Europe’s militaries right now can just Desert Storm Russia, probably in time for Christmas. They don’t want to pay the human cost, however negligible it is in comparison to what Ukraine has already paid.

I want a p2p native application like that. Using some arcane shit with smart contracts and distributed reputation and zero-knowledge distributed cache and cryptographic identities to get recommendations and fetch what they refer to. I won’t explain how it would work cause I don’t know. I just think technologies behind those buzzwords would be useful.

Probably I should spend the next weekends researching that, and not texting people I haven’t seen for years stupid questions, listening to music, playing games, commenting here and watching pron.

I understand everything, but not the older German “s” instead of usual English one. And that use of “u” is awful. Especially since it’s inconsistent. Why are you doing this?

Right, for him when Trump or Harris wins, the election is fair and transparent.

I’m sorry for the conspiracy tone, but they do keep playing you for fools.

Without photos then.

Have you heard the saying about horrible end being better than horror without end?

The right-wing shift is part of a global failure of established governments.

Yes! Thank you.

Just as the next left-wing shift won’t be a result of humanity getting smarter somehow, it will be a result of right-wing policies failing. And that shift won’t lead to any improvement either.

It’s a pendulum.

People are willing to tolerate a failing system longer, when it aligns on surface with their own views. This is similar to people on the right defending Pinochet and death squadrons.

And people on the left 20 years ago would defend a lot of things about USSR or Che Gevara or stuff like this, even not being tankies.

Tribalism leads to degeneracy.

Well, maybe US-produced porn will stop being glossy garbage for a difference.

Charging the last terrified rapscallion

Left wing, right wing, the people, the elites - forget all that.

There’s only taking responsibility and giving it to someone else.

but Stalin shortly implemented bans on the Ukrainian language in education, government, and industry, as it was deemed “counterrevolutionary”.

Any sources for that?

I dunno, try to imagine useful tech manuals in Pennsylvanian Dutch. Similarly there would be no need to specifically ban Ukrainian.

Things I’ve said are factually true.

Truth can’t be whitewashing.

OK, so you live in Ukraine. This gives us what?

I am Ukrainian. So let’s just say you won’t convince me of the uncle Stalin coming to liberate eastern Europe BS narrative. I would you and your family to try and speak Ukrainian in the occupied territories.

Ukrainian language was not in any way suppressed in the USSR at any point. My grandmother happens to be from Ukraine.

It was less prestigious, because of technical education being given in Russian and the “distribution” system after university, where graduates were being directed to workplaces all over the union.

If you mean these days, I don’t think there’s been a vote on invading Ukraine.

A strong majority of russian are genocidal imperialists. Not because of any inherent qualities, it’s the choices they make.

Well, since you’ve pulled some Ukrainian roots for your position, I’ll say that I’m Armenian and those Ukrainians I’ve met who’d open their mouth on Artsakh did not lead me to believe that Ukrainians make better choices (and they can stick whatever they call “international law” where sun don’t shine, if that set of rules in their opinion makes a land consistently Armenian since before Slavs made it into written history and till now to be Azeri, because in USSR someone decided so and some bastards “recognized” it as such).

I will just add that the russians should take ownership of the outcomes in their history (not just 1996 election, but more generally). They are not children and they need to take responsibility without looking for scapegoats as they always do.

Do you do the same in full for every identity you apply to yourself? If not, then why are you giving advice to Russians?

The 2000 and 2004 elections in russia are generally considered free and fair (2004 perhaps less so, but I digress). That didn’t really have an impact later on.

I meant 1996. Wide protests, the first election in independent Russia widely put in doubt, but in the West - lots of enthusiasm that the bad thing didn’t happen and those communists didn’t win.

even their much fetishized celebration of WW2 victory is a ruse as the USSR initially sided with the Nazis to split up Europe

I disagree. (Sorry for the very long elaboration that follows, but it’s needed, I think. Stalin’s USSR wasn’t nice, but what you said is usually part of the narrative most of which is plainly not true.)

The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact was a temporary (and very abrupt) change of policy and not what some common narratives make it seem. Soviet propaganda almost since 20s and till that short period actually portrayed Germans in some form as the main potential enemy.

Those Baltic countries USSR swallowed were typical fascist regimes, just small. Military aggression is not nice, but the narrative people from the Baltics love now, about how USSR was “worse than the Nazis” - well, very few Baltic Jews survived, I guess that makes their position consistent with reality, but doesn’t sell it very well to me.

Parts of Poland annexed were Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, and Wilno which is now part of Lithuania. And no, Polish Republic of that time wasn’t very minority-friendly. Again, not as clear-cut. There Soviet troops were really welcomed in 1939.

Even the Winter War was preceded by repeated offers of similar or bigger amount of territory given to Finland by USSR in exchange for what it asked, and what it asked was the really necessary territory to make Leningrad defensible from the Finnish side. It was not as barbaric and aggressive as the common narratives say as well. Karl Gustav Mannerheim, if you know who that is, not only supported accepting the deal, but was in favor of some concessions more than the minimum that USSR demanded. And after the war, forcing its victory, USSR took no more than that.

And Soviet Union did pay the biggest human cost of those fighting in Europe.

The fetish is disgusting, of course, and also anachronistic - there were no regular parades initially in celebration of that war ending, only those on November 7, and of course nobody was enthusiastic about an opportunity to “repeat it”. It was a hungry ruined country with disabled veterans in poverty, gangs of orphans, years of darkness and despair, one can say. The years between end of the war and Stalin’s death are not really remembered for anything other than that.

Actually for all the Cold War the USSR’s propaganda position was that it wants only peace and united humanity, and the people who want to “repeat” something are on the other side. I’d say that during the first Indochina war and even later this was, well, true.

Being a continuation of England more or less, you’ve got more. Especially since those democratic traditions were pretty English in the beginning.

Some appreciation for the Hezbollah please, they know that and they don’t care

The issue is that we believe we have a free democracy when the only power we have is to put an X in a box every few years.

Right.

WDYM, Hitler was pretty friendly with German oligarchy. No suiciding them or something, their relationships were pretty chill, having fun together, going to countryside, going to each other with families, having coffee.

They are elite. Not in quotes. The fact that they remain an elite and will remain an elite under Trump shows us that they are not losers and they don’t lose.

They didn’t lose control over DNC, that’s what they care about, perpetual real power over half the politics in one big country, not temporary and limited power over all of it.

In this case they have also shown Trump and anybody else that they are a very convenient opposition, that should remain as it is. It’s a win.

But you’re the guys who flew to the Moon, invented nukes and the Internet. You’ll think of something.

Age caps are good.

A rating voting system would be good too.

But I don’t think there won’t be younger people with the same kind of hubris.