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It was 100% pettiness. The entire reason Romania wants us there is because of Russia. (and money) I'm curious as to what the tourist activity is in Romania now. I know that for 99% of the US personnel that have gone to there it was their first time ever being in EU and they loved it. I imagine there would be a lot that would happily make it a vacation destination. spacetoaster fucked around with this message at 15:30 on May 12, 2021 |
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May 12, 2021 15:28
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spacetoaster posted:It was 100% pettiness. How many went to see Vlad's castle.
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May 12, 2021 16:25
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I don't think Romania is a huge tourism destination. Other tha driving/hiking the Transalpina/Transfăgărășan I've never heard of anyone going there for fun. Not even to the black sea coast, while Bulgaria is a pretty well known target. E: now with data!  actually a bit surprising it's as high as it is mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 16:50 on May 12, 2021 |
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May 12, 2021 16:40
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Romanian cities are a bit rough around the edges
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May 12, 2021 17:44
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Oracle posted:How many went to see Vlad's castle. That attraction is in Brasov? I think a bunch went. I spent my time in Sibiu. That place is pretty awesome. Other than that we also drove up the windy road to see the hole the Soviets drilled through the mountain. The rural roads were terrifying to drive on because nobody cuts the growth on the sides of the road. This translates to any slight curve in the road being completely blind. Another thing is that tipping servers is not normal? I almost had to physically subdue a Romanian officer trying to take back some money I gave to a waitress for keeping my plate, and beer glass, full and I appreciated it (her service, not the officer's actions). Poland is the new hotness right now and I love it. spacetoaster fucked around with this message at 17:57 on May 12, 2021 |
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May 12, 2021 17:53
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Estonia here, my GP called me and offered pfizer's. Actually it wouldn't have mattered, I would've gone for any vaccine (except Sputnik, which we don't have anyway). I guess they must have some supplies before free-for-all vaccination kicks off on the 17th. That's when everyone's going to hammer the booking website. I was encouraged to write to my GP back in March, that in case they come across some elderly folks who refuse their vaccine, I could show up in 15 minutes. So it doesn't go to waste. Perhaps that worked. Right, NATO presence here. I love those guys! In past week I've witnessed several fly-bys of italian F-35s over my workplace. That awesome roar. 1.6 trillion USD well spent. 82nd airborne had an exercise over Estonia just last weekend. I say 'over' because they did an airdrop. There's something really heartwarming about seeing any combination of US, Spanish, Italian, Latvian, Polish, Georgian, French, British, Danish et. al troops having a joint exercise in any of the eastern European states. They're probably exchanging MRE packs after that. I remember one exercise from 2015, I was in home guard at the time. Wading through rain and mud for three days, final line-up after the ENDEX. Aaand a boring speech by a general followed by a little Abrams demonstration. And we could check out Strykers later. But all we wanted was to get back, clean the equipment and get home to get ready for the next work week. jonnypeh fucked around with this message at 18:56 on May 12, 2021 |
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May 12, 2021 18:53
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mobby_6kl posted:I don't think Romania is a huge tourism destination. Other tha driving/hiking the Transalpina/Transfăgărășan I've never heard of anyone going there for fun. Not even to the black sea coast, while Bulgaria is a pretty well known target. Bucharest is pretty rad though.
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May 13, 2021 05:04
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mobby_6kl posted:I don't think Romania is a huge tourism destination. Other tha driving/hiking the Transalpina/Transfăgărășan I've never heard of anyone going there for fun. Not even to the black sea coast, while Bulgaria is a pretty well known target. Its all the brits and germans that use spain as summer country houses, carry on
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May 13, 2021 07:27
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jonnypeh posted:Estonia here, my GP called me and offered pfizer's. Actually it wouldn't have mattered, I would've gone for any vaccine (except Sputnik, which we don't have anyway). I guess they must have some supplies before free-for-all vaccination kicks off on the 17th. That's when everyone's going to hammer the booking website. I was encouraged to write to my GP back in March, that in case they come across some elderly folks who refuse their vaccine, I could show up in 15 minutes. So it doesn't go to waste. Perhaps that worked.
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May 13, 2021 14:56
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Grouchio posted:As an aside, is Robert Kurvitz a national Estonian icon yet? I doubt that people who don't frequent the art circles nor play video games (because of Disco Elysium) have even heard of him. The ending credits had quite a few names that I recognized, the ones that one could usually find in the "culture" section of various newspapers. One Estonian playwright was in charge of the recording, for one. This game is exactly what I imagined would happen if artists came together and decided to make a video game. It's art and I like it.
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May 13, 2021 18:18
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So, just giving a thread update for those who care: Ukraine decided to piss off the west and is now giving Naftogaz to Kolomoskyi. Vitrenko, the UGV representative director and energy minister who allowed Kolomoskyi to embezzle half of Ukraine's electricity is the new CEO of Naftogaz. The state of Ukraine is recognizing US$3b of fake transmission invoices in order to create a "merger" with UGV. This stunt will give Igor 60% of the country's gas transmission system, which is seen as a bad move. In a related power move, Zelensky has nationalized Medvechuk's pipeline, and is awarding it to Igor Kolomoskyi, taking his ownership of gas network transmission systems to 80%. The remainder of the gas system will be owned by Firtash and Group DF. Meanwhile, Vitrenko's ally Herman Haluschenko was appointed to be the acting minister of energy. Herman is a really great guy who is best known for creating fake trading contracts, just like Enron did in the 1990's to enable Igor Kolomoskyi to steal the mentioned electricity mentioned above. He also fled the country in 2004, when SBU investigated him for embezzling the Chernobyl defense fund. He returned to Ukraine in 2011, when Yanukovich returned to power, only to flee again, in 2014. When he's not helping bankrupt the electricity sector he's been allegedly trafficking in RosEnergoAtom parts, which would be a act of Treason in Ukraine. Despite all that, Zelensky elected this fine gentleman to the National Security Council of Ukraine today, which means Kolomoskyi now controls the country's army, intelligence services and national guard. Which is swell, because Igor is currently under investigation for smuggling deisel fuel with Medvechuk through Belarus and ripping off the Ukraine army for selling diesel fuel to Ukraine at a 500% markup in 2020. In other news, the IMF is still expected to go to Ukraine in June and pretend Ukraine is moving in a good direction. Medvechuk is under a house arrest so fake, the SBU Alfa Teams (Ukraine's version of FBI HRT) could not enter his property to confirm his arrest or even raid his property. So, nobody is really impressed or happy with this new turn in Ukraine. On the military front, Russia moved some heavy artillery into Crimea this week. The conscripts went home and a new cycle will likely kick off sometime between the IMF meetings and the Biden-Putin meeting. The wild card to this time table is if Zelensky walks away from the Contact Group with no ceasefire before July or sacks the Cabinet of Ministers & Schmegal while on a cocaine high.
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May 14, 2021 07:23
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Thank you for that update.
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May 14, 2021 12:51
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So is Zelensky cracking under the pressure or do they have his family hostage or what? I thought he was supposed to be a good guy.
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May 15, 2021 00:01
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What, Zelensky? I thought his whole presidency was a fluke and he was voted in by exasperated Ukrainians just tired of it all.
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May 15, 2021 00:39
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I'd imagine he's been captured by the system by now.
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May 15, 2021 02:57
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This sucks. Has anything at all changed for the better in Ukraine since 2014?
Necronormiecon fucked around with this message at 10:25 on May 15, 2021 |
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May 15, 2021 06:39
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jarosław kaczyński has announced a program called the New Polish Order which has a lot of weird poo poo in it like rebuilding palaces destroyed hundreds of years ago or raising the tax free income level by ten times or giving new parents 12000 PLN to spend on the kid or removing the civil job contracts (good lord PLEASE) but also it raises the footprint limit for buildings to be built without a building permit to 70 m2. national groverhaus program
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May 15, 2021 11:05
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also i skimmed the last few pages and i can't loving believe nobody posted about the Leftist Betrayal
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May 15, 2021 11:09
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Hal_2005 posted:Naftogaz stuff Could you clarify what is the benefit of this for the ruling coalition? Seems like it's all political downsides - 1) done right before the Blinken visit, 2) when Biden is throwing out summit ideas, 3) when Ukraine needs military backing since Putin is doing the "totally normal military exercises" similar to May 2014 and 4) not long before Nord Stream 2 is finished
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May 15, 2021 12:02
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goblin week posted:also i skimmed the last few pages and i can't loving believe nobody posted about the Leftist Betrayal It's too local and too stupid to accurately describe, so let's just grab a vegedog from the gas station and forget about it, nothing matters
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May 15, 2021 12:48
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The new order stuff has a hidden tax in the health insurance tax rate for the self-employed, which will now be tied to your income level instead of being fixed rate. I’m a high earner, so for me it’ll be an increase from ~100€ to ~300€. I’m fine with taxes, though, and it’s still not even close to the taxation I had when I was working in Germany, the difference being I could actually use the national health service in Germany (and it was rad).
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May 15, 2021 14:12
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That New Order poo poo sure does smell like The IV Republic, with added bouquets from MdM and that new jazzy "tradition" that is all the rage for half of the voters. I can imagine how fun is going to be the next election and the one after that. Also, just checked how good is the vaccination going. 29,54% of population got at least one jab, with 10,9% having both doses. I hope the coronavirus watched the TV, cuz Kaczynski said the pandemic will soon be over, and also today the mask mandate was lifted. The next wave will be brutal.
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May 15, 2021 20:50
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Russians are building a "Stalin Center"quote:“Stalin was the best master. He won the war and built the country from ruins,” Aleksey Zorov, 44, a local businessman who is the sponsor of the new center inaugurated May 8, told NBC News. quote:Opinion polls conducted by the Levada Center, an independent polling organization based in Moscow, have shown that approximately 70 percent of Russians approve of Stalin and his policies. quote:“Our crawling economic growth is a shame! Our population shrank by 670,000 last year. Five thousand businesses closed down in our region,” said Vladislav Yegorov, the first secretary of the Communist Party’s local branch. quote:“Stalin, wake up!” an old man in the crowd yelled, as if addressing the statue.
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May 17, 2021 17:45
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I swear these guys are sheep.
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May 17, 2021 18:42
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Did I miss the article saying who was behind it?
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May 17, 2021 19:17
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Discendo Vox posted:Did I miss the article saying who was behind it? The Russian Communist Party it looks like (KPRF).
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May 17, 2021 19:55
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Some troubling developments from Belarus. Today Financial Investigations Department raided offices of several large media portals, including TUT.BY, which is the most popular opposition news portal that remained unblocked before now. Among others are av.by (a site dedicated to all things cars), rabota.by (a job portal), Rocket Data (a data management solution start up). All of them are charged with tax fraud. Allegedly, while profiting from tax relief privileges as members of High Technology Park, they carried out commercial activities prohibited by HTP's rules. Normally, they would just be expelled from HTP and ordered to pay extra in tax for the last year, but, well, as Lukashenko once famously said, sometimes laws are not important. Along with tax fraud charges, TUT.BY's website was shut down by general prosecutor's office, as they 'published information on behalf of the unregistered BYSOL foundation'. As in reported on a charity that helps political prisoners and protesters. At the very start of the protests last year, TUT.BY's media license has been already revoked, but that didn't affect their popularity. This is how TUT.BY compares to the most popular state media outlet:  The second largest news portal Onliner is also currently under a lot of pressure. Some of their journalists were detained today when reporting on the TUT.BY situation.
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May 18, 2021 13:06
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I’m seeing a bunch of belarussian people from the general IT sector applying here in Poland, a bunch of them with personal stories about last year in the cover letters. It’s certainly something else. The downside for these companies is there’s no way to continue operating in Minsk and their employees will have to make a decision to emigrate. The upside is all countries around will gladly take them in - a bunch of these companies are already effectively in Kiev, AFAIK. Moving to Ukraine is probably easier due to a lower language barrier and formalities, Poland has more prospects but a lot more hoops to jump through. BTW, who owns Tut.by?
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May 18, 2021 18:30
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Mokotow posted:BTW, who owns Tut.by? Anatoly Zisser, its founder, died one year ago, and now it's his widow Yulia Chernyavskaya and a group of co-founders. TUT is as close to independent media as you can get. They are not affiliated with US or EU governments like Euroradio or BelSat, nor with any oligarch, like non-state media in Ukraine or Russia. It's pretty much a self-sufficient brand.
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May 18, 2021 22:01
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Read about Tut.by this morning. It's a big loss, right? Lukashenko appears to be tightening his grip.
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May 19, 2021 01:03
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HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:Read about Tut.by this morning. It's a big loss, right? Lukashenko appears to be tightening his grip. It's huge. TUT attracted around 60% of all Belarusian internet audience (3+ million people). It's THE news portal for the majority of Belarusians. I suppose you could compare it to what happened to NTV in Russia when Putin came to power, only it's somehow even more obviously politically motivated. Some analytics say that the recent strengthening of control over media and introduction of harsher punishments for political descent is an indicator of Lukashenko working on a peaceful transition and trying to eliminated any risks for himself and the possible successor. I'd be surprised if it were true, but there are clearly some things going on behind the scenes with Russia and the small group of other partners, where Lukashenko is pushed to do something before sanctions start affecting not just Belarus, but everyone doing business there. So far he's already promised to present the new constitution by August and organise a referendum on it by January, and after that, if it's a success, new presidential elections.
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May 19, 2021 01:38
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Just wanted to chime in that tut.by wasnt the biggest opposition media, it was the biggest internet media in Belarus, period. Just lol if Luka hopes to fill the vacuum with his own content, people trying to seek out "real" information will go to telegram and god knws where. Sekenr fucked around with this message at 06:52 on May 19, 2021 |
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May 19, 2021 06:48
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Just talked about it yesterday, but there's a new analysis up - the move of IT professionals from Belarus is now showing up in statistics. https://biqdata.wyborcza.pl/biqdata....C-B.3-L.1.maly Poland is also becoming an immigration focus for not only Belarus and Ukraine, but Russia, Georgia and other ex soviet republics. I can confirm there's a Georgian bakery on every street corner in Warsaw now (though less than before COVID) and Pielmeni are served in every bar, because every restaurant kitchen is staffed by Ukrainians, basically. Went to a garden store last Saturday and all the staff were Ukrainians, as were 90% of customers in the next door Lidl. My local Żabka is playing Ukrainian disco hits on full blast. It's kinda great how Warsaw is becoming this focal point between east and west. I was kind weary a few years ago of German businessmen and British dudes girl hunting, which is mostly who you'd meet on the streets in Warsaw back then. These days you'll meet anyone, ranging from random Azeris, through Spanish folks that are apparently moving here en masse to work at Spanish construction companies doing business in Poland, through US soldiers on leave.
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May 19, 2021 09:15
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Mokotow posted:Just talked about it yesterday, but there's a new analysis up - the move of IT professionals from Belarus is now showing up in statistics. That's actually pretty cool. Every so often I want to go back to Poland, but given that I'm living with my family again, I'm reticent to go since it'd be paying money to fly over and experience more of what I already live with. I always love seeing how cultures shift and adapt, so this is really neat to me.
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May 19, 2021 19:03
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Mokotow posted:I can confirm there's a Georgian bakery on every street corner in Warsaw now (though less than before COVID) and Pielmeni are served in every bar, because every restaurant kitchen is staffed by Ukrainians Wow this is the first time i've ever wanted to go to poland
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May 20, 2021 08:45
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finally deffo gonna visit once this pandemic poo poo is over
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May 20, 2021 14:54
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Truga posted:finally You haven't been to the Gulag museum already? 
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May 20, 2021 17:14
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quote:Such efforts extend beyond Stalin. In Moscow, government prosecutors recently declared that the dismantling of a monument to Soviet intelligence chief Felix Dzerzhinsky was illegal. The statue had stood in front of the FSB’s headquarters on Lubyanka Square but was pulled down in 1991. Now, it may be resurrected in the place where it once stood.
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May 20, 2021 17:55
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Mokotow posted:I can confirm there's a Georgian bakery on every street corner in Warsaw now (though less than before COVID)
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May 20, 2021 18:04
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There are three in my old hometown, 60k population. Just wait and one will show up eventually.
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May 20, 2021 18:48
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