Joe

???

The far-right political fringe in Ukraine is tiny. Far-right parties are usually under 3 % of the popular vote nationally.

In 2019 the coalition of far-right parties (e.g. Svoboda, Right Sector, etc.) got just over 2% and didn’t clear the threshold for parliamentary representation… Svboda (the most well known) has a single seat right now iirc.

Sure, extremist militias such as Azov Battalion (or its successors) have included far-right activists and symbols.

However, “some far-right fighters exist” is not the same as “Ukraine is run by Nazis”.

The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians before and since 2022 reject far-right ideology.

What there was: A single spike in 2012, typically interpreted as protest votes against Yanukovych and his policies - with votes for the parties collapsing again once he was gone.

You took to abuse and a silly claim on a side thread… and you got a fitting response.

You are reading motives into my argument that aren’t there. I am not claiming europe is moral, has a mandate to police anyone, or deserves immunity from judgement. I am not trying to justify Iraq, Libya or Gaza, and I am not asking anyone to view those actions as lesser.

My only point is that political structures differ, and that this matters for understanding how states act and how their citizens can influence them. That’s not a moral hierarchy and not an excuse - just a factual distinction. If you reject the idea that internal political structure makes any difference at all, then we are working with entirely different premises.

At that stage there is no meaningful basis for comparison or discussion. I have stated my view and you disagree. OK.

Removed by mod

Nah, the guy clearly has an agenda and can’t control himself. I’m just trying to stay consistent.

You are treating any distinction I make as if it is an attempt to portray europe as moral. It is not. europe has taken part in serious crimes and carries responsibility for them.

My point is that political systems are not identical. Europe’s structures are too often captured by interests and often fail, but they still allow for leadership changes, court rulings, investigations and public pressure. Even in eastern europe elections have been re-run and parties banned after proven foreign interference. These mechanisms are limited, but they exist. Russia removes them entirely.

Acknowledging this difference is not excusing western actions. It’s also not claiming russia’s motives are justified. It’s just recognising that foreign policy, internal structure and accountability aren’t the same thing.

If your view is that any distinction is a double standard, then we are not working with the same categories, and there is no productive way to continue the comparison.

And back to the original theme - we don’t want nor need war in europe, but russia (a fully captured state) seems hell bent on bringing it. I suppose that when it eventually falls, it will fall hard.

I think you are also treating every western action as if europe personally designed it, when in reality europe’s record is more mixed. It has responsibility for serious failures, but in most recent cases it was not the main driver. Libya is one of the few examples where european governments pushed an intervention themselves. In lots of others, like iraq or afghanistan (or the US’s overall middle east approach), european states mostly followed the US out of strategic dependence rather than some unified desire to dominate the world. That does not make the outcomes less tragic, but it does mean europe isn’t operating on the same logic as russia, which treats territorial expansion as a central political project.

That’a why I separate western crimes from the structure of the political systems behind them. Europe has elections that can actually change governments, courts that can and sometimes do push back, space for journalists, and protests that occasionally work. None of this helped people in iraq or gaza, which is exactly why those policies deserve criticism, but it still gives european citizens real levers to pressure their own governments.

Russia superglues those levers in place. Opposition is criminalised, media is destroyed, and elections are for show. That is not a small difference. It affects what citizens can realistically do and how the state behaves both at home and abroad.

So for me it is not about excusing the west or pretending europe is ‘moral’. It is simply that western hypocrisy does not magically turn russia’s invasion into something justified or admirable. I can condemn Iraq, Libya, Gaza and still condemn a war aimed at erasing a neighbour. That is not loyalty to Europe, it is just refusing the idea that one set of atrocities cancels out another.

Western countries have absolutely earned a lot of the criticism they get. Iraq, Libya, and the good ol’ US of A’s approach to the Middle East are pretty glaring stains, and Israel’s conduct has raised (justified) outrage, enough that even its own leadership now faces ICC warrants. Europe isn’t some angelic bloc either; it’s just that it does have legal and political structures (ECHR, ICC support, actual protest cultures, real accountability mechanisms) that at least give people tools to contest state violence.

None of that makes Russian aggression suddenly noble. Pointing out Western hypocrisy doesn’t magically turn Putin into a principled anti-imperialist. He’s running an authoritarian system that jails dissent, murders critics and wages a war built on territorial revanchism complete with deliberately targeting civilians.

If I have to choose between flawed democracies with internal pressure valves, independent courts and protest movements… or authoritarian states that treat brutality as a virtue, then I’ll stick to pushing the countries and systems I’m actually part of to live up to their ideals.

Hypocrisy is a problem, but open militaristic authoritarianism is way worse. The answer to western failures isn’t to excuse someone else’s.

Trust me, nobody here is itching for a fight with russia. Most of us just want to live our lives without worrying about a bully neighbour driving tanks (or riding donkeys, heh) over borders.

Ukraine isn’t fighting because we asked them to or because we want them to. They’re fighting because they woke up to an invasion.

And we will continue to support them because if you let a country grab land by force (let alone reward them for it, witkoff you idiot), it won’t stop there. It makes the whole region less safe. So no, it’s not about wanting a war. It’s about trying to prevent a bigger one.

Interesting fact: You can use an elephant’s trunk as a low-resolution 3D printing nozzle

Hah, yeah. Vibe coding and prompt engineering seem like a huge fad right now, although I don’t think it’s going to die out, just the hype.

The most successful vibe projects in the next few years are likely to be the least innovative technically, following well trodden paths (and generating lots of throwaway code).

I suppose we’ll see more and more curated collections of AI-friendly design documents and best-practice code samples to enable vibe coding for varied use-cases, and this will be the perceived value add for various tools in the short term. The spec driven development trend seems to have value, adding semantic layers for humans and AI alike.

Yeah - there’s definitely a GIGO factor. Throwing it at a undocumented codebase with poor and inconsistent function & variable names isn’t likely to yield great revelations. But it can probably still tell you why changing input X didn’t result in a change to output Y (with 50k lines of code in-between), saving you a bunch of debugging time.

Most code on the planet is boring legacy code, though. Novel and interesting is typically a small fraction of a codebase, and it will often be more in the design than the code itself. Anything that can help us make boring code more digestible is welcome. Plenty of other pitfalls along the way though.

I have a suspicion that the guy took issue with my use of “one” instead of “you”, more-so than the content. Maybe it came across as uppity.

It’s a changing world, and there is going to be an ever increasing amount of AI slop out there, and even more potential programmers who won’t make the leap due to the crutch.

At the same time, there are always people who want to and will learn in spite of the available crutches the latest tech revolution brings.

There will also be many good engineers who will exploit the tech for all its worth while applying appropriate rigour, increasing their real productivity and value manyfold.

And there will be many non-programmers who can achieve much more in their respective fields, because AI tools can bridge gaps for them.

Hopefully we won’t irreversibly destroy ourselves and our planet while we’re at it. 🙈

I engaged early on on Lemmy.ml out of curiosity. There is definitely interesting theory and history, and some genuinely learned folks lurking. Unfortunately, that is rarely what we get to see.

Hm? Oh, I obviously misread the room. It seems I interrupted a circle jerk? My apologies.

Is that why they cheer on authoritarian/dictatorial communism… we just need one good man/woman/AI in power, and all our problems will be solved. Then they dust off their hands after their thought triggers a tiny dopamine response (thereby confirming its truth), and they feel inspired to post another meme or to downvote a few people silly enough to engage with them by calling them libs or billionaires. 🤣

We probably shouldn’t feed them (and most definitely not after midnight…)

No, but it can help a capable developer to have more of those moments, as one can use LLMs and coding agents to (a) help explain the relationships in a complicated codebase succinctly and (b) help to quickly figure out why one’s code doesn’t work as expected (from simple bugs to calling out one’s own fundamental misunderstandings), giving one more time to focus on what matters to oneself.

You made your point, and it was clearly understood the first time. Perhaps you don’t understand my point?