"If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing."

Agreed. It sounds like both the viewport — its manufacturer wouldn't guarantee it past 1,800m the way they had it installed — and the hull itself were both potential liabilities.

I hope they nail the CEO to the wall, frankly. [edit: okay, maybe posthumously] The more info comes out, the more this disaster looks entirely foreseeable. He refused to have the sub certified despite being warned of potentially catastrophic results, fired his own director of marine operations for blowing the whistle on serious safety risks, and is on the record denouncing regulations for tourist subs for having, quote, "needlessly prioritized passenger safety".

Not a pretty picture.

"State-sanctioned criminal violence"?

No, sorry Mr. Modi, you're thinking of Gujarat in 2002, not Canada in 2023.

"Purebloods Stand Together,"

"right of protection and preservation of … the vessels of the souls of my children."

Yeah, NBD, just a new cult religion forming in real time here.

The brutal reality is that Putin's Russia embodies everything the Trump Republicans dream of for America: a boundlessly corrupt, white supremacist, ethnonationalist fascist state whose oligarchs possess limitless power so long as they obey The President.

They call themselves the "party of Reagan", while they trip over themselves to sell the geopolitical future of Europe down the river to Moscow...

Upvote for a sincere question. Here's the wiki article on its use as a fascistic pro-war symbol. Kazakhs are unhappy with it because they too are a country that Russia makes territorial claims against and are thus largely opposed to the war and its symbols.

This summary leaves out that said "cease and desist" notices also threatened execution for noncompliance — at the same time as the head cultist was urging her followers to kill nurses administering vaccines, prompting her followers to post pictures of their firearm arsenals.

It is only a matter of time before the cultists kill someone.

Good point. I'd call it poetic justice, if his reckless decisions hadn't also claimed the lives of others.

This article has confirmation from the GUR, Ukrainian military intelligence, that Kadyrov is critically ill. There are no exact details on what he has other than that it's related to a chronic health condition, potentially kidney failure given his facial swelling. It's also long been reported that he's an addict.

I also call attention to the fact that Kadyrov allegedly had his personal physician executed in suspicion that the latter was poisoning him. It would truly be poetic justice if denying himself that medical treatment in a fit of paranoia precipitated this (hopefully terminal) episode.

I understand the gravity of this consideration, and it's commendable to abide by our Convention obligations — but at the same time it's pretty rich to be lecturing Ukraine on the immorality of using against the invader the same weapons which Russia has been using against their schools, hospitals and residential areas since literally the first day of the war.

Well, it's a good thing that the Bad Foreigners are to blame for the issue — otherwise the Kremlin might be forced to engage in critical thinking over the implications of their incessant agitprop for the stability in minority regions, and we can't have that.

Speculation runs that Dimi has been told by the Tsar that if he acts like the tough guy he isn't with enough bravado, he'll be allowed to sit in the big boys' chair and pretend to be president again.

It's genuinely great to hear that that wasn't the overall goal or intention of the idea.

That said, I think it also does need to be acknowledged that there absolutely were prominent influencers on social media who preached HAES literally - as in, posting videos vehemently declaring the doctors are lying to you and obesity is actually perfectly healthy.

I guess as with many other things, it's a case of the extreme outliers (who in this case, as you say, didn't even get the point) getting the most attention and spoiling things for the sane people.

Putin makes televised national address. Summary of speech:

• 1. https://nitter.net/wartranslated/status/1672501714253934593#m
• 1. https://nitter.net/wartranslated/status/1672501823377162241#m

TL;DR - Wagner is committing a betrayal, a stab in the back like 1917, and will face "inevitable punishment".

Footage allegedly showing Wagner column led by (*T-80BV) tank and BMP entering Rostov-na-Donu, bypassing roadblock and RosGvardia troops.

https://nitter.net/igorsushko/status/1672423351418232832#m

Here's a post with more details - yes, seems like the post I quoted is just people making a joke out of the original Latin phrasing of the payroll, which for some years was written "to the custodians and the cat" rather than the presumably intended "to the custodians for the cat".

True haha. Here's a post with more info - I take it the original wording from the Mastodon post I quoted was just being cheeky about the cat technically being on the payroll. One supposes that the cat's human aide took the money on behalf of their illustrious master ;)

Time to see once and for all whether the bastards are good for anything other than TikTok videos.

Of course I don't condone shooting perps or their lawyers, but I frankly don't have any difficulty whatsoever in understanding him. This case is one of the most vile crimes I've seen in our province, and I can't imagine what the family has had to go through.

And to add to that, while the defence lawyers certainly are just doing their job, their arguments were utterly revolting. An insult to the victim, her family, and the collective intelligence of the people of this province. Supposedly the perp's lawyer has received copious death threats, and again - I'm sure none of us condone shooting lawyers, I think it's hard to blame people.

I'm just glad the jury had none of it and found him guilty.

It seems implausible in the short term, but if statements like these are in any way reflective of long term strategic goals, or even official rhetoric, it's still ominous. Of course, given the fact it's state TV, it could be the General purely reciting the party line to give the public the impression that the war is going vastly better than it really is. But it also reminds me of what were purported to be strategic planning documents leaked by FSB sources early in the war, from when Russia still believed they'd take Kyiv in three days. It described a plan to conquer the country in weeks, then present their army on the Polish border as a fait accompli and declare a no-fly zone over the Baltics as an ultimatum to NATO.

Whether that's true or not, subsequent events showed that the ZSRF was incapable of even that plan, as you say. But the very level of disparity between nominal and actual capabilities that led Moscow to believe such a thing was possible to begin with certainly doesn't speak to their ability to make accurate estimations of what their forces are capable of.