alvnv

The fact that they invaded and made a home of a part of the South-Eastern Europe almost 600 years ago does not make them European. I don’t want to get into the definition of European right now, because that would be a lengthy conversation. Undisputedly, they are mixed with Europeans, which is evidenced by their appearance (at least, some of them). However, non-native denizens of North American countries do not claim to be Native American. We don’t consider Northern Africans as Europeans either, even though they were part of the Roman Empire; Spaniards did not become Africans during  almost 8 centuries of Reconquista. Besides, ain’t nothin’ wrong with being an Asian - this forum is full of Asian-lovers 😉

Just like in many couples’ arguments, most of the time, it’s not what you say, but how you say it… Although, there are some phrases that have alternate meanings, i.e. “please advise” in a business email could mean “WTF” or, in the South (US), “bless your heart” could be a socially acceptable version of “f**k you”

Maybe then he had not mastered vowelless communication yet

Maybe then he had not mastered vowelless communication yet

Meanwhile, hospitals were getting killed (pardon my poor choice of words): back-to-back shifts, no days off, lack of PPE, especially in the early days. I cannot fathom how anybody could justify the handling of Covid-19 by that orange asshole, starting from the Fall of 2019.
 
Hand hygiene continues to be the best prevention to limit nosocomial infections

Nope. It is realism.
It is not Russia that catches Ukrainian conscripts on Ukrainian streets, and now on foreign streets, in order to send them to the front. This is the Zelensky regime, sponsored by the West.
And the longer the West supplies Zelensky with weapons, the more will die. Let me remind you: it was Boris Johnson who dissuaded Zelensky from peace negotiations in the first months of the conflict. Now your hands are bloody.

Thank you for confirming my point.  This is sick.  This is sadism.  Putin will lose.
If you had the vaguest clue how democracies and free nations work, you would understand this is precisely why the entire world will buy Putin's cheap stuff even as they organize his defeat.  
I feel very sorry for the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians who have been and will be turned into meat.  But that's the point.  Russia is not a democracy, and it is not free.  So your sadistic butcher will turn as many Russians into meat as he needs to.  And you seem to be proud of it.

Who cares? They aren't Russian speaking Ukraine. There are no huge Russian diaspora.
It all started with a Western-inspired coup in Ukraine in 2014, after which the nationalists killed 16,000 Russians in southeastern Ukraine, and Crimea fled completely. In 2022, Russia's patience has run out.
The result is known in advance: 145 million versus 25 million does not leave Ukraine a single chance.

I told to you already the same as Fico said: weapon is useless if there is no man, who hold it in hands.
And now Ukraine even searching ways to force these who ran from mobilization abroad to came back and fight... because they want 500,000 fresh meat to substitute already utilized.

Good move Rudy! don't let them get a penny. New York will forever remember you as America's Mayor. 
Filing for bankruptcy does not prevent an appeal, which in this case is almost automatic. There will be an appeal, and even if he is found to have to pay, the amount will be drastically reduced. A judgement in this range is not legally supportable.
Rudy will be ok. He doesn't really have to pay that much. He'll pay as much as OJ has paid the Goldman family. 
Can't get blood from a turnip. I guess those 2 money-grubbing, minimum-wage election workers won't be living a life of luxury after all.,,,  lol.
 

Obviously, those who don’t go out 😀

The judgement amount against him will almost certainly be lowered. It was an insane amount.
Also, he has no income. And is unemployable. Those 2 money grubbers won't see a nickel.

Maybe Giuliani has some classified documents laying around he can sell.............................

I wanted to give an update on this lamination service.  I just completed the renewal of my 1 year retirement visa and I again returned to this lamination print shop in Pattaya - where they created for me an ID Card - where on the front is the ID portion of my passport and on the back is the updated retirement visa stamp.  Very cheap - I believe that I paid 150 baht for 2 laminated ID cards.  I upload their business card (below) - the shop can be easily found on South Pattaya road shortly after the Friendship Supermarket walking in the direction of Sukhumvit Road - on the same side of the road.
Have I ever had to use this ID card for a police check in Thailand = NO.  But I feel comfortable with it in my pocket (they size it down so it can fit in your wallet - credit card size) instead of having to carry my passport with me.  Ironically, I had to use it once in the metro system in Budapest for the renewal of my monthly transit card - as they recognized it as an actual ID card instead of my Hungarian retirement ID card.  How strange.  So, it can have a use outside of Thailand.

Can we discuss the Italian director Pasolini? or is my interest too eccentric for other posters? Like Zeffirelli and the English director of Billy Liar and Midnight Cowboy, John Schlesinger, Pasolini was gay and some (though not all his films ) have a gay  theme or subtext.
He was murdered by a rent-boy in Rome, though there have always been suggestions that it was a political assassination since Pasolini was an active Communist at a time when the party was a powerful  force in Italy.
The films to see? My favourites are Arabian Nights, Accatone, Mama Roma,and- bizarrely- The Gospel According St Matthew, which portrays Christ as a working-class hero. All beautiful and all controversial, often using amateur actors. Then there's  Salo, his final masterpiece, which was banned. I had to join a cinema club to see it and even then it was cut mainly due to scenes of torture that remain disturbing.
Are other people- presumably of my generation- fascinated by Pasolini, both as man and director? In general, the European films of the 60s and 70s remain more interesting to me than Hollywood productions of the same period. 
 

Actors should play roles. It really shouldn't matter if the actor or role is gay, straight or somewhere in between. There have always been more gay actors playing straight roles than vice versa. Also, thank goodness there are now diverse gay roles to play as against the single gay stereotype.

Some people find it helps them sleep 😉

You don't follow your own logic, @Moses.   If Zelenskyy is down to "only" 62 % of the vote, in a real poll, that makes him way more popular in his country than Biden, Trump, or Putin are in their country.  Of course, in Putin's case that's if there were real polls of people who would not be arrested or sent to Ukraine to become fertilizer if they answer the question wrong.
Again, thanks.  Overall, you are comforting me.  And informing me, albeit indirectly.  Since I read your misrepresentations and then go hunting for context and facts.  
I have been reading ad nauseum that if it's a war of attrition, Russia wins.  So learning about Putin's 2024 budget was helpful.  He's clearly planning that a huge and unsustainable one year hike in defense spending will do something.  What might "something" be?  Maybe he thinks the US and EU will stop funding Ukraine.  Maybe he thinks regardless of what the US and EU do Ukraine will be so weak that Russia has a military breakthrough.  Maybe he thinks Trump will win. 
Of those three options, the latter seems most likely and most helpful to Putin.  My guess is that in his "24 hour" peace agreement, Trump will indirectly turn lots of Ukrainian men, women, and children into fertilizer.  Of course, that won't be his stated or even unstated goal.  But if he hands them over to Vlad, we all know that a sadistic butcher will feel perfectly fine with his soldiers torturing them, raping them, and killing them as he sees fit.
And even that is very unclear.  If Ukraine is considering calling up 500,000 more soldiers, they apparently feel they are not defenseless without US or EU support.
Here's the other numbers that really suggest Vlad is fucked.  And hundreds of thousands of Russians can look forward to be a bright future as fertilizer in Ukraine.


The only reason Vlad is not totally fucked is if the US turns out to be a completely castrated superpower.  And it is possible that Speaker Johnson, at Trump's command, will cut off his testicles, put them in a jar, and order all the White Republican men in the House Freedom Caucus to do the same.  So Trump can hand all those Republican testicles to Vlad, in jars, and adorned with festive American flags.  For Vlad to display as his glorious victory to the Russian people.  This will be a great debate to have in the US next year.  Why are we the first self-castrating superpower in history?
It's almost embarrassing to look at those charts as an American.  This is NOT a heavy lift.  Both charts are a bit dated.  And it was not a particularly heavy lift for Russia, either, at least through 2022.  Now that has changed.  Vlad can only make this work by pushing a massive one year spike in defense spending and focusing his country on a War/Sadism/Butchering Economy that requires paying hundreds of thousands of Russian families to turn their sons, husbands, and fathers into rotting meat.  Woo hoo!
Placed in a broader historical context, this helps explain why in a long-term war of a attrition in a foreign country, the invader almost always loses.  There's VietNam.  There's Afghanistan 1.0, USSR edition.  Afghanistan 2.0, US edition.  And of course Iraq. And perhaps we can thrown in skirmishes, like Libya.
The biggest exception I can think of is the US in Kuwait.  And that example is irrelevant.  The US amassed overwhelming international power, won quickly with limited objectives, and left.  Vlad failed completely already on every one of those measures.  He is a butcher, he is a sadist, and he is fucked.
The most optimistic I can be for Vlad is Chechnya.  It required absolute butchery and sadism and destruction.  Check.  Vlad can do that.  It required over ten years.  Check.  Vlad has ten years of Russian men to turn into fertilizer.  1 million men?  2 million men?  Vlad could give a shit, as far as how many Russian men have to be processed brutally into meat.  So far, so good.  Vlad's got this.
Where the comparison falls apart is that Chechnya has a population of 1.5 million.  Compared to 43 million for Ukraine, and 143 million Russians.  If it took a decade or so to pacify 1 million people + with little or no international allies, a country of 43 million people with the US and Eu behind them, among others, should take at least that long.  Russian spending on defense has tripled from pre-invasion levels. So where we now know it really falls apart is that Vlad just doesn't have the money.  He does for one year, for sure.  If need be I'm sure he could get some unprecedented amount for 2025, too.  But 2026?  2027?  2028?  2029?  
Oh, and who is rolling out AI while Russia is totally focused on bombs and bullets and turning their own men into meat?  If the US is in the lead on AI, and what Ukraine needs is some new technological advantage, how might that play out?  Maybe in a year or two some drone with facial recognition software will just go hunt for every single Russian soldier in Ukraine and blow his face into meat.  
That's science fiction.  But not too much.  One persuasive theory it the the US beat the USSR not only by outspending them, but also by advances in digital technologies that the Soviets simply could not keep up with. 
At a simple but true level, this is a story about overconfidence.  Ukraine had a surprisingly good 2022.  And Zelenskyy, with help from the US and NATO probably, got overconfident in 2023.  It was a mistake to tell people like me that we should just wait for this stunningly successful counteroffensive THAT NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED.  But Putin is doing the same thing now, on steroids.  He is telling his own people, and the world, give me one year and I got this.  And I promise not to turn too many of you into meat.  His budget is fantasy.  And his war plans are based on Ukrainians being stupid.  And on the US and EU being even dumber, by castrating themselves.  Stranger things have happened.  But I doubt it.
I think what Ukraine, the US, NATO, and the EU are in the process of doing is recalibrating expectations.  If the idea is that Ukraine will just be throwing men into the meat grinder until they inevitably lose, it actually seems compassionate to say let's not spend lots of our money to make that happen.  If the idea is that a sadistic butcher is pinned down in a war that gradually bleeds both his people and his economy dry, that's a very different proposition.  And, yes, the IMF now say's Russia's GDP will grow by 1 % next year.  Maybe even 2 %.  Woo hoo.  They are a backward, fucked up, dead end country that is turning their men into fertilizer while the US and China roll out the 21st century global economy.  
I'll end my long rant with two even longer and thoughtful pieces I found inspiring to read.  They were written recently, and factor in recent disappointments to paint a picture of how Ukraine wins a grinding war of attrition with Russia. 
Who Will Win the War of Attrition? Analysts say that Ukraine has a chance of success if it adjusts its tactics properly
BITING OFF WHAT IT CAN CHEW: UKRAINE UNDERSTANDS ITS ATTRITIONAL CONTEXT
 

Good for Russia. 
But it is still an economy that can't really get it up.  The surprise is the Russian economy was supposed to be shrinking.  So compared to not being able to get it up at all, 3.5 % does make Vlad look a virile stud.  As virile as all those 21 year old Russians that are rotting in Ukrainians fields.  But, honestly, it ain't really all that great.
When Vlad was younger, he could really get it up.  Every year between 2000 and 2008, the Russian economy was growing at a 5 to 10 % clip.  Young Vlad looked less like a butcher and sadist (although we will always have Chechnya) and more like the leader of a sound and growing global economy.  Which is what Vlad is, at least in his jack off fantasies.  In reality, his army is dying and turning into insect food in Ukraine.  Zelenskyy runs a country that is smaller, poorer, but apparently tougher than Russia.  Poor Vlad!
So I get it.  It's kind of impressive these days that Vlad can get it up at all.  But what is working for him now is a War/Butchering/Sadism Economy.  And we have seen this movie before.  And it usually ends very badly.  Which countries had two of the fastest growing economies in the 1930's?  Germany and Japan.  Why?  Because they were plowing money into war/butchering economies.  It's not like Vlad is creative or something.
And compared to Adolph, Vlad is pretty much impotent.  At least Adolph could figure out how to grow his economy 55 % in five years, from 1933 to 1938.  While the US and much of Europe was weak.  So if the IMF is wrong, and even if Vlad has another 3.5 % year, he's no Adolph.  The US and EU are growing faster, and smarter. 
That Nazi German war economy was some serious shit.  Adolph was powerful enough to kill millions of Russians.  Sorry about that, by the way.  Basically, all Vlad can do is wage a war he can't win.  And if it goes on long enough maybe he will also kill millions of Russians.  For sure hundreds of thousands.  Some legacy.  How does that make Vlad a bad ass, again?  
So the real danger to the world is that, as Nazi Germany and Japan proved, if you throw all your mojo into a War/Butchering/Sadism Economy, it tends to lead to war and sadism and butchering.  Or, in this case, World War 3.  If Vlad could really get his economy up 55 % in the next five years, while the US and EU flailed, maybe he could take on the US.  Or NATO.  Or at least Poland.  Maybe Latvia?  Lithuania?  The Falkland Islands?
Instead, Vlad can't do much more than kill Russians and Ukrainians.  Good news is if he can't start World War 3, Russia at least won't end up blown to shit or nuked like Germany or Japan.  Which I would actually feel very good about if I were sitting in your shoes, @Moses.  But your economy is still fucked.  Sorry.

I told you how I bet it ends.  Poor Vlad is gonna get castrated by his Master Xi Whiz.  Xi likes his old pit bull just fine. Since he can at least still bark and bite quite a lot.  And as long as he stays on his leash.  But Vlad really does have to wage war and butcher to even try to keep it up.  And that ain't working out for Xi as was hoped.  I mean, he'll take cheap oil and gas and stuff.  But Master Xi don't like all that World War 3 shit.  And the whole thing is kind of a bad look, anyway.  And on top of that, can we be very blunt?  The Chinese look down on these mongrel mutts like Vlad as inferior, anyway. It was never a marriage made in heaven.  And it never will be.  
So despite all the hugs and kisses, Xi Whiz is probably gonna have to castrate your used to be badass butcher someday.  Not this year or next.  But Xi ain't really a happy pet owner.  He's gonna have to abandon his old pit bull one of these years.  You'll see.
 

The Court will examine any liquidations made in anticipation of filing for bankruptcy - attempts to avoid paying his debts.  The judgment in the defamation suit will be in full force and effect no matter this filing.  He admitted guilt, which means he's 'on the hook' for life. Any income he earns going forward is almost certainly going to be attached for payment to the two women.

Not likely
Just senile

The authors said they had low to moderate confidence in their results from the Cochrane study, not the individual studies.
Like I had said, originally, the standard view prior to Covid was that masks were not effective in preventing viral infections.  Many of these studies in the Cochrane analysis are pre Covid and during non epidemic flu where the people being studied were unlikely to be worried about dying of flu.  
However, I worked in an ED with sick Covid patients throughout the pandemic. We weren’t turning people away or having them seen by younger staff outside. We were intubating patients as well as doing other procedures on them. People were dying around us.  My partners and I were extremely diligent about masking.  I wore an N95 from before I entered the hospital to the time I left without ever taking it off.  I did not eat or drink inside the hospital. Most of my partners did the same. We literally left the building if we needed to eat or drink.  We did not start getting sick until the end of the Covid pandemic despite taking care of people from day one. Many of us got sick after our kids got sick. My personal Covid infection did not occur from the hospital, since I had been off for a while when I got sick and that was more than 2 years into the pandemic.  
You can discount my experience as anecdotal, but my experience with Covid and the risk of contracting a deadly disease with people dying around you every day gave me an insight into what real compliance with masking looks like.  I would disregard any of these studies pre Covid because there was no real fear of dying.  I also doubt that there were many high quality studies of masking being done during the deadliest parts of the pandemic, since the focus was on patient care and keeping anyone that did not need to be around these patients out of the hospital.  
But for all of us who took care of these patients for years without getting sick with one of the most infectious agents that humans have been exposed to is not due to luck.  We took care of these patients for many months before the first vaccine. If masks were completely ineffective, we should all have gotten sick, yet only 1 or 2 of my partners got sick in the first year or so of the pandemic.  
When looking at a study, you have to look at the weaknesses and limits of the study.   Also, if you have insight into the question being studied, you can rightly apply skepticism to conclusions based on your experience and your knowledge of what masking diligently involves.

Nice try!…
Bali is complaining about misbehaving “ethnic Russians” there - they better watch out… Oh, wait - based on your logic, Russia won’t dare anything because of Indonesia’s “global advantage in manpower”, however Thailand better watch out - they may lose a part of Phuket because without “global advantage in manpower”, “ethnic Russians” there may want to return to the bosom of Mother Russia, along with a part of land from another sovereign state, just as Russia is used to doing for centuries… Sorry - I’m wrong again - those “ethnic Russians” fled the shit-hole Vovka Durak turn the country into…
I wonder, the end of whose regime is unavoidable?! 🤔