BMTea

Wow! NYT has an in-house mind-reader!

Yes, you can actually see the disappointing number of so-called liberals who make a mockery of the concepts of humanitarianism, anti-racism and the rule of law.

I agree with you about BoTW. I played the whole thing. It is actually overrated. Maybe I just needed to soace it out a bit since I played it a ton in college.

Wow! Now that I know the Biden administration implemented a new anti-redlining framework for banks that may come into effect in 2026 (provided Trump doesn't scrap it) I realize that he wasn't a lame duck! He was the most transformational orogressive president since FDR! LOL.

“We want to see the end of the (Israeli) investigation before we speak to that, which does not mean that it is an open-ended timeline,” State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said during a daily press briefing.

So they're giving them an open-ended timeline.

Yes, I do agree that European diplomats are generally more intelligent than US diplomats. But when you say stuff like "he also mentions his stay in Afghanistan, confirming that war is a terrible thing" I start to wonder if you don't work for him.

I think the "breath underwater" perk in a game with literally no missions where you need to touch water except one - where you have a divesuit anyways - is the best example of how shallow the game is.

Hahahaha that's an opinion piece, not a piece of legislation make your own arguments for yourself. Tax breaks for green energy! Wow! Something that even fucking broke third world nations have in place! Bravo!

Not at all surprised to see you dismiss actual data with your own made up hypotheticals

Not only did I not dismiss the data at all, nothing I said was hypothetical. It's not surprising that you use scattershot public opinion polling from wikipedia as an argument. You now have to explain why one poll shows a 50/50 split years before 2014. You also have to explain how it is that the national polling service retained integrity during a civil war. Hint: two of those pollsters stopped polling people in Donbas.

The factors I listed are things that can actually be assessed and that you can make coherent, non-hypothetical arguments about. You're snide and refuse to argue your case besides arguing hypotheticals. You also seem not to know the basic history of any of these nations, what you said about Finland is manifestly ignorant. As for handwaving informations, that's exactly what you've done as it regards NATO papers concerning Finland's prospects for joining and reasons for not doing so post-2012. Have a good one.

It's a little telling that you have yet to refer to a specific one that you find to be earthshatteringly awesome.

What if we're wrong and BlueSky just gets better? I mean, with some of the corporate trappings of old Twitter, but still user-friendly, big userbases, vibrant subcultures and banning troublemakers?

Polling data good enough?

This Wiki graph is a bit of an abomination. There is no point to jumping between different pollsters between months. But it's also a very incomplete picture of A) Ukraine's intentions B) the role that ethnic breakdown of these polling outcomes and C) whose views actually matter for security policy in Ukraine. And once again I return to the ethnic schism in Ukraine. The most significant bloc of opposition to NATO membership were the same Russian-speaking regions that felt disenfranchised when Yanukovych was removed from power.

I don’t even know what you mean by this sentence.

You claimed that when it comes to NATO membership for Ukraine, it's not about NATO's wishes or Russia's wishes, but Ukraine's wishes. I am arguing that it's not the case at all since both NATO and Russia had deep influence over Ukraine economically, politically and militarily.

Euromaidan was a nationalist movement because the catalyst for the movement was, surprise surprise, Russian meddling...

What point of mine are you responding to here? I never said anything to contradict that. I'm not making a moralistic argument, I'm making a causal one. Russian meddling was a huge part in depressing support for NATO membership in Ukraine, and Euromaidan was an enormous blow to Russian meddling. QED That's why Russia switched from meddling to compellence.

If what you're arguing is that Russia's actions made Ukraine more interested in joining NATO, I think the counterargument is quite easy to make. Russia, inatead of playing a losing political game inside Ukraine, decided to use its might to make it impossible for Ukraine to join NATO, first by supporting disaffected Russian-speakers secede, and then by partitioning Ukraine directly when it feared the secessionists would lose.

I thought it was about being neutral and not about being pro-russia? Pro-russia isn’t the same as being neutral.

Actually it is. Neutrality involves both pro-Russia and pro-West parties coexisting, alternating and sharing power. That's almost always been the case with neutral/buffer states. Finland had a pro-USSR and pro-NATO leaders alternating for the entire Cold War almost. The issue is that in the post-Soviet space, that "neutrality" has actually manifested in two groups of differently-aligned corrupt oligarchs alternating. The economic gravity, superior governance and stronger military/intelligence influence of the West leads to popular support for the pro-Western oligarchs. They're voted in, corruption continues, the electorate becomes disillusioned and votes for the more Russia-friendly oligarchs. That's basically been the story for several decades in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Montenegro etc.

Ukraine war has affected that significantly, but Ukraine is more important to Russia than any other neighbor for historical, geographic, economic, cultural and demographic reasons.

Finland and Sweden who for decades were members of the EU and had no desire to be a part of NATO

That's absolutely not true. Finland in particular came quite close to joining NATO several times and a long-term trend towards public and political support for joining NATO. In fact, if you read NATO think tank studies on the matter from 2000-2012, you'll find that the matter went from uncertain to being treated as inevitable. The main issue was always concern over Russian economic ties. But that went out the window when Russia was subject to nuclear sanctions after invading Ukraine.

Sweden is actually a similar case. It has basically acted as an auxiliary partner in basically all of NATO's major operations in the past. There is also a good study on how it used the threat of NATO-ization as part of its economic diplomacy with Russia (I think by Henrik Larsen). But it joining after the nuclear sanctions on Russia also makes sense. There have never been any downsides to the prospect of joining NATO except for 1. being dragged into others' conflicts 2. damaging economic and political relations with Russia. Following nuclear sanctions, there really were no more incentives not to join. I think with Sweden it's more complex as there are ideological factors which are more prominent than in Finland.