Russian invasion of Ukraine

It’s a bit typical of Tory governments to stem the tide of immigrants though.

The irony of Priti Patel’s family being allowed into the UK as a result of the actions of a madman in Uganda is quite something. She’s quite possibly the least compassionate tory politician I’ve come across in my lifetime.

this looks a lot like "oh shit, we can't win so easily and it will have negative consequences, better change my mind."

Vilnius too

Even in the invasion of Ukraine, there are people who mourn the loss of an airplane that got destroyed in Ukraine to the point of making a lots of content about it.

But the plane (Antonov an-225) was truly an engineering marvel - the biggest airplane in the world. Human lives are more important, of course, but we can mourn the loss of these great machines as well, especially if it's the only one in the world, especially if you're an aviation fan.

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It was also weird the extent that people made stuff up about Corbyn. It's not like he was so competent that there was no other way to attack him.

I think you're right. I've seen fake photos of him as a pallbearer at an IRA funeral ffs. Plenty of real flaws to get your teeth stuck into!

And Riga https://www.reuters.com/world/latvian-capital-rename-russian-embassy-address-independent-ukraine-street-2022-03-04/

I used to see the AN-225 take off on a regular basis whilst passing by in a Cessna considerably smaller and slower than any of the Citations in that photo.

Fully laden with fuel and multiple tons of heavy oil field equipment it was like watching a building slowly lifting off the ground. A climb rate measured almost in inches per minute, precariously balanced on the razor edge of Newtonian physics. Truly an awesome sight.

AP reporting that US is about to announce that they will stop buying Russian oil.

It's because Momentum made him an existential threat.

If this is true, are staff obliged to comply?

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precariously balanced on the razor edge of Newtonian physics.

Truly a sweet turn of phrase.

The UN has quite tight rules for employees, so I'd guess yes.

The ban on using the Ukrainian flag on personal social media seems pretty reasonable to me TBH.

I was surprised today to discover that Momentum are still a thing (the local councillor who has been pushing all the LTN stuff in my borough has been deselected in favour of a Momentum candidate).

Yeah after the epic defeat it kinda felt like they.... lost momentum.

Dad jokes aside though, the underlying structural issues that created Momentum, Brexit, etc. are all still present so it does make sense.

The extra-left part of the borough labour party is pretty strong still, very vocal, and quite organised. I didnt know he had been deselected

I made the mistake of reading random comments on Twitter. The thing I noticed is that there is tremendous disdain of the West in many third World countries and Putin is seen as a good guy. To be honest who Can blame them after US waging war in middle-east for so long under false pretenses. So it seems that the World has been divided and We are getting close to a real World war three unless Russia’s hostilities are stopped now. For me the suggested role of Israel or China as a mediator sounds like a recepy for disaster.

I would take most of the vociferous support for Putin on Twitter with a hefty pinch of salt.

Yeah I was looking at some ad-hoc numbers from traditional bot shitposting places like Twitter. Comparing most popular posts on reddit/conspiracy yesterday to a couple of weeks ago it's at ~2k upvotes rather than ~12k.

I someone posted a graph showing twitter activity relating to different hashtags around covid, vaccine scepticism, that trucker thing in canada and a few other conspiracy type topics completely flattened out for c. 30 hours. Somewhat unsurprisingly this coincided with Russia blocking twitter. So much of the internet is essentially a fabrication it's quite mindblowing.

Seen posts of billboards in Lebanon, Iraq and one of the African countries saying they support Putin, world is a messy place

On the plane thing… I think that we need to consider it a contemporary/modern relic.

Elsewhere people have mourned the destruction of ancient marvels, churches, and such. To me, had that plane survived, it may have been one day a symbol of an era’s engineering marvel. Instead, it’s consigned to history books.

Indeed, human/animal life is of a greater concern, but that plane was a piece of many people’s lives and stood for something… engineering or otherwise.

You can be sad about more than one thing also

it seems that Poland have given the planes to the US in return for equivalent aircraft so the US can donate them to Ukraine. i wonder if thats a symbolic transaction to avoid direct action on Poland?

Got a link for further reading?

Good old Grauniad. Not sure MIG-25s would be much use these days.

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