They purged roughly 10% - 12% of the opposition by parliament seats, yeah - that means it is at least that much less democratic. I’m just stating facts here. This isn’t a strong defense of the democratic values of Ukraine, just a statement that they aren’t wholly undemocratic as suggested in the meme - it’s misleading.

I agree that the situation isn’t treated with nuance, typically, by westerners. But in this case, this is neither particularly nuanced nor naïve - it’s just a statement of fact that the parliament has voted repeatedly to extend martial law.

That doesn’t mean Ukraine is a super-democratic country. It only means that it is the case that the government, made up of elected representatives (and yes, Ukraine banned 11 political parties for alleged Russian ties - one of them with ~10% of parliamentary seats - so the representativeness of the legislature is certainly debatable) has voted to not allow presidential elections until the war is over.

Obviously it’d take a much longer explanation to capture all of the relevant geopolitical context, but this is a factually accurate statement about what is happening, yes?

Referendum was incorrect. It was just a vote by the legislature, so elected representatives. I had seen Referendum used in some source, but I forget where.

On 26 February 2025, after a previous failed vote on a similar resolution,[27] the Verkhovna Rada passed a resolution reaffirming that elections should not be held during martial law, and also pledged to hold a presidential election upon the conclusion of the Russo-Ukrainian War.[28] On 6 March 2025 opposition politicians Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, after having confirmed that they had held discussions with United States representatives, confirmed that they still opposed elections held during wartime.[29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Ukrainian_presidential_election

Thank you! I really don’t mean to complain. We really have it very good. I think it’s a common sort of story here. We are extremely lucky to not be lower SES, a targeted racial minority, etc.

We’ve considered it, but my wife really doesn’t want to move far from her family, and especially not out of country. I have some friends who moved to Canada, though, and have found it to be very welcoming & they have had a lot of success with the process. My sister has definitely thought about emmigrating if things get worse - I believe she has a plan to get out. Luckily she seems to have a great group of friends who are able to support each other

Oh nice. I may have to try it out

It makes it risky to have kids here. We have some risk factors for it. Some of our friends had a rough time, and all had to make emergency plans to leave the state if worse came to worse. They also had to be careful to hide the pregnancy since the government was talking about tracking who was pregnant to catch people who left the state to get abortions - that hasn’t happened yet though. And if we left the state permanently, we’d have to do it without family support which would be hard.

So, no direct harm of course, but it has caused us to delay having kids. More than anything it causes anxiety - which is why all this stuff affects most people: not because of direct harm right now, but because it makes the future uncertain.

No worries. I’ve heard (not that you said this, but in general) people say that folks are anxious just because of politics & things that don’t affect them - I think that’s sometimes true, but more often the politics affect people’s lives directly, or at least threaten to, and that causes real stress,anxiety, and harm.

That’s why I tried to tie systemic causes into my rant. Literally every single stressful thing in my life I can point back to a systemic, “political” cause. And I have it pretty freakin good, all things considered. There’s a lot of folks I know who are much less fortunate who are impacted much worse by… gestures at stuff broadly

I’m pretty anxious.

Fascism is advancing very rapidly in my country and is dismantling everything from science funding to the basic rule of law to basic public health and disease prevention while being openly corrupt and literally just stealing tax money.

My country is helping to perpetrate a genocide and has launched a completely voluntary war against Iran for no reason. It also did something that “was totally not war” to Venezuela and is threatening both Cuba and Mexico now.

I work minimum 45 hours/week, usually closer to 55 hours/week. This is nice because I was working 70-80 hour weeks last year, but things have slowed down for me a bit. Idk who in the US is working 35 hours, but it’s not me…

Trying to plan for the future is very difficult because my government is running pump and dump schemes on the market literally constantly while also effectively destroying the bond market, threatening the dollar’s status as world reserve currency, etc. There’s no safe place to put money away for retirement and it is very unlikely the Social Security program will exist by the time I retire. I am lucky to have begun saving for retirement early and live well below my means in a low cost of living area, but even though I have saved like half my income for my entire working life that may not be enough.

Speaking of the future, it is very dangerous for women to get pregnant in my state because if they have an ectopic pregnancy or the fetus dies, the doctors will basically make the woman get sepsis before treating her because of the anti-abortion laws here. Many women have died. So even though we’re lucky enough to be in a position to afford to have kids, we’ve had to put our lives on hold & consider fleeing our home state where our families live.

My relationship with my family is strained - my parents, older relatives, and one of my sisters are all completely brainwashed by fascist propaganda. It is getting better, but during Trump 1 and Biden, they became more hateful and crazy than they ever had been prior. My other sister is trans but hasn’t come out to them yet. I expect that to be very difficult because they’re bigots and have been spewing hate about trans people for years at this point. My sister is doing a very good job of prepping them, and I’m helping how I can, but I’m worried for her. Our government has labeled trans right organizations as domestic terrorist organizations. Trans people are constantly under attack.

My younger siblings and older family members are also hurt by the economic state of affairs, either struggling to get a start in life or having a hard time making ends meet in retirement, paying for health-related expenses, etc. That causes me some anxiety.

I have a good standard of living because my wife and I are highly educated professionals. We are lucky to have had a lot of advantages. So really, we don’t have a lot of financial stress many others do. But even still, prices have risen on most goods like 30-50% or more over the past 6 years or so. If this continues, it may or may not threaten us right now, but it does call into question if we can afford kids, retirement, etc.

The environment & ecology is rapidly getting worse and the government is doing worse than nothing to help. We have flesh eating parasites coming back after having been eradicated since the 60s. Our government is attempting to destroy the national parks and wildlife system and allow.strip mining and drilling. Temperatures are rising and rainfall is decreasing, fires are becoming much more widespread, tornadoes have been hitting our area much more than in the past, etc. New Orleans, a city my wife, I, and our families have a connection to is projected to literally sink into the sea within our lifetimes.

To be fair, they’re (understandably) under martial law which has been extended in 90 day increments since 2022 with parliamentary approval. Elections aren’t to be held under martial law per Ukranian law, and there have been referenda votes held among the Rada to determine if elections should be held, which failed.

Edit: referendum would entail direct democracy. That isn’t what happened - it was just a vote by the legislature.

Whoa cool. Thanks for the info

Deepseek is definitely worse than the best ChatGPT and Anthropic models. It’s especially evident in coding tasks, but it is also worse with hallucinations and reasoning generally, in my experience. But for basic language tasks or pointing me to research on a topic, it’s pretty good.

I just don’t see it unseating the big american firms without an additional push.

Guy Extinguishi

“Bowr-gee-oh-eye-zee”

deleted by creator

Bribes from competitors? Protection racket? Yeah. There’s gotta be an angle somewhere in there.

Wow, texas AG office actually doing its job? Paxton must really be worried about the primary

Meant by whom? The people who do things like this have different, personal motives. They aren’t doing it to spread ideology, they’re doing it to address specific ideological needs in irrational ways.

It bothers me when people aren’t consistent.

Like when something good happens to them: god is rewarding me for being so good

When somehting bad happens to them: god is testing me and will reward me later for being so good

When something bad happens to someone they don’t like: god is punishing them for being so bad

Or like how they pray to god for individual favors. Like “dear god even though I didnt study please let me do well on this test” as though god should care and give them special treatment for… nothing. Yet they claim to value hard work, god only gives you what you can handle, are generally fatalistic, etc.

Pure pacifism relies on an idealized view of humanity’s capacity for change.

Something like “by allowing me and my family to maybe be killed, we are helping to create a more peaceful world that will change people like my killer into a peaceful person. Who knows, in the instant before they murder us, maybe they will have a change of heart”

I think there’s an extent to which showing others kindness can help to change others’ behavior, but it’s really taking it to a ridiculous extreme if you apply it to like… your family being massacred by a really bad person/people. By that point, they’re too far gone and you should really do what you need to do.

Yeah, not good faith afterall. Learn to read, I guess.