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On January 17 2026 06:55 Manit0u wrote: Yeah, unfortunately the flood of AI created garbage has forced legit creators to also use those generic click-bait titles. It gets harder and harder to get the real content.
To be honest, I haven't really noticed the click-bait title at first because I'm using dearrow plugin that removes click-bait titles and thumbnails from youtube so it seemed more "normal" to me.
I disagree. That is clearly a type 2 clickbait title. Type 1 clickbait is necessary and even desirable. Context:
On January 17 2026 06:55 Manit0u wrote: Yeah, unfortunately the flood of AI created garbage has forced legit creators to also use those generic click-bait titles. It gets harder and harder to get the real content.
To be honest, I haven't really noticed the click-bait title at first because I'm using dearrow plugin that removes click-bait titles and thumbnails from youtube so it seemed more "normal" to me.
In my personal opinion no click-bait is "desired". I much preferred YouTube when it wasn't all about mass engagement. AFAIK most creators nowadays just use automated tools to generate titles and thumbnails for them to maximize views and thus algo positioning and that's why so many YT thumbnails looks pretty much the same. Same colors, same font, some outrageous title and quite often an image that has nothing to do with the actual content. I hate this but I guess we're drifting way off topic here...
At least I watched the video I linked instead of just mindlessly posting it based on the title. There were some interesting things said there about the Russian army. Like soldiers being segregated into different special units if they're sick, wearing armbands informing others that they have HIV, syphilis etc. and being basically used primarily as cannon fodder. Or that when it comes to the exchange of POWs Russia prioritizes healthy ethnic Russians so they can throw them back into the meat grinder ASAP (some of the POWs have been captured like 3 or 4 times already, exchanged and then just pushed to the front again).
I really detest the clickbaity nature of a lot of Youtubers covering this war, it seems in such bad taste and it exploits our basest instincts and biases for information we want to be true.
Ironically, Veritaseum is guilty of it as well, better then most, but loves to put controversial or statements that implicate the answer is mind blowing or goes against current physics when it does not, part of the reason why I stopped watching that channel.
The overall way algorithms work is, in my estimation, one of the biggest and most successful tools in Putin's playbook, Russians were very early adopters of the online information warfare techniques, troll farms, bot farms, specialized hacking units, micro-targeted adds, harvesting people's information and shaping the propaganda to fit it.
I'd argue that without Russians being super successful in all of these techniques and using them to shape global sentiments we could have avoided:
And so much more, if we had people less sympathetic to Russia all accross the EU and USA I'm pretty sure the full scale invasion wouldn't have been done and even if it was Russians would be pushed out from everywhere except perhaps Crimea and Donbas.
Ironically, Veritaseum is guilty of it as well, better then most, but loves to put controversial or statements that implicate the answer is mind blowing or goes against current physics when it does not, part of the reason why I stopped watching that channel.
I stopped watching Veritasium when he talked about something i know a lot about, and everything he said felt ... not totally incorrect, but also not correct. I was of the opinion that there was only half of the coin there, and at least one important perspective was missing to make it sound more impressive.
And at that point, i had to assume that that is how he treats everything, so i couldn't trust when he talks about stuff i don't know as much about.
Agreed on the information point. I think in the future we will come to view the way algorithms shape information in social media as the lead, asbestos or radium of our generation.
Ironically, Veritaseum is guilty of it as well, better then most, but loves to put controversial or statements that implicate the answer is mind blowing or goes against current physics when it does not, part of the reason why I stopped watching that channel.
I stopped watching Veritasium when he talked about something i know a lot about, and everything he said felt ... not totally incorrect, but also not correct. I was of the opinion that there was only half of the coin there, and at least one important perspective was missing to make it sound more impressive.
And at that point, i had to assume that that is how he treats everything, so i couldn't trust when he talks about stuff i don't know as much about.
Agreed on the information point. I think in the future we will come to view the way algorithms shape information in social media as the lead, asbestos or radium of our generation.
I stopped watching Veritasium and some other channels like Astrum after I learned they have been bought out by hedge funds
Yeah, for me it was the "No one has measured the speed of light".
I mean, sure, 1 way vs 2 way speed of light, through atmosphere, clock syncing, there are gotchas that you can use (and he did use many) in order to make the title accurate, but for someone who is arguably the most famous science communicators on the internet he did a lot of damage, because there's an army of half baked conspiracy theorists who question science as a sport who would then use this video as a "see, scientists can't do this very obvious thing so how do we know if anything is correct".
I guess it all boils down to money and capitalism, Ukraine was invaded because EU tried to placate Putin by strengthening the economic ties, thinking he'd never give that up and risk sanctions over Ukraine, they were wrong.
The American oligarchs saw that a Republican, Trumpy regime is going to deregulate them and allow them to enact their libertarian cyberpunk fantasies, so they went all in on him.
A good way to achieve this is to completely abandon the western led rules based world order, so we are back at multi-polar world in which might makes right, and money is power, and money is speech, so they rule the world.
My thoughts about Veritasium are similar to Yours. The titles are too sensational for me to even click. PBS Space Time, Cool Worlds, and Numberphile are the things for me, at least right now.
Sorry to join the offtopic bandwagon, but I gotta say as far as entertaining science communicators go I strongly recommend Angela Collier, absolute gem of a channel.
On January 20 2026 01:22 Jankisa wrote: I guess it all boils down to money and capitalism, Ukraine was invaded because EU tried to placate Putin by strengthening the economic ties, thinking he'd never give that up and risk sanctions over Ukraine, they were wrong.
The American oligarchs saw that a Republican, Trumpy regime is going to deregulate them and allow them to enact their libertarian cyberpunk fantasies, so they went all in on him.
A good way to achieve this is to completely abandon the western led rules based world order, so we are back at multi-polar world in which might makes right, and money is power, and money is speech, so they rule the world.
This is a bit more complex than that. Corpo bros in the US sure viewed Trump as a vehicle to deregulation, where they can thrive on unbound markets and simply gobble up more and more companies when they're on the downturn to make huge profits when the market recovers. But what really allows them to do that more than anything is how globalized the world is now. They're not really tied to any particular country, they can go and live wherever they want so if they ruin a country for personal profit they don't really care because they don't have to live in it.
Just how multi-millionnaires of old like Rockefeller and his predecesors were investing heavily in the local community by building libraries, roads, theaters, galleries because they wanted to live in a nice neighbourhood the current top 1% (or even more) can just go wherever so all they do is suck the money out of the economy for their personal gain and don't give anything back (except for maybe some shady charity to get more tax cuts and improve PR).
On topic of things to learn from the war. Energy infrastructure is very sensitive and somewhat expensive. Perhaps considering fortifying/digging down larger transformers should be the standard if you expect to be in a long war. (Though nobody expects that and it is quite expensive.)
@Manit0u, I'm not sure I get what you are trying to say here, being a USA company is a tremendous force multiplier (if we are going to use those terms), USA has successfully (under multiple administrations) bullied whole countries by threatening all kinds of consequences if their companies were at risk of being regulated. They have protected them from consequences of their extremely lax moderation policies and also utilized them to apply power where it deemed necessary.
There is a reason why all these people went to USA to make their billions, the 2 top spreaders of fascism by monetary contributions and some of the wealthiest men in the world, Peter Thiel and Elon Musk are both not American by birth, they both draw roots to Apartheid South Africa (+ Thiel from Germany as well) and they obviously saw the potential to realize their dreams of them being on top of the world by going to the place of maximum capitalism.
They are also the ones pulling the strings to have their buddies pardoned (see Honduran president), Trump got the Greenland idea from a Billionaire as well, Musk is already trying to build company towns in USA again and all of them are enemies of Ukraine and EU.
They clearly choose their allegiance and just because Thiel bought himself a fallout bunker along with a New Zealand citizenship it doesn't mean that they are these stateless actors that you are describing.
They are putting the US (and theirs) interest first and they have extremely far reaching influence. Combine Twitter, Palantir and StarLink and you get access to incredible amounts of secure systems and data, plus you have hands on levers of public opinion in half of the world.
That shit is scary, and I don't think that a direct comparison to USA robber barons really work, especially since the world was a much bigger place back then and these folks were, as you noted, at least a bit charitable and worried about their legacy beyond conquest.
I think this situation is much closer to the "Business plot" but it succeeded and the oligarchs got their guy in:
Well, got him in, again, I guess, since the first time around not as many were on board (likely due to not recognizing the opportunity in time), the first time it was just Thiel and a few other ghouls like Murdoch, the second time around everyone, from Musk to Zuck to Bezos were all in, we'll see if the republic can come back from it.
On January 20 2026 02:48 Yurie wrote: On topic of things to learn from the war. Energy infrastructure is very sensitive and somewhat expensive. Perhaps considering fortifying/digging down larger transformers should be the standard if you expect to be in a long war. (Though nobody expects that and it is quite expensive.)
I work with many Ukrainians and yeah, this is a big takeaway for me as well.
It's remarkable how everyone over there has adjusted tho, we are in IT and after a big overnight drone / missile attack these guys amazingly just show up at work, even if there is no power.
They all have UPS-s and power banks and basically don't miss a day of work, even if they have no power.
Recently when they targeted heating infrastructure, our company offered everyone to come and sleep in the offices and stocked up on blankets and mats.
I think a more realistic and less expensive way of building resilience to these kinds of attacks is to have as many people be able to access these independent sources of energy.
Being able to heat yourself using firewood, assuming you are somewhere more rural should be a must. Having large batteries and sources of renewable energy (portable solar panels, wind catchers etc.) should be on the list as well.
A big battery and a small diesel or gas generators are a big boon in these kind of situations as well.
If I was an investing type, I'd look for companies making those and put money in them, it seems like a good bet given the uncertain path we are barreling down on.
On January 20 2026 02:56 Jankisa wrote: They clearly choose their allegiance and just because Thiel bought himself a fallout bunker along with a New Zealand citizenship it doesn't mean that they are these stateless actors that you are describing.
I'm not saying they are "stateless," I'm saying that with their wealth and ease of travel they're not really tied down to some particular country. They can make big bucks by exploiting lack of regulations in the US, even if it will turn the country into shit in the long run while happily touring the world on their gigantic yachts, enjoying life in luxurious penthouses in Monaco etc. so they never have to see or feel the fallout of reckless money-making.
And that's not even taking into account their massively swollen egos and complete inability to comprehend the plight of an average person since they're so detached from standard reality. Prices of everyday goods or rent going up by 10-20% are of no concern to them while they can ruin regular people.
I guess that makes sense, on the other hand, immense wealth could always isolate you from consequences of stuff, plenty of Nazis went on to live out their lives in South America, plenty of people who burnt bridges and had mobs sicked on them in the old world moved on to the new one, nation states, after all, are a relatively new invention, before that, it was all about money and land, which is what these ghouls are striving for.
They all subscribe to (at least parts) of the philosophy of politics promoted by Curtis Yarvin:
Basically going back to feudal times, putting all the power in the hands of a "CEO King", it's all bonkers but, unfortunately this seems to be where the things are heading.
With them increasing VAT and small business taxes, it sure seems like they can't do this for much longer. Here's hoping.
They are also facing logistics crisis and a lot of big firms doing construction and stuff are pretty much shutting down. One of the biggest concrete-production facilities in Russia has completely suspended 2 out of their 3 locations and have halved the output of the third.
Some good info on drone warfare. Also, Ukrainians plan to get to 50k russian kills (not wounded) per month this year.
Aspirational goal. Hard to go from around ~3k to 50k, needs solid planning and execution from the entire organization. The only way to hit that would be to get to 0 wounded since they all die and still hit more people than they do normally. Russia would have to help by launching mechanized large scale offensives or stop reinforcing at all.
The only realistic path would be to hit Moscow or other large cities and aim for citizens. But Ukraine doesn't currently have the capacity to do that. And if they did they would lose a lot of support from EU, which is a war losing move.
Some good info on drone warfare. Also, Ukrainians plan to get to 50k russian kills (not wounded) per month this year.
Aspirational goal. Hard to go from around ~3k to 50k, needs solid planning and execution from the entire organization. The only way to hit that would be to get to 0 wounded since they all die and still hit more people than they do normally. Russia would have to help by launching mechanized large scale offensives or stop reinforcing at all.
The only realistic path would be to hit Moscow or other large cities and aim for citizens. But Ukraine doesn't currently have the capacity to do that. And if they did they would lose a lot of support from EU, which is a war losing move.
Ukraine claim they kill 35k visually confirmed every month already
"Independent estimates put total Russian military casualties at over ~1.1–1.2 million since February 2022, which averages to many thousands per month across the duration of the war."
"NATO leadership has cited about 25,000 Russian soldiers killed per month"
"A broad count of 415,000 total Russian casualties (killed + wounded) in 2025 breaks down to roughly ≈34,000 per month on average."
Logically adds up perfectly, russia is recruiting 30k+ every month for the last 3 years with large sign bonuses, if they lost 3k per month their army would be absolutely massive and 0% chance they would still be recruiting 30k+ people every month with large bonuses, their recruitment basicly keeps the army roughly at the same size at all times
EPT
