Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

911–920 of 1001 posts

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#911

Post by denton-scratch »

denton-scratch wrote: post #809
willis936 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This take is unconvincing. What benefit is the invasion to the bureaucracy and oligarchs? This is the result of a megalomaniac puffing his chest.

The man's whole schtick is puffing up his chest. That's what he does (and it means he's unlikely to back down; very bad look for a bare-chested man of action). But pronouncing psychiatric diagnoses on him isn't very enlightening. If he's a megalomaniac, then half the world's governments are headed by people who are similarly mentally ill. Discounting aggressive foreign leaders as "mad" is bound to lead to incorrect c…

Hmmm. I'm rewatching Waterloo with Rod Steiger as Napoleon, and wondering whether Putin's been watching the same movie; there's a sort of method-actor hamminess about Putin's public performances that looks a lot like Steiger being Napoleon.

So maybe I'm wrong; maybe he does have a Napoleon complex.

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#912

Post by CRConrad »

pydry wrote: post #365
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then what? Everybody would be happy ever after? No, Russia wants a pro-Russia government in Ukraine, and they didn't like that Ukraine instead moved away from Russia and Russian influence via things like promoting the Ukranian language instead of Russian. It's a bullying tactic and infringes on a country's sovereignty.

Is peace not the highest priority? I dont want Ukraine to be pro Russian but I dont want Kyiv to be shelled more . I dont want a nuclear war more. It absolutely is a bullying tactic, but it's also the desperate act of a country that is trying to protect the integrity of its most exposed border from an explicitly hostile power (NATO).

> Is peace not the highest priority?

No, not necessarily.

It depends on the alternative.

> a country that is trying to protect the integrity of its most exposed border from an explicitly hostile power (NATO).

A) Ukraine is its own country, not Russia's border.

B) Only one actor in this drama is being explicitly hostile: Putler's Russia.

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#913

Post by mkr-hn »

Scoundreller wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is correct. Hence this Tell HN, unfortunately it got flagged.

Still on front page, but grayed

Gray just means you opened it since it points to the comments. It's HN's visited link style. It looks like enough people vouched or a mod intervened.

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#914

Post by usrusr »

drran wrote: post #793
usrusr wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody believes Russians these days. For good reason. Have you forgotten all the lies served by Putin in the run-up to the invasion? Those weren't "clever ruses", those were lies as crude as those of a preschooler who has just discovered that you can say counterfactual things. They kill Russians: yes, that's what happens in a war. There has been a war for eight years. Nothing you wrote is the tiniest evidence that th…

> Doesn't change the fact though that they certainly are self-identifying Nazi, in a sad perversion of "the enemy of the enemy is my friend" Are you member of Azov regiment or know them personally? If not, then list your arguments, please. For Russians, anybody who is strong and against RF (or is ally of US) is Nazi, including Jews. It's like a gold medal for the enemy of RF.

Sorry, I seem to have missed the well-deserved sarcasm in your statement, I guess we agree in everything but my claim about nazi self-identification.

What lead me to that claim: Just eight years of sometimes watching from afar (very far) and initially being quite confused by the occasional evidence (or what seemed like it?). Eventually I came to assume that they were effectively taught "from the same schoolbooks" (maybe not literally, but who knows) this Russian misappropriation of the term nazi and then simply applied logic: "if I'm against Russia then I guess I'm a nazi, heil whatever that guy was called!"

Quite unlikely (understatement!) that they actually are out to build a fourth reich and work on an Endlösung. I wrote "self-identify", not "are": I'm German and we like to think that we know a thing or two about actual nazism. But I wouldn't be surprised if occasionally some poor chap fell too deep into the ideological rabbit hole and inadvertently produced propaganda ammunition for Putinists. I suspect that the propaganda battle might be going much less bad for Putinists if the Ukraine was led by someone not quite as immune to being called a nazi (I guess bookies stopped taking bets for Time Person of the Year already?)

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#915

Post by lr1970 »

jacquesm wrote: post #859
9214 wrote: post #837

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common narrative I see on tech forums since 24th Feb is this: "if various sanctions and blockings will make average Russians' life miserable enough (i.e. even more miserable than it already is), they will stand up and oppose the power they have been electing since 20-or-so years." There are a few issues here: 1. Anyone who goes against the ruling power and stands up as a leader of opposition gets forcefully silen…

Thank you for this post. Tough times. Let's hope someone higher up grows a pair and does something about it, because otherwise we will sleepwalk straight into something much, much worse. FWIW: about those 40 year olds with families that can't do anything: they can, it's just that the perceived price is too high. But think about it from another perspective: how are you going to explain to your kids that you stood by a…

> 2. The majority of Russians are in their 40-ies, have families, have government jobs, and won't risk losing the only source of income they have by opposing said government.

I would disagree. I vividly remember August 1991 coup attempt in USSR against Gorbachev when ordinary people surrounded the "White House" (governmental building of Russian Federation) while a tank battalion surrounded the people. There were quite a few 40+ people in the crowd defending the White House. This standoff lasted for quite a while and then the coup collapsed. The whole thing lasted about 4 days [0] despite the fact that the junta had formal control over military, KGB, police, national guard (interior troops), border guards, etc. Junta summarily lost and Yeltsin became the de-factor leader of USSR with Gorbachev playing a role of British Queen for a short few months before USSR expired.

The real difference then and now is that in 1991 there was an alternative center of power (Yeltsin, government of russian federation, russian parliament). putler made sure that there is no any organized structures left that could potentially challenge his power. This is a real problem, not the 40+ people conservatism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat...

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#916

Post by CRConrad »

pydry wrote: post #397
simonh wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either you believe in democracy, or you do not. If the Ukrainian people want to join the EU or NATO, and our people want them to join us as well, they have the right to make that choice as free sovereign people, and we should back them up. Any other response is itself subjugation, and capitulation to terror.

I do believe in democracy. It doesnt change anything about what I just said.

> I do believe in democracy.

No, you quite obviously don't.

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#917

Post by roca »

sudosysgen wrote: post #812
roca wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US-supported Afghan government wasn't worse than the governments before or after it. South Korea's an interesting example. It was a dictatorship, now it's a thriving democracy. Ditto for Japan, Taiwan, West Germany. Sometimes things turn out alright.

I still don't see how that's an excuse for killing hundreds of thousands of innocents, though.

In Afghanistan? Unlikely to be hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by Americans/allies. https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/civilians/af... says "at least 71,000 civilians killed" and many of those would have been killed by other side(s).

"Justified"? Probably not, but we'd have to determine what alternative actions America/allies should have taken instead and compare.

I mean, "avoid all US-caused civilian deaths by letting AQ continue to operate from Afghanistan with impunity after 9/11" would not obviously have been the right thing to do.

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#918

Post by Ancapistani »

9214 wrote: post #577
fer wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> apply for PhD in EPHE institute of France [...] I got nothing in response. Well, that's hardly surprising, and it's not because you're Russian, in France it's hard to get any institution to ever reply you by mail, let alone if (I guess) you wrote to them in English. If you want to work or do a PhD in France (in English) I can offer some support and pointers for my region, you can hit me up at the email on my profil…

Thanks you, but I'm way past this — mostly because I reevaluated my stance towards academia and have a family to support here. To clarify: I contacted one of the professors directly, whom I visited, who was aware of my background (my employee at the time introduced us and wrote an informal letter of recommendation), and who collaborated on a startup project I mentioned.

> and have a family to support here.

Not to sound like an ass, but if that's your limiting factor and you're making anywhere near the salary you listed as average, don't worry about it. If you can figure out a way to get yourself to a better position, I'll figure out a way to get you 400 USD / year.

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#919

Post by Ancapistani »

dunkelheit wrote: post #707
teekert wrote: post #180

This whole situation is so surreal and disappointing. I grew up on Star Trek and somehow I just though we had (almost) arrived in a post-war, federation-like world. We know things should be solved with words because otherwise there are only losers. It’s how we raise our kids. I just keep thinking about how Jean Luc is looking down on us from orbit, slowly shaking his head whispering “Savages.”

The only reason why this is not happening is that there is more than one such "federation" currently and no one is unquestionably stronger. And at no point in history had a stronger faction submitted to the will of a weaker faction just to avoid hostilities. In a sense war is just a reality check when it is unclear who is really stronger. While studying history, it struck me that many countries (current unit of sover…

FWIW, I 100% agree with this assessment.

Regardless of the outcome of the current flareup, I believe we're seeing the end of "Pax Americana". There is no way to accurately predict what will come next.

Re: Tell HN: If You Are in Russia

#920

Post by CRConrad »

indymike wrote: post #763
pydry wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying "Ukraine will remain neutral and will not join NATO" would have stopped this war. It's an unpopular fact but it's still true.

> It's an unpopular fact but it's still true. This is not a fact. It is at best an educated and optimistic opinion.

> It is at best an educated and optimistic opinion.

Not even that. It is at best an uneducated and wildly optimistic opinion.

Post reply on HN