what happened with Ppauper? 
He disappeared. 
@ppauper 

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
   In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
   For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
   In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
   For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

hopefully not COVID-RIP

I believe he perished in a single vehicle auto accident in New Zealand, as foretold in many of his posts.

I believe he perished in a single vehicle auto accident in New Zealand, as foretold in many of his posts.

jjejeaja, Intentionally, I guess

A 21st Century Conundrum:

Russians don’t seem to be too keen on homosexuality. Putin could easily be gay. Should western propaganda mention this in order to turn Russians against their leader? Or would this lead to blowback with western elites and academics? They are probably already throbbing to side with Putin.

A 21st Century Conundrum:

Russians don’t seem to be too keen on homosexuality. Putin could easily be gay. Should western propaganda mention this in order to turn Russians against their leader? Or would this lead to blowback with western elites and academics? They are probably already throbbing to side with Putin.

Well, he’s known to like doing that thing where men in bathrobes roll around on the floor and hug a lot. Speaking on behalf of western elites and academics, we are pretty much all on team Zelensky now.

Russians don’t seem to be too keen on homosexuality. 

Does anyone in the world care about sexual orientation? Except mad protestants in the style of Ian Paisley and equally mad LGBT(QIA+++) activists.

The question is, can wokeness hinder war efforts?

If given a choice between homosexual slurs and nuclear weapons, I’d wholeheartedly support the former.

A 21st Century Conundrum:

Russians don’t seem to be too keen on homosexuality. Putin could easily be gay. Should western propaganda mention this in order to turn Russians against their leader? Or would this lead to blowback with western elites and academics? They are probably already throbbing to side with Putin.

I think the problem in dealing with Putin is that he might prefer nuclear annihilation of the world to personal humiliation. Face-planting in Ukraine plus disclosures of compromising pictures of him with ... Yeltsin? Gorbachev? Brezhnev? ... Trump? ... RuPaul? ... might push him over the edge.

On the plus side, he seems to be very seriously isolating himself from people who might want to kill him ... which is probably a reasonable thing for him to do at this point. But also isolating himself means he has less oversight of the information he gets and the fulfillment of whatever orders he gets: a fairly small group of people could probably conspire to make him think everything is going fine in Ukraine, or that the nukes have been launched as ordered.

Also on the plus side, I doubt there is much incentive in a fairly poor kleptocracy to spend money on the upkeep of a nuclear arsenal -- Russia apparently has 6,000-ish nuclear weapons, but probably almost all of them over thirty years old and skipped the last twenty years of oil changes and tune ups. I wouldn't expect a car that had been sitting unattended for twenty or thirty years to start up instantly; why would a nuclear weapon? Probably most of them use more stable solid fuel, but still ...

Also, apparently thinking-impaired U.S. Representative Madison Cawthorn ("Mad Caw" to his friends ...) has called Zelenskyy a "thug," which is probably the end of the road for any possibility that Western elites and academics would ever side with Putin.

I use  when I mothball my classics.

Will chemical or nuclear weapons kill the coronavirus?

What coronavirus?