Always 50/50 because two party system, FPTP and electoral college.

I would also add that isn’t empty talk like “Well he said it once, non biggie”. That statement by POTUS itself drove the national policy other countries. When POTUS says “other nations you are with us or are our enemies”, that matters.

That is a signal the reverberates around with “do we dare to anger USA on this one”. The Afghan war partisipants list is long and contains some not so obvious participants often doing rather small token participations. Which I think is exactly “Well we have to show we are with USA”.

For example here in Finland in the after action report of Finnish participation in Afghanistan tells the reason wasn’t building peace, it wasn’t even combat experience. It was “coalition and alliance building” aka showing USA “we are with them”.

In the after action study one of the interviewed decision makers literally directly quoted:

Yhdysvallat sanoi 9/11 jälkeen: olette joko meidän kanssa tai meitä vastaan.”

United States said after 9/11: You are either with us or against us.

Right above explaining how it was 20 year long very unpopular operation caused losses and achieved nothing in Afghanistan, but hey the Finnish NATO application will go through with flying colors.

The whole time the media blitz was about “Helping and building peace in Afghanistan”. When in reality we went in because USA publicly extorted pretty all of west to show colors.

This isn’t only in Finland in other European after action reports have shown similar “We went in, because Bush publicly demanded show of loyalty”.

Since he was an idiot and gave a no reservations or conditions bid for the company. At way overpriced at that. The existing biard and owners must have been fainting from shock and glee.

No one sane ever gives no reservations and conditions bid. That is insanely stupid thing to do.

Twitter didn’t make Elon buy Twitter. Elon did that to himself. Under normal bid, absolutely he could back out by arguing one of the conditions his lawyers would have put in.

Either his lawyers were highly incompetent, he didn’t use them or he ignored their advice that it would be highly unusual and monumentally stupid to issue such bid while waiving ones right to have terms and conditions included. Well negotiate in terms and conditions. Since obviously otherside might refuse to accept the buying contract, if they don’t like the terms and conditions.

In this case all the judge did was looked at the bid contract and went “Mister Musk, you signed bid to buy with no terms and conditions. So you have to honor the bid.”

Like the one recent CEO saying the quiet part aloud by saying government should promote higher unemployment, since in the high employment environment employees aren’t desperate and have more demands costing him money. That employees arent feeling enough pain and despair in economy.

Well PESCO did get created. Denmark dropped their opt out from CSDP. Stuff like this moves slowly, specially upon there not being single hegemonic leader saying “We do this” and everyone else answering “Yes boss”. EU is herding catch and it makes everything move slowly.

No, terrorism act being ruled out means police doesn’t have evidence or even suspect a terrorism motive. There is no separate “terrorism” singular statute for violent crimes. Rather Finland handles this by having qualifier for list of crimes of “crime act done in terroristic intent”. One of these is explosives crimes. Illegal possession and so on. Then going to stuff like “murder with terroristic intent” and so on. Only real pure terrorism crimes are stuff like “leading a terrorist group”, “training for terroristic group” and so on organizational crimes.

What specifying in article means is police has told they have no indication of terroristic purpose/motive and thus the investigation will start regarding just “plain” explosives crimes, instead of starting investigation on “explosives crimes with terroristic intent”. Basically initial show doesn’t show anything related to terrorism. The amount of explosives is itself irrelevant. Since the whole thing about the Finnish terrorism statute is about the motive and purpose, not the means.

You could blow some single person with a whole metric ton of explosives and not be charged with terrorism. If you did it for say as crime of passion since they were having an affair with your spouse, that isn’t a terroristic murder with explosives. It’s just plain murder for personal reasons, just way over the top amount of explosives. You probably would get charged with public endangerment againt since that is awful big explosion and so on. However again… you didn’t endanger public for terroristic purposes so no terroristic crime label. You did it rather out of not caring/stupidity and so on.

Also I would point out as result of couple big European wars and having a pretty sizeable mining industry, even large amount of explosives might be accessible to certain people. Which is why on the other hand authorities really take dim view on explosives crimes. He might not be suspected of terrorism, but I would think the person will get book thrown at them (as much as anyone gets book thrown at them in Finland) to make example. Prosecutor will must likely seek maximum jail sentence for that kind of pile of illegal explosives (whatever they were before, they certainly are illegal upon being put upon some randos car boot, which is not a legal way to store 12 kg of dynamite). Probably aggravated explosives crime at that again given it’s 12 kg of dynamite. You can make awful big crater with that amount.

Also I would at while police is at the moment ruling out terrorism, it isn’t a court judgement. They are allowed to change their mind, should they find evidence making them suspect terroristic purpose. It has happened before. For example the last right wing terrorism case actually started like that. They found a stash of firearms and explosives. However first those were being suspected to be tied to drugs crimes and were found related to a drug bust investigation. So the investigation didn’t start as terroristic. However after couple home searches related to that investigation were done, police found evidence suggesting terroristic purpose. This lead to the crimes classification changing to firearms crimes and explosives crimes to firearms crimes with terroristic intent and explosives crimes with terroristic intent. Plus on top as I remember preparing a terroristic act and so on. They were caught before they actually carried out an strike with their stash.

You know a stale mate is a possible state of war. One side doesn’t always have to be winning and the other losing.

SO if Russia starts lobbing around chemical and biological weapons, then Ukraine should do that too? Like not gonna work like that, for example biological weapons are one of those were you can’t just go “tit-for-tat”. Since every biological weapon used is new risk of launching a pandemic on the world and so on.

To certain level, yes if other side breakes the rules, we get to break them also. However there is a line. Line which you never cross. Under no circumstances should Ukraine be allowed to target medical facilities, even on Russia having done it multitude of times. Indiscriminate intentional bombardment of still habited cities with no allowing of civilians to evacuate should always be off the table. You just don’t do that. All it leads is to needless human suffering.

It’s one thing to aim for military or strategic target and miss and hit civilians. That is recognized as reality of war. Terror bombardment? Never to be allowed. Not to mention it doesn’t work. Every example in history has shown all it does is make the receiving end angry, instead of demoralizing them. It sets a “So it’s to the last breath then? That is the name of the game, fine that is the name of the game” and they fight to bitter end.

Well mostly the flaw is people assigning the test abilities it was never intended. Like testing intelligence. Turing outright as first thing in the paper presenting “imitation game” noted moving away from testing intelligence, since he didn’t know to do that. Even on the realm of “testing intelligent kind of behavior” well more like human like behavior and human being here proxy for intelligent, it was mostly an academic research idea. Not a concrete test meant to be some milestone.

If the meaning of the words ‘machine’ and ‘think’ are to be found by examining how they are commonly useit is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, ‘Can machines think?’ is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

Turing wanted a way to step away from stuff like “thinking” and “intelligence” directly and then proposed “imitation game” mostly to the rest of the academia as way to develop computer systemics more towards “intelligent behavior”. It was mostly like “hey we need some goal to have as a goal to have something to move towards with these intelligence things. This isn’t intelligence, but it might be usefull goal or tool for development work”. Since without some goal/project/aim to have project don’t advance. So it was “how about we try to develop a thing, that can beat this imitation game. Wouldn’t that be good stepping stone. Then we can move to the actual serious stuff. Just an idea”.

However since this academic “thinking out aloud spitballing ideas” was uttered by the Alan Turing, it became the Turing Test and everyone started taking it way too seriously. Specially outside academia. Who yes did play the imitation game with their programs as it was intended as research and development tool.

exemplified by for example this little exerpt of “not trying to do anything too complete and ground breaking here”:

In any case there is no intention to investigate here the theory of the game, and it will be assumed that the best strategy is to try to provide answers that would naturally be given by a man

It is pretty literally “I had a thought”. Turin makes no claims of machine beating the game having any significance other than “machine beat this game I came up with, neat”. There is no argument of if machine beats imitation game, then X or then it means Y is reached.

Rest of the paper is actually about objections to the core idea of “it could ever be possible for machine to think” and even as such said imitation game is kinda lead in or introduction to Turing’s treatise various objections of various “it would be impossible for machine to think” arguments. Starting with theological argument of “only human soul can think. Hence no animal or machine can think.” … since it was 1950’s.

Yeah. Unless he has evidence… Yeah, don’t go around spewing that kind of stuff. How about going with “looks like middle-aged man having midlife crisis and currently in the “gym rat” phase of it”… little dig in there, but you know more realistic. Yeah he is little funny with the shirtless sports posing, so throw some shade over it. However it in no way implies cheating on his wife. Don’t know if he is, don’t know if he isn’t, but getting the middle life crisis hobby of “jiu-jitsu” doesn’t tell anything about that.

As said I think him getting in shape, sports and posing is way more about just bulk standard mid-life crisis. “Oh I’m getting little old. When did that midsection and belly got so wide. I should start a sports hobby to get in shape and avoid cardiovascular disease”. Some people get a motorbike to catch the lost youth. Others become gym rats/sports nuts to try to catch back their lost youth body.

Again which really wouldn’t be that interesting except billionaire and also him apparently getting so hooked on it, that he started competing in tournaments.

Doesn’t also remove anything from his horrible record of business ethics. He has absolutely horrible business ethics as most of these silicon valley billionaires in the advertising/social media sphere. Comes with the territory. One doesn’t start a targeted advertising social media business, if one values the ethics of peoples right to privacy.

Well that is a good way for a diplomat to lose their job. Publicly criticizing the head diplomat of the country. Whether or not the criticism is valid is beside the point. One doesn’t go around publicly criticizing the head of state. Now absolutely behind closed doors tell him You should be little more careful, that last public statement might not have been in the best possible tone.

Like it is kinda funny how he got sacked criticizing head of state for what might be interpreted as alliance disunity. While showing national disunity by publicly criticizing his own head of state. Yeah. That gets you fired.

traditional grocery stores won’t put in any effort to provide it

At least where I live here in Finland, traditional retail chains are very much in the shopping delivery business. Exactly including using their vast retail stores network as their base of deliveries. However again their stores are actual stores.

The dark stores would have had choices. For example don’t run a purely dark store. Run it as combined delivery base and retail store. The walk in retail might be minority of the business, but then they could say “no, we also have walk in customers. We aren’t a dark store, the city mayor is free to walk in and come buy a bottle of cola from us.”

Well they didn’t ban the business model. They just ruled that a warehouse can’t be classed as a store. Which is atleast to me fair sounding. Since should customer not be able to walk into that establishment and buy stuff, it isn’t a store. It is delivery warehouse. Hence it shouldn’t be allowed on zonings and placings only meant for stores. You shouldn’t run commercial warehouse out of retail zoning. Since commercial warehousing is not a retail business. Retail implies customers are directly retail consumers, not other business partners.

Normal store could still partner with a delivery company. Issue is the delivery companies don’t want to partner with normal stores, since then the store wants their cut. They want to directly rent a space and turn it into warehouse. Since that costs less per item, than paying to partner with a store. You could still operate the store as supply point. Just can’t be just a delivery point.

It was companies own decision “we don’t think this makes sense, if we can’t pinch the last penny by running our own dark store. instead of say partnering with local retail chain”.

Russia still get to maintain their main embassy at capital Helsinki. Just as Finland still has it’s main Moscow embassy.

Even if it was just pure anti-personnel clusters, we have evidence of that far back in 2022. So even then he would be lying. For example there is photo graphic evidence from the bomb disposal teams in Ukraine of 9N24 submunition. Which is soviet pure anti-personnel submunition for their cluster dispensers. It has no other purpose. It isn’t even dual use dumb HEAT/FRAG submunition. 9N24 is pure fragmentations anti-personnel round with simple contact fuse. Hit’s ground, the explosive core along the main cylinder shaped munition explodes and well the whole outside wall is lined with steel balls to be thrown in 360 all around.

Similarly 9N210 HE/FRAG munitions have been documented. Again useless against armored targets, only use case is against soft targets like humans. As have 9N235 again HE/FRAG sub munitions been documented.

All same purpose, just little different sized and exact design for different dispensers. Some those might theoretically have fuses with self destruct. However the whole point about cluster munitions being bad is fuses fail, including supposed self-destruct fuses. There is no such thing as 100% reliable fuse, even self destruct one.

My source: Armaments Research Services articles on the subject. I’m sure there is bunch of other more official sources also, including listing more individual incidents and attacks. ARES are just convenient source here, since they are interested the weapons technologies and types used in conflicts, so they have bunch of articles of “This specific type of submunitions has now been seen in Ukraine”.

Though as cheaper preventative would be just electrolyte sports drink. Meant for same thing just for sports caused sweating. However sweating is sweating.

Main thing is one can buy electrolyte sports drink by big drink mix powder jar, instead of expensive single pack.

One just has to be carefull to buy the actual rehydration drink mix instead of the normal sports drink. The normal sports drink isn’t as optimal as thirst killer, since container alottaa of calories. It does also usually contain rehydration sales, but as said heck of energy bomb to be drink by bottle full outside of hard exercising. Where is pure rehydration drink has just set of salts and then maybe some flavoring and food color (because obviously sports drink is supposed to be acid green)

Ofcourse most likely not exactingly proportioned and controlled as actual ORS from pharmacy, since ORS would be done to medicine production standards.

The lead is buried in the article

During the meeting, Putin said he offered Prigozhin the option to allow Wagner fighters to continue to serve in Ukraine under the leadership of their battlefield commander, Andrey Trochev.

“All of them could gather in one place and continue to serve,” Putin told Kolesnikov, who has covered the Kremlin leader for several decades. “And nothing would change for them. They would be led by the same person who had been their actual commander this entire time.”

The offer met with some support from the Wagner commanders, Putin said. “A lot of them nodded their heads when I said this. But Prigozhin, who was sitting in front of them and didn’t see [their reaction], said: ‘No, the guys won’t agree with that decision.’”

The interview appears to be part of a broader effort by the Kremlin to win the loyalty of the Wagner rank and file, even while seeking to discredit Prigozhin by leaking sensitive and embarrassing information about him.

During the interview, Putin also said Wagner did not exist, citing Russian legislation outlawing private military companies and putting its future in doubt.

Dara Massicot, a senior policy researcher at Rand, a US thinktank, who specialises in Russian military strategy, said Putin’s version of events signalled he could outlaw Wagner at any moment while seeking to drive a wedge between Prigozhin and his fighters.

emphasis mine. Now it is kinda a show of weakness. He is having to court the fighters, instead being confident in their loyalty to simple order. However after that explanation it makes sense, more than the headline would first give reason to. Plus finally of course… trust zero on the truthfulness to any Kremlin statements information. However what is truthful, they are trying to achieve something with the statement, even if they would be lying through their teeth. There was a reason for the messaging.

honestly Guardian should have lead with title or at least first lead message of “Putin is trying to drive wedge between Prigozhin and Wagner, new interview shows” or something like that.

For some crazy reason they haven’t snatched it up yet. Atleast a domain seller website is saying it is free for pickings, if you want it.

Then again maybe their policy is to put everything as subdomain on cnn.com and make cnn.com their sole brand “if it’s not on cnn.com, it’s not that CNN”. Still i would have though they defensive register all relevant TLDs, even if they never ever use them.

Nah. He is also known for instant turns, when he thinks he has bargained enough or when it happens to suit the image he wants to present.

For example say he decided “Vilnius is the moment I stop bargaining, but only at last minute. Lets see what concessions I can get out of them until then” or so on.

It is exactly on brand for Erdogan to suddenly turn his position and go “what problem, there is no problem. What I said last week there was a problem… no no no, I Erdogan The First have solved problem quickly in only few days. Yes we made a deal, I negotiated amazing deal, deal solves the problem. There is No problem anumore. It’s solved.”

What happened to solve the problem? Nothing, Erdogan just stopped insisting there was a problem in first place and well some flowery language on top to make it look like it was deal to end the problem and not a climb down to end the problem.

Nah. Sweden doesn’t seem to have given any firm commitments about security beyond “We work on it together”, which can mean exactly as little or as much it fancies Sweden after they are in NATO.

To me this is simply “Erdogan has decided he has seen this bargaining to completion and it would look really bad, if this thing wasn’t resolved by Vilnius. Pressure started to mount with This is starting to be embarrassing Recep from rest of NATO” and he simply called it good.

Nothing needs to have been changed on this exact moment, He just decided he has tried long enough and has exhausted the concessions and no point dragging it on. Instead of benefit, it started to be more hindrance in his calculation to keep this going.

He can now tan in the limelight in Vilnius as the leader who saved the situation at last minute. Mind you the problem was of his own creation, but hey those are the best kind of problems. You have exact control and can “solve the problem” at exactly the most suitable last minute moment. Actual problems are harder for “last minute saviour” credibility collection. You might actually fail to solve the problem and thats not good.