One sided views are indeed tiring and pointless. The problem here is that you are the one with the one sided view that simply favors Russian official propaganda over all else on this matter. Myself and others arguing your point are not actually taking a side. I am considering everyone's position in this and data from many sources and Russia basically always comes out in the wrong on this one.

As for your origins, it should be very simple to say whether you are Russian or not. It does make something of a difference. I mean, the troll farms are more heavily populated with AI these days, but early on, it was very common to see people claiming to be Americans who used a very particular grammatical structure that suggested a non-english speaker from a certain linguistic background. Not that you're from a troll farm. Obviously you have been on Slashdot for years. I'm just saying that with the Ukraine war, it has been common to see Russians hiding their origins and biases posting in favor of Russia. So, since it affects the interpretation of whether your opinion on this is based on rational examination of the facts or pure partisanship, knowing whether you're Russian does indeed make a difference.

War is, indeed, a racket. It is also evil. I think though, that you need reminding that "evil is not a big happy family" (which is a trope on TV tropes that I'm not going to turn into a link, because it is a dangerous black hole). So, while there might be figurative smoke filled back rooms full of shadowy characters behind most wars, it turns out there isn't just one, there are many, and they don't all have one unified goal. They might have goals that appear superficially similar like, for example, "lots of money!", but you have to remember that's qualified with "lots of money... for ME!!!!" where the "ME!!!" in question is actually any of a large number of people and groups. Also, if there's one main smoky room behind it fall it will be at the Kremlin

I'm not really all that interested in the latest prime minister until we know they have staying power, but it does sound like you are mischaracterizing it.I just checked on the rough sleeping thing and it looks like he's not actually talking about just beating up homeless people to make them go away (time will tell and we'll see of course, but it does seem to be part of a housing first initiative which is definitely better than your characterization.

Sorry, can you point to any time limits or mentions of coups, militarization, NATO expansion, fights between Ukrainians, civil wars on the border, etc.? There are none. You're just making up ex post facto rules in your head to justify the war. Not to mention making up stuff about coups, heavy miltarization, etc. The supposed Civil wars on the border also aren't really civil wars when they're actually covert Russian operations. All the people behind them were GRU agents, Russian citizens, FSB agents, Russian political operatives, etc. I mean, Girkin and Borodai make it pretty obvious. They barely even tried to hide it in the first place and there's just so much evidence available now. There are tons of intercepted phone calls between the leaders and the Kremlin on funding, armament, troop movements, etc. I mean, seriously, right from the start, members of the supposed breakaway Republics of Luhansk (that's probably Lugansk for you) and Donetsk were getting Russian pensions. I know you'll brush that off, but it's pretty damning for supposedly independent republics.

There's another of those weird, disconnected from reality things to say. Obviously the position on the UK relative to Russian fossil fuels shows how much the war was a disadvantage to them. Not to mention all the Russian billionaires and capital tied up in London. Britain did everything they could diplomatically before the war and at the start to try to stop it, not to mention that they released all kinds of intelligence that would not normally be made public to blow up Russia's propaganda excuses for the war to try to head Russia off by exposing their pretexts as lies. Claiming that somehow the UK wanted and wants this war to be ongoing is ridiculous.

Whatever Russia says in these contexts is pretty much always exposed as a lie. In any case, none of that is honoring their agreement. As far as the "rights" of Eastern Ukrainians (at least, the healthy, militarily eligible ones) to Russians that seems to mostly mean the right to be conscripted and sent to die or be maimed in Russia's war. As far as Russia wanting the war to end, that's clearly with the proviso that they get to keep the invaded territory as their own. There's no real interpretation of protecting the rights of Eastern Ukrainians that actually requires that.

Wow. recognition of "Novorossiya"! I mean, you're not even denying there that it's purely a war of conquest. As for a neutral rest of Ukraine, you seem to think that demanding Neutrality of a sovereign nation is a reasonable request? The resf of your fantasy, about Russian fragmentation, regime change, and plunder? Well, anyone sane at this point wants Russian regime change. It became clear about two decades ago or more that Putin was a dictator who murders and oppresses his own people. I mean, just look at that sentence "two decades ago", there's basically two (maybe three) terms for anyone who has been ruler of a country for two decades or more these days: there's King (or potentially emperor) most of whom are just symbolic these days, and then there's dictators. Interestingly though, most Western governments were still fine with dealing with a dictator all that time. After 2022 though, what sane person would not want regime change in Russia? They let serial teenage girl eating cannibals out of prison while locking people holding blank signs up for a decade. As far as Russian fragmentation, who cares about that? I mean, I would be happy enough for Siberians if they got to profit from their own mineral wealth instead of being ruthlessly exploited by Russians in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but once again, no major government (outside of the Russian Federation or its immediate allies, anyway) seems to have had that as its goal. As for plundering, I mean, there are people like Trump who want to plunder everywhere, but they're kind of generalists. Plundering Russia is, once again, mostly a dream of Russia's allies due to the the geographic and logistical issues and the whole inhospitable frozen wasteland thing. That's basically "I shot this squirrel for looking at my gold!" frothing at the mouth levels of paranoia.

There was no Nazism problem in Ukraine that wasn't as bad or worse in Russia (and frankly probably not any worse than the US either). I mean Jebus, the Wagner group didn't get its name because Wagner was Winston Churchill's favorite composer. The simple fact is that Nazis and nationalists obviously flock together and intersect and so they do tend to concentrate in militias. So, sure there were some Nazis in militias around Azov the region. Of course, it's been overblown to the point where even the poster you're replying to seems to be confused hat the name Azov somehow applies to those nationalist militias. They were right that they're basically gone. Naturally, when frothing at the mouth nationalists nazi types volunteer to kill Russian soldiers, no-one in Ukraine can afford to say no right now, but you can bet that if those nazis run into a group of Russian soldiers with a grenade, they're not going to be weeping for the Nazi any more than for the Russian soldiers.

Sweet Jebus, what universe are you living in? Because it's not this one. I know you Russia fans (I mean, I'm assuming that you actually are a Russian or adjacent ex-pat living in South America, but more on that later) like to talk about a supposed slow, but inexorable takeover of Ukrainian territory, but that's just wishful thinking. If you go from the peak of Russian territorial control in Ukraine, Russia has lost 45,000 square km and controls about 120,000 now. Not to mention that they have been losing territory basically all of this year. Russia's economy is on the verge of collapse, their resources have proven to be very vulnerable despite Russia's nonsense cultural myth of being too big to be vulnerable (what is with the Russian cultural obsession with size, anyway?), their "strategy" mostly seems to be to grind up as many of their own soldiers as possible and hope that the Ukrainians drown in their corpses and also to terrorize civilians, and I think you're mistaking fatalism with patience.

Anyway, on that other matter, are you willing to straight up answer if you are Russian? I know you're some sort of ex-pat from somewhere living, at least at one point, somewhere in South America But are you Russian, or from somewhere like Moldova/Transnistra, Georgia or one of the Russian occupied bits, Belarus, Hungary, etc.? One of those former bits of the Soviet Union still full of people who grew up with the propaganda and can't let go? Or somewhere else? Any chance you'll reveal your origins and perhaps how you came to be ride or die for Putin?

Uh... Huh? How was there not going to be a war? Russia was invading no matter what. Unless you mean that Ukraine should have just rolled over and are equivocating being conquered to "peace".

Ok. So you're just a bit nutty then, and, for some strange reason making it about the UK rather than Russia and Ukraine.

I clearly meant that what you were saying was weird to say in part because you seemed to be putting words that they had not spoken into other people's mouths. You seem to have responded with another very weird thing to say.

You mean he could be different by somehow blaming the war on Ukraine instead of the actual invader, or by refusing to uphold any obligations to an ally, or to uphold the basic principles of the post-WWII order regarding territorial integrity of sovereign nations? I mean, he probably will fail to uphold those principles for, for example, Guantanamo bay which is clearly held illegally by the US, but I doubt he will for this relatively fresh and bloody, evil war by war criminals from Russia. There will be some hypocrisy there of course, but it will have more to do with one being a hot war and one being a cold war (although Trump seems to be determined to turn things with Cuba hot eventually, probably right around the midterms so he can find a justification for the state of emergency he's planning).

That's a very weird thing to say. Among other things, how is it "old". That war is going on right now. Russia is still attempting to invade and holding Ukrainian territory, etc.

They do not. The "reasonable suspicion" standard allows for police to decide these things "based on their experience" or to come up with the reason after the fact. While you can fight it in court later and you very well might win, you could have spent the last six months in jail by that point. Generally speaking you are actually much better protected against it if you actually have committed a crime because you can get evidence thrown out as "fruit of the poison tree". If you're completely innocent, you just get your life torn apart, large legal fees, and a justice system that acts like eventually letting you go (which does not actually need to happen immediately after you're found completely innocent) makes the whole thing OK.

It's quite simple. A cooler is obviously bigger than a breadbox, but smaller than a Library of Congress.

People don't do a lot of film photography any more, and modern cameras do some pretty impressive feats of self adjustment to conditions, but still... imagine trying to use a camera flash with orders of magnitude of variation in the strength of the flash, with the majority of the light coming from the flash being in non-visible wavelengths (or even particulate radiation) that may or may not react to your film in various unpredictable ways, not to mention that it is filtered first through a bulkhead and other equipment of varying opacity. Oh, and you don't get to know beforehand what direction it's coming from.
It's still not an impossible idea. Using ambient EM radiation for imaging is not actually a bad idea (I mean, it's how most photography is done, after all), but it would be very challenging under those conditions.

flink beat me to the punch on explaining this, but Windows is, in fact, a product that people pay for. Microsoft's revenue for it was 17.3 billion dollars last year.

While it's not the only factor, one of the reasons for this is the degree to which power lines are buried with weather in general as a secondary factor. For power distribution lines, the US has around 20% of their lines buried, while Europe has about 40% to 60% buried. For last mile connections, it is an even more stark difference with the US having 20% to 25% buried, with Europe having 90%+ buried. Also though, add to that the fact that European regions that are prone to extreme weather are also much more likely than US regions with extreme weather to have buried lines. So, when it's very hot, the wires don't heat up so much, and when it's windy/snowy/icy, the lines don't snap. When you add to that the fact that the US tends to see more extreme weather in general than Europe, that makes a difference in power outages.

Then there's also the European regulatory and design philosophy regarding redundancy. For US operators it tends be much more likely that a single component failing will take down power. So, typically there's n-1 redundancy, an open ring power distribution system rather than radial. Three phase power vs. single phase in a lot of the network also makes a differences. Substations are also a lot more heavily automated, especially after the Iberian power outage.

Basically, the US power grid is cheap. Note that's up-front cheap, which comes with much higher maintenance costs that actually make it more expensive in the long run. While they are not unique, that seems to be a US specialty. It is also generally older and less upgraded than Europe. Also, in certain ways, less technologically advanced.

Yeah. It's not like it's a product that people buy or anything.

But since I didn't say that, doesn't that sort of put you in a fantasy reality?

Was there a point to that?

Hmmm. Unlike a totally serious AC like you.

Yet you don't bother explaining how I am supposedly misrepresenting you. You have never actually said what was supposedly creatively snipped by me to change the meaning of what you wrote and how it does so.

Sigh. And around and around we go. Once gain, the interpretations and claims I make are not the same s the actual quote. I did not alter the quote in any way that removed context or meaning. My interpretation does not have to agree with you. I honestly represented what you actually wrote.

If party A is the council and B is the President, and C is Congress, how can what you are saying there be consistent with your original claim that the board is "there to help the President provide a proposal to Congress" and that the board "...once the President make's [sic] the call..." is "obligated to help with that direction."

You don't seem to be able to keep what you are even claiming straight, so we keep going around and around pointlessly. Your original claim was essentially that the board should advise the President but that, once the President had made a decision, the board would then need to adjust their advice to Congress based on the President's direction. Now are you reversing that and saying I was right all along?

I do not keep omitting it, you're just flat out playing pretend at this point.

For the rest of that, you seem to be implying that the board directly proposes a budget to Congress? This is a new claim. You know that's not how it works, right?

In other words, you're a coward and an idiot.