Yeah, WSL was the gateway to daily driving for me. I'd played with Linux as a kid, came back via WSL, and quickly came to the conclusion I'd be best off without Windows.
Lazy is not a very nice way of putting it, but I would urge anyone without a simple stretching routine to develop one.
Five to ten minutes a few times a week, and I've not had a back problem in years.
It's a simple and easy way to keep a healthy baseline. Good for all sorts of physical and mental issues. I feel like shit if I've not done them for a while.
> Five to ten minutes a few times a week, and I've not had a back problem in years.
It helps, no doubt.
But it's not bullet proof either. A buddy of mine, very active guy, runner, cyclist, rower, tennis, swimmer, works out 10x a week, hikes 2 weeks in the rockies every summer. If anybody knows about warmup and stretching and all that, it's him. Has been a programmer for 20 years. Herniated disc took him out a year ago, still recovering.
Russia is reflexively anti-NATO as NATO is reflexively anti-Russia.
NATO is an alliance that was created in opposition to the Soviet Union. NATO has absorbed parts of the former Soviet Union.
Western companies pillaged Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Rightly or wrongly, Putin owes a lot of his original popularity to dealing with the aftermath.
Russia, rightly or wrongly, sees colour revolutions as intelligence operations, and territorial conquest.
Russia cannot accept NATO forces on its borders.
NATO is providing decisive material, political, logistical, financial and intelligence support to Ukraine, precisely to bog it down and drain it.
These are all pretty normal perspectives for most Russians. They're arguably pretty based, and not necessarily a product of internal propaganda campaigns.
The thing that westerners don't get about Russia, and the reason we're stuck in this Godforsaken conflict, is that we personalise things around Putin. We think that if Putin dies, everything will magically improve.
The decision to invade was Putin's, but the rationale goes much deeper and will outlast him.
I'm not going to say that NATO materiel has had zero effect but I think what Russians (at least those in power) really can't reckon with is that their initial invasion got stopped by Ukrainian AD, artillery, armor, and soldiers operating on the same Cold War stockpiles and doctrine as they did. The single most valuable intervention from NATO was simply alerting Ukraine that Russia was about to invade, allowing the Ukrainians to disperse their units.
Russia committed to too many (and often poorly chosen) lines of advance and did not have a plan to keep their units adequately supplied and moving on the approach to Kiev. This meant even in the opening month of the invasion, their plan went south almost immediately and you had infamous miles-long traffic jams on the roads leading south. Their SEAD didn't work. Their soldiers were not told ahead of time that they were invading Ukraine. They didn't want to mobilize ahead of time, so they didn't amass enough forces. Against a large country like Ukraine you don't need to invent a NATO bogeyman to understand why the initial offensive failed. Credit to Ukraine, they did not allow a defeatist narrative to take hold and fought.
> NATO is providing decisive material, political, logistical, financial and intelligence support to Ukraine, precisely to bog it down and drain it.
NATO would not need to provide so much material, political, logistical, financial, and intelligence support to Ukraine if Russia just fucking left Ukraine.
The drain goes away if they stop invading a sovereign neighbor.
> The decision to invade was Putin's, but the rationale goes much deeper and will outlast him
Not Russian either but also spent a lot of time out east.
Putin declared the war as a means of personal survival. The negotiations are possible only if he gets out of the way, and then, it's really important to make a Marshall plan for Russia because indeed lots of reputational damage has to be repaired by the "winners" in the Cold War.
That Putin has personal investment in this is not under question. I agree, there are things that he won't compromise on.
Does this mean the war continues till he dies? We could yet wait a long time.
Say he does fall over tomorrow, there's no guarantee what comes next is any better. Defeat in WWI brought about Nazi Germany. A Marshal Plan would more likely come from China.
He's had attempts on his life made. Do you think Russia will fall over if that's successful? Look at what's happened with Iran. Would Russia believe he had a heart attack if he had one?
It would be in everyone's best interests if this war was frozen exactly where it is, now. A continued war in Europe is bad for everyone, and could get much worse.
Defeat of Germany in WWII was followed by Marshall plan exactly to avoid the ressentiment that nourished the Nazis.
> He's had attempts on his life made
That's a dubious claim. Nothing that we know for sure. I've seen him hinting at that and at the danger to his family in interviews, but who takes his word for it?
> Western companies pillaged Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Western companies, of course. Not oligarchs.
Please. Must be Western companies that threw orgies, spent hundreds of millions of rubles on parties and buying influence, started bandit wars, and feasted on leftovers of USSR industry.
> Russia cannot accept NATO forces on its borders.
This is such obvious bullshit. Russia already has NATO on its borders, and is attempting to expand it's borders so they will contact even more of NATO.
Huh? Geography shows NATO borders Russia in Latvia and Estonia, now also Finland. Ukraine was neutral till 2014 when Russia invaded it. Russia is so full of shit. It's like 1984 war is peace type stuff.
You. Yes you, alcohol-consuming Californian. Go buy some grapes whilst they're cheap and make some wine.
I barely drink these days, but wine production is great fun and pretty damn easy. I've done it a couple of times, it was super rewarding.
It's much more straightforward than most booze (e.g., beer). You just need clean gear and mashed up grapes, and some sulphites on hand if things get a bit wonky. There's very little else to it.
I think anyone who drinks should make wine once in their life.
As a homebrewer, this is a comment I was expecting to see. Barley prices skyrocketed in 2021 due to increased demand (COVID) and geopolitical turmoil (One major European barley producers happened to invade another). These increased prices along with the quality jump in American beers (and becoming a father) reduced my interest in brewing, but it's still a hobby I revere.
Grape sales to hobbyists won't save the industry, but it could diversify the market slightly. Home winemaking is obviously less efficient than manufacturing, but when the supply must be liquidated that becomes a feature instead of a bug.
I'm not sure the damage from vaping is even close to that of smoking, especially if you smoke a lot. Nevertheless, at some point I decided I was way too attached to it- though I only had a small vape with low nicotine and rather neutral taste as opposed to those things that produce entire cumulonimbi of cherry-flavoured vapour. At least with cigarettes I am acutely aware of the harm, constantly try to keep it in check, and to smoke I need at least to reach an open place.
Btw, one thing that helped me a lot are nicotine patches. I've used them for years and helped me reduce smoking down to ~3 cigs/ day, and even stop it for some period.
> Most urgent intervention required in the UK, IMO. We're choking to death on the cost of housing.
Every country in the Western world is. And it seriously hits our economies as well - when companies have to pay wages to match what landlords are asking of their employees, places like China with a massive oversupply of housing are far, far more competitive.
Something horrible I've noticed with a lot of AI-generated design is the size of the typeface.
There's a menu for a place in my town and it's completely illegible. They printed the same thing in three sizes, and you need a magnifying glass to see the text on the smallest two.
Accessibility matters, and is part of the job of a designer. The problem with AI tools is that by skipping the expert, you risk making some horrible mistakes.
We've been in one war or another for most of my adult life.
We are in a perilous position right now in Europe, very close to a major escalation of the Ukraine conflict. This would entail direct conflict between nuclear-armed powers.
I find it deeply troubling that no mainstream party in most European countries seems to think this is a bad idea.
Letting russians take the Crimea without any consequences in 2014 is what led the world to all of this. I dare to say, ALL of it, not just the war in Ukraine.
Letting them do even more horrible lawlessness will only lead to worse outcomes.
Hot war in Europe. We're doing incursions well into Russia. Attempts have been made on the life of Putin and Zelensky, a drone was dangerously close to a bunch of very senior Europeans the other day.
It's dangerously out of control. We should be seeking de-escalation for our own sakes. The last two major European wars destroyed empires. We're playing with fire here.
I do not want to live through, or die in WW3. I'm worried it's already started.
Europe, Ukraine and the west do want to de-escalate and end the war that Russia started, it's Putin who has repeatedly said to negotiators directly and on TV he wants to continue escalating and believes it's still possible to take over Ukraine and parts of eastern Europe.
It's hard for one side to de-escalate when the other side is an avowed irredentist attempting to rebuild the Russian Empire before they die.
To be honest, while Putin is obsessed with irredentism it's either: let him take back all the old Soviet states (which simply won't be tolerated by people there or Europe) or keep up the ongoing defence and make the cost for Russia high enough to stunt them until Putin dies either naturally or by falling out a window.
People like Trump and Elon think a deal can be done with Putin or he can be placated, or there's some sort of solution like you're waiting to hear, but all attempts to even begin negotiation fail because Putin is dead set on rebuilding the Empire. Apparently in any discussion about his war he spends hours talking about Russia's historical claims and ownership and shows old documents and books etc.
I'm sorry it seems to you like no one has come up with a good solution but it's either give Russia one or more countries (and then he'll want more...) or defend until he loses power or dies.
irredentism is a hell of a drug. Putin is fully locked in.
Regardless of Putin's obsession with Ukraine, the problem is that his clan views this war (and future wars like this) as a campaign to create a new world order where the EU and the US withdraw from supporting countries in what they consider their sphere of influence, and, ultimately, give up any ideas of affecting change inside Russia.
It's an age-old story of a crime family holding on to its mafia state.
Yeah, it's this "we continue fighting until Putin eventually dies" line of thinking which horrifies me. Is that our war strategy? That's a recipe for permanent war.
It's based on several flawed assumptions: that Putin's death will happen soon, that Putin's death will lead to a leader with a radically different and more amenable geopolitical vision.
Do understand that the popular narrative in Russia mirror's the ours exactly: "We can't just roll over and let the West have Ukraine".
I'm sorry, but "keep fighting until Putin has a heart attack" is stupid beyond belief. The only way to safely end this conflict is to freeze it. Continuation risks catastrophic escalation.
Of course it's stupid. This is a stupid war.
No one on the Ukraine or EU or western side wants to be in this war.
If you're saying defence is not an option are you suggesting we roll over give Putin back the old Soviet states? Let him do his ethnic cleansing?
Putin does NOT want to freeze this war, he honestly, truely believes he can continue to weaken the west and Ukraine until he can rebuild his empire. Go read any of his writings or interviews for the last 10 years. He's an irridentist to his bones.
This is not the Korean war where a DMZ will be agreed to.
While Putin lives he will keep the war going, keep trying to take over Ukraine entirely and the old Soviet states.
He sees the loss of the ex Soviet states to the EU as a historic mistake and catastrophe that he intends to set right via military action.
While the front might grind to a halt, there's no scenario where he would agree to end the war with just the land he's captured today.
Incorrect, there are lots of people in the West with a vested interest in keeping this war rolling. We're selling guns, doing R&D, Europe now buys its gas from America (at a higher price) instead of Russia, Zelenskyy does not need to face election.
Groups of people in the West are benefiting massively. Most Ukrainians are not. Most normal citizens of Western countries are not, we're shouldering the cost in rising cost of living, elevated military spending.
We have a hot war on our continent. I repeat, this is very fucking dangerous. WW1 was a brutal, grinding land battle with immense costs for all its European participants. It also led to WW2, which culminated in the absolute decimation of European cities and the eventual use of nuclear weapons. This is the path we're retreading.
You continue to personalise this around Putin. It is incredibly naive to think that Putin disappearing will resolve the problem. It will not.
Haven't regretted it for a second.
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