Lacessit

Russia does not have air supremacy. If it did, the ground troops would not be bogged down. I agree it doesn't look good for Ukraine. It looks even worse for Russia, now an international pariah with frozen and sequestered assets. IMO Putin never thought the US and Europe would unify so quickly and effectively. It's a repeat of Afghanistan, a prolonged insurgency. That cost 90,000 Russian lives over 10 years, Ukrainians are well on track to do that in less than a year. They are also getting better weapons from the West. History shows the fall of the Soviet Union was catalysed by the military failure in Afghanistan, this one is looking even worse. Ukraine does not need to give a psychopath an excuse to use nuclear weapons by bombing the Kremlin, they can just grind the Russians down with Western help on their home turf. ?

If only that were true, Putin has repeatedly said he wants the USSR restored to its former glory (sic). That would include the Baltic states, maybe even the Eastern European bloc of Poland, Hungary, Romania etc. As Neville Chamberlain found out, peace on the terms of a dictator is no peace at all. Putin doesn't care about anyone but himself. A guy that separates himself from his most senior advisers with a 20 metre table is not going to have empathy for anybody. All the hallmarks of a psychopath. As ordinary Russians are finding out, the hearts and minds of Ukrainians are focused on how many invaders they can kill or capture. If, as the Russians claim, the Ukrainians were actually Nazis, they would not bother with taking prisoners.

Australia gets quite a boost to its economy from overseas students, mostly from Asian countries, who go there for tertiary qualifications that are more valued than the ones they get in their home countries. Of course, that has taken a kick in the family jewels during COVID. Small players? Australia punches well above its weight in medical science and technology, have you never heard of CSL Limited and Atlassian?

Keeping active as much as possible is my solution. Sorry OP, I have been playing golf for 66 years, and have no intention of giving up now. My ambition is to break my age on the golf course at least once for every year I get older. No ambition for a 20 yo Thai woman, I'd have too much performance anxiety. Older women have more understanding. Never tried drugs, alcohol is enough in moderation. Mentally active IMO is just as important as physically active.

There is confirmation bias, and denial bias. The first means any new fact or information that fits in with your own opinions or desires is accepted, the second means anything that clashes with those beliefs is automatically rejected. See Trump supporters. Who wouldn't like a diet where one could consume as much fat and sugar as they wanted? The gold standard of validation for any medication or diet is double-blind testing of a statistically significant population of people, peer-reviewed and then shown to be reproducible. It takes time, in this age people want instant solutions. Most of the quacks appearing on Youtube don't even get to the first stage, let alone peer review and replication. All I need is a bookshelf behind me, a couple of BS certificates, and a teleprompter, and I could join their ranks.

True enough, I can't do anything about it. I also find myself unable to stomach the actions of a murderous thief without comment. It was Edmund Burke who said " The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing". If you think what is happening at the other side of the world does not affect you, I suggest you take a look at your next gasoline bill. I filled up my car today, 800 baht. Two months ago, it was about 550 baht. You can't escape by riding a bicycle, fuel costs flow on to everything you buy.

Wars have always been about theft writ large, and Putin already has a track record on kleptomania. Hitler wanting lebensraum to the east, Hussein invading Kuwait. The CCP wants Taiwan as it is a major player in electronics. Ukraine has major shale gas and agricultural assets, Putin wants to steal them.

The profit for Russia is in gaining control of the Donbas region, which has massive deposits of shale gas. Russia currently supplies 40% of Europe's energy needs, and Putin did not want the Ukrainians setting up as an alternative supplier to Europe, thereby weakening the energy blackmail he has. Taking over Ukraine's chernozem grain production would be icing on the cake.

Might have had a fairly thick layer of Kevlar in it.

This is the same Putin who held a rally recently in a Moscow stadium to shore up public support?

White sugar and brown sugar are both sucrose. Sure, the unrefined brown sugar may be marginally better in terms of the retained minerals it has. Perhaps it has not occurred to you the same lack of refining means it will also have herbicides and pesticides refined white sugar does not.

IIRC, English was a compulsory subject when I was going through secondary school. If one did not pass, they were held back a grade. IMO we should be doing the same with chemistry and physics, if we want to arrest the dumbing down of the human race.

Three reasons: Reports from independent media such as the Australian ABC. It doesn't have the axes to grind that Murdoch's News Corp or Fairfax does, so can be regarded as impartial. I don't think images of destroyed Russian tanks can be photoshopped, and there does seem to be an awful lot of them. If the war was going well for Russia, don't you think the Kremlin and Putin would be crowing about it?

Quite true. Having said that, Putin has transitioned from a democratically elected leader to a dictator who poisons opponents, rigs elections and crushes dissent. There's a penalty of 15 years in jail for referring to the attack on the Ukraine as an invasion. Facebook and Twitter are now shut down in Russia, what does that tell you about the state of democracy there?

People have a choice. They can follow the science - the real deal based on evidence. Or they can follow the confirmation bias of their opinions in a quest for something that sounds easier. They go searching on the internet for anything that will validate their gut feeling. Qanon, anti-vaxxers, climate deniers - they are all cut from the same cloth. Then they join up in a wailing Greek chorus, on the basis quantity trumps quality. Slip of the tongue, like hell. A genuine medico would not make that mistake. The first time I visited America, I was astounded by (a) the number of obese people ( b ) the amount of food that was piled onto the plate at any restaurant. It's been proved time and time again lab rats who are kept hungry live longer that rats that are allowed to stuff themselves. Why should we think humans are different? The simplest advice on diet I ever got was from a works doctor. He said the best form of exercise was to push yourself away from the table before you feel full.

I really have lost count of the number of so-called medicos appearing on YouTube with all kinds of bizarre propositions. This one was easy to pick. He referred to white sugar as dextrose. White sugar is sucrose, a di-saccharide of glucose and fructose. With a single word, he destroyed his credibility. About 99.8% of people would not have picked up on that. Quack quack quack.

IMO it's a sign of the times when my GF, who lives in the present, was concerned enough to ask me if we were OK financially. Jai yenn yenn, teerak. It's a sick joke when the Thai government, perhaps one of the most parsimonious of welfare support providers, has the gall to tout loans of 10,000 baht to COVID-affected Thais.

Fats are esters of glycerol and fatty acids, they have nothing to do with blood sugar or HBa1C levels. Cholesterol and triglycerides, yes. I have never been a big fat consumer, always discard the fat off a steak and I don't eat chicken skin. I wouldn't say I'm on a low fat diet, but IMO I probably eat less fat than most. There is a huge tome put out by the WHO called "Food, Nutrition and Cancer". It lists the risk factors for all human cancers. Fat consumption features quite high on the list for many cancers.

The smell and taste factor of pears is ethyl decadienoate, which is easily separated from pear pulp by steam distillation. In Australia, pears are usually a glut on the market every year at harvest time. As I've seen tomato sauce made at the Rosella factory in Richmond, Victoria, it seems to make economic sense there. A low-carb diet is not the same as a no-carb diet, there are good carbs and bad carbs. Whole wheat durum spaghetti and corn on the cob are classed as good carbs. Because you started your post with a demeaning comment, you're on ignore now.

In democracies, dissenting voices are heard. Check out Australia, the main parties have made an art form of stealing policies from one another.

Speaking as someone who is borderline diabetic, there are very few processed foods that are not unhealthy for me. Even tomato sauce has sugar in it. Not that it is actually tomato, many are pulped pears for bulk, with tomato concentrate added. As far as noodles go, the only two viable alternatives are egg noodles (protein) or whole wheat durum spaghetti. IMO the rest are not going to help get my fasting sugar and HBa1C levels down.

History shows Putin was a senior KGB officer, earned a living as a taxi driver after the break up of the USSR, then worked his way into power via alliances with the oligarchs and the Russian mafia. The title of Vozhd has meaning for both entities. Putin has repeatedly stated his desire to see the USSR restored. That is his obsession. According to him, life in Russia was better then. No-one who opposes him is going to be part of his advisory group, so his obsession is reinforced by the yes-men around him. If he is still rational, it must be difficult to cope with the intrusion of reality - an invasion not going to plan, the crippling sanctions, the losses on the field of battle. I doubt his advisers are willing to put their heads on the block by telling him the actual situation.

The Donbas region of Ukraine is a good example of how truth is always attended by a body of lies. The Holomodor, ordered by Stalin, emptied the Donetsk and Lukhansk regions of Ukrainians via mass starvation. The USSR then filled the vacuum left by mass migration of Russians, who now claim it as their territory. Putin has taken a leaf out of Stalin's playbook by forced transfer of Ukrainian civilians into Belarus and Russia, presumably on their way to the gulags.

It is going to affect everyone, although most do not realise it. Russia will very likely default on its debt, which will roil financial markets worldwide. The cost of fossil fuels has already soared, nickel is trading at 5 times its price prior to the war. Wheat is up 20%. All that spells inflation and rising interest rates in most countries.

If you are not American, when entering the USA you are classed as an alien too. So far, I have resisted the temptation to ask a border official whether I have two heads.