Nerd Pride Radio

May I ask why that man who is causing all the trouble has had such a puffy and unpleasant face lately? I haven't had my coffee yet so maybe I just need to get on it, but I woke up feeling like dude had some really bizarre reaction to watching the Olympics and feeling competitive and having his country's athletes accused of doping, and then decided to do a little athletic doping himself. The 2021 Gen. Ripper is apparently fueled by roid rage? So I guess we've always known that something this stupid would be the reason we wake up in the morning pondering the odds of nuclear annihilation. Is anyone else having weird echoes of their childhood when they first learned about this problem and could not comprehend why humans let it happen?

The reports that keep coming out are just so horrifying, the things that have happened and the things that are about to happen. No regard for human life or anything good or true.

nato just said they won't do a no fly zone, and it's honestly such a heartbreaking relief. It means the world is for now much safer from a new world war but it means such concentrated pain on Ukraine. Such compromises and decisions are hard to make -- and we should feel bad about it, but also no getting around the bad bad puffy man who forced this on us and them. He truly can solve this by backing off.

Meanwhile my sense of cutting losses extends and two bad options extends to what happens next. The two options seems to be defeat plus an insurgency -- horrific for all involved -- or a compromise with the devil, forced neutrality, under constant threat and shenanigans, no true independence, and hope in a few decades a kinder dictator will emerge. The latter is depressing but at least less death so that's where I'd lean, but in this I have no say. Again, the puffmaster is a bad actor.

WHY is he doing these things? Have read a couple articles suggesting he has cancer but that doesn't clarify much for me. Why fire on the nuclear plant? I feel like we don't know what's really going on but the truly terrifying thing is there may be no reason. Just random incompetent aggression.

My theory: Putin is a megalomaniac who truly sees himself as the savior of the old Soviet Union, and it is his destiny to make Soviet style Russia the most powerful nation on earth. And for some reason, he has decided that his chances will never be any better than they are now, so he has to move before it is too late.

On top of that, his actions in Ukraine and their results indicate that his own estimation of what was going to happen was way off the mark. He assumed this would be a weeklong invasion and that the world would be upset, but they'd get over it. He was going to have Ukraine with minimal pain or consequences. His equivalent of "mission accomplished". His equivalent of "we'll be greeted as liberators."

Either he's bought into his own hype, or he's surrounded by people too scared of him to give honest assessments.

I also think he's been diagnosed with some degenerative ailment, such as parkinson's, and even though he feels immortal, has an undercurrent of hurry pushing him along. Medication might also explain some of the puffiness.

My co-worker's family were refugees from Ukraine in 1951. We will call him Leo

He told me his family story today, out of the blue just came over and sat down beside me and told me the whole story.
I don't know how you carry around all this stuff, but he said all the news has triggered some memories of things he thought he had left behind.

His parents were born in 1923 and he is a surprise baby.

His grand parents were farmers when the communists started making all the farms into state communal property. They would have none of it and were put on a train to Siberia never to be seen again.
The children were just left behind to fend for themselves. Some people took in the children abandoned by the state. and raised the kids.
Life was hard but his father married his mother and they had each other.
Then the Nazis came...they were placed in work camps....everyone Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, etc.
His father smuggled a bag of sugar and the guards saw him with it.
To save him from being beaten to death his wife offered "herself"
During their time in the labor camps she had 7 forced abortions. No kids allowed in the work camps.
In 1951 they wear able to get out of Ukraine and came to Boston and changed their last name.
"Leo" was born as a surprise baby in the 60s.

He loves the US and told me he thinks that Russia is in for a long drawn out urban-guerilla war that they will not win.

Just thought I would share this with you good people.

News story today: global run on packets of potassium iodine pills. Lol great.

Have been staying in a place with televised news and it's making me sick, wtf? The more I see the more I worry, yes, we are dealing with a man who would kill millions to advance his agenda without blinking. So, fun times ahead. Hope they can divert him. I can prep for two weeks of chaos but I'm convinced prepping for worse is beside the point. It's the line between "orderly chaos" and "chaos".

I play Fallout 4 a LOT. I hope any nukes hit me on the head. Don't want to live through that kind of nightmare

The good news for me has always been guaranteed destruction! Though I do worry, given how incompetent this latest effort looks. They will need to do better to prevent me from living in that video game but I have confidence it can be done.

I was with a TV and cable tv news for a long while and it's hard to put the mind on anything else after that.

So, a Russian legislator wants Alaska ... Are we in the movie "Robot Jox"?

Well, if they'd like to do something to unwind all the damage they've caused in separating the people in this country politically, threatening to acquire any square inch of it would be the surest way. Imagine trying to come to the US with anything other than missiles. Half my neighbors like to advertise the fact that they're armed to the teeth and the other half probably just silently are.