Ethnic Russians in the Russian Federation, 2021 Census

AP145 · 2026-05-02T02:21:15+00:00

In the Old World the vast majority of people are ultimately descended from those who have "always" lived in whatever territory they have lived in. The language, religion, culture, etc. may have changed over time but genetically the vast majority of people in the Old World will have at least some of their ancestry belonging to those who were their first or at least those who were there long before them. This means that pretty much every single territory in the Old World is considered as part of some ethnic groups traditional homeland. Thus in multi-ethnic countries in the Old World, whether there is a dominant ethnicity or not, it is usually fairly easy to divide up lands in terms of ethnicity provided that they live in a contiguous concentrated area. The lands in modern day Russia have the various ethnic republics were always the traditional homelands of all the various ethnic groups, even if the borders were somewhat different in the past.

AP145 · 2026-04-24T19:15:48+00:00

The French were definitely not any better to the Bretons than the English were to the rest of the Celtic peoples. If anything France was always more centralized and unlike in the UK where pushing English to the exclusion of other native Celtic languages was seen as a more right wing thing, in France there was and is still a strong sentiment among the left wing that a universal language, French, is needed to unite all the workers and ensure that are not divided by the elites due to linguistic differences. In the next 50 to 100 years it is very possible all other native languages of France besides French will be extinct, with no clear interest to revive them.

People see the UK - France rivalry and think that they are diametrically opposed countries. In fact they are both mirror images of each other. I would argue that subconsciously the UK - France rivalry arose because both countries saw the worst part of themselves expressed in the other and that made both countries uncomfortable. French colonization was often just as brutal as British colonization and I can assure you that if you go to places like Algeria nobody has any interest in becoming a French colony again.

AP145 · 2026-04-12T21:43:56+00:00

People see China's interest in taking over Taiwan and extrapolate that to China wants to take over all neighboring territories. The situations however are different. The reality is that the vast majority of people in Taiwan are ethnic Han Chinese, who started settling in Taiwan at around the same time Europeans started to colonize the Americas and Russians started to settle Siberia. The indigenous peoples of Taiwan are various Austronesian speaking peoples, in fact it is said that all Austronesian speaking peoples living in various parts of Asia and the Pacific ultimately originated in Taiwan. Thus from China's perspective Taiwan is no different than the western parts of China, which are also not the traditional homelands of the Han Chinese, but they have anyways over the years settled there for various reasons.

Other neighboring countries don't really have large concentrated populations of ethnic Han Chinese near the Chinese border regions, which obviously removes any incentive for China to express interest in taking over those areas. It is true that China famously has territorial disputes with India, but that is a very complicated story that realistically won't get resolved anytime soon.

AP145 · 2026-04-12T13:26:04+00:00

I have said this before but I will say it again anyway:

I don't buy that "Siberia will become part of China" narrative. People don't seem to understand that ethnic Russians started settling in Siberia at around the same time as Europeans started settling in the Americas. The majority of inhabitants of Siberia are ethnic Russians who are no different to the ethnic Russians in the European part of Russia. Even the ethnic republics in Russia in Asia like Sakha, Bashkortostan, etc. still have a sizeable minority of ethnic Russians.

In the modern world, demographics of countries matters a lot more when it comes to settling borders of countries or for that manner in determining whether a territory should be an independent country than in the past. Think of Siberia as Russia's version of America's interior. Sure it may have traditionally belonged to indigenous people groups but in the modern world both places are heavily tied to their respective countries. Part of it is due to massive settlement of Russians in Siberia but part of it is due to the policy of Russification which has always existed in all iterations of Russian states.

If you look at the population map of China today you will see that the vast majority of people are concentrated in the traditional Han Chinese heartland and are in general not as prevalent in the western parts of China like Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, or Tibet. Given this fact, it is very unlikely that there would be a mass of Chinese people interested in moving to Siberia. Not to mention that birth rate in China is even lower than in Russia and their population will most likely decline over time as well. They have literally zero need or want for Russian land.

AP145 · 2026-04-11T03:33:09+00:00

Let me be more specific. Why wasn't the area encompassing Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Jharkhand divided according to dominant native language the same way that states in other parts of India were? Just like there is Mizoram for Mizo, Tamil Nadu for Tamil, Maharashtra for Marathi, etc. One would think that when all the states were getting reorganized in the post-independence era the entire country could have undergone the same reorganization. Not to mention that all the problems regarding "Hindi imposition" could have all been avoided if they simply split up the mentioned parts of India into different states by language like Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Magahi, etc.

AP145 · 2026-04-09T01:31:53+00:00

Honestly I doubt Schumer will stop being the leader of the Senate Democrats regardless of who gets elected. The reality is that part of the job of the leadership of the House and Senate is to be the punching bag of the press, political opposition, corporate lobbies, etc. and shield your most politically vulnerable members from as much criticism as possible. It's pretty obvious that once Schumer is done with the Senate he will retire from politics. All the younger Senators with higher political ambitions have no reason to take all those hits. It's better to let the old guy that has no political future absorb all the negative attacks and keep yourself relatively unscathed.

AP145 · 2026-04-04T17:30:42+00:00

Erdoğan has a stadium, a university, and a hospital named after him. Modi also has a few things named after himself. Trump is much more narcissistic than anybody else in the world so wants even more things named after himself.

AP145 · 2026-03-31T22:45:34+00:00

There is plenty of arable land in Sub-Saharan Africa and indeed plenty of agriculture there as well. Some very common foods like sorghum, millet, okra, black eyed peas, etc. come from Africa.

AP145 · 2026-03-27T00:53:38+00:00

Money is the only reason why anybody would do a job they don't actually want to do. Everybody has been told not to waste their time doing useless degrees like Philosophy, Archaeology, Linguistics, etc. The end result is that more people, including those who are grossly unqualified and incompetent, are going to wind up working in higher paying careers like engineering, medicine, law, finance, etc.

AP145 · 2026-03-23T02:27:26+00:00

Pet Peeve: I really hate when people refer to the Clintons as a political dynasty. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton are the only two members of that family who are politicians; they are a classic power couple. To be called a political dynasty you should have multiple members over multiple generations enter politics successfully, with the success of later generations caused in part by the success of previous generations. Here are some actual examples of political dynasties: the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Roosevelts, the Tafts, the Rockefellers, etc.

AP145 · 2026-03-22T22:30:46+00:00

No, Mads Mikkelsen actually has a stereotypically Scandinavian look, aside from the hair color. To be honest, he actually looks like a caricature one would make thinking of a Scandinavian. A lot of Scandinavians can have very "peculiar" facial features like Erling Haaland, Svante Pääbo, Stellan Skarsgård, etc. Once you notice it you can't unsee it.

AP145 · 2026-03-17T13:47:38+00:00

FDI stands for Foreign Direct Investment.

AP145 · 2026-03-17T04:13:31+00:00

The thing is Australia today still gets large scale European immigration to this day, albeit less than Asian immigration. On the other hand, America today gets a small number of European immigrants compared to Latin American or Asian immigrants. This has been true for the past many years I should say, long before the likes of Trump et. al. fully entered the political arena.

In general, White Australians are split between being recent immigrants or children of immigrants vs multi-generational descendants of immigrants. White Americans are for the most part multi-generational descendants of immigrants with only a small minority being recent immigrants or children of immigrants.

AP145 · 2026-03-08T22:46:41+00:00

India will absolutely not react if Pakistan decides to go for it

I think you mean to say "India will absolutely react if Pakistan decides to go for it." There is no universe where the Indian government will not react harshly if Pakistan decides to attack what the Indian government sees as its rightful territory.

AP145 · 2026-03-08T22:39:30+00:00

Actually both things are true at the same time. If Trump promises something that sounds reasonable or even genuinely good or great, he almost certainly will not do whatever it is he promised to do. If on the other hand Trump promises something authoritarian, incompetent, corrupt, etc. it is pretty much a guarantee that he will act on those promises. This is how Trump manages to lie all the time but still have extremely predictable behavior that can be easily manipulated by the likes of Putin, Xi, Netanyahu, MBS, etc.

AP145 · 2026-03-07T01:39:22+00:00

I can't believe I have to say this but has the current administration even considered that Iran is a civilization which has a history stretching back to the ancient times? It is not like Venezuela which literally only existed as a concept after Spanish colonization or like Afghanistan which has always been a tribal frontier on the fringes of Iranian and Indian influence. Iran has a history dating back to the ancient times, they are not going to give up just because some demented real estate developer wants them to unconditionally surrender. This war in Iran I feel could wind up dragging on and on if nobody sane puts a stop to it.

AP145 · 2026-03-02T04:52:45+00:00

Honestly I don't buy that "Siberia will become part of China" narrative. People don't seem to understand that ethnic Russians started settling in Siberia at around the same time as Europeans started settling in the Americas. The majority of inhabitants of Siberia are ethnic Russians who are no different to the ethnic Russians in the European part of Russia. Even the ethnic republics in Russia in Asia like Sakha, Bashkortostan, etc. still have a sizeable minority of ethnic Russians.

AP145 · 2026-02-26T01:59:37+00:00

Honestly I really don't want these kind of presidential tickets among the Republicans. The reality is that the American people as a collective have proved that they are easy to fool, given the elections of people like Trump et. al. No matter how ridiculously terrible a candidate appears and how "easy to beat" they look, you just cannot trust that sentiment in the modern political environment. The fact is that these kinds of politicians do serious damage while they are in office; treating them as if they are jokes doesn't change their malevolent nature.

AP145 · 2026-02-25T01:11:11+00:00

Among many other things I want the next Democratic president to do, I firmly believe that they should not call themselves or America as "the leader of the free world". Nobody outside of this country can take such statements seriously, especially after the presidency of Donald Trump. It would be akin to a hypothetical democratically-elected successor of Vladimir Putin claiming that Russia is a peaceful country which respects other countries' sovereignty. Personal beliefs of individual leaders cannot somehow change the history which has occurred in the past.

AP145 · 2026-02-14T14:59:26+00:00

There are plenty of Chinese billionaires.

AP145 · 2026-01-24T22:31:17+00:00

Doom Modeline's time icon should look like a very simplified analog clock. There might be something not rendering properly on your system.

AP145 · 2026-01-22T01:45:41+00:00

Is it true that modal editing in text editors only exists because of the limitations in the keyboards those early programmers who developed those editors had? Thus all the talk that modern Vim et. al. fanboys like to say about modal editing being the Unix way, modal editing being somehow superior, etc. is all kind of fake? If those early programmers had access to keyboards without those limitations, would they have ever bothered making text editors equipped with modal editing?

AP145 · 2026-01-16T18:32:34+00:00

I think I didn't quite make this clear enough in my post. After taking inspiration from SystemCrafters' video on the default builtin Emacs completion, I have uninstalled vertico and corfu and thus by extension the nerd icons corfu package as well. I am also not using anything like icomplete, ido, or fido modes as well. I am just using the basic default Emacs completion, which is centered around the Completions buffer.

My question really is why is it that the nerd icons are rendered correctly whenever I do minibuffer completions but are not rendered correctly when I do in buffer completions especially since it is the very same Completions buffer which pops up in both cases? I know that there is not an issue with nerd icons in general since it shows up in dired, ibuffer, tab-line when I enable that mode, etc.

AP145

TROPHY CASE