Given that they already have a trolleybubus infrastructure and manufacturing capacity, it’s not that hard. Just put batteries in the trolleybusses and they can charge whilst on the wires.

https://www.pharmiweb.com/press-release/2021-05-11/the-sputnik-v-vaccine-helps-san-marino-to-become-the-first-country-in-europe-to-defeat-covid-and-reduce-the-infection-rate-to-zero

Given that Italy’s Mote-Carlo, San Marino, one of the richest, most “civilized-European” places on earth bagged enough Sputnik in the spring to snuff out it’s second wave, and didn’t turn it’s nose up at it, you’ve thought it would be the prestige option for the Jean Jaques crowd. Maybe they should use that fact in pro-sputnik propaganda.

theguardian.com/world/2021/may/19/we-booked-straight-away-first-covid-vaccine-tourists-arrive-in-san-marino

Hate to be devil’s advocate here, but, whilst anyone can get it relatively easily now, there’s obviously low demand, if everybody suddenly started becoming good citizens, would supply shortages not then start to be an issue? (That’s meant as a question, not a statement)

If you’re a twenty something with a health condition that makes you more susceptible to a nasty case of corona then you’d have been offered both jabs months ago.

The interesting thing about WFH is that a few of my colleagues caught this and continued to work through it. One was completely asymptomatic, the other had flu-like symptoms for a week with anosmia that took about six weeks to resolve. Both caught it (if they were being honest) from their spouses who caught it at work.

That’s anecdotal of course. It’s been known for months that a healthy 20-something has a very low chance of dying of this thing and a low but non-trivial chance of getting very sick. Anosmia dragging on for weeks is probably very unpleasant, but then so are endless restrictions. I’ve said this many times before, but it just highlights how nuts things were for Yanks: going on a date was a criminal offense from October to May in most of the UK and our health Taliban was screaming to prevent that stupid rule being relaxed then.

If Sputnik is the Russian equivalent of AstraZeneca and EpiVac akin to Phizer/Modena then the latter will probably have fewer or no side effects. Anecdotally, everyone I know who took the AZ one had mild flu-like symptoms the following day (I think AK said he had that from Sputnik, can’t remember), everyone (including myself) who took the Phizer one had a mildly sore arm the following day, about half as bad as from a flu shot.

2. The country wants an ultra low risk approach to opening up; so it makes sense for the democratically elected government to give it to them.

Ultra low risk is taking precautions until they’ve had the vaccine, this is more like zero hypothetical risk at extreme cost to themselves and others, without any acceptable end. Plus, there’s also the fact that any country that does achieve “Zero Covid” can then look forward to the very real risk of east German style exit visas for years like Australia.

If people, after having two doses of a vaccine which prevents transmission by well over ninety percent, and serious illness/death by considerably more, for a disease with a not hideously high fatality rate to start with, in a largely vaccinated population with very low circulation anyway are still demanding others wear rags across their faces and social distance with the full force of the law, then the non-hysterical 30% or so of the population are quite morally correct to tell them to go and do one.

It looks like the uk government is about to move the goalposts, yet again, on ending the UK’s quasi-lockdown. They initially promised to end this by Easter once the very vulnerable had been vaccinated, but extended it by four months and set a ridiculously long time for reopening in order to appease the committee of mini-Fauchis they’ve delegated all of their authority to; who, surprise surprise, have asked for yet another extension. Almost all olds are fully vaccinated and a majority of the rest of the adult population has had at least one shot. There’s a combination of variant hysteria and a small uptick in cases among unvaccinated pockets and people in their teens/early 20s that’s the excuse this time. The daily deaths are in single figures. They can get away with such brazen dishonesty because a large majority of the country is still hysterical about this, regardless of their vaccination status, and will support unlimited restrictions for an unlimited amount of time. If Lemoine is telling the truth, then most of Europe is even worse. It’s ironic, that Brezhneving Russia’s not-that-great corona figures has actually resulted in the vast majority of Russians having a higher quality of life than the vast majority of Europeans probably for the first time in history.

Aren’t the “brown” bears in California actually black bears but with brown coloured fur, they’re smaller and a lot less apt to become aggessive.

The definition of “win” has a lot of room for interpretation, are we talking about a theoretical fight to the death or until one gives up and runs off? Big cats are more likely to do the latter if it’s prey aggression and they encounter resistance, brown bears and boars are especially dangerous because once they’ve decided to attack, they hardly ever back down.

Serbia is conspicuous by its absence. Vucic has handled things extremely well. Its politicians might be more rational than in most of Europe

That’s interesting, because Serbia was one of the few countries to actually suffer a popular backlash against multiple lockdowns: In early summer Vucic lifted the first lockdown early, got himself reelected then reimposed it a day later. The ensuing riots, forced him to back down. Guess this might’ve made him actually take smart choices wrt corona policy unlike most of Europe whose publics still have blind trust in a lot of very incompetent health bureaucrats even now.

The range of salaries for the owner managers was 90k to 0k GBP a year. Only the very largest paid dividends.

If you’re running an owner managed company, why wouldn’t you pay yourself 8k as a salary and the rest in dividends to avoid employer’s national insurance (the stupid name the uk gives to payroll tax)?

Most of the dead are 60+ who should have been excluded from any sane mass vaccination regime.

They’re the people who absolutely should’ve been vaccinated, after which restrictions should’ve been abandoned. Millions have now been given the various jabs available and none of them have grown two heads. Having said that, in england, over the past few days, we’ve had a parade of scientific advisors, who have our useless government by the balls, appear in the media to tell us that in three months time, when the lockdown is due to end (UK has been in quasi-lockdown since October and full lockdown since new year), it won’t actually end and masks, distancing and exit visas will be in place for years. This is with a ‘rona death rate of about 20 per day now and almost everyone likely to be fully vaccinated by then. Those “subhuman” Russians and stupid rednecks weren’t that stupid after all.

“a look one” should be “alone”, can’t seem to edit here anymore

If there is antivaxx sentiment in Europe then most of it is due to their medical establishments intermittently banning and stoking fears over the AstraZeneca jab. The uk has jabbed around 40% of it’s population, but it’s still a criminal offense to go on a date so, from the point of view of a healthy young adult, the vaccines are the difference between neverending lockdowns with boomer removal and neverending lockdowns without.

Someone who’s infected gets detained in an, otherwise closed down, hotel for a few weeks. If it’s caught quickly enough you can prevent people from infecting everyone they live with which would be an almost certainty otherwise. You can get cases down very quickly that way as not that many people live truly a look one. Less objectionable than closing businesses and enforcing worse than sharia social distancing for months on end, but no European country has actually implemented it. I suspect that the current restrictions in Europe reflect what’s tolerable to the bug-people who’re responsible for them: Sitting on their asses, eating Uber-eats and watching Netflix is something they would choose to do if Corona had never existed which is why they’re mystified that anyone objects, being hauled off to a 2 star hotel is not.

Need to seriously think about emigration though if the nonsense is reimposed next winter or never properly repealed in the summer.

I cycle to and from places as often as possible and enjoy it greatly. I like cycling just the way it is and the one of the big positives for me, apart from the fresh air, exercise and convenience, is the lack of the kind of bs overregulation that’s made diving miserable. I do appreciate cycle infrastructure where it exists, but personally, I’d prefer it to remain a niche form of transport and office plankton to continue to think it’s dangerous so they don’t take it up in large numbers and ruin it. If you want to cycle in Moscow, buy a bike and ride it.

Suspect it’s probably just a personal habit he seems to have where he’s extremely private with all things to do with his health; machismo, presidential image, personal preference, who knows. He’s probably had a few minor operations that nobody but a small clique knew about.

Russia seems to have avoided the kind of hysteria which has paralysed Europe, so, as long as the vaccines are readily available and everybody who wants one can have one I don’t see the need to get upset over a few refuseniks though I’m not going to die on a hill to defend them if the hysteria gets refocused on them instead of…..people sitting in parks drinking coffee (or whatever it is this week).

Fwiw I’ll take the vaccine at the first opportunity, and my stock argument in dealing with antivaxers is that they ought to go pet a dog… that’s got rabies then we can continue the argument six months later. Advocates of zero-covid and forever lockdowns have a certain implicit antivaxx sentiment which you need to acknowledge: “Take the vaccine by all means, but lockdowns and social distancing need to continue for months anyway” is essentially saying that they don’t work and it’s as as antivaxx as some fool saying it’ll alter your dna or let Bill Gates chip you or whatever. The difference is that the former have significantly more influence on policy.

Double post, please delete

Oh dear, perhaps you ought to have clicked the links. All those examples are countries that have attempted such a thing, declared success only to have outbreaks and subsequent lockdowns again,… and again……and again. They’ve also painted themselves into a corner as the likely endgame of all of this for most of the world is that corona will become endemic, defanged by vaccines quite soon in developed countries, a few years away in the rest; it’s going to be politically very difficult for them to open. Quite frankly, any benefit from reduced immigration to developed countries in such a scenario is more than counted by citizens of those countries having less freedom to travel than a medieval peasant (Australia actually has commie exit visas).

I know, but maybe they were just unlucky, there’s lots of other small island nations that were able to lockdown long and hard enough to get covid cases to 0 and then completely cut themselves off from the rest of the world, so that they’d never have to lockdown again:

https://jerseyeveningpost.com/news/2020/11/07/islanders-warned-that-jersey-could-be-heading-for-another-lockdown-as-active-cases-top-100/

https://www.itv.com/news/channel/2021-01-23/guernsey-to-enter-lockdown

https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2021-01-05/isle-of-man-re-enters-lockdown-after-fears-of-covid-spread-in-the-community

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/world-australia-56035668

only a covidiot would oppose such a strategy, what’s stopping the USA and Russia? The uk has just extended lockdown by another 4 months despite vaccinating nearly a third of the population.

If only the rest of the world had copied New Zealand, then we’d have eliminated covid and there’d be no more lockdowns:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/27/new-zealand-auckland-to-go-into-seven-day-covid-lockdown

London, at the minute, might as well have been hit by a Neutron bomb. A place where it’s illegal to sit on a park bench or go on a date will not exert much cultural influence unless this situation ends very very quickly (It won’t). I suppose this, for anyone who’s dabbled in populism,is akin to being made to smoke the whole pack; we saved “R NHS”. This will take time to filter through in peoples’ minds though.

Cryptos, in 2021 have gone beserk. Have been trading the things in an ultra conservative manner and I’m getting stupid roi.

Yanks should be grateful that their NPCs have gone down the road of mask fetishism. The official narrative from their counterparts in most of Europe is that the vaccines won’t change anything and that lockdowns and ridiculous criminally enforced social distancing will continue into 2022.

In the UK, it might be possible,in six weeks time, to……. sit on a park bench without committing a criminal offense. This is with most over 60s vaxxed.

It’s not that great, but the sense of urgency is not that great as the government and wider society there seem to have taken this on the chin and life is pretty much normal-ish. It’s probably much easier to do this when you don’t have a hysterical mass media blaming you for every single covid death, but it’s still an achievement.

In the uk I was pleasantly surprised by the speed of the vaccine rollout, but unpleasantly unsurprised to find out that it hasn’t made any difference to the government’s policy on restrictions which will continue until July and most probably much longer because… reasons.

It’s also worth re-assessing the how successful the “successful”(lucky) countries who’ve supposedly eliminated this actually are as almost all of them are now/were back in lockdowns again (NZ, China, Australia, UK channel islands) and probably will be, on and off, for the foreseeable future, with East German style borders on top of that.

closed borders forever

N.B, delete previous comment,it timed out for an edit.

I’m sure if you wanted to emigrate to North Korea it would be possible. In all seriousness, on what planet would that lead to anything other than total immiseration? Ensure the peasants don’t leave their parish. Yarvin said something along those lines in an article last year and people seem to have been regurgitating it in these circles ever since, and it’s just lunatic. Would prefer to side with the critical theory and pronouns crowd than that.

I’m sure if you wanted to emigrate to North Korea it would be possible.

What’s with the anti Sikh sentiment? As a group they’re perhaps more compatible with european culture than any other from the Indian subcontinent. Before the Corona cult lobotomised them, the French used to do this kind of thing every few months.

most notably, TikTok.

Is tiktok really a hotbed of insurrection? I’m not even sure how it could be, the videos seem to have a time limit of about 30seconds and 99% of the content appears to be dancing, and lip syncing to music and lines in films. I’d have thought it’d breed apathy and insularity more than anything else. Is this just a case of politically indifferent people giving an opinion when prompted for one without really caring?

The other odd thing about tiktok is that it’s a Chinese app, but mainlanders are the only nationality not on it in large numbers.

I think you’re right about the US, with a few exceptions, but there rest of Europe is considerably more draconian, though the duration might eventually be less. In England, there’s no 18:00 curfews, outdoor mask mandates or exercise bans, and, at least here, if you’re ever harassed by the police for being outside “I am going to get food” will get rid of them. Russia, by contrast, has delagated the response to regional governors with “Anna Popova”, their equivalent of Fauci, strongly suggesting to them what it ought to be; afaik this is mainly cancelled mass events, indoor mask mandates and nightclub closures. They’ve been reporting 27(+/-2)k cases a day since November which is implausible and means someone high up, who knows the true figure, has decided to release BS ones and browbeat the media into compliance in order to keep things open at a cost of more deaths. The Russian youth have considerably more freedom than anywhere else in Europe at the minute and the government have gone out on a limb to make it so, so having a “23rdJanuaryForFreedom” is a textbook example of them biting the hand that feeds them. If that clown was still in Germany he’d be under house arrest anyway, along with all other Germans, so I don’t know what they’re complaining about.

What exactly are they protesting for, to be more like Europe, where they could expect 18 months of on and off house arrest and wrecked earning potential in order to save boomers? A good proportion of Russians in my social circle who were sort-of pro Navalny have been utterly turned by this and learned to stop worrying and love the bald one, some living in Europe and the UK have ripped up their residence cards, packed their bags and gone home permanently (A few have gone the opposite way, a ratio of about 2:1).

Smarkets is giving 8% on him not serving a full term (being booted before the 20th Jan), that’s probably worth a $50-100 gamble at this stage.

https://smarkets.com/politics

A big consequence of this is that the chances of “the orange one” himself going to jail have now gone from unlikely to quite likely. Anybody know what odds betting markets are giving at the minute, is it still worth putting money on, anyone place any bets beforehand?

A lot of the the UK’s long term Indian population originated in Africa; they were brought there in the nineteenth century to staff the colonel bureaucracies then expelled by Idi Amin types in the mid c20.

Britain is more complicit,

Will not disagree

temporary restrictions which will hopefully be relaxed during the course of this year

Hopefully they will be, though it’s now obvious that the overton window in liberal democracies has shifted to allow this kind of thing in the future so they’ll still be hanging over peoples’ heads. Fergusson pretty much said that explicitly in a times article. The double digit economic contraction will not be gone in a year though and, I’ll be willing to bet that if and when this is under control, the government niceties to stave off poverty and immiseration will abruptly stop.

I really wonder how people like you imagine a solution…just let it run through completely unimpeded (which will also kill lots of people in the 60-79 age range who aren’t yet with one foot in the grave), no matter the immense strain it will put on the health care system, with all its secondary effects?

What exactly don’t you get about the fact that intensive care units in many European countries are already under great pressure, when we’re in mid-winter, with a new more infectious variant spreading

You’re wanting other people to pay a price for the dysfunctionality of the healthcare systems and failure to prepare.

AK has documented the FSU and red-srate America’s ability to stay open despite completely failing to contain this disiese with considerably milder, though not non-existent restrictions and seems to have grudgingly come to terms with the fact that this is a better course than endless lockdowns. No doubt western Europe would certainly find that harder politically, nevertheless, it is certainly not an impossible feat if the political will is there to balance life years lost due to Corona Vs life years made miserable by lockdowns and utter economic devastation.

Nobody lives forever, death rates in Germany increasing by 50% would give them the same death rates as the Baltics pre corona. You’d then probably have several years of below average death rates. Once again, not one mention of people who’s lives have been ruined by the restrictions, totally one sided. People can of course take their own percautions.

and 2-3 months to go until spring and vaccination should improve the situation.

Just three more months, so that now makes it a year, how much longer would you consider it appropriate for people to accept this level of disruption to their lives? One more year, three years, indefinitely? It’s as valid a question as you asking about death rates, name a timeframe!

Germany has vaccinated 0.3 percent of its population, the UK slightly better, the speed of the rollout has been pathetic, and there’s plenty of scope for the goalposts to be moved and governments insisting on the whole population be vaccinated, not just the vulnerable before opening up; that would take the best part of 2021. If the vaccine stops serious disiese but doesn’t prevent infection then there’s scope for restrictions to drag on considerably longer.

Or are you one of those idiots who think it’s all made up anyway?
imo you’re childish, it’s pathetic how much whining there is from many right-wingers.

I’ve tried to keep any comments made here civil and if you’d read properly what I wrote it would’ve been obvious that’s not the case. If you want examples of childish
right wing whinging then incessant complaining about Merkel allowing Arabs into the fatherland who’ve been displaced by stupid American wars for which German society is at least somewhat complicit would Probably be a better example than a reasoned objection to this dystopian nonsense coming inside the overton window in liberal democracies.

It’s a legitimate debate which you’re refusing to acknowledge and resorting to emotional blackmail. A good proportion of deaths are in care homes; in order to go into one of those places (not assisted living or something similar) you generally need to have dementia advanced to such an extent as to have very little executive function left and practically no sort term memory. This will only get worse and worse until you generally die of… pneumonia if something else doesn’t get you first. The older generation not in such a poor state owns a majority of the decent housing stock, have generous pensions and can self isolate in comparatively greater comfort. Saying that the lives of such people ought to be weighed up against the absolutely ruined life years of the vast majority of the population who won’t die from this thing, including children in their formative years who’s development will very likely be stunted, is rational and utilitarian once the epidemic has advanced to this stage.

The fact that European governments were criminally negligent between mid-January and mid-March is history at this stage, we are where we are and the young should not be scapegoated for their failure.

That European publics so comprehensively reject even considering such tradeoffs is a mixture of knee jerk sentimentality of the same type that argues for the right of people from every extremely poor and dysfunctional county to live and work here, the same selfishness they accuse others of and pure cowardice.

You rant on in most threads about Muslims in Europe (a permanent double-digit GDP drop and horrific unemployment will probably dissuade a good proportion of then mind) but defend Taliban level social distancing rules (that’s not an exaggeration; brutally of enforcement notwithstanding, in the UK, going on a date has been a criminal offence for the past four months with no indication of when that will change).

I suspect, in the UK, it’s a case of priorities; with such high percentages of people not really caring about being locked down for god knows how long, the government isn’t under that much pressure to speed things up and end the situation. Oxford vaccinations didn’t start until 4 days after approval as the healthare workers were off for the new year. Any deaths can be successfully blamed on “those pesky kids”; it’s a winning formula, so why do anything more.

Class stratification amongst native English is absolutely massive, almost at Indian levels though less formal. GCSEs are not hard; you don’t don’t need to be all that smart to get a respectable grade, just to pay at least some attention to the teacher in most lessons and do at least some work. The white underclass does not do that naturally, schools have become increasingly spineless about coercing them to and parents less supportive when, on rate occasions, they do.

There’s no nimbys in the middle of the sea, probably makes it cheaper and quicker than to build them on land one delays and legal bills are factored in.
Edit: looks like someone else beat me to it to make the point.

I remember the good old days before online shopping. The good old days were crap. A very limited range of over-priced products. We should not sentimentalise the past too much. Online shopping is popular because it is much much better than the good old days of bricks-and-mortar stores.

Can’t disagree with this statement but there’s a certain danger to all of this. It’s enabled the Corona restrictions to be sustainable for far longer than would’ve been the case 20-30 years ago. If most internet connections were still 56k office workers would never have been sent home and the Corona deaths would have been simply accepted as fact of life. The lack of discontent and defiance from the young has been the most shocking thing about this; If you actually obey the UK’s Corona nonsense, going on a date has been a criminal offence since September ffs and will probably be so until July. There’s a sentiment amongst nerdy millennials and zoomers, who are very well represented here and our author has a streak of this, that the physical world is passe and that sitting on your ass staring at a screen all day in a tiny flat isn’t dystopian nor represents gigantic fall in living standards, but is simply the future.

I don’t want to defend the clown for one second, but that’s probably unfair. UK Corona policy has been de-facto in the hands of a cabal of scientists who flipped from “let it rip” to ” forever lockdown” in mid-March.

To be fair he advocated lockdown in march, but not the forever lockdown that Western Europe and Blue America have adopted, but he really ought to have had more foursight. Authoritarian regimes can turn draconian policies on and off like a lightbulb, when democracies enact similar measures an entire bureaucratic eco system is created around them which makes them very difficult to repeal which was the primary reason I was against these from the start, once it has become endemic.

I’ve said before that I agree with you mostly on this but with some caveats. The hysteria cuts across generations and is only slightly worse for those in older age groups for whom Corona is extremely dangerous to. Far too many Zoomers and millennials already spend unhealthy amounts of time staring and screens and are already indifferent and/or scared of the physical world. A large number in that age cohort who’ve got secure office jobs are quite happy to sit at home all day, a lot of the rest are extremely supine. There’s certainly going to be a generation of seriously messed up kids coming through the pipeline though, there was even before this, and it’s going to be very bad once they start getting into decision making positions. My own opinion is that the western response has fast forwarded by about 20 years a lot of unpleasant and dystopian tends.

The British Isles crown dependencies did similarly, (maybe not jersey) and have the benefit of being run by vestigial aristocrats and financiers rather than an irritating harpie.

72% of Britons support Boris Johnson’s recent decision to return to a lockdown.

I don’t doubt this for a second, the figure, if anything, is probably higher but so what? A similar percentage probably believe that Crimea is Ukraine; you can’t have your cake and eat it. In the UK, as part of the emergency measures, ofcom has effectively prohibited the broadcast media from any dissent with respect to lockdowns, a mirror image to the situation in Russia where the broadcast media had almost certainly been “asked nicely” not to stir up panic regardless of what Putin has said. This is why most Russians, yourself and others notwithstanding, are remarkably relaxed about this and most western office plankton have gone Howard Hughes. Obviously containment would’ve been by far the best outcome, but once that fails you’re in trade-off land and European governments don’t seem to care about anyone besides wealthy pensioners*, so ruining the lives of kids, teens and young adults for months on end and wrecking their prospects to protect the former was always going to happen. The latter are too servile to seriously object anyway even when they were aggressively blamed for the second wave starting in September when anyone with half a brain could see it was seasonality.

*The UK’s boomer gibs have a “triple lock”, this means that out of the three metrics that the government can use to increase them, the one that increases them the most is chosen. Due to the sheer number of, generally low paid, service workers losing their jobs, the average employee’s pay in the uk has gone up, so that has caused considerable increases in state pension payments (the dole for over 65s).

The war on meritocracy strikes me as a uniquely American obsession.

I think it’s probably an Anglo thing. The grammar school debate in the UK mirrors this, only there’s no racial aspect to it, or there wasn’t in the 1970s when most of the damage was done (by Shirley Williams; a minor aristocrat turned liberal politician). Any time any suggestion is made that public money should be spent on educating talented kids above a very low minimum standard, these types will complain that it doesn’t help the “most disadvantaged”.

The centralised quarantine will certainly massively magnify other measures, but it was never allowed to become endemic there which seems to have made all the difference; nowhere where cases were absolutely out of control in March had successfully controlled it. As for masks; most of Europe has had the most Draconian mask laws for months and they’ve not stopped cases ballooning in wintertime. I wouldn’t use anything less than an FFP3 (n99) to sand old paint or cut up drywall with power tools etc and, given that most of the winter spread is from aerosols, not droplets, those blue things are likely to be worse than useless. Look at this guide for spray painting safety; they’re recommending an air-fed helmet to deal with dangerous aerosol particles you can’t smell.

https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/paint-safety.htm

They could’ve dispensed with nonsense like outdoor mask mandates and focussed on supplying at least n95/ffp3 level masks to people inside, but that would require a level of imagination they lack. Or, once it was obvious how widespread this had become, they could’ve (like most other places outside Europe and blue America) focused on striking a balance between protecting lives of the vulnerable and ruining everyone elses’ for months on end.

Given that most of the west will probably still be under covid lockdowns by then, I wouldn’t get too upset about it, or even count on them going ahead at all.

I got out of academia a few years ago, there was no woke nonsense pushed on hard scientists researching uncontroversial topics then. People more senior than myself were made to do what they used to call “endless stupid courses”, on admin and teaching styles fire extinguishers etc. They were introducing an “unconscious bias” one as I was leaving; it’s probably much worse now.

Zurab Tsereteli?

The reason that Shusha fell so quickly is that Azeri spetsnats infiltrated it through by scaling the cliffs

If that’s true then the complacency on the Armenian side was simply jaw dropping as, according to this, that’s how they captured Shusha/i in the first war.

The Armenians weren’t as soft. Under artillery cover, they launched a surprise attack by climbing a 90 degree slope to storm Shushi in 1992 by foot. It was the same slope from which Armenian girls jumped to their deaths to avoid being raped by Azeris. With that kind of motivation, the Armenians had no qualms about turning Shushi into a mini Sarajevo.

The entire article is worth a re-read in the aftermath of this, in particular

“So what if they spend more money on their military than we do, it doesn’t mean anything. Let them spend ten times more, it won’t matter. The Turks don’t have a mind for machinery. They don’t know how to operate it and when they break it, they don’t know how to fix it. They’re horrible mechanics and engineers. Right now, all of their machinery is rusting out,” he said coolly.

“So you call Azeris Turks?” I asked.

He smiled. “No, not Turks. Defective Turks.”

At least the level of civilian atrocities is, and will be, less this time around.

http://exiledonline.com/feature-story-hot-afternoons-in-armenias-frozen-zone/

Most of they territory lost was undisputedly Azerbaijani and depopulated, ruined; look at YouTube footage of Agdam. All of those districts go to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan gets to occupy the bits of katabakh it took by force, Shusha/i was the big gain here, though before the first war it was mainly Azerbaijani, I think about 4k people will be displaced. If you look at AP’s map above, you’ll see that they went straight for that town and signed the deal onnce they took it, they didn’t take that much of krabakh proper. My interpretation of what happens there is that the Russian forces essentially replace the Armenian ones, but life, for the civilians remaining, can continue. Not sure what will happen with civilian government. That’s not an awful deal given how crushing the defeat was.

It’s a massive humiliation for Armenia though, the outcome of the first war formed a key part of their national identity and allowed them some self-respect. They’re also in serious danger of a civil war as Pashinyan seems more sticky than he appeared a few days ago.

I’ve not been to Batumi, so these are accounts from people I know. I think the climate is such that it’s cold enough in the winter to make beach holidays unfeasible, but not sufficiently cold to kill the plants. There’s quite a few botanic gardens on the south coast of England that have subtropical plants, but I wouldn’t want to sit on a beach there all day in January. It’s also quite wet, as the prevailing wind blows in from the West off the black sea and dumps all of the rain when it hits the mountains which is why the West off the Caucasus is quite lush, but the east is Arid.

It’s gone a bit seedy as of late. It’s unique selling point is the liberal visa regime. There’s legal gambling and quasi-legal prostitution, so it attracts a lot of people from the middle East who want to go there to “misbehave”. Gudauri is worth looking at, the mountains are comparable to Val Thorens if not the infrastructure; they recently extended the ski lifts down to the other side of the mountain, connecting another village to the network, (can’t remember the name, but the peasants there
with freeholds must’ve hit the jackpot) see if there’s still any low hanging fruit. Prices might’ve gone bubble-level stupid though, I’ve not checked for ages.

It’s there any data on how early/late these abortions are? I’m off the “lesser of two evils in some circumstances” mindset with respect to this, but, without any religious preconceptions; very early abortion is pretty similar to contraception, late abortion is pretty similar to infanticide. If most are the former, it’s not something to worry about too much.

Sorry, wrong post to reply to

Have you read Ali and Nino, now might be the time if you haven’t. The book predates the Soviet Union, but, with the exception of religion, attitudes don’t seem to have changed that much. The main character swaps between using Azerbaijani and Tatar to describe himself, though that might be down to translation. It’s a good read; every character in it is hateful. Not sure if they ever found out who wrote it.

Yawn, this whole debate is very “old-normal”. Given that in a decent number of municipalities in France you now have to wear a Niqab (mask but it has the same effect) on an otherwise empty street, because of Corona and not Islam, it kind of begs the question, who cares? France is probably a couple of years behind Anglo-land on this, but “woke-capital” will now take care of any blasphemers, with the exception of a few old, indepently wealthy cranks (who’ll be gone in a decade anyway), long before any stabbings.

YouTube is a bit more even handed. RT et al. get the “— is funded in part or in whole by the — government” caption. The BBC and company get “— is a British/French etc. public service broadcaster”

Whatever happened to Rutube, from memory, in the mid 00s it had a decent fraction of YouTube’s market share even in the West?

O.T. but it looks like ak’s Twitter account has just been wiped

It is a bit silly I’ll admit, though I do have some sympathy with Americans on this issue, the police there do seem quite thuggish. Nevertheless, the personal cost to myself, with my “white privilege” from all of this has been…. absolutely nothing, so for the time being, as far as I’m concerned, they can protest all they like. There were some scuffles in London, but no arson or looting. The rain here might’ve stopped it escalating. Meanwhile the Corona cult had cost me 1/4 life years and counting and is particularly keen to ensure my “young, healthy, non-obese privilege” is checked. If the former helps bring a swift end to the latter then good.

The guy was morbidly obese so not a great example. I don’t wish him ill and I don’t disagree that for every death there’ll be several people who get very sick from this thing, but what’s the alternative? Supposing it’s eradicated from a country, then what? It’s endemic throughout the world now which means several months at least cutoff from the rest of the world until there’s vaccine. I’m not even opposed to lockdowns that much, but this “new normal” crap is beyond the pale. A 1/10 chance of hospitalisation is preferable to an impoverished police state. Our idiot government seems to want social distancing to continue for months; individuals will (and are already starting to) disobey this with impunity, but businesses and organizations will have to comply, so there’ll be no economic rebound for years. On top of that they want all incoming foreign travelers to quarantine, three months late to do any good and just as mass testing is becoming available.

Given the hellscape this will likely produce (90s Russia with its 30 percent gdp drop wasn’t a healthy place), informing individuals of the risk and letting them decide how much they’re willing to take seems preferable.

I half agree with you here. It’s certainly the policy, but I’m not sure it’s actually boomers driving it. Sailer notwithstanding, the most hysterical proponents of this house arrest seem to be millenial women. Almost boomers I know have the ability to put this into some kind of perspective. It kind of makes sense as even they’ve got a 90%+ chance of surviving this thing (it’s silents who is deadly to) and, if i were in their shoes, if rather roll the dice on it than spend the 10-20 quality adjusted life years I’d have left in some impoverished socially distanced dystopia.

1A couple of years ago i got a new job in a different city to my own and had to rent a room. My live-in landlord had such a sedantry lifestyle I was in disbelief. He would drive about 1.5 miles to work each morning (the city was congested and with awful parking so it actually took longer than waking) before coming home, microwaving a ready-meal and eating it in bed in his underpants (at about 18:00) then watching Netflix until he fell asleep. He’s either been furloughed or is working from home now, so I doubt he’s been out of bed for six weeks. Unsurprisingly, he’s posting “StayTheFuckHome” memes on Facebook nonstop and complaining about “covidiots”. I suspect I’ve massively underestimated how many people just like him exist.

Whilst public support for these measures is practically unanimous NOW, I suspect that if this thing drags on for months, as it’s likely to do given the extent to which it’s already spread, those percentages will drop quite fast. Given the very low recovery rate for severe corona cases on ventilators making sure enough are always available seems like a bit of a red herring.

If Batka does actually pull this off, I wonder whether they’ll be able to close the gdp gap a bit with the west.

Moscow is now at the same level as London was last week. Looks like they’re about two weeks behind the uk in terms of the number of cases pp, though might be slightly better if they are testing more people. It’s a Shame they haven’t been able to avoid a lock-down. Singapore and South Korea are much less disrupted.

Still, it is quite shocking incompetence form governments of countries of USA, EU, and (to less extent) in Russia as well, to not close down travel in January.

Disagree slightly with this. At least with respect to quarantine, western countries’ early response to this wasn’t all that bad. Incoming travelers from affected regions were isolated and quarantined and travel stopped in reasonable time. Things really went sour when outbreaks became established in Europe; it was inevitable that some would happen and Italy was probably just very unlucky. Nobody had the nerve to cut off eu countries even when it became obvious that they were exporting cases. This, combined with a lack of testing, and denial about the scale of community transmission got us to this point. The fact that so many governments screwed up in exactly the same way will mean that this incompetence will probably go unpunished.

Unsettling but hardly surprising, there’s been data coming out of China for several weeks now suggesting that once someone needs a ventilator, their prognosis is not good. Even in mid January, the recovery rate suggested this.

As someone who’s been renovating a house, thus doing a lot of dusty work, I used to buy these quite often. ffp2/3 (euro standard for n95) makes would cost about £1.50 each before this thing hit. Or is AK referring to the cheap surgical ones?

Because it spread around the resorts in the the alps specifically. Pattern is similar in the uk; my scruffy prole city has about 10 cases, but the wealthy shires surrounding it have about 150.

Disagree. The thing about the great awokening is that, the mantra of “invade, invite” remains unscathed by all of this, in some cases strenghthened (“we must invade iran to help out all of the strong independent women”). I suppose it’s not conducive to world dominaion in the very long term, but, in the short term, it’s riding on us’s current status which will take at least a couple of decades to erode. On top of that, European elites are more servile than ever. In the uk, Corbyn, got the le penn/putin/trump treatment from the establishment/media because of his anti-imperialism and economic leftism, despite being (or at least onowtowing to) as woke as it’s possible to be.

The bbc has now taken to calling Lyubov Sobol ‘opposition leader’ and not Navalny.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49218726

Lawyer it seems: a big problem as it suggests that a non trivial chunk of the urban profeasional class subscribes to ‘neoliberalism.txt’. Even if their numbers as a proportion of the population are low, that masks much higher influence. Maybe it would be better for the kremlins to use ‘western’ techniques on these guys (destroy their careers) , if they’re serious about avoiding Yelsin ii in a few years time.

Don’t want to repeat myself here but, as per my point above, the classifications are really really low. The low and middle percentages should be added together and compared with the high for this table to be of much use. “High” here means someone has completed high school, or it’s vocational equivalent, nowhere near ‘smart faction’ level, “medium” means high school dropout and “low” means someone who left school before 16. In the western world that only really happens with juvenile delinquents and people with very serious learning difficulties so, even if some countires do better than others, those numbers are absolutely awful for most.

It says on the table that “High” is defined as post secondary. In England that means sixth form, school for 16-18 year olds; equivalent to American high school. If that definition actually does line up with ours, we’re in big trouble.

Edit: here’s the definition
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Classification_of_Education

In conclusion: were screwed.

Your biggest costs will be purchase, insurance, fuel and whatever anti-car taxes the city authorities impose in the near future (if moscow is becoming as bobo as you claim). Servicing isn’t that expensive. I’m not sure what the parts situation is like in Russia, but in England ‘premium’ marques have only slightly more expensive spares, as long as you’re not dumb enough to go to main dealers for them. You’d need to get something seriously exotic before the premium becomes unaffordable (Ferrari etc, even Porsche parts aren’t that bad) Mechanics’ labor ought to be much cheaper over there as a fraction of a moscow professional’s salary. Ever since mechanical ignition and carburetors were phased out in the early 90s car reliability has been a non-issue and fussing over it is a boomer pathology. If you want to buy a Lada out of patriotism, then go for it, but don’t rationalise. An uaz jeep would be much cooler though.

No experience with Matlab, but it can of course be pirated.

Use sage instead, it’s faster.

You’re massively overestimating the availability here. You can buy it in some of the the larger stores of the chains that stock it, with a limited choice, on the bottom shelf, next to wines from other non-mainstream (for the uk) producers. Outside of the home counties, it’s never available. It’s actually quite reasonably priced, compared to the stuff sold in east European shops, abou £6 per bottle. The last M&S i went to which stocked it had two, the yellow one and a not-terrible, but otherwise quite forgettable white. I liked the yellow one.

There’s a few large, trustworthy winehouses where safety shouldn’t be a concern, as long as they’re not fake; Marani, Tblivino, Teliani valley etc. Georgian spices are a different matter entirely (full of lead: either 19th century style adulteration or useing lead-solder to bodge-repair grinding mills). It’s a matter of taste as to whether they’re any good or not; a lot of them are aimed at russians and very sweet, some aren’t. They have some unique and, exotic to westerner, grape varieties though. Georgian wines in Georgia are no cheaper than French wines in France though and very expensive, for what they are, abroad. Saperavi is sold in eastern European shops in Britain for abot $15.

It’s cheap, exotic-ish; more Italian-like than french (pre-khruschev commie architecture looks a bit Italian), Russaphone (if you’re white there, they’ll automatically speak to you in Russian) and has a liberal visa regime.

A connecting flight doubles the flight time to somewhere like that and makes short breaks impractical. Especially since ukraine can’t be used for this; their choices are minksk or istanbul.

It looks as if the establishment in the UK has waited until the race for tory leader was down to one brexiteer and one remainer before giving the former the “Francois Fillion” treatment.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-48727620

They had an election just under a year ago where saakshvili’s party was expecting to return to power, but, instead some obscure woman who was promising to restore the monarchy won. Soros monkeys and other ngo types were spitting feathers at the time, and there were a few protests, but nothing came of them. This comes just after the karacakhy clan were forced out of armenia by mass protests and replaced by closeted atlaticists. Georgians are an odd people and their relationship with Russia is erratic; they’re ultra-conservative and nationalistic by European standards, much more so than Russians or Ukrainians. They were butchered horribly in Abkhazia in the 90s for which they blamed Russia, but then some of their most famous, influential people, even to this day are Russo-Georgeian; Tsereteli, Kandelaki etc

Are there any stats for urbanization in general. I get the impression that in Western Ukraine, with a few exceptions, there are the cities, then deep countryside. In the donbass there’s lots of, probably not very nice, towns with around 50k population where most people in those oblasts live.

I’m not sure about Donetsk: I’ve never visited either. The one thing I’d noticed about it was that in Yerevan and Tbilisi (pre 2014 that is), long distance marshrutkas would advertise it on flyposters as a destination alongside Moscow, Petersburg, and Russian border towns (Volgograd, Stavropol etc), which obviously indicated that there was money to be made there. Wizzair started flying there about three years after kiev. AP will come along and say that this was a vulgar, moneyed upper-middle class able to hire tradesmen to do renovations and build dachas, whilst the rest of the population stagnated. There was, and probably still is, a lot of very unfashionable smokestack industry there; it’s one of the last places in the world that still uses open hearth furnaces for steel making, so the money made has probably been skimmed off and not reinvested. Still, steel has to be made somewhere, and not everywhere can be silicon valley. The poor people who work/worked in those plants prabably get/got about $400 pcm, so still highly profitable, even though antinquated. I suspect that the aids rate and other social ills are a result of urbanization; the population of the donbass probably reside in satellite towns of the major cities, so still urban. I can’t imagine N/Mikoliev or Odessa being much better.

I’m not sure about scandinavia, but urban decay in the late 80s-early 90s in the cities of northen England that had suffered de-industrialisation was absolutely horrific. New-Labour stopped most of the visible rot in the centres and projects/council-estates by hosing these areas with copious amounts of taxpayers’ money. Having said that, they also subjected the, privately owned, inner suburbs of the same cities to Ceaucescu-style demolition in an attempt to replicate the massive house-price inflation seen in the southeast at the time, destroying thousands of cheap, victorian terraces: scumbags.

Tagil is the russian city that’s most similar to Donetsk. Russia’s pastiche of ‘little britain’ made fun of it.

Nevertheless there’s YouTube footage of the reverbaratory furnace chimneys being blown up, and not just left derelict, due to replacement by electric arc furnaces which is evidence that someone reasonably high up the political/economic food chain gives a toss about the place (if you’re a metal bashing town, at least do it well, with the most modern equipment), even if the electric furnaces were most likely sourced from Germany. As someone who cares about air quality, that’s surely an improvement.

Horrors such as this have probably stopped (bypass the paywall whichever way you please):

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=16405&PAGE=1

Are you seriously suggesting that a female American politician, or any politician for that matter, with a realistic chance of nomination and election would’ve done anything different? How’s the wall coming along? What’s more, as unpleasant as merkel is, she doesn’t “treat” us to the kind of incessant tales of woe and adversity that engish speaking female elites do.

Sorry, America is ground zero for this current wave of nonsense. As someone working in tech, on the borderline between gen x and the millenials, i can tell you that wothout exception, the ‘Titania McGrath’ types are from the English speaking world and in their twenties. Foreigners with non-English-speaking accents NEVER engage in this crap. Europe may well have more females in elite positions, but they simply get on with life rather than banging on about the patriarchy or whatever 24/7.

He got killed, in old age, after more than a decade in relative comfort. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia dodged any consequences at all for its complicity in 911, the us and its allies/satraps have effectively sided with aq offshoots in Syria, are closer to war with (shia extremist) Iran than ever before and anyone who criticizes islam in angloland had better be self employed and/or independently wealthy. You could be as rude about Islam/mohammed as you liked in the 80s/90s and still be welcome in polite society, so long as you weren’t abusive to Muslims themselves (If AK is to be believed, things are similar in Russia). What’s more, when ‘orange man’ leaves office, the Chinese will likely go from being ‘trade cheats’ to ‘Xinjiang genociders’, so, all things considered, obl has had a pretty good run.

Yes, especially when you consider the fact that central banks have been cranking up interest rates for the past couple of years. If there’s ever a shock which might harm prices, you can bet they’ll slash them to practically nothing again, first time buyers be dammed.

West hampstead is fine. I can remember being tempted by ‘the ladders’ in harringey as one of the last places where decent terrace houses (not flats) could still be had for less than a million.

It’s a combination of English industrialized dystopia and Muslim people.

That was probably a representative sample then. It’s about 20% cheaper than any similar sized town town in a comparable location for a reason.

There are no cheap areas in or anywhere within commuting distance to london anymore. It’s a choice of extremely expensive or more expensive still. The only cheap(ish) satellite town is luton which is scruffy and crime ridden, but extremely well connected. Manchester is more like what you described; expensive nice areas and cheap bad areas.