Abattoir is just the french word for slaughterhouse, and it means the exact same thing. But point taken.

The article says there’s a narrow corridor which is about 0.5-1 km wide. This means the Ukrainians are in operational encirclement.

Russians usually leave a small corridor open like this, because they’ve observed that Ukrainian high command dislikes retreating and insists on sending reinforcements and supplies, as they order units to hold to the last man. At the same time, they try to sneak out heavy equipment and elite units. Both resupplies and shuffling of troops/equipment along this narrow path are usually easy targets for UAVs, missiles and air strikes. That’s when they inflict the highest losses. This also softens the units caught in the pocket and makes capturing them easier and less dangerous.

What makes you feel sad?

WTF?

It also angers me at the end where the owner feigns ignorance, when clearly this culture permeated the whole abattoir. This wasn’t one or two workers being sadistic. At that scale, it was everybody.

I wouldn’t say AI (or pattern-replicating models resembling AI) is flawed. It’s a great tool for saving time and automating certain processes.

The problem is the myriad of grifters who appeared, mostly in the West, trying to sell it as a cure-all snake oil.

For instance, there’s a massive push in the EU to insert AI in education, but with little regard or planning on how to do it effectively. It would be a great tool if we were to feed AI with our curriculi, then ask it to update it to current knowledge (e.g. in science), come up with suggestions for better delivery of certain topics, eliminate time wasted on erroneous, repeating, or useless topics and improve our schedules for other topics (e.g. teaching Romeo and Juliet in Languages, and at the same time go through the history of 1400s Venice in History). These things could be done using commitees over a 5 year period. Or they could be done by AI in a day. Instead though, we get to have handsomely-paid private contractors organize days-long training sessions over how to use AI to draw a picture, because it might make a presentation to students slightly more exciting.

There’s a saying where I come from: “To find justice, make a problem”. If you don’t speak up, nothing will ever get resolved to your satisfaction. Being polite and friendly is one thing. Don’t let it get in the way of your well-being.

What are you talking about? Zelensky isn’t a communist! How can he be autocratic and authoritarian?!

A “Hong-Kong” newspaper, critical of China, based in Canada, with 3 Americans as its lead editors, needs my financial support urgently after USAID got killed.

🤔🤔🤔

You should state that in your letter’s last paragraph “I would like to avoid taking birth control medication, for fear of how its side effects might interact with my fragile health and the other medication I receive”.

That’s the good thing about Trump. He says the quiet part out loud and reveals how horrible the US is. The bad side of this is that it makes the Dems look nice.

US proxies doing US proxy things

Yes.

French citizen.

Used to be the French ambassador to Georgia.

She was the French ambassador in Chad during a French-supported coup.

She was part of the Iran sanctions UN committee.

She was a permanent representative of France in NATO.

She participated in efforts to get Georgia into NATO.

She organized training of Georgian army by NATO.

She is partly responsible for all the protests going on against this bill.

A couple weeks ago, during a military ceremony, she took the podium and made a speech reminding the soldiers of “who trained them” and that “when the time comes you should follow the will of the people”. Basically asking them to overthrow the Prime Minister and his ruling party. The PM was sitting right behind her.

She stands to be exposed as a foreign agent if this bill passes, along with many other politicians. Georgia has 1 NGO or SMO (social movement organization) per 148 people (that’s 10 000 NGOs and 15 000 SMOs). The Georgians are the most propagandized people by foreign forces.

The very way you just described is how they make you ignore his resistance.

I’m not saying it’s some sort of Marxist masterpiece by the way. I just think it was the intention.

Yeah, that’s my point. Gomer Pyle doesn’t resist for shits and giggles. He has no choice but to resist. And they portray his character the way they do so you’ll disregard him.

Aren’t they worried that too much of their money is in the hands of too many people?

As long as the dollar is the reserve currency of the world, and as long as oil is sold in dollars, they never have to worry about inflation. That is why the US is so furiously stepping on anybody who tries to change those two facts.

I always assumed this was the case, no?

Joker intentionally disregards authority to be funny. Gomer Pyle disregards authority because of who he is. By happenstance, the only one who is caught is Gomer Pyle, and he gets punished. Joker gets away with it and ends up getting rewarded later on too.

Gomer Pyle is the hero who resists authority and ends up dying for it. He is portrayed the way he is, so the audience disregards him, which is what the public often does with actual symbols of resistance.

Joker thinks he resists authority from within, but really, he is just getting assimilated and by the end of the movie, becomes just another soldier of the empire, perfectly willing to kill Charlie. He becomes just like the rest (or everyone deteriorates into a killer together, which is why they all sing at the end, while marching through fields on fire).

By the way, the 20% threshold of the Georgian Law is far more forgiving than the Foreign Agents Registration Act that applies in the US, which is way more broad and also more vague in its restrictions.

Also, it’s like libs and Eurolickers have forgotten that we’ve just finished spending 5 years of US media and government agencies crying about the possibility that Russia “might have meddled” in their elections. Why are they decrying a country that is trying to prevent that from happening.

On a side note, a few days ago, the Georgian president came on stage during a military ceremony and addressed the troops, basically asking them to help her overthrow the prime minister. The prime minister came up on stage after her and outright called her a traitor.

Ukraine might be on the brink of collapse but it’s still capable of inflicting losses to the Russians, especially using drones. As the Russians themselves have said, the nature of warfare has changed a lot due to the introduction of cheap small drones in the battlefield. Any significant mass of men, weapon platforms or ammunition is instantly targeted. Therefore, the tactical approach now for both Russia and Ukraine is to use very small groups of soldiers in any attack, so as not to attract drone attacks. Furthermore, massed artillery is no longer practical due to the target they would present and neither is storing ammo/supplies in large quantities anywhere near the front, as they’d be extremely vulnerable to drones.

Also, we should keep in mind that due to constant satellite surveillance, all the above can be identified and targeted very easily. Also, the surveillance makes it hard for Russians to draw or prepare to execute massive pushes, as they would be easily anticipated. Therefore, they try to keep things moving everywhere all at once, and wait for advantages to develop before pouring resources to those sectors that would prove the most beneficial.

Hence, any advances made are small and incremental. The advantage that Russia has now is that it can perform these advances everywhere at the same time, and, because the Ukrainian ability to respond has been minimized, most of these small advances can be immediately successful.

When Putin retires/dies, anything could happen. He’s going to be hard to replace, and his party might not be able to hold on to the support it has now.

If you die from hunger, while food rots in garbage dumps, it’s democracy. If you die from diseases, when medicine costs an arm and a leg, it’s freedom. If you die from a firing squad, for facilitating aforementioned deaths, it’s evil communism.