Comment by lupusreal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lupusreal | Hacker News Reader

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> an accidental shiboleth that trips up Russians pretending to be American online is they'll mention unprompted "warm water port" as a notable feature.

That's just reddit paranoia. "Warm water port" is a term of art which means a port that stays free of ice. It's not about comfortable swimming temperatures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port#Warm-water_port

Reddit just uses this as an excuse to say that anybody discussing reasons Russia might have started this war, other than "they're being evil for the sake of being evil, just like in my manchild Marvel/Harry Potter/Star Wars movies" is secretly a Russian bot, because even if you know such reasons might exist your willingness to discuss them, or unwillingness to go along with a simplistic groupthink narrative, is something which must be suppressed and punished. The cause is more important than your desire to have an honest conversation!

Anyway, this kind of language policing and "shibboleth" crap lame slacktivism. Go enlist. Ooh, that's probably a shibboleth too. Beep boop, Imma robot because I don't walk in lockstep with Reddit!

>"they're being evil for the sake of being evil, just like in my manchild Marvel/Harry Potter/Star Wars movies"

The amount of times I've seen people on reddit reply to (presumably real) Ukrainian redditors with a show of solidarity composed of some slogan from a Hollywood movie or to try to explain/compare their situation in Ukraine / on the world stage to an Avengers movie is honestly baffling. I genuinely can't believe that people live framing their existence and perspective of the world without the context of cheap power fantasy fiction. It's so cringingly out of touch that I'm almost far more willing to believe people talking like that are the Russian bots people are constantly harping on about trying to make Western public support look bad.

It isn't paranoia because for most counties all of their ports are "warm water" and only Russia has an obsession with "warm water ports" and is likely to use this phrase. For most countries it is like saying "car with wheels" it is just redundant.

It's also well known that Russia has a lot of fake accounts on social media sites.

So many.

No it's when it's used in contexts outside Russia, note I've been saying it but I'd be a shitty Russia astroturf account to be calling myself out too..., people can say warm water ports. It's mentioning it like it's a notable feature elsewhere in the world that's the telltale sign because it's pretty much only a notable feature for Russia because their other ports freeze in the winter. It's not a notable feature of Texas that it's ports are warm water ports. Every US port except small ones in Alaska that serve the fishing industry are warm water and the same is true of most of the world where all non land locked countries have at least a few lovely balmy ports to choose from.

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