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Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

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Re: Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

#141

Post by sharikous »

logicchains wrote: post #2

I wonder why they added quotation marks around "coup" in the headline? Is there anything nonstandardly-coupish about a military commander engaging in armed rebellion to overthrow the standing government? Seems to perfectly fit the textbook/dictionary definition of "coup".

They are still hundreds of miles away from Moscow. In a textbook coup you seize centers of power and media stations as fast as you can but this attempt is on the slow side (certainly the physical size of Russia is helping too).

For now it is "only" an armed rebellion, I guess. And depending on how it unfolds it could be a lot of things.

I think that this sort of thing is not very frequent in contemporary, or even modern, history, but it is very reminiscent of Roman history.

Re: Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

#142

Post by justsomehnguy »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #134
oneshtein wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear genocide != nuclear suicide. Russian people started the war. Majority of Russians support war with Ukraine even today, with hope that they kill all Ukrainians and occupy their territory, to show their power to Rotten West. They sad that their leader is too weak to nuke Washington and London.

"...it is distressing to see the [British] press grovelling in the gutter as low as Goebbels in his prime, shrieking that any German commander who holds out in a desperate situation (when, too, the military needs of his side clearly benefit) is a drunkard, and a besotted fanatic. ... There was a solemn article in the local [Oxford] paper seriously advocating systematic exterminating of the entire German nation as the…

Very apt quote, sadly.

Offtopic:

Regarding your Ask HN thread - some years ago I used (well, tried to) a small smartphone stylus which 'docked' in the headphone socket so it would be always with the phone. It wasn't good for me, because it wasn't sensitive enough for sketching, but overall it was fine for navigating the UI.

If your phone has no 3.5 jack but you use a case it can be attached to the case.

Maybe you can try to use a notebook style case, so your palms would sweat the case, not the phone and therefore you would have a bit less trouble with false touches.

Eg: https://www.amazon.com/x-girl-P-TPS-XG1-Collaboration-Stylus...

Re: Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

#143

Post by Balgair »

jacquesm wrote: post #129
hutzlibu wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me currently neither. But this seems to be his only choice, where he would go on living. I am sure, there are secret negotiations taking place behind the scenes. But he knows, that he will confirm in the eye of the russian public, that he is a traitor then. But officially he already is and his loyal forces can never take Moscow.

Either he or Putin will be dead in the next few weeks, my money is on Putin surviving for the time being. But he's going to come out much weaker.

Vova will have to purge whatever is left after this coup.

Doing so will make an already paper-tiger of an army/bureaucracy even worse off, as paranoia and shows of loyalty will be paramount, not effective fighting ability. Think North Korea, but even more so.

Whatever command structure of the army is left will have even worse of a time in Ukraine and, especially, in Crimea.

Vova is running out of cards to play, Wagner having now taken some double-digit percent of his remaining deck.

When Ukraine pushes into Crimea, the chances of nukes going off goes up a lot now.

Re: Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

#144

Post by sph »

ModernMech wrote: post #140
dmarchand90 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is precedent for hackernews covering unusually large and important events. Covid, Jan 6th, the start of the Ukraine War. I don't see the problem with some general news of large scale importance, e.g., a hostile mercenary force is a 4 hour drive away from the capital of the state with the largest supply of nuclear weapons Agree we shouldn't lose focus but this seems rare and important enough to be worth discussi…

Slashdot used to get complaints like this all the time (maybe still does, wouldn't know). They would be followed by a recitation of the Slashdot motto: "News for nerds, stuff that matters. This is a story that matters." Usually shut people up immediately. HN also suffers nerds not wanting to hear about anything except nerd shit, but we don't have a handy shorthand to shut down these tedious complaints.

[flagged]

Re: Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

#145

Post by jona-f »

sph wrote: post #128
Lewton wrote: post #95

@dang anything mentioning Wagner group is being flagged off the main page, I could see why some people would react that way when there’s a 20 articles shared about the same thing in an hour, but it’s a bit disturbing that there’s currently zero articles on the front page about this

Quit using HN for general news. Go to your favourite news website, they all have a live section about this unfolding event. I could not care less what software engineers have to say on the matter.

I didn't know about swiftcentre, or metaculus and I'm fascinated by it. That's exactly the software engineer approach to this topic i like to see when i come here.

Re: Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

#146

Post by r721 »

jcrites wrote: post #44
dave4420 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, if this was a coup, I’d say Wagner would have taken control of important infrastructure by now (e.g. the Kremlin, state tv, military depots, Putin / defence minister). Or been killed/arrested himself. This feels more like a civil war. It might not last long of course. We’ll see.

Wagner Group [1] is a mercenary company, by the way, named after German composer Richard Wagner [1]. Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin [2] is reportedly the founder and owner. (Wagner is not a person. Or am I misreading: who does "himself" refer to?) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner_Group [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wagner [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Prigozhin

>Wagner is not a person

>He is alleged to have founded the Wagner Group, with his own call-sign reportedly being Wagner

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Utkin

Re: Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

#147

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #139
mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm villifying their leadership. Do you think the nukes would hit the Kreml? Or potentially millions of innocent civilians?

At what point are the citizens of a country responsible for what the country's military is doing? Note: not advocating for a nuclear genocide, but I do feel that citizens become culpable if they are allowing their country to stop on others and they aren't protesting or emigrating (if possible)

Well, avoiding the deeper philosophical waters, I would say whatever responsibility is there would depend on how democratic the country is. Russia is very far from being a functioning democracy at the moment. Sure they have elections, but they're likely partially fixed, freedom of the press is a joke, political protest is punished harshly(typically with violence), and opposing political candidates are prosecuted on false charges, jailed, even killed. Given this, I think holding the Russian people as a whole responsible for the war seems unreasonable. Certainly there's some responsibility there in various ways in terms of the personal contributions of individual people. But precisely because Russia is so undemocratic, the distribution of responsibility is heavily distributed onto the oligarchy and military leadership.

But like you say, genocide is never justified, no matter what. And that was mainly what I was reacting to.

Re: Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

#148

Post by Lewton »

bitcharmer wrote: post #136
Lewton wrote: post #95

@dang anything mentioning Wagner group is being flagged off the main page, I could see why some people would react that way when there’s a 20 articles shared about the same thing in an hour, but it’s a bit disturbing that there’s currently zero articles on the front page about this

The main page is heavily curated by dang and only features what he likes. For actual popular content I just go to /active

“and only features what he likes” that’s not remotely true

Re: Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

#149

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

sph wrote: post #128
Lewton wrote: post #95

@dang anything mentioning Wagner group is being flagged off the main page, I could see why some people would react that way when there’s a 20 articles shared about the same thing in an hour, but it’s a bit disturbing that there’s currently zero articles on the front page about this

Quit using HN for general news. Go to your favourite news website, they all have a live section about this unfolding event. I could not care less what software engineers have to say on the matter.

I mean, I get your point that others programmers are not usually were I go for political wisdom. But it's not like mainstream news website have a better alternative for discussion either. Their comment sections tend to be completely saturated with far right incel fanaticism and low brow outrage. HN, at least, is not that.

Re: Russia 'Coup' Live Forecast

#150

Post by ModernMech »

sph wrote: post #144
ModernMech wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slashdot used to get complaints like this all the time (maybe still does, wouldn't know). They would be followed by a recitation of the Slashdot motto: "News for nerds, stuff that matters. This is a story that matters." Usually shut people up immediately. HN also suffers nerds not wanting to hear about anything except nerd shit, but we don't have a handy shorthand to shut down these tedious complaints.

[flagged]

The obvious solution for everyone taking the time to comment and complain about how much they don't want to read what they're reading, is for them to just to not read it and move on. That's why the complaints are so tedious.
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