I’m talking about using a piece of software, no idea how you arrived to murder from that. People on this platform also have many opinions on TikTok without ever trying it. Feels like they are talking out of their ass whenever they mention it.

deleted by creator

Isn’t that the same case for Facebook, Instagram, x-twitter?

Tbh I learned a lot about other cultures through tiktok and recently the US have proven that no matter how much chest pounding about freedom they do, they can be just as authoritarian as any other, even ignoring the invasion of other countries, literally murdering their citizens in the streets and abusing women and minorities, so the app being owned by a Chinese company was not really as big of an issue as others have made it out to be.

Now that ownership has changed, there’s an active suppression of american sensitive topics on the platform, so that’s already a visible downgrade.

I wish someone more neutral could offer a real alternative that people would jump on.

My argument is that the shit that these countries go and have gone through is mostly self inflicted. 90s Romania was insanely corrupt with an “everyone for themselves” attitude like you wouldn’t believe. I was there so I know. People would give bribes even to the local pool to go in without paying a normal fare. Even the priests took bribes. The guy that was chosen as the first president was a former communist elite and he went to town on fucking the country over and people rioted over it. The poverty and suffering was fully internally manufactured.

People nostalgic for the communist system are idiots. Looking at the data economically it might not look bad, but there were extreme supply issues, famine and the authoritarian regime were in full swing in the final years and were the catalist for the fall of the whole system. The years leading up to that is when Romanians learned to survive by any means necessary and infused the society with the corruption that led to the experience of the 90s.

2000s is when people finally had enough and started aspiring to the European model and things started to turn around. You can totally see it on the GDP graph that you showed, 90s was not really capitalistic, it was wild oligarchy west where the only people with any opportunity were former communist elites with money and influence to create their local mafias. Those mafias continued to permate the society in some places to this day.

My argument is that overall the EU has been a net benefit for Romania. Now if you want to get into how capitalism as a whole is not great, especially for the lower classes, then sure, we can agree on that. But this is not what betrayed Romania, Romanians betrayed Romania.

Relative richness, compared to how they started in the 90’s after communism. In 2000 Spain had an average salary of 1443€ and Romania 143€. In 2018 Spain grew to 2295€ but Romania to 965€ an almost 7 times increase.

Current minimum salary in Romania is 814€. It was 40€ in 2000. Your average IT person in Romania right now makes ~70% as a much as a Spaniard but their rent and prices are less than half compared to Spain. Lower skill jobs are still lagging, but it’s been getting better and better.

All of this success is partly due to the EU pulling strings on Romanian politicians in exchange for funds and partly having a political and justice system that has mostly been doing acceptable. If you compare 90’s Ukraine and Romania they had a similar shitty start and the same access to opportunities including the EU. One embraced that and the other did not.

The same EU exported model that made Poland, Romania and Bulgaria as rich as they are today. But also what made Hungary or Greece what they are today, right?

Turns out corruption and internal politics have more influence than anything, but the EU has been a net gain overall for any country that actually gave it an honest try.

Europe could definitely do more, but I don’t think a brute force removal of the current russian elite is feasible without huge loss of life.

Since apparently these days you could just fly into a capital and kidnap a president after a few months of training, simulation and bribery maybe they could do something like that for Putin and the main Russian oligarchs. Clear out the trash in one go and avoid war. But I think this is also too optimistic.

I have a nagging feeling the general public does not hate Microsoft as much as computer nerds do and so probably overall their image is muddled to not that bad overall.

Didn’t he tell them to drink bleach for covid? Unfortunately no one really did.

Straight up 1984 “don’t believe your eyes” bullshit. The woman clearly turns the wheels and what’s to get away. So they just murder her.

I didn’t actually catch the info that they managed to bribe officials to stand down so this is a pretty satisfying answer to my question. Thanks!

Crazy. Thanks, I couldn’t find similar cases when I looked. Considering all the other coups the US has done, this is just a time honored tradition for them.

You see, I thought you can’t just go in a foreign country and kidnap the leader…

Technically you are right, but we already know the us is in love with Israel so them having nukes would have no effect on the hypothetical situation of clearing out the trash in that particular country.

Does pakistan have a particularly problematic leader? Or why are we taking about them?

North korea didn’t have them for the longest time. None of the middle east countries have them to this day. I wonder if Rusia would even retaliate like that, I suspect not.

This is Putin’s wet dream.

These days I’d take living in China instead of living in the US, especially if I’m thinking of having kids.