pro-Israel and lacks the antisemitic element (even though they paradoxically love Hitler at the same time)? 2603:6081:6DF0:81B0:AC38:C093:7B67:F124 (talk) 23:07, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, that's kind of the tip of the iceberg. Hinduvta (which is pretty much where all the alt-right there resides) has some pretty strange interpretations of history, religion, science (pseudo and otherwise), eugenics, and-- it's like Qanon in much of it's daftness, if a bit less conspiratorial and, in India, more mainstream.  And India's alt-right is a subset of that.  Neither is what most of us here would call a positive. Kencolt (talk) 01:12, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * they would most likely get along fine and find plenty of common ground at an organisational level. they would only really be antagonistic to one and other if they were pushing their specific kinds of supremacy in direct opposition to one another but they are not really because they both in distinctly separate geographical regions, ie hindu supremacists focused on asia, the subcontinent specifically, while us alt right types are focused on north america, and more generally europe. as it is there paths are unlikely to cross anywhere to see the other as a threat to their aims. on a personal level and individually i doubt they would get along too well but at policy level, there could be benefit for the optics of being publicly supportive of each other, to say they are not racist, they do the same too, its just natural and right whats 'ours' ours by right and not have outsiders trying to muscle in. AMassiveGay (talk) 01:55, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I could easily see a ruling Hindutva and MAGA groping towards an 'alliance of convenience'; one which was primarily anti-Chinese and anti-Muslim in nature. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:37, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Right wingers are notorious for putting aside differences until it's time to consolidate their power. See: pre-Long Knives Nazi Party, the Unite the Right rally, etc. Moon Sock (talk) 16:07, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * That's not confined to the far-right. Bolshevik vs. Menshevik schism following the October revolution, and Soviet purges of anarchists. Bongolian (talk) 19:51, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Making generalisations about "right wingers" or "leftwingers" is dubious to put it lightly. Dividing a populations camp into two halves is already fairly useless beyond creating a rough outline of spectrum to align multiple parties in various aspects. Saying "rightwingers" or "leftwingers" do this or that will always be a gross overgeneralisation, guaranteed to be vacuous and unhelpful. All parties in all democracies have a history of temporary instability, destructive infighting, but also "putting aside differences" to strengthen their position. In the U.S. only recently the national republicans sabotaged themselves with the absurd selection of the speakers. Democrats have also done the same in the Senate over petty squabbles recently. The UK Labour party ripped itself apart over a fairly moderate move towards more socialist principles (moderate by European standards) and the UK conservatives have gone through three prime ministers in the last few months, along with petty bickering over a fucking deranged brexit. Italy, Belgium, Spain also have parties throughout the spectrum with moments of pointless infighting and also unity to win elections. It almost seems like it is unavoidable due to human nature, power struggles, personal self interest and so on that stability and infighting will come and go. This is not ideological but simply the way powerstructures work. Overcoming that will be a monumental achievement. Shabi  DOO  23:06, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Pedantic point of the day; the Bolshevik/Menshevik split was not in 1917, but [I believe] 1904. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:09, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Uh oh
NYC has record snow drought. People, let's take climate change seriously. The editor who used to be Andrew5, but retired and is now 47.16.96.33 (talk) 21:25, 30 January 2023 (UTC).
 * Yeah, it's extremely depressing. Hope all these fuckwits who are celebrating a "mild winter" love getting Lyme disease, because the ticks will be out in full force. It's fucking scary. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 02:42, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * "I am announcing the fact that I am retiring from RW. When I joined back in May 2021, immediately after my ban from Uncyclopedia, it seemed promising, and while I lost faith after my sysoprevoke, I came back and it seemed like a good hobby. My hope was that in September, I could apply for the standard offer on Wikipedia and got unbanned. Well, not only did that fail, I got caught block evading so many times that Yamla thinks I will never get unbanned, and so did ArbCom. So I figured I was stuck here. I grasped here as long as possible after the SB drama in late January/February, until I got exiled from here until mid March. Weaving in and out of drama since then, I attempted in November to get LGM ousted from moderator. Well, that failed, and ever since late December he [sic] seems motivated to get me kicked off here, whether it’s 11° at my house or it’s in the 80s.


 * Well, in that case, it became clear that RW isn’t worth it. I have better things to focus on anyway. Good bye. I might drop in occasionally, but only when my life is empty. Andrew5 (talk) 19:04, 16 January 2023 (UTC)"


 * I guess your life is empty now? Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 09:26, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but it won't be for very long at all. Thankfully I still have a life. New month, new oppertunities! 47.16.96.33 (talk) 00:42, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * how in the world did you get blocked from enwiki and uncyc? my my. Servasym (Talk / Contribs) 21:26, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Rest in peace, Tom Verlaine
May you forever improvise sick guitar solos for the goats in the sky. Moon Sock (talk) 00:41, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Black Hebrew Israelites are hilariously bad
https://youtu.be/yfLDVJerOqk

They are just as loony as white nationalists. Good for a laugh and nothing more. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 17:33, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * They even murdered Dr MLK Jr's mom. They were targeting MLK Sr, but he wasn't there, so...
 * And they were the ones who indirectly set off the Covington fiasco, which was a massive own-goal by the media. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 01:11, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That was the media's fault, not theirs, though. The media decided to promote a story because it fit a narrative they wanted to push, but didn't do any fact checking first.  Allegedly the kid managed to settle a few lawsuits, but given that most of the suits were dismissed by the courts, I don't think he got that much.  Honestly the press has too many protections in cases like those; sometimes you have to report a story before all the facts come in, but once they do come in and even if the facts show the opposite story, there's no real requirement to change the story or even not to keep repeating the same story.
 * I'm reminded of the Dreyfus Affair. The French were in the middle of one of their Republics, and the country was divided into two sides; whether France was for all citizens regardless of origin, or if France was to be for the ethnically French alone.  A military officer named Alfred Dreyfus, who was Jewish and thus not ethnically French, was charged with treason over his alleged role in helping France lose the Franco-Prussian War.  Before all the evidence was presented, the French public had decided he was either guilty or innocent based on their own views.  The more nationalist types needed Dreyfus to be guilty to show that the non-French should not have a place in France, whereas the more egalitarian types needed him innocent.  More evidence came out, showing that he was, in fact, innocent, but the nationalists simply could not accept it, no matter how increasingly embarrassing it was to believe him guilty.  But we, today, are not much different.  Once we hear a story that fits our worldview, how willing are we to admit the original story was wrong?  15:03, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

neo-nazi trolling
Why is National Socialism considered evil because it supposedly killed six million jews, but Christianity which murdered 100 million Native Americans is socially acceptable? Batgirl (talk) 21:38, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Hiya Ken. 21:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Ken, go piss up a rope. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 21:49, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * "supposedly" bitch go fuck a cactus. 22:48, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Delicious bait. 10/10 -RipCityLiberal (talk) 22:52, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * that is most probably not ken. not even close. you know there are other trolls? AMassiveGay (talk) 23:04, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Ideally, no ideology or movement which is destructive should be socially acceptable. Also...this is very low-quality trolling. Shabi  DOO  23:09, 31 January 2023 (UTC)


 * 100 million native Americans? Really? Someone doesn't want to know history http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/variables/smallpox.html Cardinal Chang (talk) 21:18, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Is Armed intervention in Haiti inevitable?(Discussion about the current situation in Haiti)
I hate to steal the title of the video like this but I came across this on my Youtube feed and was hoping to gain a more nuanced perspective on this topic as I haven’t seen it discussed much here or by the mainstream media.SensaurC-137 (talk) 23:44, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * US won't lead it, they want Canada to. Don't think Trudeau has the political capital to pull this off. It's just a lose-lose situation.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:52, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I did a Case Study on this in my Global Politics Class a few months ago, and it's a really tough situation because the biggest problem is the government is just incapable of re-gaining its monopoly of power without aid. The largest city there, Port-Au-Prince, only very recently got their electricity (not really, there was a fuel terminal which was the only way that people in the city could get fuel for their generators) back, and that was after a few weeks of govt. forces having to fight their way through the terminal to re-take it from the gangs that control like 60% of the city. Adding on top of that, the only reason they got the terminal back was through a US/Canada aid package which gave the govt. a bunch of MRAPS and other military equipment, it's just a bad situation all around. The Prime Minister recently asked NATO and the US for help with an actual armed intervention, but given the history of interventions in the region, every single time we tried the last few hundred years it always ended badly (oh, and also the PM is in gray waters with whether he is legitimately the PM but that's another issue).
 * Cutting through the random factoids though, the end result is that intervention isn't inevitable, but it seems right now to be the only true way to get Haiti out of this and civilian deaths if we want the fighting to stop in the near future. But given how no one in the US or Canada is for interventionism right now, doesn't reallllly seem that likely. Stingraey  Angy  07:17, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Looks like some people will never see the light of day again
https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.go.com/amp/US/wireStory/us-charges-4-key-suspects-killing-haitis-president-96828759

Four United States citizens were arrested for the assassination of the Haitian president. Looks like they will get life in prison if convicted. Better best criminal defense lawyer on the planet. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 00:49, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

what's the hell is Turkey doing?
And why do they get to choose who's in nato? (sry for any typo's) Wheelsontheancom (talk) 18:44, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * new countries can only be admitted by unanimous vote from the sitting member states, which gives each member state a whole lot of discretion to either confirm or deny new members. The G (talk) 18:47, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Whether Finland or Sweden join NATO is moot in the short-term because both countries are supplying Ukraine with military equipment and have renounced neutrality towards Russia. Turkey is more valuable as a NATO partner than not. Bongolian (talk) 18:57, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The problem is that (as G Man said) NATO needs an unanimous vote. And Turkey's leader - "strongman" Erdogan - had full garage of axes to grind - and this is an excellent opportunity to get the sharpening tools out.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:05, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Turkey's only addition to NATO is control over the Black Sea. If it was located anywhere else, it'd be worse than worthless as an ally.  21:15, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That Quran burning in Sweden sure happened conveniently right before Turkey approved Finland but not Sweden. Smells like a psyop.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 00:43, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * You mean the one organised by a journo with "Kremlin ties"? Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 04:46, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The reason why Turkey, and by that standard every member of NATO, gets to choose who is in NATO, is because of the very nature of the alliance. Say that Spain was attacked by Morocco: servicemen of the United States, United Kingdom and likely every NATO country would be sent to fight and sometimes die for another country. That is seen as acceptable because it is a mutual defense pact. By allowing NATO to override member country vetoes, it undermines the legitimacy of the alliance. Turkey's soldiers being sent to die for a country that their government never agreed to allow into NATO would make NATO seem illegitimate until the concept of a defense obligation breaks down. SwampFox (talk) 05:37, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Great post. MirrorIrorriM (talk) 10:19, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I believe it's simple, really - it's all about Turkey's pet hate - the Kurds - and Erdogan's pet hate - Turkish [mainly secular] dissidents. Sweden has traditionally given both groups santurary and is often the 'exile of first resort' for figures on the run from the Turks. Therefore, I see an unspoken quid pro quo being offered; Sweden throws all the dissidents/Kurds under the bus [including accepting extradition requests from Ankara without question] and the signs are that Stockholm is starting to bend to these demands.
 * Oh, and for the people saying NATO doesn't need Turkey... no, we really do right now. They are the most clearly pro-Russian member but are also key in helping Ukraine. This is a classic Erdogan 'I'm important, I shall name my price' situation. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:22, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Turkey is one of the most essential members of NATO both because they have one of the largest militaries in the alliance (even though the professionality and competence is definitely in question) and most of all their control of the Black Sea. NATO basically has Russia in a very unfavorable position considering their Baltic fleet is trapped between EU and/or NATO countries, Black Sea fleet trapped because of Turkey and two other fleets where the United States could easily make short work of them. Turkey is necessary to ensure that Russia's surface navy can be easily destroyed without doing any significant amount of damage. If Sweden and Finland get into NATO, Russia will lose all control of the Baltic altogether. Another aspect is that they still house nuclear weapons which have been placed in a very favorable position to strike Russia, even if just gravity bombs. SwampFox (talk) 17:07, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Turkey also has air bases in the Middle East that are important for counter terrorist operations. 18:55, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, the Black issue is that Turkey is not allowing non-Black based Russian ships into the Black [which provides a bit of a breather for the Ukranians]. However, they are doing this out of operation of the Montreux Treaty of 1936, not simply because 'NATO asked them to' [though they are doing this because other NATO members leaned on them to actually enforce said treaty]. Yet Erdogan cannot push too hard because basically, Turkey also needs NATO/EU. Her military is dependent on it for spares etc for much of their kit, is heavily intergated into the European market and most importantly, ultimately it is not in Turkey's interest to be left 'in the cold' facing a Russian regional hegemon alone - the only real 'friend' she has right on her borders is Georgia, and in a dispute scenario Tbilisi is more likely to be 'the load' than 'the asset' to the Turks. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:19, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There's also the canal to the west of Istanbul that should be open in another year or two, which is part of why Russia started the Ukraine War NOW. Basically, Russia currently has a huge knife at Europe's throat by being able to cut off literally half of European trade from the world by closing the Black Sea.  All the treaties regarding the Bosporus apply ONLY to the Bosporus and not, theoretically, a canal dug around it, which would effectively hand over the Black Sea to NATO.  19:34, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Nah. If this war was launched due to a ticking clock, it was for Putin's health, not the digging of a canal. And while a canal would allow [at least theoretically] a NATO carrier or two to enter the Black, to be honest it's not really 'vital' as a) the Russians would be bottled up there regardless, b) most, if not all areas can be patrolled by land-based planes and c) all NATO ships save carriers and [perhaps] the Zumwalt destroyers can already enter the Black if so desired. KarmaPolice (talk) 20:09, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually by treaty the Zumwalts CAN'T enter the Black Sea. Basically, no more than a certain tonnage of warships may ever be in the Bosporus at any given moment... which means that as long as the Russians keep a rusty destroyer there, nobody else is allowed in.  At least, not if we want to pretend we care about treaties.  A canal around it?  Suddenly the treaty is not violated by dozens of ships showing up...  20:53, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

It's also important to note Erdogan is facing an election this spring and he's ramping up the nationalist rhetoric for domestic support.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:05, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, he has reason to be worried since Turkey's economy is still pretty fucked right now. 03:15, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Currently there's a dead end, but probably only until US-led pressure on Turkey mounts further, and some time passes. On Sweden's end, it's otherwise looking miserable. Turkey currently demands that Sweden change its constitution to add anti-blasphemy law if Sweden wants to get approval, in breach of the agreement signed by Sweden, Finland, and Turkey last year.


 * Sweden also hoped to get Turkish help with about a dozen extraditions of gangsters who fled to Turkey to avoid facing justice in Sweden, reaching a dead end. Here's an interview with Erdogan's spokesperson (video in English, except when the journalist explains he repeated his questions in search for clearer answers in a voice-over), where he makes it clear that, according to Turkey's government, any suggestion or "insinuation" that Turkey is protecting gangsters from abroad is both unacceptable and terrorist propaganda.


 * The issue is that Turkey hands out citizenship to anyone who buys expensive-enough property, meaning immunity to prosecution from abroad. In a cracked encrypted chat, one high-profile Swedish gangster referred to Turkey as a "gangster's paradise". In earlier years, gangsters from Sweden fled to Spain, but Sweden began to work with Spain to get to them and stop that -- then they switched destination to Turkey instead. Erdogan's government apparently values the money from foreign mafiosos enough that individuals wanted by Interpol can find a safe haven there if only they have enough money to buy a citizenship.


 * In a recent attempt to convince Turkey, Sweden's NATO negotiator with Turkey emphasized that these druglords are also funneling money into PKK and that it would therefore be in Turkey's interest to get to them as well, but it didn't work. Meanwhile, this year there's been a record number of shootings and explosions, a number of them organized or ordered from crime bosses hiding in Turkey, the most infamous of which is a man mostly known by the nickname "Foxkurdish". --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 12:57, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Accurate portrayal of Mega Churches
https://youtu.be/Bqavq5pUC04

This video is so true. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 23:12, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * That was really good! That guy should found a church to spread his message. JumboWhales (talk) 06:24, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

Death and Fear - a question...
I'm not going to link to it but our CP friend Ken wrote an..err.."article" about atheist's having a fear of death, and he suggests it is a unconscious belief in god/s. Not addressing Ken but asking here - what do people think about death? I am interested to know because I have no fear of death. I fear the manner of death (like burned in a fire, a terrible car crash etc) but the actual dying part doesn't scare me in the slightest. For me asking what happens to you after die is the same asking what happened before you were born if you follow me. What are your thoughts? (No one fucking listens to me anyway but I am still posing the question). Love, Acei9 01:29, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I hate it. I can't deal with the fact that I'll probably cease to exist once I'm dead. The only thing that scares me more than death is living beyond the Stelliferous Era. Though, granted, I won't feel anything so my fear of death is pretty irrational. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 01:44, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Speaking of the Stelliferous Era have you read that book Five Ages of the Universe? Well worth your time. I read the whole book in one sitting over whisky in a pub in the middle of some hick town. Acei9 01:49, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It's one of those things were it is easier to say that you are not afraid but having never faced it personally how would you know? From what I can gather from the atheist's I met in my life most are not afraid of death, but it should be specified that most are not really afraid of being dead. The idea of your sentience ceasing to exist isn't exactly frightening when you comprehend it because it is literally something you will never experience. Of course I have no real data on this so there is no justification of generalize from that for atheists as a whole.  You may not live your life afraid of death, but in the process of dying the rising levels of CO2 will induce an involuntarily state of panic (unless you are loaded up on drugs or are already unconscious). If you ever experienced a panic attack before I would imagine it would be a lot like that sweet hell. Difficult to imagine though if you never personally felt panic. Dying itself may very well be a terrifying and painful experience, but a fear of that is not something unique to atheists.  I have known plenty of religious people who fear non-existence or the process of death itself being torturous. The good news is that most of us will die in the hospital and it seems for the vast majority of people to which that happens to that isn't a particularly painful or uncomfortable experience. I personally watched my best friend die at the age of 21 in a hospice.  He was unconscious for hours with a death rattle but the nurses stated that he showed no signs of distress which is something dying patients can still communicate by facial expression. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 01:50, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * (EC)(EC) Actually, the idea that a with all my memories will possibly form due to quantum fluctuation in the future is even scarier. The fact that it might happen many many times is even worse. I hate pain, and having your brain in the void is probably extremely painful. And yes, I've read it. It's fucking great. GeeJayKWhere all evil dwells Where every lie is true 01:52, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It's one of those things were it is easier to say that you are not afraid but having never faced it personally how would you know I have. I was revived in an ambulance about 6 months ago. I also suffer severe panic attacks. I don't fear it because... I don't feel there is anything to fear. It's...nothing. Game over man, game over. The Boltzmann brain idea is fascinating though Acei9 01:54, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I remember having an episode almost 10 years ago when I truly thought I'd drop dead at any moment, I had way too much caffeine and my heart was racing for 12+ hours. Though I was and remain an agnostic, it was the one time I can ever remember hoping there was some kind of afterlife, because I couldn't comprehend the idea of dropping dead without something to look forward to. Since then I've learned more about psychology and how we're basically wired to think ahead for at least a few moments at a time, so while the notion remains frightening I at least feel better knowing that any trepidation is simple biology; the fewer ghosts in machines, the better for me. Goodness knows I'd love if there was some sort of coherent explanation for an eternal paradise, but since there's not I'm content to live the life I know I have with the intent of getting the most out of it; if there's no guarantee of an afterlife, I'm not selling myself short with what I have now. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 02:23, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I am an existential nihilist in every way but this outlook gives me such joy and purpose. I wrote an article about it for a major magazine in NZ but I don't want to share it, even though it is under a pseudonym. Anyway my point was that because I know, or at least have a strong inkling, that this is it I derive so much pleasure from the world. This is it. This could be my last walk on the beach as the sun rises before I go to work. The last time I hug my 9 year old daughter and tell her I love her and hear those sweet words - "I love you too, Daddy". My final cigarette as darkness creeps around me each night on the patio facing the ocean. All I have is now. Death will come, it is the great equaliser. There is nothing to fear. There is only reasons to appreciate the moment. Because you won't get another chance...Acei9 03:17, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I fear death just as much as I feared the time before I was born - which is to say not at all. Not that I SEEK death - life is to be enjoyed and I only get 1 shot at it so hoping to make hte most of it I have left.  Pain and suffering OTOH are to be avoided. Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 04:11, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Soong May-ling (who I find one of history's most fascinating figures) ended up outliving her siblings, nieces, nephews, and good friends by a lot. She was an ardent Christian and said that she thought God was punishing her by making her live so long after everyone she knew had died; since I have none of the personal relationships she ever developed, I'd find living to her age (or more!) a far more appealing outcome than what the most likely alternative is. That said, just recently I watched my uncle die of an extremely aggressive cancer (he had HIV for 20+ years and the cancer he had was something HIV patients are especially vulnerable to getting); if I learned I was in that situation I'd plan a few now-or-never type trips, then either find a way to go out in a (possibly literal!) blaze of glory and/or find someone I really didn't like who I could take down with me. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 06:48, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I would rather be alive than dead. But the idea of death itself has no fear for me.  The process of dying is kind of worrying though. In Spain you can request euthanasia if you are terminally ill which is good news on that front. I also recently signed a document stating that I wanted euthanasia if my mental condition had deteriorated to such an extend that I could only be kept alive artificially.  So I'm doing everything I can to make the process of dying  easier - the the end result holds no fear at all.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 06:51, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think death is like going to sleep at the end of a long day. If you lived well then you should have nothing to fear. 09:16, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * im more concerned with a long drawn out painful death, like incurable cancer, rather than the death part. thats just oblivionAMassiveGay (talk) 10:08, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * a former partner of mine had seen two of their lovers buried as a result of AIDS, and my current partner is a widower, their husband dying of cancer. this question about a fear of death seems to ignore that we might actually have experience of death first hand. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:15, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah that’s why I support euthanasia if the patient is terminal and chooses it. If it were me I’d rather slip away into a morphine sleep than be in horrible agony. 11:01, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * i am even less concerned with what some human piece of dogshit over at cp thinks of what we might think. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:11, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I support euthanasia and it's legal here. That said, even when it was illegal it was still common practice for doctors to "make a patient comfortable" in the final hours with increasingly strong shots of morphine. They did it with grandfather and when my mother died of cancer they did the same. My father was a doctor and used to tell me these things. He himself dropped dead of a cardiac arrest in the street some years back. Dead before he hit the ground and never knew it was coming, let alone happening. That's a good way to go. Acei9 17:46, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * as someone with a heavy fear of death, i think that death it self isnt scary but for me at least it's being forgoten about, and i have nothing to say about athism (sry for any typo's) Wheelsontheancom (talk) 18:59, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't fear death in the abstract, only in the specifics of a painful or prolonged death. The idea of not dying in my view is quite a bit more horrific. The idea that one has only one life challenges one to live it as best one can. This is oppositional to the fundamentalist view of life, generally nihilistic, that this world does not matter — only they (hypothetical) next world.


 * Despite powers-that-be (Catholic/fundie) opposition to euthanasia in the US, it appears to exist on the sly in some cases. I knew a woman who ended up in home hospice care after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. She had a morphine drip that she controlled, which presumably allowed herself to give a lethal dose if she so chose. Bongolian (talk) 19:13, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

By all y'all logic, you shouldn't fear nuclear weapons. If you are close enough to the center of the blast itself, the heat and radiation is so intense that the blood in your brain boils before the blast wave even strikes you. You dont really "die" so much as simply cease to exist. So, yeah, the idea of "not existing" should cause you some fear in itself, not just the dying part. But for me, my fear is not a slow death but slowly losing my mind. The idea that I no longer am able to comprehend why I cant comprehend something? Terrifying. CorSock (talk) 07:08, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Nuclear weapons, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not only caused death but a lot of lingering pain and agony to those in the vicinity of the epicenter who were not immediately killed. Bongolian (talk) 07:39, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Those were small weapons, measured in kilotons. Modern ones are hundreds of times more powerful.  And while I agree that the people who died instantly had it better than the ones who had the outer centimeter of skin, eyes and external organs seared off while the internal organs were left unharmed, causing them to survive for hours before succumbing, or those exposed to enough radiation that their immune systems were overwhelmed and they were digested by bacteria while still alive and their veins were too porous for morphine to make it to the brain, if nuclear war breaks out I'm going as far away from where the nukes will be, not closer. CorSock (talk) 14:29, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There are a lot of things I’d like to do, and even just having experiences and awareness is something I’m rather fond of, so death is a frightening prospect. Perhaps one day I’ll be satisfied with the life I’ve led and have no further serious ambitions, and then it will pose no threat to me. I don’t find any particular comfort in the notion that there will be no me to experience death, what good is that to me? As it stands, I’m experiencing life, and I want to go on doing so for at least a good while more; my present desires would be no less frustrated by my dying today by the fact that tomorrow nobody would have those desires anyway. 𝒮𝑒𝓇𝑒𝓃𝑒  talk  17:19, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * First of all, the fear of death is not because of an afterlife whose existence is more than questionable. It's a primal fear also present in animals and is totally natural to be afraid of it, or at least I see it.
 * As for the rest, I was scared of death at first, but I've come to terms with the most likely outcome being oblivion and that you cannot feel nonexistence, as in this comic: https://joshuawright.net/slack-wyrm-005.html
 * What is troublesome is how I will die and especially the transition between life and death, as Isaac Asimov puts nicely in one of his quotes. And the implications of nonexistence not being felt, so in a sense you will live a lot of lives, not just Boltzmann brains: http://naturalism.org/philosophy/death/death-nothingness-and-subjectivityPanzerfaust (talk) 18:31, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I do not believe that non-human animals have a "fear of death" at least not in quite the same way that humans do. I doubt that they understand the concept sufficiently to have a fear of the concept (though, like many things, this will be on a spectrum). In general all animals have a mandate from evolution to avoid pain, mutilation and death - because those which lacked this tendency were less likely to have offspring.  And the more they fought to avoid death the more likely they were to survive and reproduce.
 * The only animal which which we can be sure is able to contemplate the possibility of its own death is homo sapiens. And, even for many of us, it's not death itself - but rather the process of dying which is the problem.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:46, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Orson Scott Card had an interesting interpretation of "dying" in the Ender saga. Jane, a computer program, was being killed by the humans as they turned off all the computers.  Towards the end, she lost the processing capacity to even care about her death.  That's possibly how humans die, as our braincells cease functioning and we don't notice.  There's even some speculation that, as the brain releases its stored seratonin and dopamine and the perception of time slows down, effectively when you die you experience a feeling of bliss that lasts for an eternity in your frame of reference but without much ability to think about things, which is not too dissimilar to some descriptions of heaven.  22:04, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I meant in what refers to non-human animals. Unless we are missing something for the most intelligent ones, their fear of death is an instinctive one (sort of), because of those reasons you outline and as far as we know we're the only ones that can contemplate it. As for the process of dying, here's that Asimov's quote: Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. (https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/isaac_asimov_103611).
 * I hope that when my time comes, it will be as fast and painless as possible. One moment I'm here, the next not. Panzerfaust (talk) 22:58, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * im in no hurry to find out. not quite ready to give myself over to oblivion. ive no health issues that let me count down the days till i go or threaten a sudden death. and i look both ways when crossing the road. i have the agency to mitigate the risk of death from most likely sources. until i develop an incurable and fatal disease, the fears i have are down to fact they are outside of my control, like a drunk driver. if by ill health or misadventure, i can probably point to reason for my dying as something that i did or did not do. at worst, maybe i could point to a fault in my genetics. its kind of comforting to me that will have somehow earned my death. id feel cheated by fate if a car mounted the pavement and wiped me out. i fear an arbitrary death, where the mode, the timing, the place, everything about it is completely out of ones hands. AMassiveGay (talk) 14:08, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I hear you on that, if somehow there was some afterlife I'd be irate to find out I was dead because (to cite a not hypothetical example) some junkie shot through a window and hit me. If it was at least something I had coming, via my lifestyle or my genetics (or both!) that would be at least something I could try to come to terms with. That said, after seeing what happened to my uncle with his extremely aggressive cancer, if it came to that I'd probably need someone to talk me down from at least one last violent stand; I can accept people who don't deserve it ended up living better than me, but I'm still inclined to make some effort to knock at least one of those people down a few pegs. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 05:59, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

If God were real, he surely couldn't be such a petty little arsehole that he'd condemn me to everlasting torment just for not believing in him. But as I said before, if heaven is full of people like Ken, I'd rather be in hell anyway. Spud (talk) 03:37, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Given Ken is a mean-spirited, dishonest bigot even his own god would find it difficult to accept him into heaven. Acei9 03:42, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If God, as characterised by the Christians were real, then he utterly despises and hates you and could not remotely be said to love you. He keeps claiming he loves you but cannot possibly do so the way he treats his creations with such contempt and tortures them with endless pointless cruelty. He would be...without doubt...the most abusive parent figure there is. Shabi  DOO  15:47, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think my favorite interpretation is that the soul isn't so much a creation of god so much as the soul is god. Heaven and hell are the same place; every single action you've ever done being either praised or denigrated by every person who ever has or ever will exist, and without any of your ability to make excuses whereas all factors involved are completely understood by all.  The whole purpose of existence is basically god simply improving himself in some sense, and as we make ourselves better, we effectively make god better.  16:18, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Do Russians have white privilege?
I find it hard to imagine how you could apply the theory of "white privilege" to Russians. They played no part in slavery and colonialism, and in fact where the main supporters of decolonizing Africa and fought on the side of Africans against colonialists in places like Angola. Russians faced terrible wars and genocides in just the past century, and most today still live in conditions that are worse than many "Third World" countries. Very few live in bourgeois comfort and enjoy wealth stolen from the labor of the global south. Russians need to be seen as the oppressed, not the oppressors. FreeLeft (talk) 00:24, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * This is stupid and you are stupid. 01:20, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * FreeLeft:  01:23, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Your post is somewhat interesting, but at this time I am otherwise occupied and cannot be distracted by such bullshit at this time. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 03:11, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, the West did horrible shit, but does it mean that Russia and the like-minded countries are perfect? You wouldn't even survive in Russia as a queer.93.87.60.182 (talk) 15:26, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Two words: Central Asia. Toddle off and read up on that, then perhaps we'll talk... KarmaPolice (talk) 08:24, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Have you ever heard of a website called "ProleWiki"? Arcadium Trancefer (talk) 16:24, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

If any Russian person were to come to a place like the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, or Canada they would still appreciate the benefits of whiteness as they would be classified and perceived as white. That really is the only requirement to posses "white privilege". I am not sure how it would apply within the actual region of Russia itself as racialization and ethnic conflict works a little different in the context of Central Asia then it does it in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. To possess white privilege is only to appreciate the socioeconomic advantages of whiteness, technically you don't even need to be white to appreciate the benefits of white privilege. People who have been adopted into white families and communities even when they themselves are people of color appreciate some amount of white privilege, though of course not to the extent that people perceived as white do themselves. Basically if you can pass as white, or are accepted in white social circles you appreciate at least some white privilege. This is where you can get an intersection between colorism and whiteness. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 18:12, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Just a heads up, not a rebuttal to any points here, but for clarification's sake: nationality isn't the same as race. I know most Russians are white so there's an implicit assumption that Russian = white but I want to get that out of the way. Black Russians probably don't have the same privilege as the white Russians. 19:27, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * uhh yes. Egg on my face. I was thinking of Russians as an ethnic group and maybe that does not really apply here. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 20:38, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The assumption from the OP would seem to be that there is no racism in Russia. That's not really true. Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:53, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The idea that Russia didn't have an empire is pretty odd - Russian-speaking ethnic Russians, originally Orthodox Christians till Communism, ruling a wide range of other races and religions. You could read about the Russian conquest of Siberia or Afghanistan, Stalin's treatment of several ethnic groups he disliked, anti-Muslim violence, and the treatment of Jews in the country that gave the world the word "pogrom". --Annanoon (talk) 21:18, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Russian empire was an empire, obviously. It colonized Siberia, Caucasus & large swathes of Central Asia - and being dominated by white, eastern orthodox christian, russian-speaking people, it oppressed various colonised nations & ethnic groups in the usual colonialist manner. (In some ways it was close to the Spanish colonization of Ibero America - with cultural assimilation or eventually some minor degree of cultural fusion. And of course, Russian ruling class was equally OK with oppressing Russian peasants, abolishing serfdom only in 1861.) Russians today still fail to deal wit their imperialist and colonialist past - some of them, such as Putin, even cherish the memories of happier times of the "Russian world" - which they'd like to reconquer, if possible...
 * What Russia was not strong on were the overseas colonies, mainly because historically speaking its navy & merchant marine kinda sucked & it came relatively late into the game (the largest overseas colony of Russia being Alaska, which failed because it's kinda difficult to exploit an overseas colony in Northern America when your main sea route there starts from a Baltic seaport. There was also the New Moscow project which failed even quicker, largely because it was in area covetted by other European colonialists).
 * Not to speak about genocides and ethnic cleansings committed by various Russian governments.
 * And today's Russia is still strongly & unashamedly racist - even in Moscow, St. Petersburg & other presumably "more progressive" cities there're many landlords who openly advertise they're letting "for Slavic people only" (they're mostly against Asians & Caucasians, but apparently at least some of them think that Polish people aren't Slavic enough either) and no one gives a fuck. And it's only a tip of the iceberg.-2A00:102A:500A:F6B8:1120:80C:CF50:8009 (talk) 16:26, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Privilege is not necessarily related to race, For example "Blue privilege" lies just above "white privilege." The Memphis police killing of Tyre Nichols is an example of "Blue privilege." Also, a black African American can rise above the "blue privilege" if they are wealthy enough. And, of course, white billionaires have them all beat. I understand that life can be tough for a Russian of color.Ariel31459 (talk) 01:57, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Just ask Buryats how benevolent Russians were, then run as fast as you fucking can before one of them catches you and pulverizes your skull. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 05:43, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Stop! The troll's already burnt alive from their own pants! :( 20:45, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Genocide in Artsakh?
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-01-31/armenia-azerbaijan-blockade-nagorno-karabakh-artsakh-humanitarian-crisis

Artsakh, the unrecognized breakaway state in Azerbaijan. For those unaware, Armenian people in the region are suffering from crimes against humanity at the hands of the Azerbaijani government. Then again, Azerbaijan has a terrible human rights record. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 21:16, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * From what I understand, this is happening because of the Ukraine War. Armenia is part of the CSTO, or basically "Russia's NATO", and they've asked for help from Russia... which has been denied, because go away we're busy right now.  What's going on with the Armenians today will pale in comparison to the future.  If Russia has a loss in Ukraine, or worse it drags on for years before Russia loses, well, the CSTO treaty is nothing more than glorified toilet paper.  Central Asia is in the middle of a massive crisis involving the Aral Sea, and the obvious end result is Uzbekistan committing genocide over the last few drops of water in the region.  Normally, Russia would be there to prevent this, but if the Ukraine war continues to drag on?  21:44, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah Armenia is in one ugly situation right now. The Azeris are pals with the Turks, who will shield them from NATO. And Russia has once again proved itself to be the worst possible ally. I don’t see any good endings for Armenia here. 22:50, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * proven again its a bad ally? this is a direct consequence of the ukraine war and russia shitting the bed/exposing their weakness. its opportunism from azerbaijan rather than any inherent unreliability of the russians.  AMassiveGay (talk) 23:14, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * do not be surprised at other flare ups in other parts in the former soviet realm and/or what was russia's sphere of influence. AMassiveGay (talk) 23:22, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria come to mind in terms of Russian sphere of influence. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 23:38, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * we should also be aware that russian ally or simply dependant on russia for protection does not make any these regions the 'enemy' by default. many of these disputed regions/frozen conflicts cannot be easily broken down into good vs bad or right vs wrong terms. they are all more complicated and nuanced than that, and there has often been human rights abuses on both sides. even in the above nagorno-karabakh conflicts. AMassiveGay (talk) 23:53, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * re: nato; turkey doesn't even have to shield azerbaijan from nato. the rest of nato will just look the other way out of fear of upsetting one of their own members. The G (talk) 03:56, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Should Artsakh be recognized
I honestly think so. --Sexy Trans Zmbie (talk) 22:04, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * No need to get the US into this dispute. We have no real interests there, and it’ll probably piss off Turkey (which I’m not opposed to but there has to be a good reason). 00:13, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Turkey is a NATO ally so I assume that pissing them off would endanger security agreements in the region. Azerbaijan also sends oil through Turkey for export. I also guess that the US does not want that oil supply cut off. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 00:40, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * there might be a moral argument for recognition, but realistically, it won't happen. the us can't afford to lose a key middle eastern ally (turkey). as for everyone else, they'll all just leave it up to turkey, either out of fear of upsetting them or simply because they feel it's none of their business. i mean, if the international response to the ukraine invasion or uyghur genocide (outside of the west) haven't told you anything... The G (talk) 18:55, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * This was the same argument used against the US recognizing the Armenian Genocide, G. 17:10, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * virtually no one but armenia recognises artsakh, exceptions being south ossetia and those other breakaway regions. the most anyone does is to state a commitment to the human rights of the peoples in the region, qualified by reiterating the non negotiable support for azerbaijan's right to safeguard its border integrity. meanwhile artsakh starves. AMassiveGay (talk) 15:41, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think the big problem with Artsakh recognition is that it basically legitimizes Armenia conquering those regions. (Usually Artsakh independence is seen as a mere first step toward unification with Armenia rather than an end in and of itself.) It would be somewhat similar to recognizing the Donetsk Republic.-Flandres (talk) 23:02, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * yes, and it took over a century for the us to officially recognize the genocide despite all the pleas and requests from the armenian community. also, by the time the us finally jumped on board, dozens of countries had already recognized the armenian genocide. meanwhile, no un member state – not even armenia – recognizes artsakh officially. instead (with the possible exception of armenia because their position is ambiguous after all), the international community universally recognizes the territory as nagorno-karabakh, an integral part of azerbaijan. i just don't see artsakh being recognized in my lifetime. i could be wrong, though. The G (talk) 19:21, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

How is Russia's war in Ukraine likely to end?
Overall, it seems like neither Russia or Ukraine are in a position to pull off a victory that is not completely pyrrhic in nature. Ukraine has had a substantial part of its population leave, die or become permanently disabled along with entire cities leveled and Russia has lost in many cases irreplaceable equipment that is no longer in production as well as tens of thousands of soldiers while having negative birth rates and nonexistent immigration.

Russia has also lost a large amount of prestige. Russia was very very overestimated prior to Ukraine even though massive amounts of corruption and incompetence were known. The largest of these revelations about Russia's military weakness would (in my opinion) likely be the following:

-Logistics breaking down a few miles into Ukraine's territory despite being subject to very little if any attack. In any potential war with NATO, these massive logistic "lines" (read: traffic jams) would get their clock cleaned by CAS aircraft, cluster munitions and rocket artillery resulting in Russian soldiers being without food, potable water, clean uniforms or weaponry.

-Integral weaknesses in their military, both doctrine and leadership, that liberal use of conscripts, convicted rapists and PMC Wagner cannot fix. While Ukraine losing Bakhmut is not an entirely unlikely possibility, especially after the fall of Soledar, it will come at an incredible cost to Russia with thousands of soldiers and Wagner contractors dead, missing, brain damaged, crippled, missing limbs, traumatized or otherwise disabled. These people will no longer be able to fight nor work once they return to civilian life. Massive numbers of equipment no longer in production have been destroyed or knocked out of service needing expensive repairs. If Russia wins in Bakhmut, it will be the textbook definition of a pyrrhic victory.

-Russian wunderwaffe being non-existent, inoperable or nowhere near as good as it was claimed to be. Rather than spending money on rooting out corruption, increasing logistics capability or replacing stubborn incompetent officers with new faces, Russia has chosen to spend it on wunderwaffe like the T-14 (non existent), Su-57 (far inferior to existing and future United States stealth aircraft) and Dr. Evil-esque Weapons of Mass Destruction (useless unless they like having tens of millions of their citizens dead). This is one of the causes of the above 2 issues. The hilarious part about this is how the really big chunk of shit oligarchs have stolen the money for this making it so even their not-so-secret weapons don't exist or work. Can't make a good tank if half the money is going to blow being done off of hookers, ahem, escorts and the other half is being spent in unusually expensive contracts to manufacturers and contractors suspiciously connected to oligarchs, generals and politicians.

With that out of the way, what are the likely victory conditions for either country?

If Ukraine manages to grind down Russia, what will they demand back? Just the annexed territories, everything except the Donbas or a return to pre-2014 borders? I'm not exactly seeing a situation where Ukraine will be able to invade and successfully control territory in Russia. Too many Russian 18 year olds to thrown at the Ukrainians after being conscripted, after all. Will they even be in a position to demand war reparations from Russia to hopefully rebuild after all the damages they have caused?

If Russia wins, it's fairly clear what they will want. All of the territory they have annexed plus a regime change in Kyiv and war reparations. Think about all the poor Wagner mercenaries and convicted murderers/rapists/kidnappers/robbers! Ukraine will become a vassal state of Russia in this scenario and those who paint everything they have with Z will celebrate their supposed victory over NATO and the whole thing will be forgotten about outside of Eastern Europe and military command rooms throughout the world in a few years.

It's started to look pretty grim for Ukraine lately, especially in Donetsk and Bakhmut, but all they have to do is let Russia throw their soldiers into death until the Russian populace has enough of their fathers, brothers, uncles and sons being butchered over "demilitarizing and denazifying" a country that needed neither of those things. That's one of the only likely scenarios of this ending in a favorable way for Ukraine. Alast, I would like to hear your opinions on what's currently going on. SwampFox (talk) 06:58, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It is probably only going to end if Putin dies, and possibly not then. The screams of the rabid "nationalists" for complete destruction of Ukraine - reducing it to a puppet state at best, or complete annexation at worst, have no died down.  Putin might try declaring "victory" if his troops can occupy all of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, but Ukraine isn't going to stop at that point and it seems likely most  of Europe won't want them to - any sort of result that can be spun as victory for Russia posses an existential threat to the Baltic States and Poland from further "maximalist" Russian neo-empire ambitions.Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 11:32, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There's the possibility of whoever replaces Putin, was him to either die in office or forced to resign, being still more aggressive and wanting to escalate the conflict still more, up to going nuclear despite warnings to the contrary not just from US but also supposedly from both China and India, or at least using chemical weapons.
 * If Russia wins this, even if such victory is pyrrhic, they will probably attempt the same with other countries in the future (Baltic states and Poland, as others note even if they are NATO members and that would end badly for everyone). If Ukraine wins instead, albeit a partial one, the hot potato is still there. The only solution I see here is a negotiated settlement between all the parties involved, but it's highly unlikely at best to happen now. Panzerfaust (talk) 13:51, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * theres always the possibility of some of the republics causing mischief for moscow. the longer this thing drags on the more likely something will give. just an uptick in terrorist activity or even just mass protests in these regions would a serious problem if it disrupted coal and gas production from these areas. a stalemate is only workable for russia if it becomes a 'frozen' conflict ie no fighting is actually going on. if its a stalemate where ukraine actively goes on the offensive and russia can only do all it can to defend what it has, or vice versa then russia loses by attrition. AMassiveGay (talk) 15:02, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Considering that Russia is incapable of beating Ukraine, NATO would absolutely humiliate them. I doubt China would jump in to help an old, decrepit empire in it's final death throes as NATO soldiers close in on St. Petersburg. Let's just hope that the current counterforce plan and ABM shield would be enough to protect NATO from Putin deciding to fuck everybody over because he picked a fight with the strongest alliance in the world. SwampFox (talk) 17:58, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The biggest threat to NATO from the current Russian army is an attack on hte Baltic States - believing them to be small and with few NATO troops stationed there. Sure that'd be war with NATO, but how much would NATO actually do faced with a force majeure fait accomplis?  That's an extreme scenario - but it is not an impossible one - the Baltics have small armies and only a few thousand NATO troops in "trigger brigades".  I don't think it is very likely of course - the Russian army is being gutted and is probably incapable of any sort of decent military action for years or decades to come, but it still exists as a possible scenario.Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 21:51, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The Baltics would probably have to temporarily fall before reinforcements can arrive from the rest of Europe and North America in a few weeks or months. Russia would probably be in a similar situation with most of Kaliningrad. I wouldn't say it would be entirely implausible that Russia could be fighting a partial 2 front war as I doubt they have enough to stop a serious amphibious landing in Vladivostok/that general region, though it's obvious the main focus would be almost entirely Eastern Europe. The only states that would jump in to help are decrepit shitholes, and when I say shithole, I'm not using it lightly. Russia's only true friends in this world have been reduced to nations like North Korea (worse GDP Per Capita than fucking Eritrea), Burma under the illegal control of an illegitimate military junta and some other countries in similar situations. China won't jump in to help the geriatric bear and India isn't willing to lose everything they've been building up for 70 years over Russia. SwampFox (talk) 22:06, 4 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Russia went in Ukraine light as far as their troops level thinking they would have an easy win and effect regime change. Now they have no such illusions and Russia is ramping up its troops level in Ukraine in order to do a major offensive. This is turning into a war of attrition and Russia has a population that is at least 3 times that of Ukraine. So Russia is going to "win" a pyric victory over Ukraine. Dolphin51 (talk) 06:12, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Why do you think the Russians have "learned" anything at all? Their "tactics" at Bakhmut and Vuhledar - with Wagner AND with "elite" marines and VDV - are still rubbish and costing them hundreds of casualties every day for small gains.  Their armoured and artillery forces are decimated, their regular infantry is gutted, their airforce is timid, their navy would be obliterated in hte Baltic if they tried.  Stop thinking that Russia is thinking like "the west" - they don't - their culture is completely different, and the main thing the higher-ups are interested in is preserving their positions.  "The west" consistently screws up by thinking that Russia is behaving the same was as Western Europe or hte USA behaves. Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 11:34, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * From my perspective, the closest "echo" in history this conflict seems to have is the Soviet-Afghanistan War from 1979-1989, which was pretty much a never-ending grind. The way this war concluded was an eventual exhaustion of the Soviet economy, which many see as playing a significant role in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. I also think that the West arming the Ukraine army is probably not going to have the negative impact to Western interests that the West arming the mujahideens ended up having -- so there's probably very little political consequence of simply funding military gear for Ukraine for a while. Yes, the Putin-sympathetic white nationalist/culture warrior crowd opposes this sort of funding these days, but they are a minority.
 * The only caveat to this is if Putin somehow either acts stupid (eg triggering NATO or invoking nukes), or if Putin smartens up a bit (negotiates a truce of some sort). But never-ending military grinds against small countries seem to be fashionable even with much more capable armies (eg the US and Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) It's hard to bet against what is the "typical military pattern" of late. BobJohnson (talk) 19:31, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

The long range missile/rocket attacks against Ukraine degrade the Ukrainian economy/military and cause more people to flee Ukraine. The use of more long range missile/rocket attacks by Russia was a change in tactics and a response against the HIMAR weapons supplied by the U.S. to arm the Ukrainian military. Ukraine's top military commander, Valery Zaluzhny, told The Economist that Russia has adapted to U.S. made HIMARS and gone to a distance that the U.S. artillery can't reach (Putin’s new strategy makes things more difficult for Ukraine; Why U.S.-made HIMARS can’t reach Russian soldiers). But this strategy does cause more moral outrage against Russia in the West which causes more support for Ukraine - especially in NATO countries not suffering from as much Ukraine fatigue.

The Wagner Group mercenaries are more sophisticated than many people think and Russian society doesn't care as much if they die because they are mercenaries recruited out of prisons, etc. (Battle For Bakhmut | Ukraine Reveals Why Wagner Fighters Are Deadlier To Fight Than Russian Troops and Untold Reality Of Wagner Group In Bakhmut Ukraine | First Hand Account).
 * The Wagner Group receives better training and elite weapons, I imagine. But there are not enough of them to make a difference except in select arenas of battle. A few years of using WG troops to intimidate retreating Russian troops will spell their demise. Ukraine may run out of soldiers before the Russians, but the Russians have already started to run out of necessary field equipment and supplies that the Ukrainians can count on receiving from the west for from now on. The Russians are fucked.Ariel31459 (talk) 21:38, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Ariel - no Wagner gets nothing "elite" at all - it is not part of the regular logistics of the Russian forces, and only gets what local commanders have allowed it. And the main "ally" of Wagner in the Russian forces just got demoted from commander of the Ukraine war to 2nd in command as part of internal Russian military political power-plays, so it seems likely they will be getting less from now.  Wagner's use of convicts was useful for hte Russians, but seems not so many are keen on volunteering any more for 2 reasons - 1/ there aren't as many left; and 2/ they've heard what happens to them at the front!  Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 22:54, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

At the beginning of the war, I said that Putin would win this by war of attrition. For a while it seemed like this was not gonna happen but now I feel it seems like this scenario might become reality. No victory for Putin is gonna be phyrric. He has the country pretty much under control by either propaganda or intimidation. He simply does not give a fudge whether the Russian casualties are x10 as high. If he wins he achieves his goal, end of story. I think the only other way Russia can lose is if Putin falls. Also I do not think that Russia will ever run out of supplies. Maybe of the high-end kind yes, but as long as they can build an AK and Ammunition as well as Tanks, Putin will send them to the frontline no matter how ill prepared.NastyNugget (talk) 22:35, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Indeed Russia will send it's muzhiks forever - the only thing that will stop that is internal Russian politics - but even it Putin falls there's still a seriously revisionist cabal in Russia that will continue the war if they can - for them overthrowing Putin would be a matter of removing the ineffective leader and getting someone who can do the job properly - not to give up! Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 22:56, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The only way Russia can win is if the west abandons Ukraine to its fate. The Russians can keep making small arms and munitions for some time. Anything high-tech is likely to fail due to primative manufacture techniques caused by the inadequate supply of skilled labor, which has been fleeing the country since the war began, and various embargoes. They have lost enormous amounts of equipment already with no prospect of an end to their loses. The problem for Russian real politics is Ukraine isn't worth the cost of acquiring it into their new empire, because the cost is virtually everything they have and that probably wont be enough because the west has more, a lot more. Ariel31459 (talk) 23:31, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Both countries have a history of internal/geopolitical disasters (WWI, WWII, Stalin's famines, Soviet mismanagement, post Cold War collapse) so they have some of the smallest populations they have ever had.


 * So both countries were rapidly aging messes before the war and this war has made thing worse for both of them. And foreigners don't want to move to either of these countries because of the war and because they were so badly run before the war. Ukraine has some of the best farmland in the world due to its soil so this war is even more tragic than it otherwise would be since it helps feed a lot of developing nations. After this war is over, people who are farmers are bound to want to move to Ukraine eventually. Russia does have some productive farmland and it has oil and gas, but much of it has harsh winters so there will be no rush of people to move to Russia in the next 50+ years. Dolphin51 (talk) 23:40, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If the past is prologue and this war of attrition drags on Ukraine and Russia don't have promising futures. The West has been a godsend to Ukraine, but its assistance has been wanting in terms of offensive weapons such as tanks that would kick the Russians out. Air defense systems from the West has been wanting as well. The Bradley Fighting vehicles and tanks sent to Ukraine will provide some protection to Ukrainian soldiers but they were late in coming so the Ukrainians suffered more casualties in the past than need be because they lacked this protective armour. But even now, the West is not pouring Leapard tanks in very big numbers despite their being clear signs the Russians are poised to do a major offensive in spring or sooner. NATO has been helping Ukraine hang in this war and not be completely overrun, but they haven't been helping Ukraine enough to kick the Russians out. EthanRossie2023 (talk) 01:24, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I partially retract what I just posted. The West has been an alluring suitor to Ukraine promising them prosperity and freedom, but they haven't done enough to protect Ukraine from being battered and they haven't been insistent enough that Ukraine cleanup up its corruption so they could join NATO and the European Union. And to make the metaphor complete, Russia has been an ex abusive boyfriend that refuses to let Ukraine go. It is basically saying, if I can't have her, nobody can. EthanRossie2023 (talk) 02:08, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * For what I've seen elsewhere, Russia is much better at defending than attacking even if they'd not be the only ones, and it seems the problems on their army as corruption pretty much galore have been around for centuries. Even since Napoleon times, it seems, so unless things change Russia will basically keep sending cannon fodder to Ukraine. Panzerfaust (talk) 09:38, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ukraine is replacing its defense minister amidst a corruption scandal. Russia and Ukraine are both known for their corruption. EthanRossie2023 (talk) 10:54, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I know, it's of the many things that will have to change there in order for Ukraine to be admitted in the future in the EU. Panzerfaust (talk) 12:14, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

(reset) As has been said elsewhere - the Kremlin has lost because it did not win immediately, and the Ukraine government has won because it did not lose immediately. Also 'The first derivative of Godwin's Law' - Anyone who brings in the Nazis/'the usual suspects' *unnecessarily* automatically loses the argument. Anna Livia (talk) 13:57, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Wars are not necessary won or lost on having to win in the beginning. The Russians were being trounced in the beginning of WWII, but they recovered.


 * The Europeans are not sending enough Leapard tanks to Ukraine to effectively fight against a major Russian offensive which could have a LOT OF TANKS. If that wasn't bad enough, Western stockpiles of tank ammunition is low. NATO has had AT LEAST a year to prepare for this soon coming moment so this is disgraceful. The West have watched much of Ukraine get demolished by the Russians when they had a lot of Leapard tanks and had air defense systems they could have given Ukraine. Through their inaction they've made it abundantly clear that they cannot be counted on when it matters. As part of a hammered out peace deal, which is anyone's guess on when it will happen, Ukraine will have to agree to be a nonaligned country. Ukraine can't count on the Europeans to provide them enough tanks to kick the Russians out of their country so they will have to give up some land and agree be a nonaligned country that is not a part of the European Union and not a party of NATO. Ukraine should have never agreed to give up their nukes. Dolphin51 (talk) 14:19, 6 February 2023 (UTC)


 * In the near future, viewing a Russian offensive as likely (and it seems Russia is trying to make it happen as soon as possible), Ukraine has some other factors on its side. If Russia sends lots of troops in (though on tanks, it has lost many of its better tanks already), it's not likely that they will flood in with any efficiency. Like a year ago, the weather around spring in Ukraine is the worst for war, and can be expected to make a largely impassable mess out of many roads Russia will have to use, making Russian advances slow and difficult. Ukraine may face an awful lot of Russians, but will almost certainly have time to see them coming and plan and prepare. But yes, it sucks that the West has been slow with delivering heavier weapons, prolonging the whole mess and making it bloodier (and, yes, giving Russia more of a chance). --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 15:54, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Y'all are assuming that if Russia wins the conventional war, that the war is over. It won't be, not by a long shot. It just means the war's gotten dirtier, because we've moved to the stage of insurgency and occupation. It's a lot easier to conquer a country than it is to rule. Look how easily Saddam's regime was toppled, and then look at the absolute slog fest that came afterwards. The general rule to occupy a country effectively is you need around 20 soldiers for every thousand civilians. Ukraine is a country with over 40 million people. Russia doesn't have the numbers. Vee (talk) 16:21, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The Russians can finish wrecking much of Ukraine, finish taking over the Russian speaking parts of Ukraine, retain Crimea, pressure Ukraine into signing a peace agreement declaring neutrality in perpetuity which includes no future joining of NATO and the European Union. In such a scenario, occupation would not be as difficult as Iraq. Dolphin51 (talk) 17:24, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * True, but how likely is such a scenario, Ken? The problems with the Russian war machine are legion. Does Russia have the capacity to do even that? Vee (talk) 17:56, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ukraine's much smaller population than Russia is becoming a problem in this war. The Guardian, which is very pro-Ukraine, notes: "There is also anxiety in political circles about how long the existing frontline troops in Ukraine’s military – however committed they have been – can be asked to carry on fighting without a long break. A concern about the level of suicide among Ukrainian soldiers “as a result of battlefield stress” was raised last month by the UK Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith after he visited a military hospital near Kharkiv. Mobilisation has stepped up in Ukraine and there is talk of people being presented with recruitment papers on the street, but the question raised is whether future waves of recruits will show the same level of motivation." EthanRossie2023 (talk) 18:34, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * War is difficult, and there is no doubt that soldiers and civilians on both sides will suffer mental illness as a result of Putin's war. But I'm not sure what point you are making beyond the obvious.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 19:07, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * You're assuming Ken has a point to begin with. Vee (talk) 19:38, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Are you responding to me? If so, please explain.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:24, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I will elaborate and explain.

Colonel Dave Grossman and Bruce K. Siddle wrote in their work the "Psychological Effects of Combat" which was published in the Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict:


 * "During World War II, 504,000 men were lost from America's combat forces due to psychiatric collapse--enough to man 50 divisions. The United States suffered this loss despite efforts to weed out those mentally and emotionally unfit for combat by classifying more than 800,000 men 4-F (unfit for military service) due to psychiatric reasons. '''At one point in World War II, psychiatric casualties were being discharged from the U.S. Army faster than new recruits were being drafted in.

'''
 * Swank and Marchand's World War II study of US Army combatants on the beaches of Normandy found that after 60 days of continuous combat, 98% of the surviving soldiers had become psychiatric casualties. And the remaining 2% were identified as "aggressive psychopathic personalities." Thus it is not too far from the mark to observe that there is something about continuous, inescapable combat which will drive 98% of all men insane, and the other 2% were crazy when they got there...


 * It must be understood that the kind of continuous, protracted combat that produces such high psychiatric casualty rates is largely a product of 20th-century warfare. The Battle of Waterloo lasted only a day. Gettysburg lasted only three days--and they took the nights off. It was only in World War I that armies began to experience months of 24-hour combat, and it is in World War I that vast numbers of psychiatric casualties were first observed."

Key point: Because the Russians have a bigger population and have a bigger army, they can rotate troops in and out of the battlefield more readily. This is important given the high use of artillery in the War in Ukraine and the very difficult combat in cities. EthanRossie2023 (talk) 22:48, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Er, oh series of random questionable new accounts, is not only a former psychologist, he is also an asshole who hosts questionable "killology" conferences that normalize the militarization of cops. I have no further point to add, other than "war is hell" is a "no duh" statement, and population size is a poor prediction of who wins grind-style wars. The Soviet Union (population in 1980: 262 million) lost the Afghanistan war (population in 1980: 12.5 million). The ratio actually is much more "in favor of Ukraine" when it comes to Ukraine vs. Russia (~40 million vs. 147 million), not that this matters much in this style of war. BobJohnson (talk) 23:10, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Vietnam had lots of jungle and Afghanistan has lots of mountainous terrains with lots of caves. The difficult terrains of these countries made them much easier to defend and to engage in hit and run guerilla attacks. On the other hand, Ukraine has lots of flat farmland with wheat, etc. Second, the Dave Grossman comment engaged in the genetic fallacy. EthanRossie2023 (talk) 00:48, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * My point was that Russia doesn't have the numbers to effectively hold the country. Vee (talk) 23:32, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The Russians don't have to hold the entire country of Ukraine. They can merely conquer Eastern Ukrainian areas that have lots of Russian speakers. EthanRossie2023 (talk) 00:48, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * They have to hold the part they occupy, and that means fighting from now on. They can't merely conquer eastern Ukraine unless they are willing to stop existing as a nation, because fighting age men and women will continue to abandon the lunatic leader's obsession.Ariel31459 (talk) 00:54, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * In the Vietnam War the USA won all the battles and had superior kill ratios in battles. And yet, the North Vietmanese ultimately won because they broke the will of the American people who were paying for the war. Russia does not need to break the will of the Ukrainian people. If it breaks the will of the Americans and Europeans who fund the war, it achieves a major victory. A new poll indicates 82% of Europeans want peace negotiations with Russia now. Support for Ukraine in US still high, but slowly fading: survey. Time is not on the Ukrainians side. On the other hand, in Poland and the UK Ukraine fatigue hasn't set in as much. Dolphin51 (talk) 01:10, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "Tsarizm.com" appears to be a webshite run by a "L. Todd Wood", and judging by his Washington Times columns he leans towards Putin apologia and Trump style isolationism. Mr. Wood has also appeared on Putin ass-kisser Tucker Carlson's show.  The source of the survey is from a "Századvég Foundation" which, er, is a Hungarian conservative political think-tank strongly tied to Fidesz. A recent  poll indicates broad support for Ukraine still . Eurobarometer is tied to the EU governance, so I suppose it depends on whose "house effect" you trust. At the very least, if you're going to make a "time is not on the Ukrainians side" argument, you'll have to find out who is wrong here. (Or correlate it with polls from BertelsmannStiftung  and Ipsos, among others that I'm not going to research too much given the likelihood of incoming troll collapse. Overall I'd rate Századvég as the outlier, from what I'm seeing.)
 * Fair point. However, Germany is a key player in the war in Ukraine given the importance of Leapard tanks. Germany doesn't have a good track when it comes to rapid response to help the Ukrainians. Also, Germany recently dodged Russia's energy squeeze, but the more important question is for how long can Germany do this? Dolphin51 (talk) 03:24, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * And yes, genetic fallacy, blah blah. What then of propaganda and fake news, oh suspicious new account? Just because some webshite says 82% of Europeans want peace negotiations with Russia now doesn't necessarily mean it is true. My comment on Mr. Grossman was more an aside (as I did mention, he's a psychologist by training and has military experience, so he's qualified to speak on combat psychology, he's just an asshole with his cop course style). But in this case, when you are dealing with known entities of propaganda, much caution is needed. Anyone can spew information on the Internet, including fake polls. I don't think the genetic fallacy means "blindly trust everything you see". If a website seems to be putting out poll results like this that seem way out there compared to other polling firms, then that is sufficient reason to question their methodology. BobJohnson (talk) 02:36, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

And Northern Ireland has... hills. And cities. Iraq has desert. What's your point, Ken? Vee (talk) 02:53, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Crimea doesn't have huge problems with insurgencies since 2014 and it is mostly Russian speakers. The same situation could apply to Eastern Ukrainian areas with mostly Russian speakers. Dolphin51 (talk) 03:24, 7 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Prediction/betting markets have beaten polls on various occasions. The prediction market at prediki.com indicates there is only a 20% chance of Ukraine winning the war and the other options could potentially be less favorable to the Ukrainians, see: What will be the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war of 2022?. Dolphin51 (talk) 03:24, 7 February 2023 (UTC)


 * That's nice. You forgot to mention, in the same poll, the chances of Russia winning in Ukraine are given as less than 11%. The prediction market is a cute idea for gamblers I suppose, but it won't solve all of your problems. Viet Nam, for example, began in 1955, continued along until the US took it over in around 1963. The Vietnamese civil war was a big mistake for the US to get involved in because it was a civil war and those guys were fighting for their country kind of like the Ukrainians, and America quickly quit the thing after ten years of intense fighting that killed over 60,000 Americans. It was deeply unpopular by 1965, and forced LBJ out of office in 1968-9. That didn't stop the war from going on for almost four more years. the war cost only 120 billion in 1973 dollars, but adjusting for inflation that would be a little over $800 billion today. Let's see if the Russians want to die in Ukraine for the next ten years, by which time America will certainly begin to think about giving up.Ariel31459 (talk) 05:31, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The prediction market that Dolphin51 cited at What will be the outcome of the Russo-Ukrainian war of 2022? has 42 participants. Because I believe in the wisdom of crowds, but wanted more predication market data, I found this additional prediction market: Will Russia Control Any Formerly Ukrainian Territories Other Than LNR, DNR, or Crimea on September 1, 2023? and the implied probability is 78% that Russia will do this. The predictions market at Ukaine market has a number of predictions related to the war in Ukraine.


 * How reliable are prediction markets?


 * US midterms: why gambling markets often predict elections more accurately than polls, TheConversation.com, 2022
 * Political betting: Is it a 'gambling den' or 'better than polls'?, Politico, 2022
 * Betting on Elections Can Tell Us a Lot. Why Is It Mostly Illegal?, The New Yorker, 2022
 * The Election Betting Markets Fell Short. They're Still the Most Flexible Predictor., Reason.com, 2022
 * Prediction markets vs polls – an examination of accuracy for the 2008 and 2012 elections, Journal of Prediction Markets, Jan 8, 2015, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5750/jpm.v8i3.981 Maxell (talk) 09:11, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

The above Gish Gallop influx is rather boring. On Maxell's point, (and almost certainly, Maxell=Dolphin51) I note that the links are all about political election predictions, which is a different type and only weakly relevant here. You (Dolphin51, EthanRossie2023, Maxell) are really changing around the topic a lot, adding lots of flawed reasons to believe your case. --ApooftGnegiol (talk) 14:19, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ken, while Germany has been reluctant to meaningfully aid Ukraine (because of fears of a United Eastern European block reducing German influence on the continent), the New Reich has also tacitly given permission for Poland to sell German tanks to Ukraine. Vee (talk) 15:43, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Best typographic error in recent memory:
"2020 U.S presidenial election" Bongolian (talk) 19:31, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Is this an example of a 'Freudian slip', or Titivilius passing by? Anna Livia (talk) 11:05, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * someone should've made a strikethrough out of that. The G (talk) 19:07, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

The “mood” is back again
I been having thoughts about giving my cat away to my friend whose cat has passed. I love my cat, but also just been having certain thoughts about whether or not I really want to continue on. I couldn’t bear leaving my cat alone without someone to care for her. My boyfriend has been suffering from a week long headache. I am worried it’s something serious. I watched my friend die of cancer and I don’t think I can go through something like that again. I don’t feel understood by anyone around me. My interests in logic and philosophy is taken as a uninteresting quirk about me. No one cares about my educational background and how it informs my views. I get dismissed with anecdotes or told that I am reading too much into things. I have strong suspicion my applications to grad school will be rejected. My dreams unreachable. My purpose nihl. I am not a real danger to myself, so I just sit with these feelings until an unbearable panic attacks comes on. How do I find comfort in a time like this? - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 07:01, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * A cat on your lap may help. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 11:43, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I was in a position like that too towards the end of my Bachelors program in 2012. I lost my best friend at the time, and I ended up losing almost my entire support network.  The chaos and stress of school was enough to drive me crazy for a time, and what really brought me back was working.  I work in engineering, and even though it is a technically complicated job, the stability of work really helped ground me again and balance things out.  I also got involved in a lot of hobbies (game development, music production, 3d modeling, and ttrpg games), and stayed off social media for the most part (only YouTube tutorial videos).  After about a year, I started to feel much better and the idea that my world was only going to last one more week started to subside.  It really does balance out eventually.  If you are anything like me, I'm not a creature of habit (waking up at the same time everyday has been a challenge for me my whole life), but I do crave that stability that comes from working.  If people are ignoring the parts of your personality that you value, I recommend finding a group of like minded people and spending time with them (preferably in person but that isn't always possible).  My key takeaways from my experiences were: 1) Get some hobbies and find some people you can geek out over it with! That will get your mind off things when you are in a dark place. 2) It does get better when you start working.  School is far more stressful than almost any career.  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 18:46, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Additionally, if one is an exceptionally complex, and intellectually oriented person, one cannot expect to be understood as though one were a simpleton of some kind. 2500 or so years ago, a Greek philosopher said that everything changes. What a simple idea, of course, but it can help one to clear ones mind. Whenever I am down I remember eventually that the mood passes after a while. Just knowing that makes me feel a little better. Maybe get your friend another cat from somewhere else. Keep your cat.Ariel31459 (talk) 20:09, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I am already working full time. Work has just been another source of stress for me. I don't doubt you though I think it also really depends on the type of work one does. I just work a clerical job at an environmental lab right now. I think if I was working in an environment that allowed to me tutor people on certain subjects or write papers I would be happier. I am actually a lot more happier when I am in school. I appreciate your response though. - 21:17, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I will keep my cat, and I will try to find my "own" people but my interests are a little too esoteric for some. I don't think I really fit the category of complex and intellectually oriented. I think most people think of me as a pseud. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 21:17, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Dial 988 at any time. 21:48, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Does that even apply to Canada? - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 21:55, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Canucks can use 1 833 456 4566 21:57, 26 January 2023 (UTC)


 * That's the mood talking now. Get your friend that cat if you think they will want another one. Ariel31459 (talk) 22:19, 26 January 2023 (UTC)
 * In addition, you can write on philosophical subjects on this wiki. I noticed your article on Quine. Recently I had a look at our article on Consciousness. The last talk page entry is 8 years old and titled "This page is terrible." Maybe have a look. Ariel31459 (talk) 00:47, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * How are you feeling today? 17:33, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry I wasn't notified about this ping. As of now? worse. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 23:24, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * You are able to respond. So... that's good news at least.  21:51, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I stated I wasn't a real danger to myself. I wasn't exaggerating. I don't think I have the willpower, motivation, or bravery in the face of pain and uncertainty to harm myself. As tempting as it's been in the past I only ever done gestural things in front of a mirror and running hot water from the sink before calling the crisis line. I never broke skin, never took any large amount of drugs, and never stood out from a high place. I don't think I could. I am too much of a coward.  - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 17:24, 4 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That's part of my concern. When someone is really depressed for a long time, one of the warning signs they are planning a suicide is them being "calm" since it can mean they've made the decision.  I strongly suggest you speak with someone, preferably a professional but if not that, we are here.
 * So you mentioned that you think your dreams are unobtainable. What are your dreams/goals that you feel you can't obtain?  If those goals are unobtainable, what's wrong with more "humble" goals?  Sure, you might not want to be "assistant McManager", but in all likelihood you could become a plumber, elevator mechanic, welder, etc etc, and many of those blue color jobs pay over $100k/yr these days.  05:43, 5 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I want to get a masters degree then a Ph.D in philosophy. I already applied to some master programs within my province but I have strong feeling I will get rejected again as I did last year. The acceptance rates for masters programs make the probability of getting rejected higher then that of getting accepted. I have no interest going into a trades, and to get the technical education for that would require spending more on schooling. I am fine with the clerical work I currently do in an environmental lab. I make several dollars more than minimum wage, and I get to interact with analytical chemists on the daily. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 17:44, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Assuming it's "all or nothing" for Philosophy for you, I actually see 4 options, not 2.
 * 1) If you get in, hooray, end of discussion, go for it
 * 2) If you don't get in, continue your clerical job
 * 3) If you don't get in, continue your clerical job, but study in your free time
 * 4) If you don't get in, continue your clerical job, see if you can audit some courses
 * The auditing thing may actually be your best option. If you don't happen to get accepted, that doesn't mean you can't show up and ask to sit in, so long as you don't interrupt or make yourself a nuisance.  But why is this the best option?  Well, let's say you make a good impression, show that you are a good learner.  What happens next year when you apply and a few of the professors already know you?  00:22, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I have looked back on my life and keep wondering how different things would be if I realized that I was Trans/Demi-Girl when I was a kid
I know that my Dad (in name only), was emotionally abuse, racist, homophobic, transphobic and was a fundie Christian (in name only).

I cannot help but wonder how different my life would be. Back then I had absolutely no spine either. I also did not accept that I had Autism at the time. I did not discover who I was until 2021 --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 22:48, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Also keep in mind that the scene in the early 2000s was hardly a Trans-paradise. Would you have been able to handle the extra bullying?  23:09, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I was already mocked for frequently shaking my hands and legs due to my developmental disability. Every teacher I had told me to "control it". That was a nightmare for me. Come to think of it I was the target of teachers; not so much as the students. So thinking about it my childhood would be a living Hell. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 23:19, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, it is truly something to muse over for a long time. For you, it would have most certainly fomented additional bullying, particularly if you decided to start transitioning (or not; transition is not an essential part of being trans). The bullying would have come from students but most especially from teachers. It would also prove difficult to acquire essential services (e.g., bathroom access). At the same time, though, there is a feeling of satisfaction when you conform to a social role with which you affiliate/that you like better. It was certainly hard to be trans in the early 2000s, but it is still just as hard to be trans today, the discrimination in most cases merely became more implicit and nuanced. Your early life would have been so much more whole if you found out you were a trans demi-girl back then, so it is understandable to reminisce about it. Although, of course, it would also, for you, be a harder life, at home and in school. It is a double-edged sword.--A p r i l Chat? 00:01, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, the Stimming. For me, it was rubbing my hands together and shaking the knee.  Sometimes I still fiddle my fingers, but for the most part, I don't stim anywhere near the amount I used to.  00:41, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * EC you are a little young to be looking back on a life full of regrets. what would life be like if you had the childhood you wished you had and not the one you got? what would life be like if you were someone else is what you really ask. you are who you are right now because of the life you lived up until now. change any part of it and you are somebody else. you've had the childhood you've had. you are not somebody else. you are who you are. you cant change what got you to who you are today. but you can change who you will be tomorrow. you've got most of your life still ahead of you. look ahead of yourself, not behind AMassiveGay (talk) 01:17, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * For me, when I'm wound up my arms go rigid. I've basically gotten rid of it, to the point where I actively have to try to induce it for occasional demonstration purposes; I'm glad not to have to deal with it anymore, because it really does look about a step below catatonia and I think it looks strange. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 01:21, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Chinese Balloon
Honestly I'm not sure whether I believe it was a balloon for intelligence gathering because aren't there more efficient methods such as satellites?, what does everyone else think? &mdash; Unsigned, by: 49.197.49.137 / talk
 * My best guess is that if it really was a spy balloon it was likely being used for ground penetrating radar, something you can't use on a satellite. Watching it get blown up in person was pretty cool though. SwampFox (talk) 05:32, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Remember that getting destroyed tells you a LOT about your enemy. Where did their missiles launch from?  How fast are the missiles?  When and where did they detect you?  Etc etc.  The Chinese got a lot of intel out of this...  07:03, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Are such balloons 'less visible' to 'radar and other monitoring systems' than other means of observation (and likewise eg the 'reconstructed Ancient Greek wooden warship now attached to the Greek Navy)? The balloon could also be serving several purposes (and as it was shot down over the Atlantic it managed to cross the entire mainland US). Anna Livia (talk) 10:20, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't exactly think the CPC got too much information out of this. An F-22 was launched from Norfolk if I remember correctly and destroyed it with an AIM-9 missile. It seems like it was intentionally done to minimize anything they could get out of it. SwampFox (talk) 19:39, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, Norfolk is a publicly well-known base, and F-22s have been in use for ages. 19:46, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It also 'tests' the ability of your opponent to a) see and b) actually deal with the damn thing. If I recall right, the balloon was going about ~60k feet and most 'Gen 4' fighters and AA missiles [F-15s, Patriots etc] would find it fairly difficult to reach that high and the radar cover may also be rather spotty. This - I think - was partly why Biden stressed that they had a) been tracking the thing all the time and b) they always had the ability to destroy the thing.


 * There is similarities with the U-2 overflights of the USSR in the 1950s. The CIA/USAF proposed it was too high to be detected and even if the Soviets did, they wouldn't bitch because they lacked the ability to get up ~20k feet to blow it up. Naturally, in 1960 this was proven wrong when they shot one down. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:24, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Unblocked sock of sexist/ageist troll
I think we have the identity of that nasty edgelord troll wrong, it's not Jaraxle from Wikipedia and it's not someone from Conservapedia, it's an old guard troll. I'm almost of the opinion this is worthy of a coop case, to ban this person given the seriousness of this trolling. 192.111.132.82 (talk) 02:23, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That edit was made in 2010 by an member who hasn't been active since 2016. Looking at the member's contributions, it is unlikely that the troll you mention is the same as the "nasty edgelord troll", and that the edit you point out was a joke. And you propose a time wasting coop for something as stupid as this? I think you need to look in the mirror to find the troll. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 20:46, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm impressed that you understood what they were talking about.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 07:40, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

After Putin
'Sooner or later' Putin will no longer be in office.

How long after that will 'things in the Kremlin' start getting 'very weird and confusing' as the next echelon were loyal to Putin rather than each other?. Anna Livia (talk) 20:37, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * He either:
 * Needs to die in office
 * Needs to be pushed aside by a large group of Russian elites, for him to live in his ice palace in Sochi.
 * Neither of these things is realistic in the immediate term. Maybe in 5 years?

-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:09, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Every likely option still will result in some other authoritarian leader who will commit crimes against humanity. I have no hopes for a free democratic Russia. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 22:20, 27 January 2023 (UTC)
 * He will cease being in office at some point - but consider what happened after Koba died and the events of August 1991.
 * Is there separatism/are there regional strongmen in parts of Russia? Anna Livia (talk) 00:35, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * There is a separatist movement in the Russian Republic of Tartarstan but it is very minimal. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 01:51, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't say that either of the removal options is very unrealistic in the short term. There are plenty of rumors about his health and successful secret plots against autocratic leaders are, by definition, secret until they happen. The problem is that this is a "be careful of what you wish for" situation.
 * What the world wants is not "no Putin" but rather "a responsible, peaceful, democratic Russian government". One of these outcomes is a lot easier to imagine than the other.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 09:41, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I was making no guesses as to when (though age/health, what happens with the Ukraine situation/the impact of sanctions and lack of access to foreign resources on leading politicos and oligarchs etc will have various impacts) but considering what will happen in the aftermath. In both the above cases 'who actually succeeded' were not those who appeared the most likely successors at the point of transition. Anna Livia (talk) 11:10, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * To predict the future, you need to understand the present.
 * Russia is now ruled by the 'siloviki' who are now now by all accounts a 'new aristocracy' in the Third Russian Empire. And like the last, they dominate all fields of endeavour in the country, and they have built a neo-feudal economic setup to support it. Therefore, we can conclude that when the Czar dies, the 'Princes' shall gather around and select another of their number to succeed Vladimir I. However, like any new monarch, they shall only be given the right to reign - they shall have to earn the right to rule. Therefore, there shall be about two-five years of relative external inaction while the dust settles as the new Czar either a) asserts control or b) a ruling troika forms to sideline them as a figurehead.


 * Now, while the siloviki Princes are tainted by their support for the previous Czar and policies, there's nothing stopping them pulling the ancient leadership trick of 'blaming everything on the guy before me' and feigning ignorance of the worst aspects of previous even though they'd had ringside seats. The narod opinion of this is irrelevant - they shall believe what they're told and if they don't well... they'll know not to allow their mutterings be heard while the local boyar goes past. I have one assumption which is a bit 'controversial'; that by this point most of the Princes are against the Ukranian war as-is [poor use of Russian resources, little chance of self-enrichment, threatens to weaken whole regime etc]. However, I don't think they see it as serious enough issue to pay the political costs of 'losing' [ie stopping] the war. Thus, we end up with a stalemate. The post-Putin Princes shall need a 'victory' [of sorts] to trumpet to the narod, to allow them to claim to be the 'true successor' but Kyiv is not only not willing to grant them this but are actually gunning to really cause them to 'lose' [retake regions lost in 2014].


 * Perhaps the only easy off-ramp in this situation is if Putin 'ends' having clearly failed in his imperial ambitions - that shall give his successor the political roof to cut the losses outright. In that respect, this would be the best solution. So we need to hope the Kremlin butcher lives for a couple more years, so he can dig his own political grave.


 * Another thing to read; Think-piece on a post-War Russia.
 * KarmaPolice (talk) 15:39, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * But there will be some aspects of 'pass the hot potato' (and the narod will be sensible in keeping away from the infighting). How many 'fights among members of the presidium' will there be (Khrushchev and Beria, and Hoxha and Shehu being examples). Anna Livia (talk) 20:15, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
 * So many ifs. One key one being 'how/when does the Czar die?' Putin may have not designated his true successor [this is normal; all kings fear their heir] but if he has a period of clear 'ill-health' and/or is obviously 'in decline' the major players will 'be on manoeuvres' in regards to the succession. In fact, some of the Princes may have already started to quietly, cryptically sound choice persons out on it - after all, Putin is 70 and might already be in declining health.
 * The key problem is that technically, if Putin dies in office [I think he will, the question whether the death is natural is the debate bit] the relative nonentity Mishustin shall become President by default. Therefore, it's possible the Princes decide to keep him on, to allow him to soak up the unpopularity from say, ending the war. However, the man may not desire to fill this role. KarmaPolice (talk) 07:54, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * The comparison to monarchy is an apt one. No one is going to replace Putin, there may be some who claim the title of 'President', but violence and fear have been primary tools. If he's gone, different groups currently have control of those tools,(especially the violence part) and it's likely there would be a period of internal conflict where you may find regions attempt to break away.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 20:07, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't buy that – as in the 'oh [nasty regime] is only kept afloat via fear and violence' line. This is one of the aspects in which [generally] 'democracies' misunderstand 'dictatorships'. That we like to think that Putin [or Xi, or even Kim the Fat] in reality has 0% approval rating and is merely held up by the truncheon, firing squad and 3AM vanishments. But the truth is that they do have some genuine support.


 * Firstly, there's the 'servant class'; the apparatchiks, professionals, politicians, clergy etc. To carry on the neo-feudalism analogy, they are the knights and squires of the Third Empire. They may have lost some 'freedom of conscience' but have traditionally gained in material terms. Those who are vassals of the nobles particularly so. What's more, unlike the Second Empire [USSR] they don't have to doff cap and bend knee – if they don't like it, they are free to leave.


 * Next, we have the labourers, farmers and other wage-earners; they are our 'serfs'. Even when we discount the propaganda they're fed with [which is in fact less effective than you'd think, as you kind of learn to 'tune it out'] traditionally they've been somewhat supportive of the new Czar. In short, he restored 'stability' and 'prosperity' after the chaos of the 1990s by helping quash some of the most blatant 'banditry' and at least ensuring the electricity works, the Rouble is vaguely stable and shops have some reasonable stocks of products.


 * But the 'secret sauce' to Putinism is that generally speaking, it doesn't enforce ideological conformity. That as long as you don't resist the Czar or his minions, you shall be left alone. 'Ownlife' is perfectly acceptable here; a critical safety valve to allow the 'vaguely discontented' to mentally withdraw – family, friends, hobbies, sports, travel or the ever-popular vodka bottle. If the Third Empire has a state religion, it's apathy.


 * Thinkpiece on this; https://www.thebulwark.com/apathy-keeps-russias-death-cult-alive/


 * Anyway, back to the main point. Russia is a very centralised state, and with a very few exceptions has Russians as an ethnic majority throughout. Therefore, 'fragmentation' is highly unlikely. What we may see is a 'weakening' of central power, akin to in history where nobles did what the hell they want in their areas while the monarch sat in the centre either vainly trying to get them to obey or pretending everything was fine. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:24, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think your misunderstanding my statement about Putin's control. Obviously he has support, but the strength of the regime emanates from Moscow. Though again, there are certainly regime supporters in these regions, most only support the regime to avoid the ire of Moscow. If Moscow's focus is diverted to internal conflict, I think you will see regions attempt to break away. Chechnya is the obvious example of this; Kadyrov has built an irregular military structure, it's gaining significant experience from their conflicts, and Kadyrov has made pains to back Putin, he has openly criticized the MoD. Eastern and Central statelets are frequently making direct appeals for better training and supplies for their mobilized men. Russian MoD only recently stated it will be responsible for more of the kit provided to soldiers, reaffirming that for the better part of this conflict, it has fallen to these communities. These would be prime regions to try to declare independence if their is no clear (perceived legitimate) government in the Kremlin.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 20:01, 1 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Eh, it was more a general gripe, Liberal. Anyway, Chechnya is a 'special case' in the respect that it's a 'minority-majority' region and it is also a differing religion from the 'core'. Thus, I would argue they're the exception, not the rule. Other 'ethnic Russian' regional leaders won't try to bolt from even in a very weakened state, because there's no 'ideology' to coalesce around. Instead, if the regional 'Princes' are that discontented with the Czar, they shall simply ignore him. If there's kickback from that, they'll then try to depose him.


 * And don't read too much into the fact that Moscow is throwing the weight of the costs of the mobilisations onto the provinces - that is once again, the neo-feudalism in action [and the fact the MoD has shown itself to be massively corrupt and somewhat incompetent, as well as the fact the Finance department is trying to conserve cash].


 * In short; as long as the Army, FSB and other 'organs' remain responsive to the orders of the centre, Russia shall hold together. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:13, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

(reset) Given that this is a topic that 'interested ordinary persons' can discuss (in part due to media comments on Putin's position and state of health) it can be assumed that governments and others have equivalents of 'London Bridge is fallen' ('Kremlin is fallen'?) which are in progress (including possible successors to Putin).

It is in would-be-successors' interests to make their ambitions obscure - and for Putin to remain in office while in a weak position - it gives them more room to manoeuvre (but more chances to be discovered): unless they reach the point where 'we better hang together/do something #now# before we get hanged (or otherwise dealt with) separately.' Anna Livia (talk) 13:56, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That implies of course that any of them have any idea about when Putin will be weak enough to remove. Karma is correct that control of the security services and riot police is pretty key. Losing control of either of those would effectively neutralize Putin's ability to control the Russian public.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 00:16, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Technically, the Russians do have a 'chain of command' which shall kick in if any succession moves are needed. However, Putin has ammassed a huge amount of informal power and political capital [though I bet he's spent a ton of this on this war]. That to paraphrase Star Trek VI: Mishustin may succeed Putin, he won't be able to replace him. There it gets fuzzy; shall Mishustin be a puppet President, try to take the role himself or simply become a forgettable stopgap before being shunted aside [the Russian constitution makes this easy; simply appoint your successor as PM, then resign, like Yeltsin did with Putin in '99.]


 * One thing we need to watch for is 'non-compliance with orders'. Russians are rather like Brits in this manner; if confronted with something we don't like, or cannot actually do, we usually won't call out the boss... we shall simply 'crash' the policy. It shall run into 'unforseen problems' and stall. The orders shall get 'lost'. We shall forget to give you updates [hoping you forget]. We'll try to pass the task to a third party and then blame them for non-achievement. We'll follow malicious compliance and run it into bureaucratic bollards. And if needs be, we'll file technical compliance of the policy while doing what the hell we would anyway. Some shall call this 'passive aggressive' - I prefer the term from Yes, Minister; 'creative inertia'.


 * Continuing with my neo-feudal analogy; let us remember 'my vassal's vassal is not my vassal'. Every order Putin makes has to be filtered through at least four layers of bureaucracy to 'make it happen'. This relies on every layer executing the order correctly and returning correct information back to their boss. From the looks of it, the Russian system has a significant amount of slack in it [also, corruption] which is why they're proving fairly incompetent and relying on brute force and weight of numbers to succeed [again, a classic Russian tactic, which does not always work]. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:12, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * One can assume that 'many governments and others' have planned courses of action 'what happens when...' and a number of 'what happens if...' (the firmness or vagueness of which will depend in part upon proximity: the Russia-bordering countries as against some of the smaller countries of of the world which are of limited interest to Russia) which will remain 'passive/occasionally explored' until there is reason to activate them.
 * Putin's 'L'Etat c'est moi' set up will cause some problems (as with Nicholas II taking on the leadership of the Russian army during WWI) = as is the absence of a viable system of succession/caretaker leader.
 * My original point was not so much 'the end-point of the Putin regime' but what will happen several months afterwards, when the dust has settled and whoever is in power realises that the situation requires more than just a new leader to resolve the issues. Anna Livia (talk) 13:13, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Well that's a fundamentally different question that I think no one truly has the answer too. It's all conjecture. I think it's safe to assume the Russian state will continue to exist, but very likely weakened. If there is a lot of political infighting, it will likely take time for whomever works their way to the top to then assume control of different structures, which I think will not be easy. Then the question becomes whether they double down on their imperialism, or seek to refocus their energy on reintegrating with the world. It will be hard to convince the masses to give up their imperial thinking and I think even harder to go begging to the West to let them back in.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 21:02, 3 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I take two issues with your question, Liberal...


 * 1/ The idea the Russians had ever 'given up' on imperalism. The USSR was ultimately the 'Second Russian Empire', which is shown by the fact Russians clearly 'miss' it but the non-Russian Soviets generally are glad it's gone [the prime example being that Putin's replacing the old Soviet motifs in the Occupied Ukraine including statues to Stalin thinking the locals would somehow like them]. The Soviet Coup of 1991 was the last ditch attempt by [mainly] ethnic Russians to 'save the empire' and even at the nadir of Russian power it still did it's best to crush breakaway efforts from Chechenia and assert claims over Crimea etc.


 * 2/ The idea it was 'integrated' with the rest of the world, and there is in fact 'one world' to integrate with. Her internal economy was always highly protected from outsiders, the siloviki had utterly bent the legal systems to their will, the government only made a facade of following 'international norms' and that's assuming they didn't simply dismiss some of the actions as nothing more than 'Western faddism'. Ironically, the economic/cultural relations between Russia and 'the West' in 2014 was almost identical to the one in 1914.


 * What's more, it always tried to deal with 'other' powers if/when it could; India, China, Brazil etc. That is one of the main plans to survive now - they shall take Russian raw materials in return for manufactures and re-exported sanctioned luxury goods for the siloviki, if needs be via a form of barter called 'countertrades' [like how the USSR got by on for most of it's life]. The only real fly is the ending of the Euro natural gas trade, as it's pretty hard to set up alternative supply lines etc.


 * KarmaPolice (talk) 10:00, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * After Lenin's death there was a notional 'collective leadership', even if Stalin engineering his own succession; after Stalin's death there was a collective leadership 'for a while', with Beria and Malenkov as possible front runners (the former very temporarily); and with the August 1991 coup there was a 'Gang of Eight', with Shevardnadze and Yeltsin acting from outside that group (simplifying considerably); so it is likely that the transition period (however and whenever it happens) will involve a number of diverse figures (who are likely to be keeping their heads down presently in order to keep their heads attached), and there will probably be a certain amount of discussion with regional apparatchiks/siloviki (mutual support and non-interference).
 * We can also assume that most governments with an interest in Russian affairs will have plans for 'Kremlin May Fall' - which will contain a large amount of conjecture and wishful thinking, and will not place emphasis on the actual successor emerging. Anna Livia (talk) 13:52, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think anyone in leadership actually wants a fallen Russia (that would be disastrous). What they want is a Russia that plays ball and doesn't rock the boat too much. Vee (talk) 13:58, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * A reference to 'London Bridge is Fallen' - ie the departure of Putin (however it happens). Anna Livia (talk) 17:49, 6 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Karma you have a magnificent gift of context, because I can totally see how my post can be viewed through multiple lenses. I'll say this, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia was integrated into the world 'economy' which to a classic Liberal is the same thing. Russian businesses could operate with relative freedom, Russian people could take advantage of more travel options, and have general open access to the internet. There is obviously no one world integration, but for a time Russia and it's citizens were a part of the broader world. Putin did create a fortress economy, but as we see every day out of Russia is things not quite working because they have been cut-off from the rest of the world.
 * In terms of Russia's imperial goals, a larger empire is certainly the goal of the state and shared with large portions of the public. But the method, using violent force, is not the way modern empires are built. If they seek to achieve those goals in the future, they have to fundamentally change. Whether the next leader is willing to do that remains to be seen.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 00:58, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Issue is, while your point is decent, it exaggerates [by implication] how closed the Soviet system was. Yes, it was pretty strangled at the heights of Stalinism but before and after there was some 'connections'. The issue was that of, well connections. If you had 'blat', you could get in the 60s Beatles records, Levi jeans, copies of Newsweek, Dior perfume, IKEA furniture and holidays in France. In fact, it was one of the glues which held together the regime; that for an ordinary 'middle class' person, if 'we did good' [in some way] we'd be granted some 'monopoly money', allowed to go into one of the closed shops and pick out a taste of materialism, like say a couple of American bras, a pair of British shoes or some jazzy Italian scarves.


 * In this respect, Russia has simply reverted to how we ration shit like this; by the purse. Issue is, Russia is an incredibly unequal nation and only the 'nobles' and the top grades of the 'burghers' can afford to enjoy the fruits of this 'integration'. One of the major changes is the growth of China as the world's factory, allowing the narod to get cheap shoddy shirts and poorly-glued trainers like the rest of us. 'Freedom of travel' is one clear difference between the Second and Third Empires, which deserves some looking at.


 * The USSR [like the Eastern Bloc] hated with a passion overseas travel. Partly because they'd see Western SoL, but mainly because they feared they wouldn't come back. Most of the travellers were young[ish] and well-educated - a resource the state had sunk cash into. You don't want to pay say $100k in training a doctor only to see them emigrate as soon as they've qualified, yes? [This brain-drain got so bad for East Germany it was one of the main reasons for the Berlin Wall; even Kennedy himself was privately sympathetic to the DDR's issue]. But this had the knock-on effect that it created dissidents.


 * The Putinist regime doesn't give a fuck about organic economic/national growth; their neo-feudal system is all about rent-seeking behavior and wealth-extraction, not building a 'new civilisation'. This means in general, it has no 'need' for all those intelligentsia who bitch about 'human rights', 'democracy' and all that. Don't need you, either fit in or fuck off. And well, if you are going to say that, you'd better leave the door open so it can hit them in the arse on the way out, yes? Here Putin shows his KGB background; he took what was an ad-hoc 'safety valve' in the 1970s for individuals into a whole public policy to shore up the regime. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:32, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Are we racing toward AI catastrophe?
As tech giants like Microsoft and Google compete to capture the AI market, safety could be an afterthought. Herreshoffian (talk) 12:11, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ever play with ChatGPT? It's both neat, and also half useless. It's pretty easy to get that bot to offer "confident and completely incorrect" answers. As science fiction author Ted Chiang describes it, these sort of bots are akin to a "blurry JPEG of the web". Anyone relying on this for "good answers" is naive; pretty much everything this bot spits out should be fact-checked with yer standard Google searches.
 * So, the main "AI catastrophe" I would foresee in the near future is yet another This happens over time. At present, it seems that the hype cycles in AI primarily concern commercial over-promise, with self-driving cars being the most visible over-hype that I can recall. Remember in the 2010s where tech was promising self-driving cars in 3-5 years? Oops. Instead, we get some admittedly nifty extended cruise control modes that some idiot CEOs dangerously overhype. Mercedes recently came out with a more extended self-driving mode that only works in stop-and-go traffic. Whee... BobJohnson (talk) 14:54, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Human labor is going to be further devalued by anything the AI can do, causing widening class divides if we don't regulate it. The art and music industries are already being severely disrupted, and it is going to just be inundated with cheap ai products.  An actual artist might be better than an ai (debatable), but is it worth spending thousands of times more vs free?  MirrorIrorriM (talk) 16:40, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * (EC)I agree with the other Bob. This will not end the world the world.
 * On the other hand, I have been having endless fun playing with chat GDP. You need to fire it up and ask: "Write two articles on "X". One in the style of Rationalwiki and the other in the style of Conservapedia."
 * I have had no end of fun replacing "X" with things like "atheism", "atheism and obesity", "magic", "urine therapy" and a whole host of others - the spirit of Ken comes through so clearly you can feel his unintellectual input prodding the output.
 * The RW "articles" are really what you would expect (though lacking some snark) but the Conservapedia ones are frequently even funnier than their real-life equivalents. I recommend this to anyone feeling bored and with time to spare. It really cheers you up!Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 16:51, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Is this Poe's Law in action?
 * What is the likelihood that 'as with other forms of automation' some of the hard/routine work gets passed onto 'the machines' allowing new forms of human activities to emerge (the printing press and the typewriter replacing manual copying; the industrial revolution removed much pure human hard graft etc - and Wikipedia/the wikiverse replaced paper encyclopedias and Encarta etc, while hybrid human-AI interactions will occur. (One example I have come across - 'judges and lawyers' can consider the wider context of a particular situation, whereas the LawBots just 'follow the rules.') Anna Livia (talk) 17:22, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I suspect the opening post was done by a concern troll seeking entertainment. Ayıntaplo (talk) 17:51, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Sadly, other Bob, it appears that the "fun" is over for at least one half. When I tried to get ChatGPT to write some articles in the style of Conservapedia, it tells me that it won't generate "content that mimics hate speech, such as that which appears on websites that promote conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation, such as Conservapedia." Oh noes my freeze peach is being crushed! /s Truth though. :)
 * In the last few days, there's been a non-story in the outrage circuits circulating where certain single brain cells like Elon Musk and Ben Shapiro are really really upset that you can't use the n-word on ChatGPT. So maybe they've tightened things down a bit in order to dissuade the edgelord troll types. BobJohnson (talk) 19:33, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Hello other Bob. It's a bit hit or miss. But now I'm getting a refusal to write with a specific bias as well. I wish I'd kept the ones it generated before, as they were really funny. But it refused to play a few days ago as well, but then it came back.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 20:04, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

.... or arguably it will make pricing difficult to justify with the absence of human labour and the inability for people to afford good and services without some significant UBI. It may actually be the thing that will force us to transfer into a Post-capitalist society. This is what the journalist Paul Mason believes anyways. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 20:09, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Some of the Conservapedia articles like atheism and obesity appear to have an undercurrent of dry humor and provocativeness by the author and a bot can't easily capture that. A number of Conservapedia's atheism, homosexuality and evolution articles seem to be purposefully provocative and incorporate dry humor while still incorporating an encyclopedic tone. RationalWiki uses snark. Conservapedia uses dry humor. Even in a dry science topic like evolution, the first section of Conservapedia's main evolution article has a subtle, taunting undercurrent. The pictures and captions in the articles often appear to use dry humor and be provocative too. For example, in the Conservapedia evolution article, the author doesn't use just any picture of Jonathan Sarfati, he uses one of Sarfati playing chess. Ayıntaplo (talk) 20:22, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * No one here's impressed by your flexing, Ken. Vee (talk) 02:21, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The only reason people are impressed with ChatGPT is because its output looks like the sort of thing most humans write: vacuous banal pap. But is that really an accomplishment to be proud of? FairDinkum (talk) 08:37, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Vee (talk) 09:30, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

I must pet the ultimate goat!
I just found this on Reddit. D'awwwww. Luigifan18 (talk) 00:21, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It's pretty good - though the outraged Christian comments are unintendedly funnier than the pic.Bob"Life is short and (insert adjective)" 16:34, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I skimmed through their subreddit. Unfortunately, they do make points. 2A06:5B01:C02:F000:D120:C5AE:A9C9:753 (talk) 06:54, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Fly eagles fly!
Super Bowl 57 is about to be underway! 2600:387:5:803:0:0:0:37 (talk) 23:39, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Nah man, I’m backing the Chiefs. Kansan here. 01:45, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * And the Chiefs got it!!! 03:22, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

About that war in Vietnam...
People seem not to realise it, but we've been "lied": USA ACTUALLY WON THE WAR

Before rejecting me as a "crank", let me explain: The militar warfare ended in 1975, when North Vietnam defeated SOUTH VIETNAM, unifying all the country. However, USA left the belic strategy two years earlier, changing to a policy of economic embargo. Unlike Cuba, Vietnam ended utterly destroyed, so they needed some external help to rebuild the economy. Their new leaders were forced to do some market "reforms" to allow international capital to flow.

The involvement of USA in Vietnam wasn't mainly for mere imperialist purposes (though it was), but to stop a revolutionary domino-effect among Southeastern Asian nations... AND THEY SUCCEEDED: No socialist country is left there (not sure if North Korea counts).

All of this would only prove what we've been fearing: USA (CIA in particular) is an allmighty monster that gets everything they want by truly machiavellian means Deadend (talk) 01:16, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * easy there ken.
 * Vietnam was in the soviet camp after the war; the US lost, even if a domino effect was prevented, though we will never know if the domino effect wouldve been real. The US "won" in the 1990s, when the USSR disappeared and 'nam firmwd a quiet relationship with the US against china.  We won every battle, lost the war, but won the grand strategy. CorSock (talk) 05:19, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * What about Cambodia and Laos? They 'fell' about the same time as the Americans pulled out; showing that all three 'anti-Communist' governments were basically puppets being held up by American arms, ruled by relatively corrupt, 'reactionary' and unpopular elites. Like later found with Iraq and Afghanistan, America has long sucked at 'nation-building'.


 * Anyway, the Domino theory was built on incorrect assumptions and the Sino-Soviet split from ~'65 onwards also made it obsolete. There was also a general American ignorance of the appeal of Communism in the developing world and the Hanoi regime in particular which meant they failed to understand how to combat it [or more correctly, they didn't listen to those experts who did get it and came up with alternative plans].


 * However, this does not mean America 'won' the Vietnam war. It lost it, but it was proven to be in hindsight a war America didn't need to fight. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:34, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Of course, 'murica sucks at building puppet governments IN ASIA (in LatAm they are extremely successful), but, as I told before, that wasn't the main intention: Being the anti-socialist leviathan was the real one all along. The domino theory also assummed the popularity of socialism in the post-colonial world as another possible mechanism of red expansion (support from USSR or China wasn't mandatory) What I try to say with all this stuff is: United States of America is a lovecraftian entity which always gets what they want.

(and nope, they had never intended to rule Afganistan; kicking the soviets, preventing socialism and maintaining the industrial-militar complex was enough) Deadend (talk) 12:39, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, what about Haiti, then? No, the USA equally blows in 'state creation' around the globe, but isn't so bad at propping up states which do have some organic strength in them. And the Iraq and Afghanistan I cite are the post 2001 creations.


 * No, the American ruling class are simply not that smart, or forward-thinking. If they were, they would have never 'taken the bait' by [partly] paying for Chinese industrialisation between 1985-2010. And it's easy to look like an all-succesful octopus when you are the leading global power with little effective direct opposition. And this century shall feature America getting less and less of 'what she wants' in the world. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:16, 7 February 2023 (UTC)


 * you gotta love all the fractal wrongness of this post. i don't know why usa americans just can't seem to accept defeat. i mean, you lost... get over it. pretty soon, we'll have american nationalists saying they actually "won" in afghanistan. The G (talk) 16:15, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I prefer USAians myself, but each to their own. Oh, don't forget Somalia. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:49, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * America is an absolutely terrifying force when it comes to fighting wars with clearly defined goals. First Gulf War had a clearly defined goal of kicking Iraq out of Kuwait and preventing further aggression in the Arabian and Levantine regions. Iraq got butchered in one of the most triumphant military victories in history. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq went incredibly well too with amazingly lopsided casualty ratios. The issues came from the respective occupations. SwampFox (talk) 22:35, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree - America wins wars. And then royally screws up the following "peace" allowing all their military gains to be undone.  Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 22:55, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It has been a long time since the US was actually willing to commit ethnic cleansing if that's what it takes to win. The US basically told Japan via deeds that they were willing to exterminate most of the population if that's what it took.  Since then?  The US strategy in Vietnam was to basically occupy South Vietnam, generally piss off the locals, and keep the country effectively locked in a perpetual cycle of violence.  The US strategy in Iraq was not much different, though the US did get smart with the Awakening Councils; instead of fighting the genocidal nutjobs, hire them directly and let them do your dirty work.  It worked, actually quite well if you don't mind the wives and children of your targets being raped and/or butchered too.  Then the US pulled out and, understandably, the locals stopped paying the mercenaries.  Later, a bunch of the Awakening Councils would fight ISIS, while other members simply joined them, and, well, that didn't turn out so great.  The strategy in Afghanistan?  I honestly have no friggen clue.  Just send a bunch of troops there and hope for the best, I think, while trying to play one tribe off of another without truly understanding what any of the tribes actually wanted; the Pashtun were split across both Afghanistan and Pakistan and simply didn't give a fuck about the border, the Hazaras were sick of being exterminated by all the others for being Shia and were willing to accept aide from anyone (i.e., Iran), Tajik and Uzbek were I don't even know, the Baloch were too busy fighting each other to actually get anything done, etc.  It was, ugh, probably should've just negotiated with the Taliban at the start; give us Osama and we won't invade, and yeah yeah "sacred hospitality" but the rules around that also require that your guest not be a twat, and since Osama was killing muslims in his bombings throughout the mid-east, sacred hospitality does not even apply.  01:05, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * One thing to remember is this; it's been a very long time since the USA actually fought an 'comparable' enemy. Her last major naval action was WW2, the last tank/air battles were Korea. I suspect the last infantry action was Vietnam. Ever since then, she has had scraps with enemies who were either massively outnumbered, with kit a generation out of date, with a morale of cardboard and/or poor 'warcraft'. KarmaPolice (talk) 08:27, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * We fought air battles in Vietnam. Not many, but they happened.  And let's not forget there were major tank battles in the first Iraq war, and Saddam did have modern T72's at the time.  15:34, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * oh yes. 'battles'. i hadnt realised there were any battles in the first gulf war. but i guess the one sided slaughter were technically battles. AMassiveGay (talk) 19:04, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The only countries that could ever hope to match the US in a conventional war 1v1 are India and China. Russia would be steamrolled, as Ukraine is proving.  India and China are a bit out of date, but not excessively so, and they have a LOT of manpower at their disposal.  Everyone else?  Some are able to harass the US in other ways to avoid an all-out war, e.g., Iran doesn't need to win on the battlefield but just drop a bunch of mines into the straits of Hormuz which would make WWIII unavoidable, Indonesia could do the same with the strait of Malacca and Russia with the Black Sea and Danube.  Most countries really have one option; fade into the civilian population, and wait until the Americans get sick of bombing hospitals.  21:18, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * For the record....


 * - Vietnam occasionally could scrape up 'comparable' aircraft/AAs [think the USSR gave some MiG-21s and SA2s at one point] but generally speaking they were using stuff of Korea-vintage or older. Which was a 'generation' difference for early jet craft.


 * - The T-72 was newish in 1991, but we need to remember that tank is the 'budget' option for the USSR [the T-80 was more comparable to main NATO tanks of this period]. Also, Iraq had the even cheaper 'export' version which really couldn't go toe-to-toe [why the hell do you think the Ukranians want shit like Challengers and Leopards?]. Lastly, the allies weren't stupid and used their complete air superority to blow those Iraqi tanks to bits even before they had the chance to respond. If nothing else, the USAF could not have used it's A-10s to do this if the Iraqis had a functioning AA system or fighter cover.


 * But you miss the main point; which is with a lack of 'field experience', much of America's military strength is theoretical in nature. Peacetime militaries have a tendency to prepare for the wars they'd like to fight - this usually compliments their own strengths. Which means oddly enough, enemies are least inclined to do this in RL. It's inevitable that in a 'WW3' scenario America shall learn at least one key concept/weapon system is utterly wrong [my money is on aircraft carriers]. Though on the plus side, the enemy shall have this issue too.


 * As for claims of American superiority... don't be so sure. America has several issues, including reports ~75% of eligible males unable to serve in a draft, many of her weapon systems are high-maintenence nightmares or overly-specialised 'glass cannons', it's a near-cert she doesn't have enough ordinance stocks for a prolonged campaign, is critically dependent on tech which ultimately stems from around a dozen factories on Taiwan and lacks the reserves/production for a 'Ukraine-style' land campaign. Perhaps more importantly, your statement highlights why America loses wars - the relative ignoring the socio-econo-political vectors for a rigidly  conventional military view. This cost Vietnam - with Westmoreland with his graphs and charts showing 'enemy killed' and not fucking realising he was measuring something which did not change Hanoi's views on the war.


 * Which is why, if nothing else the world's militaries are watching the Russian war with interest - trying to divine lessons on their craft from it. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:19, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Disclaimer: Unlike many of you think, I'm not even USAnian, but a spanish socialist with doomer characteristics. I just wanted to point out how USA/CIA has become the global Big Brother and how any hope shall be lost Deadend (talk) 13:36, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
 * ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????--A p r i l Chat? 22:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Overlap Between Anti-vaxxers and TERFs
I think there is an overlap between Anti-vaxers and TERFs.Both of them originated from The UK,A lot of TERFs are british and while america has more anti-vaxers than UK,The modern anti-vaccination movement was strarted by a brit.They both hate big pharma,TERFs hate it for offering Transition for Transgender people while Anti-vaxxers hate it for exploiting children for profit,Depopulating the world. And other reasons. →§ Edward the eight (talk) 11:06, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think you're wrong on this, but I can kinda get why you are [and they aren't for bad reasons either].


 * The crux of the issue is simple; in the UK, you shall find both TERFy-ness and anti-vaxxer views meeting together in the mind of the 'British Karen', esp the mid-aged ones who are found in places like MumsNet. As Karen already knows everything she needs to know, she doesn't see any need to correct the vague maxim she has that 'all men are [ultimately] rapists' and vague misandry that she got from the thrice-watered RadFem articles in the Daily Fail etc and a quarter-century of bitching sessions with other Karens.


 * The Karen-ness also hits with anti-vaxxing, because her precious spawn is the most important thing ever and she remembers the shite by Wakefield but not the bit where he was proven to be shite [effects still with us some 20 years later]. She also has no sense of proportion, mainly due to the fact she doesn't understand statistics [which tallies above; she fears trans-rapists hiding in bathrooms when all the stats show that transwomen are much more victims than culprits in this].


 * However, there's one other aspect you've missed; the whole 'child sexual abuse' angle. I occasionally follow the pack of idiots and nutjobs which started out over the whole Carl 'Credible and True' Beech affair [so need to do a RW page on that fat fucker] and there's a lot of overlap in the venn circles of 'TERF', 'Anti-Vax' and 'satanic ritual abuse' which morphs into a general deep suspicion of 'Them' and occasionally can be seen becoming a full blown 'grand conspiracy theory' in the corners of the British SuperWeb. 'Think of the children!' is normally the main strand for all three.


 * Anyway, the fact the first anti-vaxxers were British means nothing, as the UK was the first place with modern vaccinations and [I believe] the first place to make a infant vaxxination mandatory [against smallpox]. Naturally, the first anti-vax stuff would start at the same time/place. KarmaPolice (talk) 12:41, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It's worth noting that while Andrew Wakefield plays a huge role in the modern US / British / etc. anti-vaccination movement, it is hardly the only genesis of such. France for instance had a and many sources cite this as the reason why a rumor about the hepatitis B vaccine spread through that country during that decade, and why that country has some deep pockets of hesitancy. In the US, I think the HPV vaccine bruhaha in the 2000s equally helped jumpstart the current anti-vaccination movement, and that was tied to fundie style discomfort of sex. Generally speaking, anti-vaccination movements tend to be some combination of a lack of trust in institutions for whatever reason, and/or a promotion of superstition or some social paradigm above all. The later is much harder to dislodge than the former, and I think that shows in the differences in vaccination rates between the UK (and even France!) and the US for the COVID-19 vaccine. While the US certainly had its crowd of vaccine-hesitancy due to, say, understandable historical reasons, more of the anti-vaccination hesitancy in the US is tied to the oogie-boogie of fundamentalism (or, even worse, the political identity that emerged with the fundie/Republican combo of "Trumpism"). And that's much harder to change. BobJohnson (talk) 14:07, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think the Conspiracy-Culture in the US is not only from the Fundamentalists but the libertarians who believe that anything that the government does is bad Due to this US is not a Developed but a Developing country similar to nigeria but even nigeria is better than that ←§ Edward the eight (talk) 14:40, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Thing is, we in the UK had our own 'contaminated blood scandal' which was more preventable and a series of 'don't trust the authorities' examples for any Brit can recall. However, I think in the UK this was counteracted by a combination of a) general trust in the NHS, b) less dogmatic view of 'the state' being a boogieman by default and c) much less of the fundie, prudish shite.


 * This last one is worth looking at a bit deeper. I think a major issue with disease protection is a variant of the old prosperity gospel. That THE LORD shall not only reward 'the just' with material riches and 'success' but shall also personally protect them from Covid [or any other disease] if they are 'deserving'. Therefore, there is 'no need' for not just vaccinations, but even any protections or public health actions. Here in the UK, we saw this kind of fundie fatalistic views not just with the usual Christian cults but also with elements of both the hardline Muslims and Haredi Jews too during the lockdowns etc.


 * Anyway, as this infographic page shows the UK ended up with about 'average' vaccination coverage by Euro standards and wasn't that bad when it needs to be remembered we have relatively little stick used. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:36, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * EC there is always a lot of overlap between fringe (and not so fringe) fuck nut movements, they are all against an 'establishment' of some kind - the illuminati, big government, big pharma, mainstream media etc. these things function as huge umbrellas that cover a hell of a lot. they can cover a lot of disparate causes, even ones antagonistic to each other. something like big pharma, everyone on the planet hates something that can fall under the big pharma umbrella. you could claim common cause with a lot of different groups if you ignore their reasoning and extent of their antipathy to whatever it is that is covered by the label. fringe movements can find themselves on the same side of debates on occasion. it doesnt really mean much in and of itself. it might mean their support base cross pollinates and their respective movements grow as a result. or they might find the association with a particular movement toxic and need to distance themselves from it. we should not view them all and as a result dismiss them all as being ultimately the same though. we'd risk dismissing any genuine grievance a particular group might draw its support base from, strengthening the more toxic elements.


 * as for terfs and anti vaxxers specifically, if there is over lap in an anti big pharma position, its not a position that is of equal importance to each movement. for terfs, antipathy to big pharma is not fundamental to their cause, its supplementary if its a thing at all that is widespread amongst terfs. for anti vaxxer, opposition to big pharma its fundamental to the cause. for anti vaxxers it is the cause. there are no doubt anti-vaxxers who are strident terfs. but probably plenty of terfs who are stridently opposed to anti vaxxers. beyond sharing a broadly anti big pharma position, what can it tell us about these two movements? do they share talking points or tactics? and having a shared uk origin means little, even if it were not a little dubious (andrew wakefield's discredited research might have been published in the uk, but wakefield had to go to the us for the anti vaxx movement to really bloom. blame oprah, not the uk). we dont learn anything about either of them by reading too much into an overlap that is at best contrived. AMassiveGay (talk) 16:05, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The categories are ostensibly incoherent. Anti-vaxxers is fairly well-defined, while TERF has recently been taken to include anyone with gender critical views. TERF as a common English noun is not well-defined beyond " person who is not 100 per cent compliant with trans-movement positions". UncleKrampus (talk) 20:47, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think someone who is a radical feminist whose feminism is exclusionary to transgender people is a pretty clear and concise definition. Anti-vaxxers on the other hand doesn’t even necessarily entail people entirely opposed to vaccination. Many of them are only opposed to certain kinds of vaccines and yet we would still call them anti-vax. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 21:54, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Having just listened to a half-hour panel debate show on the Scottish Gender Bill, I think I can come up with a rough-and-ready 'British TERF ID card'...


 * 1/ Claims to be 'for women' and/or 'a feminist'.
 * 2/ Speaks of trans persons primarily or wholly as 'being a threat' to 1.
 * 3/ Never considers 2 to be actual persons who may have rights of their own, such as protection.
 * 4/ Rarely notes that transmen exist.


 * There are others, naturally, but for me they're the four key points to watch for. KarmaPolice (talk) 22:03, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Very good summary, may be incomplete. To OnlySortaDumb: From our own article: "a member of a fringe but sadly loud and vocal hate movement within feminism, in which the vast majority of members never actually advocate for women's rights but instead, obsessively promote transphobia, especially transmisogyny, often through a range of conspiracy theories and denialism...." I would dispute that is concise and comprises a well-defined meaning. I am only arguing the ambiguity of the definition. Just saying espouses transphobic views  inadequately delimits their numbers.UncleKrampus (talk) 22:21, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * You are reading that assuming it is intended as a definition and not as a general but not absolute statement about what TERF's often are like. The second claim requires qualification as what constitutes transphobia in this context. I would argue that anything that works to delegitimize a transgender person's gender identity is inherently transphobic.   People make the distinction between someone who transphobic and that who is a TERF. Matt Walsh is a transphobe, J.K. Rowling is a TERF. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 22:56, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It should also be said that "gender critical" in this context is a bit of a dog whistle. Being critical of gender as a concept is something many trans people themselves promote, I know trans people who are gender abolitionists, post-genderists, or gender nihilists -- but still believe in the legitimacy of transgender identity (as something as legitimate as anyone's else gender identity which is to say as a sort of "spook"). The focus is just more emphasized on bodily autonomy and self-expression (if "women" isn't a real category then what justification do we have to say that certain people cannot identify as a woman?). The specific kind of "gender critical" that TERF's espouse is more specific to endorsing a kind of bioessentialism to the categories of men and women. It's not really by any means truly critical of gender or exemplifying of thinking critically about gender. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 23:01, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes you are right. I am reading it that way. There is a problem, as I see it, with your assertion ' anything that works to delegitimize a transgender person's gender identity is inherently transphobic." that problem is: the definition is personalized and therefore incoherent for general use. Some trans people are not offended or feel undermined by statements that deeply concern others. The dog whistle stuff is not helpful at all. I understand why Matt Walsh is considered transphobic. He rejects the trans concept. J.K Rowling is, I think just gender critical, or am I wrong about that?UncleKrampus (talk) 00:34, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "Just gender critical" is not a thing. If you are genuinely a self-identified feminist who uses "gender critical" as certain anti-trans feminist sub-groups do then you are de facto accepting anti-trans ideology. I said anything that works to delegitimize a transgender person's gender identity is inherently transphobic, yes but that does not mean transphobia is defined as such. That is the fallacy of taking  If P then Q and inferring if Q then P.


 * Incoherent, how? I don't see any inherent logical contradictions or anything of the sort that violates any formal understanding of coherency that I am aware of. "helpful" to what? Why is it even relevant if some trans people are offended or not? I didn't say anything about offense.  To "delegitimize" something is not dependent on personal offense. You're not making sense to me. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 00:47, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Very simple my friend. If X behavior offends a fraction of a group Y then we cannot say that x is Y-phobic in general. Just simple principles of clearly defined language. That is not to say that people who are offended are wrong. Only that the concept of such offence is incoherent. We are confused as to when it is offensive. Some are offended by the concept of biological sex, for example.UncleKrampus (talk) 01:21, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Also, incoherence can be a matter of improper definitions. Logic is really not involved.UncleKrampus (talk) 01:25, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Okay, just gonna to reject all of that because again emotional offence is not relevant to whether or not something is “Y-phobic”. Also any passive reading in the epstemology on coherence will make it very clear logical consistency is a major component to coherence. To be coherent informally means to be internally interconnected, consistent, and sensical. There is no grounds to claim incoherency by simply making shit up that has nothing to do with what I am talking about. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 03:41, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * However, 'emotional offence' is important in the respect many folks use it as a critera for '-phobia'. For a significant minority seems to be under the impression that the entire world should be a security blanket, enveloping them in a Barney-like hug and constantly reassuring them that they're 100% right and nobody has the right to make them 'sad' by say, questioning their views or presenting points which aren't a 'we love you' validation [dopey voice optional]. Which I think is Krampus' sticking point; we cannot judge by offence generated [at least, not alone].


 * Which is why I pull out the old measuring-stick of the 'reasonable person' from Anglo law; or in this particular case the 'reasonable transperson'. For there's clearly unreasonable transpersons out there [just like anywhere else]. And parts of the attributes of the 'reasonable person' [for me at least] is that they are smart/knowlegeable enough to judge the author on what they're saying, not on what people are calling them [or call themselves], and they're level-headed enough to get that just because you don't like some facts, it doesn't stop them being facts.


 * Part of the issue with Rowling et al is that they've basically 'drifted' towards TERFdom over time because of [I suspect] mainly by the actions of 'bad allies', who think transfolk are one monolithic bloc and they all have the exact same views on everything and falling into the fallacy above. KarmaPolice (talk) 08:13, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * From what I know, JK Rowling's transition to TERF really did come from a feminist perspective; the overall "feel" I get is that she was very concerned about domestic violence and female mental health, and unfortunately that led to what I see as over-concern on "the bathroom issue" and over the "over-treatment issue". Both I see as valid concerns worthy of addressing though, even though IMHO the "bathroom issue" is really overblown, and many concerned on the "over-treatment issue" seems to have only skimmed the gender affirming care process, showing concern on this alone is not worthy of the "transphobia" tag IMHO. However... feminism also has *always* had a small radical side that in the past bordered on unhelpful misandry; if you're dissing on anything with a penis already, there's no issue attacking trans people, and I sense that some of the worst of the modern "TERF" crowd would've been Andrea Dworkin types in the past. So the other thing that seemed to get the ball rolling with Rowling was befriending on Twitter, who really seems transphobic; her quotes and views seem to less occupy the world of actual feminism and more to occupy the world of Ron DeSantis. Since Twitter is a shithole with no nuance and base tribes lobbing shit at each other, such snowballed from there, and now Rowling is just another edgelord liking Libs of TikTok when they tweet anti-trans bullshit. So, yeah, if Rowling had simply stayed off social media, she probably wouldn't deserve the "transphobe" label; this is, alas, no longer seemingly the case.BobJohnson (talk) 15:21, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "For a significant minority seems to be under the impression that the entire world should be a security blanket, enveloping them in a Barney-like hug and constantly reassuring them that they're 100% right and nobody has the right to make them 'sad' by say, questioning their views or presenting points which aren't a 'we love you' validation [dopey voice optional]. Which I think is Krampus' sticking point; we cannot judge by offence generated [at least, not alone]." This is the sort of thing someone would conclude masturbating to copies of Newsweek and having taken seriously too many Ben Garrison cartoons. I will grant that some people like this exist but in the strict formal sense of "at least one".  I grant it the same level of seriousness in stating that some people are sexually aroused by the sight of safety cones.  We shouldn't be factoring the moral panic narratives from 2015 of the coddled college kids that lead conservative "protestors" to wear diapers on campus in our consideration to what makes something "Y-phobic". Thinking a particular black person's hair looks bad wouldn't make you racist. Neither still does hating a particular gay man's shoes make you homophobic. No matter how offended these particular people are on the basis of your comments.  "offense" is too broad and subjective to really assign any practical and actionable reality to bigotry.  It's not what I consider as someone who gives a shit about social justice. What I care about is power dynamics, exploitation, and oppression. That is what we should be focusing on. Does it help to harmfully limit the liberty of marginalized people? Does it help push them into dynamics that harmfully exploits them? Does it dehumanize them? Does it help motivate violence against them? Does it help construct hierarchies that privilege's certain demographics and the expense of others? Does it discriminate or actively push to exclude them from meaningfully participating in society? And of the people negatively effected by these things is their identity "immutable", etc.  - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 18:35, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Refusing to acknowledge the reality of a person's identity and refusing to grant them special protections to prevent them being subject to personal harms that as a member of an "identifiable group" they would be subject to is therefore commiting to discrimination and active political/social exclusion. So yeah for transgender people, refusing to grant their gender identity legitimacy knowing the harm that would result from it and how without protections to the legal recognition of their gender identity leads to things like employment discrimination, significant mental health outcomes, harassment, sexual assault, etc -- You would be acting transphobically. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 18:43, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * "refusing to grant them special protections... is therefore commiting to discrimination and active political/social exclusion." Actually, spectial treatment based on membership in a partcular group is discrimination, and a lack of discrimination would involve NOT doing that.


 * "a member of an "identifiable group"" The meaning of "identity" in legal contexts is not the same as in modern gender discussions. Let's be clear on which definitions are in use before progressing here. 192․168․1․42 (talk) 19:40, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I am using "identifiable group" as defined by Canadian law in the human rights code. Typically we are talking about immutable characteristics about who a person is such as their race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, etc. Things that cannot be forcibly muted, changed, or are under the individual's control. I.E. in the example of homosexuality you can not force someone to change their sexual orientation and it's not something that someone simply choses to be. Same with being black, ethnically Jewish, transgender, or a woman.  I am clearly not referring to what is called "positive discrimination" when I speak of discrimination. Affirmative action or reparation's in this context is NOT what is being referred to as discrimination. These do not result in active political/social exclusion but rather the opposite. The work to correct the past wrongs of negative discrimination - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 20:58, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

BobJ; which is my personal theory with Rowling. She voiced 'concerns' over overtreatment etc [which is as you note a valid, non-phobic position] got torn apart by the minority I outlined above online, then the chilling effect kicked in and voila, ended up being pushed into the arms of the true 'phobes. That not for the first time they partly created the 'enemy' by acting like intransigent pillocks and being a fucking bad advert to the cause I actually generally support.

Dumb; first off, my opinion can't be from "masturbating to copies of Newsweek and having taken seriously too many Ben Garrison cartoons" for the following reasons. 1/ I think I read about one Newsweek article every three months and 2/ I only learned who Garrison was about a month ago [and that was RW's own page]. If you'd really like to know how I reached this conclusion, it's primarily from actually interacting with these people, often online and frequently ending up banned, blocked and/or simply driven off. I won't mince words; if I didn't have 'skin in this game' [regardless to what they say] there's a damn good chance I would have followed the path I laid out above to full-blown 'phobe-dom.

Yes, social conservatives are doing their damn best to belch as much black smoke over this issue so they can peddle their culture wars shite but it's kinda a good move to see if there truly is a fire before dismissing it as a hoax. And there is. It's not very big, but it does exist.

In short, after spending a good 20 mins trying to decypher the rest of your comments, I'm still not sure whether you're flogging a dead horse or that hitching-post on the other side of the road. We both agree that personal offense is not critera for -phobia. Good. But what the hell are you going on about past this? KarmaPolice (talk) 19:28, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Imagine thinking I was being literal and not simply making cultural references to illustrate the overlap in narrative to a widely popular conservative moral panic. Your anecdotes don't prove that this is a general problem.  You are taking something deeply personal and specific to you and projecting it on a minority group. No different from the people who are  the victim of a violent crime by a black person and generalizes that criminal pre-disposition is a trait significant among black people, it's not a justifiable premise to make sweeping generalizations even in a limited sense of a "a significant minority".  Also based on my interactions with you I am not entirely convinced in this context you didn't deserve being banned from whatever small communities you are referencing. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 20:00, 10 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I'd like to intervene here and request that this discussion not refer to the motives, intelligence, or insight of the participants. We are all known to each other to the extent that we each should understand that no one is misrepresenting their opinions, and we must tolerate a variety of opinion. Ariel31459 (talk) 23:30, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, so what I've personally experienced is either hallucinations or lies, Dumb? And because I'm remotely critical towards a... whatever it is [it's not an ideology, it's not a scientific consensus and not even a public 'majority opinion'. So... a theory? A belief? A socio-political POV?] must clearly mean I've been brainwashed by ractionary culture war shite or something? It's something in the water, isn't it?


 * I never claimed it was a 'common' problem. And even if I had, while I can't prove that, you cannot prove the other way either. I made it clear that it was a minority and I felt the major culprits were bad/misplaced 'allyship', which scotches your point that I was 'projecting it onto a minority group', which was an assumption in the first place. Everyone knows that 'debate via Twitter' is hardly either filled with nuance or reasonableness too.


 * But it don't really matter. This has been an excellent example of 'how not to discuss a topic with others'. Wrapping up every point they make into veiled counters that they're either biased, lying, taken in by propaganda or 'like attacking victims' you put their backs up. When you discount actual personal experiences [without good reason] in such a glib manner, it makes people stop listening to you. The excessive use of overly-dense and jargonese language makes people suspect they're being bullshitted. Lastly, you are not even correct as you are presenting a uniformity of views on this topic which does not actually exist.


 * If I didn't have skin in this game, an interaction like this may have pushed me some 10% towards the transphobic crowd. Would that be helpful for 'the cause' long-term? KarmaPolice (talk) 09:18, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think a simpler, if more cynical interpretation, is that Rowling wanted to remain relevant and saw that the trans bandwagon was the best way of doing so. If fame doesn't work, try infamy! Vee (talk) 09:35, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Karma really trying to legitimize anectodical evidence and hasty generalizations by accusing the person pointing these fallacies out as being a conspiracy theorist is kind of telling. If I were to take a guess here can I assume that you never actually sat through a research methods, data analysis or critical thinking class before? Let's throw in a demand to prove a negative for good measure. "Personal experience" is also the grounds to which people justify the effects of alternative medicine. There are many other factors from confirmation bias, the self-fulfilling prophecy, expectancy effects, priming, etc. That can effect how other people respond to you, and what you perceive in the behavior of other people. You can't be so obtuse as to pretend that the a decade long moral panic of "PC culture gone too far", "SJW's are destroying college campuses", and the new "woke pandemic" with it's associated stereotypes of coddled college students and activists is not a popular media narrative. I can get you a hundred examples of it if you really wanted it. Literally copy and paste those statements in the quotes and you will get plenty of results from thinkpieces, to news coverage, to conservative protests. Just because you are not actively consuming this media does not mean you are not effected by it. Expectancy effects can easily be passively primed by this. Do I need to cite social and cognitive psychology textbooks to legitimize my claims are can you simply google this shit yourself? You can start with "top-down perceptual processing" - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 16:47, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Most of our experience is comprised by anecdotal information. Some of it fits together nicely, mostly it doesn't. Trying to make a theory that is sound is a really arduous task for social scientists. Instead of advising others to go back to school, it would strengthen your POV by making relevant arguments. We are, I believe, informed enough to follow it.Ariel31459 (talk) 19:44, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Except that OSD did provide relevant arguments. (What do you call this other than a "relevant argument": ""Personal experience" is also the grounds to which people justify the effects of alternative medicine. There are many other factors from confirmation bias, the self-fulfilling prophecy, expectancy effects, priming, etc. That can effect how other people respond to you, and what you perceive in the behavior of other people. You can't be so obtuse as to pretend that the a decade long moral panic of "PC culture gone too far", "SJW's are destroying college campuses",  and the new "woke pandemic" with it's associated stereotypes of coddled college students and activists is not a popular media narrative. I can get you a hundred examples of it if you really wanted it.  Literally copy and paste those statements in the quotes and you will get plenty of results from thinkpieces, to news coverage, to conservative protests. Just because you are not actively consuming this media does not mean you are not effected by it. Expectancy effects can easily be passively primed by this.") OSD also takes pains to point out that he is qualified to talk about these things, and gives pointers on relevant information to follow up on. OSD shouldn't have to educate others when others can, like OSD said, google the information themselves. Vee (talk) 01:31, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Karma really trying to legitimize anectodical evidence and hasty generalizations by accusing the person pointing these fallacies out as being a conspiracy theorist is kind of telling.


 * -Of what, exactly? Spit it out.


 * If I were to take a guess here can I assume that you never actually sat through a research methods, data analysis or critical thinking class before?


 * University level Economics, if you must know [which you don't]. Also did Sociology, History, Psychology and Philosophy at A-Level. Not my 'exact field', but not basket-weaving either. Or why don't you simply go all courtier's reply on me now and save me the time?


 * Oh, to pull up the 'critical thinking' point. Didn't turn yours to note that the minority of activists I mentioned may be not academics or experts, but simply blinkered loudmouths?


 * Let's throw in a demand to prove a negative for good measure. "Personal experience" is also the grounds to which people justify the effects of alternative medicine. There are many other factors from confirmation bias, the self-fulfilling prophecy, expectancy effects, priming, etc.


 * I agree. Which is why I am loathe in general to ignore established/proven theories by people way smarter than me and if/when I find anacdotal evidence contrary to them I shall first look to see how they can fit with the theory. Only if they don't, and the exceptions seem to be too large to 'explain away' only then shall I wonder if the theory is incomplete.


 * But you don't mention that your field is a new subject, with no established consensus on this yet, do you? There are persons who a) don't agree with you 100% and b) 'are not complete transphobes'. Social sciences are a lot more slippery... but we both already know this, don't we?


 * That can effect how other people respond to you, and what you perceive in the behavior of other people. You can't be so obtuse as to pretend that the a decade long moral panic of "PC culture gone too far", "SJW's are destroying college campuses", and the new "woke pandemic" with it's associated stereotypes of coddled college students and activists is not a popular media narrative.


 * Your point being? Legitimate concerns, however small they be should be covered up because the culture war shite peddlers might sieze on it? You might have not noticed this, but I am actually in general agreement with 'your side' on this. You are the one who repeatedly goes down this path, not me. I wanted a discussion about this, 'between critical friends' not a repeated hector on how I should sit down and shut up.


 * I can get you a hundred examples of it if you really wanted it. Literally copy and paste those statements in the quotes and you will get plenty of results from thinkpieces, to news coverage, to conservative protests. Just because you are not actively consuming this media does not mean you are not effected by it.


 * What makes you think I don't do this? I see this all the time in other fields, you think I'd not look at others with a suspicious eye? I'm actually halfway through a mildly-TERFy book right now and I'm going to the effort to cross-check their claims [provisional conclusion; they've been taken in somewhat by the 'black propaganda' belched out online by the 'phobes]. I actually spent some of my time reading 'phobe stuff in the mid-10s and I came to the conclusion they were even more wrong.


 * Expectancy effects can easily be passively primed by this. Do I need to cite social and cognitive psychology textbooks to legitimize my claims are can you simply google this shit yourself? You can start with "top-down perceptual processing" 


 * I cannot help but note [and point out] that you appear to be tilting at windmills here. My original point was that a minority of dogmatic, jerky loudmouths, often seen on places online may be having a overall negative effect on 'the cause' by driving neutrals into the 'phobic camp by well, being dogmatic jerks. Your counter-claim is that such people almost don't exist [you equated it being in the same numbers as people sexually attracted to traffic cones]. Therefore, I am left with three logical options;


 * a) Such people don't exist, I was having hallucinations all those times.


 * b) I am lying.


 * c) You are wrong on this one claim.


 * Now, I shall assure you it's not a but I don't have a doctor's certificate to prove that to a conclusive level. But as I don't seem to have issues functioning in other realms of my life, I think I can trust my senses on it. I naturally shall deny b but accept I cannot prove this to others without tons of effort. Which leaves me with c as the most credible option from my own point of view.


 * Lastly, ah, here's the courtier's reply. Was wondering when it would turn up. But this isn't actually your court, is it? For we're discussing public relations, science communication and political activism - not gender theory. KarmaPolice (talk) 11:00, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Putting what I say in italics and responding to it evidently doesn’t show a display of comprehension here. Do you honestly think expectancy effects, confirmation bias, and the self fulfilling prophecy implies that you are “hallucinating” these experiences or outright lying? Not even in the slightest. Maybe actually verify what these terms mean first before attempting to construct some rebuttal. These sorts of cognitive and social phenomena is about how you unconsciously effect other people’s behaviour by the way you have already internalized things about them. Your expectations of other people can effect how they will behave and respond to you. That’s why “double-blind” procedures are used in science. Confirmation bias is a relevant factor because you will pay more attention to and readily perceive/recall things that confirm what you already think about other people. It’s explains why everyone who believes that asians are bad drivers all have these personal experiences and anecdotes that “prove” the claim is true. It’s not that they are lying or merely hallucinating that’s sort of an absurd interpretation. The data on car accidents and traffic violations illustrate that their beliefs are false but they are primed to especially notice and recall the few instances where asians are bad drivers, and not so primed when they are driving well. Or they may not commit all the bad drivers who are not asian so readily to memory. A cultural backdrop of “trans activists” being overly sensitive or aggressive is a common stereotype. If you were to happen to internalize these stereotypes without necessarily even being aware of it or desiring to, it will come out in how you talk to activists and the like. The self fulling prophecy is specifically the phenomena of making other people fulfil your expectations of them by unintentionally causing the behaviour you expect from them. This like expecting someone to be overemotional then acting somewhat passive aggressively in anticipation of an overemotional outburst while not knowing that you are in actuality causing that outburst. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 11:26, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I also think the whole argument of “People would be less bigoted if said marginalized people were less emotional and extreme” is kind of a bigoted argument in of itself. It’s akin to saying “people would be less homophobic if the gays weren’t so in your face about it and weren’t so cringe at those AID’s protests”. It’s put the onus of bigotry on the people most effected by it. It’s essentially victim blaming. The real problem is the lack of empathy.  - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 11:32, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Even if one is claiming it’s a “small minority” of the minority to draw them as significant implies it’s still a culturally relevant and sizeable amount of people to effect public attitudes at large. I still think even generalizations like that require external evidence in the form of actual data. If we had polls from activists or the results of inventories measuring emotional stability, or a pathological desire to avoid distress that can be called statistically significant then I would maybe consider this to be a appreciable social phenomena. In the absence of that this may just in fact be a personal rather then a sociological problem — that is solely the result of the just the handful of individuals you have interacted with rather than a cultural relevant phenomena that causally effects politics in a meaningful way.  Sorry for expressing genuine skepticism on a site that seems to focused on promoting scientific skepticism. Neuropsychological humility is a big part of that. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 11:41, 13 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I can hardly bring myself to read the self-absorbed remarks that are typical in these sorts of arguments. I only have the following advice for OnlySortaDumb. You can make coherent arguments. I presume you can be quite lucid. If you have been clear in your arguments, then there is nothing more to say on the subject, and certainly no comment on your correspondents is required. If you suspect you could make a more generally understandable argument, then those who question your previous arguments might profit from further explanations. If neither of these two situations is the case, then the formal arguments are complete, and it would be wise to move on. We must tolerate those who do not, will not, or cannot agree with us on questions of understanding.Ariel31459 (talk) 18:06, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Nice handwave there. Completely ignore everything OSD wrote and then insult him regardless of what he actually said. Vee (talk) 20:00, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * How did I insult him? I did say his arguments can be coherent and lucid. That was a complement in my book. I only asked for the personal stuff to be omitted which usually come after the argument is over and the disagreement begins...Also, why are you answering for him?Ariel31459 (talk) 22:07, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Personal experience can be a powerful tool in discourse. It gives a human face to cold issues without necessarily being an appeal to emotion. Vee (talk) 22:14, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, certainly. I wasn't referring to OSD's experiences, but rather to undervaluing the experiences of others. They also have weight, can be difficult to fathom and contradictory. Still, they are to be taken into account. One cannot simply reject them because they don't match up.Ariel31459 (talk) 22:26, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

What is a 'Grammar check'?
I keep seeing edits with no changes that are labelled as 'grammar checks'. What is the purpose of this? Does this mean that the person who made the non-edit wants us to know that they read the article?? Wouldn't any reading be a 'grammar check'? FairDinkum (talk) 03:14, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If you look closely, most of those edits are just adding single commas or apostrophes. Hard to see without your glasses but a real change. 03:24, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I suppose that is possible in some cases, but wouldn't that be a 'grammar fix' rather than a 'grammar check'? FairDinkum (talk) 03:52, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * If it's who I think it is then a lot of their 'grammar checks' involve adding Oxford commas! Scream!! (talk) 20:38, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It probably is who you think it is. I think Chef is probably correct, bold commas and periods are very difficult to see. I think people who make changes that are very difficult to see should explictly state what their 'Grammar check' consisted of. FairDinkum (talk) 08:50, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Consequences of the Russian intervention part (whatever)
Following on from a RL discussion:

The Russian population has been in decline (for a variety of reasons).

The war in Ukraine has, in effect, removed a significant percent of 'the male population of breeding age (recruited and leaving the country etc) for at least a year.' What impact will this have on demographics? Anna Livia (talk) 12:12, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Please don't forget about all the young men who fled military conscription by leaving Russia and all the young tech people who have fled Russia after the Western sanctions. But to answer your question, this war is going to make a bad situation even worse demographically for Russia and Ukraine. HapMaxion (talk) 15:26, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I did include 'leaving the country' (and it is not complicated to work out that 'breeding age' and 'military recruitment age' will overlap significantly): and the possibility of recruitment will also be a discouragement.
 * According to the news at least some Russian women are going to Argentina to have their children (and how secure is the Mongolian border for those wishing to leave Russia?).
 * Wars can have a much longer population shadow than is immediately apparent - I read somewhere long ago that 'undertakers in New Zealand' noticed an unexpected drop in deaths (possibly 1970s-80s) - attributed to to the men who had already died in WWI (and this would be far more noticeable in areas where fighting actually occurred). Anna Livia (talk) 18:20, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Russia still hasn't fully recovered from the population drop following Operation Barbarossa. It will be interesting, from a grim demographic perspective, to see the effects the Ukraine War has on the Russian population. If anything, it will probably increase the gender disparity. Vee (talk) 19:29, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Demographic collapse is a long-term problem, and dictators aren't so good at thinking long-term. 21:57, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I've heard the opposite, actually. Democracy keeps rewarding the people who raid the treasury to give to constituents, which is why the national debt goes to insane levels.  05:56, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * CorruptUser - that is a different discussion. Anna Livia (talk) 10:44, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Sort of. It's more that it's a sign that Democracies struggle with long term planning because voters are short-sighted idiots.  14:02, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * People are mostly short-sighted idiots. The real problem with allowing one person to be dictator is the probability is too great that they will be a short-sighted idiot. The wealth of a nation belongs to its people. Who gets what is the problem. If the state gives you money to buy a T-bone steak, that's fine as long as T-bone steaks are available. Ariel31459 (talk) 21:53, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * No, because you don't get to be dictator without long-term planning. The problems with dictatorships are that 1) in the event you do get the philosopher-prince as your despot, there's no guarantee that your leader will remain a philosopher-prince in a few years' time, 2) there's no way to tell the leader that they are wrong, 3) no matter what leader you have, they die and are replaced with someone who may not be nearly as competent.  Oh, and obviously, if all the wealth is controlled by a single individual with no accountability, where in the form of a country or just a company, that person will spend exorbitant amounts on themselves no matter what scenario.  22:51, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Depends what you mean by long term planning. Not many people are even capable of that. Your reply belies your own assessment. You don't need to be a long-term planner, you just need to follow a long-term planner. Say like Stalin following Lenin, or John Gotti following Paul Castellano. Even Putin who seemed like such a long-term planner has been shit at planning in the end. Ariel31459 (talk) 23:26, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Coming back to Anna's original query, the demographic changes will get worse the longer people are out of the country. While there are a fair number of men who left with their families because they didn't support the war, most left to avoid sanctions and mobilization. Mobilization will be the thing that knee-caps the Russian economy. Businesses are already turning down male applicants because they will likely see those workers mobilized. There have been multiple reports of businesses receiving mobilization notices for all of their male staff. Then there are the stories about compensation for casualties. Giving grieving mothers a Lada, sending broken husbands back to their wives to live on meager pensions. The demographic threat is there, but the deep societal issues threaten the social contract that binds Russians together.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 23:47, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
 * FWIW Cornea/Corrupt User's reply did not belie their assessment. They said being a dictator requires long term planning, not that it requires the dictator to be a long term planner. If the dictator uses long term planning done by someone else, the dictator would still be using long term planning, which is consistent with C/CU's claim. FairDinkum (talk) 09:04, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * CorruptUser's remark was referring to a related concept to the point I was making.
 * I know my point is 'somewhat of a simplification' - but if the issues arising from 'removing significant numbers of breeding-age males (Russian conscription age group is 18-27, though probably now somewhat extended to the 18-48 figures I would have included in the wider group)' from a population where the life expectancy of males is decreasing is obvious to persons waiting at Omnibus Clapham bus stop, then it should be obvious to the Russian equivalents of Sir Humphrey Appleby (though possibly not to Putin's sycophants). Anna Livia (talk) 13:41, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It's been obvious to the Soviet/Russian 'Sir Humphreys' since the 1960s. In fact, one of the reasons the USSR economically stagnated past c1975 was the simple fact that around 1960 the birth rate of the 'European' nationalities had hit replacement level [or below] and thus the labour force was no longer growing. The USSR's population continued to rise until end partly due to high birth rates in the 'Asian' republics and better healthcare producing more seniors, while Russia managed to plug much of the gaps past 1991 due to the return of millions of ethnic/cultural Russians who ended up in the 'wrong country' on collapse.


 * Sociologists in fact were in the doghouse in the late USSR, partly due to the simple fact they could explain why this was so. Like with any advancing society, the three simple expedients of a) contraception, b) urbanisation and c) female education took an axe to it but it was also found from surveys that Russian women also cited 'cramped urban homes', 'long work hours', the 'double shift', 'lack of support' and 'economic penalties' [similar can be seen in post-2008 Greece and UK, though to a lesser extent] for lack of kids.


 * The current issue is that generally speaking, the 'nobility' of the Third Empire haven't really given much of a shit about demographics. The economy runs on mainly exploitation of natural resources and ripping off the state - when it comes to their 'empires', the narod are not really needed [at least in the previous empires, they were needed to work the land and toil in the factories]. As others have commented, in Russia 'life is cheap' and why the fuck would you 'waste' resources trying to get more of something which you consider almost worthless. Yes, there were some financial incentives put in for more kids etc under Putin but we need to place that in the category that he was doing it more to get some popularity with the narod than demographic reasons.


 * No leader who cared about demographics would be fighting a war with so little regard for the corpses. One of the things I wonder whether the shrunken, depressed and isolated post-war Russia shall go full-on 'Lebensborn' - after all, they've already pretty much done everything else from the fascist playbook [like mass kidnapping of Ukrainian children for indoctrination]. KarmaPolice (talk) 15:58, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Except that a single man can keep several women perpetually pregnant, and old men can still impregnate women. If a lack of men reduces the birth rates, it's only because a diminished labor force is the cause of, as you mentioned, women needing to work double shifts, the homes being too cramped, etc etc.  17:12, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Except that human beings don't breed like cattle - all the historical examples [after both WW1/2 etc] is that the child-bearing age women who are 'missing' men are more destined to spinsterdom than anything else [because 'traditional reproduction' is monogamous marriages and the Third Empire is reactionary/conservative as fuck]. Thus my wondering about a 'Russian Lebensborn' in an attempt to replenish a country which is progressively draining into the sand. IVF is by itself not a solution for this.
 * And the 'double shift' [also 'second shift'] is the extra burden women with children/partners often end up carrying out - that after their 'first shift' [work] they then have to do their 'second' [kids, hubby, house, cooking, shopping etc]. Clearly, if you're already utterly knackered from both shifts the last thing you'd want is another kid esp if it started out having to work the double shift while pregnant. KarmaPolice (talk) 17:32, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think that will be especially pronounced as professional sectors become more impacted. Education is higher, in addition to use of birth control. Russia is currently raiding areas with ethnic minorities and rural areas, who tend to have more children. But that is still finite.-RipCityLiberal (talk) 18:10, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The 'nobles' don't give a shit about that either. They [and the Czar] are the most anti-intellectual, self-absorbed, parochial and corrupt ruling class since that of Nicholas I - another suspicious, blinkered autocrat which threw Russia into a bloody, drawn-out war with 'the West' [the Crimean War] which showed just how far back the motherland had lagged. KarmaPolice (talk) 18:27, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I was simplifying the situation - from what I know (as a generalist) is that children are most likely to be born to fathers in the '18-48 age range', and even when the war of the soldiers stops the bottleneck will spread/ripple outwards down the years (the impact of the 'children who never were' going through the education system etc).
 * With men recruited from the rural areas there will be less technical experience, and the ethnic minorities and steppes peoples are likely to be less interested in/committed to a war in a far away place (and there are likely to be language and other issues).
 * I have come across the (South Korean) concept of Hell Joseon - to what extent is there an equivalent in Russia? Anna Livia (talk) 19:41, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The premise of 'Hell Joseon' is that the people who have coined it know that 'other ways of living' exist in reality. Russia is utterly shot through with cynicism, apathy and atomised self-interest; I suspect even the Russians who have been informed other ways of living exist don't really believe it, suspecting that the 'nice' SoL seen in foreign TV etc is either made-up or simply about 'the elites'. Which is not completely stupid conclusion, when you think how many [esp American] shows etc are utterly unrealistic in how much some characters earn and the over-focus on say, the top 20-10% household incomes and with a slathering of consumerism on top. It's no shocker that until the mobilisation refugees/deserters came about, the majority of people relocating out of Russia were the ones who knew 'other lands' personally or at least had 'connections' with foreigners etc. KarmaPolice (talk) 20:33, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Lex Fridman
Is it ok to watch Lex Fridman, despite him being associated with the IDW? The dude has episodes related to computer sciences.ASerb (talk) 19:49, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Well I'm not going to stop petting cats because Jordan Peterson recommends petting cats in his self-help book, but if wanted encouragement to pet cats I would not seek it from Jordan Peterson. Do Lex Fridman's computer science episodes contain anything you cannot find elsewhere? If you watch them you will get prompts to watch other episodes. FairDinkum (talk) 09:30, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It is OK to listen to anybody. Anyone who tells you otherwise is an ignoramus. However, what you do with what you hear is on you.UncleKrampus (talk) 14:38, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It is not OK for me to listen to anybody, which is why there are people I don't listen to. I have tried to watch JP videos but they are so boring and filled with so much meaningless blather that I had to turn them off after only a few minutes. I don't bother even trying to watch them now. I get my JP information from people with far more patience than I have. FairDinkum (talk) 04:43, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There is a pearl of wisdom somewhere in there. You may choose to take another's opinion concerning what to read, listen to, people to talk to, etc., But if you do not have personal experience then you are really in the dark. What you did is what is required: you listened until you felt you could form a judgment. That is the preferred way to evaluate ideas. Otherwise you are subordinate to others.Ariel31459 (talk) 15:19, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Fuck Games Workshop
that is all Wheelsontheancom (talk) 18:59, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * No thanks - the orifices are too small and there's far too many spikes and sharp corners! But hey - you do you....  or them...  or whatever.  Aloysius the Gaul (talk) 22:31, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd love to take part in a workshop for fuck games. Spud (talk) 03:05, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Are you complaining about the video games, or the overpriced miniatures of dubious quality? 05:12, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Is this some teenager outrage thing? 06:33, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Games Workshop are about as popular with their fanbase/community as Wizards of the Coast [holders of D&D] are with the RPG one. KarmaPolice (talk) 09:27, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Transgender Healthcare Bans
I find it amazing how trans people are being considered a threat to children yet ignore sexual abuse in churches. Got to have a bogeyman to justify ignorant prejudice.

To those who live in red states and can vote, be sure to vote out bigots who stomp on civil liberties. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 00:11, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It is because cisgenderism and heterosexuality are, to cissexist and heterosexist society, normal, ergo non-sexual. Normalcy presupposes non-sexuality, thus naught about being or expressing cisgendered and heterosexual identity counts as sexual. On the other hand, the trans experience, the non-binary experience, etc, and queerness, are to that same society abnormal, ergo sexual. The clergy primarily consist of bourgeois heterosexual cisgender men, hence not a single act of despicable abuse they commit against children (i.e., pedophilia) is immediately obvious. To most, the clergy is of a "normal" category — any horrible crimes they commit, particularly sexual crimes, appear as outliners. Whereas anything queer people do, non-abusive and abusive acts alike, become sexualized. Everything about us is already sexual because it's not conventional. Every sexual crime a queer person commits appears as a uniformly queer phenomenon contributing to the sexualization of the community. Expressions of queerness (e.g., drag) become sexual; every queer identity becomes sexual. That is why transphobes reckon we are a threat to children, that is why they take away our healthcare, our jobs, our medicine, locker rooms, bathrooms, sports careers, drag shows, and dignity. Our mere existence as trans people become fetishes in the eyes of cisgender heterosexual normativity. Anything and everything we do or say becomes sexual. Anything one of us does contributes to this supposed intrinsic fetishization, and because of it, we become sexual threats, undeserving of any rights.--A p r i l Chat? 05:30, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Paragraphs are a useful tool. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 06:03, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * ...Eh?--<font color="55CDFC">A <font color="Pink">p <font color="EBECF0">r <font color="Pink">i <font color="55CDFC">l Chat? 07:12, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Plus, y'know, priests are supposed to be celibate. It's not like they'd ever even think of diddling kids, right? Right?!? Right?!?!? …Oh, who am I kidding?!? (Note: this is why general enforced celibacy is a bad idea. Asexuals are always going to be a minority for the simple reason that they tend not to transmit their genes to the next generation, which means that most people will have sexual urges in some shape or form. Not everyone is capable of suppressing their sexual urges, and those who can't will find another outlet for them. And when masturbation is also strongly discouraged and effectively taken off the table, well, taking advantage of those unsuspecting altar boys starts looking like it might not be such a bad idea compared to a lifetime of frustration… and that's not even counting those who enter the priesthood who were pedophiles, sociopaths, or even worse, pedophilic sociopaths to begin with!) Luigifan18 (talk) 07:40, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming that Sexy Trans Zombie did not intend to say that trans people ignore sexual abuse in churches, though that is what they wrote. FairDinkum (talk) 09:22, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * From what I understand, the current argument is that people don't want trans people talking to kids about sex, not that they don't want trans people talking to kids (though many probably want that too). It's... a valid concern when any adult, including/especially priests, want to talk to children about sex.  10:21, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Your comment may be meant to conjure up an image of a trans person beckoning kids from behind a dumpster in the alley looking to debauch them, but what about if a trans person happens to be a sex-ed teacher at a school? No 'valid concern' there. FairDinkum (talk) 10:48, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Sex-Ed in elementary school? CorSock (talk) 11:03, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Currently, the right-wing outrage machine can't tell the difference between "transgender" and "performer in drag". None of the outrage is terribly coherent, and that doesn't matter to this crowd anyways. All that is required is an Other to wail against and angry vile and spit. Do this enough and you can get a bunch of angry Fox News watching senior citizens to continue to elect uber-rich guys that want to kill their Social Security and Medicare (for the benefit of the wealthy class). Anger is a helluv a "drug". BobJohnson (talk) 13:36, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I think stupidity is a stronger drug, myself. But that's a discussion for another day.


 * Corrupt has inavertantly highlighted the issue. Because trans has [mainly due to historical reasons] ended up being taped onto sexual minority groups [LGB...] it allows an element of genuine confusion and lots more bad faith actors to sexualise trans ['well like goes with like, right?'].


 * This is not helped by the fact [at least in the UK] that a lot of schools decide to lump the 'trans module' in with the sexual one [a lot, esp of slightly older materials do and the teaching quality shall be very variable, as well as the time allotted]. And while I generally think this topic is one of the most unequal 'both sides' issue currently about, I can see a very small point when on occasion said teaching materials for example, come with a Pride flag.


 * Lastly, Corrupt - have you even looked at the level of Sex Ed in elementary schools? Here's the blurb from the UK Education Department on this for our 'elementary' schools...


 * "At primary school relationships education teaches children a wealth of information about healthy relationships, including how to communicate their own boundaries and recognise the boundaries of others, staying safe online, and the differences between appropriate and inappropriate or unsafe contact. We strongly encourage schools to include the teaching of different family models and same-sex relationships.


 * Health education should include puberty, including menstruation, and this should as far as possible be addressed before onset. It also focuses on teaching the characteristics of good physical health and mental wellbeing, and teachers should be clear that mental wellbeing is a normal part of daily life, in the same way as physical health."


 * I don't see any actual issues from that. Even the italics bit the depths they go to is not any more than 'some people have two Mummies / two Daddies' level and explaining that some kids live in homes which are not like say, The Simpsons. And I suspect the American version is about as tame [or more]. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:50, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't know what good it does to quote the latest from any department of education. Today, there is still controversy on the best way to teach children how to read. Yes, they should provide health and some sex education. But there will be inevitable controversy about the proper age level at which to proceed. It seems many activists believe early ed is the place to start, even though that is where the alarmists in cultural conservative groups are most likely to take umbrage. Those people vote at an exceedingly high rate and will tend to drag along a majority of moderates. UncleKrampus (talk) 15:06, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't know how things got derailed on sex ed (especially the elementary school comment out of nowhere, what the fuck?). America's sex education varies widely and often is woeful. Many states don't require the subject at all. Some districts still have some districts teaching "abstinence only education", despite it being extremely ineffective. For some, sex is just an ew ick subject to begin with. (Fortunately, the "abstinence only" crowd has been moving towards an "abstinence plus" curriculum of late, which at least mentions birth control). "Trans teaching sex ed" hypotheticals seem to be a reach given how relative minority transgender is and all of the stigmas surrounding the teaching profession, where even "men teaching elementary school children" overall has a bullshit stigma among the OhNoes crowd. As the OP states, "church leader abuses the kiddies" is going to be a more realistic worry, as the scandals have shown over the years. BobJohnson (talk) 15:30, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I was trying to shoot Corrupt's 'both sidesism' in the head before it appeared. Mainly to point out that even in a athiestic leftie librul hellhole which is the UK, 'Sex Ed' actually contains pretty little sex until around 14/15 - the nearest we get to at such a young age is how to spot 'inappropriate' relations [grooming, abuse] from adults and what to do if it happens.


 * Anyway, there's no point in trying to find logic in a moral panic because by definition there's not logical. And there's a certain % of the population who believes that 'indoctrination' and 'propaganda' includes 'finding out it exists'. Which makes discussion difficult for obvious reasons.


 * And there's a difference between sex ed and teaching kids to read. Generally speaking, I don't think anyone advocates not teaching kids to read, or to only start it several years after they're capable of doing so. Anyone not a total crackpot or idiot, that is. KarmaPolice (talk) 16:08, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course, there are differences between any two distinct subjects. This needs to be pointed out?UncleKrampus (talk) 16:14, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I mentioned elementary schools, because that's where the "don't say gay" bill applies. 16:24, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, the bill. Hopefully those chucklefucks who are Very Concerned about Exposing Children under 10 to "literature involving sexually-oriented material" haven't been reading the Bible to their kids. ("Lewd or lascivious depiction or description of human genitals"? Ezekiel's got ya covered there!) BobJohnson (talk) 16:47, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I would say that references to the bible could be construed as tangential at best.UncleKrampus (talk) 16:50, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * EDIT, no, actually it was Shakespeare
 * In fairness, the word "Bowlderization" was originally in reference to a guy who edited out all the naughty bits of the bible specifically for the kids to read. 17:01, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The question is, exactly what were the problems that prompted this Florida bill to be passed? Like, even if you can find a few examples of Why This Bill Was Necessary (I couldn't but maybe some nutpickers might), is this type of bullshit really more important to Floridians than, say, preparing Florida for the long term consequences of climate change (already doing things like, via hurricanes, making a complete mess of home insurance in Florida)? It shouldn't be. But Ron DeSantis is trying to "anti-woke" his way into power, and such distracts from the fact that he's an un-charismatic Ivy League bully. It does seem to work among certain chucklefucks down here who are more outraged by The Other than their insurance bill, so far at least. C'est la vie. BobJohnson (talk) 17:14, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The problems were, as I see it, those which you have pointed out: DeSantis wanting the praise of conservative activists. The problem for left-leaning activists is, that's more than enough reason in a right-leaning state like Florida.UncleKrampus (talk) 17:34, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The problem as I see it, the more that the left-leaning activists crowd around and support people that actually are a problem, the more justified the right becomes in the eyes of the general public. In Loudoun county, a school board made a rape simply disappear, most likely because it's a school board; they tend to be filled by the jagoffs that will sweep any inconvenience under the rug.  When the father of one of the rape victims got angry at a meeting, he was arrested and charged with terrorism.  But it became a rallying cry for the Right, because the rapist in question was a gender-nonconforming boy.  Meanwhile, for the Left, somehow the father needed to be the bad guy, because the Right supported him.  But in doing so, they were siding with a rapist and his enablers.
 * It doesn't matter what else, if one side is protecting known rapists, people are at least going to see what the other side has to say. Heck, it's even been alluded to in the OP; the Catholic sex abuse scandal made a serious dent in public support for the Church and their policies.  19:00, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
 * It's hard to have meaningful conversations when one (out of, per one investigation, over 12,000 school sexual assaults in Virginia over five years according to a thingy) becomes The Nutpicked Outrage Story.
 * While it sure was a shitshow, it doesn't help when Telephone Game is being played with the facts. For instance, as far as I can tell per this, the father in question merely conflated a National School Board assertion that some of the recent school board bruhaha "could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism". Perhaps a fair bit overboard, I suppose. Sadly, you cannot use a phrase like "dumbfuck single-brain-celled Fox News addicts !!!OUTRAGED!!! over things, like critical race theory, that they don't understand" for most of the folks doing this shit. Now, the outrage is more understandable here. On the other hand, what I do know is that this person was arrested for disorderly conduct and obstruction of justice, which most likely means he was being an ass even after an official told him to cool it. In the spirit of the "Blue Lives Matter" law-and-order conservatives, if ya don't want to be arrested, don't break the law, motherfuckers. BobJohnson (talk) 19:23, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

I was saying that bigots ignore sexual abuse. --Sexy Trans Zombie (talk) 19:45, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * And you're right. It's a blatantly bad-faith tactic. The existence of trans people is being used as a wedge to drive fascist ideas and policies into the mainstream. Transphobes only pretend to care about systemic issues within the prison system when they want to weaponise them against trans women. UK transphobes are suddenly Very Concerned that a trans woman convicted of rape might be sent to Scotland's only woman's prison. They didn't care just a few years back when women at Corton Vale, the prison in question, were forced to endure "Victorian conditions," told to urinate in cell sinks when they were denied access to a single shared toilet overnight. They don't care about Corton Vale's long history of prisoner-on-prisoner violence or concerning reports of its treatment of mentally-ill inmates. None of them mention the 1998 lesbian gang rape while bringing up their "safeguarding" concerns. Similarly, American TERFs got angry when two cis women inmates at New Jersey's only women's prison ended up pregnant through CONSENSUAL sex with a trans inmate, but had very little to say about dozens of cis male guards at the same prison being indicted (in some cases convicted) of raping and beating women prisoners. In the last two years, a prison warden in California was found guilty of sexually abusing women inmates, and dozens of women were raped after two cis male inmates bribed a cis male guard for access to the women's section of an Indiana prison. You could show transphobes 100 stories like this and it wouldn't dislodge their selective fixation on the handful of women's prison assaults involving a trans perpetrator. You can point to data showing that housing trans women in men's prisons results in negligible risk reduction for cis women prisoners while creating a HUGE statistical risk of rape for trans women so housed ("Fifty-nine percent of transgender prisoners reported having been sexually assaulted within a California correctional facility compared to just 4.4% of the incarcerated population as a whole."). Transphobes don't care. They don't actually care about cisgender women. Cruelty to trans people is their only goal. Nope Rocket (talk) 22:57, 16 February 2023 (UTC)
 * To reiterate something, paragraphs are a useful tool. I got about 3 sentences in before my eyes glazed over, and I suspect I'm not the only one. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい ) 05:17, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Is this your only response when presented with a reasoned and sourced rebuttal of transphobic hysteria? Nope Rocket (talk) 05:25, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I don't agree with 'Cruelty to trans people is their only goal', at least for many. I'm a believer in the 'banality of evil' theory; that in the end a lot of people pull this stuff mainly from ignorance, misconceptions, is politically expedient, going along with the crowd, orders from above and most importantly, 'I can't personally do anything about it'. And the American prison system is so generally 'evil' it's hard to tell if it's actually targeted evil or the general stuff.


 * The Scottish case suffered from a lack of details in reporting; firstly, while they'd been put in a women's prison [I believe] they'd not been put in 'general population' but in an stricter 'close confinement' section which means unsupervised contact with other inmates is [theoretically] impossible. Now they're in a men's prison, which means basically, another close confinement section for their whole sentence [though this time, more for their own safety].


 * For UK prison management are neither stupid or evil and can see the risks of both situations. They're not going to put in female general a sex attacker of that gender any more they're going to put in a male general a bio-male who has tits and hips.


 * The critical issue here is that both sides are being absolutist, when the matter is much more situational and dependent on the individual case. For the prisons issue, several factors come into play, including the type of crime committed, how far along the person has transitioned, the judgement of the level of risk they pose to others and vice-versa and so on. However, the nutpicking end of the trans activists don't like this because it makes 'gender ID' more graduated than they'd like. KarmaPolice (talk) 10:45, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * the timing of the thing could not have been more perfect for the terfs if it were planned. its no wonder they might crow about it. its also useful to point to in order to vindicate their main argument they have against transwomen in the first place ie allowing men to sneak into women only spaces to rape women. up until now thats always been a 'theoretical' threat that would mostly have diminished in the non terf general public minds as a 'reasonable' fear over time as a rape explosion doesnt materialise and people remember men dont need to drag up to rape anyone - they just join the police force. now they have an actual convicted rapist who has transitioned and actually sent/was about to be sent a woman's prison. a fox in the henhouse - the very thing terfs have been 'warning' about. the timing of it is going to have it stick in the minds of the public for years to come everytime these issues are brought up even if the details are forgotten or no other cases ever emerge. its a win for the terfs whatever way you want to spin it. and if it isnt adequately addressed by anti terf, pro trans, it will be an easy win for the terfs everytime this subject is discussed. handwaving it away with sanctimony and dubious accusations of hypocrisy or apathy to other cases of sexual violence in prisons, as made by some here really does nothing to counter terf talking points. especially as accusations of apathy to those cases brought up make those accusing them look a tad hypocritical seeing as they were seemingly only brought up in an attempt to discredit terfs rather than make any meaningful commentary on problems of sexual violence in prisons generally and how it might relate this this case. play the ball not the man, as they say. terfs are not cowed by angry accusations, at best it preaches only to the converted. the wider public though, you lose. its so depressing to me that this is forgotten by so many. we need to be better. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:07, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There was another semi-recent exception, if I recall. But this case got more traction because it it got a 'Political' dimension because a) ScotGov/SNP defended the original choice and b) happened at the same-ish point of the Gender Bill [which UKGov then vetoed].


 * But your point is spot on; if you insist something 'never happens' all your opponent needs to do to 'win' is show an example of the contrary. And if you instantly dismiss all concerns as 'paranoia', 'bigotry' and so on you make yourself look like you don't give a crap about said concerns [or the people they effect] and again, They 'win'. This is one of those times where a 'technocratic' approach would in fact fared better; that when concerns were raised regarding re-offending within prison a three/four sentence explaining about general pop/close confinement differences and assuring the public that prison staff etc would do everything to make sure 'chances of sexual assault' were minimised as much as possible [which is in fact semi-normal prison policy] would have allayed quite a few concerns and felt they'd been heard/addressed. Why didn't they do this? My working theory is that ScotGov didn't want to upset the social progressive ideologues by admitting a uncomfortable truth or two. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:08, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * i understand the bill was over 5 years in the making. a lot of time for a lot of horse trading. we know that despite what the voting numbers looked like, it was not united front behind the scenes, not amongst the snp. im also guessing they did not expect to have to put their money where their mouth is quite so soon, if at all. i think they were aware the public was not exactly sold on all aspects of the bill - the debate out in the wild still far from settled and where the bill would have ended it, it would have or will take time for that to filter through the public. the tories vetoing the bill no doubt had some effect too. maybe they had prepared to defend the more controversial aspects of the bill that were likely to be the focus of criticisms but the veto instead halted debate around trans issues and became one about the english meddling in scottish affairs. the actual bill and the veto are now a matter for the courts to decide. the anger/glee at the veto and the opportunity it presented to get a referendum out it probably had the snp giddy with excitment. nothing more they could do about the bill now till their day in court, but indyref 2 on the other hand... whatever the case, they were blindsided by this trans rapist, and floundered long enough for public unease to grow, forcing an intervention that looks like back pedalling on the bill they pushed through holyrood but was vetoed at westminister so isnt even law.


 * and it really is only terfs who have a win here. the labour party took the opportunity to attack starmer because its always a good time to attack starmer if you are the labour party, even if you have to make shit up. the tories didnt really gain anything, but they havent really lost anything, they are still a bunch of cunts riddled with corruption, and the snp - sturgeon's gone and any move toward independence the veto might have provided, has been delayed 5 years at least. trans people certainly didnt gain anything. just terfs. lets just be thankful the bill was to update the existing laws, streamlining the process for gender recognition. you can still do all that was in the bill, just have to jump through more hoops to get there - that being the status quo. not exactly a win, but a lot of progress was made in such a short space of time. this should ultimately be only a minor set back. glass half fullAMassiveGay (talk) 21:21, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
 * To be honest, the only bit of that bill which gave me raised eyebrows was the 'self-IDing' bit; it made me a wee bit suspicious [more of it being done by 'faddist' teenagers than rapists in dresses] and I could see why some of the Big Public were worried/anxious about it. Personally, I feel that when it comes to getting 'authority' to accept your shift in binary gender there should be some system of doing it, and said system needs to have the trust of the Big Public that 'it works right'. Which invaribly involves some bureaucratic setup with a 'critical gatekeeper' of some form. However, if I said that [if I was a Scot] I suspect I'd have been attacked as 'pandering to the TERFs' or worse by the nutjob end of the trans activists.


 * The one bit which did surprise me was the UKGov veto; I find it very odd that they'd not given a single public hint in the whole campaign that they'd do this. And unless ScotGov was lying, it surprised them too. Again, if I was a Scot, I'd be pissed at UKGov right now - not because of the veto per se, but the fact they let it run through the whole legislative process [as you say, it was 5 years] and never mention their concerns/plans to veto [thanks for fucking letting us waste our time...]. Again, it stinks of playing the 'culture war' from both the SNP and Tories. Labour, once again discovered that sitting on the fence only results of splinters in the arse. I do wonder whether this shall affect the Scot LibDems; they supported the Bill, but are also pro-Union.


 * Speaking of trans teens... I was having a discussion with a relative yesterday; they were insistent that hormone blockers caused 'permanent damage' and were difficult to reverse. What's the truth on this topic? KarmaPolice (talk) 09:51, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
 * the veto can only be applied if the a bill is incompatible with uk law that was not a devolved matter. in this case, the devolved matter that holyrood is entirely within its powers to legislate for is gender recognition and the tories are saying it is incompatible with the equalities act, which is not a devolved matter. the tory government have no legal basis to oppose the bill because they do not like some aspect of it - it can only be vetoed if it clashes with non devolved uk law. i dont know how much the specifics of the bill changed over its time in holyrood to being passed and then vetoed, its possible last minute changes to its wording might have borked it, but its more likely the tories are hoping an anti woke agenda will save them at the next election - i guess they got nothing else going for them. sadly no vote was required to invoke the relevant instruments for the veto, so no oversight from parliament and holyrood can only suck it up or challenge it court. i dont know if they have set any challenge in motion yet. there was actually a pretty good indication that some kind of action against the bill the was on the cards before the it was passed, just not what that would be. the veto had not been used before so i dont know if that had been floated as an option. it does suggest to me that the incompatibility line the veto requires to be valid is arse though and they simply did not like the bill.


 * incidently, the mistake starmer made in his response to all this was to recognise the situation for what it is - that the bill was a devolved matter for holyrood until the tory governments veto made it a matter for the courts to decide. i dont know what else he could have done here. he did say when asked he personally did not agree with lowering the age to 16 that was in the bill. this was not a policy decision and he went on to say we need to update the legislation south of the border for all of this and we need to have a debate on that due course. its right that he did not have much to say about the bill itself, it was a scottish issue and the veto puts the ball in the snp's lap who are yet to mount a challenge where it will be decided in court. the performative outrage from the scottish labour seems to be entirely directed at starmer attacking him for supporting the tories and actively opposing the bill despite doing neither, with trans activists who dont seem to understand the processes involved with the veto or that starmer had no powers or mechanism available to oppose the veto, or that only holyrood can challenge it, now claiming starmer to be a dreadful transphobe and that the labour party are dead to them now. a position, i might add, that we endorse in our article on starmer, and its complete arse. there is no part of this bill or the veto that was or is or ever will be in his hands. this has always been in scottish hands, and with the veto intruding on a scottish matter, it remains in scottish hands to defend the bill and challenge the veto in court. it remains to be seen if the snp will actually do this though, its far from clear that they ever will, such is their commitment to their own bill, but its starmer that is the transphobe. AMassiveGay (talk) 13:12, 18 February 2023 (UTC)