• Aisteru@lemmy.aisteru.ch
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    15 days ago

    Now, I’m all for the freedom of defending your country… But am I the only one thinking that this is presented in a bit too much of a good light? Like, what is the title supposed to make me feel? If the nationalities were reversed, would this have been posted here still?

    I genuinely thank you for sharing this info, but I can’t help feeling uncomfortable reading about atrocious killing devices in a technology thread.

    • return2ozma@lemmy.worldOP
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      15 days ago

      I’m right there with you. My first reaction to the video in the article was “well that’s terrifying”.

    • DarkThoughts@fedia.io
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      15 days ago

      If the nationalities were reversed, would this have been posted here still?

      If Russia was illegally invaded & genocided by Ukraine as a consequence for wanting to become democratic and joining the West, then yes, people would rather root for Russia instead.

      If Russia don’t want their men to get “atrociously killed”, then they can just fuck off back into their own country.

    • Toribor@corndog.social
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      15 days ago

      I take no delight in killing but Russian forces could leave Ukraine at any point and put an end to it.

        • Takios@discuss.tchncs.de
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          15 days ago

          The russian soldiers are in an awful predicament in this war. But they are still the aggressors and Ukraine has the right (obligation even, seeing what Russia tends to do to civilian population it conquers) to defend itself against them…and as awful as these weapons are, they have not been used in an illegal way here according to international law (something that Russia doesn’t give a flying fuck about, btw.).
          Personally, I don’t see a moral issue here though I of course would prefer if noone had to die of which only happens in the case of Putin withdrawing his troops right now.

          • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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            15 days ago

            Maybe, but I’ve seen plenty of videos of Russians attempting to surrender to drones, and getting killed anyway.

            • littlewonder@lemmy.world
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              14 days ago

              I have some questions you might ask yourself:

              What is the count of those vs. the number of surrendered Russians being treated well?

              Which one is more likely to be in the news?

              Which one is more likely to be spread around by Russian bots?

              Which will be more likely to be suppressed?

              • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                14 days ago

                What is the count of those vs. the number of surrendered Russians being treated well?

                There is no credible data.

                Which one is more likely to be in the news?

                Neither, I live in America, the news only intentionally covers Russian war crimes. I say intentionally, since I remember a CNN segment near the start of the invasion where armed Ukrainian soldiers jumped out of an ambulance in the background.

                The opposite would probably be true if I lived in Russia.

                Which one is more likely to be spread around by Russian bots?

                I assume it’s not Russian bots posting Ukrainian drone footage to the combat footage sub.

                Which will be more likely to be suppressed?

                Well I haven’t seen any news covering Ukrainian war crimes and I’ve seen plenty of news covering Russian war crimes, and I know it’s not because Ukraine isn’t doing any war crimes.

                The reverse would probably be true for someone living in Russia.

      • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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        15 days ago

        Yeah I’m not sure that war crimes work that way. You don’t get a pass because the opponent is doing illegal things.

        • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          Using incendiaries away from civilians isn’t a war crime regardless of which side uses them

        • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          You literally get a pass because its not illegal to set an enemy on fire any more than its illegal to blow a hole in their guts with a bullet or fill their torso full of shrapnel. I’m not sure why you think it would be.

        • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          Even the US uses white phosphorus against infantry in violation of international law. I can’t imagine what we’d resort to with Russian soliders on our soil.

          • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
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            13 days ago

            WP isn’t illegal. It’s illegal to torch down civilian structures, with Willy Pete or any other technology. But it’s always been fair game to use incendiaries against combatants. War is hell.

          • Glitterbomb@lemmy.world
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            14 days ago

            Lol Russian soldiers on US soil? The US military would do good to hang back, avert their gaze, and let the US citizens handle things how they see fit. Plausible deniability and all that

            • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
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              14 days ago

              This fucking waffle maker in my comments above yours keeps trying to convince me that America hasnt “experienced” war. And that war is horrible, as if America isn’t the most successful War tribe in all of recorded history.

              • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                14 days ago

                If successful means achieving none of your strategic objectives, but wasting trillions killing a whole bunch of civilians, sure.

                • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
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                  14 days ago

                  Yea that.

                  But like also WW1, WW2 on two separate fronts…at the same time, Korean war, Kosovo.

                  Honerable mentions: Greek civil war, Afghanistan Russian war, Arabian Israel wars.

                  Oh right…lol. the American civil war, and the American revolution, the war of 1812, the Spanish American war…

                  Well shit Skippy …weve been in some conflicts. How many aircraft carriers does your country have floating around?

          • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
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            15 days ago

            Oh man…Geneva convention would be out the window and most land based invaders at that point would probably beg to be shipped back. And it’s not because of the military in America. It’s because of its inhabitants. When the banjos start tuning in the Appalachian forests you know Hell is a safer space than anywhere you’re going to reach.

            • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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              15 days ago

              That’s easy to say without bullet holes in your buildings and bombs being found every few months in your capital.

              IMO the US public is presenting so warlike because they never experienced war directly to a scale of WWII as a populace, especially not in living memory.

              War does not look like “let’s use all our guns and go kick commie ass”, especially resisting an occupation. It looks like your hometown burned and poisoned, never to be rebuilt in your lifetime. It looks like people you know and care about dying, being raped with impunity, or just plain disappearing. If you pick up a rifle, you are going up against trained and experienced and also more importantly, quite desensitized enemies who have been doing what you are planning to do for months if not years. And even if you shoot one, they will hang ten of your townsfolk tomorrow.

              Just look at Mariupol and Gaza and think whether anyone would thrive in that environment.

              • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee
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                15 days ago

                Do you understand how many veterans are in America? How many militia there are? How many guns we have?

                There’s a reason America didn’t get land invaded other than the giant ocean and logistical shit storm it would be. It’s our gun per person situation.

                You remember how hard it was for America to fight Afghanistan in the mountains? Imagine another country fighting America in their mountains lol. No infinite ammo to shell mountains, Americans trained with rifles commercially available to fire cleanly 1KM. Every. Single. American. Has one…most that own guns have a decent stock pile of ammo. Shit my 7 year old can shoot a soda cap off at 30 yards with iron sights.

                We readily have explosives we can order from Amazon… 2/3 of our rural population drives what Europeans would consider monster trucks. That’s one hell of a technical.

                This wouldn’t be a “go wolverines” situation. This would be 80+ years of war and gun culture ingrained in Americans through countless years in human lives of video games and television propaganda. Ukraine has a population of 38 million. America has 120 million just on its Eastern coasts. I think if we come to a middle ground here I think we can both agree it wouldn’t be pretty but significant pushback and ultimate failure on an invaders advances purely on the geology and American civilian militarization factor.

                • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyz
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                  14 days ago

                  I am not talking about whether strategically it would be a good idea to engage in conventional warfare with the US. I am talking about the fact that how you and a lot of Americans are talking about war means that they have never really experienced one, not in living memory at least.

                  War is a nightmare. It’s not a valiant defence with plucky resistance fighters outwitting the enemy in the mountains. It’s seeing your buddy still alive and conscious with half his face missing after being hit by a drone. It’s your wife writing “please, it’s the children here” in front of the school in chalk before they are hit anyway with white phosphorus, burning their flesh off slowly. It’s soldiers raping you for fun, even if you are a man, before they kill you.

                  It’s our gun per person situation.

                  How many of those guns are effective against artillery? Against even 60 year old tanks? Against remote targeting machine guns with thermal sights? Against attack helicopters? Russia had more tanks per person than any country on Earth, they are still getting trounced. Modern warfare does not care about your semi auto at home.

                  You remember how hard it was for America to fight Afghanistan in the mountains? Imagine another country fighting America in their mountains lol.

                  You remember how that war looked? Look at this article. One battle, 18 dead from the occupying side, 1000+ local soldiers killed. Could you bear to read these in the US? Can you imagine how the US would look like after fighting 20 years of this? Let me help you, it would look like Afghanistan.

                  America has 120 million just on its Eastern coasts.

                  China has an army of 2 million at peacetime, and it is not maintaining as many overseas bases as the US. The US currently has around 1 million people in the army one way or another. Of course, if it was real, total war as you imagine, these numbers would go up, fast.

                  During WWII, the Soviet Union had a population of around 200 million. 26 million people died just on their side, of which only 10.5 million were soldiers. 2 million of these people died in a single battle, in Stalingrad. We have gotten much, much better at killing people since then.

                  This would be 80+ years of war and gun culture ingrained in Americans through countless years in human lives of video games and television propaganda.

                  You don’t know war. War is hell on earth. It is tragedy on a mass scale, leaving scars for generations on whole societies. Seeing war movies in TV does not prepare you for shit. The US does not even have conscription.

                  Shit my 7 year old can shoot a soda cap off at 30 yards with iron sights.

                  Great, what will he do against incendiary rocket artillery at 10 km? You know, the kind which bursts in the air and covers him in burning napalm?

        • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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          15 days ago

          …being in nursing school is giving me a strong hatred for the imperial system.

          The doctor ordered 35mg/kg Watdafuqenol IV QID. Available is a 2’ by 15" section of torn out carpet soaked in spilled Watdafuqenol; when wrung out into the patient’s left shoe, you get 97 chipmunk-mouthfuls diluted to a concentration of 24 Watdafuqenol to 1 toe jam. How many shot glasses full do you administer?

          • GiveMemes@jlai.lu
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            15 days ago

            You might’ve already seen this, but try using the method of dimensional analysis where you work backwards on a single line and you’ll never get one of those problems wrong again.

            The key is just working backwards by units using the equations you have available. I know somebody that only got one of the questions on his MCAT correct bc he used this method lol.

            • Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world
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              15 days ago

              I use dimensional analysis, but it’s over two lines… and not sure what you mean by working backwards, since the order doesn’t really matter so long as every value is in the correct line.

              Since typing it out would be ugly as sin, example image stolen from google:

              …they like to give us things like pt weight in lbs and oz, and ask for final product of tablespoons or some shit cuz they enjoy wasting our time, lol.

              That the type you mean?

              I know there are a few different ways to crunch the numbers, but DA is my favorite so far cuz it’s so consistent.

              *edit, example pic changed, first one put mcg twice in the same line, which is a weird move. /shrug

              • oldfart@lemm.ee
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                15 days ago

                So USAnian drugs are in metric units? I hope in actual work nurses get to use a phone app or something because this asks for mistakes

                • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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                  15 days ago

                  Even in the US, science is mostly metric. But most US people are not exactly the scientific kind…

  • ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works
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    15 days ago

    This is what international law has to say about incendiary weapons:

    1. It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual civilians or civilian objects the object of attack by incendiary weapons.
    1. It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.
    1. It is further prohibited to make any military objective located within a concentration of civilians the object of attack by means of incendiary weapons other than air-delivered incendiary weapons, except when such military objective is clearly separated from the concentration of civilians and all feasible precautions are taken with a view to limiting the incendiary effects to the military objective and to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects.
    1. It is prohibited to make forests or other kinds of plant cover the object of attack by incendiary weapons except when such natural elements are used to cover, conceal or camouflage combatants or other military objectives, or are themselves military objectives.

    This treeline is clearly not located within a concentration of civilians and it is concealing (or plausibly believed to be concealing) enemy combatants and therefore the use of incendiary weapons is unambiguously legal.

    • booly@sh.itjust.works
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      15 days ago

      The United States and the UK successfully blocked attempts to outlaw all use of incendiary weapons, and all use of incendiary weapons against personnel, and all use of incendiary weapons against forests and plant cover.

      This is an area where it’s perfectly reasonable to disagree with how the US watered down this convention, to push for stricter rules on this, and to condemn the use of thermite as an anti-personnel weapon and the use of incendiary weapons on plants that are being used for cover and concealment of military objectives.

      So pointing out that this might technically be legal isn’t enough for me to personally be OK with this. I think it’s morally reprehensible, and I’d prefer for Ukraine to keep the moral high ground in this war.

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        15 days ago

        The United States and the UK successfully blocked attempts to outlaw all use of incendiary weapons

        That’s because incendiary weapons are great for exterminating villages full of poor people in the colonized world - ie, the kind of wars the US and UK prefer to wage.

    • Firestorm Druid@lemmy.zip
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      15 days ago

      Are all of these “laws” in place because incendiary weapons are especially cruel compared to a simple shot to the dome?

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        15 days ago

        It’s because of their indiscriminate nature.

        The US use of napalm on cities in Korea contributed to the nearly 20% of their population that was wiped out.

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Apart from that, their Russian attacker does not give a flying f-ck about international law from the start either, so after quite some illegal events (rape, torturing/killing POWs, shelling and bombing hospitals and schools), there is no reason to hold back any longer. It would just enable the Russians to maim and kill more Ukrainian civilists.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        15 days ago

        The point of these laws is to protect civilians from weapons that can’t be used to target just military targets. Do you give a shit about the people in Ukraine beyond their use as cannon fodder?