I posted this image early this morning in Adam’s Ukraine update thread for the amusement of commenters of a certain age. But it bears repeating now that even Russia has admitted that its Black Sea flagship sank:
— darth™ (@darth) April 14, 2022
The Russians say it sank in a storm while being towed to port after an accidental fire blew up ammunition stores. The Ukrainians say they hit it with a Ukrainian-made Neptune missile.
I believe the Ukrainians, and their account of what happened is indirectly corroborated by American reports that several other Russian ships moved away from Ukraine after the Moskva was hit — as if they were responding to a newly perceived threat from Ukrainian shores.
Open thread!
Patricia Kayden
Litlebritdifrnt
*snork* as a former member of the Navy this is about embarrassing as it gets, the country who doesn’t even have a Navy takes down the Flagship of the “mighty russians”. Heads are going to roll over this, you can count on it.
trollhattan
Will repeat a link re. the Orion missile I put In the thread below.
https://twitter.com/Orion__int/status/1486024600974938113
Going to be very tough for Russia to get anybody believing this was some kind of open ocean “oopsie.”
ETA sinking before being towed to port means they didn’t get any remaining weapons off the ship, including the cruise missiles bristling from the deck.
schrodingers_cat
OT: Growing intolerance coming from the ruling BJP towards minority religions of India inspired me to make a new Twitter header. What do you guys think?
Uncle Cosmo
@trollhattan: Will repeat for your benefit that the missile is named Neptun, not Orion – which latter refers to the people who put up that tweet.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: It’s a good thought, although not entirely true.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: It is a literal translation of a line in Iqbal’s poem akin to India’s version of America the Beautiful. (Sare jahan se accha Hindosta hamara == Best in the Universe is our Hindustan)
At their best all religions preach universal brotherhood and love. It is an ideal.
lee
So the Russian towed the damaged ship into rough seas and subsequently lost the ship.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: Nice! Your own artwork?
@Litlebritdifrnt: The Ukrainians have humiliated Russia repeatedly. Whatever Putin & minions are saying to the outside world, they’ve got to be reeling.
smith
I must not be of the right certain age. I’ve seen that image in the tweet up top several times, and haven’t the foggiest idea what it means. Could someone of the right age enlighten me?
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: I built it in Canva with their available library of elements.
jnfr
I admit it, I cheered at this news!
planetjanet
@smith: The old board game Battleship. Three marks and the old commercial went “You’ve sunk my battleship!”
Urza
@schrodingers_cat: Shame we haven’t seen any major religion at its best in the last 120 years.
SpaceUnit
At this rate Putin is going to die from sheer rage. Hope there’ll be video.
Ken
@lee: It does sound like the trope where a character, trying to keep some embarrassing secret from coming out, lies their way into an even more embarrassing situation.
Urza
@planetjanet: Maybe they should have used the white pegs for it so people didn’t think it was smokestacks or something.
Bex
@Litlebritdifrnt: The world’s worst navy. https://youtu.be/yzGqp3R4Mx4
TheOtherHank
Maybe it’s just me, but saying “Oops, our bad, it just caught and fire and then we couldn’t stop it from sinking.” is somewhat worse than “The enemy slipped through our defenses and sank our ship.” One of those doesn’t require massive incompetence (I mean, it helps with the other one, but it’s not required).
Baud
@Urza:
What about Unitarians? Baha’i? I thought I read that they were kind of cool.
Roger Moore
@smith:
It’s from a version of the game “Battleship” that was popular when I was younger. Instead of playing purely on paper, you had a board and physical ships that you’d plug into it to set up the game. You’d mark hits and misses with pins that look like the ones shown above: white for misses and red for hits. Anyone who played the game would recognize a ship with red pins in it as a sign the other guy was laying down the hurt on you. ETA: Here’s a series of ads.
schrodingers_cat
@Urza: Making such smartass comments and leaving the entire religious space for nutjobs like the BJP to occupy has not been that great of an idea. YMMV.
I wanted to make a statement since BJP has made Hinduism stand for hatred of Muslim and Christians. It is my own stand against their bigotry.
I am not particularly religious but I did not anoint BJP to speak for me. I wanted to reach out to adherents of Indian minority religions (I have a lot of Twitter mutuals from India who are Muslim or Christian, that not all Hindus agree with BJP’s agenda of hate as they celebrate Lent and Ramadan).
Ksmiami
@Litlebritdifrnt: are they just getting canned? Or are literal heads going to be rolling around Putin’s bunker?
debbie
I’ve had NPR on as background all day. Russia’s provided several different versions about what happened to the Moskva. Inept propaganda in action!
debbie
@Baud:
Has the poster met Mara?
smith
@planetjanet: Thanks.
TaMara
@Betty Cracker: Did you see this?
topclimber
@schrodingers_cat: I like to think that “Religion Does Not Teach Hate” is more true than not. There’s lots of hate that intolerant religions didn’t have anything to do with.
Thanks for trying!
Baud
@debbie:
who?
Baud
@TaMara:
Now that’s what I call war propaganda! What a cutie!
dmsilev
@planetjanet: Somehow, the more pedantically-accurate-here cry of “you sank my cruiser!” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Though I have to admit that seeing the closest thing in the Russian Navy to a battleship exposed as being somewhat of a Potemkin village, off the coast of Odessa, has a certain historical resonance.
trollhattan
@debbie: They’re having a “Bestest Excusest” contest and are just sifting through the finalists, in the court of public opinion. Yeah, that’s the ticket. “Winner get vodka.”
debbie
@TaMara:
What a cutie!
SpaceUnit
Russia now claiming the warship is on a top-secret underwater mission.
Baud
@SpaceUnit:
“Our warships transform into submarines.”
debbie
@Baud:
This chick from Adam’s thread (subtitled):
lee
@Ken: That was exactly what I was thinking. A ‘You think this is a better story‽’ moment.
Benw
@SpaceUnit: Russia says new “cloaking” technology is working great on Moskva warship.
Baud
@debbie: Dems should repurpose that ad for the November elections.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: It’s beautiful, and religion doesn’t teach hate, but the bigots who belong do. A small minority has a big platform.
JoyceH
At first I thought that whacking the Russian navy might make it easier to resupply and reinforce Mariupol, but I see from a map that Mariupol is on the Sea of Azoz, not the Black Sea, and Crimea is in the way. Causing me to wonder – what about Crimea? Russia “annexed” it but the world in general considers it still part of Ukraine. But what about the Crimeans themselves? If they were allowed to choose, would they want to be Russian or Ukrainian? Does anyone know? Is that even knowable?
JPL
@SpaceUnit: ?
germy
The upcoming DC Extended Universe Blue Beetle movie is expanding its cast with the addition of Susan Sarandon as its villain Victoria Kord.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
I like it!
Betty Cracker
@TaMara: Awww! Reminds me of Sweet Pete!
Alison Rose ???
@planetjanet: God I loved that game. So simple, yet so satisfying.
SiubhanDuinne
Okay, jackals, please help me out here, and be kind. Betty Cracker posted the image up top
I don’t know what “certain age” BC has in mind, but it’s clearly much younger than I am. There’s some kind of, I guess, pop-culture reference to those photoshopped red towers that I’m not getting. I’d like to share in the amusement, please.
ETA: Ah. Should have read Smith’s similar question #10 and the several “Battleship” explanations. Have heard of it but never played it.
wetzel
The Russians say it sank in a storm while being towed to port
That’s a great fourteener ballad line.
Fourteener couplets!
The Russians said it sank in a storm while being towed to port
An accidental fire began where the missiles were stored
But the Ukrainians say the missile was theirs that exploded the ammo inside it
The trident of Neptune it was named for a god so the victory belongs to Poseidon
Ken
It is sometimes necessary to correct inaccuracies in earlier reports, as Winston Smith of the Ministry of Truth would tell you.
debbie
@Baud:
Agreed! She might even set Josh Hawley running.
debbie
@JPL:
Did you ever study the Reformation? Lots of hate going on then.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: Thanks!
jnfr
@TaMara:
I love that so much! Thank you.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
It’s from the game Battleship. I’m of the age, but I never played it so I too was confused.
Baud
@debbie: I am familiar with Battleship, but I didn’t recognize the pegs.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
’tis from the Milton Bradley game Battleship. Cruiser has all three holes filled with hits, glugging noises optional.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: Yikes, that’s gruesome!
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Looks like I picked the wrong week to book a Mediterranean cruise on the Moskva
CaseyL
@Litlebritdifrnt:
@Ksmiami:
Tom Levenson had a Twitter thread about that, and it seems that the Black Sea Fleet Admiral has, in fact, already been arrested.
ETA: Tom was making a similar joke, and then retweeted the report of his arrest. He was not surprised by the arrest, just that it happened so fast.
Mallard Filmore
@debbie: I detect a faint resonance of the movie “Hellraiser”
https://youtu.be/f8Kj44Pp8jM
You opened the box.
That was the signal.
You called us and we came.
germy
Maggie!
pluky
I expect our intelligence services have extensive satellite footage of the Moskva and its fate that has been shared with the Ukrainians.
BC in Illinois
@Betty Cracker:
From Amy Siskind:
TonyG
@lee: That’s the problem with liars. They have to come up with new lies to explain their previous lies and each new lie is more and more implausible. I haven’t heard about Russian casualties from this attack, but there must be some. More Russian families who will hate Putin but will be too frightened to do anything to oppose him.
germy
Twin intolerables.
Ishiyama
To recycle a joke: Q.: What do you call 510 Russian sailors at the bottom of the Black Sea? A.: A good start.
TonyG
@CaseyL: At this rate Putin must be running short on Generals and Admirals.
wetzel
@germy: Marcy Wheeler is required reading these days.
KrackenJack
Putin needs to commandeer a couple of the remaining oligarch yachts. They’re not quite as large, but the electronics are probably more modern. ;)
sdhays
@TonyG: Maybe he’ll send himself to the front to get things back on track.
germy
These people vote in every election.
Chris T.
I played that version of Battleship with the pegs and everything, and I didn’t recognize the image. (But I may be image-impaired ? … didn’t think they looked like plastic, I was thinking those were supposed to be giant fabric coverings or something)
Jinchi
So apparently Alex Navalny can make anti-war tweets against Putin from a Russian jail cell.
germy
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat: I like it.
Ken
@Chris T.: I didn’t recognize them either, and thought maybe they were life jackets, or giant pool noodles for floatation.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chris T.:
Like a Christo installation.
Richard Fox
I loved to play Battleship as a kid. Brought back memories I haven’t had in about 50 years or so, give or take. Thanks for sharing this, and so very appropriate. Extra (somewhat related) bonus: the Black Sea has pristine conditions for preservation, so thousands of years from now happy folks will be able go down to the wreck and still laugh at the moronic delusions of a third rate tin pot authoritarian schmuck.
Chris T.
@SiubhanDuinne: Exactly!
Kent
@schrodingers_cat: Random question I’ve always wondered about India.
Are the Muslim and Hindu communities different distinguishable ethnicities? Or is a purely religious distinction like Catholic and Protestant?
In other words, if you encounter young modern secular Indians in secular western dress can you tell by just looking that they are of Hindu or Muslim heritage? I assume you can probably tell by names and traditional dress. But can one hide their religious ethnicity or be ambiguous about it? Or there an ethnic/racial element you can’t hide and that you always carry with you every where you go in Indian society even if you aren’t religious?
lowtechcyclist
They said the ship was under tow at the time.
They always warned us that the under tow could be dangerous.
billcinsd
@SpaceUnit:
They’re on an undersea mission for you baby,
they can’t figure out your watery love.
They gotta solve your mystery.
They’re sitting it out in heaven above
Betty Cracker
@BC in Illinois: Amy Siskind is a fraud, but when she’s right, she’s right.
Matt McIrvin
It took me a moment, but I got the Battleship gag. “You sank my battleship!”
debbie
@Mallard Filmore:
She’d make mincemeat of him.
I’m going to make Mara my spirit animal.
bjacques
@lowtechcyclist: damn, the Undertoad got it.
wetzel
Social isolation causes many of the same neuroendocrine molecular changes, produces much of the same subjective experience, as physical pain. This was recently discovered.
I feel social isolation on Twitter a half dozen times a day using it. Losing Karma on Reddit is aversive. Those are aversive stimuli, so if they can be brought into association with a behavior, it gives the algorithm the capacity to decrease the likelihood of the behavior through positive punishment in the terms of operant conditioning.
B.F. Skinner believed that even in the ideas we have and thoughts we express, we are the product of our conditioning. The common hot take approach to critique of social media is not penetrating enough, like Robert Reich’s recent essay, where it’s all about fictions and lies which are allowed to spread. You can’t tell truth from fiction, etc.
Through Karma systems and through access to the channel and varieties of social validations, social media algorithms provide state and non-state actors a Skinner Box to drive the cognitive restructuring of the world.
I’m glad to know this issue is being adjudicated. How will the fate of humanity be decided? Lo and behold! It’s Mothra vs. Ghidorah. Prince Bonesaw vs. the guy with the supervillain lair. Strange days.
The Aristocrats!!
debbie
@BC in Illinois:
Or perhaps TFG is a better leader than Vova.
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
Nice!
:sigh: If only it were true.
lowtechcyclist
@bjacques: Been awhile since I thought about that book!
Kent
Crimea has long been the most pro-Russian part of Ukraine. For example, here is the 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum results from 31 years ago where you can see the percentage of vote by region. Crimea stands out as most pro-Russian even then. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum
Since the 2014 annexation a lot of anti-Russian Ukrainians have also fled. For example, I have a student in my class from Crimea who’s father is ethnic Russian and mother is ethnic Ukrainian. After 2014 his family had to flee Crimea due to local persecution. They ended up in Moldova for a couple years before eventually getting to the US.
I expect the ethnic Russian population there has been busy driving out non-Russians for the past 8 years with the blessing of Moscow.
smith
Speaking of childhood pursuits made newly relevant:
https://twitter.com/cash_w00/status/1514707995611078666?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5E
Betty Cracker
Ooo, this is going to be epic, via NBC:
Looks like the nonstop toadying paid off. Maybe Mandel will beat the crap out of Vance on camera. He’s a lunatic.
prostratedragon
@germy: Is this what the philosophers mean by “the problem of other minds?”
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
Are we sure that’s credible? J.D. started out as a vocal Never Trumper who, if he had to, would hold his nose and vote for Hillary. It’s hard to believe that wouldn’t turn into a lifelong grudge.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Kay must be out buying all the popcorn in Ohio.
debbie
@Baud:
I’d bet she’s also getting champagne. The Ohio Supreme Court rejected the fourth set of redistricting maps today.
JWR
@SpaceUnit:
Where’s that explodinghead.gif when we need it.
Obvious Russian Troll
@Chris T.:
I played the game, too, and I don’t think I got it until the third or fourth time I saw an image referencing it.
Scout211
@germy:
OMG. That is where I grew up. What happened to that town?! What happened to Iowa?
Captain C
@germy:
Let me guess: she wants to kill the evil neolib superheroes and let the supervillains run rampant over Metropolis, Gotham, and the rest, because only after that happens will the people rise up and cause the approved True Superhero Revolution.
SiubhanDuinne
@bjacques:
Nice Garpism.
Mallard Filmore
@debbie: I first saw some Hellraiser quotes back when Usenet was young, without seeing the movie. They were powerfully scary.
Eventually clips were posted on YouTube and were such a disappointment. The spoken dialog was nowhere near as spooky and terrifying as the written word.
I like the video you posted much better.
Kent
@Scout211: We have just as many crazy people here Vancouver WA (suburban Portland) . They are everywhere. Only difference in IA is that they have enough higher of a percentage to win elections.
Captain C
@KrackenJack:
I think some of them probably have more effective antimissile systems, too.
zhena gogolia
@smith: same here. About to read the thread to find out. Putin was really twitchy in that video somebody posted yesterday, with Lukashenka and some cosmonauts
Gravenstone
Way O/T, but any California gamers have thoughts on the new allegations that your Gov. Newsome appears to have been undercutting the state investigation into Activision Blizzard and the discrimination therein?
Mallard Filmore
@Kent:
I am not an expert, and will never find where I saw this … in that referendum the options were:
There was not an entry to stay with Ukraine.
Betty
@Betty Cracker: I have been remiss in not thanking you for bringing my question about Rick Coplen to Adam’s attention. I was delighted to find out that Adam knows him and considers him a great guy. Donation made today. So thanks!
Gravenstone
@Urza: Saw a variation of the meme where the pegs were blue and yellow for Ukraine.
Captain C
@Betty Cracker: I’m starting to think TFG has a humiliation fetish.
Raven
I want to know how many Russian sailors went down with the ship?
Origuy
That vengeful Ukrainian woman in the flowers is supposed to be a representation of the Slavic goddess Mara, aka Morana in Russian, Marzanna in Polish, etc.
Not a good idea to have the goddess of death mad at you.
debbie
JPL
@debbie: Growing up Catholic, we also studied the Crusades. I still think it is the vocal minority though. At least that’s what I want to believe.
Jay C
@Ishiyama:
fwiw, it’s unlikely the Moskva was “lost with all hands”: reports were that at least 54 sailors had been rescued by Turkish Navy vessels, and from most accounts, the cruiser had an “abandon ship” order.
I’m sure the official inquiry into the loss of Moskva will fix the blame precisely where it needs to be:
”After careful investigation, we have determined that the loss of the ship was the fault of Sailor Sergei and Seaman Semyon, who ducked into a munitions locker for a quick smoke, and carelessly dropped a match into a pool of rocket fuel which had inexplicably collected on the deck”
debbie
JPL
@Raven: Yesterday the evacuated the ship so not many.
Sure Lurkalot
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Moskva scuba dive vacation! 1/2 off and exchange rate for rubles is best ever! Book now for most excellent cabin!
JWR
@Gravenstone: Oh geez. I hope this isn’t true. I like our governor, but there are times I feel like pulling him to the side and giving him a nice hard slap upside the head.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Baud: The Unitarians have always been cool.
Gravenstone
@germy: um, Elon – if it comes down to raw cash for this little dick measuring contest, I’m betting on Saud.
debbie
@JPL:
You’re probably right. The average person lived a more Christian life than anyone in positions of power. When I was first reading about the Reformation and CounterReformation, just that entire period, the level of violence took me by surprise.
WaterGirl
@debbie: That should come with a warning.
Gravenstone
@smith: Bwhahahahaha
VOR
@germy: Let me get this straight. He was going to spend $41B, in cash, to buy Twitter but hadn’t bothered to find out who the biggest shareholders are? Seems like something you would want to know.
Argiope
@debbie: The OH Supreme Court is reminding me of my grandmother, who reportedly made my dad and aunts close a door slowly and carefully 10 times after they slammed one. Do it right, or do it over and over and over. I may share that with my RWNJ dad, also an Ohioan. My stock answer for anyone who asks me why we have to have two primaries at taxpayer expense will be “Republicans refuse to follow the rules”.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
It’s amazing how flexible Trump’s convictions are, especially when money is involved. I would not be at all surprised to learn that Trump’s endorsement is up for auction, and Vance won.
Edmund Dantes
@JWR: there’s always the Hitler meme scene from Downfall (I think) that gets used all the time with new subtitles for whatever current event is happening. Someone should have it up soon I would bet if not already.
debbie
@Argiope:
Yep. I hope they go back to a single primary.
Shalimar
@VOR: I don’t think Musk is serious about buying Twitter. He illegally failed to disclose his share had passed 5% for more than a week, and then the price jumped when he did finally disclose. My bet is the “offer” is meant to keep the price high while he is already secretly selling all of his shares, which he will disclose in a few months when they’re gone.
Edmund Dantes
@Edmund Dantes:How to Make Your Own Hitler Video Meme Parody With Subtitles (makeuseof.com) this website even has it already setup for you to just add the captions
schrodingers_cat
@Kent: I can tell the region they are from, their religion and their caste by their name with about 80 to 90% accuracy.
trollhattan
@Sure Lurkalot: ISIS probably deciding via shortest straw who gets assigned to dive down and fetch the cruise missiles.
wetzel
@VOR: Victory over Prince Salman will be chapter 1 in Twelve New Labors of Elon.
Let’s bring back the Pharoah!!!!
Let’s make Elon Musk the Pharoah of Planet Earth!!!
He can mediate our discussions!!!
He will slay the Zuckerberg!!!!
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@Betty Cracker: More like Dump trying to stay in good favor with a
suckerfinancial donor Thiel.The primary is in 19 short days (early voting already started 10 days ago), and Vance is down double digits to both Gibbons and Mandel.
SpaceUnit
Speaking of games and toys with war themes . . .
When I was growing up half the toys meant for boys were either a gun or something related to war. We had this black plastic bazooka that was almost four feet long. It was an air gun. You pumped it up, pulled the trigger and it would make a loud BOOM and shoot a foam ball the size of a softball about 60 or 70 feet.
Anyway, at some point we figured out that if you put soot dust down the barrel, say from a fireplace or a fire pit ( were always camping out in the woods behind our house ) it would also blast out an impressive plume of smoke when it fired.
At some point we lost all the balls in the woods, but we figured out that the new thing to do was to put soot down the barrel and fire it at someone’s face from about a foot away. The smoke would clear and they’d be standing there with their hair blown back and their face covered in soot. So funny. And when I say it was funny I mean that it was freaking hysterical. No matter how many times you saw it you always ended up rolling on the ground laughing so hard that you couldn’t breathe. It was like something from a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
Our mother generally took a dim view of such nonsense, but even she admitted it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen in her life.
Anyhow, just thought I’d share that memory.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@trollhattan:
the Glomar Explorer will recover the missiles
JWR
@Edmund Dantes: Yeah, with Pootie Poot’s face shopped in.
Roger Moore
@VOR:
I think a more likely explanation is that he was trying to get on the Twitter board, but tried to get too cute by delaying reporting his purchases. He thought the SEC would let it slide, but they weren’t going to, so he had to back out of joining the board. Instead of just selling his stock and taking a loss, he’s doubling down by claiming he’s interested in buying the company and taking it private. He knows that will get turned down, but he thinks it will look better to sell his stake after being turned down in his takeover bid than admitting he’s selling because the SEC got in his way.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Peter Thiel sponsored Vance’s candidacy, and he might have bought Trump’s endorsement of Vance. Trump and Thiel are both sociopaths but unlike Trump, Thiel actually is a billionaire. He could help Trump a lot if he wanted, but Thiel is probably just using the orange buffoon. It will take a lot more than Trump’s endorsement, though, to make Ohioans like the vile, phoney Vance.
mrmoshpotato
@Patricia Kayden: I love Jeff’s tweets.
Ruckus
@BC in Illinois:
Putin thought he was Peter the Great, but turned out to be Donald Trump.
Now that’s low.
He’s actually Vladimir Trumpisky.
Another Scott
@Shalimar: Rules are for little people.
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Captain C:
I’m starting to think TFG has a humiliation fetish.
Don’t think so, he’s just a dumb asshole – deluxe version.
Rachel Bakes
@planetjanet: ahhh, I hadn’t gone there. To my mind it was the 3 smoke stacks on the Titanic, and thus a sunken ship.
hueyplong
@Ruckus: We should assume both, shouldn’t we?
Tenar Arha
@Betty Cracker:
@debbie:
@Baud:
I laughed out loud, & then thought “I wonder how much Thiel is paying that orange carbuncle for an endorsement?”
ETA what Geminid said
eachother
How many nukes went down with the ship?
Chief Oshkosh
@wetzel: I doubt that Gordon Lightfoot is going to immortalize the Muscova in a ballad.
Ruckus
@hueyplong:
Well anything is possible…..
And the likely list of mental issues that he has is just a bit longer than my grocery shopping list. And a lot less satisfying
Ann Marie
@schrodingers_cat: It’s lovely. Aspirational, yes, but always better to encourage love than hate.
Kent
@Mallard Filmore: The 1991 referendum wasn’t about Crimea. It was whether Ukraine itself would remain within the Soviet Union, or declare itself (the entire country of Ukraine) an independent nation.
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
Beautiful. Very nice color combination.
Rusty
@Urza: The Civil Rights movement was led by pastors and other religious leaders for a reason. (And Dr. King was killed while leading a crusade for the poor). Religious groups run a lot of food pantries and charity services. None of it is flashy and it happens below the radar. Sadly it’s the screaming evangelicals and TV preachers who make the news.
RaflW
@TonyG: I’m feeling a little XTC coming on.
brantl
@schrodingers_cat: At their worst, they teach superstition, snobism, otherism, and have often taken the opportunity to kill “the heathens”. You have to take the good with the bad.
Dopey-o
no, we don’t have to take to bad with the good. Jesus said “The hot and the cold i will take unto myself, but the lukewarm i will vomit out of my mouth.”
I particularly like his choice of the word “vomit,” seems appropriate for the RW J Xtianists who serve Satan in our modern age.
dnfree
@Scout211: I want to know what happened to Iowa also. Not the state I remember visiting in my youth. Those relatives didn’t seem to be nuts.
Benno
@Kent: Not an ethnicity thing, no, but a person’s name is usually a dead give-away. It’s the same way in Pakistan, where I, a white guy from Illinois, am sometimes mistaken for a Pathan, which I am most definitely not. But names like Messi, Parmar and, well, Khan will identify your religion whether you are Sindhi, Gujurati or Tamil.