• 1 Post
  • 411 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 24th, 2025

help-circle



  • This is what gives away the answer (emphasis added):

    Russian ultranationalist milbloggers, a key pro-war constituency for Russian President Vladimir Putin, continued to reject the modified peace proposal, criticize the United States for moving away from Russian demands, and claim that Europe only wants to continue the war in Ukraine.[16] The milbloggers called for Russia to achieve its war aims by force instead.[17] The Kremlin has refused to meaningfully negotiate in response to all US-led peace initiatives thus far in 2025, and has shown no willingness to make the significant compromises required of a negotiation process.[18] The Kremlin very likely aims to prolong negotiations to end the war to allow Russian forces to continue advancing on the battlefield. The Kremlin likely plans to use Russian advances to further intensify information operations aimed at convincing the West and Ukraine that a Russian military victory is inevitable and that Ukraine should capitulate to Russia’s demands. The Kremlin continues to show no willingness to compromise for good-faith peace negotiations and has not set conditions for Russians to accept anything less than a full Russian victory in Ukraine.

    If they aren’t setting up conditions for the civilian population of Russia to accept less than full victory–propaganda like “we have accomplished what we need to in Ukraine, and now is the time for the Russian people to have peace”–then don’t expect them to negotiate in good faith. Even the full 28-point peace proposal, which was clearly written by Russia and has been whittled down to 19 points, was never meant to be taken seriously. It was meant to say “see, we made an offer, and they rejected it”.














  • . . . the fundamental ideas about rates of change seem like they’re something that everyone human deserves to be exposed to.

    People understand the idea of instantaneous speed intuitively. The trouble is giving it a rigorous mathematical foundation, and that’s what calculus does. Take away the rigor, and you can teach the basic ideas to anyone with some exposure to algebra. 6th grade, maybe earlier. It’s not particularly remarkable or even that useful for most people.

    When you go into a college major that requires calculus, they tend to make you take it all over again no matter if you took it in high school or not.

    Probability and statistics are far more important. We run into them constantly in daily life, and most people do not have a firm grounding in them.