RandomName2020

One thing for sure, democracy is not required to be liberal. West does not seem to understand it.

Eugene has bad air.

You still are living near to Richmond (the other Richmond, though).

"forced russification"

If you follow the definition literally, then yes. Yet, Russia always was very careful with the culture of the colonies, way more careful than Britain, France and Westerners in General.

But these are different topics.

No, actually not. Russia is always disproportionately blamed for being a cultural oppressor, however as an Empire, USSR needed a single unifying culture and language. In that respect, Russians were much less oppressing and arrogant than the British, Spaniards or French.

You might want to look at Puerto Rico.

I want one in Texas.

You can try to spin it anyway you want. Stalin, as Georgian, had no, absolutely no feeling towards Ukranians, as for example Finnish people have zero feelings towards Portuguese. There was no desire to eradicate Ukranians as ethnicity, in a way Hitler tried to eradicate Jewish people. There was no desire to destroy Ukranian culture. In fact, Khruschev , no matter what official sources say, was widely considered to be Ukranian, has always been seen wearing Ukranian ethical closing, and was instrumental in moving Crimea to Ukraine from Russia. Ukranian writers, such as Gogol, Shevchenko were considered extremly important part of Soviet culture,and no matter what was the resublic you lived at it was taught in the schools.

Nothing close to the treatment of Native Americans, Asians and Blacks in the post-war United States.

Have you ever been to the former USSR? I am not sure about what you mean by "forced russification" - 15 republics of ex-USSR had two state languages one Russian, one local. Almost every product, produced for local consumption had bilingual package (much like in Canada), (industrial goods manuals however were purely in Russian). Parents could choose if they want their children to be taught in their native languages or in Russian. Every document was bilingual. universities were bilingual (and still are in some republics with significant Russian minorities). Local artist, writers and poets who wrote in local languages were kept in a high regard, received bonuses, medals and all that things.

Overall, "forced russification" was about as bad as "forced Anglification" in Canada. Most of the republics of USSR were similar to Quebec in terms of being dominated by the language and culture of the majority.

Have you seen Spanish-teaching universities in the USA? I have not.

There was atrocities during Stalin times true. However they were purely ideological by nature; not against ethnicities, cultures etc (those were in fact actively preserved) - Stalin himself was from a tiny minority nation of Georgians. USA, OTOH, eradicated native Americans on a large scale, brought slaves with destroying their culture. USSR after Stalin was far, far less racist than USA, up until its fall in 1990s.

It was not directed against Ukranians as ethnos, period. USSR was not a Russian supremacist country. Remember, Stalin, during whose reign Holodomor happened was a Georgian, Khruschev was Ukranian, Brezhnev - Ukranian, Andropov - Russian, Chernenko - Ukranian, Gorbachev - half Ukranian. So most of supreme leaders of USSR were at least partially Ukranians.

Not sure about it...

pro-life atheist, or a pro-gun liberal,

I am both. And understand the pain of being a square peg.

Trump a politician and Trump a businessman are not the same.

The purpose of high minimal wage is to decrease inequality. It cannot become equal tax on everybody, unless you inject money into the system. The ones who are at very bottom would gain a lot, a lot more than increase in the cost of a latte. For example, for an apartment to become less affordable for a software developer, it has to become more affordable to a janitor. I am not even talking about the goods from Targets and Walmarts, which cost exactly same across the country.

There was massive amount of questionavle mergers lately: Altera + Intel, Fairchild + Onsemi, now this. We stepping into the age of monopolies, dear readers.

Yes, but if often was impossible to get insurance with preconditions, Regardless, ACA sucks. So did pre-ACA insurance.

Quartz oscillators are usually made in at leas 10th of kHz range, for whatever reason. Second most stable oscillators are LC and would require large coils for lower frequencies.

EU countries are as a rule quite far ahead on the curve of progress, see: abortion

EU (esp. Scandinavia) has much, much more tight regulations of abortion, compared to English world, esp. Canada, which has none. As a socially conservative I consider this good.

Dunno, if "drain the swamp" passes, that'de be a very significant change.

Sanders forced Clinton very far to the left

Not sure about it. Words are cheap.

For white collars yes, for blue collars - definitely no.

The point that BUS DRIVERS working for GOVERNMENT make better wages than BUS DRIVER working for PRIVATE sector. Not that bus drivers in general are rich people.

I do not know how to even reply to that. Bus drivers, post delivery people, municipal construction workers etc. - all have better salaries and benefits than similar private workers. I am not sure how any adult living anywhere in US could manage to not know that.

NASA and Fermilab are also government jobs.

1. Because US is big. 2. Because it is more welcoming for immigrants. 3. Because of broken H1B system.

Not sure about this kind of rationalization. Social mobility is a more sophisticated measure.

Back up claims? It is common knowledge - bus drivers for example, working for Santa Clara county transit make $35/h, bus drivers for (contracted) Google and such make less than $20.

(e.g. Federal government jobs and some companies) but these are frequently viewed as undesirable

Federal and government (city, state etc.) jobs (perhaps excluding IT) are some of the most desirable jobs in US, with long waiting lines. Got try get a city job in NYC....

it's harder to move from a class to another compared to the US.

Not true: social mobility in US is lower than in Europe and Canada.

Anecdote evidence, but I am currently learning FPGA and VHDL, and find it not more difficult than "normal" C. Way more more expressive, for sure: a complete 8 channel PWM controller under 150 lines. Parallelism without locking feels very cool.

They get it wrong. It is not brutalism is back, it modernism in general; what we are witnessing is the end of postmodernism. Postmodernism seem to be in conflict with the faith into progress, both social and technological, yet we've been witnessing tremendous technological progress since early 2000s - nothing revolutionary, but still great advances in mobile, in science etc. So yes, brutalism, as an offspring of modernism, is back.

What really makes me sad is that the BSD license allows corporate leeches like Sony to create incredibly successful and valuable products like the PS4 without ever having to give back to the project that produced the software they rely on.

You should not be, because this is what BSD license is for; otherwise the developers would've chosen GPL.