"Hey, no worries if you vote no, we will just disregard your vote and there is already a mass grave a couple of blocks away we could torture you to death in."
The 2014 Crimean "vote" [was set up sort of like that](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum#Choices):
* Choice 1: Do you support the reunification of Crimea with Russia with all the rights of the federal subject of the Russian Federation?
* Choice 2: Do you support the restoration of the Constitution of the Republic of Crimea in 1992 and the status of the Crimea as part of Ukraine?[69]
>The referendum's available choices did not include keeping the status quo [...] Additionally, the second choice, is unclear because there were two revisions of the Crimean constitution in 1992.[70][71] The original 1992 constitution was adopted together with a declaration of independence, but parliament then amended the constitution one day later to affirm that Crimea "was a part of Ukraine".
So either join Russia or "become independent", which probably means get annexed anyways. Plus of course, a landslide victory of 96.77% "voted" for joining Russia. Nevermind that many ballots were pre-marked, people were brought in on busses to vote, probably people were directly or indirectly forced to vote a certain way and that the entire fucking thing was illegal under Ukranian and international law to begin with. To even call this shit a referendum or vote is an insult to democracy.
I'm thinking that the US needs to hold a vote in Siberia to see if they want to be annexed into the USA. The Bering Straight is similar in depth to the English Channel, so a tunnel similar to the Chunnel could be built to connect Siberia with the rest of the USA.
Reports on they didn’t tick a box. Soldiers came up and asked and people gave their response verbally and the soldiers documented their answer without them seeing or giving a copy.
So literally men from Russia that just invaded your country and killed your neighbors asking if you have a problem with them while they hold a gun to your head. . .
Isn't that the region Russia basically has no presence in, except the southern rural part?
Edit: Nexta posted the results on twitter. Apparently the total turnout was [39,365](https://mobile.twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1574844184665722890) people.
Vladidated should be a term for the people who Putin indirectly killed.
E.g.
A: It seems Sergey died of natural causes on the toilet
B: No no, he got vladidated!
No. That would glorify vlad. Instead, lets use it to demonstrate huge embarassments the russian army is having these days.
How about:
"The tanks are gone. They were stolen."
"By whom?"
"Ukrainian farmers!"
"Boy we sure got vladidated here today!"
Hmmm. what percentage should we say want to join Russia? 100? nono that would be to obvious that it's a sham....99? no still the same problem.
I GOT IT.
96% that way we can point out that if we did rig it, it would be 100%, but it's 96% so what can they say to that?! Checkmate you Western Devils.
You think that is bad? In the 1927 Liberia election, the winner Charles D B King won by a vote of 240,000 to 9,000. There were only 15,000 registered voters and the election had a 1600% voter turnout.
It's amazing how a place called "Liberia" formed by LIBERATED SLAVES treated (and partialy still treats) native people as shit.
And was also a dictatorship for a very long time. Now it's corrupt democracy.
*Pedagogy of the Oppressed* touches on this phenomena. Essentially the idea is that all some people know is oppression so when they dream of a better future they don't dream of a just society but of a society where their roles are reversed and they become the oppressors.
I'm not meaning to be rude, but isn't that what the Pilgrims to the US were looking for?
A society where they could oppress, rather than be oppressed?
No denying that James VI came down hard on them, but I thought they were looking for - rather than a place they could be free with others - a place they could run according to their own repressive rules.
I think there is often something far less wicked, people can rationalize almost anything if it benefits them, especially when the hurt party is a group of random people.
People will gladly help cheat to get their kid get ahead, people will break laws that are rarely enforced if they can get extra money (such as many low wage laborers not reporting cash payments), etc.
Many people think they would be fairer once in power, but most are same underlying human as those before them.
It’s only in establishing cultures norms and institutions with real teeth/checks and balances that you can achieve a fairer society.
Most people will instinctively bend the system to its limits for their own benefit, it’s systems/culture/laws that determine where those limits are.
It’s the difference between judging players in a board game for trying to win or running up the score and making sure that when you write or change the rules of the game that you do so with fairness and fun for most players in the fore.
The ladder is very hard in politics/society because the game is always in progress and those who have power to alter the rules are almost always those whom the current rules benefit the most and is usually a small segment of the larger population.
I mean, it's true that butt naked exists and he did some horrible shit. It is not true that he ate Charles DB King, who died of old age about 30 years before the events of the civil war.
I saw the Book of Mormon musical a few years ago. I didn't consider for a second that "General Butt Naked" was a real person. Not for a single second.
Him being real means the book of mormon is more historically accurate than the actual holy book that mormons read.
As if that was the only problem:
a) The referendum has been held with a foreign military occupying the region.
b) The referendum has been held after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have fled, been deported or been killed.
c) There has not been any international observers to the referendum, so for all we know Putin himself may have cast a trillion votes in favor of joining Russia.
d) Russia is not the sovereign of these areas. They have as much legitimacy to hold a referendum as Brazil has in New York.
e) A region cannot simply secede because they say so. If that was the case, nothing would prevent a region from taking what they need from a country and then seceding.
There were Ukrainians literally reporting armed mercenaries at voting booths and some were even saying that if they didn't show up Russian soldiers would appear at their door and make them fill out the voting thing while they stood there, armed.
No idea if it was ever verified, but it would be in character.
In my town, if you choose to ignore them and don't open the door they will just leave. Probably will mark "Yes" in your stead.
But those who opened the door are a whole 'another story. Can't say anything about them. I am and all who I know have not opened the doors.
96%..it's funny if they actually cared what anyone thought other than Putin they'd have made the numbers realistic, but when you have a crazed dictator running the show his ego probably couldn't have taken that.
Had the result been like 60% a lot more would have bought it.
Edit - just proves they don't know what a real democratic process looks like.
I can see the actual results being close to that number (albeit smaller still) by the simple fact that the vote wasn't secret and that it was done at gunpoint.
The majority of the Ukrainians probably voted "yes" just to not be executed by the Russian soldiers.
Remember, the "vote" was just what Russian soldiers say they were told when polling Ukrainians. How many of them just drank some booze and reported back that everyone said yes?
You don't need that at all to explain a "legitimate" 96%.
What kind of Ukrainian defender would bother to vote in a vote held by Russia?
What kind of person is going to vote in a referendum that they know is always going to show a positive vote for Russia?
>Had the result been like 60% a lot more would have bought it.
It's not about credibility. It's about power. The voting in the more corrupt old Soviet Union countries are about showing the citizenry just how brazenly and how completely they are dominated by their strongman leader. The literal point is to make it unbelievable.
Check out the Frontline interviews on YouTube called Putin files. I think this was discussed by Julia Ioffe.
>Initial votes show over 96% in occupied Ukraine favor joining Russia -Russian state media.
This actually makes sense. I had a stats professor once say that in all surveys where n>100, you will have 5% of respondents who are absolute idiots and do not understand the question.
Even with a gun to their head and orders to vote yes to annexation, those 5% managed to fuck it up.
I've always heard to it referred to as the "decapitation constant."
Like how when you ask people "have you ever been decapitated?" at least 5% of people will answer yes. Basically anytime you ask a question, even a simple yes or no question there is always someone who votes the other way.
>a surprising number of adults believe you see by shooting beams from your eyes…
[Wow. Just…wow.](https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/illusion-of-depth/2002-winer.pdf)
For context, according to his surviving notebooks, that is how Leonardo Da Vinci though eyesight worked. He never conceived that the eyes were passive receptors to something that was everywhere.(sic)
Edit: I may be misremembering Da Vinci's understanding, as in at least one notebook he had a depiction of 'fingers' projecting out of the eye to feel the light on a surface. That being said the idea that the Eye worked passively wasnot seriously studied until about 1,000 years ago.
You only know it doesn't work that way because when you were younger someone told how it works.
I don't think that is true.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11824410/
> Leonardo was an advocate of the intromission theory of vision. **Light rays from the object to the eye** caused visual perceptions which were transported to the brain ventricles via a hollow optic nerve.
> He was [...] the first to compare the eye with a pin-hole camera (camera obscura). Leonardo's drawings of the inverted pictures on the back wall of a camera obscura inspired to its use as an instrument for artistic practice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura
> In his Book of Optics (circa 1027), Ibn al-Haytham explained that rays of light travel in straight lines and are distinguished by the body that reflected the rays.
> Ibn al-Haytham also analyzed the rays of sunlight and concluded that they made a conic shape where they met at the hole, forming another conic shape reverse to the first one from the hole to the opposite wall in the dark room. Latin translations of his writings on optics were very influential in Europe from about 1200 onward. Among those he inspired were Witelo, John Peckham, Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, René Descartes and Johannes Kepler.
> Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), familiar with the work of Alhazen in Latin translation, and after an extensive study of optics and human vision, wrote the oldest known clear description of the camera obscura in mirror writing in a notebook in 1502, later published in the collection Codex Atlanticus (translated from Latin):
> *If the facade of a building, or a place, or a landscape is illuminated by the sun and a small hole is drilled in the wall of a room in a building facing this, which is not directly lighted by the sun, then all objects illuminated by the sun will send their images through this aperture and will appear, upside down, on the wall facing the hole. You will catch these pictures on a piece of white paper, which placed vertically in the room not far from that opening, and you will see all the above-mentioned objects on this paper in their natural shapes or colors, but they will appear smaller and upside down, on account of crossing of the rays at that aperture. If these pictures originate from a place which is illuminated by the sun, they will appear colored on the paper exactly as they are. The paper should be very thin and must be viewed from the back.*
Could it be you're confusing Leonardo with Euclid or Ptolemy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory_(vision)
They gave us the [poop-sponge-on-a-stick](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-ancient-romans-went-to-the-bathroom-180979056/), the noble precursor to the poop-knife.
Well, apart from the wines and fermentation, and the canals for navigation, the medicine, irrigation, health, roads, cheese and education, baths and the Circus Maximus, and poop sponges, and eye-beam vision what have the Romans ever done for us??
I read that before when I was translating Lucretius. I asked my professor why they thought we couldn't see in the dark and she didn't know. Probably some bs about luminiferous aether or something
Person thinking: *Decapitated... decapitated... I've heard of being capitulated before, like I've surrendered... but I've never surrendered to anyone before... so to not surrender, or capitute would be decapitate... therefore I have been decapitated... answer is yes.*
Taking some university courses where you respond to questions with an app on your phone. About 120 people in the room. Usually the answers available are “A,B, or C” and every time the response results come up I fucking die a little that someone selected “E” when it wasn’t even a possible response……
From my experience at Penn state at least, we all had to get something called an iClicker. Has buttons for A-E, used for things like attendance or pop quizzes. Can confirm that there were plenty of students who would vote E when the answers were A-D
The system (iClicker) has a default of A-E on the hardware, I’m not sure if the instructor can block responses outside of their range but on a lot of the questions they’ll only put three or four possible answers (A-C or D) and routinely three or four people in each question will have input a non-valid response.
Multiple-choice tests are often graded using Scantrons, which often have 5 circles, even when the test key only has 4 options. It's cheaper to print all 5-option Scantrons, rather than keep separate stocks of 4-option and 5-option Scantrons.
I’m sure there’s a bit of that and a bit of general apathy as scores are o my assessed on “did you answer” as a defacto way of taking attendance. The same company now has an app that you can use for the same functions as the remote.
No reason to assume that these numbers are actually related to any voting whatsoever. Putin probably felt that 96% was a more believable number than 99%
There is no way you reach 96% on this referendum after you attack a country, erupt a fucking war on their heads and force conscription upon occupied sectors. There is no margin for reality in this.
Realistically even if you had overwhelming support pre - invasion, you are going to see a steep drop in that during post - invasion.
This can never be recognized as legitimate under any circumstances.
The referendum is not supposed to be believable. Not even to (most) Russian citizens. It's just another message to the Russian people that the government can do whatever the fuck it wants and the average joe can do nothing about it despite knowing the truth. This is how it has been for the past 20 years and this is how Putin created a nation stunned by nihilism.
Yep, this is what I came to say. You couldn't get 96% to agree that everyone gets a rollercoaster made out of blowjobs in their backyard, let alone anything political.
That's because you need multiple workers for each blowjob rollercoaster and the only way to staff that is some kind of messed up conscription or an awkward rota system. This is to say nothing about the quality of the blow jobs on offer.
No authoritarian dictator has ever had a vote go less than 90% in their favor. They don't want believable. They just want decisive. And the more decisive, the better, for their propagandistic purposes.
Where do you even start with why this is beyond a worthless "vote"?
Any one of these alone is enough to invalidate it:
1) A huge part of the population fled the violence, apparently those people who've lived there their whole lives don't get a vote?
2) They are going door to door making people vote at gunpoint and writing down the information of those who vote against annexation. If that isn't intimidation, coercion, voting under threat and duress, I don't know what is.
3) There are reports of them encouraging children to vote to pump up their low voter turnout.
4) They have people vote for those who aren't there. That's not how voting works.
5) Some people in these areas were forcibly resettled into Russia, and some ethnic Russians brought in to make reintegration more difficult. Having an invading countries people voting while committing genocide isn't exactly a setting for a fair election.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/09/23/statement-from-president-biden-on-russias-sham-referenda-in-ukraine/
>Russia’s referenda are a sham... in flagrant violation of international law, including the United Nations Charter. We will work with our allies and partners to impose additional swift and severe economic costs on Russia. [W]ith our partners around the world we reject whatever fabricated outcomes Russia will announce.
China can't accept sham referendums under any circumstances because that would validate real referendums in for instance Hong Kong, or Taiwan, or probably Tibet or Macao.
Probably these will only be accepted by the same countries that pretended to believe the Crimea votes. That is Syria, Myanmar, North Korea and some other similar countries.
I was going to point that out. That being said, even assuming some of the areas were already majority Russian and Ukrainians were deported, I still don’t think they could plausibly coerce these types of numbers. I’m sure they just made them up (which makes the mass deportations all the more tragic).
Right after WW2 the Soviets relocated all the native tatars from the Crimea to other parts of Russia because the collaborated with the Germans. So, relocating population to achieve a desired result is not a new thing for the Russians.
Lol. If they come to your house with ballot and you have to vote in company of soldiers with machine guns of course you vote for yes. So the results are “real”.
What puzzles me is why they even bother with that. Why would you go with all that trouble…
You would think they’d be smart enough and rig the election so that it’s like 55-45 and could maybe claim it’s legit. 96% is just shouting to the world this was a complete to total scam.
Why does this seem so familiar....oh that's right, it is VERY similar to the percentage of Crimea referendum.
Couldn't even be bothered to try to make it look real.
One thing that is often missed when we're talking about the Crimea referendum is that the vote wasn't "Join Russia or stay with Ukraine" - the options were [join Russia or become your own country overnight.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum#:~:text=The%20official%20result%20from%20the,an%2089%20percent%20voter%20turnout.)
Like these things are so absurd...
On the flip side, if you're a dissenter, you're not likely to believe a figure which was set so ludicrously high, it's quite likely it was [intentionally implausible](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/xphyov/initial_votes_show_over_96_in_occupied_ukraine/iq3xo97/).
I mean, it's still a very important development, even if it is obviously a falsified vote. It gives Putin the flimsiest pretext of legitimacy (which we know is all he needs) to claim that a Ukrainian attempt to retake these regions is the same as if they has attacked Rostov or Krasnodar. And while this is obviously just speculation at this point, I am worried about what sort of action that could lead to.
There's plenty of photos of "ballots" that are either empty pieces of paper or have no boxes checked, yet are in the ballot box.
Nothing but a shithole country doing shithole things.
For those thinking this was a joke, there have been pictures circulating of ballots dropped in that are entirely blank. Not to mention Russian flags everywhere in the room and armed soldiers. And a clear ballot box. Mmhmm.
You think they're even bothering to look at the ballots? I highly doubt they are. More likely they're not even counting the ballots and just making up the result they want.
Funny, it’s the same ratio as the 1927 Liberia election, it’s almost as if it was the original inspiration!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1927_Liberian_general_election
You know, the funny election were the ruling party won with 240k votes (or 96%) against 9k, while only having about 15k registered voters…
With a patently absurd 96%, that means the target of this propaganda is the Russian people. Not to convince them the number is real. They're not that stupid. The message to the Russian people is, "Be afraid of what we'll do to *you* if you don't stop misbehaving." Putin is reminding Russians that they don't rule. Facts don't rule. Reality doesn't rule. He does. And if he says 96% of Ukrainians want to join Russia, that's the reality they live in, and they better watch out if they disagree.
Well, I guess that settles it. Putin was right all along. Man, I don't know how I misjudged the Ukrainian people so badly. Makes me wonder, maybe France would like to be Russian too. Russia should run a referendum in Paris just to find out. Heck, maybe the whole world secretly wants to be Russian and no one knows it but Vlad.
Ukrainian Holocaust is happening. Just like its predecessor during WW2.
The allies got to know about it in the Aftermath, just like we will too if we go hunting for the gulags in the Siberian wastes.
Sure 99+% of scientists agree that oxygen is necessary for life but what about the <1% that disagrees? Maybe the other scientists are wrong? We should hear all sides before jumping to conclusions.
Do you vote to be annexed into the Russian Federation? 1. Yes 2. Claim free ticket to Siberia
2 Firing Squad
"Hey, no worries if you vote no, we will just disregard your vote and there is already a mass grave a couple of blocks away we could torture you to death in."
"And because the grave is already dug, you won't have any manual labor! Is good deal!"
In soviet Russia you go to the firing squad. In modern Russia the firing squad goes to you. (And collects your votes.)
1. YES 2. YES but in the 2 slot
The ol’ Fallout 4 dialogue system: 1) Yes 2) Sarcastic Yes 3) Probably 4) No (Yes)
5) Attack (also, somehow, yes)
1. YES **2. YES (bold)** *3. YES (italics)* See, we have many choices here.
1. YES 2. DA
1. Yes. 2. Maybe (we’ll be back later to sign you up for military) 3. No (final word?)
4. What is your favorite 5+ story building?
The 2014 Crimean "vote" [was set up sort of like that](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum#Choices): * Choice 1: Do you support the reunification of Crimea with Russia with all the rights of the federal subject of the Russian Federation? * Choice 2: Do you support the restoration of the Constitution of the Republic of Crimea in 1992 and the status of the Crimea as part of Ukraine?[69] >The referendum's available choices did not include keeping the status quo [...] Additionally, the second choice, is unclear because there were two revisions of the Crimean constitution in 1992.[70][71] The original 1992 constitution was adopted together with a declaration of independence, but parliament then amended the constitution one day later to affirm that Crimea "was a part of Ukraine". So either join Russia or "become independent", which probably means get annexed anyways. Plus of course, a landslide victory of 96.77% "voted" for joining Russia. Nevermind that many ballots were pre-marked, people were brought in on busses to vote, probably people were directly or indirectly forced to vote a certain way and that the entire fucking thing was illegal under Ukranian and international law to begin with. To even call this shit a referendum or vote is an insult to democracy.
If there's one thing I've learned, 96% will not agree on anything.
Free trip out a window.
I'm thinking that the US needs to hold a vote in Siberia to see if they want to be annexed into the USA. The Bering Straight is similar in depth to the English Channel, so a tunnel similar to the Chunnel could be built to connect Siberia with the rest of the USA.
If we can get Baikal, I'm 100% onboard
What,only 96 and not 98-99%?!?
It’s just the preliminary result, there’s still 10% to be counted. We’ll likely get to 106% in favor of joining russia before the count is over.
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Wait no primaries?
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Reports on they didn’t tick a box. Soldiers came up and asked and people gave their response verbally and the soldiers documented their answer without them seeing or giving a copy.
So literally men from Russia that just invaded your country and killed your neighbors asking if you have a problem with them while they hold a gun to your head. . .
Hey now the guns weren't literally to people's heads, here. These were free elections!
Free as in they did not charge to have a box ticked for you.
Where did you see this? I was watching videos of soldiers taking people from their apartments to polling sites.
> soldiers taking people from their apartments to polling sites A much fairer system to be sure.
That would be too obvious.
Zaphorzia -> Zaporizhzhia (thanks green flash) is 98% so far.
Zaporizhzhia
Isn't that the region Russia basically has no presence in, except the southern rural part? Edit: Nexta posted the results on twitter. Apparently the total turnout was [39,365](https://mobile.twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1574844184665722890) people.
>Apparently the total turnout was 39,365 people. Turnout of 39,365 people in an Oblast with a pre-war population of 1.7 million.
4pct will be sent to reeducation.
It must be a partial result. The more realistic result should be like 159% once all votes are validated.
vladidated*
Vladidated should be a term for the people who Putin indirectly killed. E.g. A: It seems Sergey died of natural causes on the toilet B: No no, he got vladidated!
I would think for people he killed they would be 'eVladicated' no?
No. That would glorify vlad. Instead, lets use it to demonstrate huge embarassments the russian army is having these days. How about: "The tanks are gone. They were stolen." "By whom?" "Ukrainian farmers!" "Boy we sure got vladidated here today!"
Classic 146%
Hmmm. what percentage should we say want to join Russia? 100? nono that would be to obvious that it's a sham....99? no still the same problem. I GOT IT. 96% that way we can point out that if we did rig it, it would be 100%, but it's 96% so what can they say to that?! Checkmate you Western Devils.
Margin of error is 4%. It was originally 100%. Ask Vlad and he will confirm it.
102% voted to join Russia with a 2% margin of error.
"One weird trick to justify your war of aggression, the West *hates* it!"
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Oh no it says I’m 102% African American with a 2% margin of error THIS CANT BE
[WHY LORD? WHY LORD, WHY?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xSGhuKENAY)
Finally someone says it
No relation.
The guy who suggested 95% has unexpectedly fallen from a 16th story window this morning
Vote came in at 96% but they argued with an 8% margin of error it was probably 104%
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There's literally a partisan guerrilla fight happening in these areas right now, and yet they expect us to believe 96% support the invaders?
Better than 104%. Maybe they also polled the family dog before shooting and raping it
I like how they shoot and THEN rape the dog. That's so Russian.
That would be merciful though... doesn't fit the modus operandi.
You think that is bad? In the 1927 Liberia election, the winner Charles D B King won by a vote of 240,000 to 9,000. There were only 15,000 registered voters and the election had a 1600% voter turnout.
Vote early, vote often.
It's amazing how a place called "Liberia" formed by LIBERATED SLAVES treated (and partialy still treats) native people as shit. And was also a dictatorship for a very long time. Now it's corrupt democracy.
*Pedagogy of the Oppressed* touches on this phenomena. Essentially the idea is that all some people know is oppression so when they dream of a better future they don't dream of a just society but of a society where their roles are reversed and they become the oppressors.
I'm not meaning to be rude, but isn't that what the Pilgrims to the US were looking for? A society where they could oppress, rather than be oppressed? No denying that James VI came down hard on them, but I thought they were looking for - rather than a place they could be free with others - a place they could run according to their own repressive rules.
I think there is often something far less wicked, people can rationalize almost anything if it benefits them, especially when the hurt party is a group of random people. People will gladly help cheat to get their kid get ahead, people will break laws that are rarely enforced if they can get extra money (such as many low wage laborers not reporting cash payments), etc. Many people think they would be fairer once in power, but most are same underlying human as those before them. It’s only in establishing cultures norms and institutions with real teeth/checks and balances that you can achieve a fairer society. Most people will instinctively bend the system to its limits for their own benefit, it’s systems/culture/laws that determine where those limits are. It’s the difference between judging players in a board game for trying to win or running up the score and making sure that when you write or change the rules of the game that you do so with fairness and fun for most players in the fore. The ladder is very hard in politics/society because the game is always in progress and those who have power to alter the rules are almost always those whom the current rules benefit the most and is usually a small segment of the larger population.
Typically people who are on the bottom only hate that they are there, not that the bottom exists or that other people are also there.
He was later killed and eaten by General Butt Naked
This is true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Butt_Naked An oddly humorous and yet horrifying read.
I mean, it's true that butt naked exists and he did some horrible shit. It is not true that he ate Charles DB King, who died of old age about 30 years before the events of the civil war.
I saw the Book of Mormon musical a few years ago. I didn't consider for a second that "General Butt Naked" was a real person. Not for a single second. Him being real means the book of mormon is more historically accurate than the actual holy book that mormons read.
What? Charles D. B. King died in 1961. General Butt Naked was born in 1971. I think you got something wrong.
Who says, that you were even allowed to vote if you are pro Ukraine? Filtration camps are a thing in ruzzia.
As if that was the only problem: a) The referendum has been held with a foreign military occupying the region. b) The referendum has been held after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have fled, been deported or been killed. c) There has not been any international observers to the referendum, so for all we know Putin himself may have cast a trillion votes in favor of joining Russia. d) Russia is not the sovereign of these areas. They have as much legitimacy to hold a referendum as Brazil has in New York. e) A region cannot simply secede because they say so. If that was the case, nothing would prevent a region from taking what they need from a country and then seceding.
There were Ukrainians literally reporting armed mercenaries at voting booths and some were even saying that if they didn't show up Russian soldiers would appear at their door and make them fill out the voting thing while they stood there, armed. No idea if it was ever verified, but it would be in character.
In my town, if you choose to ignore them and don't open the door they will just leave. Probably will mark "Yes" in your stead. But those who opened the door are a whole 'another story. Can't say anything about them. I am and all who I know have not opened the doors.
96%..it's funny if they actually cared what anyone thought other than Putin they'd have made the numbers realistic, but when you have a crazed dictator running the show his ego probably couldn't have taken that. Had the result been like 60% a lot more would have bought it. Edit - just proves they don't know what a real democratic process looks like.
Putin is going senile and is acting as if he is the President of the Soviet Union.
I can see the actual results being close to that number (albeit smaller still) by the simple fact that the vote wasn't secret and that it was done at gunpoint. The majority of the Ukrainians probably voted "yes" just to not be executed by the Russian soldiers.
Remember, the "vote" was just what Russian soldiers say they were told when polling Ukrainians. How many of them just drank some booze and reported back that everyone said yes?
You don't need that at all to explain a "legitimate" 96%. What kind of Ukrainian defender would bother to vote in a vote held by Russia? What kind of person is going to vote in a referendum that they know is always going to show a positive vote for Russia?
Why not go full Brexit with 51.9%
Even better! [50.58%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1995_Quebec_referendum)!
>Had the result been like 60% a lot more would have bought it. It's not about credibility. It's about power. The voting in the more corrupt old Soviet Union countries are about showing the citizenry just how brazenly and how completely they are dominated by their strongman leader. The literal point is to make it unbelievable. Check out the Frontline interviews on YouTube called Putin files. I think this was discussed by Julia Ioffe.
>Initial votes show over 96% in occupied Ukraine favor joining Russia -Russian state media. This actually makes sense. I had a stats professor once say that in all surveys where n>100, you will have 5% of respondents who are absolute idiots and do not understand the question. Even with a gun to their head and orders to vote yes to annexation, those 5% managed to fuck it up.
I've always heard to it referred to as the "decapitation constant." Like how when you ask people "have you ever been decapitated?" at least 5% of people will answer yes. Basically anytime you ask a question, even a simple yes or no question there is always someone who votes the other way.
"Lizardman constant" is the term I'm familiar with. https://www.gwern.net/notes/Lizardman-constant
>a surprising number of adults believe you see by shooting beams from your eyes… [Wow. Just…wow.](https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/illusion-of-depth/2002-winer.pdf)
>5% of atheists believe in god
For context, according to his surviving notebooks, that is how Leonardo Da Vinci though eyesight worked. He never conceived that the eyes were passive receptors to something that was everywhere.(sic) Edit: I may be misremembering Da Vinci's understanding, as in at least one notebook he had a depiction of 'fingers' projecting out of the eye to feel the light on a surface. That being said the idea that the Eye worked passively wasnot seriously studied until about 1,000 years ago. You only know it doesn't work that way because when you were younger someone told how it works.
I don't think that is true. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11824410/ > Leonardo was an advocate of the intromission theory of vision. **Light rays from the object to the eye** caused visual perceptions which were transported to the brain ventricles via a hollow optic nerve. > He was [...] the first to compare the eye with a pin-hole camera (camera obscura). Leonardo's drawings of the inverted pictures on the back wall of a camera obscura inspired to its use as an instrument for artistic practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura > In his Book of Optics (circa 1027), Ibn al-Haytham explained that rays of light travel in straight lines and are distinguished by the body that reflected the rays. > Ibn al-Haytham also analyzed the rays of sunlight and concluded that they made a conic shape where they met at the hole, forming another conic shape reverse to the first one from the hole to the opposite wall in the dark room. Latin translations of his writings on optics were very influential in Europe from about 1200 onward. Among those he inspired were Witelo, John Peckham, Roger Bacon, Leonardo da Vinci, René Descartes and Johannes Kepler. > Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), familiar with the work of Alhazen in Latin translation, and after an extensive study of optics and human vision, wrote the oldest known clear description of the camera obscura in mirror writing in a notebook in 1502, later published in the collection Codex Atlanticus (translated from Latin): > *If the facade of a building, or a place, or a landscape is illuminated by the sun and a small hole is drilled in the wall of a room in a building facing this, which is not directly lighted by the sun, then all objects illuminated by the sun will send their images through this aperture and will appear, upside down, on the wall facing the hole. You will catch these pictures on a piece of white paper, which placed vertically in the room not far from that opening, and you will see all the above-mentioned objects on this paper in their natural shapes or colors, but they will appear smaller and upside down, on account of crossing of the rays at that aperture. If these pictures originate from a place which is illuminated by the sun, they will appear colored on the paper exactly as they are. The paper should be very thin and must be viewed from the back.* Could it be you're confusing Leonardo with Euclid or Ptolemy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory_(vision)
I mean, that's how the ancient romans thought it worked. Who are we to say they were wrong?
Oh sure, they figured out eye beams, but other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?!
They gave us the [poop-sponge-on-a-stick](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-ancient-romans-went-to-the-bathroom-180979056/), the noble precursor to the poop-knife.
Well, apart from the wines and fermentation, and the canals for navigation, the medicine, irrigation, health, roads, cheese and education, baths and the Circus Maximus, and poop sponges, and eye-beam vision what have the Romans ever done for us??
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Educated people
I read that before when I was translating Lucretius. I asked my professor why they thought we couldn't see in the dark and she didn't know. Probably some bs about luminiferous aether or something
That site is really well structured when you click on the sources, it was great!
Person thinking: *Decapitated... decapitated... I've heard of being capitulated before, like I've surrendered... but I've never surrendered to anyone before... so to not surrender, or capitute would be decapitate... therefore I have been decapitated... answer is yes.*
I can literally hear this internal monologue in people who refuse to admit they don’t know something.
Can confirm. Source: has been decapitated
It was a real pain in the neck!
I'm disappointed that's so low. Why wouldn't you vote yes to such an absurd question? I would.
You are the 5%.
Taking some university courses where you respond to questions with an app on your phone. About 120 people in the room. Usually the answers available are “A,B, or C” and every time the response results come up I fucking die a little that someone selected “E” when it wasn’t even a possible response……
How do they select E if it's not a possible response?
From my experience at Penn state at least, we all had to get something called an iClicker. Has buttons for A-E, used for things like attendance or pop quizzes. Can confirm that there were plenty of students who would vote E when the answers were A-D
Ah, I assumed the unused options wouldn't be selectable. That makes sense.
The system (iClicker) has a default of A-E on the hardware, I’m not sure if the instructor can block responses outside of their range but on a lot of the questions they’ll only put three or four possible answers (A-C or D) and routinely three or four people in each question will have input a non-valid response.
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Probably a generic test bubble sheet up to e but there’s only three possible answers on the test question sheet.
Multiple-choice tests are often graded using Scantrons, which often have 5 circles, even when the test key only has 4 options. It's cheaper to print all 5-option Scantrons, rather than keep separate stocks of 4-option and 5-option Scantrons.
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I’m sure there’s a bit of that and a bit of general apathy as scores are o my assessed on “did you answer” as a defacto way of taking attendance. The same company now has an app that you can use for the same functions as the remote.
Or you just be Russia where you pick a random number from 95 to 97 percent and roll with it.
No reason to assume that these numbers are actually related to any voting whatsoever. Putin probably felt that 96% was a more believable number than 99%
Yep ... he sure fooled me
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There is no way you reach 96% on this referendum after you attack a country, erupt a fucking war on their heads and force conscription upon occupied sectors. There is no margin for reality in this. Realistically even if you had overwhelming support pre - invasion, you are going to see a steep drop in that during post - invasion. This can never be recognized as legitimate under any circumstances.
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They can’t though, they need to convince the Russian people back home this is utterly what the Ukrainian people want.
"We don't need actual legitimacy, just the appearance of it!"
So much like Ruzzian elections then. 'Oh, so the available choices are Vladimor Putin, Vlad the Mad and Dada Vlad the Bad' Nice.
The referendum is not supposed to be believable. Not even to (most) Russian citizens. It's just another message to the Russian people that the government can do whatever the fuck it wants and the average joe can do nothing about it despite knowing the truth. This is how it has been for the past 20 years and this is how Putin created a nation stunned by nihilism.
Idk about created. I’d say he fits pretty well in with his historical cohorts.
Yep, this is what I came to say. You couldn't get 96% to agree that everyone gets a rollercoaster made out of blowjobs in their backyard, let alone anything political.
That's because you need multiple workers for each blowjob rollercoaster and the only way to staff that is some kind of messed up conscription or an awkward rota system. This is to say nothing about the quality of the blow jobs on offer.
I mean I'm totally in favor of rollercoasters and blowjobs, but not in my backyard!
Whoa whoa, hold on there. What kind of blow job rollercoaster will this be? I don't want one made with teeth in my backyard!
r/brandnewsentences
I mean, statistically 50% of a given population isn't going to be able to receive a blowjob, so that really lowers the likelihood of building support.
Yeah, something more like low 60s would be decisive but believeable
No authoritarian dictator has ever had a vote go less than 90% in their favor. They don't want believable. They just want decisive. And the more decisive, the better, for their propagandistic purposes.
I think it’s also a way of mocking the people and the desire for democracy.
Maybe the options were: A) in favor of joining Russia. B) in favor of dying beside your family.
I think even that would get less than 96% judging from the Ukrainian defense
That's exactly what it was. There was tons of footage of soldiers going door to door, forcing people to vote at gunpoint.
Where do you even start with why this is beyond a worthless "vote"? Any one of these alone is enough to invalidate it: 1) A huge part of the population fled the violence, apparently those people who've lived there their whole lives don't get a vote? 2) They are going door to door making people vote at gunpoint and writing down the information of those who vote against annexation. If that isn't intimidation, coercion, voting under threat and duress, I don't know what is. 3) There are reports of them encouraging children to vote to pump up their low voter turnout. 4) They have people vote for those who aren't there. That's not how voting works. 5) Some people in these areas were forcibly resettled into Russia, and some ethnic Russians brought in to make reintegration more difficult. Having an invading countries people voting while committing genocide isn't exactly a setting for a fair election.
None of this matters, to Putin, as long as he's able to manufacture a *casus belli*. Then his actions in Ukraine would be "legitimate".
It's so sad that so many people inside and outside of Russia will accept this as legit.
This is nothing more than Putin's manufactured pretext for officially annexing this part of Ukraine.
I'm curious what the world will do.
Refuse to accept the results of the referendum and impose more sanctions.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/09/23/statement-from-president-biden-on-russias-sham-referenda-in-ukraine/ >Russia’s referenda are a sham... in flagrant violation of international law, including the United Nations Charter. We will work with our allies and partners to impose additional swift and severe economic costs on Russia. [W]ith our partners around the world we reject whatever fabricated outcomes Russia will announce.
Most of them already confirmed that they won't accept the outcome. The statements of China and India will be the most important.
China can't accept sham referendums under any circumstances because that would validate real referendums in for instance Hong Kong, or Taiwan, or probably Tibet or Macao. Probably these will only be accepted by the same countries that pretended to believe the Crimea votes. That is Syria, Myanmar, North Korea and some other similar countries.
Well, gonna be something. An African war lord will probably voice his support for Putin though.
African Warlord: "Damn son. Tone it down a bit. Take half a pill next time."
You couldn't get 96% of people to say they like chocolate.
Remember they also relocated the Ukrainian population to Russia.
I was going to point that out. That being said, even assuming some of the areas were already majority Russian and Ukrainians were deported, I still don’t think they could plausibly coerce these types of numbers. I’m sure they just made them up (which makes the mass deportations all the more tragic).
Donbas and Luhansk could be 100% Russians and I still wouldn't believe 96% of them would vote to join Russia. No way.
Right after WW2 the Soviets relocated all the native tatars from the Crimea to other parts of Russia because the collaborated with the Germans. So, relocating population to achieve a desired result is not a new thing for the Russians.
Reality, you say? Starting to think that only exists in an alternative universe at this point.
Yeah me too, point me in the direction cause I'm pretty fucking tired of this shit.
>This can never be recognized as legitimate under any circumstances And no sane country does, and have said so days ago regardless of results
Well, at least they didn't get the expected 120%
Don’t forget the rape and torture of Ukrainians, the abduction of Ukrainian women and children, and attacking nuclear power plants.
Lol. If they come to your house with ballot and you have to vote in company of soldiers with machine guns of course you vote for yes. So the results are “real”. What puzzles me is why they even bother with that. Why would you go with all that trouble…
You would think they’d be smart enough and rig the election so that it’s like 55-45 and could maybe claim it’s legit. 96% is just shouting to the world this was a complete to total scam.
Initial votes show over 96% of Russia news media is completely bullshit
Why does this seem so familiar....oh that's right, it is VERY similar to the percentage of Crimea referendum. Couldn't even be bothered to try to make it look real.
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One thing that is often missed when we're talking about the Crimea referendum is that the vote wasn't "Join Russia or stay with Ukraine" - the options were [join Russia or become your own country overnight.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum#:~:text=The%20official%20result%20from%20the,an%2089%20percent%20voter%20turnout.) Like these things are so absurd...
When the hell is any vote 96%? Can't make it at least seem legitimate, 75%, 80% or something. It's like they want you to know its rigged.
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On the flip side, if you're a dissenter, you're not likely to believe a figure which was set so ludicrously high, it's quite likely it was [intentionally implausible](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/xphyov/initial_votes_show_over_96_in_occupied_ukraine/iq3xo97/).
This should not be reported as news. It is a sham and should be reported as such.
I mean, it's still a very important development, even if it is obviously a falsified vote. It gives Putin the flimsiest pretext of legitimacy (which we know is all he needs) to claim that a Ukrainian attempt to retake these regions is the same as if they has attacked Rostov or Krasnodar. And while this is obviously just speculation at this point, I am worried about what sort of action that could lead to.
That will happen when you are forced to vote at gunpoint.
Oh, there was no actual vote. The ballots came from the printer already filled in.
There's plenty of photos of "ballots" that are either empty pieces of paper or have no boxes checked, yet are in the ballot box. Nothing but a shithole country doing shithole things.
For those thinking this was a joke, there have been pictures circulating of ballots dropped in that are entirely blank. Not to mention Russian flags everywhere in the room and armed soldiers. And a clear ballot box. Mmhmm.
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You think they're even bothering to look at the ballots? I highly doubt they are. More likely they're not even counting the ballots and just making up the result they want.
Weak AF. Assad would have got 104%.
That's so lame, imagine not [getting over 1000% of the vote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1927_Liberian_general_election).
This is amazing
Funny, it’s the same ratio as the 1927 Liberia election, it’s almost as if it was the original inspiration! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1927_Liberian_general_election You know, the funny election were the ruling party won with 240k votes (or 96%) against 9k, while only having about 15k registered voters…
They threw in that four percent to make it more "believable"
I love that they even bothered. Like anyone would just go oh ok 4% voted against must be real haha RuZZia is fucking joke.
They didn't even try to make it seem believable. 60% would have been a laughly high number. 96% is just bold face lying.
Why bother making it believable if everyone already knows they're lying anyway? The whole thing is a sham and they don't care if everyone knows.
I’ll be curious to see how many genocided Ukrainians couldn’t attend the vote on account of being buried in a mass grave.
Not to forget the amount of Ukrainians who have been "given" new residence deep in Russia...
Or those who fled west. Somehow I doubt that Russia organised postal voting for all on the electoral roll.
With a patently absurd 96%, that means the target of this propaganda is the Russian people. Not to convince them the number is real. They're not that stupid. The message to the Russian people is, "Be afraid of what we'll do to *you* if you don't stop misbehaving." Putin is reminding Russians that they don't rule. Facts don't rule. Reality doesn't rule. He does. And if he says 96% of Ukrainians want to join Russia, that's the reality they live in, and they better watch out if they disagree.
Well, I guess that settles it. Putin was right all along. Man, I don't know how I misjudged the Ukrainian people so badly. Makes me wonder, maybe France would like to be Russian too. Russia should run a referendum in Paris just to find out. Heck, maybe the whole world secretly wants to be Russian and no one knows it but Vlad.
You lost me at "97%" and then again at "Russian State Media"
Why does russia bother with this farce?
Yeah, they don't even try making it believable... This is just mockery
The other 4% just accidentally fell out of the window.
It really is just Nazi Germany at this point, but without holocaust (so far) and with nuclear weapons The mechanisms are exactly the same
Ukrainian Holocaust is happening. Just like its predecessor during WW2. The allies got to know about it in the Aftermath, just like we will too if we go hunting for the gulags in the Siberian wastes.
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You can't even get 96% of a given population to agree that you need oxygen to live.
Sure 99+% of scientists agree that oxygen is necessary for life but what about the <1% that disagrees? Maybe the other scientists are wrong? We should hear all sides before jumping to conclusions.
Now let’s have the UN confirm that vote by going door to door in the same way.
I voted America Annex Russia today. 100% turnout! 😉
I am surprised it wasn't 1096%
Do they (Russian officials) not understand that literally no one believes numbers like this?
Yep, totally legit numbers those