So, yeah. At this point, Ukraine's demands should be:

1. Russia withdraws from all of Ukraine, including Luhansk, Donbas, and Crimea.

2. Russia publicly and irrevocably repudiates any and all claims they may have to any and all territory outside of Russia, including but not limited to Ukranian territory; all claims, whatever their origin, be it historical, ethnic, linguistic, or imaginary, all claims, past, present, or future. They must repudiate these claims across all media, both without and within Russia. The list of claims repudiated should be exhaustive, but not exclusive.

And the moment Russia repudiates said claims and is no longer in Ukraine, Ukraine is in NATO. No approval process that Russia could jack-fuck by launching another sneak attack. Just "in, immediately." Any further attacks will trigger Article 5.

They should probably forget about any reparations or getting their hands on any war criminals. The only way they could press those claims would be when the blue and yellow flag flies over Moscow, and nukes will fly before that happens, even if NATO did just basically throw the floodgates open wide and turn all of Ukraine into an arms depot. While that sucks, sometimes you have to settle for the victory you can get, not the one you want; also, Putin, at least, is a dead man either way, as a dictator can't come back from getting his cock knocked in like this in a fight he started. (Or, indeed, one he didn't.) Someone will off him in a year or two at the most.

Also, they can quietly continue their forensic investigations. Sooner or later, some of the crims they want will travel, and then they can have them grabbed and dragged to the Hague.

Honestly, "spite and rage" might make an effective defense there. I cannot tell you how many times my uncle, enraged at me for doing things not-the-way-he-would-have-done-it, threatened to destroy something I had bought to do something my way. For example: LED light-bulbs. Yes, they have an up-front sticker-shock price, and he hated them over incandescent light bulbs, but the sensible thing, once they're already bought, it to just use them.

Instead he would rage, and scream "I'm gonna break these fuckin' things!" at me.

So, yeah, this guy could potentially defend himself by claiming to be so furious at his partner's profligate spending that, rather than attempt to offload the machine at a loss and recoup some of the money, or trying to find work they could undertake now they had an excavator, he got furious and destructive.

Would that work? Hahahah, who knows? But it might.

Apparently it was sent to a repair center, presumably one that repairs a lot of things and not just steam decks or bird-fryers.

My bet is that it got VALVe's attention first, probably because the recipient posted "hey, I got my Steam deck back, along with a turkey fryer, whut?" and VALVe looked into it.

> Most companies will eat the cost of shipping mistakes but that doesn't mean you're legally allowed to keep items mistakenly shipped to you.

Yes, it does.

See, back in the day, there was a pretty slick scam going on; scammers would mail out a quantity of cheap office supplies to various places-of-business. The people who received the shipments, used to receiving such shipments, would think it merely a paperwork SNAFU that it didn't have proper documentation or a person to sign for it, shrug, and put it in inventory, where it would be used. A little while later - long enough for the stuff to have been used, or partially - the scammers would send them an invoice for the goods, at ridiculous prices. I mean bottom-barrel office paper, but being billed as if it was the triple-luxury stuff that J.P. Morgan's lawyers would print the final formal version of a major, multi-hundred-million-dollar contract on. The companies would be skewered, because they had accepted delivery and had used the stuff.

FTC put a hard stop to that nonsense by ruling that anything which arrives unsolicited is a gift, and the shipper cannot hold the receiver accountable in any manner.

Wasn't pRiVaTiZaTiOn supposed to fix every problem with the trains ever? You know, like the Beeching Axe was supposed to fix every problem with the trains ever before that?

And yet, the only time post-privatization when the trains have run effectively, safely, on time and profitably (in the sense that they were making more than they were spending, not in the sense that sHaReHoLdErS would have been satisfied with the profit-fellatio they were getting), was when one of the privatized companies performed so fucking poorly that the government was forced to invoke their claw-back-our-trains clause and assume direct control again.

Trains, like healthcare, like, frankly, most if not all forms of national infrastructure, are too necessary for the economy and society of a country as a whole, and too vulnerable to the slings and arrows of misfortune, to be left in the hands of an entity whose primary motivation is to make buck-u-boo-bux for the almighty shareholders.

It's long past time that the UK re-nationalized their rails. It's worth pointing out that not even Thatcher herself would not privatize the rail network.

Someone at Amazon fucked up royally when this kid contacted them and told them that his MacBook was Weetabix.

I'm guessing someone presumed that he was trying to scam them by stuffing a box of Weetabix into the shipping box his MacBook arrived in, and slammed the "fuck this guy" button.

No, it happened for shitty, authoritarian reasons. If your court cannot command respect without arresting dissenting voices and silencing mockery, it has no respect whatever, and is worthy of any and all contempt.

Hrm, yes, let's see here... FBC News carries, according to them, "the latest news in Fiji."

That link in question notes,

> This is in relation to a committal proceeding filed against him by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

Prime Ministers... Yep, we sure do have a full stock o' them here in the United States of America, which, apparently, according to you, is Fiji.

In case the poster above deletes his post full'a ignorance, I'mma repost it in full:

> [–]randomFrenchDeadbeat [score hidden] 5 minutes ago 

> The correct action to signal a mistake when you are a lawyer is to send a private message through proper channels, not post it on facebook.

> Doing the latter invites mockery. There is no other point in posting that in public, and yes, justice IS above mockery, wether you like it or not.

> That could be an understandable mistake if the person publishing it was a regular one, but it was a lawyer.

> BTW thats not the first time something like that happens in the US. Got this with a simple googling.

> https://www.fbcnews.com.fj/news/court/lautoka-lawyer-convicted-of-contempt-of-court/

> This is in relation to a committal proceeding filed against him by Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum.

Mmmmh, yes, we sure do have a Prime Minister here in the United States.

In case this poster deletes his post full'o ignorance, here it is, in full:

> [–]randomFrenchDeadbeat [score hidden] 8 minutes ago 

> No, and you are wrong, proof here :

> https://www.fbcnews.com.fj/news/court/lautoka-lawyer-convicted-of-contempt-of-court/

Are you expecting backwards-ass, patriarchial, moralizing lawmakers to make laws and public policy that make sense from a "how do we shape the law to cause the most good for the most people without doing harm to anyone"?

Because they're coming at this from the perspective of "those people are ways that we don't like, how can we shape the law to inconvenience, harm, and kill them as expediently as possible!"

This is true, but we don't classify peanuts and tree nuts as, let me check here, a Schedule 1 drug, which, let me check the DEA here...

> has a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.

All of which statements are either blatantly false in the absurd, I mean "two plus three equals thirteen, also the sky is neon-green and water is the driest substance known to mankind" false, or are misleading in that the exact same statement applies to alcohol and tobacco.

One of those is not like the others. It is medically impossible to overdose on one of them.

Yes it is. Mocking the court for the court's mistake is very much free speech in the U.S. The government, in the form of the court punishing the mocking party, would very quickly find itself on the wrong side of a ACLU lawsuit for infringing upon free speech.

I think the point was "this kind of shit happening in a foreign country is why we, here, have, and need, the First Amendment."

The authoritarianism flows deep in this one.

This was a bullshit ruling that should be overturned. If a judge does something contemptuous, they should not be above mockery.

The correct response to being called out on a spelling mistake? "Mea culpa, I was tired and didn't spellcheck it. The correct spelling of 'Injunction' is as precedes."

Australia is the country which tried to introduce minimum breast and hip dimensions for pornography actresses, out of fear that particularly lithe ladies might "excite paedophiles."

So yes, Australia is well-known for being overly-paternalistic in its regulations, and this coming from someone who is constantly screaming for more regulations.

It's been true since the '60s, the only question was whether we were willing to put up the cash to do it.

Does a fistfight count as a duel?

I'm not saying it shouldn't be prosecuted, because, WTF, but when I saw the combination of "teen girls" "japan" and "duel" I was thinking that this fucknugglet turdburgler was somehow coercing two kids to fight each other with swords.

I am profoundly glad to hear that was not the case, don't get me wrong, but I think "dueling" is a bit... Dramatic a word to apply to a fistfight.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

The United Kingdom does have nuclear power plant technology, right?

They do have hydro and wind and solar technology, right? Hell, they have some Scottish island where they occasionally have a problem where their green energy sources outstrip demand so much that they have to find a way to get rid of it or risk overloading the island grid, right?!

Someone needs to sack this clown and put in a sensible climate minister. This is "good for the environment" in the way that switching from pipe-smoking to chewing snuff is "good for your health."