There was a bit from Soviet TV of early eighties. Rough translation of hosts words:

USSR is a big country, we’ll live with these sanctions just fine, but Washington’s allies will be hit from these “cowboy jumps” much harder.

So I’d say it’s always all good and stable for Russia until some certain point.

Makes me think how China could’ve eventually reunited with Taiwan if they just played a long game and didn’t destroy Hong Kong’s autonomy. But instead authoritarian habits kicked in.

John Law about to ask to hold his beer.

Obama orchestrated “Russia probe” narrative.

• Russia probe told reporters.

There is Valetudo project, that spoofs vacuums external cloud connections to your locally hosted server.

Also AFAIK there are vacuums with only Bluetooth connectivity to configure them from a phone, with no Wi-Fi and cloud bullshit.

You’d be better seeing fall of USSR as cautionary tale of letting senile morons run a country to the ground.

Defending Western civilization against threats from both Progressive Left extremism and global jihad.

Ah yes, the infamous Marxist-Islamist menace.

And in fact, that VFX sequence was completed 10 times faster that it could have been completed with visual traditional VFX tools and workflows.

Yeah, generative AI model that is probably trained on some IP that they probably do not own, will do the job faster. Duh.

deleted by creator

As someone had put it:

Putin lays a pile of shit in Trump’s hands, and latter looks for nuts in there to be happy about.

While people like Rubio and Couch Lover have to “tune in” to Taco Don’s stupidity, I think Pete there was already on that wave due to being an idiot, and alcoholism probably doesn’t help, so my assumption is that he was actually quite in sync.

Considering how shipments were stopped last times, with one most idiotic - “we stopped shipment because what if they negotiate ceasefire now” - that’s absolutely what “master of the deal” would say.

He could’ve tried to revive the country, and he got an easy start in the 00s, but he chosed to gamble it instead.

That’s not why people become dictators. Not to mention that in autocratic environments heads of states don’t really feel the consequences of their actions, and don’t really mind throwing millions of their own people under the bus to bring some ephemeral former glory back.

Some folks became billionaires in Russia simply because they were friends of Putin though.

These may truly be protected class. Everyone else though - out the window as soon as they outlive their usefulness.

Interesting how he wasn’t just transferred to some “window looker” job (pun not intended).

Ministers in Russia are appointed basically by czar himself and firing such folks for their failures would mean admitting that czar made wrong decision when appointing them.

There’s, of course, ol’ classic “czar good, boyars bad”, but still kinda surprising for me.

Art of the deal, folks.

utan

Taco Don already functionally stopped all aid and arms supply to Ukraine and trying his hardest to ignore Ukraine, and will probably chicken out from helping Taiwan defend itself too in case latter gets invaded.

So that’s just China being asshole too and wanting Russia to succeed, because that’d mean you can take a dump on international laws and have benefits that outweigh repercussions.

If whatever remains of free democratic world won’t get its shit together soon - we will just get picked apart eventually by those last iteration imperialists.

That’s repeating theme in Russian history though.

Back in 18th and 19th centuries French was spoken by Russian elites and wannabe aristocrates more than Russian.

(PDF) The History of the French Language in Russia

In later USSR period Russians wanted everything American and dreamed to become Americans. As Western media started creeping in, fashion started creeping in, obtaining some Levi’s pair of jeans meant you’re the coolest guy around, would also mean you could have problems with police. But Western way of life with how it was portrayed, seemed superior in every way to what people had in decaying Soviet Union. Democracy with those charismatic leaders also seemed like a dream compared to Soviet increasingly geriatric leadership (oh the irony).

Soviet Denim Smuggling - The History of Jens Behind the Iron Curtain

deleted by creator

deleted by creator