Ok, thanks for the concern.

I thought maybe I should just get up and exercise. Brief research shows that releases dopamine. What if I meditate, or just do nothing? That releases dopamine too. Everything I consider releases dopamine! I don't think there is a way out of dopamine specifically. But I can change which ways I get it.

of course Putin's history lecture was biased. the part about Russia and Ukraine being one was true. the lie was that Ukraine was a part of Russia when really Russia was a part of Ukraine.

Kiev to Moscow is like Rome or Athens to London, Berlin and Paris.

Kiev was the cradle of civilization and Moscow came later ... in fact Russians were so butthurt about how "provincial" ( using the words from Anna Karenina ) Moscow was that they had to build St. Petersburg to get away from that shame.

St. Petersburg was supposed to be the European Capital that Kiev was.

I have been to St. Petersburg - it's fancy - but the weather is shit. Weather in Kiev 100 times better.

my mother still wants me to be a professor ( like most of my family ) but i explain to her that i already am a professor.

i teach you faggots.

your place in the world is more or less determined when you are born. the closer you live to your place the happier you will be. the more you stray from it the more you will suffer.

my place in the world is teaching all of you.

Putin was also pretty clear in interview with Tucker that the reason for invasion he gave to his citizens ( defending against NATO ) was bullshit. he asked Tucker " are we here to have a serious conversation or a show ? " Obviously Putin couldn't plainly state that he lied to his countrymen about the reason for the "operation" but to a thinking person it was pretty obvious that this is what he was in fact saying.

Putin then proceeded to explain the REAL reason was that Ukraine is Russia and he wasn't going to allow it to be split off. Same reason why Lincoln went to war with the South.

Of course tucker ( like you Mike ) couldn't understand this, because he was coming from the perspective of conservative propaganda about "biolabs" etc. and not from understanding of Russian history. which is why Putin had to give him an hour long lecture but Tucker thought it was some kind of a trick ... it wasn't.

so this isn't really about toppling Russia as much as about biting off a third of Russia, namely Ukraine.

as a multi-ethnic ( 25% Russian, 25% Ukrainian ) individual born in Kiev my opinion is that it's not about geography but the simple fact that Ukraine, just like Putin said, *IS* Russia.

or rather Russia is Ukraine. the oldest Russian city is actually Kiev, which celebrated 1,500 years when i lived there, whereas Moscow isn't even 1,000 years old.

war between Russia and Ukraine is a civil war like between North and South in American history.

Putin-fags say Ukraine is not a country. actually it is Russia that is not a country. it is even called "Federation" because even the stupidest of Russians understand that Chechens aren't Russian.

Simply put Ukrainians are more Russian than a large portion of citizens of the Russian Federation.

US / NATO interfered in the politics of both Russia itself and Ukraine but was actually successful in Ukraine by dangling EU membership in front of impoverished Ukrainians who saw it as a lifeline.

Putin rightly saw this as US / NATO biting off a part of Russia and having already failed to control Ukraine through installing puppet leaders had no choice other than to invade.

I've had a bit more thinking on Russia and NATO powers. Clearly I'm just a hobbyist, not a military strategist, so I'm slow on the uptake on these things. But when I finally realize something or change my thinking (whether it is correct or not) I like to post it on nostr.

First, a quote from the book "Prisoners of Geography" by Tim Marshall: "Vladimir Putin says he is a religous man, a great supporter or the Russian Orthodox Church. If so, he may well go to bed each night, say his prayers and ask God: "Why didn't you put some mountains in Ukraine?" If God had built mountains in Ukraine, then the great expanse of flatland that is the North European Plain would not be such encouraging territory from which to attack Russia repeatedly. As it is, Putin has no choice: he must at least attempt to control the flatlands to the west. So it is with all nations, big or small. The landscape imprisons their leaders, giving them fewer choices and less room to manoeuvre than you might think."

Second, Barack Obama said that because Ukraine is a core Russian interest, but not a core American interest (America would not be defeated via Ukraine), then Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there. "The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-nato country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do. There are ways to deter, but it requires you to be very clear ahead of time about what is worth going to war for and what is not. Now, if there is somebody in this town that would claim that we would consider going to war with Russia over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, they should speak up and be very clear about it. The idea that talking tough or engaging in some military action that is tangential to that particular area is somehow going to influence the decision making of Russia or China is contrary to all the evidence we have seen over the last 50 years."

To be clear, America is not at war with Russia. It is supplying Ukraine, but the US remains out of the war. But what Barack was saying is that Russia will escalate because Ukraine matters more to them than to us.

If you assume American military leadership is logical and reasonable (which I think Putin does) then they would never have stepped in to back Ukraine in the first place unless they planned to "go all the way". And this is why Putin takes every Western threat of escalation very seriously. This is why he is now reading his troops to be trained on tactical nukes. If he didn't, he would be derelict in his duties to defend Russia from a threat that must be (logically reasoning thing out) intent on toppling Russia.

So I think America intended to topple Russia, and believed Navalny was one strategy, bombing the Nord Stream was another, sanctions was another, confiscating central bank assets was another, getting the world to back the West by luring Russia to strike first was another, and supplying Ukraine with superior weapons systems was yet another, and with all of that combined with their various covert CIA activities, surely they had a very good chance. But alas, those strategies all failed. And then China decided to backstop Russia.

Ukraine now has long-range ATACMS and successfully strikes military assets far into Russian occupied Ukraine including Crimea, including military bases, military training (over 100 dead nearly instantly) and a civilian oil refinery. This won't turn the tide of the war, but it has caused the war to escalate, as Russia now sends in far more drones seeking artillery, abrams tanks (they just got another) and those ATACMS systems.

As troops in Ukraine are running low, and the West is not ready to concede, they are threatening moving forces in. Russia's response was to train for the usage of tactical nukes. I don't think he is bluffing. I think NATO forces present a very credible threat of an attempt to collapse Russia, and Russia cannot win against NATO forces without resorting to tactical nukes.

So I think the Western forces backing Ukraine (NATO, France, US, UK) at some point will stop talking tough and concede. Because most of their plans already failed. I think there is a limit to how much war they are willing to get involved in... they want a lot, but not quite nukes.

Some people think Nostr cannot work with things like a "universal consistent like count" and other basic social media malignant tumors.

Even if we ignore the bad psychological and societal effects of such practices and assume they are good, and even if we assume that Nostr is all running in a single server that has all the events (a Bluesky-like unavoidable requirement for such universal consistency) these people are still completely oblivious to the fact that anyone can create a bazillion keypairs and spam like counts.

So when they ask for a "universal consistent like count" what these people are really asking for is for a centralized KYC barrier at the doors of Nostr that ensures only a single keypair can be created by each human.

now with a little bit of thinking you might even realize it would look better still if the color of the logo wasn't a fixed "apple green"

exactly. lost respect for Bradley Martin. if she goes to meet him using her own two legs unless he mis-represented who he was ( pretending to be a 15 year old himself ) he did noting wrong.

you think there are people trying to become elites but being held out and they are angry and will revolt ...

i disagree. people at the top know who has and who doesn't have what it takes to be at the top. if you have what it takes you will be let in without a struggle and if you don't you're not going to make it to the top regardless.

yes some people don't understand that they don't belong and find out the hard way. Kanye West couldn't understand his place for example. Che Guevara had no chill.

but overall it isn't so much a struggle of climbing to the top but a process of discovering what your place is.