I replied there.

You won’t hear this often in mainstream media but NATO expansionism

Dont sovereign countries have the right to join alliances? Would you support the US invading Mexico if Mexico joins a chinese led alliance? Would you support a cuban invasion during the Cold War for similar reasons?

the involvement of neo-nazi far right paramilitary groups in the Maidan revolution in Ukraine were legitimate grievances for Russia.

Putin is also supported by neo-nazis. The premiere russian military organization in Ukraine was named Wagner. What is your argument here? Shitty people follow shitty ideologies. You fight with the people you have, not with the people you want to have. This is problematic but it isnt as if Ukraine was left with many alternatives.

Ukraine is not that different to Russia in the end. Both have insane corruption issues and both have neonazis. Neither is an excuse to invade anyone or to not help the victims of an invasion.

Russia’s resources are vast and they are supported by China. Ukraine is backed by the deep pockets of NATO.

Russia has the gdp of Italy. Russia is big in terms of geographical area but not really in terms of economy. If you think Russia has vast resources, wait till you find out about the resources the West has. It’s all about political will.

And China doesnt really support Russia, at least not in terms of military help, at least not for the moment. China supports Russia as much as Turkey supports it, ie it facilitates trade and takes advantage of Russia’s lack of alternatives when it comes to trading.

Over half a million troops on both sides have been killed

Casualties are not dead. It is dead+injured.

A diplomatic solution three years ago could have possibly prevented all that.

What diplomatic solution would have prevented Russia from invading? Should have the West pre-emptively sanctioned and cut off Russia from the world economy in order to prevent the invasion? Should the West have said “ok, we wont let Ukraine join NATO and EU”? Should countries not have the right to choose what they do?

Even during the early stages of invasion, Macron legitimately thought he could stop it, he still wanted to keep the bridge with Russia alive. Go back and read some articles. Now Macron is one of the most anti-Russia politicians in the world? Why? Because he eventually realized that there was no alternative and that Putin was bullshitting him the whole time.

In Russia’s mind there are 2 types of countries, sovereign countries where rules do not apply to (the US, China, Russia) and minor countries that are just following what their “master” country tells them. It is inconceivable to the russian mind that 2 countries could freely associate with each other. Hence the whole “NATO expansion” narrative. As if NATO tanks marched in and forced those countries to join it.

The exact opposite happened actually. Eastern Europe was so afraid even after the USSR collapse, that some of them blackmailed NATO to let them join. Poland literally threatened to get their own nukes if they werent allowed to join NATO.

Ask yourself, why would all eastern european countries want to join NATO? Your answer is the Ukraine invasion. They wanted to join because they didnt want to be like Ukraine is now.

So invade your country, grab a few parts, then we have a ceasefire and a diplomatic solution where i keep the land that i already got. And then i repeat it. Is this a “pro-peace” stand? Or is it a “pro-conquering” stance, that enables this behaviour?

Would he have the same opinion about nazi Germany invading and conquering other countries? Maybe a peace for our time kind of deal?

Greeks living in current western Turkey were called Ionians.

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

They were mostly athenean settlers, which is why when Persia conquered them, they asked Athens for help. Athens helped them but the ionian revolt failed and Persia was super pissed. The persian emperor had his servant reminding him daily to “remember the athenians”.

This is the main reason behind the persian invasion of mainland Greece. The persians burnt Athens to the ground, which eventually led to Alexander the OK burning Persepolis(Persian Empire’s Capital) to the ground(a couple centuries later).

Since turks came from the East, Ionians were kinda the first greeks they met, so they decided that all greeks are Ionians(Yunans). Or other non greeks in the East were already calling greeks “yunans” and turks just adopted that terminology too. Especially since that term had been mostly depreciated by the time the turks arrived to the neighbourhood.

Most of Sicily was a greek and Syracuse was a greek colony. In fact Archimedes helped defend it against the romans. Most of southern Italy was greek, before Rome became big(and conquered other italians, greeks and carthaginians).

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

And even after the romans conquered “everything”, greek culture was still dominant since the romans were greekaboos(and greek culture was everywhere because of Alexander the OK).

They have US military bases there

There are no US military bases in Cyprus. There are british ones(since Cyprus used to be part of the British Empire).

And there is 0% chance that Cyprus would let israeli military launch attacks from Cyprus.

Nor is there much strategic reason to do so, unless Hezbollah has some s-300/400 and Israel needs to go around them and attack from a different direction. But they dont. And even if they had, Cyprus has basically no reason to allow Israel to do that and there is 0 precedent for that either.

I think it is just Hezbollah being an attention whore.

It’s also available on hbo max.

Cyrillic is literally greek+glagolitic and it was partly a diplomatic creation of the Eastern Roman Empire(aka Byzantine Empire), in order to bring the slavs culturally closer to them.

Russians have nothing to do with it, other than them claiming they are the continuation of Eastern Roman Empire, something which is kinda laughable but whatever dont let your dreams be dreams.

Normal memory isnt supposed to be 100% reliable. Thats why you have ECC memory, which is used on mission critical computers(servers). It’s more expensive and more reliable but normal memory is reliable enough for most consumer uses and cheaper, thats why it is the default.

Normal DDR5 modules have something like a “light ecc” function built in but there are actual DDR5 ECC modules that are obviously better.

PS Your motherboard needs to support ECC memory in order to use ECC memory modules.

It is chinese owned but Volvo is still a thing in Sweden. Geely bought them(Volvo Cars), gave them infinite money, so that Volvo could design and make cars like the 2nd gen xc90. In return Geely acquired the technology and know how on how to make quality cars.

Nowadays, Volvo can combine their world leading car design with Geely’s electric vehicle platforms. Thats how you get a car like upcoming volvo ex30, that is cheap and (probably) good.

When Volvo was owned by Ford, it was about to go the way of the Dodo(aka Saab). Geely saved it and made it a competitive car brand.

From what i have read, it was a freelancer dude who wrote 1 article for Al Jazeera, 5+ years ago. I dont know why there is this need to make everything so biased/black and white.

No, it isnt anything like that. The EU elections are different than the national ones and they arent explicitly connected in any way.

But they are implicitly connected. His party just did very badly in the EU elections. He could technically continue to govern till the next national elections or he could go to early national elections and ask the voters “hey, you didnt vote for me in the EU elections, do you still want me to rule this country or not? Please confirm that you still continue to support me”.

Basically Macron is saying “You just saw how fucked things are, with the far right getting over 30% of the votes in the EU elections. Vote for me or the fascists will win”. It is a move intended to rally the voters to his party but he also risks losing the elections(resulting in a fascist government).

As a general rule, in many countries the governing party does worse in the EU elections, because the EU elections are often used as an opportunity to vote for small/minor political parties or protest vote. The EU parliament isnt as legislatively relevant. They dont make laws, they just approve/reject laws proposed by the EU Commision.

The EU Commision isnt directly elected by the voters. The european country governments appoint EU Commission members(one from each country) and the EU parliament votes for the EU Commission leader. This is a point of contention.

Technically it is “democratic” because eventually everything comes down to either national european governments(who are democratically elected) or the EU parliament(which is also democratically elected). But many people think it is weird to have the most powerful EU institution appointed instead of directly elected. The procedure isnt as transparent as people would like and it involves a lot of backdoor “politicking”.

PS On the other hand, directly electing the EU Commission would give its members a lot more political power, basically on par or higher with the elected country leaders. Being directly elected greatly increases your political power.

Reminder that Mirage 2000 is the only plane to have shot down an F-16. A greek Mirage 2000 shot down a turkish F-16. The event was kept secret in both countries for almost 20 years, to avoid escalation. Greece still today denies that it shot down the F-16. From wikipedia

On the eighth of October 1996, seven months after the escalation of the Imia/Kardak crisis, a Greek Mirage 2000 reportedly fired an R.550 Magic II missile and shot down a Turkish F-16D over the Aegean Sea near Chios island. The Turkish pilot died, while the co-pilot ejected and was rescued by Greek forces. In August 2012, after the downing of a RF-4E on the Syrian Coast, Turkish Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz confirmed that the Turkish F-16D was shot down by a Greek Mirage 2000 with an R.550 Magic II in 1996 after allegedly violating Greek airspace near Chios island. Greece denies that the F-16 was shot down. Both Mirage 2000 pilots reported that the F-16 caught fire and they saw one parachute.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Turkish_F-16_shootdown

The turks had almost certainly shot down a greek military helicopter earlier and that was also kept a secret/both sides claim it was an accidental crash.

PS The surviving turkish F-16 pilot was immediately returned to Turkey after the rescue.

1. Lego horizon Adventures looks neat, hopefully it has more depth than other lego games but i dont expect much. At least it looks pretty. Atm it isnt on steam, but it is announced that it will be.

2. I am very hyped for Space Marine 2. This might be the best warhammer 40k game ever.

3. I am optimistic for Star Wars Outlaws by the division devs(i liked division 1 and 2). But it isnt even on steam, so it will fail.

4. Civilization 7 is definitely one of the most anticipated games ever.

5. And hopefully Battle Aces will revive the rts genre.

Seems pretty mid and derivative.