Also gamers make the best draft dodgers. Gaming totally did help with not leaving my appartment for a year.

I’m a bit confused about this, isn’t the whole lgbtq movement advocating for the distinction between terms “sex” and “gender” exactly the same way as those quotes do? Or do lgbtq people advocate for equating “sex” to “gender”? Honestly, this whole thing is always a huge mindfuck to try to comprehend.

Well, if we’re talking about masturbation specifically, I personally like to warm up with softer content and gradually build up to the most hardcore stuff. When the same person (or drawn character) has the full spectrum of content covered, it’s the best.

Was searching something and stumbled upon this old piece from 2004 about journalism in context of America:

The press, to a large extent, owes its origins to the party pamphlets of the 17th and 18th centuries, and it is good to see that they are sticking to the traditions that made the term “honest journalist” a contradiction in terms. The only question is, “Who pays?” In the heroic days of journalism, dishonest editors like Bennet, Pulitzer, and Hearst paid their writers to go out and get stories that would sell papers, and the journalist guns they hired would have cheerfully sold out either employer or party in order to gain fame and fortune—though not in that order.

“Honest journalist” and “a free press” are not only contradictions in terms; they are mutually exclusive, because the nearest thing to an honest journalist is a man who will sell himself to the highest bidder. Once a man has made enough money—that is, supposing he is a man—he can devote himself to telling the lies he really believes in.

So the question is not, as our colleague Humpty Dumpty never ceases to remind us, whether one has the right to “make words mean so many different things”—that is, to mislead and deceive the public. “The question is which is to be master—that is all.” In other words, since we must assume that journalists will twist and contort both fact and language in order to maintain the cause taken up by their master, the only question in American journalism worth debating (though even talking about the subject can sour the digestion of a philanthropic optimist) is who shall be the masters of the servile press—that is all.

The left generally answers, “the people,” by which they mean the government, by which they mean themselves and their leftist colleagues who end up as the cultural commissars who run the NEA, the DOE, the NEH, and every other set of unpalatable acronyms that, when reassembled, spell out the ignorance and stupidity which are the fate of the American people. The so-called right (though there is not now and never has been a genuine American right that amounted to anything) answers, “the individual,” by which they mean media corporations, by which they mean monopolies like Disney/ABC-Time Warner, by which they mean themselves and their friends who run the monopolies that spell the doom of the American mind and American freedom.

I don’t think this exists, and I’m not sure I’d believe this ever existed anywhere at all. Any journalism is driven by certain political interests and every social media is heavily brigaded hivemind like r/worldnews.

Post them again.

Hell yeah! Make Fortnite Great Again! Those little bastards and obvious catering to them from Epic Games totally ruined this game!

Removed by mod

Sounds like you envy a lot more about it than just the ability to leave.

True, but that doesn’t mean I want to live in Russia. It’s just ridiculous to fight for what our people get and how our government treats us vs country that gives their people more and treats their people better. Countries aren’t something that has inherent self-worth after all, the whole concept of states was supposed to be a tool to make people live better.

But it’s hard for me to interpret this combination any other way than that the “muscles” were helping it succeed

Those “muscles” played central role in making it succeed, people alone couldn’t do it. Civilians in general are really bad at violence, especially in eastern europe. I was a student back then, and I didn’t know a single person among my classmates or relatives or their contacts who went to Maidan.

and it wasn’t a genuine people’s movement.

It’s “genuine” in a sense there is definitely something upsetting people and at the right time forces come in to drive that energy of people into revolution. The point is, it doesn’t happen to most of things upsetting people. Since then we’ve many times had 100x more reasons for another Maidan, but there were no forces investing into “muscles” during long timeframes that were interested in our upset at those moments to overthrow government again. West is way more interested in dealing maximum damage to Russia at the cost of lives of ukrainians than saving lives of ukrainians. Also West thinks that if we become Russia it would just mean that Russia became stronger and it’s better to just kill us all to prevent Russia from getting us. It’s understandable point of view, but we as ukrainians are not interested in it.

he wishes he could be in Russia where he could get $22k for signing up with the military

You’re again making things up about what I said. Also, you keep failing to understand the motives even though I explained them. You can just read it again more carefully.

Here are some links I was able to recover from archives relevant to recent “Maidan was funded by USAID” narrative:

• https://web.archive.org/web/20230112043500/https://pandodaily.com/2014/02/28/pierre-omidyar-co-funded-ukraine-revolution-groups-with-us-government-documents-show/
• https://web.archive.org/web/20180115175340/https://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/us-backing-neo-nazis-ukraine

Good job! I don’t often participate in political discussions and having my head filled with this for two days is a bit too much.

he wished he could live in Russia

I would only ever travel out of there once and never come back. I’m just envy that they can leave freely if they don’t like anything. We don’t have such option.

paid thugs coming in rough up anyone who opposed it

I never said that.

Ukraine’s military was corrupt and mismanaging the war

Our government admit this and talk about it every day, yet they only fight each other and don’t do anything to fix it.

Eventually, what I told him was that as long as he sent me comment replies filled with bullshit, I was planning on making posts that contradicted his narrative, so the sum total of influence each of his comments would have on the narrative would be against his favored position.

If you’re going to miss my posts as inspiration for this, I recommend watching ukrainian youtube. You can turn on subtitles with english autotranslate - it’s decent.

Tell me more about these far-right NGOs. Which NGOs, and about how many of their “muscles” were in the protests in 2013?

I took that straight from the Reddit thread I linked, you can find more there (there are some links to other sources as well). There were dozens of far-right NGOs, some of the biggest ones are listed in Wikipedia article you posted (Right Sector, Svoboda, UDAR, Spilna Sprava, Misanthropic Division). By the evening of today dozens of our popular videobloggers made videos about USAID and Maidan. I’m getting kinda sick of digging through this stuff.

Here is Reddit thread I posted before: https://www.reddit.com/r/NeutralPolitics/comments/tg9zwp/what_evidence_exists_for_or_against_the_assertion/

They didn’t create all those people in the streets.

Apparently a lot of those far-right NGOs who were “the muscles” of Maidan were funded by west. I guess most of those have found their way to Valhalla by now. Certainly there were some civilian activists as well. I hope they don’t have to participate in undersupplied meat assaults.

If you’re interested what ukrainians are talking about today, it’s how USAID funded Maidan in 2014 and how it explains why we don’t have Maidan now even though we have 100x reasons for it. In the meanwhile, Verkhovna Rada fighting each other while admitting terrible mismanagement of the frontlines. I’m personally researching some threads on extents of foreign influence in 2014 Maidan and some general things about colour revolutions.

Casual adhominem comment

Thanks for your valuable contribution to the discussion.

They can’t efficiently extend frontline “into the depth” (km) because it leads to “cauldrons”, so they extend it along all the border.

My point is that that’s an incredibly poor showing for Russia fighting against a massively outnumbered enemy that’s mismanaging a war fought by people who don’t want to fight.

It took 2 absurd failing counteroffensives to wipe all willing soldiers and forced conscription started just half of year ago, and everything was on rapid decline since then. It doesn’t all happen overnight.

Why would they need soldiers “when the time comes” / “when the day comes”? I thought Ukraine was a lot more evil dictatorship than Russia. Aren’t you looking forward to peace? Wouldn’t it be nicer to have Russia on their borders, with open borders and free media, and finally put an end to the corruption of Ukraine? You said you were looking forward to the Russian military rolling over Kyiv, and then you could leave under the auspices of Russia’s more friendly government. Right?

I don’t understand where do you see any paradox in that. Yes I’m looking forward to peace for Ukraine. Yes, I think it will be possible to leave the country in case of peace deal or if Ukraine falls. Yes, I consider it possible for Russia to continue and attack EU states eventually. Do you think I’m telling NATO to come fight for Ukraine or something? That would be neat, but that’s obviously not going to happen.

and then you could leave under the auspices of Russia’s more friendly government

It’s not that they are kind, they just less absurd and at least don’t sabotage their own economy and morale as hard as ukrainian government does.

Also, it’s 68196-65871=2325 km since September 3.

I like the one with “are you sure how this evening will end?” It gives some funny spy vibes.