Mama told me not to come.
She said, that ain’t the way to have fun.
Idk, if he completely absorbs Ukraine, that puts him right next door to a very angry NATO. I really don’t think he wants that, he wants a buffer, and he wants Europe to get over what he’s done in Ukraine. I think he now sees that ship has sailed, and he can’t really back down due to local political pressure, so he has to keep going.
Eh, Americans spend something like $10-20B per year on guns and ammo. That’s nowhere near the military budget, but it’s still a lot of guns and ammo, so the US would put up a pretty good guerrilla resistance.
It’s a lot easier if you get a balance bike first. They’ll naturally try coasting because that’s fun, so all they need to figure out is pedaling to move on to a real bike.
I did that with two kids, and it worked well both times.
Hey, it’s okay if you can’t finish, that’s normal.
I don’t really believe anything Putin says, I believe what he does. I think “protecting ethnic Russians” was an excuse to achieve his main goal, which was to keep Ukraine from joining NATO, and to resolve the dispute around Crimea.
I think he wanted a quick war, but Ukraine didn’t play ball and now he needs to save face to stay in power. So he desperately needs a win here, so he’s pivoting to Russian nationalism to stay in power because it’s becoming pretty clear that this war is going to drag on.
I thought they’re devoting so much to this war largely because Putin needs it to stay in power. As in, they started it because they thought they could secure a peace deal really quickly (i.e. no NATO and official handover of Crimea), but things didn’t go as planned and Putin has to see it through to maintain his power. The nationalism and crushing of Democracy was plan B, not the primary goal.
I don’t think they need more fuel reserves, and they already have a bridge to Crimea, so they don’t really need any of the land in E. Ukraine. I think Russia attacked with the excuse of assisting Russian separatists in the east, but I really don’t think they care about them, they just want Ukraine to stay within their sphere of influence, and failing that, not join the west. Before 2014, the government of Ukraine was pretty pro-Russia, and then they switched to a pro-west government (some say through western influence, but not sure how much of that is propaganda).
I understand the Taiwan argument, I don’t understand Ukraine, how does everyone joining NATO help Russia/China in any capacity? By that logic, they should attack Switzerland or the Cayman Islands and piss off most of the billionaires in the world who hide their assets there…
The purpose behind attacking Ukraine was to prevent them from joining NATO, and that kind of relied on a quick resolution to the war before other countries have a chance to join. The goal was to get in and get out with a treaty that formally recognizes Russia’s control over Crimea and promises to not join NATO.
Exactly. We’re in a monogamous relationship and have made legal and spiritual contracts to be faithful with eachother, so it’s fair for my SO and I to “own” each other in a sense. That doesn’t mean we get to tell each other what to do, it just means we have an expectation that they won’t go looking for an outside relationship.
It’s like saying “my gym,” I have a contract that states I can use their facilities. I don’t own that gym, but I do have a certain level of expectations.
Yeah, it’s legal in my state, you just have to be in your 50s and one of you needs to be sterile.
But make it look like your cousin did it.
I wrote a “virus” in college, which basically:
Oh, and it started on startup, so rebooting wouldn’t fix it. :)
Yeah, not sure why you’d piss off random people with that, you’d be much better off doing some kind of ransomware attack.
I’d honestly just run it on my Linux laptop with the network disabled. It’s old, so if it gets wrecked, I’m really not out much. And the risk of someone bothering to target Linux is incredibly small, so I’m comfortable with the risk.
Wow, that’s dumb. My local emissions place charges a 3% “service charge,” which is waived if I pay in cash, but since that’s pretty close to the rewards I get with my card (2%), I just paid by card since the difference is like $1. I don’t remember my DMV charging any fees for credit though (i.e. when I get plates).
If you’re buying from a dealership, you could probably go to the DMV directly to get the plates, and maybe they don’t charge a fee. Idk though, each state is different, and I’ve never bought a car at a dealership.
Exactly.
My SO is Asian and they just don’t much BO at all, due to genetics and whatnot. I can sometimes get away with skipping a day showering, but only if I’ve been very lazy all day. Other people need two showers/day to be presentable. It very much varies by person.
Same. I might have paid an application fee in cash or something (for background check), but that’s really it in the past 15 years. If I was a landlord, I would highly discourage paying in cash, because nobody wants to handle thousands of dollars in cash every month…
The last time I paid for rent via check was… 12 years ago? And that was for a pretty ghetto apartment. Everything before and after was electronic (some used Paypal, some had a website that accepted bank transfers, and accepted Venmo). I write maybe one check/year these days, and usually for a wedding. This year, I’m back to writing multiple, because my kid’s pre-school charges extra for Venmo for some reason.
But don’t worry, they’ll get there before someone else beats them to nuclear winter.
Best I can do is spaghetti.
There seems to have been a set of informal assurances between the US/NATO and the USSR that NATO wouldn’t expand eastward past Germany, though there were no legally binding agreements. Russia objected when NATO expanded in the 90s, and it continued objecting as more and more countries joined NATO. This isn’t new, it’s a clearly established pattern.
So when we get to Putin, I think his argument that NATO is being too aggressive has merit, at least from the Russian perspective. If he allows NATO to continue expanding, the Russian people would justifiably be pretty upset, so he essentially is forced to take some kind of action to show that Russia has certain lines in the sand. If he lets Ukraine, their next-door neighbor, join NATO, who would trust that he actually has any kind of power to protect Russian interests? So it makes complete sense that Putin decided to invade Ukraine for the primary purpose of preserving a line of buffer states, as well as legally justify the taking of Crimea. That sends a message to other border states that Russia will not stand by while it’s regional influence is further eroded.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he was justified in attacking Ukraine, I’m merely saying he was obligated to demonstrate a show of force to retain his position of power. If he was able to get a peace agreement from Ukraine to not join NATO and to formally recognize Russian control of Crimea, I think he would’ve withdrawn. That didn’t happen, so now he’s between a rock and a hard place and needs to get significant concessions from Ukraine to retain his power in Russia.