Replies: @Colin Wright, @HammerJack, @SIMP simp, @Batman, @AnotherDad, @johnmark7, @XBardon Kaldlan

Replies: @Colin Wright, @HammerJack, @SIMP simp, @Batman, @AnotherDad, @johnmark7, @XBardon Kaldlan

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

And they're very big on animal abuse, if that's your thing. Mainly horses and camels in that particular case, but Islam seems to favor abusing all animals, except maybe falcons.

Replies: @JimB, @Anon, @Ian Smith, @Dream

SafeNow, I also like to just BE somewhere old like this and imagine how long ago that was and what was actually going on then. No pictures are necessary. I ran into this at the ruins in Rome a few years back. As I described in "The Ugly* Chinaman", the Chinese seem to be the worst about this, especially the girls (of course).

I ask people, such as my wife, "What is it? Do you think nobody will believe you went here? Just tell 'em you went, and there are a million pictures of this on the internet. Just BE here!" That's what it's about.

But no, her sandstone-colored legs, at least, look pretty good. This picture has inspired me to see if we can go there too. 4,500 years!

.

* For those who don't get the reference, it's not a slur, so calm TF down.

Replies: @JR Ewing, @fish, @kaganovitch, @AndrewR, @Joe Stalin

Replies: @Anonymous, @The Plutonium Kid, @AnotherDad, @scrivener3, @Dave from Oz

Replies: @JimDandy, @Dream, @SFG, @dearieme

Replies: @JimDandy, @Dream, @SFG, @dearieme

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Pixo, @AndrewR, @Rob, @nebulafox, @R.G. Camara, @Prester John

Replies: @Reg Cæsar

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Pixo, @AndrewR, @Rob, @nebulafox, @R.G. Camara, @Prester John

Replies: @reactionry

Replies: @Colin Wright, @HammerJack, @SIMP simp, @Batman, @AnotherDad, @johnmark7, @XBardon Kaldlan

Replies: @reactionry

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Pixo, @AndrewR, @Rob, @nebulafox, @R.G. Camara, @Prester John

Replies: @Anonymous, @The Plutonium Kid, @AnotherDad, @scrivener3, @Dave from Oz

Replies: @JimDandy, @Dream, @SFG, @dearieme

And they're very big on animal abuse, if that's your thing. Mainly horses and camels in that particular case, but Islam seems to favor abusing all animals, except maybe falcons.

Replies: @JimB, @Anon, @Ian Smith, @Dream

EVERYONE in America is noticeably fatter now than just 20 years ago, when we were already plenty dissolute and fucked up as a country. Have you seen how much wider and fuller Johnny Depp’s face is? We’ve gotten really lazy, but tell me that what they’re putting in the food is also partly to blame, right?
 

Also, get white sugar out of your house. Don’t eat it.

Do that, eat vegetables, supplement, and you can be like me: Same weight I was in college, that means thin, resting pulse is 58, blood pressure 107/64, and in far better shape than most people my age, 62. A month ago, I locked myself out of my backyard, so I had to scale a nine foot fence. Had to drop five feet on my way down. Not a problem. I’d love to watch a randomly picked bunch of 62 year olds try to do it. It would be hilarious.

Replies: @bomag, @prosa123, @kaganovitch, @Jack D, @Charles Pewitt, @Ghost of Bull Moose

Replies: @bomag, @Hal E. Burton

Replies: @Colin Wright, @HammerJack, @SIMP simp, @Batman, @AnotherDad, @johnmark7, @XBardon Kaldlan

"...but could be a bit on the beefy side."

Yeah, a lot of people put on some pounds during the Great Pandemic of Pizza, but you wouldn't want her to go to the opposite extreme of Thighless in Giza.

tripling down on stupid...

Hat tips to Garry Wills' Vixen Agonistes and the Hasbro Corp which not only funds our pro-Israel, mensch-splaining Jack D., but also manufacturers John Milton Bradley desert fighting vehicle toys.

Also see: "Sodom and Begorrah" and Erin Go Hasbara!

Replies: @slumber_j

Russia is tightening the noose on Ukrainian troops in the country’s east.

Moscow’s forces have advanced in a fierce ground and artillery assault, and they now appear close to encircling the last two holdout cities in Luhansk province. Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk form the Donbas region, which has become the key focus of the Kremlin’s war.

As Ukrainian officials voice concern that their troops are now outmanned and outgunned, the Russian push could prove decisive in the conflict.
…
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukrainian defenses were struggling to keep up with Russia’s onslaught.

“We’ve now lost to the Russian army in terms of pace,” he said in an interview with an independent Russian media outlet.

“The Russian side managed to gather its reserves before we did. We’re lagging behind, which makes the situation at the front extremely difficult.”
…
After months of battlefield setbacks and the grinding siege of the Black Sea port of Mariupol, Russia’s brutal advance in Luhansk has renewed concerns about the conflict’s endgame.

If Russia is able to secure control of a large slice of the east, might Ukraine be better off accepting that as the price of survival?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger suggested exactly that at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week as he called for a resumption of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, warning that failing to engage Russia diplomatically would have long-term consequences for European stability.
 

Replies: @WJ, @ic1000, @Pixo, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @Mark G., @SunBakedSuburb, @mc23

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Pixo, @AndrewR, @Rob, @nebulafox, @R.G. Camara, @Prester John

Russia is tightening the noose on Ukrainian troops in the country’s east.

Moscow’s forces have advanced in a fierce ground and artillery assault, and they now appear close to encircling the last two holdout cities in Luhansk province. Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk form the Donbas region, which has become the key focus of the Kremlin’s war.

As Ukrainian officials voice concern that their troops are now outmanned and outgunned, the Russian push could prove decisive in the conflict.
…
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukrainian defenses were struggling to keep up with Russia’s onslaught.

“We’ve now lost to the Russian army in terms of pace,” he said in an interview with an independent Russian media outlet.

“The Russian side managed to gather its reserves before we did. We’re lagging behind, which makes the situation at the front extremely difficult.”
…
After months of battlefield setbacks and the grinding siege of the Black Sea port of Mariupol, Russia’s brutal advance in Luhansk has renewed concerns about the conflict’s endgame.

If Russia is able to secure control of a large slice of the east, might Ukraine be better off accepting that as the price of survival?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger suggested exactly that at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week as he called for a resumption of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, warning that failing to engage Russia diplomatically would have long-term consequences for European stability.
 

Replies: @WJ, @ic1000, @Pixo, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @Mark G., @SunBakedSuburb, @mc23

Replies: @Mike Tre

SafeNow, I also like to just BE somewhere old like this and imagine how long ago that was and what was actually going on then. No pictures are necessary. I ran into this at the ruins in Rome a few years back. As I described in "The Ugly* Chinaman", the Chinese seem to be the worst about this, especially the girls (of course).

I ask people, such as my wife, "What is it? Do you think nobody will believe you went here? Just tell 'em you went, and there are a million pictures of this on the internet. Just BE here!" That's what it's about.

But no, her sandstone-colored legs, at least, look pretty good. This picture has inspired me to see if we can go there too. 4,500 years!

.

* For those who don't get the reference, it's not a slur, so calm TF down.

Replies: @JR Ewing, @fish, @kaganovitch, @AndrewR, @Joe Stalin

Replies: @Colin Wright, @HammerJack, @SIMP simp, @Batman, @AnotherDad, @johnmark7, @XBardon Kaldlan

Replies: @SFG, @Yahya

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Pixo, @AndrewR, @Rob, @nebulafox, @R.G. Camara, @Prester John

I had a great history teacher in high school. One time when he was trying to help us understand the time scale of history, he explained that it was a shorter time gap between us and Athens’ golden age than it was between Athens’ golden age and time when the pyramids were built.
 

Replies: @JR Ewing, @Stan Adams

I’ve had similar thoughts, for instance seeing the throng of people around the Mona Lisa trying to take a picture of it. Why?

If you’re going to take a picture, include yourself in it. Take a selfie. Prove you were there. What’s the point otherwise?

Without your smiling face in it, your crappy snapshot is just a crappy snapshot of something that has already been professionally photographed 100’s or 1000’s of times.

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Alfa158, @Harry Baldwin

I’ve heard that visiting the Pyramids requires wading through a sea of aggressive beggars.
 

Replies: @usNthem, @Reg Cæsar

Replies: @JimDandy, @Dream, @SFG, @dearieme

Russia is tightening the noose on Ukrainian troops in the country’s east.

Moscow’s forces have advanced in a fierce ground and artillery assault, and they now appear close to encircling the last two holdout cities in Luhansk province. Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk form the Donbas region, which has become the key focus of the Kremlin’s war.

As Ukrainian officials voice concern that their troops are now outmanned and outgunned, the Russian push could prove decisive in the conflict.
…
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukrainian defenses were struggling to keep up with Russia’s onslaught.

“We’ve now lost to the Russian army in terms of pace,” he said in an interview with an independent Russian media outlet.

“The Russian side managed to gather its reserves before we did. We’re lagging behind, which makes the situation at the front extremely difficult.”
…
After months of battlefield setbacks and the grinding siege of the Black Sea port of Mariupol, Russia’s brutal advance in Luhansk has renewed concerns about the conflict’s endgame.

If Russia is able to secure control of a large slice of the east, might Ukraine be better off accepting that as the price of survival?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger suggested exactly that at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week as he called for a resumption of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, warning that failing to engage Russia diplomatically would have long-term consequences for European stability.
 

Replies: @WJ, @ic1000, @Pixo, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @Mark G., @SunBakedSuburb, @mc23

EVERYONE in America is noticeably fatter now than just 20 years ago, when we were already plenty dissolute and fucked up as a country. Have you seen how much wider and fuller Johnny Depp’s face is? We’ve gotten really lazy, but tell me that what they’re putting in the food is also partly to blame, right?
 

Also, get white sugar out of your house. Don’t eat it.

Do that, eat vegetables, supplement, and you can be like me: Same weight I was in college, that means thin, resting pulse is 58, blood pressure 107/64, and in far better shape than most people my age, 62. A month ago, I locked myself out of my backyard, so I had to scale a nine foot fence. Had to drop five feet on my way down. Not a problem. I’d love to watch a randomly picked bunch of 62 year olds try to do it. It would be hilarious.

Replies: @bomag, @prosa123, @kaganovitch, @Jack D, @Charles Pewitt, @Ghost of Bull Moose

PhysicistDave, while I favor Kyiv in this war (on balance), I concur with your analysis.

It has been difficult-to-impossible to know the ground truth of this war in detail. But it has been clear for weeks that Russia's strategy has been to attempt to encircle Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk salient around the city of Severodonetsk.

Would the Ukrainians be strong enough to hold fast, given that this battlefield minimizes Russian weaknesses in logistics? The cited NBC report gives the answer to us spectators (which would have been obvious to both sides for some time): No.

So the Ukrainian General Staff's choice has been between holding territory at the high risk of the forced surrender of the defending troops, or attempting a withdrawal in good order, westwards towards Dnipro, conceding the remainder of the Donbas to the Russians.

Fighting withdrawals are extremely difficult. They require the sacrifice of units at the 'back,' and risk turning into sauve-qui-peut routs. Worse, for the past week there have been only two 2-lane paved roads open to the west from Severodonetsk, with one or both under observation by Russian artillery.

The NBC article confirms that the Ukrainians have prioritized territory over soldiers, and are about to pay the price.

The reporter mentions the prospect of sending "reinforcements" to the embattled troops, presumably to buoy the spirits of U.S./EU fans of Ukraine. General von Paulus was not available for comment.

Replies: @Pixo, @Jack D, @Alfa158

"Dust in the Wind"

Soap Opera Socratics:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=bill+and+ted+socrates+dust&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dbill%2520and%2520ted%2520socrates%2520dust%26form%3dSWAUA2&view=detail&mmscn=vwrc&mid=1641C1A244ADA353083E1641C1A244ADA353083E&FORM=WRVORC

Replies: @Ganderson

Replies: @SFG, @Yahya

And they're very big on animal abuse, if that's your thing. Mainly horses and camels in that particular case, but Islam seems to favor abusing all animals, except maybe falcons.

Replies: @JimB, @Anon, @Ian Smith, @Dream

A month ago, I locked myself out of my backyard, so I had to scale a nine foot fence. Had to drop five feet on my way down. Not a problem. I’d love to watch a randomly picked bunch of 62 year olds try to do it. It would be hilarious.

I'd say that a random bunch of 62 y.o. women would do better than a random bunch of men the same age. Women in that age range are often into nutrition and fitness while way too many men just pork up and turn into blobs. In fairness, in those age ranges men are far more likely than women to have chronic medical conditions that makes it impossible to engage in physical activity.

Replies: @anon

I’ve heard that visiting the Pyramids requires wading through a sea of aggressive beggars.
 

Replies: @usNthem, @Reg Cæsar

The point with the pyramids is they didn’t have steel, structural or otherwise.

Replies: @Jack D, @Buffalo Joe

EVERYONE in America is noticeably fatter now than just 20 years ago, when we were already plenty dissolute and fucked up as a country. Have you seen how much wider and fuller Johnny Depp’s face is? We’ve gotten really lazy, but tell me that what they’re putting in the food is also partly to blame, right?
 

Also, get white sugar out of your house. Don’t eat it.

Do that, eat vegetables, supplement, and you can be like me: Same weight I was in college, that means thin, resting pulse is 58, blood pressure 107/64, and in far better shape than most people my age, 62. A month ago, I locked myself out of my backyard, so I had to scale a nine foot fence. Had to drop five feet on my way down. Not a problem. I’d love to watch a randomly picked bunch of 62 year olds try to do it. It would be hilarious.

Replies: @bomag, @prosa123, @kaganovitch, @Jack D, @Charles Pewitt, @Ghost of Bull Moose

PhysicistDave, while I favor Kyiv in this war (on balance), I concur with your analysis.

It has been difficult-to-impossible to know the ground truth of this war in detail. But it has been clear for weeks that Russia's strategy has been to attempt to encircle Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk salient around the city of Severodonetsk.

Would the Ukrainians be strong enough to hold fast, given that this battlefield minimizes Russian weaknesses in logistics? The cited NBC report gives the answer to us spectators (which would have been obvious to both sides for some time): No.

So the Ukrainian General Staff's choice has been between holding territory at the high risk of the forced surrender of the defending troops, or attempting a withdrawal in good order, westwards towards Dnipro, conceding the remainder of the Donbas to the Russians.

Fighting withdrawals are extremely difficult. They require the sacrifice of units at the 'back,' and risk turning into sauve-qui-peut routs. Worse, for the past week there have been only two 2-lane paved roads open to the west from Severodonetsk, with one or both under observation by Russian artillery.

The NBC article confirms that the Ukrainians have prioritized territory over soldiers, and are about to pay the price.

The reporter mentions the prospect of sending "reinforcements" to the embattled troops, presumably to buoy the spirits of U.S./EU fans of Ukraine. General von Paulus was not available for comment.

Replies: @Pixo, @Jack D, @Alfa158

EVERYONE in America is noticeably fatter now than just 20 years ago, when we were already plenty dissolute and fucked up as a country. Have you seen how much wider and fuller Johnny Depp’s face is? We’ve gotten really lazy, but tell me that what they’re putting in the food is also partly to blame, right?
 

Also, get white sugar out of your house. Don’t eat it.

Do that, eat vegetables, supplement, and you can be like me: Same weight I was in college, that means thin, resting pulse is 58, blood pressure 107/64, and in far better shape than most people my age, 62. A month ago, I locked myself out of my backyard, so I had to scale a nine foot fence. Had to drop five feet on my way down. Not a problem. I’d love to watch a randomly picked bunch of 62 year olds try to do it. It would be hilarious.

Replies: @bomag, @prosa123, @kaganovitch, @Jack D, @Charles Pewitt, @Ghost of Bull Moose

I was talking about selfies, J.R. Even then, look, I've got friends and family who will believe me if I say I went to the Roman Colosseum, so I don't need any pictures.

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Old Prude

There is no doubt that it's not going well for the Ukrainians at Severodonetsk. However, keep in mind that the Russians have lowered their sights considerably. The "cauldron" was originally going to be the entire east and the whole Ukrainian army was going to be trapped inside of it. The pocket around Severodonetsk is more like a saucepan than a cauldron.

The narratives in this war have gone back and forth - when the war started, everyone expected the mighty Russian Army to overrun the Ukrainians. Then it flipped and the Russians were complete incompetents who couldn't do anything right. The truth is somewhere in between and there is no question that they can score at least tactical victories in some places. They have a lot of heavy artillery that they can bring to bear on an area that is difficult to withstand.

Note though that by the time they take over a city they are capturing rubble. Most of the people are gone, all the structures and industry are destroyed. So what have they captured? Does Russia need more land? Whatever short term tactical victories they can achieve, Putin has driven Russia into a strategic "cauldron". Unless they give up their gains in Ukraine, they are going to be a giant version of N. Korea. Putin has turned Russia into a pariah state and his prize is the rubble of Severodonetsk. Is this game really worth the candle?

Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Hypnotoad666, @R.G. Camara, @Joe Stalin

Neither did the Romans but they built the Pantheon and the Coliseum and the aqueducts. And neither did the cathedral builders. One of the ways of judging the sophistication of a culture is seeing how far they can span open space with their structures. The Egyptians were not very good at that.

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @SFG, @AnotherDad, @Cido

SafeNow, I also like to just BE somewhere old like this and imagine how long ago that was and what was actually going on then. No pictures are necessary. I ran into this at the ruins in Rome a few years back. As I described in "The Ugly* Chinaman", the Chinese seem to be the worst about this, especially the girls (of course).

I ask people, such as my wife, "What is it? Do you think nobody will believe you went here? Just tell 'em you went, and there are a million pictures of this on the internet. Just BE here!" That's what it's about.

But no, her sandstone-colored legs, at least, look pretty good. This picture has inspired me to see if we can go there too. 4,500 years!

.

* For those who don't get the reference, it's not a slur, so calm TF down.

Replies: @JR Ewing, @fish, @kaganovitch, @AndrewR, @Joe Stalin

A month ago, I locked myself out of my backyard, so I had to scale a nine foot fence. Had to drop five feet on my way down. Not a problem. I’d love to watch a randomly picked bunch of 62 year olds try to do it.
 

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Zoos

One of the ways of judging the sophistication of a culture is seeing how far they can span open space with their structures. The Egyptians were not very good at that.
 

Contrast this pair of photos from Braşov in Romania:

https://romaniatourism.com/images/brasov/strada-sforii-brasov-romania-the-narrowest-street-large.jpg

http://photos.wikimapia.org/p/00/02/21/11/80_big.jpg

Replies: @kaganovitch

Neither did the Romans but they built the Pantheon and the Coliseum and the aqueducts. And neither did the cathedral builders. One of the ways of judging the sophistication of a culture is seeing how far they can span open space with their structures. The Egyptians were not very good at that.

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @SFG, @AnotherDad, @Cido

Neither did the Romans but they built the Pantheon and the Coliseum and the aqueducts. And neither did the cathedral builders. One of the ways of judging the sophistication of a culture is seeing how far they can span open space with their structures. The Egyptians were not very good at that.

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @SFG, @AnotherDad, @Cido

I’ve had similar thoughts, for instance seeing the throng of people around the Mona Lisa trying to take a picture of it. Why?

If you’re going to take a picture, include yourself in it. Take a selfie. Prove you were there. What’s the point otherwise?

Without your smiling face in it, your crappy snapshot is just a crappy snapshot of something that has already been professionally photographed 100’s or 1000’s of times.

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Alfa158, @Harry Baldwin

We visited the Louvre pre-pandemic and there were literally 40-50 people at a time taking photos of Mona Lisa. Instead of taking a photo of the painting I stood in front of the crowd and took a shot of them all photographing the painting.
In Rome the whole selfie thing was a pain not as much because of the people taking selfies, but because the tourist areas were infested with Tamil refugees aggressively hawking selfie sticks. If you walked a typical block you would pass four or five selfie stick salesman and about half as many Africans selling fake made in Southeast Asia “African” wood handicrafts.
The whole scene in Europe has become strange. One time we were driving along a side road in rural Tuscany and there was suddenly a couple of hundred meter stretch with African prostitutes spaced out along the road waiting for customers. I presume it was known among the locals that was where you went if you wanted to get laid.

Replies: @prosa123, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @YetAnotherAnon

SafeNow, I also like to just BE somewhere old like this and imagine how long ago that was and what was actually going on then. No pictures are necessary. I ran into this at the ruins in Rome a few years back. As I described in "The Ugly* Chinaman", the Chinese seem to be the worst about this, especially the girls (of course).

I ask people, such as my wife, "What is it? Do you think nobody will believe you went here? Just tell 'em you went, and there are a million pictures of this on the internet. Just BE here!" That's what it's about.

But no, her sandstone-colored legs, at least, look pretty good. This picture has inspired me to see if we can go there too. 4,500 years!

.

* For those who don't get the reference, it's not a slur, so calm TF down.

Replies: @JR Ewing, @fish, @kaganovitch, @AndrewR, @Joe Stalin

Russia is tightening the noose on Ukrainian troops in the country’s east.

Moscow’s forces have advanced in a fierce ground and artillery assault, and they now appear close to encircling the last two holdout cities in Luhansk province. Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk form the Donbas region, which has become the key focus of the Kremlin’s war.

As Ukrainian officials voice concern that their troops are now outmanned and outgunned, the Russian push could prove decisive in the conflict.
…
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukrainian defenses were struggling to keep up with Russia’s onslaught.

“We’ve now lost to the Russian army in terms of pace,” he said in an interview with an independent Russian media outlet.

“The Russian side managed to gather its reserves before we did. We’re lagging behind, which makes the situation at the front extremely difficult.”
…
After months of battlefield setbacks and the grinding siege of the Black Sea port of Mariupol, Russia’s brutal advance in Luhansk has renewed concerns about the conflict’s endgame.

If Russia is able to secure control of a large slice of the east, might Ukraine be better off accepting that as the price of survival?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger suggested exactly that at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week as he called for a resumption of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, warning that failing to engage Russia diplomatically would have long-term consequences for European stability.
 

Replies: @WJ, @ic1000, @Pixo, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @Mark G., @SunBakedSuburb, @mc23

Replies: @bomag, @Hal E. Burton

We visited the Louvre pre-pandemic and there were literally 40-50 people at a time taking photos of Mona Lisa. Instead of taking a photo of the painting I stood in front of the crowd and took a shot of them all photographing the painting.
In Rome the whole selfie thing was a pain not as much because of the people taking selfies, but because the tourist areas were infested with Tamil refugees aggressively hawking selfie sticks. If you walked a typical block you would pass four or five selfie stick salesman and about half as many Africans selling fake made in Southeast Asia “African” wood handicrafts.
The whole scene in Europe has become strange. One time we were driving along a side road in rural Tuscany and there was suddenly a couple of hundred meter stretch with African prostitutes spaced out along the road waiting for customers. I presume it was known among the locals that was where you went if you wanted to get laid.

Replies: @prosa123, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @YetAnotherAnon

I was talking about selfies, J.R. Even then, look, I've got friends and family who will believe me if I say I went to the Roman Colosseum, so I don't need any pictures.

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Old Prude

PhysicistDave, while I favor Kyiv in this war (on balance), I concur with your analysis.

It has been difficult-to-impossible to know the ground truth of this war in detail. But it has been clear for weeks that Russia's strategy has been to attempt to encircle Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk salient around the city of Severodonetsk.

Would the Ukrainians be strong enough to hold fast, given that this battlefield minimizes Russian weaknesses in logistics? The cited NBC report gives the answer to us spectators (which would have been obvious to both sides for some time): No.

So the Ukrainian General Staff's choice has been between holding territory at the high risk of the forced surrender of the defending troops, or attempting a withdrawal in good order, westwards towards Dnipro, conceding the remainder of the Donbas to the Russians.

Fighting withdrawals are extremely difficult. They require the sacrifice of units at the 'back,' and risk turning into sauve-qui-peut routs. Worse, for the past week there have been only two 2-lane paved roads open to the west from Severodonetsk, with one or both under observation by Russian artillery.

The NBC article confirms that the Ukrainians have prioritized territory over soldiers, and are about to pay the price.

The reporter mentions the prospect of sending "reinforcements" to the embattled troops, presumably to buoy the spirits of U.S./EU fans of Ukraine. General von Paulus was not available for comment.

Replies: @Pixo, @Jack D, @Alfa158

This ivory statue found in southern France is from around 23,000BC.

https://www.ilcerchiodellaluna.it/immagini/27000-BC_Venus-of-Brassempouy_PLZ-011.jpg

Replies: @G. Poulin

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Pixo, @AndrewR, @Rob, @nebulafox, @R.G. Camara, @Prester John

Neither did the Romans but they built the Pantheon and the Coliseum and the aqueducts. And neither did the cathedral builders. One of the ways of judging the sophistication of a culture is seeing how far they can span open space with their structures. The Egyptians were not very good at that.
 

Replies: @Jack D

Replies: @Anonymous, @The Plutonium Kid, @AnotherDad, @scrivener3, @Dave from Oz

What are they putting in the food? Sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. Whether it's cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup, American food is drenched in sugar. Compared to bread in most of the rest of the world, bread in America is more like cake. You want real bread, buy the freshly baked stuff.

Replies: @J.Ross, @peterike, @Nervous in Stalingrad

I would never do that. The grain silo at Great Zimbabwe is over 30 feet tall and upwards of 18 feet in diameter!

https://www.exploring-africa.com/sites/default/files/styles/full_page/public/uploads/article/325/cover/zimbabwe-africa-exploringafrica-safariadv-radio-raheem-great-zimbabwe.jpg?itok=Y0E33Ab-

Great Zimbabwe compares favorably with the Gothic cathedrals that were built at the same time. The towers of the cathedrals were built for no good reason but a grain silo feeds the people.

Replies: @peterike, @mc23

What are they putting in the food? Sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. Whether it's cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup, American food is drenched in sugar. Compared to bread in most of the rest of the world, bread in America is more like cake. You want real bread, buy the freshly baked stuff.

Replies: @J.Ross, @peterike, @Nervous in Stalingrad

Russia is tightening the noose on Ukrainian troops in the country’s east.

Moscow’s forces have advanced in a fierce ground and artillery assault, and they now appear close to encircling the last two holdout cities in Luhansk province. Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk form the Donbas region, which has become the key focus of the Kremlin’s war.

As Ukrainian officials voice concern that their troops are now outmanned and outgunned, the Russian push could prove decisive in the conflict.
…
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukrainian defenses were struggling to keep up with Russia’s onslaught.

“We’ve now lost to the Russian army in terms of pace,” he said in an interview with an independent Russian media outlet.

“The Russian side managed to gather its reserves before we did. We’re lagging behind, which makes the situation at the front extremely difficult.”
…
After months of battlefield setbacks and the grinding siege of the Black Sea port of Mariupol, Russia’s brutal advance in Luhansk has renewed concerns about the conflict’s endgame.

If Russia is able to secure control of a large slice of the east, might Ukraine be better off accepting that as the price of survival?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger suggested exactly that at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week as he called for a resumption of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, warning that failing to engage Russia diplomatically would have long-term consequences for European stability.
 

Replies: @WJ, @ic1000, @Pixo, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @Mark G., @SunBakedSuburb, @mc23

What are they putting in the food? Sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. Whether it's cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup, American food is drenched in sugar. Compared to bread in most of the rest of the world, bread in America is more like cake. You want real bread, buy the freshly baked stuff.

Replies: @J.Ross, @peterike, @Nervous in Stalingrad

Replies: @SunBakedSuburb

EVERYONE in America is noticeably fatter now than just 20 years ago, when we were already plenty dissolute and fucked up as a country. Have you seen how much wider and fuller Johnny Depp’s face is? We’ve gotten really lazy, but tell me that what they’re putting in the food is also partly to blame, right?
 

Also, get white sugar out of your house. Don’t eat it.

Do that, eat vegetables, supplement, and you can be like me: Same weight I was in college, that means thin, resting pulse is 58, blood pressure 107/64, and in far better shape than most people my age, 62. A month ago, I locked myself out of my backyard, so I had to scale a nine foot fence. Had to drop five feet on my way down. Not a problem. I’d love to watch a randomly picked bunch of 62 year olds try to do it. It would be hilarious.

Replies: @bomag, @prosa123, @kaganovitch, @Jack D, @Charles Pewitt, @Ghost of Bull Moose

Why are there Tamil refugees at all, in 2022?The Tamils have their own, prosperous state in India, and the civil war in Sri Lanka has been over for over a dozen years, with the Tamil separatist leadership completely annihilated.

Replies: @nebulafox

We visited the Louvre pre-pandemic and there were literally 40-50 people at a time taking photos of Mona Lisa. Instead of taking a photo of the painting I stood in front of the crowd and took a shot of them all photographing the painting.
In Rome the whole selfie thing was a pain not as much because of the people taking selfies, but because the tourist areas were infested with Tamil refugees aggressively hawking selfie sticks. If you walked a typical block you would pass four or five selfie stick salesman and about half as many Africans selling fake made in Southeast Asia “African” wood handicrafts.
The whole scene in Europe has become strange. One time we were driving along a side road in rural Tuscany and there was suddenly a couple of hundred meter stretch with African prostitutes spaced out along the road waiting for customers. I presume it was known among the locals that was where you went if you wanted to get laid.

Replies: @prosa123, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @YetAnotherAnon

No pictures are necessary. I ran into this at the ruins in Rome a few years back. As I described in “The Ugly* Chinaman”, the Chinese seem to be the worst about this, especially the girls


Old Jewish joke: Max and Izzy from Brooklyn struck it rich building suburban developments after WW2. They sell the business for millions and decide they're going to travel the world to imbibe some culture. First stop of course is Italy. They tour the sites then they arrive at the Colosseum. They look around and Izzy tells Max "Max, dis illustrates vot I told you not vunce but a hundred times; If you don't hef sufficient kepital, you don't start to build!"

Replies: @Anonymous

Russia is tightening the noose on Ukrainian troops in the country’s east.

Moscow’s forces have advanced in a fierce ground and artillery assault, and they now appear close to encircling the last two holdout cities in Luhansk province. Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk form the Donbas region, which has become the key focus of the Kremlin’s war.

As Ukrainian officials voice concern that their troops are now outmanned and outgunned, the Russian push could prove decisive in the conflict.
…
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukrainian defenses were struggling to keep up with Russia’s onslaught.

“We’ve now lost to the Russian army in terms of pace,” he said in an interview with an independent Russian media outlet.

“The Russian side managed to gather its reserves before we did. We’re lagging behind, which makes the situation at the front extremely difficult.”
…
After months of battlefield setbacks and the grinding siege of the Black Sea port of Mariupol, Russia’s brutal advance in Luhansk has renewed concerns about the conflict’s endgame.

If Russia is able to secure control of a large slice of the east, might Ukraine be better off accepting that as the price of survival?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger suggested exactly that at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week as he called for a resumption of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, warning that failing to engage Russia diplomatically would have long-term consequences for European stability.
 

Replies: @WJ, @ic1000, @Pixo, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @Mark G., @SunBakedSuburb, @mc23

Russia is tightening the noose on Ukrainian troops in the country’s east.

Moscow’s forces have advanced in a fierce ground and artillery assault, and they now appear close to encircling the last two holdout cities in Luhansk province. Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk form the Donbas region, which has become the key focus of the Kremlin’s war.

As Ukrainian officials voice concern that their troops are now outmanned and outgunned, the Russian push could prove decisive in the conflict.
…
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukrainian defenses were struggling to keep up with Russia’s onslaught.

“We’ve now lost to the Russian army in terms of pace,” he said in an interview with an independent Russian media outlet.

“The Russian side managed to gather its reserves before we did. We’re lagging behind, which makes the situation at the front extremely difficult.”
…
After months of battlefield setbacks and the grinding siege of the Black Sea port of Mariupol, Russia’s brutal advance in Luhansk has renewed concerns about the conflict’s endgame.

If Russia is able to secure control of a large slice of the east, might Ukraine be better off accepting that as the price of survival?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger suggested exactly that at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week as he called for a resumption of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, warning that failing to engage Russia diplomatically would have long-term consequences for European stability.
 

Replies: @WJ, @ic1000, @Pixo, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @Mark G., @SunBakedSuburb, @mc23

Replies: @Anonymous, @The Plutonium Kid, @AnotherDad, @scrivener3, @Dave from Oz

Yeah, but the Egyptians were first and had less accumulated knowledge to build on. It’s like asking why Newton didn’t look up the laws of motion on Wikipedia. Someone had to be first.

People in the past weren’t dumber, they knew less. (And were often in better shape!)

Replies: @Bill Jones

We’ve gotten really lazy, but tell me that what they’re putting in the food is also partly to blame, right?
 

Sure. The medical establishment totally screwed the pooch with their dietary advice to the fattening post-War officer workers (like my dad) back in the 60s/70s. "Fat" or "saturated fat" isn't some demon. It's basically carbs--lots and lots of cheap and plentiful carbs--that yo-yo people's blood sugar help make them hungry again. People like fat. It makes people feel "full" and ready to stop eating. And yeah, the seed oil replacements seem to be worse for folks than the original--for Westerners--animal based fats.

But the bottom line remains: Americans eat way too much for the sedentary lifestyles we have.

Americans are no longer toting that barge or lifting that bale. But lots are eating like they do. If you do not want to be fat ... do not eat so much. (Particularly don't fill up on fast carbs. You'll just be hungry again in a couple hours.) But it is less what you eat than how much you stuff your maw.

I'll put myself out there: I eat the same "processed food" from Walmart and Costco as a typical American. I weigh 160 (my scale which sucks just said 158). I'm an averaged sized American male--5'10'', not thin framed. I was 150-155 during most of my adult life ... when I was hitting the gym regularly after work. A bit chunkier in retirement. I need to lose about 10 pounds. And I am not "naturally thin". I was a fat kid, and if I overeat ... I get fat.

But ... I don't eat breakfast. I try to give myself a good long eating break--evening meal to lunch around noon for ketosis. I snack a bit--love my chips. But I do not have a big dinner. (Sometimes no dinner or just a bit of peanut butter and pretzels and a cup of tea. I do not have any sort of "bedtime snack" (the dumbest possible eating). I do not have big bowls of fat and sugar. (I'm not putting up hay all day!) I had put on 5+ over the Christmas feasting season and since I've been fasting a day a week (usually Monday)--though I do have my tea with milk and sugar--and I've peeled back about 5 lbs this spring. And I walk. When here in Florida, usually AnotherMom and I do about a 3 mile beach walk, and I swim a bit (rarely more than 500) in the pool about every other day. So while not fit I'm not a completely sedentary blob.

My point: I've reigned in my eating to more or less match my lifestyle. If I ate anything approaching 3 squares while sitting on my ass reading iSteve ... I'd be a 200 lb. blob of blubber and look like every other fat-assmerican.

If you do not want to be fat ... stop eating so damn much.

Replies: @Jack D

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @Pixo, @AndrewR, @Rob, @nebulafox, @R.G. Camara, @Prester John

I had a great history teacher in high school. One time when he was trying to help us understand the time scale of history, he explained that it was a shorter time gap between us and Athens’ golden age than it was between Athens’ golden age and time when the pyramids were built.
 

Replies: @JR Ewing, @Stan Adams

We visited the Louvre pre-pandemic and there were literally 40-50 people at a time taking photos of Mona Lisa. Instead of taking a photo of the painting I stood in front of the crowd and took a shot of them all photographing the painting.
In Rome the whole selfie thing was a pain not as much because of the people taking selfies, but because the tourist areas were infested with Tamil refugees aggressively hawking selfie sticks. If you walked a typical block you would pass four or five selfie stick salesman and about half as many Africans selling fake made in Southeast Asia “African” wood handicrafts.
The whole scene in Europe has become strange. One time we were driving along a side road in rural Tuscany and there was suddenly a couple of hundred meter stretch with African prostitutes spaced out along the road waiting for customers. I presume it was known among the locals that was where you went if you wanted to get laid.

Replies: @prosa123, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @YetAnotherAnon

And they're very big on animal abuse, if that's your thing. Mainly horses and camels in that particular case, but Islam seems to favor abusing all animals, except maybe falcons.

Replies: @JimB, @Anon, @Ian Smith, @Dream

The Giza pyramids are spectacular so the ancient Egyptians knew how to construct tourist attractions. Take that Dollywood!

Cairo can be frenetic and is the largest city in the Arab world I believe.

They have been hustling/accommodating tourists for about 5,000 years. Overall pretty friendly to visitors. Though the radical Islamists were a problem for a while.

You see (or did) a lot of donkeys pulling carts in the streets there. Carts with car tires. The donkeys get hit with long sticks by their drivers.

Has to be a tough life for them. The city (long ago) seemed pretty prosperous but some places were pretty threadbare, poor.

Egyptians overall seemed to be pretty nice people. We should ship the illegal aliens here to Egypt and give them $200/month for a while. And a plane ticket one way home (not refundable).

They could get by on that for a while. Learn some skills, like donkey management...

Home might not seem so bad.

Replies: @tyrone

'I’ve heard that visiting the Pyramids requires wading through a sea of aggressive beggars.'

It would. Avoid visiting countries with very poor people. Poor is okay -- but not very poor. Unless you intend to do something about it, raw desperation is unpleasant.

Replies: @Art Deco

Egypt is a middle-income country, somewhat below average in real income per capita (which resembles that of the U.S. in the 1920s). Life expectancy at birth is 72 years, homicide rates are not elevated (about 2.5 per 100,000 per most recent assessment), income distribution satisfactory (like a European country - ratio of top 10% to bottom 10% is about 7-to-1). You could do a great deal worse than Egypt. India is less affluent and Latin America is much more crime-ridden. However, the pyramids are fairly near urban development and the populated parts of the country are abnormally densely settled.

Replies: @Jack D

Neither did the Romans but they built the Pantheon and the Coliseum and the aqueducts. And neither did the cathedral builders. One of the ways of judging the sophistication of a culture is seeing how far they can span open space with their structures. The Egyptians were not very good at that.

Replies: @Reg Cæsar, @SFG, @AnotherDad, @Cido

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk

Contrast this pair of photos from Braşov in Romania:

I only see one photo? Back in the day my great grandpaw lived in Brasov.

Replies: @Reg Cæsar

I had to scale a nine foot fence. Had to drop five feet on my way down.

Unless you're Tom Thumb, I'm not sure why you had to drop 5 feet down on the other side of a nine foot fence?

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

OT, but I think everyone, including Sailer, needs to read this current report from NBC News, citing multiple pro-Ukraine sources, including official spokesmen for the Kiev regime

 

"Boris Johnson today warned that Russia is 'chewing through ground' in eastern Ukraine as he urged more support for Kyiv's forces.

The PM said Vladimir Putin's military is making 'palpable progress' in the Donbas region despite the 'incredible heroism' of the resistance."
 

Replies: @Joe S.Walker

There are not more beggars and hustlers at the pyramids then what you would expect in a touristy area in Italy or France. But the hustlers at the pyramids have a hilarious scam. They offer horse and camel rides. It is easy for a foreign tourist to get on a camel when they are sitting down, but once the ride is over the camel driver asks for a big extra payment to make the camel lay down. Otherwise the tourist, which is usually far from fit, has to jump from the standing camel on the stony desert. Camels are much taller than horses so tourists always pay.
I visited Egypt after the danish cartoons controversy and I was surprised to see all shops having in windows posters aimed at foreign customers about how disrespectful the Mohammed cartoons were. I thought it was extremely stupid to act hostile towards your patrons for ideological reasons, but now this is happening everywhere since all companies are woke.

Replies: @Alden

"Does This Pyramid Make Me Look Fat?"
 

Replies: @Stan Adams

And yeah, the seed oil replacements seem to be worse for folks than the original–for Westerners–animal based fats.
 

Replies: @AnotherDad

Hanging onto the top after climbing over, he had 5 ft. between his feet and the ground when he jumped. That makes sense, because you've got to be bent over a ways to hang on with your feet against it.

Nice job, #954. Just make sure you show up for your deportation hearing, mmmkaayy?

Replies: @Jack D

Replies: @Colin Wright, @HammerJack, @SIMP simp, @Batman, @AnotherDad, @johnmark7, @XBardon Kaldlan

I am not so sure that is true. Yeah, olive oil is probably better and a little animal fat is not going to kill you, but I haven’t seen anything that really proves that the liquid seed oils are really bad for you in small quantities as part of a balanced diet.
 

Replies: @Jack D

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1529616896303276032

In the pagan Greco-Roman world, it was taken for granted that men had the right to expose a newborn baby for any reason, or even no reason. Part of the reason early Christianity was popular among women was asserting that things like casual infanticide was, well... wrong. And in some societies-some of them very civilized, relatively advanced places to live like Tokugawa-era Japan, lest you get the wrong idea that this was the domain of cavemen-this remained true for far longer, until the last few centuries.

A tacit return to paganism with all the devaluations that come with it reconciling with an attempt to assert the dominance of the prerogatives and geist of women, though? Don't think we've seen that. That is going to be messy. Interesting, in that ol' car-crash sense. But messy. Especially since if the Left doesn't like the attitudes that married, Christian right-wing men in their 50s and 60s have toward their ideology and how it views them, they are *really* not going to like what unmarried, de-Christianized right-wing men in their 20s and 30s are going to start bringing to the table on that score.

Replies: @Alden, @Reg Cæsar

I agree with you that transfats are bad but they stopped making transfats several years ago. I was talking about liquid veg. oils such as canola, soybean, corn, etc.

I also agree that the big problem is quantity in relation to your level of activity. If you weigh 300 lbs. you are eating too many calories period. I don't care if it is all carb or all protein or all whatever - the only way you are going to achieve that is by eating more food than your body needs. I'll bet that if you followed these people around you would be shocked by how much food they ate in the course of a day. Maybe if you are a marathon runner you can eat 6,000 calories/ day but not if you sit at a desk all day.

A double quarter pounder with cheese plus a large coke and large fries is over 1500 calories, which is more calories than a sedentary person needs in a day, but which for a fatty is a typical lunch. Add a McFlurry for dessert and you are well over 2,000 calories and that's just lunch.

(BTW, the classic McDonald's hamburger by itself is only 250 calories so even if you eat two of them for lunch but skip the fries and the coke, it's still a reasonable # of calories and has 1/2 your daily requirement for protein but only 22% of the daily allowance for fat and carbs). Ironically the most nutritionally empty items on the fast food menu (soda and fries) are also the most high profit. I don't think they even make any money on the $1.69 hamburger.

Replies: @Alden

"One time we were driving along a side road in rural Tuscany and there was suddenly a couple of hundred meter stretch with African prostitutes spaced out along the road waiting for customers. I presume it was known among the locals that was where you went if you wanted to get laid."

Same on the ring road round Beziers in southern France, but by no means all black girls. Same on the coast road from France towards Barcelona. In Porto (Portugal) there were transvestite prostitutes across the road from our hotel. Lord knows who their clients were.

Re Ukraine, I'm a tad worried that as the initial they-got-their-ass-kicked euphoria (produced by a vast propaganda campaign, but an effective one) wears off, and Russia grind west slowly but surely,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/26/ukraine-frontline-russia-military-severodonetsk/

that demands to DO SOMETHING OR RUSSIA WILL WIN will become louder (and they'll be amplified as if we are all Nulands/Jack Ds) - drawing the US/UK/EU closer to open confrontation with Russia.

Now personally, I'd rather Ukraine and Russia were at peace, that NATO stopped expanding (who wants to die for North Macedonia?), that gas was flowing via NS2 to a grateful Europe, that I didn't need a bank loan to fill my car or the oil tank, and that the queues at the local food bank didn't get ever longer.

Replies: @Jack D, @Old Prude

I’ll post this again. It was one man, Hugh Hefner, using the money he made from other men buying his porn magazine Playboy. It was Hefner’s Playboy Foundation a typical rich man's tax dodge that funded the entire legalize abortion movement. And paid the expenses of the feminazi law firm that filed and litigated Roe vs Wade.

Legal abortion, as Hefner knew enabled men to squirt and scram and avoid supporting any children they didn’t want.

Yes Hefner used feminazis as fronts for abortion that benefited promiscuous men far more than it benefited women. Just as Ford Rockefeller Carnegie and other Foundations that sent all the married women back to work by using feminazis as fronts.

The naivety and ignorance of the MEN OF UNZ never ceases to amaze. Any anti or pro abortion activist continually discussing abortion who doesn’t know it was Hugh Hefner and his tax dodging Play Foundation who legalized abortion is ignorant about the subject.

I was very very skeptical at the time about the plaintiff Jane Roe’s story. She claimed she was a waitress who was raped and got pregnant. Well that does happen.

But she went on to say that she, a waitress was the sole support of her parents in their 60s. And that her father was disabled in an accident at work and that her parents had no income.

Here’s my thinking about her ridiculous tale. How could a waitress at a humdrum diner support 3 people? If her father was disabled and in his 60s, shouldn’t he have been getting social security? And if things were so dire, why didn’t her mother go find a job instead of depending on a diner waitress meager earnings?

And the media repeated and repeated that ridiculous soap opera story.

Later it cane out that Jane Roe’s pregnancy was the result of consensual sex with a boyfriend that she already had kids and that she didn’t live with handicapped elderly parents at all.

The media and people who believed the ridiculous story were incredibly naive.

And so are the anti abortion people who believe legal abortion was solely the project of evil upper class White women who wanted to kill babies to outrage conservative men.

Idiots who believed Jane Roe’s lies. Men who are so ignorant of who and what was responsible for legalization of abortion; Hugh Hefner and his Playboy Foundation

What’s the difference? Both are completely ignorant and believe the most ridiculous media tales

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @SFG, @Reg Cæsar, @R.G. Camara

The point with the pyramids is they didn’t have steel, structural or otherwise.

Replies: @Jack D, @Buffalo Joe

What are they putting in the food? Sugar. Lots and lots of sugar. Whether it’s cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup, American food is drenched in sugar.
 

Replies: @anonymous

Taking you at your word, you have outlined Hefner's strategy, but you haven't proven him wrong. You also assign motivation to him based on your own projection or interpretation. The man was a libertine who knew sex was fun and that people have always engaged in it and that accidents happen.

FWIW I know that Roe v. Wade is wrong, a poor judgement by an overreaching court. Abortion is not in the constitution, and the court went through contortions to pretend that the Bill of Rights covered it.

It is reserved for the People and their States to legislate this, or for Congress and 2/3 of the States to approve a Constitutional amendment about it.

As for me, I am in favor of legal abortion only during the first two or three months, but everybody else is an absolutist who can't think in subtleties or shades of gray. A human does not exist at conception, and babies beyond the first third or less of pregnancy are too human for anyone with a conscience to kill. The truth, The Way, is in the middle or outside the dichotomy, as with many things...

And Hefner is not the issue, whether you like him or not.

Replies: @nebulafox, @PhysicistDave

War is grim for the soldiers in the trenches on both sides, which is why it would have been better for everyone if Putin hadn't invaded. European civilization destroyed itself in the trenches of WWI and has never recovered and now this is being repeated in Ukraine on a smaller scale and for equally pointless reasons. (The last time also involved Russia).

Germany was glad to buy Russia's oil and gas before the invasion. Putin had a pretty nice setup but he threw it all away for some rubble in Ukraine. Did Russia really need more land? About as much as Putin needed one more palace.

Replies: @Anne Lid, @Old Prude

To the ancient Romans, conquering Egypt was a monumental event. Not because it was difficult (spoiler: it was not), nor because it was a source of infinite wealth (spoiler: it was), and not because its conquest was simultaneous of the transition from Republic to Empire (spoiler it was, but because Egypt, to the Romans, was a mystical and full of history as China is to the United States.

For the Romans, once the dust had settled on the Civil Wars, possession of Egypt was a sign from above that Rome truly was a monumental historical nation.

Replies: @Franz

I’ll post this again. It was one man, Hugh Hefner, using the money he made from other men buying his porn magazine Playboy. It was Hefner’s Playboy Foundation a typical rich man's tax dodge that funded the entire legalize abortion movement. And paid the expenses of the feminazi law firm that filed and litigated Roe vs Wade.

Legal abortion, as Hefner knew enabled men to squirt and scram and avoid supporting any children they didn’t want.

Yes Hefner used feminazis as fronts for abortion that benefited promiscuous men far more than it benefited women. Just as Ford Rockefeller Carnegie and other Foundations that sent all the married women back to work by using feminazis as fronts.

The naivety and ignorance of the MEN OF UNZ never ceases to amaze. Any anti or pro abortion activist continually discussing abortion who doesn’t know it was Hugh Hefner and his tax dodging Play Foundation who legalized abortion is ignorant about the subject.

I was very very skeptical at the time about the plaintiff Jane Roe’s story. She claimed she was a waitress who was raped and got pregnant. Well that does happen.

But she went on to say that she, a waitress was the sole support of her parents in their 60s. And that her father was disabled in an accident at work and that her parents had no income.

Here’s my thinking about her ridiculous tale. How could a waitress at a humdrum diner support 3 people? If her father was disabled and in his 60s, shouldn’t he have been getting social security? And if things were so dire, why didn’t her mother go find a job instead of depending on a diner waitress meager earnings?

And the media repeated and repeated that ridiculous soap opera story.

Later it cane out that Jane Roe’s pregnancy was the result of consensual sex with a boyfriend that she already had kids and that she didn’t live with handicapped elderly parents at all.

The media and people who believed the ridiculous story were incredibly naive.

And so are the anti abortion people who believe legal abortion was solely the project of evil upper class White women who wanted to kill babies to outrage conservative men.

Idiots who believed Jane Roe’s lies. Men who are so ignorant of who and what was responsible for legalization of abortion; Hugh Hefner and his Playboy Foundation

What’s the difference? Both are completely ignorant and believe the most ridiculous media tales

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @SFG, @Reg Cæsar, @R.G. Camara

There is no doubt that it's not going well for the Ukrainians at Severodonetsk. However, keep in mind that the Russians have lowered their sights considerably. The "cauldron" was originally going to be the entire east and the whole Ukrainian army was going to be trapped inside of it. The pocket around Severodonetsk is more like a saucepan than a cauldron.

The narratives in this war have gone back and forth - when the war started, everyone expected the mighty Russian Army to overrun the Ukrainians. Then it flipped and the Russians were complete incompetents who couldn't do anything right. The truth is somewhere in between and there is no question that they can score at least tactical victories in some places. They have a lot of heavy artillery that they can bring to bear on an area that is difficult to withstand.

Note though that by the time they take over a city they are capturing rubble. Most of the people are gone, all the structures and industry are destroyed. So what have they captured? Does Russia need more land? Whatever short term tactical victories they can achieve, Putin has driven Russia into a strategic "cauldron". Unless they give up their gains in Ukraine, they are going to be a giant version of N. Korea. Putin has turned Russia into a pariah state and his prize is the rubble of Severodonetsk. Is this game really worth the candle?

Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Hypnotoad666, @R.G. Camara, @Joe Stalin

Russia is tightening the noose on Ukrainian troops in the country’s east.

Moscow’s forces have advanced in a fierce ground and artillery assault, and they now appear close to encircling the last two holdout cities in Luhansk province. Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk form the Donbas region, which has become the key focus of the Kremlin’s war.

As Ukrainian officials voice concern that their troops are now outmanned and outgunned, the Russian push could prove decisive in the conflict.
…
Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Ukrainian defenses were struggling to keep up with Russia’s onslaught.

“We’ve now lost to the Russian army in terms of pace,” he said in an interview with an independent Russian media outlet.

“The Russian side managed to gather its reserves before we did. We’re lagging behind, which makes the situation at the front extremely difficult.”
…
After months of battlefield setbacks and the grinding siege of the Black Sea port of Mariupol, Russia’s brutal advance in Luhansk has renewed concerns about the conflict’s endgame.

If Russia is able to secure control of a large slice of the east, might Ukraine be better off accepting that as the price of survival?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger suggested exactly that at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week as he called for a resumption of peace talks between Moscow and Kyiv, warning that failing to engage Russia diplomatically would have long-term consequences for European stability.
 

Replies: @WJ, @ic1000, @Pixo, @PiltdownMan, @AnotherDad, @Mark G., @SunBakedSuburb, @mc23

I like the way you think.

Bucky Fuller would tell you both shapes are good, though, because both occur in his vector equilibrium, which exists in "allspace" as lines (vectors) linking all equally spaced points. It is part of his geometry.

It is also the strongest structure possible, but we don't build many of them because every angle is 60 degrees instead of 90, not so easy for crews to lay out efficiently.

http://www.treeincarnation.com/images/jitterbug.gif

Bucky and a Vector Equilibrium model

It is the strongest structure possible, but when you isolate one unit and remove the internal structure, as he did there, it can be folded in and out.

-- Buzz, fan of the regular tetrahedron

Replies: @Rob

But the Russians, having cut down to realistic goals of taking some territory in the east, are doing better lately. As I pointed out in Taki's in March, the Soviets were ignominiously beaten badly in late 1939 invading Finland, but reorganized in 1940 under Zhukov and ground out an expensive conquest of a modest amount of terrain.

Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Pixo, @Bill Jones

This was all too predictable. The odd obsession that many Americans have had with Ukraine is surprising since many are on the right. These people that have scoffed at the Russian collusion hoax and at the Vindman impeachment hoax , suddenly start believing the garbage media. Snake Island ant the ghost of Kiev are swallowed hook line and sinker. I can only imagine their impending disappointment.

Replies: @mc23

Based on what I've seen at the gym that I've lifted at for the last 12 years (I'm 68 ), you would be wrong. Anecdotal, yes, but I bet that your statement is purely anecdotal. Mileage tends to vary.

Replies: @prosa123

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1529616896303276032

In the pagan Greco-Roman world, it was taken for granted that men had the right to expose a newborn baby for any reason, or even no reason. Part of the reason early Christianity was popular among women was asserting that things like casual infanticide was, well... wrong. And in some societies-some of them very civilized, relatively advanced places to live like Tokugawa-era Japan, lest you get the wrong idea that this was the domain of cavemen-this remained true for far longer, until the last few centuries.

A tacit return to paganism with all the devaluations that come with it reconciling with an attempt to assert the dominance of the prerogatives and geist of women, though? Don't think we've seen that. That is going to be messy. Interesting, in that ol' car-crash sense. But messy. Especially since if the Left doesn't like the attitudes that married, Christian right-wing men in their 50s and 60s have toward their ideology and how it views them, they are *really* not going to like what unmarried, de-Christianized right-wing men in their 20s and 30s are going to start bringing to the table on that score.

Replies: @Alden, @Reg Cæsar

I would never do that. The grain silo at Great Zimbabwe is over 30 feet tall and upwards of 18 feet in diameter!

https://www.exploring-africa.com/sites/default/files/styles/full_page/public/uploads/article/325/cover/zimbabwe-africa-exploringafrica-safariadv-radio-raheem-great-zimbabwe.jpg?itok=Y0E33Ab-

Great Zimbabwe compares favorably with the Gothic cathedrals that were built at the same time. The towers of the cathedrals were built for no good reason but a grain silo feeds the people.

Replies: @peterike, @mc23

I’ll post this again. It was one man, Hugh Hefner, using the money he made from other men buying his porn magazine Playboy. It was Hefner’s Playboy Foundation a typical rich man's tax dodge that funded the entire legalize abortion movement. And paid the expenses of the feminazi law firm that filed and litigated Roe vs Wade.

Legal abortion, as Hefner knew enabled men to squirt and scram and avoid supporting any children they didn’t want.

Yes Hefner used feminazis as fronts for abortion that benefited promiscuous men far more than it benefited women. Just as Ford Rockefeller Carnegie and other Foundations that sent all the married women back to work by using feminazis as fronts.

The naivety and ignorance of the MEN OF UNZ never ceases to amaze. Any anti or pro abortion activist continually discussing abortion who doesn’t know it was Hugh Hefner and his tax dodging Play Foundation who legalized abortion is ignorant about the subject.

I was very very skeptical at the time about the plaintiff Jane Roe’s story. She claimed she was a waitress who was raped and got pregnant. Well that does happen.

But she went on to say that she, a waitress was the sole support of her parents in their 60s. And that her father was disabled in an accident at work and that her parents had no income.

Here’s my thinking about her ridiculous tale. How could a waitress at a humdrum diner support 3 people? If her father was disabled and in his 60s, shouldn’t he have been getting social security? And if things were so dire, why didn’t her mother go find a job instead of depending on a diner waitress meager earnings?

And the media repeated and repeated that ridiculous soap opera story.

Later it cane out that Jane Roe’s pregnancy was the result of consensual sex with a boyfriend that she already had kids and that she didn’t live with handicapped elderly parents at all.

The media and people who believed the ridiculous story were incredibly naive.

And so are the anti abortion people who believe legal abortion was solely the project of evil upper class White women who wanted to kill babies to outrage conservative men.

Idiots who believed Jane Roe’s lies. Men who are so ignorant of who and what was responsible for legalization of abortion; Hugh Hefner and his Playboy Foundation

What’s the difference? Both are completely ignorant and believe the most ridiculous media tales

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @SFG, @Reg Cæsar, @R.G. Camara

There is no doubt that it's not going well for the Ukrainians at Severodonetsk. However, keep in mind that the Russians have lowered their sights considerably. The "cauldron" was originally going to be the entire east and the whole Ukrainian army was going to be trapped inside of it. The pocket around Severodonetsk is more like a saucepan than a cauldron.

The narratives in this war have gone back and forth - when the war started, everyone expected the mighty Russian Army to overrun the Ukrainians. Then it flipped and the Russians were complete incompetents who couldn't do anything right. The truth is somewhere in between and there is no question that they can score at least tactical victories in some places. They have a lot of heavy artillery that they can bring to bear on an area that is difficult to withstand.

Note though that by the time they take over a city they are capturing rubble. Most of the people are gone, all the structures and industry are destroyed. So what have they captured? Does Russia need more land? Whatever short term tactical victories they can achieve, Putin has driven Russia into a strategic "cauldron". Unless they give up their gains in Ukraine, they are going to be a giant version of N. Korea. Putin has turned Russia into a pariah state and his prize is the rubble of Severodonetsk. Is this game really worth the candle?

Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Hypnotoad666, @R.G. Camara, @Joe Stalin

I’ll post this again. It was one man, Hugh Hefner, using the money he made from other men buying his porn magazine Playboy. It was Hefner’s Playboy Foundation a typical rich man's tax dodge that funded the entire legalize abortion movement. And paid the expenses of the feminazi law firm that filed and litigated Roe vs Wade.

Legal abortion, as Hefner knew enabled men to squirt and scram and avoid supporting any children they didn’t want.

Yes Hefner used feminazis as fronts for abortion that benefited promiscuous men far more than it benefited women. Just as Ford Rockefeller Carnegie and other Foundations that sent all the married women back to work by using feminazis as fronts.

The naivety and ignorance of the MEN OF UNZ never ceases to amaze. Any anti or pro abortion activist continually discussing abortion who doesn’t know it was Hugh Hefner and his tax dodging Play Foundation who legalized abortion is ignorant about the subject.

I was very very skeptical at the time about the plaintiff Jane Roe’s story. She claimed she was a waitress who was raped and got pregnant. Well that does happen.

But she went on to say that she, a waitress was the sole support of her parents in their 60s. And that her father was disabled in an accident at work and that her parents had no income.

Here’s my thinking about her ridiculous tale. How could a waitress at a humdrum diner support 3 people? If her father was disabled and in his 60s, shouldn’t he have been getting social security? And if things were so dire, why didn’t her mother go find a job instead of depending on a diner waitress meager earnings?

And the media repeated and repeated that ridiculous soap opera story.

Later it cane out that Jane Roe’s pregnancy was the result of consensual sex with a boyfriend that she already had kids and that she didn’t live with handicapped elderly parents at all.

The media and people who believed the ridiculous story were incredibly naive.

And so are the anti abortion people who believe legal abortion was solely the project of evil upper class White women who wanted to kill babies to outrage conservative men.

Idiots who believed Jane Roe’s lies. Men who are so ignorant of who and what was responsible for legalization of abortion; Hugh Hefner and his Playboy Foundation

What’s the difference? Both are completely ignorant and believe the most ridiculous media tales

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @SFG, @Reg Cæsar, @R.G. Camara

Isn't the last step that you hang from the top of the fence by your curled fingertips with your arms overhead and then you let go?

If you do this on a 9' fence and you are say 6' tall, your arms should extend at least one more foot over your head and the soles of your feet should be no more than 2' from the ground at the time that you let go. If you are less than 6', then a few inches more but basically about the same as jumping from a desk top to the ground, not exactly a death defying height.

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Achmed E. Newman

Way too long to read

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman

SafeNow, I also like to just BE somewhere old like this and imagine how long ago that was and what was actually going on then. No pictures are necessary. I ran into this at the ruins in Rome a few years back. As I described in "The Ugly* Chinaman", the Chinese seem to be the worst about this, especially the girls (of course).

I ask people, such as my wife, "What is it? Do you think nobody will believe you went here? Just tell 'em you went, and there are a million pictures of this on the internet. Just BE here!" That's what it's about.

But no, her sandstone-colored legs, at least, look pretty good. This picture has inspired me to see if we can go there too. 4,500 years!

.

* For those who don't get the reference, it's not a slur, so calm TF down.

Replies: @JR Ewing, @fish, @kaganovitch, @AndrewR, @Joe Stalin

A month ago, I locked myself out of my backyard, so I had to scale a nine foot fence. Had to drop five feet on my way down. Not a problem. I’d love to watch a randomly picked bunch of 62 year olds try to do it.
 

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Zoos

And Russia has lost so many of its tanks that it is now sending its T-62s from deep storage. They were produced from 1961-1975, so 47 years old at absolute best. And we know Russian are great at long term maintenance of old Soviet equipment, right?

To complement Russia’s ancient tanks, it just raised the age for new military recruits from 40 to 50. Another thing you do when victory is at hand, right? And Russian men are known for their clean living and staying in great shape, so should make great soldiers at 50!

Sure, if Putin insists on throwing everything into Severodonetsk, he will trade thousands of his soldiers lives for a bombed out and abandoned city, as he did with Mariupol. That’s not winning, that’s a vainglorious and evil dictator imposing his insanity on his unfortunate subjects.

Replies: @James Speaks, @Anonymous

Hey, don’t hear ‘bout Buckminster Fuller these days. Ever since graphene took the place of C60 Buckminster fullerenes as the weird material people are interested in.

The thing with Fuller, reading stuff about his ideas, I go from “yep, yep, ok, I never thought about that” to “dimensions in synchronous vector spaces define the structure of the cosmos” Reasonable-seeming to nonsense in zero to sixty.

VR-enhanced construction is a thing that either exists or is coming soon. Have glasses that can tell you if two things are at a 60° a 107.5° or any other angle could make Fuller’s staff (slightly) more practical. I mean, one dymaxion car was kinda neat, but could you imagine a city full of them?

The thing I thought was cool. In theory, you could build a buckysphere a few miles across, then replace either some of the nitrogen in the air with helium or just keep it a few degrees warmer than ambient, and then your Fuller-city could float through the air. Rumor has it that there are layers in venus’ upper atmosphere where liquid wat would be normal, and air pressure would be earth-normal. Nitrogen gas is lighter than carbon dioxide, so your Venusian Bucky-city flits through the sky of a hellscape planet.

Y’know. I don’t know why people focus on carbon and water as the things necessary for life to begin. A great majority (or so I was told) of biomolecules have nitrogens in the structure. Carbon and water are everywhere in the sky (far enough from the sun) but where did our nice, thick N2 blanket come from?

See, I can from zero to pointless really fast too.

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk

There is no doubt that it's not going well for the Ukrainians at Severodonetsk. However, keep in mind that the Russians have lowered their sights considerably. The "cauldron" was originally going to be the entire east and the whole Ukrainian army was going to be trapped inside of it. The pocket around Severodonetsk is more like a saucepan than a cauldron.

The narratives in this war have gone back and forth - when the war started, everyone expected the mighty Russian Army to overrun the Ukrainians. Then it flipped and the Russians were complete incompetents who couldn't do anything right. The truth is somewhere in between and there is no question that they can score at least tactical victories in some places. They have a lot of heavy artillery that they can bring to bear on an area that is difficult to withstand.

Note though that by the time they take over a city they are capturing rubble. Most of the people are gone, all the structures and industry are destroyed. So what have they captured? Does Russia need more land? Whatever short term tactical victories they can achieve, Putin has driven Russia into a strategic "cauldron". Unless they give up their gains in Ukraine, they are going to be a giant version of N. Korea. Putin has turned Russia into a pariah state and his prize is the rubble of Severodonetsk. Is this game really worth the candle?

Replies: @Bardon Kaldian, @Hypnotoad666, @R.G. Camara, @Joe Stalin

Replies: @Colin Wright, @HammerJack, @SIMP simp, @Batman, @AnotherDad, @johnmark7, @XBardon Kaldlan

But the Russians, having cut down to realistic goals of taking some territory in the east, are doing better lately.
 

Steve, serious question: why do you keep believing what the Western media is saying on this topic?

Replies: @Peter Akuleyev, @Pixo

You didn’t know it, you didn’t think it could be done
In the final end he won the war
After losing every battle

https://youtu.be/5E4ytUW8g_0

Replies: @XBardon Kaldlan

21,645

June 21, 1945 - Thursday

End of the Okinawa campaign

Replies: @Reg Cæsar

But the Russians, having cut down to realistic goals of taking some territory in the east, are doing better lately.
 

Steve, serious question: why do you keep believing what the Western media is saying on this topic?

Replies: @Peter Akuleyev, @Pixo

Unless they give up their gains in Ukraine, they are going to be a giant version of N. Korea.
 

Replies: @Pixo

# of days from the release of the Beatles’ first LP come June 25: 21,645
# of days from the release of the Beatles’ first LP to Kitty Hawk: 21,645
 

A couple of years ago that song came on the radio in the car and I started doing math in my head and about drove off the road when I realized that the music that I listened to in high school was now relatively older - 30 years - than that Stones song was when I had that discussion with my mom. None of my music is old! It still sounds like it was yesterday!

Similarly, I have an uncle who was an All State football player in Texas in the late 1960's. he tried to talk to me about it a couple of times and I blew it off because in 1990 his career could have been in the leather helmet era to me. I can only imagine what my own son thinks about me now that he's playing high school football.

Time doesn't stop.

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @PiltdownMan

Isn't the last step that you hang from the top of the fence by your curled fingertips with your arms overhead and then you let go?

If you do this on a 9' fence and you are say 6' tall, your arms should extend at least one more foot over your head and the soles of your feet should be no more than 2' from the ground at the time that you let go. If you are less than 6', then a few inches more but basically about the same as jumping from a desk top to the ground, not exactly a death defying height.

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Achmed E. Newman

What are we arguing about climbing fences for anyway? Right here on The Unz Review, there's the ¡Ask a Mexican! column. Ron's got expertise of all kinds here.

Replies: @Cortes

No, if you do that, you can't hang on that easy to get like that, and you're gonna scrape your fingers, chin, or something on the way down. Have you never done this?

(I'm picturing a wooden fence, as for a chain link fence I'd climb at least most of the way down.) As I wrote, you need to be bent over with your feet against it, and I'd say the 6ft guy may take up 4 ft from the top. Ask him.

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @kaganovitch

EVERYONE in America is noticeably fatter now than just 20 years ago, when we were already plenty dissolute and fucked up as a country. Have you seen how much wider and fuller Johnny Depp’s face is? We’ve gotten really lazy, but tell me that what they’re putting in the food is also partly to blame, right?
 

Also, get white sugar out of your house. Don’t eat it.

Do that, eat vegetables, supplement, and you can be like me: Same weight I was in college, that means thin, resting pulse is 58, blood pressure 107/64, and in far better shape than most people my age, 62. A month ago, I locked myself out of my backyard, so I had to scale a nine foot fence. Had to drop five feet on my way down. Not a problem. I’d love to watch a randomly picked bunch of 62 year olds try to do it. It would be hilarious.

Replies: @bomag, @prosa123, @kaganovitch, @Jack D, @Charles Pewitt, @Ghost of Bull Moose

People in the past weren’t dumber, they knew less.
 

Kunstler touches on this very topic today.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/childhoods-end/

Replies: @Reg Cæsar

Cottonseed oil. That’s not even food.

Replies: @Reg Cæsar

Hey Dave, in late February you told us Russia was taking Kharkiv, and would soon control half or Ukraine, and Zelensky would be captured and beg for his life.

How’s that sick fantasy going?

The reality is that despite a larger military and a cowardly surprise attack, this evil invasion is an unmitigated disaster for your hero Putin. He failed his bloody drive for Kiev, then was chased out of Kharkiv’s suburbs. The drive to Odessa was crushed, the Russian flagship sunk, and Russia retreated all around Kherson.

Having lost the battle for the two largest cities, he’s throwing all his remaining forces on a few bombed out and abandoned small towns. And that’s not going too well either.

You’re a consistent liar, but the maps don’t lie. Look at Russia’s zone of control in March versus today. They are losing. You know that feeling well, doncha?

https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1508774299058020357

https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1530129305618874370

Replies: @Steve Sailer, @PhysicistDave

“dimensions in synchronous vector spaces define the structure of the cosmos”

LOL. Try his magnum opus, Synergetics sometime. It's full of stuff like that. I've had the book for decades, and I've read many different chapters throughout, but if I were to go the whole distance I would probably end up crazier than I already am.

His point, though, as I understand it anyway, is that just maybe we should consider a new way of representing things, one that is not based on 3 dimensions at 90 degrees, but rather something like the 60 degree, 6 dimensional vector equilibrium that comes about when you connect equally-spaced points with line segments of equal length. He thought this was the structure of space or that it could be the basis of a true graphic representation of space.

In other words, look at oranges stacked in a grocery store. They naturally settle into this spacial arrangement because they are spheres of the same size. Spheres of equal size, they represent points arranged in space equidistant from each other in all directions. Connect the center of each orange with the centers of every orange next to it and voilà, you have a vector equilibrium that could continue to infinity in "allspace." Things don't naturally fall into 90 degree squares and cubes (or rarely, maybe things like sodium chloride crystals.)

Nor does "non-Euclidian geometry" satisfy this, simply because it too is described with mathematic's customary x,y,z space.

Space is not arranged at 90 degrees, and there are no straight lines, perfectly flat planes or perfectly square cubes -- but our math and science systems measure and describe everything that way (yes, even curved space) perhaps because the world always seemed flat and perpendicular to men on the ground, and because it is practical to work as if it is so. Imagine a mathematics in which your 2D and 3D graphs of space and functions, etc. were not square and cubic but tetrahedral or vector equal...

?

... or something.

Maybe the reason he got so far out is because it is just impossible to describe terms in which we never have thought, spaces we didn't even know we inhabited.

Then again, he was kind of a crackpot whose New England Brahmin origins made it easier for him to go around the world that way than it would be for most other people.

"See, I can from zero to pointless really fast too."

Me too.

Replies: @PhysicistDave

Taking you at your word, you have outlined Hefner's strategy, but you haven't proven him wrong. You also assign motivation to him based on your own projection or interpretation. The man was a libertine who knew sex was fun and that people have always engaged in it and that accidents happen.

FWIW I know that Roe v. Wade is wrong, a poor judgement by an overreaching court. Abortion is not in the constitution, and the court went through contortions to pretend that the Bill of Rights covered it.

It is reserved for the People and their States to legislate this, or for Congress and 2/3 of the States to approve a Constitutional amendment about it.

As for me, I am in favor of legal abortion only during the first two or three months, but everybody else is an absolutist who can't think in subtleties or shades of gray. A human does not exist at conception, and babies beyond the first third or less of pregnancy are too human for anyone with a conscience to kill. The truth, The Way, is in the middle or outside the dichotomy, as with many things...

And Hefner is not the issue, whether you like him or not.

Replies: @nebulafox, @PhysicistDave

And Russia has lost so many of its tanks that it is now sending its T-62s from deep storage. They were produced from 1961-1975, so 47 years old at absolute best. And we know Russian are great at long term maintenance of old Soviet equipment, right?

To complement Russia’s ancient tanks, it just raised the age for new military recruits from 40 to 50. Another thing you do when victory is at hand, right? And Russian men are known for their clean living and staying in great shape, so should make great soldiers at 50!

Sure, if Putin insists on throwing everything into Severodonetsk, he will trade thousands of his soldiers lives for a bombed out and abandoned city, as he did with Mariupol. That’s not winning, that’s a vainglorious and evil dictator imposing his insanity on his unfortunate subjects.

Replies: @James Speaks, @Anonymous

"One time we were driving along a side road in rural Tuscany and there was suddenly a couple of hundred meter stretch with African prostitutes spaced out along the road waiting for customers. I presume it was known among the locals that was where you went if you wanted to get laid."

Same on the ring road round Beziers in southern France, but by no means all black girls. Same on the coast road from France towards Barcelona. In Porto (Portugal) there were transvestite prostitutes across the road from our hotel. Lord knows who their clients were.

Re Ukraine, I'm a tad worried that as the initial they-got-their-ass-kicked euphoria (produced by a vast propaganda campaign, but an effective one) wears off, and Russia grind west slowly but surely,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/26/ukraine-frontline-russia-military-severodonetsk/

that demands to DO SOMETHING OR RUSSIA WILL WIN will become louder (and they'll be amplified as if we are all Nulands/Jack Ds) - drawing the US/UK/EU closer to open confrontation with Russia.

Now personally, I'd rather Ukraine and Russia were at peace, that NATO stopped expanding (who wants to die for North Macedonia?), that gas was flowing via NS2 to a grateful Europe, that I didn't need a bank loan to fill my car or the oil tank, and that the queues at the local food bank didn't get ever longer.

Replies: @Jack D, @Old Prude

War is grim for the soldiers in the trenches on both sides, which is why it would have been better for everyone if Putin hadn't invaded. European civilization destroyed itself in the trenches of WWI and has never recovered and now this is being repeated in Ukraine on a smaller scale and for equally pointless reasons. (The last time also involved Russia).

Germany was glad to buy Russia's oil and gas before the invasion. Putin had a pretty nice setup but he threw it all away for some rubble in Ukraine. Did Russia really need more land? About as much as Putin needed one more palace.

Replies: @Anne Lid, @Old Prude

Ukraine is now about to learn what happens to those who put their faith in the US Deep State.

 

In addition to the NBC News report and the NYT giving up on a Ukrainian victory, the WaPo is now talking about catastrophic conditions and collapsing morale among Ukrainian forces.

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/wapo-stunning-first-admits-catastrophic-conditions-collapsing-morale-ukraine-forces-front

It appears a consensus is forming in the mainstream media that things are not going as well as previously claimed. Many of the same politicians who said support for Ukraine would help them beat the Russians were saying a year ago Covid vaccines would stop transmission of the disease. This was followed by eight hundred thousand cases a day last winter. Many of these politicians were also saying inflation was "transitory". It's now 8% and rising. We need to elect people with better prognostication skills.

Replies: @PhysicistDave

# of days from the release of the Beatles’ first LP come June 25: 21,645
# of days from the release of the Beatles’ first LP to Kitty Hawk: 21,645
 

A couple of years ago that song came on the radio in the car and I started doing math in my head and about drove off the road when I realized that the music that I listened to in high school was now relatively older - 30 years - than that Stones song was when I had that discussion with my mom. None of my music is old! It still sounds like it was yesterday!

Similarly, I have an uncle who was an All State football player in Texas in the late 1960's. he tried to talk to me about it a couple of times and I blew it off because in 1990 his career could have been in the leather helmet era to me. I can only imagine what my own son thinks about me now that he's playing high school football.

Time doesn't stop.

Replies: @Buzz Mohawk, @PiltdownMan

Buzz Mohawk wrote:

Then again, [Bucky Fuller] was kind of a crackpot whose New England Brahmin origins made it easier for him to go around the world that way than it would be for most other people.
 

Replies: @PiltdownMan

R.G - In Russia it was very clear the original goal was to take Kiev. Russian media figures have been fairly open about admitting the March offensive was a failure. Everyone in Russia read Gerasimov‘s absence from the Victory Day celebration as commentary on Gerasimov‘s failure. You should try to read actual Russian commentary and not the Russian propaganda targeted at useful idiots in the West.

Replies: @YetAnotherAnon

I’ve had similar thoughts, for instance seeing the throng of people around the Mona Lisa trying to take a picture of it. Why?

If you’re going to take a picture, include yourself in it. Take a selfie. Prove you were there. What’s the point otherwise?

Without your smiling face in it, your crappy snapshot is just a crappy snapshot of something that has already been professionally photographed 100’s or 1000’s of times.

Replies: @Achmed E. Newman, @Alfa158, @Harry Baldwin

But the Russians, having cut down to realistic goals of taking some territory in the east, are doing better lately. As I pointed out in Taki's in March, the Soviets were ignominiously beaten badly in late 1939 invading Finland, but reorganized in 1940 under Zhukov and ground out an expensive conquest of a modest amount of terrain.

Replies: @R.G. Camara, @Pixo, @Bill Jones

Mark,

Here is a link to the WaPo story from Thursday (May 26, 2022) to which you referred that is (right now at least) not behind a paywall.

It is worth reading the whole piece, which is truly heartbreaking: these are courageous men who have clearly been abandoned by the regime in Kiev.

Highlights from the WaPo report:

Ukrainian leaders have projected and nurtured a public image of military invulnerability — of their volunteer and professional forces triumphantly standing up to the Russian onslaught. Videos of assaults on Russian tanks or positions are posted daily on social media. Artists are creating patriotic posters, billboards and T-shirts. The postal service even released stamps commemorating the sinking of a Russian warship in the Black Sea.

Ukrainian forces have succeeded in thwarting Russian efforts to seize Kyiv and Kharkiv and have scored battlefield victories in the east. But the experience of Lapko and his group of volunteers offers a rare and more realistic portrait of the conflict and Ukraine’s struggle to halt the Russian advance in parts of Donbas. Ukraine, like Russia, has provided scant information about deaths, injuries or losses of military equipment. But after three months of war, this company of 120 men is down to 54 because of deaths, injuries and desertions.

The volunteers were civilians before Russia invaded on Feb. 24, and they never expected to be dispatched to one of the most dangerous front lines in eastern Ukraine. They quickly found themselves in the crosshairs of war, feeling abandoned by their military superiors and struggling to survive.

“Our command takes no responsibility,” Lapko said. “They only take credit for our achievements. They give us no support.”

When they could take it no longer, Lapko and his top lieutenant, Vitaliy Khrus, retreated with members of their company this week to a hotel away from the front. There, both men spoke to The Washington Post on the record, knowing they could face a court-martial and time in military prison.