Barbarian

Fun fact about our legal system: we don't do jury trials. The evidence and arguments are heard by the judge, who decides both guilty/not guilty and the sentence.

Sounds like he's still stuck in the 90s. The police used to be corrupt as all hell, but things have slowly improved. Most would probably take a kickback for something very minor, like drinking a beer in a park, but there's too many eyes on them for anything more major.

Just 2 months ago a guy I know came in from Italy, but didn't realize Romania has a zero tolerance policy on drunk driving. He had a single glass of wine and was driving. Police stopped him, asked if he'd been drinking, he said yes. Once he realized how much shit he was in, he tried to bribe them. They added that to the charges. He's now banned from driving in Romania (he had to get a pair of friends from Italy to come pick up his car), but they were nice enough to not cancel his driving license completely.

Living next to a park is great. I do the same, except I've got my phone with me connected to teams. I can get back home on my computer in under 2 minutes if I need to.

But seriously, are there really women who talk about men in those terms?

Yes. Personally, I see it as the mirror image of the "tradwife" thing where toxic men see their partner as a subservient maid. Seeing men as primarily an income source comes from a similar place imho.

It takes more than a few weeks to undo 14 years of damage. Negotiations have started for limited regulation alignment with the EU, the response to the race riots was decent, legislation is starting to go through.

Hold them to account, but I would recommend being fair about it.

i need someone to talk to

Have you considered talking to a psychologist? I've never been clinically depressed, but I was going through some stuff and went to a few sessions. It really helped me a lot.

I've no idea how practical that is where you live, but if it is an option I can't recommend it enough.

Absolutely. Fdroid is awesome.

I hate the fact that there's no simple, free, ad-free note-taking app either inbuilt or on the app store. Just something simple and local to take a quick shopping list or a name or something like that. Fdroid has me covered for that.

To add on to what @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world said, you need to change the voting system first before that becomes viable, and then it happens naturally without any manual intervention.

Take the Alaska 2022 election as an example. Before, candidates had to be extreme in order to appeal to their base, as all that mattered was making the other side look "evil". Once they switched to rank voting, all of a sudden they had to convince voters of their own worth so they'd be put in at least second or third place, if not first directly. It also meant people could safely vote third party or alternative candidates within the major parties without a spoiler effect, as if the candidate is unviable, the vote just gets transferred to the second place pick.

Tl;Dr: The real solution to what you're trying to do is abandon first past the post and adopt some kind of ranked choice voting.

As a member of a family who were living in a fascist country, the answer is hide or get shot. I'm (obviously) descended from the part of my family who managed to avoid getting executed.

I would think that Ukrainian military senior staff know a bit more of what they're doing than us armchair generals. In terms of the full explanation, I'm sure we'll get that much later down the line (likely after the war). In terms of the desperation, I guess a bit of that has to be involved. They wouldn't need to do this if they were winning easily in the east, but that's where basically all the Russian military is alongside extensive fortifications, minefields, pre-sited artillery, etc.

It's likely also got a political angle to it too. Undermining the myth of the strong Czar protecting his people, and forcing tough decisions about how to use conscripts, some of which are from wealthy and influential cities (unlike the contract soldiers).

I'm no military guy, but as far as I understand it using troops trained in combined arms maneuver warfare to hold a trench line is a bit of a misuse of their skillset. Kinda like using an entire delivery van to transport your weekly shopping.

Why not use the troops in an environment they can truly excel and force a disproportionate response?

Also, it isn't exactly true that these troops were pulled off the eastern front. More accurate to say they weren't deployed there, so there's an opportunity cost.

Half my main shadowrun group are Germans, I could get them to help instead