I really don’t like this article because it reminds me of the crazy health nut parents who get disgusted by fat babies and try to make them diet for “health” and instead starve them. Babies are supposed to be fat.

Is the writer here applying guidelines for adults to babies? Babies are supposed to take in foods that are high calorie. I think Nestle is a shit company, but I am extremely suspicious of the article.

That’s a really good point. There were individual trolls and general cruel maladjusted scum, but they hadn’t yet been courted or manipulated by political orgs and fed collective marching orders to sow discord.

As far as I’m given to understand from folks who are Russian (but got out of Russia) or Ukrainian, this fellow would more be a change from one strongman to another if he replaced Putin. Apparently his Livejournal has him saying some nasty stuff he hasn’t repudiated. (Unfortunately, I don’t speak or read Russian so I can’t examine the sources myself very well, and machine translation doesn’t bring cultural nuance or context.) (Also, as funny as it sounds to people who remember Livejournal as the first English-speaking major social media for fandom, Livejournal has been the place for years for Russian intellectuals and politicians to say their bit, so it has a different cultural context in Russia than it does elsewhere where it was mainly used for fandom drama.)

It’s been strangely fascinating watching as western media tries to hold him up as some hope, when as far as I can tell when I stop to listen to actual Ukranians or Russians with better cultural knowledge on how Russia works than most western commentators, there’s basically minimal hope he’ll be anything close to a (good) Western-style leader and if he gets into power. (it gets swept under the rug in the west that Russian culture is NOT western european culture and things that are a “given” in European and other western cultures actually are not necessarily established culturally in Russia.)

As far as I understand it, it’ll just be exchanging one dude who’s done obviously terrible things (Putin) for another who probably’s not going to be all that different, and will just do his own brand of bad things. I think perhaps people just hope he’ll be a stable asshole, as opposed to an unstable one as Putin’s become.

Or maybe they just like a scapegoat narrative–it has been fascinating to me that he voluntarily returned to Russia, and it really reminds me that people who aren’t necessarily good can still show courage, and shape narratives that way in their favor. I suspect his actions have motivations underneath that I don’t understand because I don’t understand Russian strongman culture. And I suspect other people interpret his actions through a western lens, without understanding there’s cultural nuance going on that doesn’t align with how a western viewpoint might interpret something, and that’s why western media keeps talking about him so breathlessly.

Someone I read pointed out that in the real world, people are actually largely ok with monarchies and authoritarian rulers so long as the ruler at the top keeps things stable enough for business to be conducted. Ideals like democracy fall by the wayside in light of pragmatism when a nation state is unstable–people crave stability over all, over democracy even, regardless of what method of governance brings it. They will flock to authoritarianism if it promises stability.

And in Russia, the early 90s in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR brought a great deal of instability and hardship along with its “democracy”, so there’s not necessarily a positive feeling towards it as there is in more-functional western nations where it’s been working more or less for decades, as people who lived through the 90s in Russia associate the concept with hardship, not stability. Basically, a good concept implemented like crap can poison the concept in people’s minds for the rest of their life.

So I suspect if Putin is ever ousted, whoever replaces him (whether this guy or another) will be there because people think he can bring stability, not because the successor will actually be a good leader (from a western perspective).

But it’s all operating on a lower level of the “hierarchy of needs” than most people in western countries understand–more concern with base survival, less with being able to flower and thrive. So things might stabilize, but it might still be very bad for people, especially minorities, in Russia, and bad for smaller states if this guy gets into power but also turns his eye to conquering or dominating them in order to garner support.

Anyway. I find it interesting this guy hasn’t yet been executed. Instead they (supposedly) shuffle him off elsewhere. If you were Putin, why not kill him? Must be things going on behind the scenes that we don’t see, or understand, things concerning enough that Putin thinks executing him will be more trouble than it solves.

If Navalny ever comes to power, I don’t have any particular hope he’ll be a “good” leader.

But he has an interesting story, to be sure, and you can’t say he hasn’t been through quite a bit of hardship.

I was going to reply, stopped to look at this guy’s comment history. I’m not seeing a lot of worth in it, it’s mostly one-liners about this or that, no real engagement. Some seem mildly divisive simply for division’s sake.

All the money spent coordinating that visit could be better spent fighting the war in Ukraine.

…you do realize that the ONLY reason the money coming in to Ukraine at the pace it is is because he said exactly the right things on the world stage at the right time in such a charismatic way that people believed in him enough that fundraising basically started flowing in?

His diplomatic/networking/fundraising acumen is WHY the money is flowing in, ya doofus.

Why the hell wouldn’t he be furiously trying to arrange in-person meetings where he can use his personal social skills to forge diplomatic ties?

In the tech sector you can run into caste-ism (is that the correct word?), where Indians who are “lower” caste can be looked over when applying to jobs if the one going through resumes or making hiring decisions is Indian themselves and a “higher” or at least “different” caste, and can identify at a glance what caste the applicant is by their surname.

It’s apparently popping up enough that it’s on the radar as a discrimination problem in California, which has a big tech sector and I suppose a large enough population in some areas of Indian immigrants for this to start being a problem.

It surprised me at first that anyone was concerned about it–but then I realized…yeah, you kinda want to nip that one in the bud. Given all the existing classism/racism in the US, we hardly need a new one to throw into the mix. And it’s really dumb/disappointing to me that someone might come here from India hoping to start a new life and obviously have to deal with racism already because that never won’t NOT be a thing–only to ALSO run face first into caste-ism from fellow immigrants who drag that crap over with them. What a crappy catch-22, you know? So it seems to me that it’s good that some folk have awareness that it’s a thing to watch out for.

I can’t speak much about Europe, but when I was in the beverage industry about 10 years ago, energy drinks often had ADDITIONAL ingredients (supplements) far beyond caffeine.

If you look on the back of those energy drink cans in the US, they don’t say Nutrition Facts, they say Supplement Facts. That is important, it tells you how the item is classified and whether it has to follow FDA rules on Foods or FDA rules on Dietary Supplements (like vitamins do).

And if you look at the list of ingredients in many energy drinks (I have a tub of powdered GFuel before me so I’m refreshing my memory using that–it says “Supplement Facts”), you see a lot of ingredients like L-Tyrosine or L-Citrulline Malate which never appear in anything categorized as a food with the “Nutrition Facts” label on it. These fancy designer ingredients are basically newly-developed things that do not yet have a long-term proven track record of safety when eaten regularly on an everyday basis like a food.

A “food” is expected to be eaten regularly, so the standard of safety is higher for ingredients that go in a “food”. There’s a specific list the FDA has that lists ingredients considered GRAS (generally regarded as safe). New ingredients have to be evaluated by the FDA to determine whether they can be treated as GRAS, or if they have to have additional regulation if a corporation wants to put them in a food, drink, or supplement.

Corporations, unsurprisingly, LOVE to throw all sorts of newly created ingredients in things, for marketing purposes, so they do a lot of shady shit like labeling their product as a dietary supplement–but marketing it as a food so people think it’s a food.

Something classified as a “dietary supplement” (as many energy drinks are) is not meant to be eaten regularly as a food item. It’s meant to be consumed less frequently to SUPPLEMENT other things you consume or put in your body. However, people often treat energy drinks as a “food”, as if they’re the same thing as pop or juice, which could potentially be dangerous to your health because the ingredients in them have not yet proven they have a track record of safety when consumed frequently in food-like amounts. (I’m not really talking about caffeine here, I’m talking about all the OTHER stuff they throw in it.)

Whether a drink is classified as a “supplement” or a “food” is important. It is a big thing, because the regulations for what can be put into something that’s a “supplement” is looser than what can be labeled as a “food”.

I don’t know exactly how Europe draws the lines or what the regulatory landscape is there regarding energy drinks, but it sounds like this ban is possibly because Energy Drinks tend to have ingredients that push the boundary on what is safe eaten in large amounts like a food and what might be more harmful like a drug. Europe is generally stricter than America when it comes to food safety.

I haven’t watched any of the CGI Ahsoka stuff, so I came into the live action show without that.

My verdict is that I want to like it, and will watch a few episodes, but what I’ve seen has made me suspect it won’t have the legs I was hoping for. I’m getting Book of Boba Fett feelings, basically.

I like how Ahsoka is played quite a lot, she has a screen presence I enjoy, but the vast majority of the supporting cast are played/written as too juvenile compared to her. Like, she’s clearly a mature women, and the cast around her are, by and large, kiddies. Mentally, at least. They don’t act or think like adults regardless of whatever war titles they gained.

I could tell they were playing on nostalgia for the animated show heavily. (Without having seen the animated show.)

Knowing nothing about Sabine or her history with Ahsoka, I just wanted to drop Sabine down a well. She runs off to decode the map, but then it turns out she doesn’t actually have to go home to do it, given what’s shown on screen…the two things she actually used were the two things she started with. You can argue she didn’t KNOW that–but from a writer’s perspective, something like this could’ve been written better, executed better. Sabine needed to earn sympathy from the audience, beyond having a cute “cat”, and that could’ve been delivered here but it wasn’t. (I do wonder if they lingered so much on the cat because they knew she had little else to make her likable in the first episodes.)

The map stuff would’ve been more palatable if she’d run off home–but just grabbed tools or something, then started back to the ship and got run into by the Apprentice THEN. Because at least it would have shown her THINKING and TRYING to correct her mistake. Like, still making the mistake because she’s hot-headed, but then at least trying to course-correct before it bit her.

And the scene with the “general” patting her on her little dumb head and saying it’s ok she disobeyed and fucked up didn’t much give good character development/portrayal to a character who is supposed to be a general. I can only assume “General” is a vanity title at this point, she’s not much acting like one.

Sabine fucking up majorly put them in a lot of hot water–and it’s just really weird (as someone going into it without knowing the history of the characters) that despite what she did, she gets coddled and patted for it.

It’s just very obvious plot armor–and the thing is (and I say this as a writer)…you can actually have a great show and great development when a character is correctly punished or correctly has consequences for doing something, you know? “Hurting” a character can lead to gigantic growth. It’s actually ok to put a character through hard things.

So it WAS possible for her still to fuck up in such a giant way and have the story continue and grow–WITHOUT having to coddle her. You don’t actually need to be gentle with main characters.

And having her treated as she should’ve been treated would have given a new show watcher who doesn’t have background knowledge of the characters some trust in the storytelling. That’s something you need to build early on when introducing characters.

There’s also the issue with the exploding robot head–I can see it’s an attempt to “show” she’s a hot-shot, but it still feels a lot like telling (rather than “showing”). And as someone else said–it was false peril to raise the stakes. Or perhaps to redeem Sabine as being useful? But the peril of the exploding head just underscores that Sabine is out of control and stupid–and I already came into that scene not liking her because she was out of control and stupid with the map. So fucking around with the head after she’d already fucked around with the map made me feel MORE negative towards her, not less. Her getting the data didn’t make me feel more inclined towards her–because I feel if she really was a hot-shot at this, she could’ve been hot shot enough to avoid the exploding head.

I know I’m ragging on Sabine a lot, but I feel it impacts the larger story too. Like, from bits and pieces I’ve heard, Thrawn is supposed to be really dangerous. And supposedly this character Sabine knows that in a very personal way.

Wouldn’t even a hot-headed stubborn person TRY to get their shit together if something that big showed up on the horizon again? So Sabine acting like an idiot undermines the threat of Thrawn, too. Clearly even his worst enemies aren’t even scared enough to get their shit together, so why should I care or be concerned as a show-watcher if he’s coming back?

Anyway. I suspect this show isn’t made for me, for someone who hasn’t seen the animated shows. It’s for existing fans of Ahsoka and Sabine who understand their backstory and sympathize with them enough that the things I talk about above don’t undermine the threat of Thrawn, and the competence of Ahsoka’s allies.

I’ve had good experiences with Namecheap for domains. Some of their support people are also in Ukraine, so if you’re of a mind to support them, giving them your business will do that at least a little.

One word of advice–it can be smart to have the domain name with one provider, and the hosting with a different one. That way if your hosting situation goes bad for whatever reason, you still have control of your domain and can point it at a new host as quickly as you can buy space and they can provision it (with time for DNS to propagate of course).

Basically, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. When I did webhost support, I saw WAY too many small business owners get into pickles because they had hosting AND domain with the same provider, and when something went wrong with that provider, it was just such a huge PITA to get control of the domain.

No recs for hosting, I don’t currently have a webpage up (just email) and my knowledge is way out of date, from like 2008 when I worked for a webhost as support.