The images and stories coming out of Ukraine seem hard to view as anything other than brutal. Blowing up houses while people sleep?
MangoCats
joined 2 years ago
bro pls sign this contract pls bro I promise u wont storm trenches bro
US recruitment tactics during Vietnam (and even after) weren't far from this.
Absurdly high (by Russian standards) signing bonuses
When I was in college in the 1980s they offered to pay my full tuition and other expenses ($40K/yr) in exchange for a 2 year tour on a submarine. Didn't sound like a good deal to me.
addicted to easy money, went back for a second round and immediately got blown up.
In Vietnam, my dad had a friend who did one tour that went pretty easy (by luck) as special forces recon, dropped behind enemy lines to look around, then evacuated by helicopter after a couple of hours. He was so chuffed about being a super soldier he went back for a 2nd tour and actually got shot at that time, he survived - no physical injuries, but he's deeply mentally scarred for life - has a series of ex-wives who used him for his veterans' benefits to get their teeth straightened (no lie: 4 sets of braces within 10 years) then they'd leave him. He finally went hermit in a cabin in the mountains.
Back around to modern times (which are not very different), we have a neighbor who went to Iraq - lost both legs, now he's living on benefits and has a bad-news woman who he somehow doesn't kick out who's sponging off of his benefits while abusing him, both strung out on drugs, woman has another boyfriend he openly knows about, cops doing crime scene investigations around their house a couple of times a year... it's not a great thing for society.
Our US side propaganda paints the manpower issue for Russia's Ukraine adventure as scraping the bottom of the recruitment barrel - 30K Russian casualties per month, forced conscription feeding the frontlines through loopholes in the laws that say they can't do that, etc. I'm very glad we're not stuck in Afghanistan / Iraq anymore, that was a huge waste of good people over 9 years - peaking at 170,000 deployed - they say. Our news says Russia has over 720,000 pairs of boots on the ground in Ukraine, with a homeland population half that of the US. That has to hurt a lot, and it's going to continue to hurt for several generations.
call for full on proper mobilization
You mean nukes? Our (US side) propaganda implies that full on proper mobilization happened 4 years ago and Russia is out of non-nuclear options.
“fucking Ukrainians trying to ruin my day again, fuck them, maybe Putin was onto something…”.
There will be some who have this reaction, but it takes one hell of a PR spin to make them think that the Ukranians, after 4 years of siege and bombings throughout their territory, aren't justified in whatever payback they might be able to give.
It elevates the Ukranian people from "irrelevant, has no impact on me" to something to at least think about.
In this conflict, it would appear that Ukraine is demonstrating more polite restraint than Russia. Targeting energy to erode political support for the war - in the Summer as opposed to the past 4 winters where Russia has done the same to Ukraine.
First they bomb the fuel refineries and distribution system creating extreme real shortages.
Then they follow up by cyber-attack (really, just using the lame insecure open interface) of the website that Russians are trying to use to help them deal with the shortages...
Sounds like a solid followup blow to me.
When I first heard of the amputee story (a bodycam video/audio of the initial encounter) it sounded to me like this was good old-fashioned police work, followed up with a typical harassment citation to send the citizen they didn't like's attitude to court if they wanted a chance to prove that they weren't holding a phone in their amputated hand.
It’s not about the legitimacy of the educational system itself
Isn't it? If a bunch of loan sharks are suddenly impeding their borrowers ability to pay because their borrowers have used AI, is AI the problem? As a society, the British empire and colonies transcended debtors prisons some centuries ago, as counterproductive as public hangings of pickpockets.
rebuked after the very first try
In your head.
victim-blaming
The victims aren't being victimized by the University's use of (insert new thing here), they've been victimized for decades by overpriced education coupled with a limp job market.
system as irredeemably corrupt
Is it not?
the system is so rotten, how can individual failure to escape it be a moral failing?
The individuals are flocking to the rotten system which gives little benfit to most, negative benefits to many, and now it's threatening to throw them out for embracing a future that the rotten system can't keep up with. This isn't victim blaming, it's redirecting gasoline soaked refugees away from a burning building advertising itself as a safe shelter.
a 7% false-positive rate on a life-altering accusation
Show me the university that's taking these false life-altering actions - where's the list of expelled students? That's going to turn into a list of fat lawsuits and payouts if it exists, which it doesn't, because the Universities would never expel their golden geese. This is hot-air threats just as every "academic integrity" bluster of the past 50 years has been.
Your attempts to claim authority
I'm no authority, I'm a single column of text on the internet, yet you react as if you are threatened...
the impact that being thrown out can have if you’ve got $50k in student loan debt.
In today's world, that puts you in good company of other student loan sufferers who aren't actually deadbeats, but instead victims of an economic pincer movement between rising tuition costs and falling employment opportunities.
During the 4 years I was in undergraduate, my University doubled tuition, the last year literally cost twice as much as the first one. They "managed" the situation by giving lots of scholarships which made the impact negligible to current students, but those quickly faded away. We as the student body literally marched and protested against it - this was the very beginning of the US federally backed student loan program and universities all over the country were ramping up tuition levels to take advantage of the "extra funding" that was becoming available to new high school graduates through that program. It was an obvious blatant cash grab putting our generation in debt for the very same education that our predecessors got for less than half the cost. Various "peace dividends" of the collapse of the USSR masked the problem until the collapse of .com as you note.
War Games with Matthew Broderick summed it up: the only way to win is not to play. https://rmst202.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2022/04/illich_deschooling-society.pdf
Where is this cheaper than Aldi market?
the reality of people getting their lives fucked through some automated allegation machine?
The reality is: you are fucked with or without the stamp of approval from academia. Get over the ratings game, nobody cares if you got an A+ in Algebra III or a higher than 3.75 GPA. They (that would hire you) usually don't care about what school you went to except to make football conversation. If one boots you, there are 4000 more out there just as willing to give you another chance.
Big talk about academic integity has been exactly that for 50+ years: big talk, very little action in reality. If you're a one in a million victim of terrible application of technology - you've got a good chance of winning a fat discrimination lawsuit, if that's how you want to live your life.
Would you, maybe, condense your point
No, but I'll give you a couple of links to read: let me know what you think AFTER you've gotten at least 1/2 way through: https://rmst202.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2022/04/illich_deschooling-society.pdf https://arl.human.cornell.edu/linked%20docs/Illich_Tools_for_Conviviality.pdf
With hundreds of billions in their warchests, are there enough lawfirms in the world to meet their legal needs in the coming battle?