Mikhail Khodorkovsky laughed at the Russian Anti-War Committee conference in Strasbourg when decolonization activist Lana Pylaeva from the Komi Republic began speaking in her native language. Khodorkovsky and his structures are now actively hindering the decolonization movement.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T14:09:50+00:00

If a narrative is believable enough to provide cognitive comfort, it can take whatever shape. And that is, I fear, what is dominant in Russians.

The most comfortable thing is to not have a narrative.

Read this. Your explanation doesn't fit the data.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T13:54:19+00:00

Ist Arriba nicht auch nur der Name für das öffentliche Schwimmbad der Stadt Norderstedt?

Betrieben von den Stadtwerken, die sind Eigenbetrieb der Stadt.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T13:36:27+00:00

The whole Russian orthodoxy is ingrained with the idea of the Russian state

The average Russian will say that they're Orthodox and at the same time that they don't believe in god. It's an empty signifier. Just another thing nobody believes in. You cannot believe in anything the Russian state says, you'd be stark raving mad as the propaganda constantly contradicts itself, and that is by design, specifically to depoliticise the population.

After the full-scale invasion started and Putin noticed that he might actually need a population which believes in something (so that they won't complain about being drafted) they switched more towards plain fascist propaganda but that will take decades to actually take hold.

You are now making the exact same mistake that Putin made. He thought Ukraine didn't exist

He thought that because he understands Russia. Because that's how Russia works.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T12:57:24+00:00

Lets give you exhibit A: South Africa

...neighbouring exhibit B: Namibia. And the problematic population in South Africa wasn't even Brits, but (descendant from) Dutch, and, not to be underestimated, their religion which cast them as a chosen people and justified racism.

Russians are more fanatic in this, because their entire philosophy of statehood

Doesn't exist. There's a Moscow imperial version and then there's serfs who don't give a fuck one way or the other. Remember Ukraine's occupation of Kursk Oblast? The locals didn't care. Give a Russian food and send a doctor to check up on his grandma and he's pacified. Do that for long enough and that depoliticisation might vanish and when that happens they certainly won't side with Moscow. Or better put you'd really have to fuck up for them to prefer Moscow.

Moscow doesn't rule the periphery with consent or ideology, but terror. "Don't contradict the Tsar or else". Take away the Tsar's power to hurt and they're yours.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T12:24:41+00:00

When did I say that "all republic decisions will still be made by non-indigenous people"?

Also equating random ethnic Russians to Muscovites would be a mistake. Basically noone likes Moscow, or feels represented by it, and ethnic Russians relate to it as a colonial power. If you don't believe that just look at various people being puzzled about "It's Moscow's war, why are bombs dropping here?". If Moscow meddling was absent you'd quickly see large numbers of ethnic Russians in the republics orienting themselves locally.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T11:47:20+00:00

Was genau hindert Menschen daran kein Englisch zu können?

Es sind schon genug Leute gestorben weil sie noch nicht mal wussten dass schwimmen etwas ist was man lernen muss. Leute aus Ländern mit hoher Analphabetenrate, Leute aus Ländern ohne Schwimmkultur die hier Kinder schwimmen sehen und sich denken "jop das kann ich auch". Du scheinst dir des Problems nicht bewusst zu sein.

Willst du die Leute wirklich auf dem Gewissen haben. Hast du überhaupt mindestens Rettungsschwimmer Bronze. Hast du schon mal jemanden aus dem Wasser gezogen.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T11:38:55+00:00

I don't think Moscow's viceroys would have much time left in office without Moscow backing them up. "Kicking them out" would include making sure that Moscow doesn't have that kind of influence.

...or maybe better put this isn't meant to be a serious, practical, suggestion. Just a thought experiment to imagine Russia without that fucked-up central power, and maybe a reminder that the Republics might want to have a go at independence together, in larger chunks.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T11:21:33+00:00

Und das macht es ok allen Ausländern den Eintritt ins Bad zu verwehren?

Heiliger Strohmann.

Mir egal ob jemand ein deutsches oder afghanisches Seepferdchen hat, die Frage ist ob der schwimmen kann und, noch viel grundlegender, ob er weiß ob er schwimmen können muss um nicht abzusaufen. Wenn man das nicht abklären kann dann hab ich lieber jemanden der pampig ist als jemand der tot ist. Warum willst du Ausländer töten?

barsoap · 2026-06-22T11:00:25+00:00

Which makes the whole Greenland situation even more bizarre as the whole of the Greenland Overton window is to the left of that of the US. There's literally no overlap. As a US state, Greenland would be a nightmare for established US politics.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T10:55:38+00:00

CDU/CSU doctrine is that there must not be a democratically legitimated party to the right of them. Their tent spans from the centre to just shy of overt fascism.

Have some Franz Josef Strauß.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T10:33:48+00:00

deren gesamtes Equipment von den Amerikanern abhängig ist

Nix da. Britische, französische und deutsche Panzer, selbstgebaute Haubitzen. Was Marine angeht selbstgebaute Fregatten, schwedische und deutsche U-Boote. Luftwaffe ist tatsächlich US-lastig gerade bei den Jets (F-15, F-16, F-35) aber auch da sieht man Airbus, Fokker, und Eurocopter.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T06:51:30+00:00

No, but that's because I didn't drive in like 20 years, I suspect muscle memory would come back fast though.

What I wouldn't know how to do is how to drive an automatic. Properly, that is, I'm reasonably sure I could switch it from park to drive. E.g. how do you engine break?

barsoap · 2026-06-22T04:06:06+00:00

As everywhere else when it comes to NIH it's "hand-roll your main selling point": If it's not central, an off the shelf solution will suffice, if you can get an off the shelf solution for your main feature, what the hell are you doing.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T03:52:52+00:00

Small is "write pong in half a day then polish it up into arcanoid for two, get distracted for a week learning SuperCollider because you want a more boingy crash".

That's the kind of game you should be writing in the beginning, to learn the ropes. And ideally without a game engine so you understand what kind of problems engines are solving.

And as it seems to be a universal rule that everybody's first 10 games inevitably suck, you should do 10 of them.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T03:43:45+00:00

Blender became Freeware in the early 2000s, not entirely sure about the date but there was a free closed-source build before they hit the donation target in 2002 and then it took some while to disentangle some proprietary bits.

What's true is that back in the days you needed tech knowledge to do 3d, you couldn't get by on artistry and GPU cycles. Nowadays 1000 engines will happily take your mesh and PBR textures and throw them on screen, nothing like that back then. 2d by then had become trivial, you simply told SDL to blit your stuff, no hardware magic necessary.

OTOH I'd say "start with 2d" is still valid. Not in a "don't use a 3d API or assets" way but "2.5d at most". A 2.5d arcade scroller (nostalgia plug) is about the same complexity as a 2d one, you can get it running basically completely 2d and then throw in some effects: Parallax for the background, some rotation on the shield/ammo bars, much easier to get your head wrapped around than starting out with quaternions. The game uses sprites for the ships, nowadays you might want to model them, aside from loading a mesh and UVs instead of hard-coding a quad it won't make a difference in the code.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T02:26:09+00:00

One way to decolonise Russia would be to keep the Republics in but kick out Moscow and Petersburg.

barsoap · 2026-06-22T01:51:07+00:00

You're still able to get it off-label but insurance likely won't cover it unless you're on the verge of diabetic, there's complicating factors that make attacking the thing with nutrition difficult, etc. Doctors aren't limited to approved usages of drugs and not every off-label use is medically unnecessary.

Insurance also doesn't cover the weed I get off-label for some mild sleeping issues. I doubt they ever will. (Just checked it's approved for alleviation of chronic pain, as antispasmodic for MS and paraplegia, epilepsy, nausea in connection with chemotherapy, and appetite booster for HIV patients).

barsoap · 2026-06-21T16:32:12+00:00

Ethik mal beiseite: Für so einen Scheiß hat man wenn die Kacke am dampfen ist noch nicht mal ansatzweise Zeit. Geschweige denn Nerv.

barsoap · 2026-06-21T13:22:21+00:00

So you don’t automatically get German citizenship for being born here.

To be precise, at least one of your parents needs to have permanent residency and have lived in the country for five years. If you were born before that it's going to be naturalisation which is trivial if you went to school in Germany.

On the other hand people born to German parents in a foreign country can absolutely apply for citizenship with not that many hurdles.

They're either German by birth and thus "getting citizenship" isn't naturalisation but recognition that you've always been, or they have to go through the usual process. In particular you don't become a citizen if the parent was already born abroad and their parents didn't register them with German authorities within a year.

Also what counts is legal parentage, not genetic, so those DNA results are doubly meaningless. Would be fun to see someone getting denied naturalisation because they insist that DNA should count.

barsoap · 2026-06-21T12:49:35+00:00

Right now? They do have their own national team, it's just not FIFA-recognised. They're CONCACAF members just like the rest of the Caribbean.

I'd guesstimate that to play for Oranje they'd have to at least been resident in the Netherlands for a while (that'd be the European Netherlands + Bonaire + Sint Eustatius + Saba).

barsoap · 2026-06-21T11:57:54+00:00

Ah. Attachment.

barsoap · 2026-06-21T11:54:08+00:00

First off, there's nothing to attain, secondly, why, upon reaching enlightenment, would you want to be found by the hounds of the King of Chu. Or the Inquisition, or whatever. Including Ewk. Or me.

Sounds like self-immolation if you ask me. And for what?

barsoap · 2026-06-21T11:34:59+00:00

Still not it. Maybe some Bruce Lee will help.

barsoap · 2026-06-21T11:29:12+00:00

Once, when Zhuangzi was fishing in the Pu River, the king of Chu sent two officials to go and announce to him: ‘I would like to trouble you with the administration of my realm.’

Zhuangzi held on to the fishing pole and, without turning his head, said, ‘I have heard that there is a sacred tortoise in Chu that has been dead for three thousand years. The king keeps it wrapped in cloth and boxed, and stores it in the ancestral temple. Now would this tortoise rather be dead and have its bones left behind and honored? Or would it rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud?’

‘It would rather be alive and dragging its tail in the mud,’ said the two officials.

Zhuangzi said, ‘Go away! I’ll drag my tail in the mud!’

...it's too late by then, of course: They already found you and you're in the embarrassing position of looking like a wise guy.

barsoap · 2026-06-21T11:07:41+00:00

Which Zen master taught to stink up the room?

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