BBC -- Kaliningrad Will Be Met By Hostility Until It Relinquishes Control of Nuclear Weapons
[Nov/Dec 2026]
(LONDON) The British government has made its stance clear on Kaliningrad -- give up your nuclear weapons and then we'll talk.
Some had naively believed Western nations would welcome an independence movement in Kaliningrad with open arms but the United Kingdom has been far more prudent in dealing with the territory.
"It's completely unacceptable that a tiny territory with no means to maintain these weapons or defend themselves with conventional means would hold on to the Russian Iskander missiles. They are Russian nuclear weapons that must either be returned to the Russian Federation or destroyed by international observer bodies."
The United Kingdom does not accept Kaliningrad's independence and even if they were to become a state, they are not recognized by the NPT as a nuclear state, constituting a proliferation risk.
The Foreign Office is considering listing them as a nuclear terrorism risk, as a non-state actor. Sources within the British government say that intense discussions to disarm Kaliningrad in exchange for conventional support have collapsed and that London is looking into "every possible" solution to disarm the small Baltic territory, including even military action.
Whatever good it produced was overwhelmed by the above. Why wouldn’t God’s visit to our planet engender a renaissance of love, liberty, and joy- boosting our civilization to a more peaceful, compassionate, and harmonious future? It would. have. God did not visit us.
Not really much to say here, just very frustrated with how horribly my own mother treats me for “leaving” and I have heard one too many awful things directed toward me (and behind my back) at this point. I have a previous post with some examples if y’all are interested.
tl;dr at the end.
When I was away from the desk, this morning, I got a call from a guest who said he was locked out. I hustled back and found a middle-aged man looking impatient. I asked for his ID. First he said he had it, then he said he didn't. Next, I offered to match his signature with the one he gave us when he signed the paperwork at check-in. He consented, but then jotted down a completely different signature on the Post-It note I gave him. The one on our check-in paperwork was like a circle and a curly-cue, while the one he presented to me at this moment was a full name. Not even slightly similar. Trying to be helpful, I offered a hint:
>It looks like you gave us a quicker signature the first time, the one I have is a lot shorter.
Rather than try a second time with my clue to guide him, he went straight into hostility like a switch had been flipped. He told me his signature is never the same and it's not gonna be the same and he needs to get into his room so I need to quit wasting his time with this.
Well then it's your fault and something like this was bound to happen to you sooner or later.
After his short rant, he asked,
>Are you a professional signature analyst?
I balked at the question, but giving him the benefit of the doubt, I supposed he thought they were only superficially different, which would explain this approach he was taking. I said
>They're very different.
Despite my explanation, he dug his heels in and repeated himself,
>Are you a professional signature analyst?
Irritated at his persistence with this ridiculous approach to the problem, I repeated myself with a little more emphasis:
>It's very different.
He persisted,
>Are you a professional signature analyst? Are you professionally trained to analyze signatures?"
Abandoning any any pretense of being polite to the guy, I blinked slowly, shook my head, and replied,
>That's a nonsense question.
Middle-aged man:
>"Are you a professional signature analyst?
Obviously the guy wanted me to take the bait and say "No I'm not a signature analyst" so he could take what he thought would be the dominant position in what he thought was a debate, but the fact is one signature was an actual signature and one was just a circle. It doesn't take a CIA code-breaker to spot the difference. If he would have come off the "signature analyst" business I could arrive at my next step, but he just kept
... keep reading on reddit ➡Like in stores, restaurants, parks, work, etc? I know many of us Asian dudes in the West are dealt a lot of crap and it certainly doesn’t do us any favors when people have made us into scapegoats for the COVID-19 pandemic. I guess the silver lining through all this is the extra distance strangers leave me when I’m walking. If that reduces my chances of getting sick, I’m all for it.
I've been thinking about why I don't like discussing my non-belief with members in my family, and it generally leads to me thinking that either - they'll get upset, mad, try desperately to convert me back to religion or all of the above.
Then that had me thinking, why wont they just ask, why I feel the way I do? And I thought about it, and I could be wrong, but I think it may be due to the fact that for so many people, they find personal comfort in religion. That comfort helps them deal with their mortality (afterlife), helps them feel better about bad things they've done (absolvment from sin), it gives structure to their lives (a structured religious code) and an easy to follow, yet questionable moral code. So when we say we don't believe, whatever we may say in a discussion form, feels like an attack to their person. It triggers defense mechanisms in their mind that make them unwilling to hear any arguments that may shatter their protective comfort that they gain from religion.
I think it's a human instinct that we all follow as we don't like being uncertain within our lives, we like to believe there is control, and an all powerful deity (deities) provides that control for them. Removing that either pushes responsibility onto them or leaves them hanging in a chaotic quagmire, uncertain of their place in the universe.
Most people don't want to think for themselves, yet live in the illusion that they do, and so forcing them into that situation resorts to them being unwilling to discuss our beliefs and would rather attack, withdraw or convert.
Just my two bits of thought on the subject, please feel free to share your thoughts, but I'd like to see what you guys think.
I find it extremely sad that people can't admit to being vulnerable. More so than anything, I find this difficult for men. But more and more I am finding narcissism is a huge thing for both sexes. As a society we focus on ourselves, being strong, being beautiful, yet somehow this does not coincide with admitting we are not perfect and are still human. We don't acknowledge pain in life (which is everywhere) rather we ignore it. This can be seen in all social media, where we just post the good times, and make our lives look plastic.
I don't get why people feel the need to not admit to being weak. It's not in reality what makes you weak. What makes you weak is the weak parts of your being! Such as being too selfish, such as physical limitations, or pride and stupidity. But if we admit these weaknesses and we work on them that is being strong in my opinion.
I find this increases my misanthropy in human beings. Very rarely do I meet people who will acknowledge their weaknesses they've had in life, or the failures in ourselves, which we all have. They act like an act of over-confidence is somehow a good thing. It just shows more insecurities in the long run. Life is not perfect. Neither are we. If we ignore the pain in life we imply are ingorant, minimizing the pain of others.
My deepest relationships in life (I only have two, my girlfriend and a male best friend) are focused around comforting each other in pain and sadness. We also celebrate the times of joy together. It is a variety of the entirety of life which I have found promotes healthy relationships. Finding someone who is there for you in the bad times, not just the good times. Being self aware and helping others who are in despair is an act of kindness. I'm curious if others agree with this?
We are there for each other. With other people I am met with nothing but hostility and anger if I admit defeat or failure.
I shall close with an ancedote that sparked this post. I did not get a job promotion within my company this last week. I was disappointed by this and told my direct coworker about the lost opportunity (we're somewhat friends, at least within the company). She responded "I don't know what you are talking about, I never have that happen to me because I always get what I want."
Fuck people. Rather than sympathize with you they just want to one-up you in a conversation and act like they are the biggest shit in the world.
The leadership contest is only weeks old, yet on many social media platforms the different “factions” are already ripping shreds out of each other. It’s got to the point where it feels like we’re not even in the same party.
We all want a better, fairer and more equal society. Let’s build from those shared beliefs, not tear each other down because we’re “not left enough” or “too far left”.
Often the CvS debate finds its way into the same cul de sac:
Cap: When you try to implement the socialist vision, bad things happen.
Soc: Those bad things wouldn't happen if capitalism would only stop beating up on socialism.
Absolute monarchy did not just roll over and let liberalism scratch its belly--it fought it to the death, and lost. Competing and mutually exclusive visions of reality are always mutually hostile. Any prevailing ideology displaced the previous status quo by force. Why can't yours?
The argument that "my ideology would be workable if left alone" can be made for anything. We could imagine a society whose organizing principle is that all decisions of governance are made by priests interpreting the splatter of pigeon droppings as the will of the gods. In the absence of any hostile forces, if left alone, this could work. Not very well, but well enough to continue until something, anything else came along.
So if the defense of your ideology is that it could work in a vacuum, how are we to broker the competing claims of your ideology and those of "rule by pigeon"?
I boot up RDO after taking a break to play Sekiro until the Spring update (just finished it yesterday so perfect timing), head to Saint Denis to try my hand at poker, when right outside of town some jabroni takes a shot at me. I put two in his face and go about my business. I get hailed for some random stranger mission and no sooner do I start than said jabroni comes charging at me for round to. I proceed to fight him (and the hostile NPCs) off for several minutes in my attempt to protect some guy from getting his wallet stolen. I eventually kill everyone and drop the guy off outside of town.
No bounty. No hostility increase. No punishment for defending myself whatsoever. Never did get to play poker, but I’m glad to be back!
Today at 0600 hours the Republic of Mobela declared open hostilities with the Imperial Federation of Elysium along the following casus belli: 1 Elysium has flat out ignore every request for recognization on political grounds 2 they have harrassed allies 3 they have harrassed citizens
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Title’s pretty self-explanatory; I might remove this in a bit if this becomes an absolute shitstorm (which I’m not doubting it will). Or the mods will do it first, who knows...
In the few months that I’ve been here, I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of toxicity when it comes to basically everything. It seems like there’s just a lot of negativity, and I’ve really wanted to know why.
For instance, I’ve noticed that photography (at least for me) is like playing Russian Roulette: sometimes I’ll get a few upvotes, and sometimes I get downvoted for seemingly no reason. I think I have a good reason for this part: the vast majority of this sub is made up of photography, and I can understand people loathing photo posts since they’re honestly clogging this sub. (On a kinda related note, after a particular person told me I was overposting, I’ve since limited my photo posts to once a day) I think that the mods should make a dedicated Horizon photography sub; that way, photos aren’t filling up most of this one. But with my luck, there probably already is one...
But going away from that, I’ve noticed that a lot of posts (mostly the comments) here in general are just... mean, to say the least. It seems like no matter what you post, there’s always gonna be at least one of those people, whether as a troll or as a genuine person, who are gonna say something just to get a rise out of you or to piss you off. It appears that that’s just a way of life in this sub, so I might as well accept it.
So assuming the mods (or the people who are gonna rip the very little self-esteem that my teenager body has out of me) don’t jump on this and ban me forever, I just wanna know why the people here are the way that they are, because frankly, I’ve never really felt very welcome here. I also see a lot of negativity that shouldn’t be here. If that’s just how this subreddit works, then so be it, and that’s 15 minutes of my life that I just wasted.
Assuming you spent the time to slog through this rant, thanks for reading.
