Everything you say could be true. Just like the Ukranian propaganda. More probably there are kernels of truth, blown up on both sides.

Just from my personal view, I feel a Russian army moving towards Europe gives me more angst than some very problematic Ukranian language laws. I remember the laws being in the news in Hungary waaaay back in the day, maybe even before Maidan, but I wasn’t really paying attention to happenings at the time.

Please don’t get me wrong, I do not know the political climate to such extent in those countries and I do believe fascist memorials should be placed in a dedicated statue park (if not pulled apart in the heat of an event).

Are you implying that Nazis are not “baddies”?

Main baddies. I feel it debases us as it does them, this 2 dimensional thinking. White power. Nazis evil. If that’s the deepest you wanna go, be my guest. Of course we have to stand up against them, I really hope no one is getting that from my writing that nazism OK.

If I can use a very clunky IT support metaphor, we definitely need incident management (firefighting) now, but we should always look at root cause analysis to avoid the problem in the future. This is not an unfamiliar problem we are facing (historically speaking).

Maybe the time for mutual understanding has passed.

If you feel nazis are your main baddie, it might be better to understand what makes them tick. If not for empathy, then for hitting where it hurts.

Why do you say I am denying the presence of nazis? They are usually a niche demographic, but present in any country. I am not saying let the bastards speak hate with impunity.

For sure, countries need to look inward and start digesting that many people ate the onion in the first half of the 40s. Not because we need justice for the deaths of local minorities commited by nationals, but because this type of behaviour causes great trauma not just for the victims, but the aggressors. They pass this trauma down and it remains alive in current generations. It usually doesn’t even manifest itself as outright racism, just lots of anger issues in general (I guess this part is anecdotal).

All that being said, fuck Russia for bringing this up now. They went in to Ukraine under the flag of denazification. But Latvia is in Nato, so I don’t really see this as a cassus beli, but more of sowing division in EU.

It makes sense though, doesn’t it? I imagine someone going in knowing it’s machine learning doesn’t have too many false assumptions, but they are being programmed in a way to mimic humans. The voice recognition part has come an incredible long way and I would not be surprised that this makes the uninitiated expect more of the language model than actually is there.

In this era of atomic isolation, even I wanted to believe it’s true. Having an algorithm that remembers my name through reboots would deepen the sense that there is a pretty developed entity helping me. Luckily I skimp on the premium versions.

Very interesting.

The Hungarian and Serbian protests are pretty clear cut. Former was a rally on a national holiday by the opposition lead, while the Serbs finally have a clear and open reason to demand blood. The Italian one feels like it’s almost a direct answer to the Trump-Zelensky mis-hap (or maybe I just saw the call to protest pop up around then).

What’s happening in Romania though? What I got from the article is that there was no proven link to the Russians. That seems like a tough nut to crack. The nationalists are in the streets protesting for democracy? Are there many?

Such exciting times! Thanks for the post.