Elmo is going to take the praise and dwell in it. He won’t care who these words came from, and he’s going to praise Putin back for his “insightful observation”. And Elmos fanboys are going to suck it up, and will probably go on to say that the world better bows to them both. I hate everything about this, so much.

recollecting from memory: Early in the war, russian news reported they busted a nazi hideout in the occupied donbass region. The report was accompanied by a picture of swastika flags, nazi tshirts, 3 copies of the “Sims 3” game and a document signed with “Illegible”. All layed out neatly on a bed.

Apparently, the instructions for staging the photo was to include Nazi paraphenalia, 3 SIM Cards and a document with an illegible signature. And someone didn’t read the instructions properly (or took them too literal), and instead used 3 copies of Sims 3, as well as a document signed with the name “illegible”

So, a small anecdote from me, although from within the German Bundeswehr:

Back when I left school, Germany still had a mandatory 9 month military service (you could refuse military service in exchange for a civil service). The first three months were basic training and fairly strict, in that we had to salute higher ranking personell when we were in uniform. Our group had the luck of getting a private as a substitute group leader, someone who just finished their first 3 months. Since we were technically the same rank, we didn’t have to salute the first three months.

After our three months, everyone was transfered to different barracks, I was transfered to a military airport, specifically a helicopter sqaudron. So when I entered the hangars, I came across the first officer and saluted them, according to military conduct. They saluted back but immediately followed up, asking me to never do that again.

Air force pilots and their crew are almost exclusively officers and up, so when I was in the barracks, I would have to constantly salute, and they would have to salute back, and no one wanted that. So we were told not to salute, a friendly “good morning/day” would be enough.

There was only one person in the entire barracks that we were supposed to salute, and that was the barracks’ commander. Who, at their first visit to our squadron, told our squadron leader beforehand to have us not to salute him, either, so we didn’t.

Tl;dr: In my entire 9 months of military service, I only saluted once and was immediately told to never do that again.

I fully agree with the 8bitdo recommendation. I have an 8bitdo Pro 2 controller, and I love it. I love that it is easily customizable, I love that I can use it on multiple devices (Quest 2, Nintendo Switch, PC/Deck), I love that it comes with a rechargable battery but can also be used with AA batteries. Build quality feels great and it can often be found for around $30-40.