Addendum:

A human “casualty” total is also usually the sum of KIA and disabled/wounded.

It varies from conflct to confict and country to country.

(KIA * 3) is generally a “casualty count”, but that is a rough estimate always. (In some cases, large equipment is included in the total sum of casualty count, but that isn’t applicable here.)

(Vehicle kill * estimate number of passengers) can be a thing.

My point: fog of war is a bitch and true numbers won’t be known for years.

I certainly wouldn’t say it was incompetent and there is a good set of data points. Given the nature of what the study is attempting to correlate, not explaining what limitations were taken into account is a a significant limitation, IMHO. It is called out that there are limitations, but that it is essentially just a short footnote. (The full paper does a better job of calling out other studies and some contradictions.)

This referenced study found the opposite and had a no (or weaker correlation) to cancer associated with SSBs: Khairan P, et al. Sugary drink consumption and the subsequent risk of gastric cancer: Khairan P, et al. Sugary drink consumption and the subsequent risk of gastric cancer: The Japan Public Health Center-based Prospective Study. Eur J Clin Nutr 2023;77:218-25.

Without doing a comparative analysis of the studies, which would be interesting, I have open questions about what the key differences were. My first guess (without calling either study “wrong”) is that maybe risk factors were calculated differently?

On the darker side, there is motivation for keying-in on a specific correlation and that cannot be ignored either. (Past grants, groups requesting the study, etc.) The original paper also sets itself up to be a marketing call-out for artificially sweetened beverages, unfortunately. (I am not saying that is the intent, but the wording aligns exactly with what vitamin water-type company would want to see. It made for a good Lemmy post title, at a minimum.)

At the end of the day, they stated what they were looking for and presented what seems to be a clean analysis of that data. The limitations that were presented have the potential to be significant, however.

“War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the masses.” -Major General Smedley D. Butler.

So my chance of developing gastric cancer doubles to 1.8% chance over my lifetime if I drink sugar-beverages every day… (This math wasn’t sponsored by a cancer testing company.)

After you actually get the the study, there wasn’t any mention of other associated lifestyle behaviors that may contribute to the risk of gastric cancers. What sticks out to me is that people drinking one or more sugar-packed beverages per day likely have additional diet or lifestyle concerns.

It’s not that I think the number crunching for the study was wrong or that the sample sizes were too small, it’s just that it was extremely focused on making a correlation for the sake of making a correlation.

Domestic borrowing is helpful, but in Russia’s case, they will need to fully control every aspect of their economy as well, from capping prices on all consumer goods to directly propping up critical domestic manufacturing companies.

I won’t pretend to know all the details of how mostly isolated wartime economies function. Still, borrowing from the public is a huge part of this, but most of it based around simply keeping the people thinking their currency has value while giving everyone jobs to manufacture goods for the war effort. (If taxation becomes extreme, then they start manufacturing bodies for the war effort from people who can’t pay or doge.)

Russia still has active trading partners and can still barter raw materials for other things. The gas shortages due to fires at refineries caused by “careless smokers” is really hitting them hard though…

But yeah, like I mentioned before, wartime economies are a thing and they can function for quite a number of years. Up to and during WW2, deficit spending and taxation for Germany was insane. (Most of that debt was cancelled after the war as Germany had no economy left to pay it back.)

They just fake their economy for while, until they can’t. That’s an extremely simplic way to put it, but for idiots like me, it’s easier to understand.

Simply “printing more money” doesn’t work and the “real” economy becomes mostly goods, services and guns. Extreme inflation will drain bank accounts naturally, I speculate.

Feel free to completely correct me here, but there seem to be way to drain bank accounts without having it perceived as government theft, is my main point. (TBH, currency value makes little sense to me with the ways governments print and burn it at massive rates. It’s just all … fake to me.)

Before or after their mandatory service time?

I don’t think you know how nicotine/tobacco products are used for money laundering. Just Google it.

You seem hell bent on trying to prove these are pointless raids. Maybe they are, but your arguments are just bad.

The core of this is anti money laundering and that, in many cases, is not victimless. You also point out that they have limited resources, but try to roll into an argument about how trying to preserve those resources is pointless?

Also, law enforcement isn’t exactly a “massive resource” spend when the cost of that should already be baked into yearly country expenses. The only real expenditure is time for investigation. If this really is tied into luxury construction money laundering, we could he talking about hundreds of millions of dollars saved or recovered by only paying the salaries of a few law enforcement officers that will need to work anyway.

Again, I think you missed a few words in the article. It’s an article about black market nicotine and the issues most countries have with controlling substances that are regulated.

Careful online though! With your interpretation of this news article, it seems you might easily be swayed by heavily biased or misleading information sources. Here is a good explainer of how to spot such things: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/topics/en/article/20250227STO27081/spotting-disinformation-six-tactics-used-to-fool-us

No, they aren’t. OP even copied the summary for you.

There are some fairly beast defense lines just past Pokrovsk the Ukraine has had plenty of time to build. Hopefully it works as advertised.

I would speculate that it’s related to Russia’s ability to retaliate and Russian allies willingness to help. Also, Russian reliance on the shadow oil trade is exponentially higher than it was a couple of years ago, so the investment loss is much higher now.

Most of all, politicians are just slow. I am not extremely familiar with EU politics, but my assumption is that decisions can take much longer to make when multiple countries are involved in taking actions like this.

You can interpret anything how you choose, kind of like we have to do with your grammar.

You are missing my point, but I also wasn’t clear enough. In proper context, we are saying the same thing.

I worded that sentence carefully, as to your point, I don’t actually want to tell people to go to Reddit. However, each platform is unique in its own way. If someone wants the Reddit experience, that is the only place they are going to find it. Reddit content is generally curated algorithmically while Lemmy content is not. It’s could be the same articles on the same day, but two different experiences.

OP was referring to reposting content for someone who seemed to be looking for the same volume of content that is on Reddit that is heavily sorted, unless I missed something. I was just saying that this platform doesn’t really support that kind of thing in a constructive way. The articles and the presentation combined make the platform “content”.

Something similar has been done before and it was really easy to spot. I won’t get into the details, but it was really trashy. There are other communities that try to copy Reddit already and I block most of them.

Communities driven by one persons posts or by a cluster of bots generally suck. Yes, communities must start with only one person, but if nobody else likes the idea and the community doesn’t drive participation from Lemmy as a whole, it’s simply noise.

Post content that you like, in communities that matter to you. If you like a particular strain of content, start a new community. People will join or they won’t. Read the room and continue driving the community, or don’t.

Automated posts have their place, but most people can spot it fairly quick. It generally doesn’t drive participation as much as organic posts.

Bluntly though, if you want Reddit content, go to Reddit. Lemmy isn’t Reddit and that is what people generally like about it.

Corruption is actually a feature in this case. Most of that cash is actually pumped directly into local economies. /s

I was teaching myself assembly language and C when I was in 7th grade, so sure. If a kid is self-motivated enough then the sky is the limit.

Kids are capable of some amazing things if given the right tools, enough time and plenty of positive reinforcement.

That’s neat, but kinda pointless if ancient Romans didn’t have any bits to cover up in the first place.

That’ll be interesting when Nintendo just turns around and sues YouTube for allowing videos of emulators on its platform or for every time a creator even mentions the name Nintendo in an unapproved context.

https://www.idahostatejournal.com/community/isu-researchers-use-cockroaches-to-search-for-narcotics/article_85a9e420-dece-537d-b124-9b1037296ef0.html

“It is a really simple design, but it takes a long time. We are just rewarding them sugar water when we give them drugs.”

They could probably just give them more lines of blow… just sayin’…