How long before they start selling territory to China?
Nit: We can probably retire this term now.
I had to look it up because this is first time I heard this nonsense term, so it's not like it's commonly used
*everyone but those poor souls being drafted or invaded...
I wonder how many people are trafficked in Shanghai these days tho.
I don't think that's what "descriptive" means. The term is as descriptive as much as "laconic" or "china" or "japan" (meaning varnish) - in each case, you can't independently derive the word's meaning from the original place name.
(Since I'm getting downvoted anyway - anyone avoiding the overwhelmingly more common near-synonym, "drafted", is doing so because they don't like to remember that the US can still do it, too.)
The former I expect to be a highly managed process through which the state renders you unable to seek employment, housing, education, free movement etc, in order to coerce or capture you violating the law, encouraging you to present yourself willingly rather than dealing with criminal charges in addition to or instead of conscription.
The latter, my expectation is that mercenary recruiters, driven by sales team esque metrics, eventually resort to pulling random young men off the street, out of bars, etc, based on a best guess of the young man's age. It's far more chaotic, error prone, and disruptive to family life, while being less coersive.
Did you know all words are just sounds with an arbitrary connection to what they describe (except the unusual case of onomatopoeia, of course)?
It's exactly as descriptive as most other words, and the benefit over a neologism is the arbitrary connection has already been established in speakers' minds.
The expression "to shanghai someone" doesn't just derive from the city name -- it is the city name. And the term originated at a time when respect by the West for Chinese people was not at a historical high point.
FWIW, according to https://wordhistories.net/2019/07/16/shanghai-kidnap/ , in 1857, in San Francisco, they considered the term vulgar slang:
> It was suspected that he had been drugged and carried off, or, as it is vulgarly called, “Shanghaied,” on the ship Oliver Jordan, which sailed yesterday.
I don't think it's necessarily wrong, my issue with it is that the policing comes usually with snark. As if only total disgust to a term and a middling aggressive tone will help.
I only got to learn how some terms can be harmful through empathy, and try to apply that when trying to make a point about why I think using term such-and-such wrong. Even then I still reject when someone approaches someone's perceived non-politically correct speech with snark, we should save that for egregious instances of it, not for small slights...
> Telling people how to talk is just wrong in my opinion
Everyone has their line, though. Not knowing anything about you, I will wager there is some language you were maybe OK with 20 years ago, which you're not cool with today?
As I know, this is first formulated by Mussolini: "For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law".
And the reach of Russian authorities is unlikely to extend into Georgia at least.
you could have money, skills and eligibility to be in EU country, but if your one and only Russian passport has expired you can't extend the visa, the embassy won't extend and you will be sent back.
So threatening to nuke somebody is completely routine for Russian government and as it seems for not insignificant parts of the angry population too.
EDIT Here's an article about it: https://eurasianet.org/russian-mp-threatens-to-nuke-azerbaij...
I have to add that "Delyagin’s comments were swiftly condemned by senior Russian officials" - but as I said, making the threats itself is routine even for people in government positions.
At this point it's become rather meaningless to take too much notice of such frequent occurrences. Even Putin cannot help himself alluding to nukes, so it's not like you could point to certain people in particular that would be more worth listening to.
In the end, does it matter? If it was possible that threatening nukes gets you whatever you want - and what Russia wants right now is really big and bad - then they could just go and do whatever afterwards. I think the only logical conclusion is that one has to ignore the threats and act as if it's only used as political and propaganda weapon. The possibility that someone will do much more has always been there, but never has it made the West back down in whatever fight it came up in, despite repeated close calls. Right now the losses of giving in would be much higher and longer lasting than in many of the previous instances. I doubt even the Cuban missile crisis was as big a deal as giving Ukraine to Russia would be. Ukraine has industry and resources in large amounts, and people, and it would be a huge boost to Russia's strength to control it all. Whether they can after hat they did is another question, but lets not underestimate the power of a brutal police state. At the very least they will spread tons and tons of misery, more and much longer than they already do, and they will have significantly more control over Europe.
It would tell me a lot about how successful pro-war propaganda is among it's viewership, but very little about what is likely to be done by the department of state.
If Russia breaks the nuclear taboo, all other countries can retaliate nuclearly against Russia. At that point China invading Russia becomes an advantageous action for China.
Not that I would take that particular offer so...