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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • There is a CRITICAL piece of information that was neglected in this and most articles:

    In the late 90s, a relatively newly minted President Putin was embroiled in a military operation against Chechnya.

    Then, there were a series of apartment bombings in Russia. The party line was that they were Chechen terrorists.

    Now, a few REALLY strange things happened:

    1. the government accidentally referenced a 4th bombing… 3 days before the bombing occurred

    2. local police foiled a 5th bombing. The people arrested ended up being FSB. Putin was immediately before becoming a leader of Russia was the head of the FSB.

    3. An independent investigation on if the Kremlin was involved resulted in everyone involved being jailed or assasinated.

    The strong suspicion was that this was a false flag operation, at least outside of Russia.

    The RESULT of the bombing was a massive galvanization of the populace around Putin and his Chechnya war.

    So, long story short: this was the event that propelled Putin into the Russian political stratosphere.

    There shouldn’t be any confusion as to Putin’s experience with political gain from terrorist attacks.

    I’m not suggesting Putin was responsible for this last attack, but using such an attack for political gain is absolutely a strategy he has succeeded with in the past.


  • Those of us who remember the Orange Revolution understand the incredible political attack that Ukraine has been under for decades. Russia has expended unprecedented expenditure understanding democracy in order to develop mechanisms to undermine it.

    It’s extremely unfortunate the reality in which former Soviet states exist. While it’s distasteful, it’s certainly necessary given a reality that westerners barely understand… Which is kind of shocking to me given the outcome of Jan 6.

    I think when the war is over, it would be appropriate for him to not even run. Hard men make hard decisions when under existential threat. I’m glad Ukraine had a Churchill when Ukraine needed a Churchill… But when that time comes for a peacetime leader, it doesn’t mean he wasn’t the right man in the right place at the right time.

    It is from a position of privilege and ignorance that we criticize the necessary actions of wartime leaders.


  • I think you’ve missed what the sin was, as well as the context of the players.

    The sin was not the bad code. Let me say it one more time for clarity: the issue was not the code

    The issue was that, when presented with the defect (inevitable outcome of any software project: not intrinsically sinful) Mauro started blaming other people on a public mailing list

    Mauro, being a maintainer, was in a position of authority. Like a police officer, their bad behaviour reflected poorly on the organization*as a whole.

    If a cop was abusing their power (publicly or not), I expect the chief of police to come down on that abuser; to make clear that this abuse is absolutely unacceptable, not only within the accute instance, but within the greater context of the expectation of the behaviour of the whole organization.

    Mauro chose the context of his abusive behaviour as the public mailing list.

    Him getting slapped down in that same forum is the direct result of his own choices.

    In the same way that I would be upset with the chief of police not publicly and harshy denouncing an abusive police officer, so would I be upset with the absence of such a response in this situation