PhilipTheBucket

True that

I feel like almost every really good leader is someone who happens to have that "natural leader" quality, but also asks people for input constantly and is aware of their lack of judgement.

A little semi related aside: There is a fascinating story in "Most Secret War" of the author's first meeting where Winston Churchill was running the meeting. One, Churchill came in in working clothes, the only one not wearing a suit, and everyone thought for a second that he was the janitor or something entering the wrong room when he walked in. He just didn't carry himself like "the boss." Once they all realized everyone stood up and he sort of waved it off and took his seat like nothing special. He had sort of anti charisma.

Once he started running the meeting, Jones said that Churchill had an almost supernatural ability to spot when Jones at least had something he needed to say. Somebody would say something that was wrong, Jones would carefully keep his face neutral because he was just some random low-level peon at this meeting and didn't want to get in trouble, and the next thing that happened Churchill would say, "Jones, what do you think of that?" Basically he was at a grandmaster level of digging to get to the bottom of what was actually happening so everyone could make good decisions.

I don't really know that much about any famous leaders through history, but it was just fuckin' fascinating as a window onto how these decisions and plans actually get made, to some small extent.

A billion in EU buys many times less than the same billion does in russia.

Think about why it does

Because no one in their right mind wants rubles, so money comparisons that involve rubles have to be corrected back to reality before the values actually match. If you go by the exchange rate alone, you might as well be comparing dollars to lollipops or something.

1. I was talking about how much they're spending on the Ukraine war, not how much they're spending in general. Obviously the EU's economy dwarfs Russia's so of course they're going to spend more on their military in general, it's only even competitive because of PPP and because Russia has mobilized its entire country more or less into a war economy for the Ukraine war
2. PPP is the correct way to compare dollar values between countries, most of the time, doing otherwise gives wildly misleading values for a lot of comparisons
3. "It sound foolish to believe Russia has plans to attack" my guy they are literally "attacking," they are literally moving their units into enemy territory (and then back out) right now
4. "they would be heading for a war they have no guarantee of winning" I have bad news for you about what it means historically when the massive nation is invading a small country that didn't do anything to it, and the war is still going on with no progress several years in. That's not just "no guarantee of winning" territory at that point...

I actually do see another possibility beyond what I said: I think it's also possible that Russia has decided on war with NATO, and is doing provocations so the other party will have to be the one to "officially start" the war and then they can "retaliate." That's part of why I was saying it would be smart for NATO to establish very clear ahead-of-time guidelines and then stick to them, so there's no escalation by mistake once missiles do start flying around. Anyway that type of behavior is a time-honored tradition especially for democratic countries that have to worry about the public perception (US with Japan before WW2, US with Vietnam at Tonkin Gulf, Israel at all times...). I don't think that's what they are doing for a couple of reasons, but it's the only other explanation besides what I said that makes any sense to me.

Yeah. I'm not exactly a geopolitics-man, but my best guess for what's going on with Putin and Russia's strategy here is:

1. He'd been doing fine with taking over small countries up until 2022, and it generally gave him opportunities for new goodies to give away to his friends and also it's exciting and makes him look like a winner
2. He's been surrounded by yes men for so long that he's lost his ability to really tell what are good strategies, what is happening, or what's likely to happen in the future

I think the combination means that he's just kind of telling his military to do whatever, including invading Ukraine thinking it would go about the same way as Georgia, Crimea, Chechnya, and the US elections. I do think he benefits from a certain amount of native cunning in this particular brinksmanship with NATO, and of course it doesn't take too much detailed understanding of facts on the ground to just fly some planes around in their airspace and flip people off, but also I think in general this latest chapter of Russia is just a pretty good demonstration of why authoritarianism doesn't make for effective countries.

EU countries combined are matching already russia military expenses

Check the data

The US plus all partners has sent about $150 billion in total, it looks like, up until the middle of last year: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-aid-to-ukraine/ About half of that is EU, so say $75 billion from the EU.

Russia spends about $500 billion per year: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/02/12/russias-2024-military-spending-surpassed-eu-uk-combined-in-ppp-terms-study-a87974 They have mobilized basically their entire economy to try to win this thing.

What is your source for saying the EU alone is matching Russia? The EU is barely paying attention to the war, because of complacency and a subtle racism. But the idea that the EU is pulling out all the stops like Russia is, or prioritizing making their "defense" contractors rich in this as the US is wont to do, is absurd.

and watch out for propaganda.

Can do! I think I might have found some, I'm not sure.

Oh wait lol

Russia is already shooting down anything that enters their airspace (or trying to, mostly succeeding). As well as lots and lots of things which are outside their airspace including civilian airliners sometimes. It's only in NATO-land that it's this big crisis like "oh no oh no whatever shall we do."

The whole thing where moderators have mostly-unchecked power in their little domain, and they can ban people or delete comments and make rules for what other humans in their space can and can't say, is one of the most toxic features of Reddit. I think Lemmy copied it from sheer traditionalism, but it was really a mistake in both locations. It leads a bro to think they're supposed to be in charge of the other little peons in their space, and that's a pretty bad thing for a bro to start thinking like.

See, now you've got a problem. If you'd shot down the first one, Russia would have made a big noise and then it would have been fine. Now that you didn't, now it's weird if you start shooting them down.

My advice is to just be straight about it: Publicly announce what the line is where you'll shoot them down, and then stick to it. Even if you just announced a date when the shooting-down will start any time they enter NATO airspace, that might be fine. But you have to stick to it. Right now you're trying to figure out how to make them stop without shooting them down, and that approach just doesn't work. Like you're all surprised they don't establish radio contact. Bro... that is not the game you are engaged in.

(You might also want to confiscate $10 billion in frozen Russian assets to give to Ukraine for each incursion, just to respond to what's already happened... but again without shooting them down it's not going to accomplish anything. The money's already gone honestly, and they know that, they're just waiting for you to figure it out and go through your whole "process" and make it official, and they think you're stupid and weak for every year that goes by that you're not doing that.)

Sure, have a good one

You said, “I personally am of the opinion that voting isn’t very important. I think it distracts from real action.” Right?

If that's not what you said or not what you think, tell me. What's your position on voting? Is it worth upsetting yourself by voting, if you can then take part in keeping thousands of people out of ICE detention or reduce the US government's destruction of the planet compared to the alternative? My position is that it is, but tell me.

No idea why you've moved to cursing and insulting me.

But what if voting in this system doesn’t prevent harm?

Or voting for major party candidates doesn’t prevent harm?

Then you need to do more, on top of voting, to try to further reduce the harm. And, also, don't throw away a crucial tool to move the needle towards "less death and suffering" because it would be way too upsetting.

Not complicated really. Lots of ways of fighting for a better world are upsetting. That's not really the metric of whether they are worth doing.

May have confused it with the original more considered version that got munched.

What?

What was the thing you repeated that you had heard, but that isn't actually your position? I'm just confused by this.

Not really trying to give you a hard time, I get what you're saying about me coming on super-strong about it and I apologize about any kind of harshness. Like I say, it's just an important issue for me that is connected with real world harm, so I feel like if we can have a slightly upsetting conversation and then be set up for action that can help prevent some massive material harm in the world, that's okay.󠀁󠁓󠁯󠀠󠁉󠀧󠁭󠀠󠁡󠀠󠁬󠁩󠁴󠁴󠁬󠁥󠀠󠁳󠁵󠁳󠁰󠁩󠁣󠁩󠁯󠁵󠁳󠀠󠁯󠁦󠀠󠀢󠁤󠁥󠁬󠁶󠁥󠀬󠀢󠀠󠁡󠁬󠁳󠁯󠀮󠀠󠁔󠁨󠁡󠁴󠀧󠁳󠀠󠁣󠁯󠁭󠁭󠁯󠁮󠁬󠁹󠀠󠁡󠀠󠁨󠁡󠁬󠁬󠁭󠁡󠁲󠁫󠀠󠁯󠁦󠀠󠁴󠁥󠁸󠁴󠀠󠁴󠁨󠁡󠁴󠀠󠁷󠁡󠁳󠀠󠁧󠁥󠁮󠁥󠁲󠁡󠁴󠁥󠁤󠀠󠁢󠁹󠀠󠁡󠁮󠀠󠁌󠁌󠁍󠀮󠁿