Apparently, it was first reported that the F-16 was shot down. Then the story was pulled and replaced with one about it crashing on its own accord.

If the guy who is being reported as “the best pilot in Ukraine” crashed an F-16 during a mission, that says much worse things about the Ukrainian Air Force.

Mind you, Russia has sophisticated anti-air capabilities and can easily dominate Ukrainian airspace if they need to. But, sure, that billion-dollar high-tech jet fighter crashed itself.

losers want to say that it’s pay to win, and that’s the main criticism that you’ll see when you look into the game. The second criticism you’ll find is people being sinophobic about the game’s developers being Chinese.

I haven’t put a single cent into the game, but that hasn’t put me at a disadvantage against the players who do buy currency. If you understand tactics and make smart choices, the gear tier of your enemies never actually matters. It’s not pay to win, because you’d have to actually win as a result of putting money in.

is anybody else playing Arena Breakout Infinite?

I’ve been playing it since it was released to EA and I’m loving it.

moving to a reply for a similar story (really it’s a rant) of my own.

My party had a few anarchists in it, they made up something like 10% of the party at a point. A small enough percentage that you can simply ignore them during votes or party motions, but a big enough number that you couldn’t ignore them during discussions.

There was one Anarchist who would volunteer themself to speak on behalf of all Anarchists at every discussion, taking personal issue with anything that could possibly upset an Anarchist. A member of the party might want to simply talk about the great technological innovations that happened in the USSR, and that Anarchist would find a way to steer the discussion towards “USSR bad”. A member might want to discuss the guerrilla fighting in the Cuban revolution, the Anarchist would go on and on about how Cuba is “an authoritarian dictatorship”. This goes so on, and so forth. And every time we tried to bring up the issues that were created by them doing that, the 29 other Anarchists would stand up with them and claim we were trying to make them leave.

Leadership thought it would be a good idea to make them their own wing within the party, so they could be autonomous and have their own discussions apart from the main party discussions. They treated it like we were moving them to the “kiddie’s table” and threatened to start disrupting other party functions. A few members of leadership decided, without consulting all of leadership, to appoint that very vocal Anarchist to a seat within leadership to keep them from complaining as much.

Nobody abused the power of leadership in our party like they did. They would make unilateral decisions without asking anyone else.

Later on, we would find out that the whole thing was an ego trip for them. They liked feeling like they were at odds against any authority, so they’d put themself into positions to be at odds with party leadership. When they were put into leadership, they had no idea how difficult the position actually was, so they simply refused to act within the guidelines.

Reading this made me remember how much I do not miss being a party leader.

There are two good ways to can try to handle this situation, and both may look like hostility if egos are at play.

The first is to simply talk to the Trot directly in private and try to direct them towards better historians and convince them to read ML theory. If they’re receptive, they might shift their ideological position and stop being a nuisance. If it fails, they could claim that you’re trying to “bully” them into being a “Stalinist”.

The second is to talk to either party leadership or fellow party members and try to get them to agree on more rigid party lines. If successful, it’ll become easier to keep conversations on track and productive, as most of your party members will agree that tirades against the USSR aren’t helpful. You can pair this with readings or studies of the USSR to help the less informed members of the party come to a mutual understanding. If it fails, they could accuse you of trying to co-opt the party and get you kicked out.

These are the kinds of murky waters I had to try to navigate daily within my party when it existed, inner-party politics is a hard game to play, and it usually results in battles of egos.

All I’m seeing is people putting themselves into hysterics talking about it on social media, demanding that it has to be staged and his death would be an objectively good thing. And it’s all just people who don’t know what they’re talking about, but refuse to ever shut up.

The right is going to retaliate for this eventually, but Trump getting off with only a minor injury was the best possible outcome of this. If the injury was serious or fatal, the fascist bandit armies would come out in droves. It would be worse for everyone. Remember a few years ago when the right kept doing terror attacks in progressive spaces? Imagine how much worse that would be if their dear leader was murdered on camera. Liberals really need to stop celebrating the idea of this attempted assassination, all it did was open a door that none of us should want to go through. This is a rallying cry for the right, this is a green light for violence. The far-right will use this event for years to come to justify murders and hate crimes.

I won’t discount the possibility that it’s staged, but this one doesn’t ring that bell for me.

It’s very possible that some liberal with a rifle and a dream thought he’d become a hero. Given the media coverage that Trump gets from the “”“left”“”, it’s most likely that he’s just the victim of someone who lost the mental health battle.

By all accounts, he had to have been actually injured based on the wound and the blood pattern. More than what a razor blade could do. As well, Trump would’ve needed to make the incision himself. It’s extremely unlikely that he would’ve agreed to do something like this while he’s already leading in the polls and doesn’t need a stunt.

His reaction is also normal for someone who has just been grazed by a bullet. The first thing our body will do in an extreme situation is fill our brain with adrenaline, numbing pain. It’s well documented that soldiers could be shot more than once in combat before fully realizing what’s happened, this is even more true for grazes. An injury like this won’t be fatal, and won’t cause any long-term damage. His ear will get patched up, and he’ll be back to normal with nothing but a scar and possible mental anguish.

And I’d like to close with a personal gripe, I’m seeing way too many people who aren’t big into marksmanship not understanding why the shot missed. The head is a target the size of a cantaloupe, and a man like Trump never stops moving. From the noise of the rounds in the footage, I estimate a minimum distance of 150m. That is a damn difficult shot to make, of course it’s going to miss. Then factor in that the shooter took (I counted but could be wrong) three shots. After that first round, it gets significantly harder to keep the rifle on target. The two follow-up shots might as well have been directed at random. Media has made so many people believe that hitting shots like that is easy, but it really isn’t. Please stop with this one.

There’s not a lot that can be done if they’re unwilling to learn.

You could try to explain the lies colonialists told, and the systems of oppression they built. You could try to show them the direct results of colonialism, like the famines, the reservations, etc. But if they’re closed off from accepting that colonialism was an evil system, perpetrated by white supremacists, you won’t be able to fix their issue.

The simplest explanation is that the American “left” is rightwing, because they’ve been told that actual leftism is bad.

We’re only told about leftist ideology or politics in the context of “these bad people in the past did bad things”, and many Americans refuse to actually tackle those lies. because of this, no one in the American “left” is willing to be anti-capitalist in any way that actually matters. Nor are they willing to use materialism in their dialectics, because their political education comes from Liberalism, so they’re more willing to listen to right-wing talking points and integrate them into their views.

This is why you’ll see Americans who’ll call themselves “leftists” pair a statement for working rights with a statement against immigration. Or you’ll see them decry the horrors of fascism, then support whatever new war NATO has wrought.

Anarchists will really try to rip us apart for being “authoritarian”, but when you ask them how their system would deal with crimes, upholding socialism, or maintaining any semblance of order, their responses are almost always far more extreme than ours.

Genuinely had an Anarchist call me an “evil person” and a “future baby killer” for saying that I’m ML. Then when I asked them about their proposed methods for preventing counter-revolution, they described a system where anyone can murder anyone else if the victim was suspected of wanting to act against the revolution. No trial, no investigation, just the word of the murderer.

Edit to add another thought to; “their responses are almost always far more extreme than ours.”

If it’s not more extreme, it’s lax to the point of being nothing. So the poles are either a system of total chaos, or substanceless idealism.

me when a fellow ML says “tankie”;

me when literally anyone else does;

“made them the dominate voice”

bro, tankies made lemmygrad for tankies

I did just a little bit ago.

Their take on the conflict in Palestine follows the logic of Zionist organizations, and generally, they show that they don’t know much about the world outside of their narrow Western perspective. So, good fuckin’ riddance.

the one instance I’ve hated the most has been .world, solely because 9/10 times when there’s a pending report, that report was about a .worlder saying some horrible shit. and that .worlders will report our comments and posts for “violence advocation” when all we’re doing is discussing the conflict.

holy fuckin’ hell, Anarchists really will monetise their ideology.

It seems like every time I see a shop that sells leftist clothing it’s an Anarchist.

Also, most of their clothing looks hella bad and it makes me wonder if they made the designs themselves or if the designs are stolen. Also, if they hate AES and capitalism, where do they source their shirts from? Seems pretty damn hypocritical to shit on AES, and then utilize AES labour for your own profit.

“China isn’t real Socialism because they have billionaires and corporations”

“Nordic Socialism is a better form of Socialism than Marxism-Leninism, because it’s democratic and happiness is high in those countries”

Meanwhile, China has democratic elections and scores high on citizen happiness, and the Nordic countries also have billionaires and corporations. China has a ML government, while the Nordic countries are capitalist. Make it make sense.

It’s a long read, so to sum up;

Ukraine doesn’t have enough munitions or vehicles to counter Russian numbers. Ukraine isn’t communicating with DC - leading to NATO being unable to catalogue the conflict accurately. DC is using Ukraine’s propaganda numbers from a sheer lack of knowledge while having meticulous & exact numbers for Russian forces.

all-in-all Ukraine lacks any real ability to continue for much longer, while Russia doesn’t seem to have any end in sight. It doesn’t provide estimates for how much longer the war will last (as far as I can see) but there’s clearly no long-term planning on the side of NATO. What may have started as an effort by NATO to weaken Russia has become an Uno reverse card, instead draining their stockpiles for a government that gives nothing of note in return.

in my very unprofessional opinion, based on what this report says, perhaps the war will end sometime either in the summer or the fall. I can’t see a reality where Ukraine’s able to keep up after this spring.

I’ve written out long-form versions of my radicalization journey. But I’m realizing that I may have always leaned towards the political left, and simply needed an awakening moment to know it.

you really can’t win talking to a liberal. Anything you have to say that would persuade them to take a more nuanced stance on an issue, media’s already rotted their brain on.

Wanting them to understand that backing the Ukraine government is the worst of the three possible options? They’ll call it Russian propaganda, and potentially also imply that you’re a Russian agent. (real cold war shit)

Wanting them to understand that China is objectively better than the US in almost every way, and that the media has a habit of making stuff up about the country and the government? They’ll go on about Tiananmen square, the Uyghur camps, and “social credits”, and likely say racist shit casually.

Wanting them to understand that North Korea is a much freer nation than they assume, that’s arguably better than South Korea? They start shouting about government-mandated haircuts, torture of civilians, wild dogs eating people, etc.

in 2016 I corrected some liberals on reddit about North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. It was literally just provable technical data, with a lil “and that’s why y’all should be calm” thrown in. They called me a “Russian bot”, a “Trumpie”, and a “Republican troll” because I shattered their fearmongering.

There is literally no winning with them. Nothing you can say matters. And over it all, the smugness and “better than you” attitude makes the argument twice as grating.

If my options were between arguing with fascists / far-righters or liberals, I’d pick the fashies any day. At least their beliefs are rigid and calculatable. They’re not going to fold in on themselves in a month and start arguing opposite of what they were, they’re not going to suddenly change all of their stances depending on the topic at hand. Liberals will tell you genocide is bad when China is supposedly doing it, but when a white nation is doing it suddenly it’s okay. They’ll say locking children in cages is evil when it’s under Trump, but don’t say a word about it under Obama and defend it under Biden.

• Recently I introduced a group of “socialist” liberals to the idea of “radical anti-fascism”. That being the idea that leftists should be organizing into militant assemblies to counter the growth of far-right militias. They acted like that was the worst thing they’ve ever heard in their lives, seemingly just because an ML said it.

• Liberals are congratulating and celebrating Daria Dugina’s death by domestic terrorism, seemingly just because it happened in Russia and could have been done by a Ukraine-oriented group. When the IRA was doing it, it was unexeptable. When possible pro-Ukrainians do it to our geopolitical enemy, it’s something to celebrate.

Xi please liberate USA