Liz

I would guess literally 99% of people could switch to Linux Mint and be more than happy.

The strategic reality of Russia’s neighbours is obviously that they can’t change their geography and have to find a way to live with Russia. That should be obvious to anybody with even a minimally functioning brain.

Yes? We’re in agreement here. The neighbors are happy to get their oil at a discount. They would not be getting this discount were it not for the sanctions, since there would be more competition in the buyer’s market.

The war in Ukraine is a direct result of Europe acting in the American interest and participating in expansion of NATO.

If Russian leadership was under the illusion that NATO was secretly an offensive alliance, and thus needed to preemptively invade Ukraine, it should be clear with this Hormuz straight business that it really is a defensive alliance. Trump tried to get the NATO members to help and they all told him to pound sand.

Meanwhile, the report you yourself linked clearly shows that Russian energy exports have remained stable overall.

They’re down year-over-year, with the biggest hit coming in the first year. The sanctions did what they could (forced Russia to offer big discounts) and now they’re stable in their effect.

The harm that’s been done to Europe is far greater than any profits Russia has lost over the past 4 years.

I mean, this is an argument fraught with “nuh-uh” and hand-waving on all sides. “Worth it” is very subjective, especially when the harm to both sides is relatively minor, in the grand scheme of things. Both sides have adjusted to the new reality.

Not only that, but with Russian supplies cut off and now the Gulf, Europe finds itself entirely dependent on the US which is a predatory power.

The European oil sources are super diverse, there’s no need to make this a false East vs West thing. I’m literally just here to explain that Russia is selling oil at a discount because it has to, not because it wants to.

For sure, and phonetic spelling would mean either everyone types in their own accent and reading becomes harder, or everyone agrees on a phonetic spelling and we solved basically nothing.

That wasn’t a moral judgment of the Russian invasion, it was just pointing out a strategic reality for neighbors. Likewise, Gazans would probably have issue with buying Israeli products if given choice.

Still, I don’t know what to tell you. Russian carbon energy export profits have fallen hard since the beginning of the invasion, with much of the losses coming out of their pipelines.

See this graph in this article/report. You can find quite a lot of other articles talking about how the recent spike in prices from the Hormuz bullshit is a huge boon for Russian carbon energy.

They’ve been selling oil and gas this entire time, there isn’t any need to secure customers, they already have them. The discount is essentially the effect that they have a smaller pool of buyers, and those buyers piss off a number of other players (countries, buyers, sellers, insurance, etc) by buying from Russia. A few buyers have to also contend with paying a country that has demonstrated a willingness to invade their neighbors. Many of the former Soviet states, for example, have continued to buy Russian oil this entire time, while putting in big efforts to transition away. Their oil and gas purchases have been heavily criticized by people who don’t understand how long it takes to change energy sources.

Yes, that’s what the sanctions are intended to do. Russia should struggle to make any profit from their gas and oil. It would be ideal if they couldn’t sell at all, but forcing them to sell at steep discounts is still very good. This Hormuz straight business has unfortunately caused the price of oil to go up, which will significantly increase the price Russia can sell at.

From a hand-writing perspective, I’m a big fan of syllabaries. But when you have to use a keyboard, an alphabet is pretty damn good. English could easily switch to quasi phonetic spelling by repurposing redundant consonants and adding accents to voewls.

Qe íntréstíng qíng úbáüt ít ís qat ít’s stíl kind úf légíbl evn íf I don’t eksplan háw ít wïrks.

It’ll never happen though.

Didn’t BlueSky come up with their own federation system because… Fuck you?

I mean, what was wrong with using the ActivityPub standard?

Please propose a law or regulation structure for significantly reducing or eliminating advertisements. I’m serious. I fucking hate ads. I just don’t have a reasonable or effective way to get rid of them.

Edit: Hey actually I just thought of one! If the consumer is paying for the product, it can’t come with ads, including things like product placement or ad reads!