It astounds me that even in 2026 people are still regurgitating this standard-issue Russian propaganda canard about "Ukraine already lost the war", consciously or subconsciously. While the war is going on, you can make equally vacuous claims that "Russia already lost the war" with about as much cause.
Ukraine is fighting for its survival against a fascist and colonialist invader that aims to end its nationhood. The final outcome is unclear.
The real tragedy is that intelligent people like you buy the EU propaganda that "Ukraine is winning this war" without truly understanding what is happening on the ground.
The stark facts are simple - nearly 20% of Ukranian territory has been strategically captured by the Russians. Ukraine has no real chance of getting it back. Ukraine's counter-offensive has failed twice. It cannot launch any more counter-offensive because it doesn't have the men - any counter-offensive by recalling men from other parts of the frontline would weaken the defence line. So any new counter offensive launched needs to really bloody the Russians to completely back off, or the whole frontline will collapse and Ukraine will face a complete military defeat. Whatever Russian territory Ukraine had occupied has been recovered by the Russians. In case Ukraine doesn't accede to Russian terms, Russia has also been working on a plan B that entails systematically destroying Ukraine's industrial infrastructure (demilitarisation through de-industrialisation - https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/94244 ).
All Ukraine does now is to launch drones and missile attacks at Russian infrastructure for western and social media PR (as it is the only way EU will keep funding Zelensky's government and the war), while it is forced to retreat in the frontlines every week as the Russians slowly keep advancing.
>The real tragedy is that intelligent people like you buy the EU propaganda that "Ukraine is winning this war"
All depends on your victory conditions, tovarish.
>In case Ukraine doesn't accede to Russian terms, Russia has also been working on a plan B that entails systematically destroying Ukraine's industrial infrastructure
You don't seem to be following this war very closely. Short of nukes, Russia has already done everything it possibly can, including trying to freeze old people in their flats during cold snaps, multiple times. They've been targeting industrial infrastructure since day one, but interestingly what's been changing is that Ukraine is increasingly playing that game too, focusing on demilitarizing Russia by targeting its defence industry and increasingly taking its oil exports offline. Turns out two can play this whole de-industrialisation game. It remains to be seen who succeeds, but things aren't looking as good on this front for Russia as they did in 2022 or 2023, that's for sure.
>All Ukraine does now is to launch drones and missile attacks at Russian infrastructure for western and social media PR
Well and also to do things like take 46% of Russia's oil export capacity offline just when oil prices were soaring. You know, small trifles.
>while it is forced to retreat in the frontlines every week as the Russians slowly keep advancing.
Slowly is doing all the heavy lifting here, to borrow a common AI slop refrain. Russia is now losing more men per month than it can recruit, somewhere in the vicinity of 30-40 thousand. Ukraine is extending the drone kill-zone to 30+ km from the so called "front line" (more of a zone). It produces millions of drones and is at the forefront of a drone revolution in warfare. In other words, its demilitarization is progressing swimmingly, but for the minus sign.
> All depends on your victory conditions, tovarish.
The break with factual reality in your post is enlightening. As is the misinformation of Russia "running out of men" when that is the situation Ukraine is facing. There is no "victory", is the point. There is no path to defeating Russia without a nuclear war. That Ukraine can bring about the economic collapse of Russia is a delusional fantasy.
You are just lazily "no u"-ing and projecting at this point, and your uninformed cheerleading of Russian fascism is profoundly uninteresting, so there's nothing further to discuss with you. You're either a Russian Z-bag, or one of those tedious people who make up their minds on a topic they mistakenly think they mastered and then shut themselves off from contrary information. Case in point, the hilarious timing of you saying the Russian economy isn't nearing collapse, when it's one of the main topics of discussion on even on Russian TV and press. Which of course, if you're the second type, you can't watch/read.
What is clear that you have no understanding of either superpower politics, military capabilities or how economies work. You are clearly one of those shameless EU cheerleaders who don't care about Ukrainians getting slaughtered and their country destroyed, as long as they "weaken" Russia in the process.
If all you've got is full political power and control over propaganda networks, your won't get the USSR. You'll get Hungary between 2010 and 2026. It works well, but in the critical moments when things start going wrong you need to kill people to maintain power, or else your nascent autocracy collapses as quick as Orban's.
Well, actually I've long held the view that accusations of astroturfing, shilling, being a Chinese/Russian/CIA/MAGA/Soros/Martian bot, etc, are just people being too lazy to take on arguments they dislike with well-reasoned arguments of their own, but needing some sort of a quick "exit strategy" out of a conversation. Maybe this isn't true on Facebook, but here or on Reddit it is always far more likely that you're talking to an actual, possibly very wrong/bad, human being.
What is perfectly reasonable and rational is to only respond to clearly written arguments with some evidence of thought and time invested in them, and to consider others to be too low-effort or spammy to invest time in responding to. But guess what? Real humans spam for free, they're mostly not paid to do so by the PRC or George Soros.
Rich people aren't going to find themselves needing to sleep under a bridge, so the law really only exists as a constraint on the poor. Duh. The flex that "well a rich guy couldn't do it either" is A) at best a myopic misunderstanding perpetuated by out of touch people and B) hopelessly naive, because anny punishment for the rich guy actually sleeping under a bridge is so laughably small it may as well not even exist. Hence, the whole bit of "a legal system to keep these accountable, but not for me".
Okay, you explained what Anatole France meant, which is probably helpful for those few who didn't get it from the quote itself. Perhaps now you can explain what on earth this has to do with Anthropic not wanting to let other for-profit businesses mooch off its investment of time, brainpower and money?
You explained what “rich and poor are equally forbidden from sleeping under bridges” means, but not what this has to do with the statement that one is free to do their own scraping and training, which I’m pretty sure is what kspacewalk was asking.
Off-topic, but I think this AI-generated post (probably just modified for clarity/language rather than full slop) could have used an additional prompt to dial down the combativeness ("overreacting") and reduce text length by 2x without losing any useful detail.
Parents ought to be held held responsible for how they care for their kids. This isn't just true of their use of social media and devices, but also when it comes to teaching them to look both ways when crossing the street; making sure they understand the concept of private parts, consent and personal space; making them understand the dangers of alcohol, and many other things.
Does any of that obviate the need for safe urban design, anti-CSAM and anti-molestation laws, or laws prohibiting the local dive from serving a cold one to my 11 year old? Will simple appeals for "parental responsibility" suffice as an argument for undoing those child safety systems we put in place, or will they be met with derisive dismissal? Why should your "solution" be treated any differently? In fact you offer none. Yours is the non-solution solution, the not-my-problem solution, the go-away solution. Not good enough on its own, sorry.
For 30 (60's to 90's) years we told parents "It's 10pm do you know where your kids are", with an AD, on TV. We came home to empty houses and go in with a key around our neck.
Parents are afraid to let their kids out of their site, and for those of us who have been pragmatic because we understand the data (and not the fear) they tend to look down on us.
Talk to any one who is Gen X and they will tell you that we basically got thrown out side all day (and had fun). Parents cant say "go outside and play" so kids end up getting handed devices... and they are going to play and explore and do the dumb things that gets them in trouble.
> those child safety systems we put in place
Except we have denormalized things that SHOULD be perfectly fine. And as fewer kids get to go outside unattended with friends, it pushes their peers to go "online" to socialize.
Maybe the government needs to run commercials "Its 10am, why isnt your child outside playing with the neighbor kids unsupervised"
As sibling comments point out, parents are already overly held responsible for how they care for their kids. To an absurd amount.
I have had CPS called on me by an overbearing school administrator. Have you had that happen to you? Let me tell you, it's not a fun experience.
Enough of this "blame the parents" mentality! Ironic given that the goal for all these platforms is growth at all costs. Where do you think "growth" comes from, after all? If you make being a parent so goddamn difficult that it's more rational to just not do it, guess what, poof goes your sweet, sweet growth.
So tired of this line of thinking. The parents are put into an impossible situation. Stuck between kids who by definition and by design will test the boundaries that they're given, and tech platforms that are propped up with not just trillions of dollars of valuation, but the societal expectation that you engage with them. Want your kids to compete in sports? Well, they need to have WhatsApp and Instagram to keep track of team events!
Give me a break. Equating controlling social media and devices to "look both ways when crossing the street" is disingenuous at best. There are no companies that make billions of dollars in advertising revenue telling your kids to jaywalk. But Facebook gladly weaponizes their algorithm to drive "engagement" - and, surprise, children with still-forming prefrontal cortices are drawn to content that reinforce their natural self-criticisms and doubts. So now my child, who has to be on Instagram to keep track of sports schedules, is also force fed toxic content because that's what a mechanical algorithm thinks is most "engaging" based on my derived psychological and demographic profile.
You want to talk about CSAM? X proudly proclaims that they have every right to produce deep-fake pornography with the faces of underage children. What action shall I, as an individual parent, take if my 15 year old girl's face is suddenly pasted onto sexually explicit video and widely shared thanks to xAI's actions? Shall I be held responsible for how I "let this happen" to my child?
You seem to imply in your reply that I disagree with you, hence necessitating a polemic style. I would have thought the last few sentences of my comment make it clear where I stand on simplistic appeals to "parental responsibility".
Why don't we start with a mechanism for user registration that does not involve a simple pinky-swear "over 13?" checkbox and then continue the conversation about further steps.
How would that hold anybody responsible? What did you have in mind with respect to parental accountability? Does anything other than the legal system actually have power to make changes when it comes to bad parents?
Gatekeeping is trivially turned off by those who won't footgun themselves by dragging literal garbage from the Internet into their system. It is a good feature for most macOS users. They only care about your verification woes a tiniest bit, if at all. They need a walled garden, Apple gives one to them, it's a product-market fit, while power users are given a reasonable off-ramp.
The other issues are more serious, especially macOS 25, but again, how much of that deeply affects the vast majority of actual paying customers who buy Macbooks? As long as Apple learned their lesson and will do another one of those bugfix OS releases they've done before, no long lasting harm done.
Using credit cards for age verification is certainly dumb, but age verification is coming and most people see the need for it. You can disagree that there is a need for it (entirely different discussion), but you must acknowledge the broad support for it at least.
Ukraine is fighting for its survival against a fascist and colonialist invader that aims to end its nationhood. The final outcome is unclear.
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