patrick.net

richwicks says

I don't get it. I just see the whole thing as terribly tragic and preventable and Ukraine would win or lose no matter what I thought. Douglas Macgregor says it's like 300,000 Ukrainians dead, I hope that's not right.

Preventable. Russia was the invader. So yeah, it didn't need to get to this point. Macgregor is a dip shit and has been proven wrong for 3 years. That's the last person I'd bring up with Russia/Ukraine. Anyone that even mentions that dumb fucks name needs their head checked.

Ukraine won't "win" this assault on them. Russia has lost it in the long game. I shouldn't have to explain why Russia already lost. It's obvious as can be. You guys are counting bodies. Not strategy. Have a conversation when you wake up.

WookieMan says

I shouldn't have to explain why Russia already lost.

@WookieMan please explain it to me. I think Russia is clearly winning.

Patrick says

Usually such laws are limited to large websites.

But also, isn't it an overt violation of the First Amendment for any law to restrict what I can link to?

Responding to both points:

You got the money to fight this if they come after you?

I mean, the IRS are going after VENMO payments of $600 instead of the rich big fish.

Look, explain what your objection is.

Don't be do garbage of "this violates terms of service" - explain how it does. I can't correct if you can't explain where I'm wrong. You are just requiring me to fumble around to guess. I'll keep doing this until Patrick explains it, and you're not Patrick is my bet.

@Patrick, give whomever my email address. Let him explain it, and I will report what is written and let you judge.

-------------------------------------

OK, I give up, what is the objection here?

I am sick of talking to people who insist that reality isn't reality. Ukraine was overthrown by the US, there's no disputing this, it went into 8 years of civil war as a result where the US funded and supported the Western side. The Minsk Accords were scuttled by Boris Johnson and undoubtedly by the United States which would have at least HAD a chance of preventing the civil war, there ARE BSL5 labs in Ukraine that are US operated and owned and we know this because Victoria Nuland admitted it in Congress during testimony, and several billion dollars have been spent on this whole mess while killing 100's of thousands of people.

And I still, people, insist "what the US gubermint says is twoo". "Russia invaded for NO REASON, and it's all their fault this war is here".

Our government makes the same boneheaded dickhead moves over and over and over again, kills 100's of thousands of people, has gotten this nation destroyed, and so what's the best thing to do - apparently? Don't even acknowledge what is going on, and censor people who fucking do. That's me.

Because having sociopaths run a society is a great idea isn't it?

WookieMan says

Preventable. Russia was the invader.

You just don't give two fucks about reality, do you?

The most obvious coup in all of world history, where the setup of the next government was intercepted 1/2 month before the coup took place. I've shown this to you a MILLION TIMES, and you just like to play dumb, and pretend it doesn't exist.

This is why I really can't decide are you really this stupid - I can't imagine anybody being this stupid really. Or are you a propagandist, and if you're a propagandist, why? Are you paid to peddle confusion and false information? What good does that do? 95% of American have forgotten the Ukraine war, and it's easy to make them an enemy of anything, just label whoever you want to demonize as "the next Hitler".

They've done it with Saddam Hussein, Bashir al-Assad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Putin (let me make it so YOU can understand "Putler"), and they will do it again.

Why do you lie are are you really this dumb, did you forget we have ABSOLUTE PROOF that it was a CIA coup, and that Ukraine went into civil war almost IMMEDIATELY after the coup? Did you forget Victoria Nuland testified in congress we had bio-safety lab level 5's in Ukraine?

WookieMan says

Macgregor is a dip shit and has been proven wrong for 3 years.

Maybe.

WookieMan says

That's the last person I'd bring up with Russia/Ukraine. Anyone that even mentions that dumb fucks name needs their head checked.

Who are YOU bringing up? This dumb asshole?


original link

and I mean either one. The homosexual twat Vanderbilt who does nothing but lie, or the fat bearded man pretending he's a pilot who knows so little about jets, he didn't realize he can't have a fucking beard and be a jet pilot - oh and he speaks with what I THINK is a Sweedish accent?

Who the fuck would you bring up? I bring up Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt. They ARE the ones that had the conversation to pick out the next government of Ukraine before their "revolution". You will just pretend they don't exist, because you don't care about reality, at all. You just continue to lie. I consider that a very consequential moral failing. I consider you to be an immoral person because you deceive people, and you probably don't even do it for money.

WookieMan says

Ukraine won't "win" this assault on them. Russia has lost it in the long game.

Russia is doing great. I bet you never talk to Russians. Russians always felt a bit of shame they they were once a world power and lost it in 1991. They are now fighting this stupid proxy war, against the US, and winning.

Our government is run by such stupid fucking people, that they are claiming that Russia blew up the Nordstream. Russia doesn't really care, they can export to India or China, they don't need Europe, Europe needs them. Russia has better trade relationships with India and China as a result of this, sanctions don't effect them, they've rebuild some of their industrial capacity.

Who lost is the United States and Europe. The US fucked Europe by cutting off energy, and we can't supply them, not really. It's finally exposed our propaganda system as a propaganda system. "Oh, the Ukrainians used a yacht and blew up the Nordstream" - what just trivially stupid bullshit. Our propaganda is so fucking dumb, I can't believe that people quote it. My firned is convinced that the Norstream was blown up by the Russians, and I have had this conversation with him dozens of times, why would Russia blow up their own goddamned infrastructure, and he said "to blackmail Europe", well how the fuck are they going to do that if they can't turn on the gas again?

Just it's amazing that people can just believe the stupidest bullshit. You do. "Oh it's Russia's fault", yeah, the coup had nothing to do with it or the 8 year civil war and the BSL5 labs and so on. "Putler invaded for NO REASON AT ALL. I'm that fucking dumb!!" He spent 8 years trying to stop this shit, the Minsk Accords were there, Zelenskyy ran on the promise of implementing the Minsk Accords, and it was Boris Johnson and the US that stopped the implementation - but it's RUSSIA'S fault.

When I was talking to my friend a few days ago about the Nordstream, I literally can't believe that he really believes that. I have to consider that he's just fucking with me. I have attained a level of knowledge now where it's difficult not to see everybody around me as either insane, or just uneducated. Ignorance is fine, I don't mind that, but when I hear a propaganda slogan out of a person's mouth, it's shocking. "safe and effective", "Putler invaded for no reason at all" "Russia hacked our election". I know there are real genuine human beings, but whatever you are, you're not quite there.

And the exact objection is?

If somebody else has done the same thing I have, I will show it's been done to me, and you ignored it.

I give what I take. Let's see if you're objective.

----------------------------

For fuck's sake, "moderating" a comment without telling me what the fuck the fucking fucking problem is with my comment is something fucking Facebook does, or YouTube, or Twitter.

What is the objection? Is it arbitrary? I have no fucking idea how to get into another person's mind to GUESS as to what the hell you are objecting to.

Patrick says

WookieMan says

I shouldn't have to explain why Russia already lost.

WookieMan please explain it to me. I think Russia is clearly winning.

He's just full of crap. At worst, this mess will be a Pyrrhic victory for Russia. It's going to create decades if not centuries of enmity. Another big win for the Neocons that love to create as much hatred and death as possible all across the planet for absolutely no discernible gain.

Let's just celebrate evil. That's what propaganda is for, to get people to support the most awful evil garbage policies and actions.

Onvacation says

Suggestion: You don't have to use the ignore button. It is very easy to skim through known bull-shitter's posts. Occasionally they have something wise, entertaining, or informative to share. But do your own research and fact check those motherfuckers because they often spew made up shit.

How the F does @Onvacation have one more ignore than me?

How the F does @Patrick have two ignores at all? I mean "I'm coming to Admin's site to ignore the Admin" is kinda... pointless.

Patrick says

WookieMan says

I shouldn't have to explain why Russia already lost.

WookieMan please explain it to me. I think Russia is clearly winning.

They invaded and expected to take over the country. They didn't. Loss #1. Now we sit here 3 years later roughly and they're still fighting. They already had mercenaries in the East of Ukraine for years before the "official" invasion. It's not about casualties in war. They've destroyed the land and infrastructure they wanted. Loss #2 Whether you like NATO or not, they have new NATO neighbors. Loss #3.

Yet this war is still going and probably won't stop for a while. Not sure how that's winning. Russia is losing plenty of men as well. Loss #4. I guess the better question is, what is a "win" for Russia? Ukraine is fucked, won't dispute that and never have. But I fail to see how Russia is winning in the long term. Putin isn't getting any younger. There will be a power grab internally. NATO countries will continue to feed weapons to Ukraine. You have Iran firing on Israel and Russia saying it would back Iran. They couldn't even overpower a neighboring country and now potentially might have a non-neighboring country to fight? lol.

The US ain't perfect in international affairs, but Russia is definitely stretching its resources thin and has not had a declarative victory in Ukraine. We'll see in 5 years or maybe longer. But this is not what winning looks like. When you lose more men in 3 years than we did in Afghanistan AND Iraq in 20 years, again, not winning. Birth rates in Russia will drop. Men that don't want to fight will flee the country. It's a demographic nightmare for Russia. That's not winning.

Germany and the Nazis "lost" WWII and WWI. Guess what, Germany is still there. This is my point. A "win" isn't actually a win in 20 years and that's been the issue for the USSR and Russian wars in the past. Did Russian forces move 100 meters forward yesterday, sure. Did they kill 10:1 sure. All for 100 meters of land they just destroyed that they wanted. Makes total sense and is winning.....

I say the conflict, if frozen today, is a mixed mag

* NATO ended up with two new members

* More NATO members are taking defense spending with at least some grudging, slovenly interest now whereas before they haughtily disregarded any military preparedness.

* Ukraine is a demographic basketcase

* Ukriane will be an economic basketcase once it comes loan repayment time. The fun for the Ukrainian Working Man is just beginning,

* The next election in Ukraine will be a basketcase with riots, chicanery, corruption, brazen media lies, and ballot stuffing that will make 2020 look legit.

* Russia doesn't look impressive being unable to slam it's way to at least to the Dneipr with a massive manpower and material advantage and hold it. Even if every Russian soldier was crosseyed, one-legged, half-starving, and their AK jammed three times for every 30-rounds fired requiring them to spend 10 minutes clearing it under fire. Hell, if they only had SKS and unarmored wheeled trucks they should have smashed everything by sheer weight of numbers.

* Their inability to do, if their generals had been 90-year old Cold War era guys who couldn't piss outside a catheter and just ran off the old echelon strategy or some imitation of it, was a big shock to me.

* Therefore, Russia outside of Nukes is an offensive non-entity. One should not take it as being a Defensive non-entity, because the bear in his den is different than the bear outside his territory if history is any guide.

* BUT, there's simply no way Crimea or Donbas goes back to Ukraine barring a miraculous concession by Western Powers.

WookieMan says

Preventable. Russia was the invader

Russia has a history of invading and slicing off bits of other countries or supporting the secession of breakaway bits that have a majority ethnic Russian population. Now you might understand how Eastern European countries resent to this day the invasion of ethnic Russians and their then first-class status and institution of an oppressive security apparatus (not that that could ever happen in the USA), but that be the way it be.

AmericanKulak says

* BUT, there's simply no way Crimea or Donbas goes back to Ukraine barring a miraculous concession by Western Powers.

And this is where we are. Russia can keep this going. So can the West. I don't see it going much further and I'm not sure that's a Russian victory since they were already in the Donbas from the word go years before the official invasion.

Ukraine is fucked either way. No debating that. I'd say this is going to be a stalemate/cease fire situation. No one definitively wins. Ukrainians lose more men screwing the future as you said demographically. Russia ain't winning in that realm either though, they just have more.

Patrick says

WookieMan please explain it to me. I think Russia is clearly winning.
444   UkraineIsTotallyFucked     ignore (

He's already gone on as nauseum about this in the Ukraine Liberators thread. Basically, philosophy beats realpolitik is his stance.

AmericanKulak says

How the F does Patrick have two ignores at all? I mean "I'm coming to Admin's site to ignore the Admin" is kinda... pointless.

Still, I'm kind of proud that it shows I apply the rules to myself as well.

WookieMan says

They invaded and expected to take over the country. They didn't.

They took 1/4 of Ukraine quickly at the beginning of the war and could have taken Kiev, but then backed off for no clear reason. I'm sure there's a lot more going on than we know about.

https://metro.co.uk/2023/02/24/map-shows-how-much-territory-russia-has-gained-and-lost-in-ukraine-18339796/

Patrick says

They took 1/4 of Ukraine quickly at the beginning of the war and could have taken Kiev, but then backed off for no clear reason. I'm sure there's a lot more going on than we know about.

That's the point, the could have rolled over into Kiev but they didn't. They don't want to rule Western Ukraine, by now the population despises Russia after being at war for 3 years. They want a buffer, just like they claimed they did.

The US is going to keep funding Western Ukraine to create havoc forever. Russia has their buffer. Ukraine is keeping this war going, and it will continue for at least a few more years. The war will take a toll on Ukraine and the US and Europe, and Russia just maintaining position.

Nobody is going to "win" this, but Russia will be less hurt than Europe, the US, and especially Ukraine.

People cite that NATO has expanded. So what? That just costs the US more money, costs Sweden and Finland more money and the US as well.

Russia isn't expansionist, if they were, they would have taken over Georgia after that skirmish, and would have taken Ukraine by now and then the stupid argument is "well Russia is a paper tiger", well, if it is, why are we wasting all this fucking money on a war? The US propaganda is that Russia is trying to rebuild the USSR, how are they going to do that when they can't even take over Ukraine?

WookieMan says

They invaded and expected to take over the country.

NO.

From what Russia has said, consistently, for over 10 years (6 before they OFFICIALLY entered as an invasion force) is they want to prevent incursion of weaponry into Ukraine, they want to stop the civil war in Ukraine.

Now, it's quite possible that Russia is full of shit, after all, our government lies all the time.

IF the Minsk Accords were actually implemented, that would have been a wonderful test to see if that is what Russia actually wanted, but it was the United States and British that PURPOSELY prevented that from being implemented.

Why? Why did they do this? What's the explanation for the British and the United States wanting to NOT implement the Minsk Accords? If Russia isn't serious about them and going to invade anyhow, why not implement them? Wouldn't have made a difference, if it didn't matter.

Now, it can be several reasons I haven't thought up yet (or maybe am too stupid to think up ever), but the most obvious explanation is that it would have prevented conflict leading to another war, which I feel the US wanted and desired because I've seen the US lie to start wars 7 times. If you can come up with another hypothesis, I'd like to hear it, but I'll never hear it from you, will I?

I don't trust my government, for very good reason. I'm dumbfounded you do. It's a responsibility not to trust your government to provide oversight. People are called traitors for doing CIVIC DUTY. This is our duty. Maybe the population is too stupid to understand the complexities, fine, but I if they explained it ANYWHERE, where is it? I am a serious researcher in this. I can't find it, maybe I've not looked hard enough, but it's been 10 years.

I knew Hunter Biden was on the BOD of Burisma 10 years ago. Why? "It's innocent" - but nobody will explain to me how a CRACK ADDICT MALE SLUT is indispensable to be on the BOD of Burisma. My conclusion (and again, maybe I'm just not thinking enough!) is that it's just a bribe. He was paid 50,000 a month to "work" on the BOD on an energy company, when he has no experience with energy, and can't even speak the language.

Where's the error in my reasoning? Show me an error in my reasoning. I'd welcome it. I am happy to be incorrect, but I can't figure it out. I freely admit it, and the only thing I can come up with is corruption.

War is profitable, that's my only explanation I can come up with. It's to expropriate money from taxpayers to a criminal syndicate which is my government. ANY OTHER EXPLANATION would be awesome, but you claim not to believe this, but however you refuse to give an explanation, and my viewpoint is that you can't give another explanation but you still believe the stupid, puerile propaganda. Or you claim you do, I don't know.

AmericanKulak says

How the F does Onvacation have one more ignore than me?

He's probably correct.

Ignores are used to get you to ignore responses, it's the Asch Comformity test.

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

If everybody says that they think you are wrong, you are pushed to believe you are actually wrong, even if you are right because you are in the minority, it doesn't matter if you are right or wrong. Once you know the trick, you can ignore it, but so few people do. Who has ever read psychology experiments in conformance? Although I have plenty of people I ignore here, I never put them on ignore. Even the wrongest person is right, like a broken clock. It is time consuming though and there are few people I ignore, with the exception of the entire corporate media. I don't ignore them because I think they never tell the truth, it's just so rare that it's not worthwhile to pay any attention to them but I never ever self-censor my consumption.

I have read a great deal of psychology, I'm am rarity. I will freely share my knowledge, but then there is another hurdle, will you check to see I'm not lying? I always am honest, as much as I'm aware, I can be fooled and misdirected as well. I do make errors, although I do my best not to propagate my errors. I need feedback. I beg for feedback and when I do not receive it, I become extremely frustrated to the point I think what I'm talking to is an AI, a propagandist, or a semi-human.

I never delete my posts for a reason. I learn from my past mistakes, that's a rarity as well. Very few people want to learn to see if they have made a mistake, there's no shame in being wrong. We're trained to be defend our position, there's no need for it on the Internet.

Want to see my errors? I once thought Russia had never been defeated in their own territory, for example. This wasn't me pushing propaganda, it was just my own ignorance. We all have infinite ignorance. Everybody is plagued by it. I was plagued by another propagandist, or somebody else that was mistaken - who knows? Maybe they didn't know, maybe they were lying. I don't know. They should be better about being correct though. I know they were wrong though, this gives me pause on their statements from that point forward. They need to make a correction, and I've not heard one.

@Patrick

Getting slammed with this:

@UkraineIsTotallyFucked

How did you get that response? It should not happen to a person unless you click reload like mad.

I had to implement rate limiting after getting swarmed by robots, but I thought I had it so that it would be indetectable by humans.

Patrick says

UkraineIsTotallyFucked

How did you get that response? It should not happen to a person unless you click reload like mad.

I had to implement rate limiting after getting swarmed by robots, but I thought I had it so that it would be indetectable by humans.

I go to various threads at my normal speed. Those are technically reloads. And I upload and post images. I am fast but wouldn't say that I am reloading like mad.

Here's how I did the nginx config for that. Within the top http{} block:

limit_req_zone $binary_remote_addr zone=ratelimit:10m rate=15r/m; # 15 requests per minute, to match robots.txt "Crawl-Delay: 4"

So that says to limit by IP address, allocating 10MB named "ratelimit" for the rate limit data, and to limit the rate to 15 requests per minute.

Then within the / location block (the block that hits the node server rather than static files):

location / {
limit_req zone=ratelimit burst=10 nodelay;

That says for that "ratelimit" memory zone defined above, allow up to 10 requests at one burst, but still with an overall 15 requests per minute limit.

The images have no rate limit, because they are not served from node but directly from nginx via their own block starting with:
location ~ /icons/|/uploads/ {

I'm not an expert on nginx config, so maybe I misunderstand part of this.

@UkraineIsTotallyFucked

Is it possible you are sharing your IP address with others? That's a common situation if you are at work. All the outgoing traffic from a company typically goes out of a single IP address.

Patrick says

UkraineIsTotallyFucked

Is it possible you are sharing your IP address with others? That's a common situation if you are at work. All the outgoing traffic from a company typically goes out of a single IP address.

No. Just my home wifi.

@UkraineIsTotallyFucked

Ah, I noticed that your browser is making repeated requests for /apple-touch-icon.png, which does not exist on my server, and which count against your rate limit.

@Patrick if it isn't on your server, how come it count against my rate limit?

Because it starts with / but is not in the /uploads directory with other images. So it ends up hitting the node server, and there is a rate limit on that.

I had not considered the possibility of requests for non-existent images (404's) in combination with the rate limit. Programming is like that, always a new combination you hadn't thought of.

I'll think about how to fix that.

@UkraineIsTotallyFucked

I think I found a solution on the server side.

Let me know if you still get any "429 Too Many Request" responses.

There is no about:settings or about:config in DDG as far as I can find.

Should be OK anyway now. I lump in image 404's with other image requests now, not counting them against the rate limit.

Patrick says

Ah, I noticed that your browser is making repeated requests for /apple-touch-icon.png, which does not exist on my server, and which count against your rate limit.

Why would a computer be making requests from your server of files that don't exist? That shouldn't happen without an explicit request from the user, should it?

@richwicks

Browsers are programmed to look for a standard file called /favicon.ico to put into browser tabs as a visual identifier, so I created one and put it in the right spot on my server:

https://patrick.net/favicon.ico

It seems that Apple wanted in on that game, but with "apple" in the URL as a kind of perverse advertising. So certain browsers are now making tons of requests for /apple-touch-icon.png, but I haven't created that one, and won't, because it refers to a specific corporation and their sleazy marketing.

It seems to be used for the same purpose that favicon.ico is.

Patrick says

It seems that Apple wanted in on that game, but with "apple" in the URL as a kind of perverse advertising. So certain browsers are now making tons of requests for /apple-touch-icon.png, but I haven't created that one, and won't, because it refers to a specific corporation and their sleazy marketing.

Everybody's sleazy.

Remember when Microsoft tried to take over the Internet Internet by bribing companies to use Microsoft IIS and then hobbling that to only work with IE? Facebook, Google, and Twitter HAVE managed to take over the Internet, with false promises.

@Patrick.

You can't always post links because of markups. I'm trying to post this link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v.Israel(Genocide_Convention)

The underscores are being interpreted as a prompt to print in italics. Anything between even when I compose the link manually.

Is there a way where I can tell your site NOT to mess with what I type? So that underscore remains a literal underscore, and asterisk perhaps the same?

@richwicks Sorry about the parsing error.

I changed the regexps to require space before and after the underscore to do that. So now this should be linkified correctly:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v.Israel(Genocide_Convention)

Note that you can use html escape characters to prevent interpretation of underscore.

https://mateam.net/html-escape-characters/ says that the underscore escape is &#95

Shit, still did not linkify correctly. At least it didn't italicize.

I guess the parens are not in my list of url chars. Added them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_v.Israel(Genocide_Convention)

OK, now parens do not prevent linkification.

Implement something like community notes.

You either have stupid people here, or propagandists here, or AI bots pushing propaganda.

Tie posts down to scrutiny so claims can be determined true or false, and assess quality of sources. I'm tired of having the same arguments over and over again from liars, propagandists, and scumbags - maybe morons, but again, I have only met a handful of people in my ENTIRE LIFE who are actually "stupid".

If I'm wrong, well, thanks for pointing it out. I'm in the frustration where I am not told HOW I'm wrong, just that I somehow am. I don't believe them, I don't trust them.

I've dealt with people here who I spoke with for MONTHS explaining Ukraine was over-thrown, after MONTHS, they said just because Victoria Nuland picked out the government of Ukraine before their "revolution", it wasn't certain was a coup. Fuck you @"Mostly Reader" - how many dead? 300,000? 500,000? Propagandist scumbags are everywhere, including here. You're a small site, they are here.

personal

richwicks says

awaiting moderation

You gotta calm your ponies chief. I'm not moderating that comment. All I know is when you say "I know where you live" and "I will never use that against you. I won't harm you ever." Who the fuck thought they were going to get harmed by a website user??? Dude that's a veiled threat if I ever saw one.

Up to Pat about banning, but you're for sure crossing a line. We can give each other shit, but what I saw in moderation is trash. Not my site, but definitely not an adult comment is all I'll say. That's called seeing a brain doctor of some sort. Get some help dude. You're out of your element. You're wrong on a ton of stuff. It's okay. So am I. No need to call out that you know where people live. That's not remotely normal.

richwicks says

awaiting moderation

"He was just a fucking propagandist"

"OK Patrick, what vague Terms of Service did I violate now? Point them out."

@richwicks

Rule #1: "Site Rules 1. Do not deliberately insult the other users personally." from https://patrick.net/post/1277846/2015-02-09-an-antidote-to-corporate-media

You just keep on insulting other users personally.

Why do you do that?