"Russia requires security guarantees that Ukraine will not defend itself the next time we attack it." - NYT pitchbot

Every data center Ukraine can locate needs to be leveled. That would be far easier if the Russian asset in the White House would stop sucking Putin's dick and help Ukraine do its job.

One problem with this is that world's wealthiest have financial assets that live largely, if not only, in the digital realm. Wiping out data centers, as a policy, are a threat to their wealth. It's a threat to Russian oligarch wealth as well.

Trump recently touted inflation as a cure for the country's runaway debt. It was speculated that he did this because of his bitcoin holdings, which are supposed to do better in times of inflation. The point of this is to demonstrate that the wealthiest's interests may lead to non-obvious policy goals.

I'm an American from Colorado and don't speak a word of Russian or give one goddamn about Putin, Zelensky, or any of your fucking "problems". I don't give a single fuck about Ukraine. All either Russia or Ukraine exports is strippers and scammers. Fuck them. Fuck Russia and all the virtue signaling idiots in the EU, too. You're fucking countries are burning down around you as leftists "demonstrate" (riot) in the streets over their entitlements and protection of foreign rapists and Muslims.... and you're worried about Ukraine. Bwahahahaha!

So the reason they worry about Russia's incursion into Ukraine is that Russia is a former colonial empire, which was known as the Soviet Union. After its breakup, it spun off 15 conquered countries. The concern is that Russia is seeking to rebuild its colonial empire because that is the path it sees to power and prosperity (such as it was - see Yeltsin's reaction to see a run-of-the-mill American supermarket).

My hope is that Russia, Ukraine, and all their pals in the EU get burned/bombed into the fucking ground and shut the fuck up at last.... Giving money to Ukraine is worse than useless. Those people SUCK. Let them solve their own problems and if they cannot, let them kill each other without my tax money.

The problem is we live in an interconnected world. To paraphrase the saying, "You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you," another accurate formulation is "you many not be interested in internal affairs, but international affairs are interested in you."

Summary: your characterization of the situation on the ground in Ukraine is not correct. Additionally, the reason why Ukraine wants no part of the Russian model of government and economy is listed. Details below.

Leonid Ivashov, a former Soviet and Russian general, penned an essay before the invasion, as the world got wind of Russia's intention. His observations were prescient. Remarkable that this gentlemen predicted nearly exactly what would happen, while Putin believed in a 3 day operation. Putin was able to snatch Crimea without effort or bloodshed, and he thought he could do the same with the whole of Ukraine (kind of like Trump believing he could snatch Iran, because Venezuela was easy):

The use of military force against Ukraine will, first of all, call into question Russia’s very existence as a state. Second, it will turn Russians and Ukrainians into mortal enemies. Third, thousands (tens of thousands) of young, healthy people will die on both sides, which will naturally have an effect on the future demographic situation in our dying countries. On the battlefield field – if there is a battle – Russian troops will face not just Ukrainian soldiers, many of whom will be [ethnically] Russian, but also NATO troops and equipment, while NATO member states will be obligated to declare war against Russia. Turkish President Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan has been clear about whose side Turkey will be on. And we can assume that Turkey’s two field armies and its fleet will be ordered to “liberate” the Crimea and Sevastopol and, possibly, to invade the Caucasus. In addition, there is no doubt that Russia will be added to the category of countries that pose a threat to peace and international security, subjected to the most severe sanctions, transformed into a pariah in the eyes of the international community and probably lose the status of an independent state. There is no way that the president, the government and the Defense Ministry do not understand these consequences.

The Center For Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) goes into depth, as of July 2026, examining the Russian incursion into Ukraine:

But much of the analysis on Russia’s battlefield performance has been anecdotal. This study examines several indicators of Russia’s battlefield performance compiled by CSIS ...

First, Russian battlefield costs continue to mount, with as many as 450,000 battlefield deaths and 1.4 million casualties between February 2022 and June 2026. These rates are astounding. Russian fatalities in Ukraine are more than four times greater than all U.S. fatalities in all wars combined since World War II, and more than nine times greater than all Soviet and Russian fatalities in all wars combined since World War II.

In addition, Russia’s monthly casualty rates of over 30,000 per month in 2026 have likely exceeded Russia’s recruitment rates of roughly 27,000 new recruits per month. The Russia-Ukraine casualty rate has likely risen to nearly 8:1 in the first half of 2026, up from between 2:1 and 3:1 for much of the war, in large part due to Ukraine’s use of drones—including AI-enabled drones—as part of its aggressive air interdiction campaign.

Second, Russia’s ground offensive has largely stalled, with an average rate of advance of approximately 50 meters per day around Kostiantynivka, 70 meters per day around Pokrovsk, and 90 meters per day around Sloviansk. These are among the slowest rates of advance in any war over the last century.

Third, Russia’s territorial control in Ukraine shrank in the spring of 2026. Russian forces lost more ground than they captured in both April and May, a net loss of roughly 400 square kilometers and their first monthly net losses since August 2024—yet another sign of Russia’s military struggles.

The rest of this analysis is divided into five sections. ...

What you feel is best, is of course your opinion, no right or wrong to it. However, note Ivashov's characterization:

Naturally, in order for Ukraine to remain a friendly neighbor for Russia, Russia would have had to demonstrate the attractiveness of its state model and system of government. But Russia never became a friendly neighbor; its model of development and foreign policy mechanism for international cooperation repelled almost all its neighbors and beyond. Russia’s appropriation of the Crimea and Sevastopol, and their nonrecognition as Russian by the international community (meaning that the majority of countries in the world still believe they belong to Ukraine) are convincing proof of the failure of Russian foreign policy and the unattractiveness of its domestic policy. Attempts to use ultimatums and the threat of force to make [others] “fall in love with” Russia and its leaders are pointless and extremely dangerous.

It is obvious why Ukraine wanted to avoid being reconquered by its former colonial master, and sought independence, freedom and prosperity with the European model of government and economy.

Ukraine taking credit with their fake news so idiots can pour more millions in that bottomless pit of human misery and of course some people filling up their pockets with that money.

Ukraine can take credit for, the first time in human history, doing a medevac of a wounded soldier out of a combat zone with a drone. Good for the kid on making the prototype. Various companies have been working on air taxis. They've just been proof of concepts. No one had ever evacuated a badly wounded soldier out of a combat zone, a heavy, unstable, non-aerodynamic load slung under a hexacopter which was agile, stable, reliable, small and fast enough to avoid ground fire, in hellish conditions, as exist on the zero line of the Ukrainian front.

It's not hard to see how that's an accomplishment. Unless one is too emotionally perturbed for whatever reason. Odd for a normal person because Ukraine was an insular, peaceful agrarian nation prior to Russia's invasion, bothering no one, except one tyrant. It's important to avoid becoming hysterical so one doesn't become blinded to reality and subsequently embarrassing oneself.

The AI / LLM core is tokens-in/tokens-out. It's an amazing, astounding system.

The problems however are the tools designed to be connected to the AI core, the "agents". The programs designed to generate and consume the tokens.

I give a brilliant hacker purpose-built tools to help him penetrate systems, and let him run 24/7... that's what's occurring here.

The problem going forward is when high power LLMs get to the public or even rogue nation-states, and they set their agents and AI core to do damage.

The problem is once you accumulate that much money you have a ton of power. The only way to do away with too big to fail companies is to do away with billionaires and trillionaires.

Getting the money out of politics is critical to restoring representative government.
Ending gerrymandering is critical to restoring representative government.

The people telling us it's impossible to get the money out of politics are the people benefiting: the media, highly organized interest groups, corporations, etc.

If money is speech, the wealthy have a lot more of it than you. Each individual in the top 1 percent has as much speech as nearly 100 people in the bottom 90 percent:

"The 3 million people who make up the wealthiest 1% of Americans are collectively worth more than the 291 million that make up the bottom 90%."

They often look at the top three people. Back in 2017, it was Gates, Buffett and Bezos who had more money-speech than the bottom 50 percent. Today it's Elon, Zuck and Bezos. 3 people who have more money-speech than 165 million people. Money makes that not a representative government.

Bait and Switch is "advertise one price, charge another, higher price".

It's a standard deceptive sales tactic to have the user commit to one price, then at the last minute, demand additional required payments.

In free market terms, this tactic hides the true price from both competitors and consumers.

Towards the end of the last administration, there was a limited push to put federal limits on Bait and Switch but these prohibitions are slowly being rolled back.

The problem is, people that have committed crimes have proven they will criminally lie, cheat, steal, victimize and otherwise harm others for their own personal gain. I've worked in the security-cleared sector and work with PII and PHI. You need people of higher moral character who won't misuse that data for personal gain or entertainment. We don't want people that have proven they will do such things in places where they can harm others or their employer.

Personality traits drive criminal behavior. Blaming social factors as the root cause of crime is a convenient way to absolve the offenders of responsibility. But pick whatever social factor or demographic you want, most people in that category aren't committing crimes. QED.

I've seen a number of self-driving car accident videos and I notice in too many cases their reflexes don't actually seem faster than humans. In fact they seem worse!

But it's always paying attention, never gets distracted. That probably results in a net increase in vehicle safety.

I think it's Tragedy of the Commons, where it's in each individual's interest to maximize their benefit, leading to destruction of the public resource.

Accepting consumer deposits means the company will become a legitimate bailout recipient when it runs into trouble. This will creates a stabilizing force for the price of crypto. This will further the gambling economy and enhance the net worth of those who currently have crypto.

Not saying any of that is good or bad, just that that is what will happen.

Dimon is concerned about getting market share taken away and competition.

The former head of the MIT Artificial Intelligence lab, said, in an open courseware lecture, linked here at between 14 and 16 minutes, said they don't know why it works and that they were astounded by the results produced by Geoffrey Hinton who introduced the first vastly larger neural network and ushered in the modern era of AI.

Geoffrey Hinton, associated with University of Toronto (he was Ilya Sutskever's phd advisor) has been warning about the risks of AI for some time.

The neural network roughly simulates how the brain processes information. It is the general design that nature came up with and now man is harnessing (the first commercial neural networks were used in the 90s for check scanning OCR).

They know that scaling up can eventually create a superior information processing system to the human brain. They don't know for sure. But it's a risk. THAT'S what they're concerned with primarily. If you listen to Hinton, social upheaval is also a risk.

Yes, big companies DO use all their tools, like purchasing politicians and using regulation, to squelch competition and get an advantage. That anti-competitive behavior should not obscure the risk of AI. No one knows why the LLM's can produce the results that they do. They think scaling up will make it more powerful than a human brain - but maybe it won't. I saw a study which said LLM digital computing consumes 900 million times more power than biological computing. Maybe that will limit it - until they make it more optimized.

The LLM is a digital system. It has no nervous system, no feelings. It processes information. It roughly approximates the way nature processes information with brains. They need to get a handle on what the risks of using a super-powerful information processing system like this will do.

If you want to understand the real risks, it pays to be skeptical of these companies. The best bet is to listen to top academics who are not commercially associated. Hinton is the top among them. I don't agree with all his theories - he misses, it seems to me, that the system has no nervous system. But when he talks about its information processing capabilities and what that could mean for humanity once that system becomes more powerful than humans is worth listening too.

People need to be skeptical, but not too clever by half, when thinking about the risks of AI.

People who live in condos, townhouses, apartments, single family homes without driveways - those people don't have a place to charge their vehicles at home. The optimal use case for an EV is a house with a garage and a charger in the garage. That group is wealthier, but more limited in number. What vehicle is that group going to choose? Single family homeowners with garages are probably going to go for higher-end electric vehicles. Hondas are a largely reliable economy to mid-range cost vehicle, for which that first group I listed above is the customer base, it seems to me. Honda might just be catering to their target audience.