Shitposting since 2005
Everyone’s heard of Marantz, Pioneer, Kenwood, Sansui, Sony, Technics, and Yamaha from the heyday of vintage audio, but I’ve always loved the look of Akai and thought their stuff was overlooked and underrated in the audio community.
I wanted that cassette deck in the worst way, but of course, it was way out of my budget.
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Going back into an active battlezone for a kitty & fishā¦meanwhile back home big strong men are whining over wearing a piece of cloth over their faces and getting a couple pokes in their arms.
Ukraine is showing the world why the United States is rapidly becoming the laughingstock of the world.
Ours is an empire in collapse.
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From The Guardian:
Cyber conflicts are fought in the shadows, but in the case of Russiaās invasion of Ukraine, it is a group that calls itself Anonymous that has made the most public declaration of war. Late on Thursday the hacker collective tweeted from an account linked to Anonymous, @YourAnonOne, that it had Vladimir Putinās regime in its sights.
The Anonymous collective is officially in cyber war against the Russian government. #Anonymous #Ukraine
— Anonymous (@YourAnonOne) February 24, 2022
In the days since, the group has claimed credit for several cyber incidents including distributed denial of service attacks ā where a site is rendered unreachable by being bombarded with traffic ā that have brought down government websites and that of Russia Today, the state-backed news service. The DDoS attacks still appeared to be working on Sunday afternoon, with the official sites for the Kremlin and Ministry of Defence still inaccessible.
Anonymous also said it had hacked the Ministry of Defence database, while on Sunday it was claimed the group had hacked Russian state TV channels, posting pro-Ukraine content including patriotic songs and images from the invasion.
JUST IN: #Russian state TV channels have been hacked by #Anonymous to broadcast the truth about what happens in #Ukraine. #OpRussia #OpKremlin #FckPutin #StandWithUkriane pic.twitter.com/vBq8pQnjPc
— Anonymous TV ???????? (@YourAnonTV) February 26, 2022
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…that despite Putin’s nuclear posturing, the planet is not going to end up a radioactive cinder. At least notĀ now.
From two separate posts atĀ The Palmer Report:
Back when Donald Trump was still occupying the office of President of the United States, and his corrupt connections to Vladimir Putin kept emerging, there was at least some theoretical danger that Trumpās downfall could take Putin down with him. But even though Trump was ousted in disgrace and is now in the process of losing everything, Putin managed to survive his own failed Trump experiment.
Even with Putinās puppet Trump now fully neutered, most of us were still expecting a weakened Putin to remain in control of Russia indefinitely. After all, itās usually others who have paid the price for Putinās failures. But thatās because Putinās gambles over the years have been calculated to make sure that even if they failed, the consequences wouldnāt be catastrophic for him. This is a guy with nine evil lives whoās used them up very carefully.
Thatās what makes it so remarkable that weāre now looking at the realistic possibility of Putin being ousted from power and perhaps even made to disappear in the process. Thatās because Putin has, for whatever still-unknown reasons, decided to bet everything on a Ukraine invasion that was far from a sure thing.
This is the kind of unwise bet that a stable villain only tends to take if heās reached a point of desperation where he fears heās about to be ousted anyway, or if heās learned heās dying and wants to go out with a bang, or if heās lost his mind to the point that he canāt even rely on his own evil pragmatism any longer.
Itās a tricky game to try to figure out whatās going on in Putinās mind at this point, which in addition to having always been evil, now seems to be incoherently evil. But of all the people who are surprised by whatās transpired over the past week, Putin himself surely has to be the most surprised of all.
Putinās allies such as Hungary and Kazakhstan are now refusing to help him. China, which initially appeared interested in siding with Putin and using his antics as cover for its own antics, now seems to be betting on his failure. And the European Union, some of which relies fairly heavily on Russian energy exports, has carried out the history-making move of removing multiple Russian banks from the SWIFT banking system. Not only that, support for Ukraine has suddenly become a rallying cry around the world, in a way that never did materialize back when Putin was having Trump try to sabotage Ukraineās government from within.
Putin couldnāt have possibly seen all of this coming, right? Perhaps he was expecting a certain round of trade sanctions, budgeted for it, and thought that would be that. But how could Putin not have seen this kind of pushback coming? Comparisons to Hitler in general are essentially always over the top. But when you launch an unprovoked military invasion into a sovereign European country, itās difficult to think of any comparisons but Hitler. Putin has done perhaps the one thing that could have evoked this quick of and fierce of a worldwide response.
There are far too many variables at play to try to predict precisely how this will all unfold from here. But we do know that Russiaās economy is now headed for full scale collapse. How long will that take? Tough to say, given that nothing like this has been tried on this scale before. But we do know that the Russian oligarchs will have a very difficult time swallowing whatās about to happen to them. They love their money and their international glamor life, and now theyāve begun losing both.
There has always been one hypothetical that could lead to Putinās downfall and outright ouster, and thatās the scenario where the Russian oligarchs collectively decide he needs to go. Itās just that most of us never expected that hypothetical to happen, because Putin never seemed dumb enough to get himself that severely on the oligarchsā bad side.
Yet here we are, suddenly facing the very real possibility of the end of Vladimir Putin. Will it happen? When will it happen? Again, there are still too many variables to answer those questions. But the specter of Putinās downfall is no longer just a hypothetical. Itās a very real scenario playing out right in front of us.
Itās been clear all along that if there is any way to get Putin to back down in Ukraine, itāll be because the Russian oligarchs pressure him to do it. Thatās why the world has spent the past several days placing so much financial pressure on those oligarchs, cutting off their bank accounts and even seizing their yachts and mansions around the world.
Now two Russian oligarchs, including notorious bad guy Oleg Deripaska, are publicly calling for āpeaceā between Russia and Ukraine. Itās important to understand that when these kinds of things are said publicly among allies, itās always done subtly. But make no mistake: these two oligarchs are telling Putting that he must make this Ukraine debacle go away to the satisfaction of the world, so that their bank accounts can get turned back on. Putin certainly understands that this is what these two oligarchs are saying. The only question is whether there are enough marbles left in his head to care bout surviving this.
There will be a lot of pundit debate about whether this means the oligarchs are āgoodā or ābadā or whether someone like Deripaska can be ātrusted.ā But none of those naive concepts are relevant in the political world. It doesnāt matter if the oligarchs are good or bad people. Theyāve been in bed with Putin for decades, so draw your own conclusions about their morality.
The oligarchs donāt care about right or wrong. But they do care about money and power, and they can be trusted to do whatever they think will be most beneficial for their money and power. Putin has given them a ton of both over the years, but now his antics are threatening both. The oligarchs have to weigh that equation in their heads, and figure out whether Putin is still worth it. And Putin has to weigh whether he thinks the oligarchs will take him out if he doesnāt clean up his Ukraine mess. Those are the concepts thatāll decide how this plays out from here.
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METRO WEEKLY: Barry Williams ā Greg from The Brady Bunch ā is speaking out about the show’s impact, and also about co-star Robert Reed’s sexual orientation:
“That was very difficult and unfair. Youāre talking about a time period where there was a different ā¦ social consciousness and acceptability. Robert did not talk about it. He just didnāt. He was very private. He wasnāt out out, but I can say that when you work together for that many years that closely ā and we spent more time together as a Brady family than we spent with our own families ā you get to know a lot about everybody. There really arenāt any secrets, even if theyāre not being shared.”
[Source]
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