From the ABC yesterday, a profile of Olha Bihar, a 31-year-old lawyer from Kyiv, who has morphed into a semi-famous military commander and veteran of Bakhmut. She serves as a commander of a mortar unit and an artillery officer, with the call sign Witch. Bihar’s journey from law to war began when she woke up to Russian missiles hitting the capital and decided to join Ukraine's armed forces along with her mother and brother, who are combat medics.
To do so, she had to send her seven-year-old son out of the country to safety.
To explain why she made the sacrifice of being separated from her son, Olha quoted her younger brother who had just won a law scholarship to study at Kyiv University.
"My brother said, 'I don't want to study law because we don't need to study law if Russia comes to our country. There is no law in Russia and people have no rules'," she said.
"So we have to defend our country. And then we can think about the future."
Besides running the mortar crew, she does a lot of work on Tik Tok, and I remember seeing one of her videos via Twitter. It was scarymazing.
I read this one this morning. I couldnt help but be cynical about pretty people getting more airtime than poor old Joe Schmosky who was an electrician for a middling company sitting in the corner cleaning his equipment and just wanting to be able to sit down one day without wondering if he'll get to see another week out. But then chided myself because that kid who was shipped off to live with an aunt will likely not have a mother when he grows up, and I followed up with my daily mantra of "eff you Putin and Russia in general"
Of course, FKAS, because winning the PR front is an important component of winning on the physical fronts. More knowledgeable people than me can speak on this, but my guess is that was as true back in, say, WW1 as it is now.
Similarly, the work that a Joe Schmosky still does as an electrician, keeping the power running at a munitions factory miles from any front is also an essential component of winning the war. These people won't be as photogenic, literally or metaphorically, as a lawyer turned mortar-unit commander. This has also always been known to be the case, I guess.
yeah - i think it got me at a weak spot this morning waking up on the wrong side of the bed. I also read a story about the companies making AI endorsing a draft document about the concerns of AI being a possible extinction event for humans? Didnt make sense to me and sounded like a filler piece with a clickbait title (looking at you ABC news australia). Plus they didnt actually explain what their specific extinction event concerns were. I wanted to see what they thought the catalysts were going to be. I suspect they are worried AI is going to royally stuff up the first world and poorer nations not as reliant on tech will do just fine. I may need to stop reading clickbait headlines for a little while :)
Creator bless this lady. May her ammo always be dry, her baseplate light, and she never has to respond to "final protective fires/charge zero."
I read this one this morning. I couldnt help but be cynical about pretty people getting more airtime than poor old Joe Schmosky who was an electrician for a middling company sitting in the corner cleaning his equipment and just wanting to be able to sit down one day without wondering if he'll get to see another week out. But then chided myself because that kid who was shipped off to live with an aunt will likely not have a mother when he grows up, and I followed up with my daily mantra of "eff you Putin and Russia in general"
Of course, FKAS, because winning the PR front is an important component of winning on the physical fronts. More knowledgeable people than me can speak on this, but my guess is that was as true back in, say, WW1 as it is now.
Similarly, the work that a Joe Schmosky still does as an electrician, keeping the power running at a munitions factory miles from any front is also an essential component of winning the war. These people won't be as photogenic, literally or metaphorically, as a lawyer turned mortar-unit commander. This has also always been known to be the case, I guess.
yeah - i think it got me at a weak spot this morning waking up on the wrong side of the bed. I also read a story about the companies making AI endorsing a draft document about the concerns of AI being a possible extinction event for humans? Didnt make sense to me and sounded like a filler piece with a clickbait title (looking at you ABC news australia). Plus they didnt actually explain what their specific extinction event concerns were. I wanted to see what they thought the catalysts were going to be. I suspect they are worried AI is going to royally stuff up the first world and poorer nations not as reliant on tech will do just fine. I may need to stop reading clickbait headlines for a little while :)