29 karma · joined May 24, 2012
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Why do we (the public) always fall for the "powerful men" type, be it billionaires or despots, promising to fix all our problems?. This is the antithesis of democracy. Democracy is slow, painful and often mistaken but the added value is that few people get shot on the street. Twitter under Musk will be like the Mad Max's Thunderdome.
And sanction will work -- the reason the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc collapsed is economic. People seem to forget that e.g what made workers go on a country-wide strike in the 80s Poland and eventually led to the downfall of communism in that country was not the notorious lack of freedom and media censorship but empty wallets.
The situation here may be similar and the process can be long, possibly decades. I think what makes the situation worse for Russians is the fact that economic ties with the West are so much stronger compared to the 1950s. The Russian middle-class from big cities will be hit the hardest -- losing their good paying IT and finance jobs and facing a huge downgrade in the quality of life or facing emigration. It's true that the sanctions will have less effect on blue-collars or people from smaller town and villages, likely the main source of support for Putin and also the main audience for the state propaganda. But, I'd argue that the middle-class city dwellers are more influential and less prone to the propaganda.
Oligarchs are another group key to influencing Russian politics and that's harder to reason about. On one hand losing one's yachts and houses on Cote d'Azur is a blow to the status. On the other hand their wealth comes from exploiting commodities and sanctions are unlikely to target that. On the contrary: in the short term the current situation is likely to be beneficial.
If there's a silver lining for the EU, it might be accelerating the process of Green transformation. Even if the war ends tomorrow, I can't see there being any support for retaining existing level of dependence on Russian oil and gas. That ship has sailed. Countries that will remain dependent on Russian fossil fuels, e.g Hungary, have visibly strong autocratic tendencies and will be increasingly ostracised in the EU, possibly eventually leaving it.
Now (I guess always?), it's clear that Apple Silicon is not going to be a comfortable dev environment, at lest not for some and not for a while. JDK macos/aarch64 port is still in dev and so is VS Code. Docker support is probably months away (looking at their roadmap no dev has even started) and when it arrives it's almost certain to be limited to ARM linux images.
Still, hanging on to x86 on a Mac seems like a lost cause and I wonder if I should just change my approach. Rather than getting a beefy MBP, get the cheaper Air with M1 and a powerful MiniPC (NUC or similar) with native Linux. VS Code has a Remote Development (over SSH) feature, has anyone used it? Can it be combined with Docker (on Linux) in a seamless setup where the Air runs VS.Code and all devel happens on the MiniPC through remote coding? Is this setup going to work when VS Code macos/aarch64 is out or is there something else one needs to wait for?
I'm asking all the above to figure out whether my profile (33yrs old, running every second day with ~30km weekly + basic work out of pushups, pullups, situps, etc, BMI 24) is anything like the profiles of "fasters". A year ago I've noticed I started putting up on weight and decided to switch to a low-carb diet, cut down on beer/wine and exercise regularly. I lost about 6kg of excess fat within 2 months (down to 12% overall fat). Now I have largely reverted back to my standard diet though I avoid sweets/candy, white bread/pasta/rice/potatoes in larger quantities and "processed" food in general. I seem be able to maintain my fat and muscle levels and sustain high energy levels through out the day.