Relayed by Nick Metropolis: Fermi and von Neumann overlapped. They collaborated on problems of Taylor instabilities and they wrote a report. When Fermi went back to Chicago after that work he called in his very close collaborator, namely Herbert Anderson, a young Ph.D. student at Columbia, a collaboration that began from Fermi's very first days at Columbia and lasted up until the very last moment. Herb was an experimental physicist. (If you want to know about Fermi in great detail, you would do well to interview Herbert Anderson.) But, at any rate, when Fermi got back he called in Herb Anderson to his office and he said, "You know, Herb, how much faster I am in thinking than you are. That is how much faster von Neumann is compared to me." [0]
>When literal Nazis are perceived as the better option you can imagine the alternative isn't very shiny.
Nice story. One problem though: they eagerly joined Nazis in exterminating Jews.
The ideology of nationalists aligned quite well, be it German Nazis, Baltic states, Hungarians or Western Ukrainians.
“When you walk by the side of these people you realise they have every human right to feel hatred towards any Russian,’’ she told the AP. “Still, I think it’s important to do even a small action to show them that maybe not all the people are thinking the same way.”
She has been living in Italy for 14 years, doesn't pay taxes to Putin, supports Ukraine, what's not to like?
I mean if you are Ukrainian, there is nothing to hate her for, right?
Wrong.
Here comes Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman feeling offended by her ethnicity:
"The fact that the International Olympic Committee chose a Russian to carry the plaque with the name [of Ukraine] is shameful. It goes beyond any human morality and any principles..."[0]
I hope she learned her lesson about the nature of Ukrainian nationalists.
No, the Ukraine didn't cede anything. They cut water and electricity to Crimea to punish Crimeans and they were building up the army with Western help.
What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on this site is now dumber for having read it.
A few days ago Ukraine knocked out central heating infrastructure in Belgorod, a regional capital with 350k people, which is unlikely to be repaired until spring. Two civilians repairing it from previous strikes were killed. Whether this is rare or not, it doesn’t change anything about what I said about changing character of the war: both sides largely gave up on trying to win on the battlefield and now attack energy infrastructure of each other, putting pressure on civilian population.
When you knock out primary energy source in a large city instead of attacking military consumers, it has one goal - terror. Most people suffering from it will be civilians. There will likely be deaths. Look at the recent terrorist attack in Berlin by far left extremists: blackout of a single district resulted in at least one known direct casualty. How many people will die of hypothermia or inability to get help being locked in a high rise residential building? This is happening now in many places in Ukraine as well as in border regions of Russia. I do think it’s the same as targeting civilians directly.
>When you knock out primary energy source in a large city instead of attacking military consumers, it has one goal - terror.
Not if that city's industry is contributing to the war effort.
>Most people suffering from it will be civilians. There will likely be deaths.
You can say that about Western sanctions on Russia too. How many people have died because of a single MRI scanner or cancer drug that couldn't be bought by a Russian hospital?
Was it the "nuclear war without nukes" since the day the West imposed blanket sanctions on Russian economy?
Or did that "nuclear war without nukes" started in 2014-2015 when the Ukraine cut electricity and water supply to Crimea? "It has one goal - terror", right?
I really don’t understand your point. Are you questioning the choice of metaphor?
Ukraine cutting supply of electricity and water to Crimea did demonstrate the attitude of the Ukrainian government to people it considered once their citizen. It obviously wasn’t a part of the current chapter of the war.
Yes, there is nothing like 'nuclear war without nukes' that is happening here. And I was trying to demonstrate that your logic seem to lead to conclusion that the 'nuclear war without nukes' started in 2014.
My argument is that you can't bring strategic defeat without leveling cities or utterly destroying the power generation and electric grid. And that's not what is happening in the Ukraine or even Belgorod for that matter
In this war strategic victory is not the destruction of the state, but the control over development trajectory of the rival for the foreseeable future. Russian objective is and was not to annex entire Ukraine, but to ensure that it does not become menacing part of NATO infrastructure (they are surprisingly content with Ukraine joining EU). This is political goal and thus can be pursued through hybrid warfare, which includes psychological pressure on Ukrainian population, to ensure that current administration will loose political support and will be pressured into a peace deal on terms favorable for Russia. Ukraine does the same to achieve the opposite goal, but of course with much less success.
The whole story with territorial question is part of this: possible peace settlement could include just splitting Donbas region on the current front line, so that Putin could claim victory and Ukraine could just say they did what they could. But Russia wants more, they need Donbas in original borders, which is unacceptable to Ukraine. Why? Because if this question will be settled in the peace deal, it may open Ukraine eventually path to NATO. They want to create permanent tension the same way as it happened to Georgia, deferring the final settlement by a hundred years (see Taiwan as an example, which occupies China for decades).
>In this war strategic victory is not the destruction of the state, but the control over development trajectory of the rival for the foreseeable future.
No, it wouldn't be victory, it would be compromise. And the Ukraine isn't Russia's rival, it's just cannon fodder for the West.
>they are surprisingly content with Ukraine joining EU
Kremlin says that. Doesn't have to be true.
>which is unacceptable to Ukraine
Why is it unacceptable to the Ukraine?
I see why it's unacceptable for current regime in Kiev because they can't just say "we actually don't need Donbass, never mind hundreds of thousands lives we wasted defending it".
"Slava Ukraine" (Glory to the Ukraine) is the slogan used by the Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with Nazis and mass-murdered Poles and Jews.
"In the 1930s, it became widespread as a slogan of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), as well as Ukrainian diaspora groups and refugee communities in the West during the Cold War. ... Its use was revived again during the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and the Russo-Ukrainian War, during which it became a widely popular symbol in Ukraine."[0]
Your first point is unsubstantiated by the link. You pick two points in history for a phrase that dates back a 100 years before WW2.
From the same wikipedia page
> In July 1940, a Ukrainian observer from the Włodawa area noted: We have not yet seen in our lives such an educated, so organised rural youth. Every child who passed by us raised his hand and greeted: "Glory to Ukraine"
Only if you don't click on the "Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists". Here you are:
"The OUN intended to create a Ukrainian state with widely understood Ukrainian territories, but inhabited by Ukrainian people narrowly understood, according to Timothy Snyder. Its first congress in 1929 resolved that "Only the complete removal of all occupiers from Ukrainian lands will allow for the general development of the Ukrainian Nation within its own state." OUN's "Ten Commandments" stated "Aspire to expand the strength, riches, and size of the Ukrainian State even by means of enslaving foreigners", or "Thou shalt struggle for the glory, greatness, power, and space of the Ukrainian state by enslaving the strangers"."[0]
And then some action:
"The massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were carried out in German-occupied Poland by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), with the support of parts of the local Ukrainian population, against the Polish minority in Volhynia, Eastern Galicia, parts of Polesia, and the Lublin region from 1943 to 1945. The UPA's actions resulted in up to 100,000 Polish deaths.
The peak of the massacres took place in July and August 1943. These killings were exceptionally brutal, and most of the victims were women and children. Other victims of the massacres included several hundred Armenians, Jews, Russians, Czechs, Georgians, and Ukrainians who were part of Polish families or opposed the UPA and impeded the massacres by hiding Polish escapees"[1]
>for a phrase that dates back a 100 years before WW2
Yeah, and then you use it to greet each other while genociding non-Ukrainians and smear it forever.
Swastika dates back much further, but today it tells you quite a lot about Ukrainian "heroes" with such tattoos:
"Des saluts nazis, des croix gammées, des emblèmes de la SS… La cellule d’enquête vidéo du Monde en a identifié plusieurs centaines, arborés par des centaines de soldats ukrainiens sur les réseaux sociaux. Parmi les 350 soldats repérés, 200 membres de la 3e brigade d’assaut, l’une des unités fer de lance de l’armée ukrainienne."[2]
>such an educated, so organised rural youth
And the point is? Nazis were educated and organized too. One even sent Americans to the moon some time later.
Relayed by Nick Metropolis: Fermi and von Neumann overlapped. They collaborated on problems of Taylor instabilities and they wrote a report. When Fermi went back to Chicago after that work he called in his very close collaborator, namely Herbert Anderson, a young Ph.D. student at Columbia, a collaboration that began from Fermi's very first days at Columbia and lasted up until the very last moment. Herb was an experimental physicist. (If you want to know about Fermi in great detail, you would do well to interview Herbert Anderson.) But, at any rate, when Fermi got back he called in Herb Anderson to his office and he said, "You know, Herb, how much faster I am in thinking than you are. That is how much faster von Neumann is compared to me." [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39965802
reply