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Cake day: July 14th, 2023

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  • 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.



  • 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.


  • What phones would you consider worthwhile in terms of price, i.e. those you can cheap out on, but not suffer the consequences of it being slow even in the simplest tasks?

    One Android phone I had, Nokia 5.1, had to be replaced in less than 5 years because it often froze and lagged when I had to make or receive a phone call, open a single tab in some light-weight browser, etc.

    I’m not a big fan of the smartphone industry and especially the reviewers because they seem to have a very twisted idea of a budget device. Or maybe I’m a cheapskate.



  • The lower amount of content on Lemmy is balanced by the increased quality and the fact I can’t spend all day on here

    This is easily one of the greatest aspects of the fediverse for me so far; Reddit seemed great at first, when all of its content and communities were new to me, and as it gradually got more familiar and filtered and fine-tuned through my own activity, I noticed that I’d been just scrolling the thing mindlessly, aimlessly, hoping to experience something good, have a nice laugh, a nice read, just anything - ultimately wasting dozens of minutes, sometimes hours, with nothing but a sad sigh as a result.

    Browsing Lemmy is a genuinely fun activity for a relatively short amount of time a couple of times a day max, always having a good time thanks to its quality and always having nice conversations because it’s the culture so far, and never scrolling through endless equally poorly-thought-out posts or comments because even if there are any, they’re few and far between.

    I think I say the same things whenever I get to praise the fediverse in general and Lemmy in particular, but I just can’t help myself.



  • I like your theory and wanna agree.

    In 00s and 10s, my friends and I used to engage with the Internet and each other in a very different way than in the more recent years: We basically were the content generators for ourselves, making conversations based on our ideas fueled by movies, books, or pure imagination, with a lot of jokes and other content that, compared to today, probably took much more effort; we made ambient music with a shitty mic, gathered together, somewhere away from our homes, to talk and watch shit on some weak-ass laptops, maybe game and talk on said laptops, maybe game online, share stupid proposals for our art projects like making music or writing stories or drawing, sharing results.

    Of course, we recited some jokes, rein reenacted some, and ironically enough, the most repeated were the ones coming from short-term content, like the z0r.de flashes or skits from collection-type videos like the GMOD Idiot Box. Back then such short-form content was more of a rarity, it seems, so we still had a lot room for creativity and something more meaningful and such, while now this type of content has filled way too many spaces, with much lower quality, too - we’ve seemed to have stopped creating, despite having arguably much more fuel for it thanks to the many changes our lives brought.

    Thinking about this makes me browse the Internet a little less and focus on writing or reading, two things I’ve been most creatively engaged with since I was a kid, hoping that can bring creating stuff back to my life and the lives of my friends and family, at least to some degree, as opposed to just consuming lazy content and having even lazier, meaningless, dull conversations with people I care about.


  • 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.




  • NOTE: I turned to a lot of ranting after 2nd paragraph, so don’t read anything past that if you’re only interested in learning what we, the anti-war Russians, think.

    I have only ever heard the former from - for the lack of a better word - the westerners; more specifically, I’ve only ever heard that from non-European westerners, as every German, French, Pole, etc. only ever had a different idea of why the war ever happened, but nothing about resources or any other nonsense like that. I’ll try to respond as best as I can, and some things may look like I’m excusing myself or others, so please bear in mind that it’s just my attempts to explain some of the most bizarre things that people may see coming from Russia in these times.

    The anti-war Russians either don’t rationalize it all, mock the initial talking points (“No NATO expansion!”), or talk about Putin’s ego and his long history with Ukraine. I’m in the latter camp: I believe that Putin wanted to have Ukraine in his pocket the same way he has Belarus right now, but he failed multiple times, which ultimately led to the Euromaidan protests; at that point he just got pissed I guess and tried to bruteforce some influence into Ukraine or something, first annexing Crimea (overtly), then sending various agents and actors to the Southeast of Ukraine (covertly at first), and eventually starting a full-blown campaign hoping for a quick win and patriotic points akin to Crimea… we all know it failed, and it’s good, but I still doubt it ever could have an effect that is in any way similar to the Crimea annexation because Putin managed to sell it as the will of the people over there, having enough material to force the “not a shot” narrative of the peaceful annexation; I just think that even if Putin conquered and held the entirety of Ukraine in 3 days or less, the way things happened already was covered in blood, and that’s not very popular, neither here, nor anywhere else; then there simply was more blood and more suffering that was much more prominent and noticeable to the people living in Russia because, well, it’s Ukraine of all places, the amount of all kinds of relationships meant that none of the killings and pain could ever be hidden or downplayed. I really doubt Putin ever wanted it take any longer than a couple of weeks, but oh well, here’s what 20+ years of rampant kleptocracy gets you, I guess.

    One could argue there’s always been support for the war effort and the anti-Ukrainian sentiment, but all of that is artificial first and foremost, and then fueled by massive amounts of copium that a lot of people need to stay at least somewhat sane. I should know because following my ever-growing discontent with my country (both its people and the government), I’ve mentally emigrated years ago, mostly talking to people living outside Russia and solely in English, and developed very humanistic, leftist views over that time as well as gaining a massive base of various resources to get news from all around the world with the least amount of (one-sided) propaganda - so when the war started and I saw what my government was doing, I could not believe any of that shit. It honestly felt like a nightmare that was not surprising because I knew what kind of people made up my government on all of its levels, but still a gut-turning nightmare. And that was me, someone who had very little ties to the country despite living there and basically hoping to move out one day - I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to happen to be more of a patriot on 24 February 2022 and later; that’s way too rapid and insane and brutal to believe and properly accept, and so many people - a lot of which had vigorously complained about Russia and its government before the war, by the way - developed a coping mechanism that just happens to look very fucking wrong.

    Many fell victim to very powerful and long-running propaganda, which is a very serious and difficult problem to tackle on any level, be it individual or collective; the people who blame them are very lucky to not have witnessed this kind of shit first-hand, and they simply don’t understand what it is - even Orwell would’ve shat himself had he had the chance to live with it side-by-side. It’s a very complicated and difficult issue, and we’re in deep.

    As for the anti-war Russians, I don’t even think anybody rationalizes it anymore. Thankfully, we’ve seen many speakers talking about the real reasons for the war (2nd paragraph, it all basically being an ego trip and an attempt to gather some political points in lieu of having done anything worthwhile at all in over 20 years), so I guess that’s the stance most of us take now. Funnily enough, I tried to be a bit more mentally present in Russia after the war started, like trying to find some Russian websites and communities online and stuff to stay more up-to-date and, well, try and make some influence, but recently I’ve come to the same conclusion again that I just can’t stand many of my fellow countrypeople, especially online because they’re either more likely to show some of their not-so-sociable faces or just hold some disgusting views in general; by the time I got capable of leaving, I realized that I can’t because, despite all the shit, I now have people that I care about over here and can neither leave (because I highly doubt I’d be able to get them into crypto to financially help anyone if need be, or will face massive issues if I have to visit) nor take them with me (because they won’t move).

    On top of all that, I just don’t know what to expect from the future - not my future, but just the future in general. I’m going to try my best to aid the anti-Putin effort for the March 2024 elections, but I don’t know if that’s going to be any success. I’m not feeling too good about the right-wing sentiment gaining traction all over the world again. I’m certainly not happy about the climate situation and the big players just not caring about shit other than their profits. Real estate is not even worth talking about.

    It’s all so tiresome and weird.


  • That, too. Good points, thanks.

    The people that got mobilised late September last year already lead to many reports of extremely poor and lacking equipment, and news like that usually don’t break out of something as gated and hostile to any outside world communications as the Russian army.

    Prigozhin and his Wager group got increasingly mad because of that, too, among other things, as they weren’t pumped full of money and best gear the Russian government could muster. They said they were getting g ripped off and such, but what really happened is they got down to the same tier gear as everyone else (maybe higher, still), and that was THAT infuriating to them.


  • It’s very ducking complicated, but I’ll do my best to give you a sensible answer. I live in Russia and while I’m no journalist or expert, maybe I have something worthwhile to say for an insight.

    We do have the numbers, period - there’s money in killing our neighbors, there’s some sort of twisted fate or purpose that always emerges during this kind of times, and there’s people willing to do this kind of stuff for the kind of money or purpose offered. There’s also, well, just people of various backgrounds, skills, and capabilites to forcefully throw into the war effort, but the most important thing is that it’s not just a number game - like, it’s not a dead-simple RTS game where you select some units and magically convert them into equally capable combatants over a set period of time to go and win with some tactics.

    Despite the somewhat prevalent opinion, this is not a popular war, it’s not supported or sacred or anything - Russia wouldn’t see so many people fleeing and imprisoned otherwise. Wouldn’t have to forcefully mobilise anyone either.

    There’s enough people in the country that the government can try and throw at the wall of this war and see if they stick and magically do something, but that doesn’t guarantee any success of its own and has massive risks that even the current old men aren’t willing to take.

    As a bonus, any good dictator loves a war, especially a war that’s prolonged, that’s convenient excuse for anything - establish the right kind of info, punish anyone who disagrees, make people praise you for the very little they may get because things could always be worse, make the war the excuse, tell people it’s good and creates work places and gives them purposes, and so and so forth. I don’t belive Putin wants an end to this war - he’d much rather let it help him sit tighter on his blood-drenched throne, and make Ukraine suffer for not playing along with his egomaniac ambitions; under Putin, the war dies with him, not a minute earlier.




  • That’s the point - you have the expertise to make proper sense of whatever it outputs. The people pushing for “AI” the most want to rely on it without any necessary expertise or just minimal efforts, like feeding it some of your financial reports and have generate a 5-year strategy only to fail miserably and have no one to blame this time (will still blame anyone else but themselves btw).

    It’s not the most useless tool in the world by any means, but the mainstream talk is completely out of touch with reality on the matter, and so are mainstream actions (i.e. overrelying on it and putting way too much faith into it).