apriorion
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Posts posted by apriorion
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23 hours ago, Dragon said:
this is really really fucking scary. i didn't hear about this type of activity, did i miss something? they're pulling people out of Ukraine and forcing them into Russian territory. this can be taken very, very far into an extremely disturbing situation (obvious post).
but really, send some links this way because i don't want to be out of the loop, if it's coming to this.
Man, this situation just keeps getting more and more depressing and frightening. The potential for genocide of the sort that Germany carried out after invading Poland seems to keep increasing with actions like these. Moreover, the situation as reported in that article seems like the modern version of what the Ancient Greeks used to do when they conquered a neighboring city-state: all of the surviving inhabitants were turned into slaves, in those days. The difference here appears to be that they have to sign a contract to stay in an impoverished part of Russia to work for them for no less than two years. But what then? Does anyone really expect Russia to take care of these people, especially when Putin has said things to indicate that he believes that Ukraine isn't real and Ukrainians don't have a right to exist?
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1 hour ago, ignatius said:
saw that the other day along w/the entire staff of the tv network that resigned while streaming and played "swan lake" which has a special significance.
Whoa, that is pretty cool.
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1 hour ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:
i find this post disturbing as if youre presenting a choice that he should accept anal rape with a knife and get murdered to allow US influenced revolutions to happen. as if US led murder attempts are righteous and just and he should accept them rather than intend on avoiding them. Putin is a piece of shit but every single US president is worse on a scale hard to imagine because of the scale of their influence in comparison to russia. you think putin wants to get murdered by nazi gangs in ukraine the US has been funding?
If you find my post disturbing then that says more about you than the post. Seems you missed the point, really.
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1 hour ago, usagi said:
given how the early days of this conflict have played out poorly for the Russians and prompted a wave of love-ins and celebrations of Ukrainian resistance which are quite possibly premature, I think it's important to read this sort of long-term view to stay grounded.
the article in full:
After a Fumbled Start, Russian Forces Hit Harder in Ukraine
After days of miscalculation about Ukraine’s resolve to fight, Russian forces are turning toward an old pattern of opening fire on cities and mounting sieges.
BRUSSELS — When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine with nearly 200,000 troops, many observers — and seemingly President Vladimir V. Putin himself — expected that the force would roll right in and the fighting would be over quickly. Instead, after five days of war, what appears to be unfolding is a Russian miscalculation about tactics and about how hard the Ukrainians would fight.
No major cities have been taken after an initial Russian push toward Kyiv, the capital, stalled. While Russia appeared to pull its punches, Ukraine marshaled and armed civilians to cover more ground, and its military has attacked Russian convoys and supply lines, leaving video evidence of scorched Russian vehicles and dead soldiers.
But the war was already changing quickly on Monday, and ultimately, it is likely to turn on just how far Russia is willing to go to subjugate Ukraine. The Russian track record in the Syrian civil war, and in its own ruthless efforts to crush separatism in the Russian region of Chechnya, suggest an increasingly brutal campaign ahead.
Signs of that appeared on Monday in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, when Russia accelerated its bombardment of a residential district where heavy civilian casualties were reported, an attack that may have included cluster munitions, which are banned by many countries, but not Russia and Ukraine.
“We’re only in the opening days of this, and Putin has a lot of cards to play,’’ said Douglas Lute, a former U.S. lieutenant general and ambassador to NATO. “It’s too early to be triumphalist, and there are a lot of Russian capabilities not employed yet.”
Russian military doctrine toward taking cities is both grimly practical and deadly, favoring heavy artillery, missiles and bombs to terrify civilians and push them to flee, while killing defenders and destroying local infrastructure and communications before advancing on the ground.
“Russia has not yet massed its military capability in an efficient way,” Mr. Lute said. “But the Russian doctrine of mass firing and no holds barred was visible in Chechnya, and there is the potential that Russia will get its act together tactically, and that will result in mass fire against population centers.’’
Russian forces advancing toward Kyiv continue to face “creative and effective” resistance, according to a senior Pentagon official who briefed reporters on Monday. But Russia’s assault is in just the fifth day, and Russian commanders will likely learn from their failures and adapt, the official said, as Russian forces also did in Syria. American officials say they fear that Russia may now escalate missile and aerial bombing of cities with major civilian casualties, the official said.
Many experts say that Mr. Putin appeared to miscalculate in assuming that a quick strike on Kyiv could dislodge the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, and that Ukrainians would stay largely indifferent. That explains, the experts suggest, why Russia went in lightly, seemingly trying to limit civilian casualties.
But the Ukrainians surprised the Russians with their defense, and an early effort to seize a Kyiv airport with a spearhead group, to allow reinforcements to fly in, failed badly.
Russia has seemed markedly restrained in its use of force and even clumsy in the early days, said Mathieu Boulègue, an expert in Russian warfare at Chatham House. “They were paying the price of their own rhetoric, that this was a defensive war against fascists and neo-Nazis,’’ he said. But now “we have an irritated Kremlin, and we haven’t seen yet what Russia has in store.”
The world is “starting to see stage two, when they go in with heavy artillery and ground troops, as they are doing in Kharkiv and Mariupol,’’ he said.
“I’m afraid this is really the beginning,” Mr. Boulègue said. “We can see a follow-on invasion with more experienced troops, with more forces, fewer precision-guided systems, more attrition, more carpet bombing and more victims.’’
In their effort to take Kyiv quickly, based on “terribly flawed assumptions about Ukraine,” the Russians withheld much of their combat power and capabilities and “got a bloody nose in the early days of the war,” said Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, a defense research institute.
“However, we are only at the beginning of this war, and much of the euphoric optimism about the way the first 96 hours have gone belies the situation on the ground and the reality that the worst may yet be to come,” he said.
Jack Watling, an expert in land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, a defense research institution, returned from Ukraine 12 days ago and says he expects more pressure from Russian forces in the coming days. “The Russians have a lot of forces in Ukraine, and as they continue to advance in a steady pace, they can function in a combined way, and not as isolated tank columns, and they will apply a much higher level of firepower,’’ he said.
Analysts say they expect Russian forces to work to expand their hold on the pro-Russia, separatist enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, and to capture a land bridge to Crimea in the south, while pushing troops down from the north to try to encircle the main Ukrainian Army east of the Dnieper River. They are trying to surround Mariupol and take Kharkiv.
That encirclement would cut off the bulk of Ukraine’s forces from Kyiv and from easy resupply, the experts say, limiting the sustainability of organized resistance. Russian troops are also moving steadily toward Kyiv from three axes to try to surround it.
While Russian forces have had supply and logistical problems — in some cases stranding vehicles without fuel in the early days of the invasion — those of the Ukrainians are likely more severe. The Ukrainian Army will start to run out of ammunition in a week, the experts suggest, and out of Stinger missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles before then.
Countries belonging to NATO and the European Union are sending ammunition and Stinger and Javelin missiles into western Ukraine from Poland, a NATO member, through a still-open border. The European Union is even, for the first time, promising to reimburse member states up to 450 million euros for the purchase and supply of weapons and equipment like flak jackets and helmets to Ukraine.
But if the Russians cut off the cities, Mr. Watling said, it will be difficult to get those supplies to Ukrainian defenders. Russian helicopters are beginning to run interdiction flights near the Polish border, and more troops are likely to move down from Belarus to cut off supply routes from Poland, he said, especially if, as it seems likely, Belarusian troops enter the war.
Bad starts in previous conflicts did not keep Russia from prevailing, and often at a brutal cost.
In Syria, the Russians had early setbacks, bringing predictions of quagmire. Yet they adapted, using missiles, airpower and artillery while their allies mostly went in on the ground. From 2015 to the end of 2017, Russian airstrikes were estimated to have killed at least 5,700 civilians, a quarter of them children, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights.
The two wars in Chechnya were especially brutal, destroying the capital, Grozny, and helping give Mr. Putin, then a new prime minister, a reputation for toughness. Many thousands died before Russia restored control and put a pro-Kremlin Chechen in charge.
To this point, Russia appears to have been restrained in Ukraine by the belief that “they could not turn Kyiv into Grozny and expect to govern the country,” Mr. Watling said. “But now we see the Kremlin approving demonstrative acts of extreme violence, starting in Kharkiv,” which has had severe shelling of civilian areas.
There have also been more shellings of Kyiv and Chernihiv, a city northeast of the capital.
“You don’t pacify a population that way and you lay the ground for insurgency,’’ Mr. Watling added.
That strategy also raises a question of morale, both among the Russian forces and the Russian public back home.
“A lot depends on how brutal the Russians are prepared to be,” said Ian Bond, foreign policy director for the Center for European Reform. “They can’t censor everything, so brutalizing Ukrainians for whom many Russians feel a connection may not be politically successful for Putin.’’
At home, Mr. Putin is facing an increasingly difficult position, the experts suggest. “He has another roll of the dice in the military campaign,” said Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director of the Royal United Services Institute research group in Britain. “But if he fails in week two as badly as in week one, he will be under pressure to find some way out of this.’’
The miscalculation of the early days has been reinforced by the impact of unexpectedly severe and coordinated Western sanctions, which have already devalued the ruble and promise further economic turmoil for many ordinary Russians.
There have already been some prominent Russian voices criticizing the war, and some demonstrations in Russian cities. Repressing those will not keep the reality of the war away from most Russians.
“Putin has miscalculated and put his hand in a mangle,” Mr. Watling said. “The war will go on, but a lot will depend on the character of the resistance” — whether it means fighting in the cities or, as many expect, it reverts to a partisan war. “But the Ukrainians will not give up,’’ he said.
Curtis M. Scaparrotti, a retired four-star Army general and supreme allied commander in Europe, said that Ukrainian soldiers “can’t match the Russian units, but they won’t fold, either.”
The Ukrainians “have to survive and transition to an insurgency, a tough task to pull off,” he said in an email. “The Russians have to consolidate gains and control a big country with a hostile populace. Next few days will indicate how this may go. If it gets difficult, the Russians will get brutal.”
there is a good chance this might not have the Disney ending that many people are fooling themselves into thinking it will. if Lil Putie gets desperate and is willing to throw aside special consideration or restraint for a supposed brotherly people (btw the notion of slavic brotherhood is a lie, as are most nation-building myths), then Ukrainian cities could end up looking like Syrian ones where the Russians were free to conduct war crimes with impunity for years. there are already reports and accusations that they've been using indiscriminate/overkill weaponry like cluster bombs and vacuum bombs in Ukraine, albeit on a small scale for the time being.
I don't even want to get into the hot mess about how this war is being covered by the media/received by audiences wrt to its "blonde, blue-eyed" victims vs dirty brown ones. I'm sure more of an effort will be made now to get the EU's shit together on a coherent refugee policy than was made in 2014/15. or maybe they'll continue to leave it unspoken cos actually codifying race-preferential treatment is a bad look.
There are satellite images of 40-mile long military convoys heading toward Kyiv. I'm very sorry to say that it appears very likely that the president of Ukraine will be killed soon, for all his public support and heroism. Such a horrible shame. I really don't want it to be the case, but it looks like Putin is determined to kill that guy.
This whole time, I can't help but think about how I read somewhere a few years ago about how Putin was obsessed with video of Gaddafi getting anally raped by the rebels who caught him, and how Gaddafi was killed in an undignified way by the mob, and Putin would just play that video over and over and repeatedly say "This won't ever happen to me." His personal identification with a fellow dictator was revealing, and his take-away from that whole affair was super alarming. I fear that the lesson he "learned" from that was that he'd rather blow up the whole world than be anally raped.
Such a shame how vulnerable the rest of us are to the bizarre whims of unbalanced wealthy people.
45 minutes ago, maxwellsq said:ok , sorry for emotional post but today was a complete shit . out of words , im in city of Kharkiv , just see the news . every couple days it becomes way worse , now they are striking civilian buildings , wtf . can't get out of the city , somebody mentioned that I need to get out - its more dangerous now than sitting at home . fucking miracle that almost all city have electricity and water , hope that will last. its a full on city siege . we are praying that international community will pressure russians to stop this.
So sorry about all this. I hope something positive happens soon.
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Bring back “WWIII” title! At least tentative version? For example: “perhaps WWIII?”
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1 hour ago, ilqx hermolia xpli said:
nothing better could happen to europeans than this
Well, I'm sure that there are some things that could happen that would be better, but this is good news all-round (if Zuck doesn't chicken out).
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Good grief.
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Congratulations on your successful defense on such a cool topic, and thanks for sharing! Looking forward to reading it soon!
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12 hours ago, Rubin Farr said:
Fucking pathetic.
Oh shit! My old home town! I haven't lived there in twenty years, but I grew up there (left in my early twenties) and can attest that there are many absolutely unashamed racists and confederate sympathizers there. In fact, when Trump announced his bid for presidency in the summer of 2015, I specifically thought of all the many bigots I went to school with or worked with (in the food service industry there, people don't keep their cards close to the vest, I found) and I despaired that Trump's rhetoric was going to resonate strongly with this folk. I've lived in many different places in the US since (mostly NE or MW), but I could see echoes of that contingent in all of these places, and I knew that even though the US made large progressive strides in the years leading up to 2015, those people were never going to change their minds, learn, or grow intellectually. They just kept their resentments in, and so I'm not at all terribly surprised (though I am saddened, nevertheless) to see this footage.
Geez, I had many happy memories as a kid of that fucking town square they're showing here. I just took my partner there for Thanksgiving recently and we walked in that area. Incidentally, though, there is an old historic site just feet from that gazebo called the "Slave Market", which is what you'd think it was. There used to be many controversial demonstrations there back when I was a teenager, I recall. And the Native American population used to demonstrate in front of the statue of Pedro Menendez every year on Columbus Day, for obvious reasons. But you might be appalled to hear that there were many white people who would--again, with no shame at all--publicly disparage these demonstrators with intense racial epithets.In fact, there is a well-documented history of some severe racism in St. Augustine, which is so very unfortunate because it's a beautiful place, and there were some subpopulations interested in arts and intellectual pursuits. You just have to steer clear of the rednecks.
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On 12/23/2021 at 10:28 AM, randomsummer said:
Wow, that Evidence certainly was Scary. I love how these Morons capitalize words for Emphasis.
Ha.
You know, it's really clear how biased all these liberal hippie professor types are: they penalize conservative students with poor grades just because they're illiterate. It's disgusting, really. Scary, to say the least.
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Scary to say the least.
I'm going to wrap up all of my anecdotes with that sentence.
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1 hour ago, ignatius said:
mega cringe "AmericaFest" lols.. wtf. get a life.
Whatever one thinks of the trial, this kid literally killed two people with a gun that he was talking about killing people with the night before for stealing toilet paper or whatever from a convenience store. How is there not more shame here?
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update: I pulled out my audiotechnica lp120 and both records worked fine on there. I'm not sure why they skipped on the lp60: like I said, I've never had that problem with new records on that turntable before. Oh well. The good news is that they work just fine on the other deck, so I guess I'll only play them on that one.
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@oscillik: well, it's not that kind of turntable, so admittedly, that's a limitation. It's an automatic auditechnica belt-driven table. I have another one with adjustable tracking but it's not in regular rotation. The automatic audiotechnica doesn't give me this sort of grief with any of my other records, and I listen to it daily. I'll hook up my fancier turntable and see if it still gives me this problem. It's disappointing, still.
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I looked for a thread devoted to the "Chiastic Slide"/"LP5" reissues, and didn't see it. If I missed the right thread, apologies.
So, I got the vinyl reissues yesterday in the mail, and they are lovely to behold. Excellent presentation. Problem is, both "cipater" and "acroyear2" skip repeatedly. It appears that they keep kicking my stylus out of the groove. No other tracks do this, and none of my other decent records have any problems on the turntable that I use. Anyone else having this problem? Also, what should I do about this? I'm pretty disappointed that both of the first tracks from each album have this problem.
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Well, that's fulfills my daily awful story quota, and by 8am too.
Unfortunately, I suspect that there will be a lot more of that sort of thing in the next few months/years. I sincerely wonder what it will take for there to be major systemic reform. Perhaps it will never happen. Incidentally, there was a good interview with Ryan Busse, a former gun industry insider, on Fresh Air yesterday. https://www.npr.org/2021/11/22/1056871881/gunfight-author-ryan-busse
He opens the book with a story about his twelve year old son getting physically harassed by an AR15-toting MAGA-hat wearing right-winger. As you said, now that there's this bizarre legal precedent, I am bracing myself for even more emboldened asinine shenanigans in my part of the country ('flyover' and cornfield land).
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15 minutes ago, Enthusiast said:
Gurney: "I am smiling"
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Any word on dates for this reissue?
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What is up with the happy display of that "okie-dokie" hand gesture in that Felatio Blow video? Hasn't that been reappropriated as a "white power" symbol or something? Ick.
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On 10/3/2021 at 10:42 AM, Extralife said:
Way late arrival to this. Really enjoying all three volumes of this.
I never really got into Black Dog much after Ed and Andy left, but between Fragments and these recent eps, I am re-hooked.
I have to admit: I became OBSESSED with the "Silenced", "Radio Scarecrow", "Further Vexations", "Music for Real Airports", "Liber Dogma", "Tranklements", "Neither/Neither", "Post-Truth", "Black Daisy Wheel", and "Fragments" line of CD output, in that order about a year ago. That's a very slow burn to build up for me, as I was an obsessive over "Bytes", "Spanners", and "Music for Adverts and Films" for years. I was worried when I heard about the departure of Ed and Andy, whom I adore (I have a signed CD on my wall, next to a signed box of Autechre's EP collection and a signed copy of Steve Hauschildt's first solo album: my holy trinity of signed works). But something clicked with "Liber Dogma" for me, and I felt that I can see the Black Dog as its own wonderful, prodigious thing, next to Plaid in its own right, but there's no need to really compare them in the first place. It's really its own thing, and its full of intelligence, and social anxiety about stupid-ass uses of technology, and society's malformations and all the shit I also think about and worry about on a regular basis. These guys have my heart, too.
And have you seen their serious fucking output?! They don't stop, and it's all quality. Inspiring, to say the least. They have a book of photography, and they're constantly putting out new albums and EPs. I miss the vinyl, though. If I can suggest anything it's that they put out some more vinyl soon because, hey, the world is burning up anyway and I like some larger artworks because my rapidly aging eyeballs can see it better and because I can play it for friends while the continent of North America is burning up and filling the air with toxic particles and George Carlin was probably right when he said that the planet just wants "PLASTIC, ASSHOLE!" It's all going to shit, anyway.
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Ha, that “noise” is the best part. I was instantly hooked from that point on and have been a bochead ever since. Got the fuckin’ children’s book edition on a recommendation of the guy at my local record store (“music matters”), and that album was my soundtrack through 2002 through 2012.
still my favorite album.
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3 hours ago, zero said:
where is option #3 - Obama's fault
This guy is usually pretty insightful (often in his criticism of the Trumpification of the conservative party and their continual failures lately) and related to your point, though he goes a bit further:
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7 minutes ago, Extralife said:
Lunatic was one of the formative albums from my high school years. This old guy is excited!
Me too. This will belong right beside my “Mike & Rich” reissue on the shelf.
Could Boards of Canada control my deluge via USB and make it do music?
in Boards of Canada
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Geez us fucking Christ.
im out.
fuck this, but have a good life, y’all.