i3 isn’t a proper DE, though, but I definitely would go with that with that little RAM.

For strictly DEs, I’d pick XFCE - it’s just lovely for what it demands.

There are a lot of things illegal in Ukraine that are weird. One is dual citizenship;

Ukraine is, unfortunately, hardly a special case in that regard.

Looking at the most “powerful” passports around the world, you’ll see that most of them tend to follow the same restriction, although some more exceptions, whether perfectly legal or just people being more laid-back.

I have no idea since when the same restriction is in place for the Ukrainian passport, but it would make sense to me if they imposed it after deciding to join the EU. Maybe without it, there would be a greater number of people potentially reaping the benefits of holding a member passport without having to contribute much?

I’m just grasping straws here, really.

It’s probably a very late response, but I’ll still leave it if you want it.

I honestly don’t know what typical quality of live is or was ever has been. From my very own experience of someone who’s making damn good money - not crazy good money, but damn good - I can tell you that life has gotten much more expensive. My lifestyle is something I think many people would consider enviable, because my expenses mostly come down to food and rent, with a lot of disposable income that, to my shame, is getting disposed all right.

Being a bit of a dreamer, I often imagine purchasing some stuff like real estate or a car because I’ve switched my lifestyle, or just pretend to be preparing to replace some things in my life. During these times, I look at the prices, and since that had already happened before time and time again, I can tell that the prices for everything have increased dramatically.

The prices, though, are one thing: what’s more is the fact that the salaries haven’t increased for most people, of course, and the ruble itself has plummeted down, devaluing everyone’s salaries basically. The people who get paid in dollars or euros directly or simply receive equivalent sums in rubles are much better off on paper, of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that the economy isn’t doing well for the people; I don’t really think it’s doing well for the military either, to be honest.

Now, there’s no empty shelves or any kind of shortages that you would notice in your regular life, but I’m saying this because I’m not in the market for anything that’s now gone for decades, I believe. For example, various medications are either unaffordable now or are completely absent, with some substitutes taking their place; unfortunately, I don’t know nearly enough as to tell you more here.

Another thing that’s definitely taken a hit is choice: there’s simply much less stuff to choose from now all across the market. That being said, there are some alternatives that have attempted to take the places of the goods that had left the market, but that cannot be said about every niche - and even more importantly, often you can’t say the substitutes have the same quality as their predecessors, on multiple levels ranging from sheer product quality to support and service.

The weird conclusion is that it’s kinda difficult to say that the country is on the brink of collapse, but you definitely can’t say that the sanctions haven’t done any damage to the economy and the quality of life here. The consequences, in my opinion, have been far from intended nonetheless, mostly because there are some aspects of dealing with Putin in particular and Russia as a whole that the people establishing and trying to enforce these sanctions simply couldn’t have anticipated; to be fair, many people within Russia or deeply associating themselves with Russia couldn’t have anticipated those aspects to play, for the lack of a better word, well in this situation.

Things are very complicated and difficult to forecast when it comes to such a scale, I believe.

Great questions, thank you. I’ll try my best to stick to the point and provide answers that don’t span paragraphs. I’ve already been accused of my very typical Russian tendency to write out lengthy sentences here.

What is your experience when talking to other people about your opinion? Do you think twice talking about that topic?

I think much more than twice before I indicate my position towards Putin, his government, or the war whenever I’m not talking to people I know I can trust. As important as it feels to “spread the word”, it’s just not safe to be display disloyalty towards the regime: some may tell the police about you (sometimes deliberately exaggerating to cause you more trouble), some may try and fight you, which sometimes ends really bad, and at the same time, sometimes it’s just a very regular, easy conversation where you just share your opinions and go about your business, no harm done.

Sometimes, judging by what the people you’re conversing with say and how they say it, you can tell whether they’re capable of even thinking of doing anything nasty if you disagree and to what degree. It’s still best to not risk it and steer away from that kind of talk with strangers or people you’re not sure about yet.

How many people you know have a opinion like yours?

Like MINE? Probably just me alone, but I’m saying this because the topic itself already encompasses a lot of issues, like the international law, Crimea, decolonization, imperialistic complexes and ideas, patriotism, guilt, various traumas, and many other things. There’s no way two people agree on everything - I’ve met people who are just as anti-war and anti-Putin and pro-west like me, very liberal or left-leaning and all, but can’t even begin to imagine Russia having to pay reparations after the war; there’s more: I personally know a person that wants all of it to end, like no Putin, no war type of attitude, but they seem to have something personal against Ukrainians, as if they actually hate them. It’s very nuanced and complicated.

That being said, if we boil down my opinion to something as practical as “Out with Putin” and “No more war”, then every single person I know would fall into that category: including the people from older generations, the ones that were most affected by the propaganda. Some of them are bitter about it, like they don’t want the war to end with anything less than a total Russian military victory, a complete defeat and conquer of the entire Ukraine; some are much closer to me, thinking that the Russian army should just pack up and leave to the borders that were internationally established in 1991, so Crimea goes back to Ukraine as well…

So, in general, the people who want the war to go on are an actual minority. Everybody is tired of it, but each in their own way. I don’t think anyone has been affected in a positive way, not after 2 full years of this: even pragmatically, we’ve all lost too much in both short- and long-term as a country, and even some of the “luckier” people who maybe got higher wages on their industrial facility because the demand has increased go to the same supermarkets and drug stores as I do, they go to the same hospitals, use the same infrastructure and all that, and they’ve surely suffered the consequences as much as anyone else, and even their (most likely temporary) material gains could never make up for, say, ruined international relationships, maybe ruined personal relationships, maybe dead relatives, and many other things.

Having said all that, I will also tell you this as a bonus: it’s getting harder to disagree. Even the pro-war bloggers (the so called z-bloggers) are now getting the stick treatment for getting out of line; they used to think that they’re the in-crowd and they have the free pass on reporting the real state of affairs, i.e. openly talking about problems, losses, incompetence, etc., but one thing a dictator can’t have you do is steer away from the official line, as that hurts the narratives the propaganda is going for. The irony knows no bounds.

P.S. Still got lengthy and all, my apologies.

I still live in Russia and want to offer a bit of an optimistic perspective.

First of all, Putin and the officials siding with him one war or another have been fearmongering a war with Europe, the USA, or even the entire NATO for years already. Granted, they did the same with Ukraine prior to the invasion, but I doubt there’s any decision-makers left in Russia that genuinely belive they can swing at NATO and expect anything else but a swift and painful defeat: the amount of resources dedicated to the current attempts to do anything in Ukraine would make it even harder to launch a new offensive, let alone defend anything.

Arguably, fighting Ukraine, Russia is still fighting mostly Ukraine, albeit with significant aid from its allies or at least Russia’s opponents; as reluctant as the EU, the USA, or NATO (or some of their counterparts) may seem to ditch the political ratings for either coughing up more resources or even restructuring to produce them, one tendency of our species remains strong: we do act when it’s about us, when it’s seemingly too late. Ukraine, for now at least, probably doesn’t feel like an integral part of Europe or NATO, maybe some even still believe the country to be that similar to Russia, which, combined, explains the rather cautious approach in terms of providing more lethal aid.

If Russia attacks, say, Moldova or Lithuania or Estonia or Latvia or Poland or Finland or anything else (other than Belarus, perhaps), nobody is ever going to think of it as of some kind of conflict between neighbors that somehow seems more complicated than it actually is (partly because both neighbors are slavs and tend to have somewhat nuanced, rather than obvious differences, I guess), and on top of that, any doubts like whether it’s possible to wear the Russian army down by dripfeeding supplies to the ones that fight it, or whether Putin can be appeased, or whether Putin will calm down after “reclaiming actually historically Russian land”, or anything like that - all of that is going out the window and people start acting, fast, with the combined might much greater than Russia is managing to muster now through elusive contraband military imports and making use of decades-old equipment and economical manipulations.

And in a conflict like that, who’s going to side with Russia, against the much bigger dog of NATO? Anyone who joins on the Russia’s side gets at the very least sanctioned to smithereens in the event of an actual war, and neither China nor India can have that; some of the dictatorships from the middle east may try, but I doubt they’d want to give NATO a proper excuse.

Putin is a gopnik and understands only the language of clubs and stones - the powers that Putin chose to call his enemies not only have bigger and meaner clubs and stones, but have more of them, and have the means to get even more. He might have attempted something had he actually conquered and held Ukraine, but not after this kind of reality check; he’s back to being the strong wife-beating alcoholic that sits tight when a real threat looks his way.

You’re welcome and пожалуйста. I consider my English skills one of (if not the) most important assets of mine and try to use it to offer some perspective from within the anti-war/Putin population; I can’t say I’ve seen many other Russians doing the same in places I visit, so I try to be the voice when I can.

Sometime ago I considered making a blog for that kind of thing or something, but ultimately fell out of it as I doubt I’d keep it well enough to gain proper traction; and it’s much more work than writing comments and talking to people on a more personal level, which may divert a huge chunk of my attention, too, resulting in a clouded perspective.

It is, partly. Nadezhdin has been part of the Russian politics for decades, authored and co-authored many laws and took part in many initiatives; him running for president is basically him exercising his passive right to be elected, but as he himself said, he’s been thinking about running for president since Summer 2023.

He’s been invited to the Russian propaganda TV shows numerous times as a liberal scapegoat of sorts - they’d just try to portray him and people like him (anti-war or anti-Putin or both, basically people who want freedom and peace for their own country and for everyone else), often failing, as there never was any clever way to make him shut up; the man knows many of Putin’s cronies because he’s been in politics for that long, and he’s very smart with what he’s saying because he knows what kind of narrative gets you assassinated or jailed.

From everything I’ve heard from him, Nadezhdin just wanted to act in the most influential way he saw for himself and for others, coincidentally being the safest one, too. He had hesitated at first, but quickly joined the race to get the signatures after Duntsova got turned down, and he really believes in change and progress and a brighter, non-violent future for Russia. It’s a good thing, too, because as we’ve seen times and times again, resorting to violence to deal with one regime in hopes of building a new, better system for each and for all is a sure way to attract and amass even more people who should never bear anywhere near any sort of power, and do so precisely in and around power, ultimately leading to greater terror.

To me, Nadezhdin seems like a pragmatic man who can believe, which is important, and he readily pursued the chance to become a candidate for the elections because of it, but also because he did speak, extensively, with the current Russian opposition (the ones that haven’t been murdered or jailed, at least) and cooperated with them (one would be more accurate to say that it was vise versa, actually, so props to them putting weight on the attempts and spreading the word, as well as assisting him during the process) under some shared understanding that, in times of great despair and misery and seemingly inescapable reign of darker, evil, greedy, murderous forces, when calling for peace and life is a crime, when people have been carefully manipulated into disunity and feeling small - it’s in these times that it’s important to do something to make people realize that they’re not alone, they’re not few, but that they’re many, that there’s something they can try and do to show the regime that they do not agree with it, nor do they want it.

Apart from this pursuit, very important and uplifting and very much needed by the Russian populace evident by the last several weeks, there is also an important factor of actually putting pressure on the regime - despite what many may believe, the current regime doesn’t completely ignore everything; very few regimes do or can, actually, but the Putin’s regime especially so, as we’ve seen time and time again through various displays and in various forms. Of course, it is far from perfect, but it’s not insignificant or minuscule for many reasons: it makes the regime move under pressure and uncertainty, which leads to rushed decisions, which leads to mistakes, which leads to opportunities… which is ultimately good for everyone, as without Putin and his regime, there is no war, for he’s the sole “benefactor”, if there’s anything of benefit left for him in this stupid mistake.

Last but not least, when the regime sees that some “irrelevant and small” candidate manages to gather an absurdly large and arbitrary number of signatures (try and find another country where you need to get 100,000 perfectly prepared signatures along with names and addresses and passport numbers before you can run for president), with lines of people popping all over the country despite what felt like its coldest days of the year (for larger parts, at least), then you know that there’s still a significant chunk of people that won’t be happy with, say, another broad mobilization or martial laws or anything like that - for every person who managed to go and leave their signature (along with some sensitive personal data), there’s who knows how many more people who felt too scared or simply couldn’t leave their signatures because there weren’t any collectors or posts near them (some had to travel 100+ km, some don’t have the opportunity, as Russia’s very, very big), and there’s even more people who probably could’ve signed if they had known about the whole thing if Nadezhdin had access to TV and radio to spread the word, as it should be during election such as these (in more democratic country). Nobody can say for certain what’s going to come out of these last several weeks, but Putin and his lapdogs surely have enough to consider now - and a lot of stress that, again, will ultimately help in turning things for the better.

Matrix? @noobdoomguy8658:matrix.org

There’s also DMs on Lemmy if you prefer, and IRC, but I’m new to the latter.

I kinda wish I could make everyone in my circles to get into Matrix and fediverse in general, maybe IRC, but that’s hardly a fun time for them - just another website, app, or service to learn and use just for one lefty dork, and not for a very frequent communication, too.

Couldn’t agree more. I, too, spoke with my friends, but in a very different way - I first sent one of them an invitation to come with and leave a signature for the man, giving a brief explanation of what we could achieve; I didn’t make a long or comprehensive speech, and my friend agreed, as did the other one, who was in a Discord call with the first one at the time. None of these two are particularly interested in politics, I doubt I could call them left-leaning or part of the current opposition in Russia, but the sheer ease and speed with which they just agreed to come with me and sign for Nadezhdin spoke volumes to me, even more so than the Prigozhin’s march.

The most beautiful thing about it is the fact that the point we got to initially wouldn’t be open for another 30 minutes, and then we learned we had to go to a completely different one because it was the only one open due to all the strain on the volunteers and the entire campaign; there we learned that they were out of blanks for the regions two of us were signing for, so they asked us to print some somewhere nearby, which we did, and then signed off as planned. None of them protested, despite the fact that all three of us were already late for work that day. The only concern I heard came from the least liberal of my friends, which basically boiled down to them saying that they hope Nadezhdin, should he become the president, wouldn’t become another Putin. That, too, says a lot about the Kremlin gremlin.

As to why Nadezhdin got so far… I think Maksim Katz put it best - the government is full of morons, is run by morons, and those morons seek to make other morons happy. It’s been over two decades of theft, murder, deliberate destruction of trust and unity and critical thinking, extreme bureaucracy, cleansing, lies, and wiping out autonomy - of course a system like that is prone to make mistakes, isn’t it? Especially when it’s stressed with so much stuff already, and even more so amidst the elections the prime candidate for which is definitely not in favor as evident by his joke of an announcement to run for presidency, complete lack of his face on any material advertising the elections, and now the fact that seemingly a much larger portion of the population is actually going to attend the elections, making any tampering more difficult and risky

They’re just incompetent and they get high on their own stuff, possibly truly believing that everyone is in love with Putin and everything he brings, that the opposition is just a few 18-year students making irregular donations to some irrelevant politicians. I really hope they’re losing sleep and mental health more than ever now as their beliefs crumble and they get more and more irrational, increasing the potential for even more mistakes that we can take advantage of.

Either that or it’s some secret anti-Putin plot from within, because everyone is tired of the old bastard at this point, regardless of their political or ideological views.

As for the people whose views aren’t as humane… my answer is Realpolitik. You’re right, they’re not going anywhere, and that’s why we must learn to work with people we don’t like - so must they. We’re not going to build a healthy and safe society that in turn builds a healthy and safe county, both for its citizens and the rest of the world, if we ostracise people that aren’t 100% with our idea of good or fair or just: it’s a yet another path to tyranny, for who gets to decide, and more importantly, most people often turn to radical, inhumane views and parties when they have no true human contact or empathy in their lives. We’ll have to offer everyone a chance to become a part of a kind and supporting community, one that doesn’t punish you the moment you disagree or seem different, one that embraces and teaches, one that’s inviting and welcoming - that way, the radical, the violent, and the hating communities and parties and candidates and politicians will have progressively less and less to offer, losing their old populist tricks of pride and grandeur they promise to give back.

I’m glad we’ve met over here, my friend. I wish I knew of more people like you in my country and places to meet them easily, but that’s a whole other story. Let’s talk more and network, if you don’t mind - I think we all need it right now.

My bad, I see now.

Still not a Slavic problem primarily, as far as I know - it’s just the Russian language being kinda bad at spelling, especially when it comes to Ё. Learning German made me realize the true value of Umlauts and clear, consistent rules for using them in a given language with definite alternatives for cases when they can’t be used as is, such as email addresses and other tech areas dominated by the Latin/English alphabet.

I’d make it a strict rule to never use Е instead of Ё - they’re not interchangeable in any way; maybe there was a period of time when typewriters couldn’t conveniently take this letter into account, but in the digital era, with its greater ease of typing, there’s really no excuse in going with Е instead of Ё, ever. If that was the standard, I’m sure some relatively short time in the future the inconsistent transliteration could be much less of a problem for all the Russian-native Artyoms out there.

As for the international documents… I believe a proper standard would suffice, one that would define proper and correct translations for names. There probably is one (or one thousand) already, but it doesn’t seem like it’s that definitive after all.

Seconding this as another Russia, another singee for Nadezhdin.

The most important aspect here is let people act and get out of rut of feeling powerless and alone, which is exactly what’s been cultivated by Putin and his regime for decades. A lot of people never do anything because they’ve learned to see it as pointless, both through propaganda and through other commenters’ apathy, which is often propaganda, too.

First there was Duntsova with her signatures and candidature, then many protested in Bashkortostan, then mostly self-organised to find a cat that was thrown into the cold out of a train by the conductor/stewardess, now Nadezhdin with his signatures amidst the coldest time of the year, traditionally long Russian winter holidays and rush to get everything done - people are seizing any opportunity to show themselves and others that not everyone is a warmongering blood-thirsty maniac, and that’s a very good thing.

Some have been very skeptical about Nadezhdin and the elections, but even if all that proves to be worthless and fruitless in the end, there’s still a much greater benefit in trying to do something, confirming that there’s many like-minded people around - and it’s much, much more helpful than any apathetic take saying that the Kremlin will deal with Nadezhdin in one way or another; sometimes it feels like people want Putin gone, but hush and shame any attempts to do so, except for the unrealistically idealistic ones like a brutal revolution.

The latter isn’t always the case, but the rest is very accurate. I try to use my skills in English to offer people outside Russia some insights, both to help them understand this place a little more and help myself cope with everything a little better, but your post is precise and concise, which is best for this kind of case; I just can’t stop talking and end up writing confusing and complicated paragraphs because ei get emotional and try to put too many things into a single comment.

So good job and thank you!

Diacritics: the bread and butter of the Slavic languages.

My source of credibility is that I’ve studied linguistics and translation/interpreting and got a BA on the matter, so I’m not talking out of my ass entirely.

Get ready for some dorky read.

Artyom is pretty much the expected translation, regardless of the original spelling: like with Sapkowski becoming Сапковский in Russian, which may not be what the original pronunciation or spelling intended, but that’s fine, because it’s intended to be used in a different language.

If you want to follow the spelling example, then every language is fucked because King George is very far from the Russian equivalent of Король Георг, let alone the fact that individual vowels and consonants and then their combinations are all, in fact, different sounds between languages. None of it means a translation isn’t accurate or right - it’s about ideas and legibility, comprehension achieved with the means of a target language first and foremost, no matter the limitations or differences of the source language.

Back to Artyom, regardless of the spelling I Russian, either Артём or Артем, you pronounce it the same, so it makes most sense to spell it as Artyom in English.

@x4740N@lemmy.world said languages should translate words phonetically, but that’s far from practical or comprehensive in general - but it has applications in proper names, and even then there are exceptions to handle stylistic or purely linguistic aspects.

And none of that is strictly a solely Slavic problem. It’s not even a problem, actually.

Very much this.

The suffix at the end of that last name is also causing some trouble:

• In Ukrainian, it’s Зеленський (note the “ь”, a silent letter supposed to soften the consonant before itself)
• In Russian, it’s Зеленский (no “ь”, the “н” is not soft)
• In Polish, it’s Zełenski (no “й” or anything similar, resulting in a different pronunciation again)

Now compare it to the last name of a Polish author: Сапковський (Ukrainian), Сапковский (Russian), Sapkowski (Polish).

Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles all have examples of last names like these, but the rules of our languages dictate that we handle them differently, even in terms of spelling and pronunciation; for people not speaking a Slavic language naturally, it understandably is a nightmare, as neither spelling is objectively the right one in terms of linguistics.

For now, it’s probably best to either go with one of the following:

• Zelensky or Zelenski, akin to Polish equivalent spelling of similar last names
• Zelenskyy, as seems to be the more or less official or judicial spelling of this Ukrainian last name

As messy as it seems, I believe it’s going to stay the same. Romanization of the Russian language is already an equally messy phenomenon despite multiple efforts to standardize the process, yet it only resulted in several ways of tackling the difficult cases, which is of very little help; Ukrainian seems to be an even more complicated case for romanization as it has some features that would either require intricate rules to create accurate spellings, or make greater use of diacritics.

Might be a Linux thing, though.

Doesn’t change that much, really.

Russia, as a country, does not trust many foreign institutions already - at least the western ones. They’re considered unfriendly, undesirable, and dangerous.

At the same time, Russia, as a country, is comprised of many people, including the ones that either directly represent its government in the form of deputies, ministers, and many other official figures, or use the wealth they’ve built in Russia through schemes and theft and murder and other crimes to build their stashes in democratic countries that have strong institutions and slow bureaucracies to protect their assets.

Most of these people have mastered doublethink, being able to switch their work and private personalities with ease: Get to the government office and pretend you absolutely hate everything to the west of Russia’s borders (except Belarus, maybe), including their values, happily vote for laws opposing or hurting them (mostly because you were told to “from above”), make anti-western speeches and so on and so forth - but once you clock out, you check on your kids in London, check on your French business, check on your real estate in Spain.

They live very double-agent type of lives, and will keep living them that way. None of the people in power have any incentive to make Russia a self-sufficient country in any metric, because that’s not what they wanted to be in power for, not even close - so Russia will always be interested in foreign institutions and markets and investment, because isolation is definitely not in its interest, nor is it appealing to anyone in power.

As seemingly morally correct as it is, you’re just talking about way too powerful markets here to dismiss that way. Maybe we, the Lemmy/fediverse crowd, may want and welcome it, but neither the governments nor a large enough portion of their electorates would sacrifice even relative economic comfort and their standard of living for that.

Not to mention that uncovering who’s done what atrocities is a very big Pandora’s box, opening which either blocks everyone from trading with each other, or leads to heavily-manipulated decisions and results as to whose atrocities justify embargoes and whose don’t.

This whole things is neck-deep pile of shit to say the least.

I don’t know shit about finances or economics or markets, but this seems to make sense. That’s probably why it makes sense to me in the first place.

It seems similar to mutually assured destruction, like the one that a nuclear arsenal poses, acting as a deterrent to all the parties involved. If you harm their market, they harm yours, and in this day and age, it’s more disastrous than ever, perhaps.

The bigger problem is likely spread out across smaller markets, which, combined, net you a solid benefit and profit, but if some of they start using such precedents as an excuse to seize your assets for only their benefit and profit, they might lose less than you do, ultimately proving the concern in @AlteredStateBlob@kbin.social’s comment above.

We might as well be discussing it in way more detail than the decision-makers here, as yeah, setting precedents that could (or could not) potentially harm their profits and leviathan wealth is a no-go for them.

Fair enough. I live here and always surprised my family whenever I refuse dried fish with beer - I’m more of a smoked cheese braid or chips kinda person.