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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

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  • This idea ignores how Russia works. Everyone already knows it’s a totalitarian shithole. They just don’t have the means to fight it, so they either lay low and play along, or try to get the fuck out. Sanctions hit the second group, as well as companies that implement them because they’re losing income. In fact, older folk here still grumble at USSR collapse and how effective free reign of capitalism was in the 90s at extracting wealth out of the country.

    Even if that idea was to hold any water, straight up blocks are not what you’d need. For example, when I open up a site and I see a block page, the idea that pops into my head is always the same - “what a bunch of assholes…”. I can bypass the block either way, but the difference is that it can say either “blocked by the ministry of truth”, or “blocked because ur russian, haha get rekt”. Given how easy it is to get hit by censorship for innocent things, it’s rather easy to shift the blame, while keeping the business running, by just standing up to the ideas of free speech, like not removing the “celebrating the pride month” logo in that country specifically, like all of them did…


  • Is it any 8 years, or continious 8 years? In most places, the requirement is for continious, which is a tough ask. Imagine not being able to leave the country for almost a decade.

    And you need a reason to get residence permit. In most cases there are few: living with spouse, reuniting with family, working, studying, or doing business. Of those, only work, study and business are the ones that are realistically achievable.

    For work, there’s usually also a requirement for employeer to prove that there are no natives available to fill the role. This is a tough process, which takes a lot of time and no guarantee it’d even gets approved. So, not many employees even bother unless you have exceptional skills.

    For study, you would have to actually study to avoid expulsion, while somehow earning enough on some part-time remote work to support yourself (or have enough savings to support yourself for years). And then, bachelors is not enough so you must go for PhD. Meanwhile, in both above cases you have to also learn local language. I’m sure there are people who could pull this off, but, again, it’s quite exceptional.

    Last is business. Usually the requirement is to invest somewhere in the ranges of $100k to $500k into local economy. That’s not filthy rich, but, for context, for Russian it’d take 3 years of fighting on the frontlines to earn as much, with a wage considered good enough to risk dying for… And then the country can still deny you permit without any reason.

    It’s because of this, most people I know, who chose to leave the countries, keep their passports and either settle in Armenia and Georgia with 182/365 days renewable visa-free entry, or run circles between Serbia-Montenegro or Thailand-Vietnam.

    There are also interesting opportunities with digital nomad visas, but, again, the requirements out of reach for most.

    But for oligarchs, this is pennies. They can buy a few outright, then fly private jet to the US as tourists with pregnant wives, get children born there, then send them to study in London. Apply for family reunifications, bam, theyre now citizens of US and UK, in addition to all previous ones.

    I assume if the Russian maintainers showed that they’ve passed the citizenship examinations and their different citizenship is only a matter of time

    It’s the other way around. You have to live for X years to be eligible for the test. Given a common requirement of 5 years, they would have to have started this process 2 years before the war broke out.




  • Ukraine is not committing brutal crimes, not lobbing rockets randomly, hoping to kill anyone, civilian or not

    Check your sources bias. Control phrase is “cluster munitions, Donetsk”. Russia is faaaar from being free of guilt, but, while they have capability to do this to ALL Ukrainian cities, I don’t see any footage of landmines all over Kiyv and Lviv. Another check is to listen to chants(e.g. москаляку на гіляку, смерть русні, etc) of each side. This effectively flips your argument upside down.

    Definitely not comparable, though, at least that we can agree.








  • Well, I wouldn’t worry about 2 and 3 that much. It’s just that as a foreigner, especially if you are from the US, you will most definitely fall under the surveillance of FSB and the cops will look at you twice, but they’re not paid half-decent enough to actually give a shit and do their job properly. They might harass you here and there but if you don’t do anything stupid like protesting in red square or doing selfies in front of military bases, then they’ll have nothing against you. I imagine that’s not that much worse than living in the US under CIA’s umbrella and trigger happy cops. Other than that, it’s not nearly an extreme hellhole like NK, Afghanistan or Syria that people make it sound like. In fact, you can get by in Moscow or St. Petersburg without a guide or translator just fine. I’d rather advise to watch out for the tourist traps(the usual), and to avoid getting out of the city limits and into the suburbs because of the much increased crime levels.

    Ah, and put the fact that for every dollar you spend there, you put 20 cents straight into Putin’s pocket into that list…

    And also that you’d probably need a visa and it’s a hassle…

    And that you’d probably need a Russian friend to get you hooked up with the basics and avoid going through the bureaucracy - like with currency exchange, credit card, carrier plan, etc…

    Also that weather is rather harsh there…

    And also that it’s probably the dirtiest country on earth because city planners didn’t zone out lawns and parks properly therefore the mud gets spread absolutely everywhere…

    And that internet is half-broken, with half sites censored while the others block everyone from Russian IP’s because sanctions…

    And that Ukraine might not let you in afterwards…

    And that you’d for sure be questioned by your homecountry’s intelligence services…

    And that’s about all that I can think of.





  • I wouldn’t jump on to blame on the customer. In fact, have my own hill I’m fighting right now where I’m not completely in the right. Who knows, maybe the working hours were not visible, or maybe there was no closed sign at all. In any case, this made at least one person mad and is a perfect opportunity for a business to do a retro and check if they might need to do something about it. It’s much more valuable than a thousandth review from someone who had a great time… or didn’t, but didn’t care to review either. And, unless your business is genuinely bad, even a Karen once in a while shouldn’t affect the total score a bit.




  • I think it’s possible to have both in a federated system. Let the instance the user is on keep the tally of who upvoted what, and let the instance the post is on to know only the tally from other instances. Should be up to instances whether to show this data to users or not. This way it’d be easy to find and defederate single user instances manipulating votes.

    But, on the other hand, I don’t see a reason to care about privacy of votes if you can’t even delete a post or comment. Fediverse is, by design, not very private, why bother with just this one aspect of it then.