Ylva Johansson. She’s Swedish and late last year went on tour around Swedish media about chat control. The media, however, were prepared so hilarity ensued.
https://nordictimes.com/debate/many-misleading-claims-about-chat-control-2-0/
Both are true. The standard of living did improve. But it was so abysmal, that even after the improvement only very few parts of Russia can compare to the rest of Eastern Europe, not to mention anything richer.
The commissioner responsible for the chat control was thoroughly corrupt by a company which created the scanning system. She was also either unbelievably dense or very, VERY dedicated to her role of a pearl-clutching, think-of-the-children granny. To the point of arguing with IT specialists on TV.
Is it really that good or is it just a meme?
If so is it good compared to other cheap brands or as good as the stuff I can buy in dedicated tea shops?
Oligarchs. You’re missing oligarchs. The issue with Ukrainian agricultire is that a lot of it is a big, concentrated business with ties to Western capital on top of the traditional post-soviet oligarchy. This influences actions of both Ukrainian and EU politicians. The matters of imports or transit from Ukraine could be very well sorted out for the short term, but no one in power is really willing to do so.
In the long term Polish agriculture faces a serious challenge from Ukraine when it gets more and more integrated with the west but it’s also not so binary in terms of who floods whom with produce.
I recommend everyone who hasn’t to look up the idea of “Potiomkin villages” (and subsequently Potiomkin anything eg. Potiomkin AI). In short: back in the tzarist days lower ranks put up mock villages which looked clean, modern and prosperous for higher ranks (and tzars) to see during visits. These mockups were essentially theatre decorations which hid the real state of the matters - dilapidated, dirty, poor and corrupt. For at least the last decade everything we saw of Russia was Potiomkin in nature - either to show off before the West or to hide corruption before own superiors.
Ahaha we’re so fucked. The sea temperature is not just higher, it was rising the whole previois year and it’s flatter than in the past. Say goodbye to seasons, we’re heading into the “flood season and heatwave season” territory. Last year I heard top scientists saying “it’s bad and anomalous but not exponential”, this looks… increasingly exponential.
No no no no. It’s, you know, just warfare. Terrible things happen at wars. But you can always send more missiles and bombs so Israel can end the war faster! No genocide to speak of! Just mundane defensive war.
(/s obviously)
That’s an amount of gear and people comparable to what a mid-sized European country could have and what a big European country could muster on short notice. It’s “only” a factor of 2 or 3 less than what Russia prepared for Ukraine at the beginning. It’s likely more than the combined forces of the Baltic states’ militaries and the NATO contingents stationed there.
With a generous dose of optimism it is a force that would at least hold a conventional invasion at bay, if not defeat it via superior tech and sea support. It is a lot even in absolute terms, for an exercise it’s massive.
…until morale improves.
Whether pro-Israeli bots like it or not, numerous acts by IDF do fit perfectly into descriptions of the acts forbidden by the convention. Even if the case is eventually dismissed it will be on technical grounds such as “it’s actually a war crime not a genocide” not because “IDF did nothing wrong”.
👏multi👏bread👏basket👏failure
How about the same but about the world? If I gathered together all the places I visited, all documentaries I watched and all conversations I had it adds up to a mere glance at a myriad of different worlds. Every single small region in the world has more history and social and natural structures than any fantasy book. Living is like pulling individual pixels from a 4000000000000…000k photo which then changes every second.
My brain explodes sometimes, but the idea of fractals helps. There is still immense value in perceiving this small collection of pixels as they build up to more and more connected structures.
Care to elaborate why is this relevant?
Oh and I forgot an important one:
There is no way this could be prevented!!!
What could cause this??? What a mystery!! Why would people succum to viruses?!?!?! Inexplicable!!! If only here was a reason why so many people have weakened immune system??? No one could foresee this, also covid case number is low, don’t look in this direction.
Solidifying control over the Suez Canal - note that Saudis and Iran are (at least for now) not at their throats so some or other kind of cooperation for mutual trade profits may be in order. Their agreement was brokered by China, and the Chinese are very much interested in keeping Suez open. For the local powers the best case scenario is to make westerners GTFO. But the westerners won’t gtfo as long as their ships are under fire. It’s not unlikely that Houthi got “off the leash”, in such case the Iranian warship would paradixically sail there to discipline the attackers and reduce tensions. Howevwr obviously no one would admit it openly.
A more conspirational take is that the heat in the ME, from Hamas to Houthi, is a bid to pressure the US into unpopular moves (stubborn support to Israel, actual violence on the seas, maybe some diplomatic fuckups) and produce an electoral advantage for Trump.
Why think they don’t? Amazon web service is, well, Amazon, so it’s like a Bezos-funded library - if he or other execs wish so they can preserve whatever they wish for as long as they can afford electricity and maintenance. The same goes with google or facebook … the real question is what will be chosen for preservation when inevitably the reaper comes for these corps in their current form.
To people who say it’s oVeRbLoWn CoNsPiRaCy
Every viral disease may leave long term consequences, including the common flu. So can COVID. But we as a society got quite good at handling common flu. Also most people don’t contract it that often and if they do it’s a cause for medical attention. Meanwhile people are getting infected with COVID 3-4 times within 4 years and no one bats an eye besides “yeah, you’re not lucky”. So we were forced into pretending that going through a potentially heavily debilitating disease every 1-2 years is a perfectly normal thing and those who eventually “find out” are either just unfortunate or straight up lying.
Sadly facts don’t care about our feelings and social setups. The endgame (that is max percentage of affected people) is at the level of 50% of the entire population with long covid at all times because the damage from subsequent infections accumulates. I just don’t remember if the timescale for this was 10 or 20 years of unmitigated spread of the virus (that is: what we have now)
Meanwhile the new mutations are not really less severe. Only vaccinations make it so we’re not seeing death rates of 2020 until today. And sooner or later one or another mutated form will evade all immunity, wheteher it emerges tomorrow or in 5 years.
Fun times ahead and, oh, remind me how well are health care systems faring right now when “the pandemic has ended”? Yeah, thought so. And these people are first in line to be affected so it won’t be getting better. If anythong COVID is the one topic where doomerism is perfectly justified as we don’t even try to pretend we’re doing something like we are with climate.
The link does not say in what way people were not supposed to share.
The link is the same kind of self-delusion people show around all of these generative tools: “look the faces are weird, the bird has wrong feathers, the cat has only 2 legs, nothing to worry about” while forgetting that most everything else in a clip works well and that it is the first-of-the-first releases which will get gradually better.