@tchrist Greetings.

It is a sad day.

@tchrist How are you doing? Managing to hang on?

@Cerberus Not spiraling worse.

@Cerberus Apparently it's ok to declare war on Europe, just not on NATO.

@Robusto Used to be called the "SENATVS CONSVLTVM VLTIMVM".

@tchrist That is something.

@tchrist Hmm why Europe and not just NATO?

@Cerberus There's disagreement among the Allies about what needs to be done now.

The Iron Curtain is back.

@tchrist Only about the severity of sanctions, right?

@tchrist It is saddening. I really hope the curtail will fall east of Kiev.

@Cerberus Yes.

@Cerberus "Saddening" does not begin to cover the alarm that (some) people are experiencing over this move.

@tchrist I have also walked around worried, the past couple of weeks.

And I'm far from Kiev...

No one is far enough away.

Russian autarchs have acted this way for centuries. Nothing changes.

@tchrist Yes, a depressing time, certainly.

> “Every U.N. Member State has a stake in what comes next,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in a statement. “Russia’s actions threaten the international order that, since World War II, has stood for the principle that one country cannot unilaterally redraw another country’s borders. This principle is enshrined in the UN Charter which all Member States pledge to uphold.”

This is what happens when you have a criminal-in-chief who needs to create a war to boost his flagging poll numbers.

Yeah, so much for that idea.

He'll take Kiev.

And Biden just put sanctions in place. Not that this will cause Putin to do anything but laugh.

Because he says it's really Russia, so they don't get to have their own government that isn't him.

Putin has already considered all possible sanctions. It's not a price steep enough to stop him from recreating the former USSR, which we know is his goal as he has said as much.

The U.N. can and will do nothing. Putin won't let them.

The UN has never done anything substantial in that respect. Who cares if they issue a statement "deploring" a situation somewhere in the world?

Exactly. Only the Security Council can approve any sort of force, and it's useless to contemplate that.

@Robusto That order does virtually nothing whatsoever.

I know.

Any level of sanctions that would harm the Russian oligarchs, Putin would consider an act of war by the West.

Yeah. I guess we'll find out.

Cut off gas to Europe? Is that what Europe is willing to do? I doubt it.

Yeah, go ahead and hit Putin in the fist with your face.

I'm pretty sure that the calculus is that it's better to have cheap gas than sovereign national borders.

And just as we were looking forward to an end to Covid restrictions.

Ask Fauci on that one.

@tchrist Hmm I'm not so sure about that.

@tchrist This is difficult.

@Cerberus Putin said that if he and his are locked out of the global money markets, he will consider it an Act of War.

Perhaps shock therapy will cure us of our dependence on Russian gas, and save our climate, too.

@tchrist OK but that's not quite the same thing as putting all Russian oligarchs on a blacklist personally.

Depends what one means by blacklist. No-fly list? No-bank list? Interpol Red Notice?

So what will be the next domino to fall after Ukraine?

Mainly, no-fly and freeze all their assets.

This isn't the first time Putin has invaded Ukraine, after all.

@Robusto Switzerland, where the frozen assets hide. :)

Only the Caucasus remains, outside of NATO.

Heh.

Well, and central Asia.

But I think Putin feels well in control of the latter.

@tchrist Yeah. And look what's happening with Credit Suisse now.

Finland.

Georgia.

Not Finland.

He won't attack the EU.

Even the SU didn't attack Finland.

But the Caucasus, yes.

Finland is not in NATO.

So he gets to attack.

It no longer matters that countries are in the UN.

Moldova.

Transnistria née Moldova.

Abkhazia née Georgia. These are just parts of Russia, not real places.

@tchrist The EU will defend Finland.

He knows this.

But Finland has always managed to stay neutral enough.

@Cerberus Not always.

During the Cold War, I mean.

Nowhere that's not already grey. Everywhere else is Putin's.

I don't think China would let him take Mongolia?

Central Asia he already controls well enough.

Well, then there are the Baltic states.

Oh they'd trade it for Taiwan.

Noöne else is meddling there.

@tchrist Russia does not have Taiwan to give, though.

And Lithuania is in Putin's way when he wants to get to that little fragment of Russia on the Baltic.

I'm pretty sure nobody knows that.

Ukraine is the grand prize.

That's what he wants.

Georgia second.

What he wants is the ability to take what he wants. THat is the prize for him.

Königsberg.

The Baltics he'd love to have, but he doesn't want a full war against America.

I wonder what has become of our Russian friends.

Which ones?

Those whom I can ping from here.

Ah.

Cowper isn't following the news.

Reg I haven't seen here in some time.

Trying to remain sane, I imagine.

Exactly.

Reg appears now and then.

Nice 3,4 minute answers on Russian expansion, or non-expansion.

I may watch the one about Mongolia.

I suspect the answer is that it has always fallen under the Chinese sphaere of influence?

The Great Wall was built for a reason.

Well, they begged to join Russia. Six times.

@Cerberus I bet you'll love these, and we haven't even gotten to Belgium yet. :)

@tchrist Didn't know about that!

I have seen videos of this same author before.

@tchrist I may have seen this one, not sure.

I had no idea.

It must be about De Witt.

Right.

I'm sure various politicians in history were lynched and partially eaten...

What is it with you and cannibalism?

Sorry.

We sometimes just get hungry.

Don't you have enough cheese?

Never.

@Cerberus Didn't King William pardon his cannibalizers?

Oh you probably call him Prince William. We call him King William. Funny thing that.

@tchrist Hmm I don't know, they were probably rabble.

We call him stadhouder.

Imagine today in Ukraine if the previous American president were still in power here.

@tchrist Exactly.

Biden seems to be doing well, thus far.

Even trying to help Europe acquire more gas, in an attempt to unite the sanction front.

Putin should have done this while Trump was still in power.

Perhaps he had to wait for Merkel to leave office.

But there was this article about how certain supporters of Putin, a personal friend and powerful politicians, were recently tackled by Zelensky, which praecipited Putin's ire?

I know nothing.

@tchrist I've also heard that theory.

@tchrist time.com/6144109/…

It is a long article, though.

I forgot who linked to it.

Probably someone in this very room.

@Robusto?

Not I.

It was Cowper.

So Putin invaded Ukraine on both 2021-02-21 and 2022-02-21? Why does he love this date so?

And on 2014-02-21. Ok, this is not coincidence.

Oh, really?

I don't remember, though: what did he do in 2021?

> Last February, days after the Inauguration of President Joe Biden, America’s allies in Kyiv decided to get tough on Medvedchuk. ... The first inkling of Putin’s response came less than two days later, at 7 a.m. on Feb. 21. In a little-noticed statement, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the deployment of 3,000 paratroopers to the border with Ukraine for “large-scale exercises,” training them to “seize enemy structures and hold them until the arrival of the main force.”

Hmm.

Was this two days after something Putin didn't control?

Then the date must have been a coincidence?

Well, the Olympics got over. :)

Ah, that could be a constant.

> After the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and the flight of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from Kyiv on 21 February 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated to colleagues that "we must start working on returning Crimea to Russia."

That would make it a symbolic date.

You said "invade" about 21 February 2014, too?

Not clear when they got there:

> Within days, unmarked forces with local militias took over the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, as well as occupying several localities in Kherson Oblast on the Arabat Spit, which is geographically a part of Crimea.

What this is all about is trying to avoid the muds of March, which makes it hard to move troops.

Within days of the flight of Yanukovyc?

He must have been preparing for quite a while, though.

He always has to pull the trigger on these operations before it melts.

@Robusto Do you think they'll manage to save the Queen?

Makes sense for a large military operation.

Less so for the Crimea.

@tchrist I dunno. They're reporting her symptoms as mild. But she's like 95, right?

@Robusto Of course they are! All cases begin with mild symptoms. Every single one.

Yeah. She could be at death's door and they'd be saying it was "just a slight touch of the fever."

She will turn 96 in April, should she live so long.

Well, my mother-in-law will be 103 in August, and she's still going. Japanese genes, I guess. Not sure if Hanoverian genes are as resilient.

She's at very high risk simply by virtue of being nearly 96.

Her sisters both lived to be centenarians as well.

@tchrist Yeah, that was my point.

Putin's heart is set on Ukraine. He won't let anything stand in his way, nor will anything ever make him sorry for doing it.

What a terrible world.

busy day for me just over. so did anything happen in the real world?

@tchrist The Ukrainian army is expected to put up a good fight.

And Putin may not need it right now.

@MattE.Эллен I'm stuck in a weird place.

Semantle no. 23.

I had 780/1000 on my 5th try.

And 995/1000 on my 43th try.

Now no closer, at 80.

I had to give up after 250 tries.

The word is just really not close semantically to my highest word, 995/1000.

So I would call this a failure of Semantle.

Good morning

@Cerberus I was stuck at the same place as you. It wasn't until I got 994/1000 that I got the answer. 992 and 995 are red herrings

994 is "tries". I don't know why the algorithm puts "give" and "provide" as similarly similar

@Cerberus yes

today's worldle was easy, given yesterday's

I also tried.

I've ruined wordle for myself by writing a script that shows me the possible words. certain words present a problem even then, but not on the whole

@Cerberus you will get today's

@Vikas whave you tried worldle though? worldle.teuteuf.fr

Hello everyone

Where do you play this Semantle

semantle.novalis.org

@MattE.Эллен No. Interesting though. I'll try.

I gave up on 12th attempt

the closest rank was 12.5

:D

ah. if you note above, I took 126 guesses :D 12 just isn't enough

but it's not a game for everyone. "too random" is a common complaint. also there are days where the similarity score and how I would rank the similarity are quite different

to quote someone else:

yesterday I took over 500 guesses to get the word XD

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted username, link at end of answer, potentially bad ip for hostname in answer, potentially bad ns for domain in answer (153): Difference between "Registration" and "Enrollment"‭ by Aims Education‭ on english.SE

@MattE.Эллен Very true.

"Tries", with an s?

@Cerberus oh, good question. I can't remember

I think it normally doesn't do inflected forms, except gerunds?

I don't know

I like this one.

English headline are indeed sometimes rather silly.

So close!

Trying to think of synonyms.

I didn't find 998, but 999 wasn't derivative and is an obvious synonym. As is 969

and 991

Hmm.

My current top 4 are synonyms, although two of them are plurals of the other two.

(I know I shouldn't be trying plurals.)

So my top 2 in that screenshot are synonyms.

plurals are often helpful

Yeah?

In what way?

yeah, 999 is often a plural of 1000

I just type them in because I can't resist...

Ah, OK.

not in this case, though

But then you might as well always type the singular?

yeah, but I guess I'm sucker for a long shot (i.e. that the plural is the target)

I believe plurals are excluded from the targets!

oh :D

> Secret words may be any part of speech, but will always be single words.

I took that to mean it won't be something like "credit card"

single rather than singular

Ahhh.

You're right.

@MattE.Эллен This is what I have now:

although "credit card" was quite high up when the target was "monthly", albeit technically not in the top 1000, as it was marked as unusual

I'll delete it in a moment.

ooooo

I see

Those 996 and 998 are really crying for a synonym.

I also tried compound words with 998 in it.

@MattE.Эллен I tried Worldle. Too easy.

@Cerberus I can give you a clue if you like

@MattE.Эллен Perhaps later!

Okay, maybe give me this clue: am I looking at red herrings or not?

@Robusto today's certainly was. I'm not good at geography, so previous maps stumped me

@Cerberus Wouldn't the synonym for 998 be antepenultimate?

They had a few difficult ones in Africa...

@Robusto OK thanks I'll try that!

@Cerberus not exactly, but I don't think they're as related as other words

Hmm OK, thanks.

@MattE.Эллен I got it in four guesses, but I had done the first two without reading the rules. I thought it involved letters, like Wordle.

Still, more fun than the semantle game.

@Cerberus for example I think 988 is closer than 996

I solved Semantle #24 in 104 guesses. My first guess had a similarity of 7.99. My first word in the top 1000 was at guess #13. My penultimate guess had a similarity of 69.46 (999/1000). semantle.novalis.org

@MattE.Эллен Got it!

yay!

I still think the order is off.

yes

I mean, I tried some synonyms of the word, and they were far down.

Like the one you can touch in your garden?

my top 1000 guesses

@MattE.Эллен Ahh you came at it from a much better angle.

yeah, once I got close it was clear what i was aiming for (although i spent a lot of time in the weeds)

I feel that 969 is far too low compared with the words I had.

yeah

I also had time!

Was stuck there for the longest time.

:D

But, yeah, this one was better than the other one.

I wonder if you made semantle based on EL&U chat, how the similarity index would look :D

the corpus would need a fair amount of cleaning, though

Naah we're super clean!

But, yeah, it would be cool if Semantle could generate a puzzle based on a database you upload.

@Cerberus I mean of things like image urls

obviously we're impeccable

@MattE.Эллен Well, if you happen to get an image URL, you'll just have to try harder.

lol

Today's date: 22-02-2022

Twoday's date ;P

Oh yeah

I'm going to endevour to live for 200 more years, just to see 22-02-2222

haha

24 minutes later, time here will also be: 22:22

:D

Do Ukraine people want to be with European Union? Or is it the government who want to be with European Union?

@Vikas Both.

@Cerberus So in that way, Russia's actions should be considered illegal/immoral?

> When asked which international economic union they would join if Ukraine could only join one, 58% of Ukrainians chose the EU. Only 21% support joining a Customs Union with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. If a referendum were held on joining NATO, 54% would vote to join the military alliance.

This was a poll published in December of last year.

Oh

It is possible that the Ukrainians in regions occupied by Russia were unable to take part, I don't know.

@Cerberus military alliance?

NATO is a military alliance.

@Vikas Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, and may now invade more of the country, possibly the entire country.

Only in the Crimea did there seem to be support amongst the population for joining Russia.

Oh. European Union is a different thing? I read this briefly on this page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan

@Vikas That was the most recent revolution, which shifted power back to parties within Ukraine who favour Europe.

@Cerberus When we say join Russia, we mean just International relationships with Russia or become part of Russia country itself?

The latter: Russia has invaded and annexed the Crimea.

@Cerberus Cool

It has more or less also done the same thing in eastern Ukraine, though with some pretence that it were "rebels" who occupied the region, while in fact everything was paid for and organised by Russia, also using Russian materials, weapons, and even soldiers.

@Cerberus So now if Russia invades entire country it is a possibility that Ukraine country will merge with Russia?

Just like India/Pakistan control parts of Kashmir.

@Vikas Perhaps.

But the Ukrainian population does not want to be conquered and occupied by Russia, at least a fairly large majority do not.

Okay thank you! I am waiting to watch US President speech which will happen 1 PM ET.

So, if Russia decided to invade all of Ukraine and occupy it, it remains to be seen how successful this occupation would be.

@Cerberus Okay. So everyone will oppose Russia.

@Cerberus Yeah.

It also remains to be seen whether Russia has gathered enough troops near the border to conquer all of Ukraine. Experts said, probably not.

I think it won't be successful. If we look our history.

But Russia may conquer just the capital Kiev, and try to install a puppet government.

@Vikas Yes, and Russia will try to repress the population.

Plans have leaked saying that Russia will quell any protests in violence, and Russia has already composed death lists of dissidents in Ukraine.

@Cerberus Of course. But I meant other countries will oppose them.

India is silent so far.

@Vikas Probably not in the long term. But look at the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc.: it was violent and terrible, and it lasted a long time and did great damage, much of which is still not healed.

@Cerberus That doesn't look good

@Vikas The West and its allies will oppose Russia, but they will not go to war against Russia over Ukraine.

And other countries, like China, remain neutral.

I wonder why India remains silent: any idea?

@Cerberus I don't know politics in details but people do talk like Russia is India's friend and so is USA. So they don't want to end their relationship. So they remain silent instead 🤣

OK.

Why does India view Russia as a friend?

@Cerberus Today our PM said that world is at chaos (hinting towards the Ukraine-Russia crisis) so you should vote our government so India stays strong. This isn't what I expected from him.

(Some elections of key states are going on in India)

> After dropping to 55% in December, support for Ukraine’s NATO membership climbed back up in January and reached 62% in February, according to the survey by Ukraine’s polling organization Rating Group published Friday.

> Accession to the European Union is supported by 68% and opposed by 24% of Ukrainian respondents.

@Vikas Hmm what would you rather have expected?

@Cerberus Again, I've heard that Russia has always helped India in past. That's why.

So, if he recognises that there is chaos, he should know that Russia is causing the chaos...

@Vikas OK.

Any idea how?

With gas or oil, perhaps?

@Cerberus I mean this isn't a good thing to do politics at every situation? But since he is politician, he would do it.

I'm not sure I understand.

@Cerberus Some Quora answers say they helped in weapons and especially helped during India Pakistan wars.

Ah, OK.

@Cerberus I mean he is a clever person. He would try to take advantage of everything to win the election and make people fool.

Naturally!

What do the polls predict?

@Cerberus Polls about what?

Who will win the state elections?

@Vikas Yes.

@Cerberus Of course he will.

I mean his leaders who are candidates in the elections.

As long as religion and caste issues are not solved, they will keep taking advantage of it.

All the oppositions are not good in manipulating religion like they do.

Why "of course"?

@Cerberus Explained above :)

There's no stable opposition too.

He is good at manipulating religion, and therefore he must win?

Not the Congress Party?

@Cerberus He must not win, but he will win ;)

@MattE.Эллен It's for-two-itous

@Cerberus Yes. Congress is not having its best decade.

@Mitch lol

@Mitch 🤔

@Vikas Must in the sense of "it is inevitable".

@Vikas Why not?

@Cerberus Yeah I mean a large portion of Hindus favor current government.

@Cerberus They don't have a strong face like Modi :D

OK.

@MattE.Эллен got that from a tweet

@Cerberus They don't have a leader who can do this 🤣 images.indianexpress.com/2021/12/modi-varanasi-ganga.jpeg?w=389

@Mitch two-eet? no, that's silly

Step into the Ganges?

Or which water is this?

@Cerberus Yes, and wearing orange clothes too 🤣

Oh, not orange!

@Cerberus Isn't it orange color?

@Vikas Looks like he's saying, "Now who's going to clean up this mess?"

@Robusto haha

Orange color is their party's flag color. Also it somehow relates them to Hinduism. So people especially older generation tend to follow them.

Anyone knows ET and USA time is same?

I'm waiting for 1 PM ET.

In case anyone is interested in Biden's speech: youtube.com/watch?v=joRERZ_9-iU

My first thought about this whole Ukrainian crisis is that it going to totally ruin the vibe around Eurovision.

@MattE.Эллен haha OMG that's awful

maybe even stwo-pendous

@Mitch some kind of owl based sequel to the fast and the furious: 2wit 2woo