Let me throw a disgusted upvote in your general direction.

Germany had this since forever, it’s just how offline laws translate to the internet: There’s a difference between a) ordinary nudity, b) eroticism and c) straight-up porn. The latter was always 18+, in video rental stores etc. they would have a separate section and if you didn’t look of age you’d get ID’d.

You can’t order alcohol online in Germany without a proper age check, and the same applies to porn. For paid offerings that’s no issue, payment providers offer age checks (your bank knows how old you are and them vouching suffices), for free sites it’s a no-go, noone is going to go through the hassle. Especially as you can escape off the German-language internet onto the international one and merely click through an “are you 18” banner.

Notably, pornhub isn’t blocked in Germany – neither from the German side, nor from pornhub’s. Very occasionally DNS bans are ordered when a site without age checks tries to specifically target the German market. Mostly though it’s down to German google not serving up those international porn sites which in the end is good enough for the youth protection authorities because the point is not to make access impossible, it’s to make sure that youth not ready for content doesn’t stumble across it. And once you’re actively seeking, you’re ready, the hoops you have to jump through are proof of the “active” part. YMMV on “not ready for porn with 18”, back in the days there was still softcore. On free TV. Probably won’t hurt kids to not start out with gonzo.

Shoe’s a populist socdem, which isn’t the majority of her content that’d be her having no respect for identity politics.

I’m saying that the Russian empire was different, and even the USSR was different.

Different, yes of course, what I’m trying to get at here is that there’s still consistencies. The three systems are different coats of paint on the same dysfunction. There’s also been some progress, I already mentioned the nuclear family, but the overall problem won’t be fixed until the dysfunction is understood, organically, by society.

That’s where you are wrong.

As you might have guessed, one can’t punish FSB for entrapment, they are the ones doing the punishing.

I don’t think we actually disagree: The forces that I described breed the type of people the FSB needs to do its enforcement. Cynical, ruthless, eager to suppress their trauma by inflicting it on others. In Tsarist times there was more, religion and all that, a very old notion of what God’s plan for society is, roles for everyone, in the USSR at least a number of them were actually ideologically convinced, by now, power is the only ideology. They’re mighty so they must be right, don’t they?

Except see my previous part about special services’ work. The real problem is not in nobody willing to organize.

Russia had a revolution before, it can have one again. Bluntly put: The Kremlin guards are less well armed than Ukraine. Revolutions aren’t organised, they happen once the collective psyche reaches a breaking point. No words, just people’s subconsciousness noticing the mood of the people around them, assessing the chances: “Am I going to be alone, or are we going to march together?” and suddenly decades happen in weeks.

What would be important is having a couple of ideas on what will come after that. How to not lose the moment, again. Who would be the current-day Bolsheviks, opposed to the deposed-of system but also to the freedom of the people? How to convince Yuri Shevchuk to accept being crowned Tsar. I’m only half joking.

And that stuff about Europe and homosexuality seems for me a kind of “the hungry doesn’t understand the full”, more of jokes and separation than of really thinking that’s true.

I’m talking about an underlying psychosexual current. Of course people don’t believe in the literal truth of these kinds of things, it’d be like believing that dreams are literally true. But there’s still a reason why you’re having these particular kinds of dreams, and not different ones.

They followed their own laws. If a law was too cumbersome to make, they didn’t. It was an absolute monarchy, but if you compare today’s Russia’s judicial system to the imperial one - the latter seems very humane.

Do you think it’s even constitutional for Putin to deputise people with presidential powers? That any court would challenge him? Law in Russia was, and is, subordinate to the powers that be.

Nah, not that. If we make this comparison, for them it’s the father’s right, and you are subordinate. It’s not about fear of punishment, it’s about enduring for endurance’s sake. Almost morality.

That’s the attitude of those considered strong, yes. You either become them or you break and end up with a tattoo saying “slave” on your forehead or something.

People who you are maybe looking for here are not those who try to somehow explain the state’s justifications for this war.

I’m not talking about the state’s justification, but about the justification of the cultural psyche. Russia, as a psyche, doesn’t want to see Ukrainians with forehead tattoos, it wants Ukraine to be part of it. Part of the same ethos, with maybe slightly different dances, clothing, and they can continue pronouncing things with h instead of g as long as they admit they’re Russians, that they accept, as you put it above, the father’s authority. And the only way that psyche knows how to convince the son of the father’s authority is by cruelty.

The virtuous suffering thing is often stupid, but sometimes a strength.

It’s not. It destroys social cohesion, it breeds neurosis. With true courage, it doesn’t matter whether you live or die for the cause, as long as the cause is virtuous. This Russian strength, though, it only can ever make sense if you’re dying for it, living for it indeed is stupid, at the same time its strength in dying for it is not stronger than that of true courage. It’s precisely why Russians don’t know where the fuck that cart is racing. But go, it must. Why. Why not make camp and have a party.

The reason is simple: Without the people neurotic, distrustful, and accustomed to bowing to authority, the central authority would fall, because people would actually be able to organise bottom-up. The central authority knows that, and thus does nothing to combat it, the people, well, it’s Russia’s only way to greatness, isn’t it? Any alternatives?

Which brings me to Navalny’s balls of steel, returning to Russia: Yes, that’s impressive. That’s strong, “virtuous suffering”. But it’s also accepting the status quo. You can’t be a revolutionary against a system by holding onto the ethos that fuels it.

There’s just one thing that Russians really lack - understanding of the importance of truth.

Now that is a universal human trait.

For an American or a German it takes belief in a propaganda device to follow it. For a Russian - just acceptance that it’s likelier to be better in some way.

Americans don’t believe in, whatnot, manifest destiny, their exceptionalism, they live it. Germans certainly don’t believe in classism, yet we’re living it. Generally speaking: The stuff that people are actually following is not found on the propaganda level, but on a level below that, on a cultural carrier wave so to speak. Why propagandise something that people are doing, anyway? Doesn’t make sense.

No. Just the belief that there’s some deeper grey wisdom, a secret, and you’d be an idiot to just give yourself to some specific idea.

That’s just bug-standard metamodernism collapsed into fascism, that is, regressed into modernism. Just to explains terms: Modernism is the age of grand ideas, “one true path to absolve humankind”, while postmodernism is the “yo all that stuff is BS anyway we don’t know shit”. You see those forces oscillating throughout history, metamodernism means their co-existence.

That belief might very well what people are telling themselves, but it’s a shallow analysis. The “deeper grey wisdom” (interesting that you used “grey” btw, “it must be ancient” – why?) is Snokhachestvo, and not the practice itself but the cultural attitudes that enable(d) it. Russia made some progress overcoming that shit, e.g. normalising nuclear families instead of communal ones (the one crucial achievement of the USSR), but the underlying cultural beliefs stay uninterrogated, able to perpetuate themselves. Thus men do to their sons what their fathers did to them, think that’s what being a man is all about, and if you don’t use whatever power and might you have to be cruel, you’re obviously gay. Like Europe.

That is what I meant with “a belief in might makes right”.

A whole country of cynics thinking they know better.

Germany has 80 million national football team trainers. There seems to be a pattern here: Declaring universal human traits as specifically Russian. Those traits are true, no doubt, but they’re not unique.

That’s not how central power functioned back then, and what happens now is a mafia group gratuitously using its vast human resources to just have fun.

It didn’t? The Tsar and the viceroys, plundering the country and living the good life. The General Secretariat or even Secretary and the Nomenklatura, plundering the country and living the good life. “Everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others”. In either case, highly authoritarian societies, with varying levels of totalitarianism. Such a setup requires cruelty and ruthlessness, and there’s no shortage of either because, according to Russian culture throughout the ages, good fathers make sure that their sons are strong men by raping the son’s wife. Metaphorically speaking, at least: The “sons” might be subordinate soldiers, and the “wife” their pay checks and materiel. In the position of son, you’re just expected to take it, otherwise you’re weak, and the “father” will make sure that’s an even worse fate. The Siloviki do indeed want to free Ukrainians – so they bomb cities. Free them from their “European gayness”, that is. Such is the perversity of the Russian psyche.

Or, differently put: You sure you’re looking at the water you’re swimming in? I’m not Russian, I only lived there, and I was able to see the water. Swimming feels quite a bit different in Russia than it does virtually everywhere else.

No, it’s not any more a Russian weakness than an American one, even less than a Japanese or a Chinese one.

Russians don’t have the “fuck the feds” grassroots rebelliousness of Americans, they don’t have a honour/respectability culture like the Japanese not to mention that Russians have basically no civil society while Japan (as a stem family culture) has a very strong one, and unlike the Chinese Russians are fatalist AF, don’t really have expectations about things becoming better for them. If the CCP had started this shit they would’ve lost the mandate of heaven quite a while ago.

But I agree, it’s not so much a strong man fetish. It’s an acceptance of might makes right combined with social acceptance of tyrannical behaviour on the individual level and, consequently, high distrust among individuals stopping the formation of a civil society.

Russian society hasn’t fundamentally changed since the days of the Tsars, they’ve gone through various paint-coats while sticking to the same overarching organisational structure: Central power delegates exploitation of people, the environment etc to viceroys in exchange for loyalty, meanwhile acquisition of new colonial subjects is ongoing as, being built on terror, the imperial core can never feel safe and needs to bash something to distract itself from its vulnerability.

…that’s exactly what I mean. All the broken bits and pieces get shipped to Germany to make Milchreis because it really doesn’t matter what the grains look like if you’re soaking them to smithereens anyway. Into pudding, that is. Which you should totally try on a cold day: Dump into sweetened milk (vanilla if you want), quick boil, 30-40 minutes of soaking at falling/low heat, add cinnamon, maybe some coarse raw sugar for texture variation, eat as-is or with apple sauce.

Only got Jasmin or such at home and still crave the stuff? Well, prepare it. Nothing’s stopping you.

Not just Asia, Italians and Spaniards are also quite particular about rice.

1kg bags in Germany cost 2.50 Euro for Jasmin, 3 for Basmati. One Euro for cheap parboiled. All discounter store brand. Risotto 2 Euro, that stuff is grown in Italy.

…10kg prices are practically identical, or better put if you shop at a place than sells 10kg bags suddenly the 1kg bags are expensive.

Russia by and large doesn’t give a shit about its nature as long as it’s huge and can be exploited so it’s not like they’re producing many documentaries etc. about it.

This is a cool project, though: Re-creating megafauna habitat, turning tundra into steppe. And in true Russian fashion, in lieu of living mammoths running over trees they used a tank.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klageerzwingungsverfahren

Mal als Vergleichsgröße: Der Bürgergeld/Sozialhilfe usw Regelsatz beträgt 563€.

Vorschlag an die Linken: Gesetz einbringen dass die Diätenerhöhung auf jährlich den Regelsatz beschränkt. Des Popcorns wegen.

Yes.

Also political.

Do you believe that every party in every parliament in the world should be able to just stop parliament from working instead of trying to actually vote for laws/bills

Plenty of parliamentarians getting kicked out of western parliaments for wearing t-shirts with slogans, holding up signs, suchlike. Suspensions generally are extraordinarily short and little more than “ok we’ll give you some time to change into respectable attire”. Also make a scene? Add a day. Make them watch from the visitor’s benches. Pay attention they don’t miss (relevant) votes.

That would have been the proper reaction: The proper way to handle ritual stunts (and they’re a ritual, also the t-shirt thing) is with ritual slaps on the wrist.

The NZ reaction? They’re suspending parliamentarians for unprecedented amounts of time, and on top of that while the budget is being passed. That is, they’re fucking with the distribution of votes, which is fucking with the foundations of democracy. That is, for a parliament, nothing less than a declaration of bankruptcy.

“Greece”, during the Greek financial crisis, would’ve been a political statement. Today it’d likely be fine.

No political statements with clothing is established precedent and wearing a Palestine shirt today is a political statement. Greece? Currently, not really, no, don’t see it. During the Greek debt crisis? Yes it would’ve been.

She’s free to make a pro-Palestine speech, that’s how political statements are supposed to be done in parliament. Occasionally there’s stunts like these, and they always have the same outcome: A small amount of extra spotlight, then everyone forgets about it.

Things have shifted in the last what 20 years: Back then no Nazi would ever be caught dead with a “black-red-mustard” flag, Nazi flags are outlawed so they were using imperial flags (black-white-red). Changed with the “Monday demonstrations”, and the Nazis, while infiltrating the AfD, adopting less overt symbolism. “Nono we’re not the Nazis don’t you see those boneheads there marching with the imperial flag those are Nazis”.

As far as use by non-fascists is concerned, it’s still generally limited to the extreme right (think Burschenschaften), or the world cup. Which, btw, was started by Turks: Dunno remember which but Turkey made it into the group stage at some point, lots of Germans with Turkish descent turned the balconies red, then Turkey got kicked out, and all of them, without batting an eye, switched to flying black-red-gold.

Pins are quite common with conservative politicians, and I’d say they’re subdued enough.

Have, for example, Daniel Günther with the SH coat of arms. I mean he’s prime minister, why not.