Also from Joly in the article: “Our goal is also to double our non-U.S. exports and so you see the prime minister going around and signing new trade deals across the world,”.

The title isn’t a lie, but “an open door” seems to be about as far as it goes. They’d have to send a non-insane offer though that door.

Hell yes!

We were going to have to slum it with the other two meatless meat brands Yves Potvin founded.

You would have to have an incredible grindset to become a decent engineer without actually enjoying any of it. You could become a shitty one just by passing tests, I guess. (And probably many people do)

And before that, the worry was Malthusian overpopulation. (Which would be a much bigger problem if it had happened)

That makes sense. I guess what I was thinking is a strategic use of a small, tactical-ish nuke, probably framed as tactical. Basically, cross the red line but as minimally as possible, in order to put NATO on the spot.

In a way that was Russia’s strategy before the full-scale invasion, and it was working flawlessly. Since then NATO has become much more determined and active, but also more unstable.

TBH I’m unclear on the exact specifics of how you use tactical nukes, but it’s something different that would end the geopolitical stalemate. If they get lucky, and after whatever Trump-NATO drama clears the West is willing to abandon Ukraine, it’s a victory. That doesn’t seem like the most likely outcome, but there’s more chance than none.

It doesn’t seem like Ukraine is “pulling it’s punches” in any real way right now, so from the Russian side making them angrier doesn’t matter. (Hey, you wanted no platitudes)

China would be pissed. Unless they invade it’s a different problem for later, though. Basically, the question was narrowly defined to be about chance of victory, so it gets a bit of a narrow-minded answer. If you’re asking what the best option for Russia’s general welfare is, it’s to make a big show of renouncing expansionism, say sorry and going home. If you’re asking what’s best for Putin, at this point it might be exactly what he’s doing.

Ah yes, when the US does things it’s the US. When other countries do things, it’s also the US. /s

Ukraine has been on the brink of collapsing several times and only heroic efforts on their part and the persistence of their allies have staved off the worst.

Aside from the very first months, do you have a citation for that? The roughest time for them since I can think of was when they couldn’t get shells, and even then it didn’t really translate into much movement of the front lines (since that’s the main metric of success that’s really public).

It’s a full scale war and conditions have been terrible, of course, but there’s a difference between suffering and actually losing.

My sense is that Putin is hoping that another crisis will open up in the future, and that it will finally bring about Ukraine’s surrender.

Yup. The general vibe is that even a tiny chance of an opening and a few more months to live is worth more than whatever conceding would bring Putin.

Initially, their theory was “many Ukrainians will welcome us, and we’ll be able to rush their capital before they can do anything”. TBF they got close on the second point. Then it revolved around outlasting the West’s attention span.

Now it seems to be “well, maybe if we blow up their power grid one more time”, or “we couldn’t possibly lose to Ukraine”. Internally, Putin knows shit hits the fan as soon as the war stops short of victory, or seems like it’s about to stop, so it continues. You can also see systems being moved to Moscow and St.Petersburg in open source intel, which is a preparation for a possible civil war.

The spirit of this question might be more “how would you win”, though. It’s tricky, by all accounts Russia is running out of manpower and seems afraid to conscript more aggressively. Their foreign reserves will run out eventually too (although they’re deeper than I had realised). Most conventional tactics or strategies that are scalable are being tried and not working. I guess they could try bombing some new things.

That leaves escalating to tactical nuclear weapons, and hoping Europe doesn’t respond by directly fighting Russia. Of course, potentially ending the world might be too heavy a cost if you’re not just a Lemming running a hypothetical.

Shit, I wrote that wrong. Trying to do too many things at once.

I know that’s rhetorical, but we’re still tight with Europe, basically, and hope they’d have our back if a neighbor invaded too. Under the Trump administration it’s not even America’s proxy war anymore.

Wow, I’ve never had this problem. The tricky one is Australia vs. NZ.

I mean, every dialect is just a bastardised version of an older dialect, including your own.

I mean, it is really big and looks like it’s in the way, although I wonder if it’s also parked wrong.

Maybe the owner needs a large pickup, but relatively few owners of large pickups do. For the rest it’s conspicuous consumption, which is always gross, and in cars seems to correlate with antisocial behavior.

Unfortunately, nobody else manufactures anti-air equipment that’s as good. At least not in significant quantities. AFAIK that’s what Ukraine buys from them these days

The name might well have come from the community, since the whole app store model is as old as the modern smartphone, and downloading a different way is new.

If there had been a more normal software ecosystem from the get-go that would have been nice. Actual regulation to enforce device freedom would also be good.

It’s not like it’s a unique offering at this point either. Everyone and their dog has complicated syrupy coffee/tea drinks on their menu.

I don’t know, maybe the busy-but-nicer-than-McDonalds ambiance is worth it to some people. If it’s anything like Tim Hortons, lots of people just buy out of pure habit as well. Either way, that’s their business, not the person selling it.

You could in theory make a channel with a bunch of different stable whistle frequencies, and add some other aerodynamic feature that kicks it through them. I doubt you could reasonably do more than a few notes that way, though, and you probably have to hit them in order.

More likely it’s just multiple bullets, as the other reply said.

I’m going to guess the military wasn’t the main audience here, but rather your typical gun nuts.

Come for the jokes, stay for the unprompted washing machine reviews.