The New Coffee Room

@jon-nyc

I doubt I’ll like left populism any more than I like the version on the right.

Trust me, you won’t. It’s every bit as vile in it’s own disingenuous and ignorant way.

@taiwan_girl

Trump

Who does he think he is? Auric Goldfinger?

Lovely photos TG. What little I have seen of Germany, I have liked.

@Doctor-Phibes

Quite possible. I think though that FDR was hell bent on bringing Stalin into the Pacific war should the Japanese Kwantung Army remain a fighting force on the Chinese mainland. When the Big Three Tehran summit took place, FDR was still not certain that the then still assumed secret to the Soviets, atomic bomb would be ready to bring a quick end to the war with Japan following a defeat of the Nazis. Should the war continue on in China he wanted very much to count on battle ready Soviet ground forces (well provisioned with US Lend Lease equipment) to mop up the Japanese. IOW, it was a question of expediency with minimal cost in American lives. Surplus war material from Europe was cheap.

I couldn’t read any responses as I am not registered on X. I could view the short video clip.

Nothing novel or new with his distorted view. The view that Harry Hopkins was a Soviet asset has been bandied for decades. Most recently, in Sean McKeen’s well written and researched, Stalin’s War. Personally I do not believe Hopkins was a traitorous Soviet asset . Rather, he, like many Americans in WWII, actually believed the Soviets were allies in the same way as Britain and being the only remaining continental power in to fight the Nazis deserved all the support the US could provide. Stalin, was the Allied forces co-belligerent against the Nazis and later, Japanese Empire. Nothing more. I believe deep down Churchill understood that, although Hopkins and possibly Roosevelt did not. They instead saw Stalin as a true ally.

One flake talking to another with every distorted absurdity thrown out containing a trite kernel of truth. Happens everyday in coffee and doughnut shops and bars. Now and then on TV and podcasts. This is one such example

@Doctor-Phibes

two-bit thug

You may very well believe that, I couldn’t possibly comment.

No problem.

In the meantime, I think this breakdown of the past week’s theatre of the incorrigible is not at all off the mark:

“Trump is very good when he can bully people,” Duss told the Kyiv Post’s Washington correspondent, adding “and Putin is someone who, in Trump’s words, has cards.”

…..Trump clearly feels that Putin is someone who intimidates him… Putin is someone who knows how to handle Donald Trump,” he added.

…..Duss argues that Trump’s belief in his own “skill as a negotiator” is misplaced when it comes to international security. “He might be a good negotiator when it comes to building a new casino, but he is clearly not a skilled negotiator or diplomat,” Duss said.

https://www.kyivpost.com/analysis/58597

Indeed, very much so.

@Wim said in The Ukraine war thread:

Remember Melnikov.

Which one? You’ll have to jog my memory. Only the famous Constructivist architect comes to my mind at the moment.

Poor kid. My guy never brought it into the house. Instead, he came down with stink pink eye a couple of times and a bout of ringworm on the crown of his head that made him look like a tonsured monk for a couple of months. Apparently they had been sharing wool toques at recess. Surprised he never came home with head lice.

You can always put on PPE or a hazmat suit and give him a hug.

I seem to recall reading, on more than one occasion, that in 1948 Tito refused a similar invitational summons from Stalin:

An adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky has told BBC News that Ukraine "immediately rejected" Vladimir Putin's suggestion that the two leaders should meet in Moscow.

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cz93ve1p952t?post=asset%3A1281df55-06c0-43d5-b23d-d599b7cd956b#post

@kluurs

I feel your frustration and understand your angst. “Zee” is increasingly being used here to describe the letter “Z” over the traditional English, “Zed”.

I blame those damned Millenials for polluting the minds of Gen Zedders.

People refer to the arts and the sciences so why not maths?

@Klaus

There are two points to the letter.

The first is that it is addressed exclusively to Putin; the other belligerent in the war is not a recipient. The second, the one you in fact pointed out, is that Putin is an indicted war criminal by ICC for kidnapping Ukrainian children and holding them or illegally adopting them out to citizens of Russia against their rightful parents’ or next of kin’s knowledge and will.

What is not lost on Melania Trump, a Slovene, is that Putin has single-handedly created a hatred between Ukrainians and Russians that never existed until the last decade. He alone has sowed the seeds for a future hatred akin to the one that existed and continues to exist between Croats and Serbs in the country she was raised and no longer exists - Yugoslavia.

It’s not too difficult to understand her letter. She has said more in those few paragraphs than her husband has ever said about Putin’s entirely pointless and imperialistic objective to obliterate the Ukrainian nation and its people.

Good for Mrs. Trump. I don’t believe she sees Putin to be anything other than the cold blooded KGB hood he is.

I think Trump and his team just got Keyser Söze'd.

Putin expected to play the torturous history lecture card tomorrow in an effort to zombify Trump and US officials:

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is likely to lecture US President Donald Trump on the Russian version of Ukrainian history in a bid to justify his invasion, according to Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation on Thursday….

In its Thursday update, the center stated that Putin is preparing so-called “historical materials” for the US president to justify the Kremlin’s position that Ukraine is a so-called “artificial state” that should not exist.

“These are geographical maps that, according to Putin’s plan, are supposed to prove to Trump that Ukraine is an ‘artificial state’ formed at the expense of the territories of other countries,” the update says.

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/58134

@89th

@blondie said in What else is new?:

Trex is good. I did trex with my most recent build, but I’ve a question for @Doctor-Phibes : Did you have to replace those joists under your deck? I ask because I want to rip up the unfinished cupped and split front porch boards on another house (built in 2023) and redo it with Trex.

You should not have to replace the porch or deck joists on a two year old house. I would open everything up and lay down flattened aluminium drywall corner beading over the top of each joist to act as a drip edge to keep water away from the spruce joist. Spray paint the metal beading flat black and fasten down the Trex over top. It was a carpenter who told me about that when I did my deck 20 years ago. My deck joists are as sound and unweathered today as they were then when I put them down.

It would save you a pile of money too. Those aluminium corner beading strips are fairly cheap.