this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
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Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.
AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)
This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.
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i think you're (you plural, not you singular) making the typical western mistake regarding both putin and ukraine:
putin was always an angry russian imperialist, he has built his position entirely on imperialist adventures (that were ignored by the west because who cares about chechnya or abkhazia, or other impossible-to-pronounce peoples of caucasus, really)
the russo-ukrainian war started in 2014 with the invasion of crimea and then donbas, after ukrainians decided they don't really like the russian-friendly oligarch who used russian disinfo to get elected. and notably that was what shifted the ukrainian support for dropping neutrality in favour for joining nato; until 2014 ukrainians favoured just tightening the political and economical ties with the european union.
putin didn't descend into the imperator madness recently, he started with it, it was what buoyed him to the top.
I don't deny Putin is a Russian nationalist, I just meant that he could have more profitably reached his goals with a lighter touch. Invading in 2022 hardened Ukraine's opposition, highlighted the behavior of Russian troops in occupied Ukraine, and destroyed a lot of hardware and people.
Before 2022, Putin could project Russian power as this weird chimera of Russia as a promised land of white patriarchy, coupled with invincible military threat. The invasion revealed Russia as both military incompetent and brutal, making resisting Russia militarily the rational choice, and simultanously sidelining Russia's supporters. If you stand with Putin, you also stand with the people who destroyed Bucha.