crateless

As long as they go into it fully informed, that is the best one could hope for.

Well, they have been bullshitting for loooong time if that is the case. I recall watching a video of Gorbachev talking to the US Congress and warning about NATO/US expansion. This was in 1997.

There is no credible threat of a NATO invasion but there is the First-Strike issue now that hypersonic missiles are being developed. Putin has been moaning about this for a while now. A security-conscious/pragmatic state models "what is possible" vs "what is probable". If it seems likely that future Finland could host hypersonic missiles pointed at St.Petersburg, well it becomes incumbent on Moscow to attempt to prevent that. It seems unwise to dismiss their concerns if said dismissal would lead to Ukraine 2.0.

Lots of people seem to think that the Russian unwillingness to flatten Kiev means they could not do it.

How many people have to die for Finns to feel like they stood up to a bully?

> Russia does not want to engage in conflict with a NATO country. If Finland joins NATO then Finland will be at piece for the next century, guaranteed.

Russia has not engaged in conflict with a NATO country, so far. If the stakes are raised high enough, I don't think this will continue to hold.

> Russia has very little reason to invade Finland now, and if Finland joins NATO, it cannot.

I would go so far as to say that if Finland applies to join NATO, they'd have to. That is, if it is truly part of their doctrine that NATO/US is an existential threat to the Russian state.

Following the Kremlin's logic, the advent of hypersonic missiles and the neoconservative bent of US/EU politics, it is seemingly inevitable that war is here.

Qaddafi would like a word.

It is better to call Putin's bluff now rather than wait for Ukraine to fall which might force cooler heads to prevail. Also a dual ascension dares Russia to go to war on two perhaps three fronts?

For Russia, the choice is: war now or war later?

Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.

> a strong show of force and a no-fly-zone would have stopped this, but it's too late now. Scholz is the Chamberlain of our age.

It's not too late to put up a no-fly zone. If it was ok then, why is it not ok now?

I don't see how Ukraine being democratic is an existential threat to Putin in any meaningful way. This situation has been almost 14 years in the reckoning since April 2008.

The NATO-US acting from Ukraine possibly attempting to foment "color" revolutions in Russia, NATO missiles on Ukraine soil, an increasingly belligerent leader in Ukraine renewing the push to join NATO and NATO-US arming and training Ukraine troops. These seem to be more likely factors in the invasion.

Given that the "West" has been frothing around the mouth for his ouster (he did once ask to join NATO btw), one could conclude that "He who goes first wins" was a viable strategy for him.

No, I am saying that I had not taken Russia's threat model into account. Given that threat model, Ukraine is an existential issue for them and the resolution of the uncertainty that has been in place since 2004 was just a matter of time.

I was wrong. I admit that. I spoke from a position of superficial knowledge at the time as I ignored the wider context of the situation and was commenting from a position of received wisdom as I was unaware of what a parent post mentioned regarding a widely known fact that NATO was in Ukraine providing thousands of weapons, I was not aware of that and was only commenting on the basis of "received wisdom" on a particular situation.

I have examined my bias against mainstream media and still find them completely warranted, thank you.

Are we now admitting that NATO was in Ukraine? I thought that was verboten.

> - My touchpad is recognized as "PS/2 Generic Mouse" by libinput, so I can't have touchpad scrolling.

I have the same issue. Different Dell laptop though. It's been an issue for a looong time. Scrolling reliably fails at least once a week forcing a reboot.