CayceG

3 hours ago, thewhyteboar said:

Defector is the only website I pay for, but I wouldn't really call it news.

Same. I'm also a Patreon subscriber for a couple podcasts, but they aren't really news. 

So I voted no. 

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

I'm also annoyed by this. We've been using Mint since before they were bought out, so it's frustrating to see it go away only to be pushed towards what seems to be a lesser product.

 

In the wake of this I've seen multiple recommendations for YNAB. I have a friend who uses it, but I have no personal experience. It's $100 a year, so it better be good. Would love to hear of other recommendations before going through the effort of setting up a different service.

Every evangelical friend of mine that is not all the way pilled on Dave Ramsey swears instead by YNAB. 

I couldn't be bothered to try it, but I generally don't spend a ton of money anyway, so I don't have an issue budgeting. This really sucks for people that have used and liked Mint. Tools like that are great and it sucks that capitalism is extracting more value from things that should be free. 

I took my office chair home during Covid. 

I had to bring it back, but no one said a thing. I know a guy who also took his standing desk from the office lmao.

11 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

I'd like to introduce the 51% of the general public who say that UFOs aren't a "threat" to the "Dark Forest Hypothesis".

They already believe made-up stories, so why not add one more!

17 minutes ago, best3444 said:

They know they exist but they also know the general public is too fragile to understand and accept there is other life out there. They will never tell us the truth. 

What if I told you polling said the general public is NOT fragile about it?

Most Americans believe in intelligent life beyond Earth; few see UFOs as a major national security threat

WWW.PEWRESEARCH.ORG

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About two-thirds of Americans (65%) say their best guess is that intelligent life exists on other planets.

But you're right that they'll never tell us the truth. Because the truth is that these "sightings" are normal everyday objects, military equipment, or other mundane things that are not extra-terrestrial in origin. And they won't tell us not because we're fragile, but because it removes a really good distraction from the other shit the military gets up to. 

WOW I totally forgot about markot. 

19 minutes ago, Air_Delivery said:

If Hamas is so bad why did Netanyahu prop them up?

Because he wanted to neuter the political power of the PLO.

This thread will be open and unresolved for at least another 8 months. 

They literally turned Swords to Plowshares. 

We really are past the peak of the entirety of the internet. 

Bo Burnham got it 100% right with this. 

The CIA is training Ukrainian intelligence personnel.

Notably, the Ukrainians who assassinated Alexander Dugin's daughter were trained by the CIA. 

WaPo gift link: 

Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia - The Washington Post

WWW.WASHINGTONPOST.COM

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The CIA has built up Ukraine’s espionage capabilities, but U.S. officials stress that the agency has no involvement in targeted killings operations by Kyiv

Quote

 

The cluttered car carrying a mother and her 12-year-old daughter seemed barely worth the attention of Russian security officials as it approached a border checkpoint. But the least conspicuous piece of luggage — a crate for a cat — was part of an elaborate, lethal plot. Ukrainian operatives had installed a hidden compartment in the pet carrier, according to security officials with knowledge of the operation, and used it to conceal components of a bomb.

 

Four weeks later, the device detonated just outside Moscow in an SUV being driven by the daughter of a Russian nationalist who had urged his country to “kill, kill, kill” Ukrainians, an explosion signaling that the heart of Russia would not be spared the carnage of war.

 

The operation was orchestrated by Ukraine’s domestic security service, the SBU, according to officials who provided details, including the use of the pet crate, that have not been previously disclosed. The August 2022 attack is part of a raging shadow war in which Ukraine’s spy services have also twice bombed the bridge connecting Russia to occupied Crimea, piloted drones into the roof of the Kremlin and blown holes in the hulls of Russian naval vessels in the Black Sea.

These operations have been cast as extreme measures Ukraine was forced to adopt in response to Russia’s invasion last year. In reality, they represent capabilities that Ukraine’s spy agencies have developed over nearly a decade — since Russia first seized Ukrainian territory in 2014 — a period during which the services also forged deep new bonds with the CIA.

 

Quote

 

The missions have involved elite teams of Ukrainian operatives drawn from directorates that were formed, trained and equipped in close partnership with the CIA, according to current and former Ukrainian and U.S. officials. Since 2015, the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed services into potent allies against Moscow, officials said. The agency has provided Ukraine with advanced surveillance systems, trained recruits at sites in Ukraine as well as the United States, built new headquarters for departments in Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, and shared intelligence on a scale that would have been unimaginable before Russia illegally annexed Crimea and fomented a separatist war in eastern Ukraine. The CIA maintains a significant presence in Kyiv, officials said.

 

The extent of the CIA’s involvement with Ukraine’s security services has not previously been disclosed. U.S. intelligence officials stressed that the agency has had no involvement in targeted killing operations by Ukrainian agencies, and that its work has focused on bolstering those services’ abilities to gather intelligence on a dangerous adversary. A senior intelligence official said that “any potential operational concerns have been conveyed clearly to the Ukrainian services.”

 

Many of Ukraine’s clandestine operations have had clear military objectives and contributed to the country’s defense. The car bombing that killed Daria Dugina, however, underscored Ukraine’s embrace of what officials in Kyiv refer to as “liquidations” as a weapon of war. Over the past 20 months, the SBU and its military counterpart, the GUR, have carried out dozens of assassinations against Russian officials in occupied territories, alleged Ukrainian collaborators, military officers behind the front lines and prominent war supporters deep inside Russia. Those killed include a former Russian submarine commander jogging in a park in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar and a militant blogger at a cafe in St. Petersburg, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.

 

Ukraine’s affinity for lethal operations has complicated its collaboration with the CIA, raising concerns about agency complicity and creating unease among some officials in Kyiv and Washington.

 

*Mandala effect

1 hour ago, Jason said:

 

U.S. to send Israel artillery shells initially designated for Ukraine (Axios)

 

Absolutely fuck this. 

44 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Russia has restarted their push for Andiivka. Like before, they are simply throwing columns of vehicles at Ukraine, who are destroying them:

 

 

The sunrise/sunset photos really make this look rather picturesque.

My suspicions about Mormon figures climbing the ladder in that organization remain intact. 

I'll repeat here what I posted elsewhere this morning. 

Based on this morning's photos, it appears more likely that this was a failed Hamas rocket. I also hope the initial casualty figures were higher than they ultimately turn out to be. But whether it was an accident or an attack doesn't matter. People are dead who shouldn't be and Israel is responsible for setting the conditions of this apparent accident. Without the apartheid state that Israel has created and the conflict it has nurtured, this accident would have been much less likely to happen. 

1 minute ago, Jwheel86 said:

 

Have we seen other rockets falling short creating a blast that big though? Seems like it be a regular thing given the fail rate. 

This is what swings me the other way. This just seems so incredibly different than what we've seen. 

9 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

I still keep coming back to the "whine" from the Washington Post video prior to the impact/detonation.  That's just too indicative of actual engine propulsion for me at this point.

I wonder if a failed/failing rocket engine could do that. 

My wild-ass guess of how a Hamas rocket could do this is that the engine flamed out and the rocket fell, detonating the warhead, which then detonated the fuel. Detonating rocket fuel would probably cause a much larger explosion than the warhead itself. 

I think it's possible. Maybe even plausible. But also... it's more likely Israel bombed a hospital because they've done that before. This is a level of destruction heretofore unseen from Hamas rocket launches. 

On the other end of things, this explosion seemed more massive than any Hamas rocket before. 

So either Hamas developed the most powerful rocket in their arsenal and had a mishap while launching it. 

Or the country that has made a habit of carpet bombing Gaza dropped a bomb on a hospital.

4 minutes ago, SuperSpreader said:

 

Fuck that. HAMAS fired the rocket that hit the hospital and now they are using it to rally people against Israel as if they targeted it. Hamas has been firing rockets way before last week. 

This is far from confirmed. 

Agreed. I really do think this one isn't clear cut so far. In fact, there's evidence for each... 

I stand by my damning of Israel and the IDF. Even if they didn't launch a warhead here, they created the conditions for this to happen. 

Breaking the rule because no one else is doing this on another platform. 

This twitter thread includes some preliminary analysis that indicates a Hamas rocket motor failed and the rocket fell into the vicinity of the hospital:

EDIT: And all this assumes this is the right video. 

I cannot begin to express how I feel. 

God damn Israel.