Lol, really? One can’t control the fact that bad things happen. The west isn’t forcing either China or Russia to claim territory that doesn’t belong to them.

However, one can control how one reacts to said events. Help out where we can, and strengthen ourselves for the future.

There’s that whole proverb about crisis=danger+opportunity. The danger is there regardless…if you fail to seize the opportunity presented, well, you are pretty much guaranteed to come out the other side worse off.

Very few people WANT a war in Ukraine. But as China keeps adding dashes to their map, it’s pretty clear there’s a reasonable chance to be an even bigger war around the corner, whether we want it or not.

The Ukraine war woke the west up from its slumber, and it has allowed us to put the old stuff stuff cluttering our closets to good use, as well as test some new weapons concepts, and to get ourselves ready for the bigger conflict on the horizon.

If we are really lucky, China is looking at Ukraine and having second thoughts about kicking the hornets nest at all, saving a lot of lives on both sides.

If we are not that lucky, then Ukraine has allowed us to be much better prepared for the coming conflict.

So am I glad Ukraine happened? Not a bit. Can I see the silver lining thru the clouds? For sure.

Pretty much. China is pretty good at buying friends…when they aren’t busy stealing their stuff..

I don’t get why China allows their fishing fleets to keep shitting on their international reputation. It’s so counterproductive.

I get that Ukraine won’t consider the possibility of ceding any territory, nor should they. They probably don’t like their allies even mentioning it.

But, there’s the separate issue of not being able to join NATO with ongoing territorial disputes. Without much context to go on, I would almost interpret this as something more along the lines of “Ukraine could join NATO tomorrow if the dispute went away (by whatever method)”.

The Empire focused half of the show that was mostly made up specifically for the show is EXCELLENT tho, and really worth watching.

They should have just stuck with that and called the show Empire IMHO. Would have been an instant classic.

Frankly, you’ll enjoy Foundaton more if you don’t read the books first. Otherwise, you’ll be sitting there shaking you head wondering why they continuously mangle the core concept of the books so badly, despite characters occasionally directly stating how it works (only for the same episode otherwise showing utter disregard for said statement)

Dunno if Lexx is really worth it tbh. The original movies were worth watching just because it was so weird and different.

But if you were on the fence after those, well it doesn’t really change. Just season after season of the same sort of plots…if you like that, it’s great. If you don’t, it’s gonna get old really fast.

I rewatched all of Andromeda recently, and after a season and a half is was mostly awful, but it was occasionally entertaining.

I rewatched the first Lexx movie, remembered why I never finished the show the first time around, and moved on to something else.

Andromeda had such promise for a low budget SciFi show. The writing started out pretty good…then purple went gold and the writing IMMEDIATELY went to shit, no slow downward slide or anything. It was like a totally different show midway thru season 2, have never seen anything like it before or since.

Heck yeah, watched all of those, they were so fun. Cleopatra 2525 is one I had almost forgotten about, thanks for reminding me!