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"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes" – Author unclear Can we talk about the supposedly "cosmonauts arriving in t

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes" – Author unclear Can we talk about the supposedly "cosmonauts arriving in the ISS wearing Ukraine's color" for a moment by the way? I saw that news posted at least 3 times today on HN, and it has been pushed all days on the front page on all media over here, I even got a notification on my phone from news outlets. But looking deeper into this: it seems like they've been using said suits since at least 2015, yet news outlet have _zero_ doubt this is a political message from the cosmonauts. I've been trying to take a step back from "news from the Ukrainian front" for a few days now to preserve my mental health and it's disturbing to notice just how heavily certain things are being pushed by media to fit a certain narrative, I'm in no way a Kremlin sympathizer but I truly feel like I'm "on the other side" and forced to buy into a certain idea of the truth.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
trhway 5y ago
>But looking deeper into this: it seems like they've been using said suits since at least 2015, yet news outlet have _zero_ doubt this is a political message from the cosmonauts. The action here was not by choosing Ukrainian flag suits. Like in USSR back then and today in Russia it works in a quantum mechanics way, ie. the suits were already there and those cosmonauts and others involved around instead of paying political correct attention and blocking/replacing those suits - as everybody obviously understood the reaction these suits would produce - they just played dummy and used these suits "Oh! these are just what we've always been using."
- ineedasername 5y ago
  That was pretty much my thought. Their alma mater's colors and the use of this color at some other point in the past decade gave them minimally plausible deniability. I don't completely discount the possibility of coincidental timing, but on balance I think that protesting their government's actions is plausible.
pempem 5y ago
Feeling similarly. Russia is 100% violating international law but is not the only country doing so right now by a longshot. The US is also pressing a tremendous propaganda effort that seems to ignore domestic issues, other international issues and fully whitewash our own slow-roll of Ukraine's attempts to join the EU (1, 2) or NATO 1. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/zelenskyy-ukraine-wants-a-step-by-step-plan-towards-future-eu-membership/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/zelenskyy... 2. https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/02/27/eu-and-ukraine-taking-breath-pub-75648 https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/02/27/eu-and-ukraine-taki... "further EU approximation will not be achieved so easily. There is frustration in Kiev that a deeper relationship with the EU has not brought a membership perspective or the kind of large-scale financial assistance that new member states have received." (2018) And the cost of gas continues to go up while crude goes down (3) and we are doing what would have been unthinkable in 2019, pushing more domestic drilling. (4) 3. https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/18/why-arent-gas-prices-dropping-if-oil-is-getting-cheaper/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/18/why-arent-gas-prices-... 4. https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/new-data-biden-slays-trumps-first-year-drilling-permitting-by-34-2022-01-21/ https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/new-da... It truly feels like another set of years in the upside down.
Buttons840 5y ago
It is hard to do a search on the topic that isn't overwhelmed with 100 large and small new sites all reporting the same thing. However, thinking critically, what are the odds that these colors just happen to perfectly align with the Ukrainian flag? Also, I've never see any space suite, from any country, in a yellow color. I've at least attempted to find evidence that they've used yellow suits before, but haven't found any. At this point I feel like I'm trying to prove a negative, and would ask anyone who claims that these yellow suits have been used before to please provide evidence. On the other hand, I doubt those space suits were made in the last 2 weeks. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-ridicules-idea-that-cosmonauts-wore-yellow-support-ukraine-2022-03-19/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-ridicules-idea-t... Reading the above article on the subject I notice a few interesting things. First, the suits were allegedly made some moths ago in the colors of the crews alma mater. They all have the same alma mater? Seems strange. Second, the article says: "Every crew picks a color that looks different. It was our turn to pick a color," said the cosmonaut. "The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That's why we had to wear yellow flight suits." -- They got to pick their colors, and picked yellow because they had extra fabric and HAD to choose yellow? This seems self contradictory. It also doesn't mention alma mater. There's 3 different explanations put forth by the article. To top it all off, I haven't seen anything about these suits having existed since 2015 like you claim. I'm not convinced the suits of a space agency were really determined by the amount of excess fabric they had lying around.
- sam-2727 5y ago
  Here's a picture of the same color suit on the same person in 2015: https://twitter.com/OlegMKS/status/605693958015057921 https://twitter.com/OlegMKS/status/605693958015057921
  - throwmeariver1 5y ago
    You know what happened in 2014? We just don't know why does everyone feel the need to be right and no one can admit that from an external point of view SOMETIMES you just can't know the real reason behind actions of other people.
- 5y ago
gebruikersnaam 5y ago
> it seems like they've been using said suits since at least 2015 First link i could find, from 2021. Clearly the same suits /s. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-56444775 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-564...
- qiskit 5y ago
  The fourth photo captioned "Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev with toys used as indicator of weightlessness by ISS crews." https://web.archive.org/web/20141124185343/https://www.rt.com/news/207991-russia-iss-us-space/ https://web.archive.org/web/20141124185343/https://www.rt.co... Unless the russians hacked the archive or time traveled, it shows that the yellow suit has been used since at least 2014.
  - gebruikersnaam 5y ago
    In 2021 they were using the blue suit. In 2022, they switched back to the blue/yellow suit. It's just a coincidence that those colors happen to align with the Ukrainian colors, and therefore not newsworthy /s.
    - qiskit 5y ago
      > In 2021 they were using the blue suit. They were different teams of russians. Each team gets to choose their own colors. The one in 2014 ( "Oleg Artemyev" ) and the one in 2022 ( "Oleg Artemyev" ) are the same person/team? Maybe yellow is mr artemyev's favorite color. But whatever.
    - a_throwaway_10 5y ago
      The colors don't "align with the Ukrainian colors". The suits are predominantly yellow with navy blue and a substantial part of the blue is from the Russian flag on their chests. The Ukrainian flag is yellow and light blue, not yellow and navy blue. I don't know why everyone's saying it's the same colors.
- random_upvoter 5y ago
Markoff 5y ago
yeah and let's ignore it's also their university colors and Kazakhstan flag colors from where they are taking off And speaking about supporting UA with colors same happened with Chinese CCTV news anchor where someone completely changed colors of her dress from green to blue and then spread this changed image for Ukrainian propaganda purposes all over social media, you can see social media photo and real colors in video here: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4458635 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4458635
- jml7c5 5y ago
  Given it was a photo and not a screencap, I suspect that the TV just had terrible color reproduction. Some people like to crank the saturation way up.
sdoering 5y ago
I have to admit I worked in "news" a few years back. Since then I mostly refrain from the dopamine kick of reading news (or headlines). Imho news is like a mix of slot machine (aka Skinner Box) and a 'Confirmation Bias Machine'. Our brain is wired to prefer new things. Especially if we have the delusion this new thing (or information) might benefit us in some way. What I found enlightening was the late Hans Rosling's idea (in his book Factfulness) that one roughly consumes (on average) about 10.000 news pieces a year (about 30 per day). And that one should ask oneself how many of them trigger or at least influence a relevant decision one makes/has to make. How much of news is noise vs. signal? To me this combination of low signal-to-noise ratio and addictive quality of media/news consumption while fostering my confirmation bias was enough to change jobs and turn my back to news. Given the additional fact of massive propaganda in war times (or any crisis) would only be the icing on the proverbial cake.
alphabettsy 5y ago
What’s to talk about? They are wearing uniforms that happen to have the same colors as Ukraine’s flag. > yet news outlet have _zero_ doubt this is a political message from the cosmonauts. Citation please. I’ve seen a couple of articles about it, neither offered a conclusion.
- Zealotux 5y ago
  Apologies, I may have extended my experience of French media to the rest of the world, I got news titles clearly stating "Cosmonauts wearing Ukraine's colors as sign of protest against the war" (paraphrasing).
- Buttons840 5y ago
  "The Russian astronauts did not say anything that would suggest that their clothing was a political statement. Yet it seemed difficult to believe it was happenstance." -- NY Times "It was unclear what, if any, message the yellow uniforms they changed into were intended to send." -- The Guardian "It's not yet clear what message the cosmonauts were trying to send. But when asked about the yellow suits, Artemyev said that every crew chooses their own." -- NPR I'm not sure this qualifies as "_zero_ doubt". Every news outlet I've seen indicates that the Russians said it was because of excess fabric, etc. And every headline has indicated they arrived in yellow and blue jumpsuits, which, of course, they did.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    If the topic belonged to a certain category (see below), many people would consider that to "be" an instance of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) >> In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. The concept is named for ultrasonic dog whistles used in shepherding, which are audible to dogs but not humans. Dog whistles use language that appears normal to the majority but communicates specific things to intended audiences. They are generally used to convey messages on issues likely to provoke controversy without attracting negative attention. One example may be the use of the phrase family values in the United States to signal to Christians that a candidate would support policies promoting Christian values without alienating non-Christian supporters.[1] Another may be the use of the phrase "international bankers" to signal to racists that a candidate is antisemitic without alienating non-racist supporters.[2] However, since this story is a different topic, it "is" not an example of dog whistling. We are swimming in a sea of patterns at all times, but unfortunately we often cannot see the ones that are there - but luckily(?), this is compensated for by often seeing ones that are not there! "Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?" - Frank Herbert

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

trhway 5y ago

>But looking deeper into this: it seems like they've been using said suits since at least 2015, yet news outlet have _zero_ doubt this is a political message from the cosmonauts. The action here was not by choosing Ukrainian flag suits. Like in USSR back then and today in Russia it works in a quantum mechanics way, ie. the suits were already there and those cosmonauts and others involved around instead of paying political correct attention and blocking/replacing those suits - as everybody obviously understood the reaction these suits would produce - they just played dummy and used these suits "Oh! these are just what we've always been using."

ineedasername 5y ago
That was pretty much my thought. Their alma mater's colors and the use of this color at some other point in the past decade gave them minimally plausible deniability. I don't completely discount the possibility of coincidental timing, but on balance I think that protesting their government's actions is plausible.

pempem 5y ago

Feeling similarly. Russia is 100% violating international law but is not the only country doing so right now by a longshot. The US is also pressing a tremendous propaganda effort that seems to ignore domestic issues, other international issues and fully whitewash our own slow-roll of Ukraine's attempts to join the EU (1, 2) or NATO 1. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/zelenskyy-ukraine-wants-a-step-by-step-plan-towards-future-eu-membership/ https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/zelenskyy... 2. https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/02/27/eu-and-ukraine-taking-breath-pub-75648 https://carnegieendowment.org/2018/02/27/eu-and-ukraine-taki... "further EU approximation will not be achieved so easily. There is frustration in Kiev that a deeper relationship with the EU has not brought a membership perspective or the kind of large-scale financial assistance that new member states have received." (2018) And the cost of gas continues to go up while crude goes down (3) and we are doing what would have been unthinkable in 2019, pushing more domestic drilling. (4) 3. https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/18/why-arent-gas-prices-dropping-if-oil-is-getting-cheaper/ https://www.marketplace.org/2022/03/18/why-arent-gas-prices-... 4. https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/new-data-biden-slays-trumps-first-year-drilling-permitting-by-34-2022-01-21/ https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/new-da... It truly feels like another set of years in the upside down.

Buttons840 5y ago

It is hard to do a search on the topic that isn't overwhelmed with 100 large and small new sites all reporting the same thing. However, thinking critically, what are the odds that these colors just happen to perfectly align with the Ukrainian flag? Also, I've never see any space suite, from any country, in a yellow color. I've at least attempted to find evidence that they've used yellow suits before, but haven't found any. At this point I feel like I'm trying to prove a negative, and would ask anyone who claims that these yellow suits have been used before to please provide evidence. On the other hand, I doubt those space suits were made in the last 2 weeks. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-ridicules-idea-that-cosmonauts-wore-yellow-support-ukraine-2022-03-19/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-ridicules-idea-t... Reading the above article on the subject I notice a few interesting things. First, the suits were allegedly made some moths ago in the colors of the crews alma mater. They all have the same alma mater? Seems strange. Second, the article says: "Every crew picks a color that looks different. It was our turn to pick a color," said the cosmonaut. "The truth is, we had accumulated a lot of yellow fabric, so we needed to use it up. That's why we had to wear yellow flight suits." -- They got to pick their colors, and picked yellow because they had extra fabric and HAD to choose yellow? This seems self contradictory. It also doesn't mention alma mater. There's 3 different explanations put forth by the article. To top it all off, I haven't seen anything about these suits having existed since 2015 like you claim. I'm not convinced the suits of a space agency were really determined by the amount of excess fabric they had lying around.

sam-2727 5y ago
Here's a picture of the same color suit on the same person in 2015: https://twitter.com/OlegMKS/status/605693958015057921 https://twitter.com/OlegMKS/status/605693958015057921
- throwmeariver1 5y ago
  You know what happened in 2014? We just don't know why does everyone feel the need to be right and no one can admit that from an external point of view SOMETIMES you just can't know the real reason behind actions of other people.
5y ago

gebruikersnaam 5y ago

> it seems like they've been using said suits since at least 2015 First link i could find, from 2021. Clearly the same suits /s. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-56444775 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-564...

qiskit 5y ago
The fourth photo captioned "Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev with toys used as indicator of weightlessness by ISS crews." https://web.archive.org/web/20141124185343/https://www.rt.com/news/207991-russia-iss-us-space/ https://web.archive.org/web/20141124185343/https://www.rt.co... Unless the russians hacked the archive or time traveled, it shows that the yellow suit has been used since at least 2014.
- gebruikersnaam 5y ago
  In 2021 they were using the blue suit. In 2022, they switched back to the blue/yellow suit. It's just a coincidence that those colors happen to align with the Ukrainian colors, and therefore not newsworthy /s.
  - qiskit 5y ago
    > In 2021 they were using the blue suit. They were different teams of russians. Each team gets to choose their own colors. The one in 2014 ( "Oleg Artemyev" ) and the one in 2022 ( "Oleg Artemyev" ) are the same person/team? Maybe yellow is mr artemyev's favorite color. But whatever.
  - a_throwaway_10 5y ago
    The colors don't "align with the Ukrainian colors". The suits are predominantly yellow with navy blue and a substantial part of the blue is from the Russian flag on their chests. The Ukrainian flag is yellow and light blue, not yellow and navy blue. I don't know why everyone's saying it's the same colors.
random_upvoter 5y ago

Markoff 5y ago

yeah and let's ignore it's also their university colors and Kazakhstan flag colors from where they are taking off And speaking about supporting UA with colors same happened with Chinese CCTV news anchor where someone completely changed colors of her dress from green to blue and then spread this changed image for Ukrainian propaganda purposes all over social media, you can see social media photo and real colors in video here: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4458635 https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4458635

jml7c5 5y ago
Given it was a photo and not a screencap, I suspect that the TV just had terrible color reproduction. Some people like to crank the saturation way up.

sdoering 5y ago

I have to admit I worked in "news" a few years back. Since then I mostly refrain from the dopamine kick of reading news (or headlines). Imho news is like a mix of slot machine (aka Skinner Box) and a 'Confirmation Bias Machine'. Our brain is wired to prefer new things. Especially if we have the delusion this new thing (or information) might benefit us in some way. What I found enlightening was the late Hans Rosling's idea (in his book Factfulness) that one roughly consumes (on average) about 10.000 news pieces a year (about 30 per day). And that one should ask oneself how many of them trigger or at least influence a relevant decision one makes/has to make. How much of news is noise vs. signal? To me this combination of low signal-to-noise ratio and addictive quality of media/news consumption while fostering my confirmation bias was enough to change jobs and turn my back to news. Given the additional fact of massive propaganda in war times (or any crisis) would only be the icing on the proverbial cake.

alphabettsy 5y ago

What’s to talk about? They are wearing uniforms that happen to have the same colors as Ukraine’s flag. > yet news outlet have _zero_ doubt this is a political message from the cosmonauts. Citation please. I’ve seen a couple of articles about it, neither offered a conclusion.

Zealotux 5y ago
Apologies, I may have extended my experience of French media to the rest of the world, I got news titles clearly stating "Cosmonauts wearing Ukraine's colors as sign of protest against the war" (paraphrasing).
Buttons840 5y ago
"The Russian astronauts did not say anything that would suggest that their clothing was a political statement. Yet it seemed difficult to believe it was happenstance." -- NY Times "It was unclear what, if any, message the yellow uniforms they changed into were intended to send." -- The Guardian "It's not yet clear what message the cosmonauts were trying to send. But when asked about the yellow suits, Artemyev said that every crew chooses their own." -- NPR I'm not sure this qualifies as "_zero_ doubt". Every news outlet I've seen indicates that the Russians said it was because of excess fabric, etc. And every headline has indicated they arrived in yellow and blue jumpsuits, which, of course, they did.
- mistermann 5y ago
  If the topic belonged to a certain category (see below), many people would consider that to "be" an instance of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) >> In politics, a dog whistle is the use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. The concept is named for ultrasonic dog whistles used in shepherding, which are audible to dogs but not humans. Dog whistles use language that appears normal to the majority but communicates specific things to intended audiences. They are generally used to convey messages on issues likely to provoke controversy without attracting negative attention. One example may be the use of the phrase family values in the United States to signal to Christians that a candidate would support policies promoting Christian values without alienating non-Christian supporters.[1] Another may be the use of the phrase "international bankers" to signal to racists that a candidate is antisemitic without alienating non-racist supporters.[2] However, since this story is a different topic, it "is" not an example of dog whistling. We are swimming in a sea of patterns at all times, but unfortunately we often cannot see the ones that are there - but luckily(?), this is compensated for by often seeing ones that are not there! "Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us?" - Frank Herbert