They purged roughly 10% - 12% of the opposition by parliament seats, yeah - that means it is at least that much less democratic. I’m just stating facts here. This isn’t a strong defense of the democratic values of Ukraine, just a statement that they aren’t wholly undemocratic as suggested in the meme - it’s misleading.

I agree that the situation isn’t treated with nuance, typically, by westerners. But in this case, this is neither particularly nuanced nor naïve - it’s just a statement of fact that the parliament has voted repeatedly to extend martial law.

That doesn’t mean Ukraine is a super-democratic country. It only means that it is the case that the government, made up of elected representatives (and yes, Ukraine banned 11 political parties for alleged Russian ties - one of them with ~10% of parliamentary seats - so the representativeness of the legislature is certainly debatable) has voted to not allow presidential elections until the war is over.

Obviously it’d take a much longer explanation to capture all of the relevant geopolitical context, but this is a factually accurate statement about what is happening, yes?

Referendum was incorrect. It was just a vote by the legislature, so elected representatives. I had seen Referendum used in some source, but I forget where.

On 26 February 2025, after a previous failed vote on a similar resolution,[27] the Verkhovna Rada passed a resolution reaffirming that elections should not be held during martial law, and also pledged to hold a presidential election upon the conclusion of the Russo-Ukrainian War.[28] On 6 March 2025 opposition politicians Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, after having confirmed that they had held discussions with United States representatives, confirmed that they still opposed elections held during wartime.[29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Ukrainian_presidential_election

To be fair, they’re (understandably) under martial law which has been extended in 90 day increments since 2022 with parliamentary approval. Elections aren’t to be held under martial law per Ukranian law, and there have been referenda votes held among the Rada to determine if elections should be held, which failed.

Edit: referendum would entail direct democracy. That isn’t what happened - it was just a vote by the legislature.

Based

“Counting or not counting gang violence?”

Guy Extinguishi

My thought recently has been:

1. The universe is physical, ie made of material stuff. There is just stuff and the forces between stuff

2. Stuff is governed by physical laws

3. The interractions between things are relatively simple, but get much more complex and seemingly ramdom the more stuff you add

4. This seeming randomness is not true randomness because the interractions between things are governed by predictable rules

5. We are made of stuff, down to the neurons in our brains

6. Our actions and thoughts are ultimately directly caused by neuronal activity that is (in theory) predictable and governed by laws

7. Free will and individuality aren’t “real” in the way people typically mean. Our actions are determined entirely by the particles in our system interracting with the constituent parts of other systems.

My conclusion: this doesn’t matter on a practical level. We still experience free will and individuality. But those things are illusions caused by the interractions of many complex systems.

“Bowr-gee-oh-eye-zee”

I meal prep for the week on sunday and make food for the week. Every week what I make is as good or better than the restaurant version. This week is Kenji Lopez’s cochinita pibíl with which I make tacos. It is very good and took me like 3hrs to cook over the weekend.

Not that unusual if you know a lot of hispanic people in the US. There’s a lot of pulling up the ladder and pick-me-ism. People who “did it the right way” and succeeded purely on their own merit (not like those illegals). These people vote republican, may consider themselves white and even be white nationalists - like the proud boys leader who was hispanic (edit: enrique tarrio, forgot his name. Man is an afro-cuban white nationalist smh).

Plenty of hispanic ppl who aren’t like that, obviously. But it’s common.

Dicks out

Absolutely based. Great job Hawaii!

Yeah it’s a visual metaphor - the emptiness of his bowels = the concept of zero shit in bowels

Yeah líng 零 is pretty annoying as a learner of the language.

The top character is yŭ 雨 which means rain. Confusingly, this is the semantic component - the part that contains the meaning of the character. Explained below.

The bottom character líng 令 means order/command as a noun and verb. This doesn’t add meaning, it is the phonetic component: basically a pronunciation cue.

It originally meant “light rain”/“falling in drops, like rain”, actually. It began being used to mean “fragments” or “leftover part”, then as “remainder” in the mathematical sense. Then, eventually, to mean 0. Another form of líng is 霝 which means raindrops. It has 3 kŏu 口 (“mouth”) characters on the bottom to visually represent drops.

So, like a lot of Chinese characters, it really only makes sense when you understand the etymology - and even then it’s kind of a stretch

True. The colonel is not quite at indian levels of flavor town, but still pretty good tbh

Good point! Did add one.

Just made indian style (not british style) tikka masala. Let’s count em:

Just for the oil (throw away after oil’s hot):

1. cinnamon stick

2. cardamom pods

3. bay leaf

Marinade for chicken + the tikka “gravy”

4. ginger

5. garlic

6. chili powder

7. fenugreek

8. coriander seed powder

9. cumin powder

10. turmeric

11. Edit: a serrano chili

12. garam masala

11 spices + a serrano pepper. But garam masala has like 10 spices in it

strudel.cc is really fun to learn if anyone likes this sort of thing

CEOs also have zero idea how AI/LLMs work. They are shockingly clueless.

What I think they’re really saying is: 99% of CEOs expect to blame layoffs on AI in the next 2 years