it’s so sad to see what Israel has become.

it means you compete as an independent, neutral entity and not under your country’s flag so your country gets zero recognition for any achievements, only the individuals.

12% interest rates? god damn…

how is their economy even functioning?

IIRC, Russia, at least, has had to participate under a neutral flag in recent games due to their ongoing doping scandals anyway. Other than Belarus also competing under a neutral flag, what would substantially change?

Newsweek is hot garbage these days

no kidding… wow

the US is hardly the only country sending Ukraine a bunch of money and weapons. Germany has also been a major supporter— an historical irony I personally find delicious.

see my comment— this article, from headline to its firs two sentences, changes its story 3 times. it’s nonsense.

the NATO SG merely suggested it at some discussion panel in Norway, and not even to any Ukrainians. It sounds like some dummy at Newsweek overheard something they didn’t understand and wrote some crappy clickbait article based on, basically, a bad idea someone floated.

Ok, so here’s the headline:

NATO Official Gives Ukraine ‘Unacceptable’ Conditions for Joining

Then the first sentence:

The chief of staff for NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has angered Kyiv officials for suggesting Ukraine could become a member of NATO if it ceded some of its territory to Russia.

Then the second sentence.

Stian Jenssen, who has held the title of director of the Private Office of the NATO Secretary General since 2017, reportedly made the suggestion while speaking on a recent panel in the Norwegian city of Arendal.

Now we have 3 slightly different versions of the story, but the differences are very important. Which one is the truth? The headline says he gave conditions to Ukraine, the second implies it, and the third clarifies that he was speaking to a Norwegian discussion panel. In Norway, where there may not have even been an Ukrainians present.

WTF, Newsweek?

they’ve always tacitly been cool with it. they’ve dropped little hints like this into their games since the 90s.

can’t load the page

many companies have multi-year commercial leases they suddenly can’t get out of and lots of office furniture they can’t liquidate. it’s a huge investment that suddenly worthless. (boo-hoo!)

I wouldn’t return to work if you offered me the whole building.

for my entire career, 100% of my work has been on the computer. once in a while, I may have some client interaction, and for that videoconferencing is fin 99.99% of the time. the 0.01% it’s not, I can go on-site. I’ve never attended a meeting that couldn’t have been an email or that couldn’t be handled via videoconference. what managers I’ve had fall into 2 categories:

• The Quite Ones: these are the good managers who send short emails regarding project needs/goals and periodically check in on progress, providing feedback when necessary.
• The Overbearing Micromanagers: jerkwads who feel the need to constantly insinuate themselves into my process and assert their position of power just for the sake of it, often negatively affecting both my workflow and the end-results of the project itself. They send huge, monotonous emails full of corporate-speak which say very little, set regular meetings that waste time and accomplish nothing, and set capricious, pointless policies which often change equally capriciously. I suspect this is done because they’re too incompetent to do their actual jobs and are designed both distract from that and remind us “who’s boss.”

Obviously, the first can be dealt with 100% remotely, and the second has positioned themselves, through being terrible at their jobs and being terrible people in general, to require workers to be present, mostly to justify their own jobs which would amount to nothing if there were no employees physically present to subject to their petty torments.

so, yeah, give me my own office? that’s not gonna cut it, as it changes exactly 0 of the reasons why I never want to return to the office, which are the commute, the stifling work atmosphere, the management, and the fact that there’s 0 reason to ever be there physically anyway due to the nature of my work.

Kind of hard to be sarcastic when thinking about that

I’m surprised he waited so long, honestly. all this tip-toeing around rigged elections and shoving his political opponents out of windows into cups of polonium tea is lot of work for a guy who has to shop for gigantic conference tables all day and poop into a collection bag for his secret service guys to catalogue for whatever reason. when you combine all of that with his busy schedule of genociding Ukranians, well… obviously, one of those activities will to have to go. an evil autarch has only so much time in the day!