whatever russia says, they mean to do the opposite. they've been pulling this nonsense from the start and this is no different, and we know this because they are STILL THERE. if they wanted peace, THEY'D LEAVE. ukraine doesn't have a choice, they have nowhere to go. they can't pull out of the conflict because they are literally the one being invaded. there is no logic to this argument. it's like ordering cheese and wondering why you are served cheese. it's plain and dumb.

You're not looking at the cost of living. your actual income is usually irrelevant. you could be making $100-250k, it doesn't matter, if the cost of living (and being able to actually get to your job) is 95% of that income.

For example, my buddy moved to the UK from BA where he was making $8000/mo and living paycheck to paycheck and going into debt. they didn't tell him they would cut his salary down to $4500/mo until he actually got there. He had a panic attack, until his first set of bills arrived, and he realized he still had some 80% of his paycheck left for himself due to drastically lower cost of living.

yes, it's a good reminder that capitalism doesn't actually work and needs to be propped up with bailouts to ensure it doesn't collapse and gets replaced.

i think he stopped working on groups because mastodon officially announced groups shortly after gis preview. not that they have delivered it yet (release target, q4 2023 - an no word for 2 years now).

your example is irrelevant and makes little sense as a counter when all research and innovation globally is still paid for by taxes. no business will spend billions on new ideas, they spend billions on commercial application of public (tax paid) ideas in order to profit.

got news for you, all innovation happens on the tax roll. and because it's free and public to use, companies take it, stick licenses on it, and sell it back to you (gotta love paying twice).

sweden is well known for bowing to US requests. just look at the history of the unlawful attacks on the piratebay and the sham court they were passed through to get sentenced on no broken laws.

not to mention Sweden's constant bullshit in other data related sectors pushing american (hollywood) agendas into EU (and thankfully failing). the pay to take action against the will of the people IN A DEMOCRACY must be the recipe for immortality or some such because i don't see why they would otherwise be able to legally betray their countrymen.

frankly, the US is STILL fighting in the middle east after 9/11. the chinese has shown more restraint and milder treatment towards their local terrorist group. so i'd say they've handled it better than the west ever could.

nonsense, it's not like microsoft, google or apple is logging every input you do and scanning your shit at every turn!

it still amazes me that the whole globe is paying R&D taxes to microsoft, a private foreign entity, instead of, you know, what R&D taxes are actually supposed to be spent on. is it even legal?

Been waiting like 3 years for them to start selling their laptops to the nordic countries.

Still waiting...

buddy from the US moved to europe. kept whining about his local pizza joint. I assumed it was just crap but eventually asked what was wrong with it, "The pizzas got these weird ass names like Capricciosa and they are absolutely covered by toppings. WHERE IS THE BREAD?!?!"

Zorin is designed to be a Windows replacement, but my personal recommendation is LinuxMint. Sure it's not trying to be a carbon copy of Windows, but it's designed to be easy to learn, stable, functional, and support pretty much everything from the get go (just not bleeding edge), with a readily available store that lets you download everything you need (that isn't already included in the install).