Interesting, I wonder if it was a coincidence, a very close miss, or a warning shot. I would think Russia would try pretty hard to avoid killing European prime ministers, at least for the moment.

Hmm, that might be a slightly misleading summary , I think you might need to add the 21.5% “move towards independence” to that. Hard to say though, I don’t know Chinese or the particular connotations of the words used in that poll, and I can tell you for sure you’d get different (probably higher) results in the USA poll if you used the word “independence” instead of “secession”. Nonetheless, 25.3% is still less than New York and yet nobody is promising to start a war if the federal USA government invades New York, so it’s a valid point.

I suspect, though I have no data to support this right now, that focus testing of games revealed that players were skipping tutorials and getting frustrated about things that the tutorial explained, so the solution was to make the tutorial mandatory.

Congratulations Sweden on signing up for the USA’s “wonderwaffle of the month” subscription box! For just 2% of your GDP, you’ll receive an exciting box of overpriced and overengineered weapon systems every month! (Terms and conditions apply, you may be asked for sacrifice your economy and your lives for the rapidly crumbling American empire)

Fortunately I don’t think OP is stupid enough to buy into this shit.

“Soy reddit mentality” dude are you for real right now?

There’s no point in “giving someone a chance” if you already know for sure you’re not attracted to them, that’s usually called “leading someone on” and is generally regarded as crappy behavior.

Bullshit. The great majority of normal human being are not obsessed with judging people and labeling them as “good enough” or not. It’s entirely possible to just not feel romantic attraction to someone even if they’re rich and fit and interesting or whatever other traits you think make you entitled to affection.

In the USA? This is threatening, sociopath behavior.

From what I hear though, pretty normal in a lot of the rest of the world.

I’ve been playing a lot of old (20+ years) games lately and I definitely have a greater appreciation now for the way they did things back then. I like the Deus Ex and Tomb Raider (and many others) approach of having a separate tutorial level. The game assumes that, when you start the game proper, you have a basic idea of what’s going on and the first foundational story beats of the game can occur alongside interesting and lightly challenging gameplay. Having a separate tutorial is also nice for re-acquainting yourself with the game after an absence, rather than the usual style these days where the best you get is an in-game manual telling you what the controls are but not giving you another opportunity to practice them. Lara’s Home for the PS1 Tomb Raider is great, it’s just a big space to run around in and practice whatever you want to practice.

Terrible advice in my opinion, this is just PUA-lite type stuff.

First of all, working out sucks and if your only motivation to do it is a nebulous idea of it making you more attractive to women, you’re not going to stick with it long enough for it deliver significant results. Also, there’s so many fat nerds out there fucking, you can definitely find love without being super swole. The solution to being rejected once isn’t completely internalizing western beauty standards.

Second, OP already has friends so I’m sure they’re comfortable talking to people they’re familiar with about things that interest them, that’s enough. You don’t have to be the master rizzler to get a date, you just need to find someone that’s interested in what you have to say and has interesting things to say to you.

Third, trying to change who you are for the sake of attracting women is also not likely a change you’re going to stick to if that’s your only motivation. It’s also kind of dishonest, and quite unnecessary, unless of course the part you’re trying to change is “I’m a misogynistic sack of shit” but that’s another matter. You don’t need to be able to dance or play an instrument or all the other stereotypical Hollywood “hot guy” things, you can absolutely build a relationship through the interests you actually care about, whether that be playing a guitar like a rock star or painting armies of little tiny plastic dudes.

I think it’s time to move on. Enjoy your friendship for what it is if you can. If you can’t, get some distance until you’re over it. Based on what you’re saying, I feel confident saying that she isn’t interested and if you keep pushing you’ll probably at best just poison your friendship and at worst make her want to avoid the whole friend group.

Rejection sucks, but it happens to absolutely everyone. There’s probably nothing horribly wrong with you, so don’t get stuck in a rut and try to just keep moving forward with your life.

As we all know, I am the best at warfare, so if those sneaky non-anglos have discovered a tactic to defeat me it must be some sort of strange unconventional form of warfare and that’s the only reason it works because otherwise I would totally win.

I harbor a secret, desperate hope that the USA’s nuclear arsenal is becoming equally decrepit and outdated and that, on the day when the collapse of their empire finally becomes critical and the remaining members of the death cult who are unable to imagine the end of capitalism and who see the end of the world as the only option decide in a final act of greedy desperation to launch against China, it will turn out that China has been tirelessly advancing in that field too and is able to intercept and destroy enough of the warheads to spare the rest of the world from a nuclear apocalypse.

DRC, not DPRK.

No I’m not annoyed or anything, your post just reminded me of when I was a teenager and we’d all get way too invested in the results of exceedingly unscientific quizzes on the newfangled internet. The point being, where some internet tests decides to put you on the “political compass” is almost entirely meaningless and should be ignored.

Help me out lemmygrad, I did a personality test I found on myspace and it said I’m gay but I don’t feel gay what should I do???

Better to let a Ukrainian soldier bleed out than risk letting a filthy orc live, I guess.

Shved, a marksman, was constantly moving between positions in Avdiivka, shooting so many Russian troops he said he “lost count after 10.”

Damn, look out Russia, we’ve got a certified badass with the arithmetic skills of a 5 year old over here.

Every single one of these jokers is telling stories about “waves of attackers” and “I killed, like, so many of them” that I have to conclude one of two things must be happening. Russia is managing to conduct a well orchestrated cover-up of absolutely apocalyptic losses of human life despite apparently every part of the military apparatus being completely incompetent at the most basic of tasks, or maybe these guys with their 5 weeks of training are just not very adept at judging the size of the forces attacking them and whether they’re actually hitting whatever they think they’re shooting at.

A machine-gunner and native of Canada, he set up in a one-story house and watched as Russia sent in inexperienced troops in waves each morning, afternoon and evening. They appeared to be in their 40s or 50s, with no protective vests or helmets.

Based on that description, I’m wondering if maybe this guy’s not bullshitting and just gunned down a bunch of Ukrainians instead.

Interesting article, especially now that western media’s reporting on the war is starting to converge a bit closer to reality. But I’ve been reading these Big Serge articles since the beginning of the war and, always with the benefit of hindsight of course, he’s often wrong and almost always seems to have been overly optimistic about Russia’s performance (or, at the very least, overestimates how fast they’re going to advance). Personally, I don’t think he has as good of a picture of the front or as good of an understanding of the Russian or Ukrainian strategy as he thinks he does. I’m unconvinced that enough information is publicly available to justify any of this armchair general stuff, as intriguing as it is to read.