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[scriver]

I think it's You Know What I Mean?

[Starver]

"You Know What I Mean". Might be a bit archaic of an abbreviation/initialisation (pre-web '80s/'90s!), sorry. Or it's listed under I(f)YKWIM, IYS(ee)WIM or similar.

HTH, HAND. 

(Ninjaed!)

[martinuzz]

IWPCSAE

I wish people could stop abbreviating everything

I am a cunning linguist, but that doesn't mean you need to shave off everything.

EDIT: back to the topic. According to Ukraine, Russia bombed the children's hospital in Marioepol. It is feared that many children are crushed or trapped under the debris.

[EuchreJack]

I think I saw a news cast about that, the news was showing the bodies. Or maybe it was a School.

[martinuzz]

You didn't need to edit that m8 I took no offense

[EuchreJack]

You didn't need to edit that m8 I took no offense

Re-read your edit. Yeah, it forced me to edit my response.
You snuck in serious stuff requiring a serious response.

[Ulfarr]

This is either a bullshit excuse, a colossal failure on whoever designed and maintained such a system or a sensational report to stir up controversy. Any safety system, should have (back up) generators on site.

These things go wrong (see Fukushima), and it also sounds like those who know how to keep all backup elements ready and working are not being given free reign to have the site-wide access they normally would have. (The staff may be short of necessary down-time and food, too, to keep them at personal efficiency.)

If the backup generators are still operational/weren't hit by the assaulting fire/haven't had the fuel siphoned from them.

I don't think it's going to be a fatal (YKWIM) problem, but it might cut into the safety-buffer. If incoming power had been cut in peacetime, there'd be linesmen reconnecting it within hours, with additional equipment/fuel sent in as it was found necessary for the interim. Even if the people were available to do so, now they'd probably be crossing at least one front-line to accomplish their tasks. Shall we say that, situationally, it's "not ideal"?

Of course the situation is not ideal, of course the problem (most likely) wouldn't have happened if the invasion hadn't happened but the report by itself seems exaggerated. Coupled with the threat that a nuclear disaster poses, it's just too convinient as a tool to force public opinion.

In a semi-similar* situation, some days ago there was a convoy trying to flee from Ukraine. The actual members of that convoy reported that outside some village, someone blocked their path by firing a single "warning" shot and that they had to turn back. They didn't identify who shot or from where they got shot and there weren't any actual damage to the vehicles. Considering the situation, things turned out as well as one could hope and yet our local media reported the story as if they got caught in a firefight.

*similar in the vein of how something can be exaggerated to serve a narrative

[Il Palazzo]

Yeah. We should all keep in mind that every player here is waging information warfare and people like us are the target. It's useful for Ukraine's cause to exaggerate the risks, it's convenient for the west to lambaste the Russians at every occasion, it's profitable for the news outlets to cry havoc. Regardless of whether the cause is just or not, we should take all such news with a grain of salt.

[Robsoie]

In the same time there's so much history between "bullshit excuse" and "Chernobyl" that it's very hard to stay confident in any report of "everything is fine".

[anewaname]

Can’t have a military coup if the military leadership is all dead

I'd previously had half a thought that some of the cannon-fodder losses by the Russians were 'deliberate', or at least typical Great Patriotic War zerg-rush-against-overwhelming-odds tactics (even though that shouldn't have been necessary), but I can't rationalise the reasoning behind this.


Except for the stalled convoys. Surely not, but still conceivably, engineered as such a tempting target for US-/whoever-led strikes so as to draw in the international community and 'prove' their own status as provacateurs to justify some pre-intended escalation. It's not a sane plan, but it is a plan. An attempted Xanatos-/Thanatos-Gambit, possibly.

Yeah, I had similar thoughts but more oriented towards the "what political gain could Putin gain by pushing troops into a meat-grinder?".

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Putin does what every other political animal has done over thousands of years... He keeps internal political groups from rising against him by getting them to fight each other. Quietly help one community gain economically at the expense of other communities and they will learn to hate each other... example: hire police from one community to enforce unjust laws against another community. When there is a risk of those communities grouping together against the politician, the politician declares an external enemy and sends the young from both communities to die in a meat-grinder. This is usually done with mandatory conscription.

In America, conscription was used to send "liberal hippies" and "non-white" people to fight in Korea and then Vietnam, rarely in command positions and often in infantry positions. In WWI and WWII, the undesirables were sent into more dangerous positions and died at a higher rate.

Russia and Belarus still have a limited conscription system and a question I have is, how many of the Russian invaders were identified by Putin's regime as supporting Putin's internal political rivals and put into dangerous positions?

EDIT: Just read about the news that Russian conscripts among those captured, but still would ask, "how many of them were identified by Putin's regime as supporting Putin's internal political rivals?"

[martinuzz]

https://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/ohj8pg/south-park-back-to-the-cold-war-season-25-ep-4

[Starver]

((In response to Ulfarr's accusation of purely serving a narrative, which I wouldn't dismiss as being part of it, but...))

All I've seen as a 'report' is:

Ukrainian government reports that the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant has lost power due to damage to an high voltage power line to Kyiv. They state this could potentially impact the cooling of spent fuel assemblies and lead to nuclear discharge.

...unless you're saying it can not potentially impact the cooling (...etc), Ulfarr, I'm not sure what you're getting animated about.

I will confidently state that it can do this. That it's always a risk, though usually a minor one in modern times when old mistakes (Windscale, Three-Mile Island, Fukushima, etc, and Chernobyl itself of course) have been learnt from and caution is now the watchword in any mature nuclear-operator. Maybe more risky in 'up-and-coming' places with other concerns (Iran, NK...).

In an active war-zone, with prior incident-damage to look after and limited to whatever resources are already on site, yes, there's potential problems at the most basic level (the cooling) that could escalate to further problems.

Better to say this than to ignore it/do the "This is fine" thing. It might be worse at a more recently active power-plant (like Zaporizhzhia, which had all six reactors active within the last month and did have initially worrying damage done to some of its auxilliary infrastructure), or if the Sarcophagus[1] were not there to do its intended job.


[1] Not armoured against attack, but at least preventing further casual damage to the Soviet-era reactor buildings damaged in the original incident by careless invaders.

[Il Palazzo]

Yeah, I had similar thoughts but more oriented towards the "what political gain could Putin gain by pushing troops into a meat-grinder?".

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Putin does what every other political animal has done over thousands of years... He keeps internal political groups from rising against him by getting them to fight each other. Quietly help one community gain economically at the expense of other communities and they will learn to hate each other... example: hire police from one community to enforce unjust laws against another community. When there is a risk of those communities grouping together against the politician, the politician declares an external enemy and sends the young from both communities to die in a meat-grinder. This is usually done with mandatory conscription.

In America, conscription was used to send "liberal hippies" and "non-white" people to fight in Korea and then Vietnam, rarely in command positions and often in infantry positions. In WWI and WWII, the undesirables were sent into more dangerous positions and died at a higher rate.

Russia and Belarus still have a limited conscription system and a question I have is, how many of the Russian invaders were identified by Putin's regime as supporting Putin's internal political rivals and put into dangerous positions?

EDIT: Just read about the news that Russian conscripts among those captured, but still would ask, "how many of them were identified by Putin's regime as supporting Putin's internal political rivals?"

I don't see how any of that checks out. E.g. US losses in Vietnam or Korea, by race, roughly match the general demographics of the population. In WWII blacks were preferentially kept in non-combat units because racism, duh. Or the fact that the vast majority of conscripts are too young to earn the label of a dissident, or even as much as develop concrete political opinions - you're talking kids right out of secondary education.
Where conscription discriminates, it's against the poorer strata of the population. Which are also the most susceptible to government propaganda.

[martinuzz]

About 7000 Russian tourists are stuck in Phuket, Thailand. They are unable to return to Russia because the flights are cancelled, and they have no money because their creditcards are no longer valid.

[Starver]

About 7000 Russian tourists are stuck in Phuket, Thailand.

IRTA "...7000 Russian troops..." and wondered how, by Stalin's left nipple, that particular situation had come to pass...


There are tales of Western correspondents, normally long-term resident reporters in Russia, who have precautionarily left because of the potential threat of 15 years' jail-time. They're finding they're now cut off from their Russia-localised card-payment accounts. Probably applies to others who are based mostly on the one side of the Polonium Curtain but find themselves currently on the other, for all the best reasons.

And prior to the various VISA/SWIFT/etc sanctions there were a bunch of Ukrainian truck-drivers 'stranded' in a UK motorway service-station because their fuel-cards had stopped working. I think that was administrative, their home companies/service-providers being effectively closed for business and credit-lines closed, rather than ill-targetted sanctioning. Apparently locals (and some translators) were mobilised to keep them fed and heated and otherwise kept from feeling too abandoned. Not sure if the situation improved, since. It got its two-minutes of being a "feel-good in adversity" news-slot at the time, then far more widespread news would have been priority.