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kgran

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Electric cars are as zero-carbon as the cost-equivalent space of a freshly paved asphalt concrete highway or parking space. If not more than that due to the more special materials required to make them.

Also note that, due to much heavier weight of electric cars, asphalt concrete surfaces will be damaged a lot faster. The relationship between vehicle weight and its damage to the road surface is exponential, not linear.

There are jokes this that go like this:

- lawyer to defendant [in private]: tell me the truth. how much did you steal?

- defendant: not much, just [enter small sum]

- lawyer: then i won't be defending you

Well, you could say the same about all dictatorships, whether organizations or countries: if you don't like it, leave it (unless you can't, e. g. North Korea). But I think this argument is flawed, to say the least. After all, an employment contract (and labour law in general) acts both ways - it's not a subordination of an employee to an employer.

Now imagine you're hiking in the woods and, all of a sudden, you reach a fence with a sign "PRIVATE PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING". Years go by and even more rich people build such homes in the woods. Now you're hiking in the woods, constantly passing through gravel roads leading to these properties and hearing traffic noise of a more major road where some cars from some of these houses went to fill the propane tank, buy food supplies or whatever.

In Putin's mind, USSR and Russia might be one and the same. But I'm not sure Putin's words about the ideals and politics of a historical state which was originally built after a revolution led by a radical Marxist faction, the Bolsheviks, should be taken seriously. After all, the first anthem of the Soviet Union was "The Internationale" up until sometime in the 1940s. I am not completely sure about what was on Lenin's mind though, so I might be wrong - maybe he was secretly nationalist (or a left-wing fascist, if I could use this other loose term).

I Miss RSS 5 years ago

3. anything that gets invented after you’re 30 is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

This started happening when I was 14 (~2007) and really started to accelerate after I was 20 (~2013). I don't correlate this with me getting old but more like getting more and more aware of the profiteering, surveillance and bullshit everywhere.

Not just American homes. In Europe all the new flats and houses are designed with kitchens merged with the dining room. Even the old flats are often redesigned by owners or developers by tearing down the wall(s), separating the kitchen from the other room(s). I personally hate this trend because I don't like getting cooking odors all over the place. I'll probably just build a wall whenever I'd be forced to buy such a place.

I got the same argument after I asked why there's no more RSS/Atom feed of the news section in my municipality's website. Some positive people tell me that RSS is not dead and it's still everywhere. Unfortunately, especially after modern redesigns, RSS gets dropped as "obsolete technology". The sad thing is that this doesn't only happen to optional websites which I could choose not to follow out of principle like blogs or niche websites on technology and such. Governmental, municipal, local news websites do this, after which I lose easy and convenient access to this relevant information.

Almost all Kazakhs are Sunni Muslims. If you've meant Christian populations like Russians, then I would be interested to see what's special about Russian Kazakhstani's Santa traditions.

I'd also like to see a hundred or more years old Lithuanian Santa version similar to the Unionist one.

This is not to dismiss your claim that this might be revisionist (I'm not sure), but your examples on Kazakhstan and Lithuania lack evidence.