which was me moving my reusable bag to the other side at a low angle.

Seems like a system like that would be easily fooled by confidently moving an item across the scanner and into the baggage area without scanning it.

You’re ok dude. It sounds like this guy/gal has had similar conversations and was frustrated by them. Understandable on both sides.

Military stuff is out of the picture since they established their trade with CCP and NK for rockets

Not all rockets are made equally. The NK rockets, artillery barrels and artillery shells are much worse than they could manufacture with western components. A degradation in quality leading to less accuracy which lessens the battlefield impact is still a positive step.

It also means that China can take advantage of Russia to get much more than it could usually get for their gear. China is not helping Russia out of the goodness of it’s heart or some ideological reason. They’re taking advantage.

I wonder if sanctions targeting non-consumer products critical to producing them can lead to long pauses

Interesting question. I have no idea. I’m pretty confident all sanctions so far are for gas, oil, and military/dual-use technology.

She was a big champion of Medicare for all in 2020. It is indeed a shame she isn’t talking about it now like she did last election. Judging from her 2020 rhetoric though, it is definitely something she would be open to doing if given a cooperative government, I think.

Well, there’s not much she can do atm as vice-president. It’s very well-known that Biden is very pro-Israeli.

Her rhetoric on the topic as a candidate has been very mixed. She’s been improving since she had that meeting with Uncommitted leaders. Hopefully she can have a better plan than “ask nicely for a ceasefire” to present to voters before the election.

Maybe. The point of the sanctions isn’t to cause unrest though, as I said, it’s to apply pressure to the state. If it happens to cause some unrest, that’s an unlikely side-benefit.

Hungary is blocking every single sanction package on Russia. They do not send aid to Ukraine at all and even block aid shipments through Hungary.

All of these are very fair points. My point was that they’re happy to publicly call for “peace and an end to the war” while throwing Ukraine under a bus, but simultaneously they’re for NATO protecting them against Russia.

They also blocked Swedens NATO membership for ages.

If I’m not mistaken, this wasn’t a pro-Russian thing, this was a blackmail NATO allies for concessions in exchange for agreeing thing.

What specifically do you think she should do better on?

None of the Bucharest 9 have. Hungary may make loud noises, but even they were cooperating with this group to increase defence against Russia.

To piggyback on @Syntha@sh.itjust.works, the point of sanctions is to create an extreme economic cost to a state as a bargaining chip. Stop doing the thing we don’t like and you get your trade back. Unfortunately, states control the national currency (most of the time), which means anyone who uses that currency also gets hit. There is no way around that.

Politically speaking, a majority of Russians have been utterly disenfranchised from politics, repeating the refrain “I’m not political” like it’s a magic spell that will ward off the consequences of their government. Consequently I’m not that sad about them experiencing a bit of economic hardship. Maybe it’ll help them realize that politics isn’t just for politicians.

He does display more than those traditionally masculine traits. He portrays himself as a protector of the vulnerable and a provider. Making sure women and children are safe and provided for is very traditionally masculine. He has made it a point of his political career to help children, and as an ex-member of the national guard, he can claim that “protector” archetype.

This is not to say that there aren’t problems with traditional masculinity, but there’s more to it than just family.

The city watch novels are by far my favourite. Jingo is especially amazing as a lighthearted deconstruction of xenophobia and how it functions, as well as another big theme of modern politics I can’t talk about because it’s a huge spoiler.

It’s a special experience. Others have gone over the broad strokes, so I’ll instead describe my two favourite characters in the entirety of fiction.

Sam Vimes is a pragmatic, down to earth everyman. In a world full of crime, racism, magic, and political shenanigans, he tries (and mostly succeeds) to be true to his beliefs and convictions. Convictions like female dwarves deserve to identify as female if they want to, no matter how much dwarven society despises any dwarf not sticking to male identities. That anyone and everyone deserves to be hired and promoted on merit, no matter the stigma around ghouls, zombies and werewolves. He cares about his people and his city, and really tries. He may not fully understand your culture or religion, but he will defend your right to it to the death.

Rincewind is the opposite of the hero archetype. He’s the coward with a thousand backs. A failed wizard, because the immensely powerful spell living in his head scares off all the other spells, all he wants is to live a nice, calm, peaceful life. Against his will, he’s dragged from adventure to adventure and runs away from every exciting and mystical thing in the world. He’s seen everything, done everything, and never wanted to step out of the Unseen University.

Blink-blink-blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink-blink-blink.

No, I don’t have something in my eyes, I swear I’m fine looks nervously at boss.

Commentators I’ve seen blame the lack of defence on incompetent commanders that aren’t reporting losses, lack of construction equipment for preparing fallback lines and lack of communication between units. There are apparently many cases of electronic warfare units jamming Ukrainian drones because they don’t know what the drone unit is doing. In short: doesn’t sound like a problem that can be solved by just adding more bodies.

Disclaimer: fog of war, I’m reporting on what people have said about what people have said, this may not be accurate (but what source is perfectly accurate in the middle of a war?).

I truly wish Romania would do the same with Roma people here. The culture is still very racist towards them without any actual understanding of what Romanians did to cause this to happen in the first place.

Short version: slavery followed by mass murder during WW2 (not on the scale of the Jews, but still pretty bad) followed by forced assimilation of the style described above against the Sami.

I did the same. Anything can be a garden path sentence if your tired enough.

For players of strategy games, CAS suffices. No idea if militaries do it differently. Saying you’re going to an automatic teller machine would be awkward to say as well.

scum-masters

Best typo ever.

Yup, absolutely. We have 2 posts in the two rooms we spend the most time in for exactly this reason.