Ukraine is in the unique position of being able to be publicly honest and blunt about certain things which evoke some clutched pearls among the European political class. Some things he said are unspoken truths which are obvious to outside observers such as leftists. So yea, totally true that the EU has hollowed out its own military and political power in the past few decades. But he thoroughly mixes these truths into a purée of national-chauvinist militarism, which gains short-term security and sacrifices long-term security.

Let’s not forget, we are talking about bourgeois, white-supremacist Europe. The highly militarized EU that he dreams of, one that isolates itself simultaneously from US, Russia, and China, will inevitably be a fascist Europe that has finally removed its social-democratic mask. I do agree with the principle that Europe needs to be stronger to stand up to the US, but the only way that happens without setting the stage for WW3 is to improve relations with China and to at least stop escalating with Russia. They aren’t willing to do that. And so he’s taking a truth and in fact his solution is to double down on what got us here. Sorry, a bit of a ramble, a little tired to edit this into a fully coherent post.

Just watched Zelensky speak at Davos.

He asked why doesn’t Europe simply seize Russian oil boats the way that America has done to Venezuela? Then Europe can sell the oil to rebuild Ukraine, and Russia won’t have any money left to fight the war.

Big brain time

Politically it seems like a smart move if Russia did help in that regard, even if just to deepen the NAFO rift

Overall I agree with you ITT but on the specific point of whether to call it out, I think that question has been settled among communists since the at least the Bolshevik era. Communists should not hesitate on matters of principle.

Now I think there are productive and counterproductive ways of doing it at a large rally. It would be unwise to antagonize people sincerely listening and considering your ideas. But there should be at least a comment educating the group on why it is a wrong approach and why no party members will be seen carrying the flag. To do otherwise is to allow insinuation and, if any movement ever takes off, it defers the struggle to a later point and you have to purge a bunch of liberals from your org.

Submarine until further notice

why doesn’t China require everyone to purchase rare earths in yuan instead of stopping the flow of goods? Wouldn’t that create demand for the renminbi and threaten dollar hegemony?

Why would China want that in the short term? They have a huge amount of USD as a colossal exporter nation

I don’t think it was that haphazard. Trump is unhealthy and thinking about his legacy, whether he’s getting into heaven etc. Legacy is why he cared about Nobel prize too.

Good comment. US is the largest petroleum exporter. As much as Venezuela has, it was never about getting more oil, but about control of oil. Vijay Prashad had this same take a few days ago.

It is called headlinese and is not peculiar to The Onion.

It was a delightful read. Your style is engaging and witty, I enjoyed it

Is this article copied from somewhere, or did you write it?

Monochromatic cameras have higher resolution.

A camera sensor, taken by itself, is agnostic of the color of light which lands on it. What one might call a “color sensor” is really the combination of a sensor with an overlaid array of filters that effectively divide up all of the physical pixels such that each pixel is dedicated to one color. As you can surmise, the resulting resolution is much smaller than the physical resolution of the sensor, effectively divided by the number of color channels.

For applications in which resolution is important, and in which the subject is stationary long enough to take multiple photos — such as astronomy — monochrome sensors are used in combination with multiple photos under different color filters. This allows use of the full sensor resolution. Another benefit with this approach, having decoupled the sensor and the filter(s), is it is more flexible for adding or subtracting different filter types as needed, even colors far outside the visible spectrum.

I know a German who had their first taste of beer at like 8 years old and immediately loved it. Probably has to do with ones familiar cuisine and maybe genetics a bit.

One does not simply walk into [a] mortar

The money I can see being worth it to Russia in some specific scenarios, given the alternative wartime cost to the Russian economy - which isn’t only monetary but is also limiting Russia geopolitically, as it can’t devote much resources to any other conflict at the moment.

However, the billions lost would only be worth it if it meant a very favorable deal otherwise. Allowing a highly militarized Ukraine is a deal-breaker for Russia.

word smoothie

There should be a rose-tinted glasses version of that emoji

Right-wing infighting results in the more fascist side winning and a consolidation of power afterward. I wouldn’t celebrate too hard. It’s not like leftist infighting over real principles

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