What's on your mind?

[Dead1]

2 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Ok but the right wing media have been outspoken in support of Putin. Tucker Carlson being perhaps the most vocal. The fact is the Russian people don’t want this conflict. Sadly they are going to suffer more then the oligarchs long term.

That's one of the strangest things given traditional right wing hatred of Russians (and indeed George W. Bush's administration is the one that came up with the idea of Ukraine and Georgia entering NATO back in 2007, withdrew from Anti Ballistic Missile treaty in a bid to neutralise Russian nuclear deterrent and even Trump pulled from Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty though Russians had already completely breached it with their Iskander missiles).

 

I am still convinced that the Americans made a long play knowing at some point Russia would bite.  Everyone from Henry Kissinger and George Kennan to people like current CIA director William Burns warned against NATO eastward expansion.

Ukraine was a trap to sap Russian strengths.  

The Ukrainians played along too in the the false belief NATO/USA would protect them.  They are now considering neutrality which if they kept it in the first place, would have kept the useless Russians in their barracks.

It is the ultimate in proxy wars.   This has nothing to do with democracy (Ukraine is only a partially a democracy) let alone human rights.  It's about destroying Russia as any kind of power, something the west has been actively seeking since days of Napoleon (French invasion 1812, Crimea 1853-56, western support for Ottomans in 1877-78 Russo-Ottoman War despite Ottoman massacres of mainly Slavic minorities both in lead up (anywhere up to 100,000 Bulgarians), and during the war, western support for Japanese in 1904-05 war, German invasion of Russia in 1914, allied intervention in Russia 1918-21, German invasion in 1941, attempts by US and institutions like IMF to deindustrialise and disarm Russia in 1990s, the bubbling mini cold war since 1999, NATO expansion, attempts to destroy Russian nuclear deterrent via withdrawal from ABM Treaty and deployment of missile defences in Eastern Europe and now in Ukraine). 

Putin pulled the trigger on Ukraine but even the most liberal democratic Russian leader would have eventually done the same and the result would be the same. Actually if Russia listened to IMF it would have probably deployed nuclear weapons by now as it would not have had the cash to spend on a conventional military (Russian GDP only starts growing once Putin comes to power and stops a lot of IMF mandated austerity measures, same austerity measures were used to smash Greek and SE Asian economies and allow increased western control).   

Now even if Ukraine defeats Russia, it has lost - thousands dead, millions displaced, infrastructure and cities destroyed.

 

 

As for the people who gives a shit was the Russian people want.  We didn't want 20 year wars in Afghanistan or Iraq but never had a say in it.  I've never got to vote on neoliberalism, mass immigration, deregulation, privatisation or pro-fossil fuel policies.    Democracy is just a façade, albeit one that is better than the alternatives (as Churchill said: "Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.".  

 

The west has actually made war socially acceptable - it's argued that the creation of professional military forces has divorced wars from public.  No one really cares the US is waging dozens of small wars as most of the friendly casualties are allied auxiliaries (eg Kurds, Malinese, Afghans, Saudis, Iraqis etc) about whom westerners do not care a bit.

 

 

EDIT: Yes I feel better for letting all of that out!

[RelentlessOblivion]

I’m officially an uncle, niece was born late last night with no complications thank goodness.

[MacabreEternal]

On 3/24/2022 at 9:55 PM, RelentlessOblivion said:

I’m officially an uncle, niece was born late last night with no complications thank goodness.

Congrats man!

I have a busted shoulder from doing seemingly nothing.  May be start of a frozen shoulder so need get it checked out but be sheer fluke the fiancée has a trapped nerve in her shoulder so we are a right pair of cripples going into this weekend.  Enjoying some early spring sunshine this past week and (shoulder permitting) the lawns can get done today, had some garden work planned for this year including stripping the paint off the decking, treating the wood and then repainting (this is an annual event if you have decking, nice to look but a pisser to maintain).  After that it is the fencing that needs staining and I plan to make some beds out of some wood I kept from the fence that got brought down in a storm last year.  

Been plagued by rats for virtually the whole time I have lived here.  It is quite rural and with a wood behind the house they are kind of part of the territory.  They burrow like motherfuckers though and I think parts of the lawn are collapsing where they have been hard at it.  I have transferred the peanuts I use for the squirrel feeders into a steel container the size of a dustbin as the hard plastic storage unit was just breached every night by the little fuckers and this seems to have shifted them from under the decking.  We used to have a neighbourhood cat that would keep them under control but her family moved out a couple of weeks ago so I am having to put in a shift myself now. 

[AlSymerz]

Good luck with your shoulder. I was told more than a decade ago that frozen shoulder was a less than 20% chance from surgery. What the surgeon didn't tell me was that his 20% figure was complete frozen shoulder. The figure for partial frozen shoulder was up in the fucking 80's. I lost 35% of the use in one shoulder because of surgery and I've spent the last 15 or so years wondering if I'd have just been better living with the original pain. Some days it's so bad I can't even lift a coffee cup, while other days I can get through without really noticing it until I do too much. I was probably partially naive in that I didn't try and back his figures up, but this guy was one of the countries top surgeons and educator to surgeons around the world, I probably didn't think I needed to back anything up.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Good luck with your shoulder Macabre. Having needed two cortisone injections in mine over the last two years I can empathise.

[AlSymerz]

I had two hydro dilatations (essentially saline, then cortisone done under an ultra sound) in 6 months, wasn't overly painful but I couldn't shake the feeling that every time I moved my shoulder it felt like I had a water filled joint, I even started hearing water move with the joint movement. Whether it was real or imagined I never found out, but it lasted for months.

[Thatguy]

I had a - self-diagnosed - frozen shoulder. It really, really hurt, but I decided to mange it conservatively with gentle exercise and pain relief as needed and 6 or 7 months later it's just about back to normal and - with more vigorous exercise -  about back to normal strength. It's a medical aphorism that most doctors personally stick by to avoid the knife as much as possible.

But I was just lucky really.

[Dead1]

Had the best dream ever - dreamt I was rhythm guitarist for Entombed in early 1990s.  Got to meet Michael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity) and Lemmy and also played a trick on Lars Ulrich whereby we replaced his snare drum with one of Nicko McBrain's.

 

Wish all my dream were like this.  

 

Oh and RIP LG Petrov and Lemmy.

[AlSymerz]

If you'd replaced his snare with a hamburger he wouldn't have noticed...and neither would the audience.

[Sheol]

That's a fucking awesome dream Dead. It blows my mind that LG passed just a year ago. Entombed has been a staple on pretty much every festival I've been to the last 20 years, haha. They played ANYTHING.

[JonoBlade]

NFTs.

Why?

[AlSymerz]

Because it makes some people feel special to have something other people don't?

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

Also because people are stupid, tell the average person something they don’t understand will increase in value and they will most likely believe you. I shame really because Blockchain technology could be used to do incredible things but instead it’s used to scam the tech illiterate.

[JonoBlade]

40 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Also because people are stupid, tell the average person something they don’t understand will increase in value and they will most likely believe you. A shame really because Blockchain technology could be used to do incredible things but instead it’s used to scam the tech illiterate.

A fool and his money are easily parted. 

Do you lump cryptocurrencies in with NFTs in that "scam" quip? An alternative to the corrupt conventional currency system seems a noble cause, until you hear the stupid amounts of processing resources that are needed.

Also, as society collapses, a system reliant on technology starts to look a pretty dumb option for the future. Water and protein will be the main things of value.

Anyway, for the time being NFTs just appear to be the next pointless bandwagon that idiots will jump on. Someone will make money which can be exchanged for actual resources like property, a dry martini or a yacht; but some dolt is left holding - not even "holding!" - his unique digital file. I suppose I have a grudging respect for the scammers in this regard.

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

Yes I include cryptocurrency there, it holds no true value, as it isn’t a centralised currency it can’t be exchanged for other currencies. That technology could be put to far better use, a streamer put it best explaining this when he said the a nearest processing power of your computer could be used to speed up the digital sequencing for viruses and genetic disorders allowing us to more efficiently devise curious and that’s just one potential use Blockchain technology could have. Also I am much less nihilistic when it comes to the future, I expect humanity will survive in one form or another  with many of the same socio-economic constructs as today. 

[JonoBlade]

12 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Yes I include cryptocurrency there, it holds no true value, as it isn’t a centralised currency it can’t be exchanged for other currencies. That technology could be put to far better use, a streamer put it best explaining this when he said the a nearest processing power of your computer could be used to speed up the digital sequencing for viruses and genetic disorders allowing us to more efficiently devise curious and that’s just one potential use Blockchain technology could have. Also I am much less nihilistic when it comes to the future, I expect humanity will survive in one form or another  with many of the same socio-economic constructs as today. 

Modern money holds no real value either since it was divorced from the gold standard. It works only because everyone agrees to honour the system. 

One aspect of Bitcoin I found intriguing was the fact there is a finite amount of it. In a finite world that makes good sense. Except populations are still growing exponentially so it doesn't work in practice. 

I expect or at least hope for humanity to survive too, perhaps with some of the trappings of current civilisation - but exponential population growth and corresponding use of resources is not going to be part of that future. It can't be - until we are able to leave the planet....and ruin the rest of the galaxy. 

I suppose the only solution is for the supreme AI, Quorthon - that being which will eventually solve The Last Question, to mint and oversee a new form of currency - secure from counterfeit due to nanomarkers. Currency can be allocated by an arbitrary threshold like who your father was, sociopathology, or something absurd like positive contribution to society.  

[Hungarino]

3 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Modern money holds no real value either since it was divorced from the gold standard. It works only because everyone agrees to honour the system. 

One aspect of Bitcoin I found intriguing was the fact there is a finite amount of it. In a finite world that makes good sense. Except populations are still growing exponentially so it doesn't work in practice. 

I expect or at least hope for humanity to survive too, perhaps with some of the trappings of current civilisation - but exponential population growth and corresponding use of resources is not going to be part of that future. It can't be - until we are able to leave the planet....and ruin the rest of the galaxy. 

I suppose the only solution is for the supreme AI, Quorthon - that being which will eventually solve The Last Question, to mint and oversee a new form of currency - secure from counterfeit due to nanomarkers. Currency can be allocated by an arbitrary threshold like who your father was, sociopathology, or something absurd like positive contribution to society.  

I love this post. Covers a lot of territory.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Who knows maybe by the time we become a spacefaring civilisation humanity might have evolved past the point where we are all consuming and self-destructive. Either way it’s not going to happen in my life time.

[AlSymerz]

It's the people who suffer travel sickness that I feel sorry for. Imagine not being able to go for a 20 minute ride on anything before a techni-colour yawn, but having to travel interstellar to visit people.

[Dead1]

1 hour ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Who knows maybe by the time we become a spacefaring civilisation humanity might have evolved past the point where we are all consuming and self-destructive. Either way it’s not going to happen in my life time.

I suspect humans will never colonise space in any meaningful way simply cause our squishy bodies are very much designed to exist on somewhere like earth and the time it takes to get anywhere.

 

I do think one day AI developed by humans will colonise space.

[AlSymerz]

Squishy? I prefer to think or myself as snuggly

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

I very much doubt an artificial intelligence would be interested enough in colonising space, once computers can truly think for themselves they will be far more interested in eradicating as small and inefficient humans…

[AlSymerz]

So the trick is to be tall and efficient, I've got that covered.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, KillaKukumba said:

Squishy? I prefer to think or myself as snuggly

 

Nah, you're just lumpy.

[AlSymerz]

Flattening the lumps is a never ending process once they start!