D61 [any]

Ukraine legacy is on display as the Administration refuses to level with Congress and the American public about its strategy to win the war.

I guess nobody really cares to keep up the act that the USA had nothing to do with instigating this war and keeping it going all these years anymore, huh?

Probably going to need to search for communities that prioritize privacy and use crypto currencies to keep their transactions private instead of searching for crypto currency communities directly.

Depends on the store.

Your non chain store that has a loyalty program, probably doesn’t have the interest or capital to pay some third party to manage the data collection and analysis to try to direct market things to you.

Worked at a co-op grocery store for a while. The “owners” could use their owner number to keep track of their purchases to count towards their patronage refund amount and it also allowed some limited ability to look at full transaction information to deal with misrings, returns without recipts, etc. in the decade that I worked there, there was no effort or interest (even though the people running the coop at the highest level were definitely “business goober” types) to try to use the info for direct marketing or to sell to a data broker.

Second paragraph…

A former top U.S. commander and a senior [defense] analyst with deep ties to Ukraine both say no one should be quick to draw hasty conclusions from the events of the past two weeks.

heh.

In his nightly address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s daring military incursion aims to create a buffer zone to prevent further attacks by Moscow across the border.

If you can’t keep your own territory, you’re not actually creating a buffer zone.

The first assumption demolished by this operation was that Ukraine wouldn’t be able to regain the initiative until next year.

Huh? Ukraine is currently in a holding position within its own country, throwing a bunch of troops at a bunch of small towns in Russia and claiming it as a strategic victory is right up there with the US military in Afghanistan parking a platoon of grunts in an empty house every 20 miles and coloring in the map of Afghanistan with the “secured” color on their PowerPoint presentations.

Some observers have speculated that Ukraine was trying to draw Russian troops away from the Donbas to relieve pressure on its forces there.

This is a reasonable assessment of the Ukraine gamble…

If that was the case, Karber said, the gamble “really hasn’t paid off” and he fears the Ukrainians will soon face a determined counterattack on one or both of the shoulders of the salient.

… and Ukraine seems to have lost their bet.

“I think that it’s been clear for some time that Russia does not have the ability to knock Ukraine out of the war as long as the West continues to provide even the modest amounts that we are providing now.”

Or we can phrase it slightly differently as, “to the last Ukranian.”

“It seems like they’re just trying to do more and more of the same, and certainly they will have lost thousands of experienced troops and leaders that are now being replaced by those who are not as well trained or experienced. Where is the bottom of that barrel for Russia?”

Where is the bottom of the barrel for Ukraine? So long as open warfare is happening, untrained troops are going to have “opportunities” to get experience. Until there aren’t any more bodies to throw into the meat grinder, nobody is going to see the bottom of the barrel.

Nu-Mad Max 3: Boomers doing the War Boyz “witness me” bit with riding lawnmowers, weed eaters, and mayonaise.

riding lawnmower comes screaming out of the garage at its max speed of 5 mph, the driver dual wielding leaf blowers

Before Roblox there was this…

“Boning”, black and white print 1996

It would instantly de-fed from all the cool people, all the shitty leminitors probably would be reabsorbed back into fed-Reddit and those Reddit clone lemmy comms would die.

“Anti-slave owner posting is back on the menu comrades!”

I’d say its time to disengage from the conversation.

Having the conversations and sticking to your points is good and all but they didn’t come to their opinions based on “facts and logic” so you’re not going to facts and logic them into a different opinion.

Possibly try to pay attention to when your friend has gotten to the point in the conversation that they’ve effectively shut down and wind down the conversation when it gets to that point. Talk about something else, everybody goes outside and touches grass, or just call it a day.

Misread the post title, thought everybody jumped and left you all alone.

See that parachute over there folks? Its rigged! Rigged I tell ya. Don’t trust it. If I jump out of a plane with that 'chute on and fall to the ground, to my untimely demise, it would be because it was rigged.

salute To your efforts in the posting trenches.

Given how much effort there has been over the … centuries? … to both make rules to create fairness and find ways around those rules to gain an advantage, if Testosterone was the one defining factor for all sports in all situations then there would just be a competitive breakdown for each sport by a player’s T-score.

There isn’t.

So, much in the same way that combat sports don’t have a “bone density” test and sorts boxers, wrestlers, MMA fighters, etc into Bone Density A/B/C/etc classes, I’m very inclined to view all arguments that sports should be broken down by Gender or Assigned Sex At Birth markers to keep the sports fair/competitive, as not very compelling the longer these ‘debates’ rage on.

“Fuck your magic, free Lilo and Stitch”

I shout as I start downloading Lilo and Stitch from a torrent

At this point they get to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Not sure which was first , the Atari 1600(?) PAC-Man or Pole Position.

Hamas: Shit, one of our guys got upset and killed an Israeli prisoner. This isn’t good.

Israel: We have a moral right to r*pe any Palestinian prisoners we want to.

Spray foam is still legal, so there is no way to gain compensation, and the industry is not regulated – neither the installation nor the removal – so choices are open to abuse by companies supplying these services.”

Homeowners say they were misled by the government, which exempted the insulation from VAT to promote uptake, as well as issuing grants worth up to two thirds of the installation costs. They feel this suggested the insulation was being endorsed.

Sounds like a “well there’s your problem” situation.

Self defense is self defense, would we expect some different behavior from a country being attacked from outside interests with publicly accessible end to end encryption services?