wearing rainbow-themed earrings

but muh Russia is so free of censorship

@0x815 oh, wow. Yea, their stories just seem unbelievable. And also the way some people crossed the border to reach the “free world” seems unbelievable. For example, a band managed to cross the border inside Marshall speakers. Others tried to cross the Danube into Yugoslavia (which was more liberal at the time) and got shot by the Romanian border patrols. It was pretty much hell on Earth.

each of these stories is a reason to avoid mass surveillance imo.

Absolutely. Every time I hear about governments snooping inside personal communication I think of how phones were tapped and letters were read for every known or possible dissidents back then. And when an extremist party seems to be on the verge of taking power (and we do have extremist parties as well in Romania) I just think that measures like these would be the first they would implement, along with reducing democratic rights.

@underwire212 imagine that you can tune in on Spotify, YouTube or wherever you want and listen to whatever you want. Imagine that you can legally buy whatever newspaper from the local shop, or go to whatever internet website and legally read whatever news you might find there, whether it is a government website, a conspiracy website, a satirical website or whatever. Legally. That’s what democracy makes it special. This is what freedom is all about.

Here in Romania, during communism, if you were caught listening to Radio Free Europe, you would be prosecuted immediately. If you listened to AC/DC, Beatles, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Sex Pistols, Led Zeppelin or other iconic Rock bands back in the day, you would be labeled as a potential risk for the society, possibly extremist, and followed 24/7 by the secret police. You could have a police record with this, all with this nonsense like what were you wearing, where were you going, what you were doing etc., and it would weigh down hard on your career. Your phones could be tapped, your mail could be tampered, especially if you sent it outside. The secret police was so well infiltrated in the society that anyone could report you. Anyone could be a collaborator, and you wouldn’t be aware of it. Imagine you throw a party, and you make some random jokes about the regime, or that you all listen to one of these bands. In your group of friends, it was enough for just one of them to be a collaborator. You can imagine that all of you might be fucked, the next day if you’re lucky enough, on the spot if not.

There were cases of spouses reporting to the secret police, parents, children, relatives of all sorts. Teachers could be collaborators as well. Priests were known to be collaborators of the secret police, as people would go to confess their sins, and then in turn, they would confess these sins of them to (you guessed it) the secret police. You just couldn’t trust anybody.

It’s just mind-boggling how the secret police (in Romania even aptly named Securitate meaning Security) could follow you for basically nothing. And probably the teens in the article in the OP were in a similar situation.

@0x815

@alyaza world’s hottest year on record so far!

@QuentinCallaghan natural selection took its toll, sadly.

@DdCno1 I hope so as well

@detectivemittens I may sound like a broken plate but I think it’s precisely the situation in Ukraine that is giving them hopes. Had the US not put on hold that package for Ukraine, the Chinese could have simply taken a more moderate stance towards Taiwan. By doing what it did, yea, as you said, the US showed its weakness in providing its allies and partners with the required military help.

@DdCno1

@ninjan Clearly not, lol, not at all. The guy is not a newcomer in politics, either. He’s previously served as a prime-minister until 2014 and then has been the President of the European Council, so I’m not seeing him go anywhere close to Donald Trump, unless I’m missing something.

@IoSapsai I might know which town myself. So yes, my theory confirms. Authorities, all over the world, are never (enough) prepared for winter.

@IoSapsai Ah, yes, a classic. They can never be ready for winter. When you hear that, just run (or go skying like our president does, whichever is more convenient).

Which city are you in?

@Radiant_sir_radiant does his party have any chance of forming a majority in the parliament all by itself?

@Radiant_sir_radiant I’m still struggling to understand what could be worse than selling babies and organs on the free market.

@throws_lemy I just read about this guy on a Telegram channel that I follow (content is in Romanian). What the hell?!? How can people actually vote for a crazy dude like him?!? There’s a shitload of stuff that he wants that even a moderately right-wing person would disagree.

Even our most right-wing extremists would go crazy at the thought of abolishing the national currency in exchange for a foreign one (or maybe it’s only when it’s about Euros, who knows). Let alone selling babies and organs on the free market.

@acockworkorange Yea. They are in a joint venture here with a state-owned company, so I guess it’s not only their work alone in this project.

Besides that, I hope they are not doing fraudulent things here as well, although I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they do, given our judiciary.

@sarsaparilyptus That still doesn’t beat the owner of the most popular footbal club here’s take:

FCSB owner Gigi Becali has commented in characteristic style on the conflict situation in Israel, which has declared a state of war after rocket attacks by the Palestinian Hamas movement. “The events in Israel… Excluding the fact that people are dying and it’s not good, any war is to our advantage. And in football, and economically. They won’t be in the mood for football,” said Gigi Becali, referring to the fact that Romania is in a group with Israel in the Euro 2024 preliminaries. “And economically, there are 500,000 Jews who will come to Romania. They are afraid. They have money, they have that… They’ll buy houses,” Becali added. "But it won’t last long. The Jews rule the world and you start attacking them? You attack their children over there? They leave them and they’ll be wiped out in five months. The Gaza Strip will be dust! That’s how I see it. They’ll wipe them out. They’ve got billions. They rule the world! How do you deal with them? It’s like me fighting Manchester City," added the FCSB owner.
Translated with DeepL https://www.deepl.com/app/?utm_source=android&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=share-translation

Source

@java this is the cursed AUR

@AtaKe if that’s also a possibility then cool

@dingleberry keep the option to have a password as fallback in situations like these?

… And if your phone has no biometric authentication then fuck you!

@ram anyone in charge in Russia? Well, they can’t complain, if you know what I mean 😅

@jimmydoreisalefty