• DoctorButts
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    2904 months ago

    What an imbecile. Mercury is a planet. It is too large to be hidden anywhere on a chess board

    • circuscritic
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      4 months ago

      …this was a regional tournament, in the Caucasus Republic of Dagestan.

      So calling them Russian is technically accurate, but really they are a brutalized and subjugated colonial subject of Russia.

      Also, you’ll find this kind of crazy anywhere you go. She literally just dumped mercury around her opponents chess board when she thought no one was around to notice.

      I get why it’s catching headlines, but give me a break. It’s just crazy being crazy.

      • @HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        So calling them Russian is technically accurate

        The word Russian has two meanings in English. It can mean relating to the country of Russia, or relating to the Rus ethnicity.

        The Russian language distinguishes the two. The first is росси́йский. The second is ру́сский. Both words are translated as “Russian” in English, which causes confusion in English, but there’s no such confusion in Russian.

        These people (Dagestanis) are Russian in the first sense, but not the second sense.

        Historically, the second sense of “Russian” included Ukrainians and Belarussians (so you could say Ukrainians were Russian in the second sense, but not the first sense) but it’s become controversial to do so since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

        • @Chee_Koala@lemmy.world
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          14 months ago

          Interesting! thanks for elaborating. A week or month ago, a local Ukrainski politician, I thought it was a lady person, proclaimed that using the Russian language the invaders use is like spitting in the face of your home country. She got a hell of a lot of pushback on that. That made it seem that a lot of locals still prefer Russian to Ukrainian language. Can you shed some light on those conflicting sentiments?

          Was inspired to educate myself a bit extra on Cyrillic script, so, from the english wiki:

          "As of 2011, around 252 million people in Eurasia use it as the official alphabet for their national languages. About half of them are in Russia. " … "The Slavic languages are conventionally (that is, also on the basis of extralinguistic features) divided into three subgroups: East, South, and West, which together constitute more than 20 languages. Of these, 10 have at least one million speakers and official status as the national languages of the countries in which they are predominantly spoken: Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian (of the East group), Polish, Czech and Slovak (of the West group), Bulgarian and Macedonian (eastern members of the South group), and Serbo-Croatian and Slovene (western members of the South group) "

        • circuscritic
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          14 months ago

          I can only approach this from the English language, which is why I said technically correct. But I also feel the article should have done a lot better job explaining that they were Dagestani, which is not unreasonable as if this had happened in Chechnya, it would have said Chechen.

          Also, I have never seen Russian used interchangeably with Ukrainian, or Belarusian, before or after, 2014. But again, maybe that’s just my English language only bias.

          That said, I do appreciate you writing on the explainer for other users who aren’t familiar with the status of, or distinction between Russia and the Caucasus.

        • Bizzle
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          24 months ago

          Japan, maybe? Or like the Khmer Rouge? I’m not saying the Nazis aren’t monsters because they totally are, I’m just saying the competition might be closer than you think.

  • HubertManne
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    814 months ago

    this type of stuff I will never get. why are you in a competition if you don’t want to do the thing you competing in to win. join an assasin competition.

  • @ArugulaZ@lemmy.zip
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    624 months ago

    Between this, the antisemitism of Bobby Fischer, and the guy cheating with the power of teledildonics, I have to wonder what the hell is up with chess players.

      • @naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        Hmmm lets examine this statement.

        Isolated weird place, scary Russians, Russian stereotypes of intellectual game + tremendous violence.

        Gee, it almost sounds like this is a too convenient racist lie. Any proof? The oldest reference just says ‘it totally happened’ and cites something I can’t access on Google books. It’s 20 years after the fact and not a primary source.

    • @TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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      174 months ago

      Hell hath no fury like a competitive nerd being put on a pedestal.

      I think this happens a lot anytime someone who perceives themselves as being shunned by society gets too much positive feedback and an iota of power over people.

      I think its the same reason why every nerdy twitch streamer ends up being outed as an abusive child predator.

  • The Picard Maneuver
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    524 months ago

    What a bizarre way to try to murder someone. And over a chess game? I know Russians take their chess seriously, but this is insane.

  • Lad
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    474 months ago

    Poisoning people, pushing people out of windows, and shooting people twice in the back of the head. The holy trinity of Russian assassinations.

          • @Shou@lemmy.world
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            54 months ago

            No no. You see. You didn’t actually chose to jump on it, the other person made you. You have no say in the taking the fall.

    • @Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Russian suicides you mean? Russian has never once in its history killed anyone, they died of their own accord.

    • @aidan@lemmy.world
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      14 months ago

      This wasn’t assassination though, the headline is just deceptive. It was just a lone psycho in Russia trying to kill another Russian. Not an international competition, like was implied in the headline. (Or at least that’s the impression I got from the headline.

  • Sol 6 VI StatCmd
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    444 months ago

    You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is “Never get involved in a land war in Ukraine.” But only slightly less well known is this: “Never go in against a Russian when death is on the line!”

  • fmstrat
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    414 months ago

    Oliver Carroll, a Ukraine war correspondent for The Economist, summed up the situation with some social media snark: “I know that on the standards of Russian doping it’s perhaps only a 7 out of 10. But still…”

  • @catloaf@lemm.ee
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    384 months ago

    I’m surprised it actually worked. Liquid mercury isn’t really that harmful, it’s the vapors that get you. I’d be concerned about it affecting me too, since I’d also be sitting at the board.