If you look away, you will have to watch another one

A few more years till they measure engagement via your camera

Let me first address the accusations of me accusing you being emotional and whatever. We’re having a respectful conversation I hadn’t hoped to have it in the first place. I don’t like your views, I may only sympathize with you. Thanks for that.

The hate you are talking about is not inherently inside Russia’s population. This hate is channeled by propaganda. As with Georgians and Turks: there were periods where everyone hated them, now they are friends. Fingers crossed the same will happen with ukranians soon, but I lost any hope that it will be reciprocal. Still, it is and will remain for decades a problem for the world.

how and when will russia change from its current state?

The current state is perpetual but silent war that exists, but somewhere far from themselves. The government finds this state to be the most favorable to them, but it draws a line between the government and the economic elites. I’d give it five to twenty years to resolve. No more than Putin’s lifespan, but also it should be resolved by the upcoming Third World War.

But the question itself contains a subtle implication. You think that Russia is a threat to the world or neighbors because how easy it starts the war with its neighbors and how violent its rhetoric. While I agree, I would also add to this the efficiency of Russian government, if by efficiency we define the government’s capability to save and multiply the resources of the very rich. My biggest fear is that other countries will implement the similar approaches.

That’s the case of corporate VPN I believe

I’ve been recently banned for putting links that lead to russian sites, so I’ll reference the sources by name in italic.

On the quantitative side this is confirmed by various polling initiatives that use different methodologies (including in-direct polling with attempts to estimate preference falsification).

AFAIK it is neither confirmed nor refuted. I don’t know how one would interpret results where 91-93% just refuse to talk to a sociologist and 4-5% more abort the interview when asked about something related to the war. That’s the results by Russian Field, one of a few agencies that publish these numbers. They do interpretation of these results, but they differ from month to month: you can numbers from Feb 2024 to prove your point, I can put numbers from May 2024 to prove mine.

On the qualitative side, you can look at genocides committed in the last ~100 years by the russians (and there are several, includes less well known ones) and review the attitudes towards these crimes among various socio-political groups

That’s a bold point implying that history defines the attitudes for a whole nation for decades. There were a lot of atrocities made in the name of Russia in the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, towards Circassians, Germans, Tatar and Georgians (probably forgot something). But for some reasons, russians want to exterminate only Ukrainian identity, conquer Baltics and befriend Georgia and Germany. That’s a political/propaganda surface, not a historical one.

Talking about qualitative research, there’s a publicsociologylab group that conducts interesting narrative research. Their last project is concerned with the view on the war from a non-central city. They conclude that people do ignore the atrocities and view them as something that is alien to them. The only question they ask is whether it is worth it to go to war for $10k + $3k/mo.

I hope that I was able to draw a picture where Russia is not a country of pests that should be exterminated. It’s a complex evil system that could be built anywhere in the world, even in Ukraine or the US.

To not disclose to your internet provider the sites you are visiting.

Apple? They probably are able to geoblock Russia, but it will cut sales in neighboring countries like Georgia and Kazakhstan. Why would they perform such a reckless move?

C’mon, google works with China

probably way more expensive

Nope. iPhone 15 pro max 128 gb could be bought in Moscow for 109490 руб, which is $15 higher than in the US.

Before the war Apple had a weird price policy in Russia when they just multiplied the official US price by the factor of 100 to get the price in roubles. It resulted in a +30-60% increase in prices.

So… the war has actually dropped the price for the Apple products dramatically for regular russians. The only problem with the Apple products the war has introduced is that you can’t pay in AppStore

Only via complicated shady schemes. The simplest option is to go to another country, open a bank account and buy a sim.

See how iPhone sales peak in Kazakhstan and Georgia after the war and sanctions. Does apple work in Russia? No, they just ship their shit to Georgia and don’t ask why every Georgian needs 2 iphones and one MacBook every year.

The vast majority of russians support imperialism and a majority hold genocidal views (they would never openly agree to this, but on an outcome basis they do support eradication of Ukrainian culture and not only).

That’s a major simplification. The fact that russians do not stand against a genocidal war doesn’t mean that the vast majority do support it.

First world problems

Thanks to Tinder I had the best and the worst first dates in my life.

But both long term girlfriends and soon-to-be-my-wife I met through friends

Yep. After they started this story they are sucking deep

They were afraid to lose 4% of the audience in Russia and the favor of the Russian government (probably some grants,idk). Now they are afraid to lose those who think that it’s “the right thing to do”.

Btw, it’s not that hard for the Russian government to block every VPN extension like they did with Nord VPN and Surfshark VPN let alone ban Mozilla. This action will help no one and it’s yet another act of virtue signaling

Become an aquaman and invest into real estate

Looks like you’re right

Visualization looks misleading then

April, March and Feb

Haha we’re doomed

Took me more than a minute to realize that only 4 months of this year hold the record. Well, let’s wait for 2030

Edit: nope. Last 12 months indeed beat the records consequently . We’ll all soon die. The only good thing I can see from this graph is that the shift is even, meaning the seasons are still predictable.