Completely foreseeable:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/41...l#post42372274

Purposely made that thread on the last day of 2007 knowing that bumping it would be so much fun.

This is a very interesting example with Ukraine in how you mathematically play the superpower hits your friends next door game today in modern world. I mean where do you draw the line and counter strike/oppose with force a superpower? If you are afraid of escalation and stay out they will never stop if the other country doesnt have significant military or willing local population to start an insurgency and let the superpower get in trouble on its own (of course at the risk of destruction of the country's modern infrastructure and way of life and loss of many people and further land even).

So it seems that whoever makes the first move and is located close has the advantage, as long as its not a big scale war that takes years because of local resistance, only a small strategic region capture or something. It seems that, unless the attack is on your own ground or in a significant way against multiple allies willing to fight themselves very strongly with a sense of national pride and survival at stake spirit, you actually cannot do anything militarily other than say be invited by the country itself to place your soldiers without fighting inside their land next to their own as dare come and strike us both beyond this point and start something terrible or back off and lets discuss it with the region you took in question never accepted as lost.

The other thing may be to financially attack the superpower (Russia here) all over the world with whatever this means on all other regions of the planet that the 2 superpowers tolerated and kind of opposed nonviolently each other in policies and didnt get in trouble but arrived at some type of agreements to avoid military involvements there in the recent past (ie Iran, Syria, N.Korea etc). Instantly if you strike financially all cooperation in other areas breaks down and you have magnified the problem and all the countries that kind of dislike you break the embargo vs the superpower and split the planet in groups.

Whoever stands to lose more financially is in a weak position here. Hence the risk of capitalism ie one major reason i dislike it as system and said so in the past. I have described it as an unstable system (house of cards). Its still better than all others of course until we do what i have suggested and move to a scientific, stronger more self sufficient and organized under great projects system which tries to employ most of the population, that no longer depends as much on external trading with others as a wealth accumulation/competition game but of course invites it if applicable and assumes cooperation and sharing of goods/services and resources in some fair sense as to not be isolated anyway. Such system essentially invites trading but doesnt depend in survival terms from it like current capitalist models require (ie look at the trading deficit of US right now and recognize how the US is losing for decades now to China and other countries a game by not being entirely self reliant in many areas such as manufacturing/energy etc). A scientific system would start by demanding a balance initially and would invest in its own prosperity and strength under self sufficiency targets while still trading as needed but as to eventually not have to depend on external trading as much (unless balanced, then 100% go for trading) and have mechanisms in place that can take over if trading failed due to international events. Instead of this though what we have is a paper economy of banks and stock markets founded around the apotheosis of the concept of multinational corporations that may have originated from your society but which have no strong national allegiance anymore in reality in many levels of interest, as they have other priorities of self interest (they moved their manufacturing and taxation away and do not always operate locally with original society's interests in mind etc).

It is one of the reasons (sensitivity to international political events/wars and also unforseen weather/climate issues/even geological problems like volcanoes) that i think capitalism is unstable and likely will crash eventually as it is operating now (with the house of cards banks and markets are building, instead of investing in real infrastructure and tangible creative genuine products economy). That was not a problem in the past when you had severe technological superiority and as long as there was room to grow for your companies that could afford a socially friendly behavior towards your middle class (ie 60s 70s early 80s and then last tech boom 90s before the essential resignation to China) (unsaturated system). But it becomes an issue when the others (3rd world) have advanced enough to not need you as much as in the past for their own consumers and industry and when they can compete or even outperform you in certain areas you used to dominate. Instead you need them now! Or rather your companies and your consumerism wasteful society needs them. It is in fact true now that your system is held hostage to crisis in energy, resources, trading and stock markets. So you do not want the crisis more than other less advanced economies with far less to lose in their way of life. That is a bargaining problem. Your economy is very sensitive to regular peace operations and trading/markets and therefore it can be technically blackmailed forcing your policy internationally (look how wars, deficits in trading and energy have essentially bankrupted US in order to move the wealth to private hands). It is a weak position to have your economy and middle class depend heavily on things working ok all around the globe. At the same time a surge in oil prices is just fine for Russia.

Meanwhile returning to the issue at hand here, the split of Soviet Union decades ago was very fast and losing a strategic peninsula like Crimea to the split to produce Ukraine as individual nation never made sense to me. It would make sense to at least draw the line there at the peninsula keeping it or splitting it in half and allowing yourself a fraction rather than dropping it entirely and then having to do this decades later or having special deals with your navy, minorities etc. Then again the break up back then felt more like a collapse to be honest rather than an organized separation. We pay today those problems that were not dealt with properly back then in many locations with local minorities (that often are majorities) and interests.


How do you play the game as Ukraine here? I mean Russian soldiers are now walking around without any true strike. What will happen if you send also your own soldiers to walk around them without strikes??? I would actually try it for the hell of it and force them to attack me first. What the hell, its my peninsula. To simply drop the peninsula and let them have it our of fear of worse developments is unpatriotic and the situation is worthy of putting a stand of some kind unless you have such a small minority there (not having local population support) that you basically let it go bad for 2 decades and did nothing to improve it and now legitimately got yourself in trouble. This is by the way always how it happens. There is some internal unrest in a country and some political division (always the source of most evil) and the big neighbor takes advantage of some type of present in the area minorities. This is exactly what Turkey did with Cyprus during a Greek Junta in 1974.

But in any case its a very tough problem to deal with when you have superpowers involved and you are yourself 45-50 mil population country that is significant size but not huge military and when your energy/economy depend heavily on the superpower.

Super tough situation. I would simply send my soldiers there and invite Russia to attack them (or recognize another way is needed to deal with this) and then i would have something major against them in terms of violent unprovoked aggression that would have immense international support. If you let any sob in your house (from their perspective) and do nothing about it then you deserve losing it.

To simply let them have the peninsula and raise no defense or countermeasures of any type is kind of ridiculously weak.


Someone needs to ask Russia directly what it is they want here? Why did they invade and what is the plan and accuse them directly of playing a Hitler style game of annexation/invasion to take land for themselves. But in doing that one needs to know a lot better than a superficial understanding what is going on locally and whether it was from the beginning a mistake to allow the peninsula to the Ukraine 100% over a couple decades ago.

And then you have Iraq and Afghanistan past wars for others to tell you that you are a hypocrite if you say something. Of course nobody is taking into account that the US never intended to take land and keep it from any of these guys, whereas Russia is probably something different that would be happy with Crimea and then move on to the next target, making it possible over time to rebuild land and muscle influence to neutralize any attempts for the broken prior republics to further strengthen economic and defense relationships with the west.

Curried goat is nice. You get in Carribean restaurants in the UK.

Another Gold Medal. Hello-oo...the games are already over!

for gto whoever is more irrational gets to win the game (so Russia knows that after their first move NATO won't simply escalate to risk nuclear war down the line - Russia risking it and playing irrational, NATO - conventional, more rational approach)

A wise man once said, to win a game of chicken, throw your steering wheel out the window so that the other guy can see it.

You had the chicken instead?

Coincidentally yes.

Why can't it just be a coincidence?

Because they don't believe in coincidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea



What is the lower bound price of 26000 km^2?

I have used my own arguments in the past to arrive at value of land easily over $100000/1000m^2 (obviously people that buy and sell land do it at far less than that levels when simply looking it as "land area" not in a national ownership sense = indefinite source of income for the country regardless of who owns it as private person/property). This suggests a strict land value lower bound (ignoring other strategic etc side benefits ) of 26000*1000^2*10^5/1000=2.6 tril $ for Crimea. Its not tiny by any means. This is why Russia should be forced to explain exactly what they want and what their plans are and why they are there and then the entire issue is very easily resolved using simple logic eventually where you can force your "opponent" to either behave properly or lose more in other areas or to at least show their intentions in a manner that makes it easier to know what you have to do now without taking unnecessary risks. That is all so much better than simply getting angry at Russia and escalating things without any restraint and sensibility to local issues.

More than everything Ukraine must demonstrate that it can legitimately arrive at a government in a democratic way that respects all citizens equally regardless of ethnic origin and Russia must be held to a promise it is only there to protect ethnic groups from hostilities until a new government is cleared by the international community as legitimate, at which point they will leave and retain their standard control of the naval bases etc. Then you simply improve the outcome for all involved (except Putin and the silent expansion interests of Russia of course). In other words a superpower will always behave in ways that improve its condition and therefore the ethical thing as citizen of the planet is to always stop them whether that is US or Russia or China you name it (unless of course some of them have become unethical and the remaining ones need to be united and embraced as better alternatives). ALWAYS.

Anyway you can recognize that 3 tril that is easily 20% of SP500 market capitalization is a non trivial value and in reality, with future potential unbounded technically, the real value of land is many times over that anyway.


This is why scientific society is lol-ing real hard at all this bs about national debt etc. Hahaha. The value of US in ultimate wealth terms for example is easily way over $ 1000 trillion (dept at 18 tril now) (for world total public debt is around 60 tril so even more severe lol there and a serious WTF is going on for mankind, that has unlimited value, to be held hostage to banks and private interests for decades in terms of what it can do with its resources and people for just less than 0.1% of its real value bound hahahahahaha).

The invasion is just so lol. Not how you do things 2014. The rest of the world will be hammering to no end. If needed for years and years. Remember the Russians have internet, and can see how this is going against their interests, which much have to be economical. They couldn't care less about a peninsula, which haven't been Russia's for 60 years, where not even any violations against human rights has taken place.

Self-interest is self-interest. Pretty sure that the 'mericans noted that putting our noses in other peoples' business is unwelcome. Peoples pick sides. It is what we do.

Never been to the UK. However, I have had excellent goat stew in Mexico. Long ago it was - We cruised about the city of Colima on a god awful morning quizzing people in the streets where to get some cabra guiso (I think). My Mexican companions swore that it was the best thing for hangovers. And we had massive ones.

Too focused Masque. It is not just land, its also infrastructure, mineral wealth etc., but most importantly the babe factor. I don't know if god made it this way but there is a Babe Belt through southern Europe starting about Hungary and extending in a wide swath eastward through the Ukraine and south Russia to peter out in the deserts of Kazakhstan. When I direct Btm to gather up some space babes for Zeno’s Bar on the moon, I will point at the Ukraine and surrounding area and say – "thou shalt go there".

Which brings to mind my observations made in a foreign land; to help illustrate my point ,and because I feel the need to bolster my autobiography. Not that long ago (2005 to be exact), I was in Beijing visiting a friend. We hung out in this 'expat' (Europeans mainly, but also Aussies and UK’ers, and the rare idiot Irish goon for novelty) bar that was crawling with ladies of the evening. The silky ones were dominated by the Han Chinese, but also Manchu and Mongol*. But some men only like white meat (missing out on much of course) so a smaller contingent of Russian babes were there batting their eyes and twirling their blonde hair. Ubiquitously from the Ukraine or southern Russia these stellar pieces of womanhood would knock the eyes out of any man worth his salt. Worship worthy beauties. I will say there were also a subset of the Russian Empire Whoredom in the bar, they were more on the roly-poly side, firm and solid with pleasant looking faces – the upper echelon of the peasant class probably. A different old friend of mine from the states would have loved them, he always told me “ I like them build for punishment”

The Chinese whores hated the Russian whores and vice- versa. The Mongols hated the Han and the Manchu’s were rather indifferent to all and sundry. It was always hilarious to see a willowy beautiful Chinese babe slither out the door locked arm-in-arm with an obese, fat-faced German.

Suffice to say that judging territory is a more subtle art than what Masque makes it out to be.


*I did a few rounds with some of those beauties

Smrk2 made a similar comment in some odd thread somewhere.

Honestly, I thought both you guys much smarter (or wiser) than that. That is an idiotic thing to say and I would be embarrassed to have said it in earnest. As a joke it works, barely.

Zeno thats why its a lower bound my friend! The details easily make it many times higher. Something that goes well with babes (other than guys like us) is a great looking landscape with nice forests, castles, 15th-19th century arcitecture and even older ancient Greek or Medieval ruins overlooking the Black sea shoreline. (plus lets not fail to notice a buyer wants as small price as possible lol, even if in the unreal optimism sense that defines me)




Lets not ignore Yalta either lol!

But lets not forget why i am obsessed with scientific society and eventually you all will be more than i am right now. Because the idea is that through science and technology you can turn every piece of earth's real estate and a lot of its oceans into amazingly beautiful environments of fun games and happiness not to mention substantial productivity centers of all kinds of utilities, without destroying nature, in fact improving on it, by doing it intelligently with focus on values much stronger and safer in time than money. The ultimate investment is land and people/brain power/culture/education and eventually artificial brain AI technology that will turn the land (any land even islands near Antarctica or the Arctic that were used for nuclear tests) to pure paradise. Land=energy+resources+productivity+nature=realized dreams of a better future for all, when people are less idiotic and more self centered in a stronger more ethical sense than the stupidity of today's reality. The first country that finally gets it will leave the others in the ultimate dust.

You'll see, you'll see. The countdown for the current leadership in Russia has started.

I just like getting blown by eastern European women. I am willing to listen to alternatives involving how other women might blow me if I join your society.

Do you have anything in mind in terms of the gag-reflex problem?

The secret is to get them to want to do it because of what achieves for them and i am not talking about financial gains. Obviously a person that is happy and maintains their body in great shape and is generous lover that pays attention to detail and effort and who lives in a society that people are not desperate for survival but have secured their core problems will be a desirable target for women for reasons that are less cheap than today. A real man cant get pleasure unless they know its not a chore for the other side. You do something for them and they reciprocate for a variety of reasons. You also pay attention to chemistry and maximize attraction which requires experimentation of course in laboratory conditions. If you do for them something that excites them they will improve their own skills as well. They may require professional female teachers too however. It is their problem not mine. It is of course much easier to do these things in a taboo free world that is scientific about it instead of highly selfish and hypocritical.

If one of my vassals in Shogun 2 ever gets cocky and decides it wants independence from me, I backhand the **** out of them and put 'em back in line (yeah, I'm talking about you Imagawa). So, go Russia imo.

I already have that. You just described the present.

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies, tell me lies, tell me tell me lies....

from your own friends...

Irrelevant. You are not getting it at all. But then this is a for fun thread and I have no wish to ruin it.


We should start discussing whether identity thief is possible and then take Btm and Smrk2 (but not Smrk1) to task for their silly little arguments in another thread; we steal their identity and get their money, and spend it all on Hot Babes from Beijing.

I mean that sub-society already exists. Other than the lab experiments, of course.

Irrelevant. For some of us.