To be honest, I also can't fathom it being such a massive flop. On Steam it peaked at 700 players. Shadows of doubt release peaked at 2200. Something had to go seriously wrong when a niche indie title with no mainstream appeal has a better launch than a AAA game. I don't think it should've been a success, but it definitely should've done better than that.
If the key question is security neutrality how exactly was the EU-Ukraine association agreement a security issue for Russia? Because Euromaidan wasn't about joining NATO, it was about wanting the possibility of joining the EU.
I'm not going to entertain the thought of what "neutrality" would mean, because the entire "neutral buffer" argument is just Russian propaganda. Ukraine wasn't neutral before 2014, it was squarely within the Russian sphere of influence since the collapse of the union. Let's reverse the situation. Let's say Russia wins, dismantles the current Ukrainian government and sets up the "legitimate" Ukrainian government, would Ukraine become a "neutral buffer"? No. It would become a vassal state of Russia because Russia can't give Ukraine the autonomy to make their own decisions, otherwise they might decide to turn westward again.
Maybe that's the hypocrisy the meme is pointing to, that the neutrality argument in its entirety is bullshit because Ukraine was never neutral to begin with.
I guess its worth mentioning that Ukraine was never "neutral" to begin with. Since the fall of the union Ukraine had been in the Russian sphere of influence and they were neutral only to the extent where it wouldn't undermine Russian control over Ukraine. That's why the EU accession agreement started this, because it undermined Russian power and Russia was not okay with losing that power. Russia never wanted neutral buffer states, Russia wanted countries that they could control.
Trump himself wasn't funny, but he would come across as funny because he would say the stupidest things or act in an unprofessional way. For example when he said the experts should look into if showing light inside a human body would kill COVID or maybe injecting disinfectant might work, that was stupid funny. There were others like the "who knew healthcare is so complicated" statement
That's pretty promising news. I seriously hope we do see them on the grid in 2026 because I would absolutely love more competition in F1.
The 4 years of Trumpsanity isn't starting in January, it's starting right now. For fucks sake, I'm not ready yet. I need to start stockpiling popcorn and booze. Except this time I'll probably need less popcorn and more booze because I don't think it's going to be as stupid funny as last time. It's already not funny, it's been nosediving into "could it get any worse?" and so far the answer has been "Yes!".
I'll happily be wrong, I'd love an 11th team on the grid. I had the impression it was more a goal for Andretti himself rather than the team, so when Andretti stepped down I figured that was it for the F1 plans as well. If they'll still push to get into F1 I'm all for it, I just don't see it happening without Andretti at the helm.
Isn't Andretti also out of the picture?
Because most of the communities are on those 2 instances. In terms of userbase world does have the most users, but they're the exception as other "big" instances are more evenly split.
So instead of a single instance going down we have 2 main instances that need to go down, and even if they go down we'd have lemmee, shitjustworks, lemmyca and blahaj (and I guess also lemmynsfw) communities feeding the feed.
Nice of you to assume you won't get mandatory military service.
Exactly. Ukraine didn't want to join NATO. It doesn't matter what NATO or westerns think or Russia thinks, it was up to Ukraine. They had no intentions of joining NATO, until Russia annexed Crimea.
Except Russia annexed Crimea before the election. If Russia was worried about a pro-NATO government why would they do something that guarantees a pro-NATO government? I think it's pretty obvious neutral Ukraine was not the goal for Russia.