sburke

I'm sorry but as a lowly apprentice of the cesspool, I am allowed only a few interactions with Ye Olde Ones Refreshing their drinks Lighting their cigars providing an ash tray if desired or sweeping the floor if it isn't Wiping their arses. They are such glorious arses.. err I mean they HAVE such glorious arses. ahem. However I can direct you to my Leige, the rootinest tootinest shootinest Leige one can have in the Cesspool! The one, the only @Joe Shaw

Get off my tank, hippie. Saw a post on reddit. Some guy was trying to use his Apple watch at checkout and it wasn't going through. Old guy in line behind him says "c'mon "future boy", get it moving."

For folks freakin out about the expenditure from the west, it might be good to have perspective, In Afghanistan the US alone spent some 2 TRILLION dollars. The gov't sitting in Kabul right now is the umm err Taliban. As of July we had spent about 76 billion in Ukraine..... For the return on investment, it is hard to say the West hasn't got a financial windfall in kneecapping the Russian military.

snakes in the plane!

he lives in the twilight zone

Not sure that is entirely accurate. The French in Algeria had a somewhat different perspective. In their view Algeria, particularly Algiers was French. You've probably watched it but if you haven't you should - I visited there for work a few years back and the cab driver was taking me around to some of the sights like the milk bar. He seemed excited to find someone who knew some of the specific history. The company warned us however that we were not to go into the Casbah.

whew glad you didn't spell that "on to". This is a family forum after all.

I live in a house built in 1941 and it hasn't been expanded. The price however......

heh this Ukraine thread keeps edging towards "let's solve all the world's problems"

not surprising, but still... Major Russian losses in recent offensive around Avdiivka likely to be among the worst of 2023, UK intel says (yahoo.com)

JD Vance calls Speaker Johnson’s Ukraine remarks ‘concerning’ (yahoo.com)

Just money. Seems like a lot of places in the world you can make some money to send home to family. Like the slavery conditions workers face in the Middle East.

not to mention the relationships this impacts with the Central Asian republics. This is a freakin ticking time bomb for Moscow.

This has the added benefit of driving a financial wedge amongst the Russian oligarchy. They won't be getting their money back and they really will be paying for Putin's war.

The problem for Russia is the prisoners were filling two gaps, not just filling in for boots at the front Russia's worker shortage is so bad the economy is leaning on the Soviet-era practice of using prison labor, think tank says (msn.com) In 2022, Russia pulled in an estimated 19.1 billion rubles, or around $204 million from forced prison labor, The Moscow Times recently reported, citing dating from Russia's finance ministry. That exceeded estimates that Russia made the year prior, when budget makers anticipated bringing in just 15.8 billion roubles from forced prison labor. The nation expected to rake in 15.9 billion rubles in 2023 and 16.2 billion rubles in 2024, according to 2021 budget estimates.There are around 26,000 Russian prisoners forced into labor across 1,700 organizations, according to August 2023 data from Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service. That's more than double what was reported in 2022, when 9,300 prisoners were forced to work, according to the research and analytics firm Jamestown Foundation.

"we all do" Except for the 117 House members that voted against the last package. If a bill for Ukraine aid comes to the floor, there is a high probability Johnson will be the next guy toppled out of his chair.

Freakin math lessons? I can barely spell Matth oops

Russian population set to decrease by more than 7 million in next 2 decades (yahoo.com) The one item in their projection I find questionable is an increase in life expectancy. I'd actually think you'd see a decline as the overall social/economic situation continues to decline.

Russians and windows.... Russian anti-war activist dies after ‘fall from height’ (yahoo.com) At the end of that article yeah that is gonna go over well.

so is war becoming obsolete or just for those who don't care about their own casualties?

true mostly but the beheaded babies one is as far as I know not actually confirmed yet.

same here.

yeah they are, but this isn't like this came out of the blue. we are talking close to 100 years where both sides have disregarded the concept of civilians. Granted that is a fairly alien concept in a conflict where civilians on both sides are active participants. I had a buddy while living in DC who had been living in a refugee camp in Lebanon during the 82 Israelis invasion. He had been pretty messed up with what he'd gone through. At one point throwing babies into garbage bags to evacuate a child care center before the Phalangist allies of Israel raided the camp. The situation is F'd up all the way around with no end in site to the misery of both sides. If there is a hell I expect it looks a lot like this area.

I just want to know what this all has to do with Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift. That, it seems, is the real news.

Putin: "Goddamn Hamas". Russian ruble slumps to 18-month low as Israel-Hamas war sends US dollar higher in flight to safety (yahoo.com)