Hacker News Reader

Comment by Adraghast | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps you thought me under the impression Russia hasn’t had a state security service since the USSR collapsed, but obviously I know that. The point is that one can better cloak the warmed over Cold War paranoia they’re peddling under the guise of knowing what they’re talking about if they avoid warmed over Cold War terminology.

View on HN

Is it Cold War paranoia when Russia is currently engaged in the invasion of another country?

It sure smells like it when you're using terminology outdated by 30 years. Don't use anachronisms if you don't want people to think you're anachronistic.

You may as well call Russians "Soviets". Yes, it's many of the same people in the same buildings, doing the same sort of bullshit. But they aren't called Soviets anymore and if you go around calling them Soviets, you'll going to have people think that you're stuck in the 80s.

Do you insist people refer to the company who Mark Zuckerberg is CEO of as Meta? And correct people who speak of 'Google stock'?

Broken analogy; "Facebook" still exists and their CEO is still Mark Zuckerberg; the fact that Facebook is now owned by Meta hasn't changed this; the name "Facebook" was not discontinued. "Google stock" is an anarchonism, but at least "Google" still exists.

The KGB doesn't exist anymore. They are now the FSB. The "KGB" still exists in the same sense that "The Soviets" still exist, neither call themselves that anymore, nor do they have any subsidiaries called that.

Belarusian intelligence is still the KGB

Fun fact : during the late 2015 Mariupol elections, almost 50% self-identified as Russian, 80% as Ukrainian, fewer than 20% as European, and more than 50% as... Soviet !

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61480988

(Note also that this happened not too long after a pretty bloody phase of the war, though of course less bloody than what we had since last February, especially in Mariupol.)

For my part, I still insist on calling British soldiers "red coats".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com