Melanie Best Massage
volvoxvsmarla @ volvoxvsmarla @lemm.ee Posts 2Comments 698Joined 2 yr. ago
volvoxvsmarla @ volvoxvsmarla @lemm.ee
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Damn we have similar goals but different reasons. I want to have been on all continents and I am obsessed with going to Antarctica. If I had the money, I would want to stand on the planet's axis. And have the whole world actually revolve around me. Doing this on the North Pole too would be great, but it's not a continent and therefore has second place.
And now, can you elaborate the weird stuff the sun does at the poles? Besides polar night and polar day?
I see Pluto and Charon as Irish twins. Or at least 2 under 2. I somehow always imagine two siblings spinning around each other. Maybe Pluto is showing a 🫶 to his little sister.
I gotta say the cybertruck one is so hilarious and desperate I'd spare it my rage
Yeah now try being absolutely unknowledgeable when it comes to tech and very much into makeup, skincare, 90 day fiance and parenting content. Lemmy, it's been nice, but after one and a half years I started lurking to Reddit every once in a while again.
Zelenskyy would probably get more support from his people if he told trump to get fucked
Oh how I wish this was true but a lot of Ukrainians are so weary they really just want the war to end and are frustrated with Zelensky. Believe me not everyone has the moral high ground or integrity, many, many just want him to make any kind of deal, no matter how big the insult and humiliation are.
("Moral high ground" and "integrity" are very heavy words in this context. Right now, after just watching the argument, I am a bit speechless and can't find better words. But please know that I do not want to refer to these people as having no integrity, morals, ideals, etc. They are desperate and have lost so much I can't even put it in words.)
I would honestly be interested in meeting him.
Oh I remember flying Frankfurt to Chicago with American Airlines! I mean we were 23 hours late because we had two emergency landings in Canada since our turbine caught fire twice and somehow had to stand in line for 6-7 hours for passport control in Canada to change the plane eventually - but they did have warm and nice food as well as beverages and even provided us with snacks and beverages while we were waiting inside the plane during the inspections! I mean we would have appreciated it if they had informed our relatives that we didn't die since there was apparently no information on our flight passed on whatsoever on either side of the atlantic and everyone thought we were dead (this was 2008, we were all teenagers and no one had any cell phone connection in Goose Bay), but the food was indeed nice. Pros and cons.
I cut ties with a friend my age (early to mid 30s) who grew up in Germany but had Ukrainian roots, and family in Ukraine next to the border. He also didn't believe what "Western media" said and only what his family on the border is telling him and "they know who is bombing whom". He has a Master's degree in psychology. It completely fucked me up.
My parents also have friends living in Krim who were super happy about the takeover in 2014, and they are there, so they must know better, right?
And there is some truth to that: We are also not immune to propaganda and of course Western media has its biases. I am confident that we too are being fooled here and there. You can see this in a very one sided media coverage of Gaza in German news. Most Ukrainian refugees I've met do indeed just want the war to end and some openly don't care whether their land will belong to Russia afterwards. They just want their relatives not to die. Zelensky is being heavily criticized and he is also not immune to corruption, while the internet thinks he is some god like hero with unquestionable integrity and balls of steel. He is also just a human and a politician. Ukraine is no moral safe haven and we have to remember that. My husband's cousin should not have been drafted, but he was drafted right away, because obviously someone bought themselves out and the place had to be replaced. Not everyone wants to fight for their country, but some were forced to, still. His second cousin was only drafted a year later, although he should have been in the first or second wave.
That "evil NATO, nobody got jailed" theme of your parents sounds very much like what my family would say, all of it. And it is hard to counter and admittedly it was a narrative I believed until I went to Russia in 2016 for a semester, met people, saw the country, talked to locals, met my husband. My strongest tip for you is therefore - don't get sucked into it. First and foremost be sure in what you believe in. Be sure that there are indeed people who oppose the regime and the war. Be sure they do exist. I know this sounds trivial, but sometimes it is easy to start questioning yourself when your own knowledge doesn't come from local sources. After all, your parents probably have more ties to Russia and Russian media, so they have an "insight", while you might actually really be manipulated by second hand Western media, right? ...
I've been thinking a lot whether I can give you any resources on how to counter pro Putin or pro AfD arguments. I'll start with the latter: Geld für die Welt is a youtube channel I stumbled across shortly before the election, and it has some great videos exposing illogical arguments (there is a great one about money as mentioned in my previous comment that I can link if you want).
As for Putin's propaganda: I'm not sure I know many good first hand sources. Obviously Ekaterina Schulman's podcast Status (статус) has great insights, and I recommend listening to her speech как это пережить that came out three years ago. It gives you some kind of comfort. OVD Info - which you can support via Global Giving btw, strongly recommend that - has stats and information on political imprisonments and therelike. Most information I get is actually from telegram channels, which I started following about a year ago. There are also groups of the Russian opposition (Idk where you live, but here in Leipzig there is a great one, and the chat often posts links to articles, videos and other resources). As someone who only recently got into Russian oppositional media and activities (and having limited reading/understanding abilities), I cherish these kinds of insights by people who are much more in touch with what is happening. Most have been political activists for years and many have fled from political persecution. Basically, I know I can trust their sources. Maybe it is worth asking for resources there. There is also Team Navalny in Germany and Demokratie-Ja. Medusa etc is also a classic news source.
But then again, I would not try to "debunk" or "show facts", I don't think this works well in general. It reminds me of a John Oliver episode - was it on UFOs, conspiracy theories, or vaccines? - where he has a great bit on how to talk to people who believe in such things without being condescending or just showing them "facts". They are not dumb. They believe what they believe because of subconscious fears, experiences, manipulation. No one is immune to this and it is important to meet the people where they stand and with respect and understanding and an open ear.
This has little to do with a flight being international or not, or where it starts. It depends on the airline and its policies. For example: Aeroflot serves "real" food starting from 3 hour flights. Munich to St Petersburg is 2 hours 55 minutes, so you get a horrible sandwich that haunts me to this day. But at least you get non alcoholic beverages for free. If you fly this route with Lufthansa, you get a warm meal with a free beer.
The flight I was referring to (Rome - New York and back) was a Lufthansa flight, but operated by Eurowings. They are a cheap airline, and it depended on your ticket whether or not food and one beverage was included or not. Most people did not have food included in their ticket, they still could buy some on board for like 18€. Only a small bottle of water was provided, although the flight was 6 hours.
Munich to Brussels is 55 minutes. Lufthansa gives you crackers and a non alcoholic beverage for free, and they struggle for their lives to get that to you in such a short period of time.
Same. Plus I can tell the parent that they are doing great. Maybe even help somehow, even if it is just to open the snacks.
What? I flew Rome to New York and everyone got a tiny water bottle for the entire flight and all other drinks (including more water) were crazy expensive
Is "here" in the US? Or somewhere else in the West? I'm mostly asking because I could probably give more concrete tips if it were in Germany.
Have they ever met a refuge from Ukraine? Did they talk with them?
As for things like wind parks or climate policies or economics I think it is important to find a way to present that as "this is directly financially beneficial for you". Here in Germany, let's say, different independent financial institutions have calculated the total tax burden based on your income bracket if different parties were in power and went through with their plans. And lo and behold, of course FDP, CDU and AfD would have very much increased the tax burden on low to middle income people. Or they calculated that the great sounding plans of these parties would cost like 150 billion euros - which is an incredibly high sum - and explaining this away with "oh we'll make the economy prosper" doesn't work either (more calculations that are irrelevant if you're not in Germany).
My honest tip is don't make it about ideology. If you want to keep talking about politics, don't talk about liberation. Don't talk about foreigners, nazis, climate change, DEI or LGBTQ. Your best bet is money. And safety maybe. But as others have suggested - reconsider whether you even want to throw pearls at swine and try to convince them of something different.
And don't forget that a lot of behavior is a reaction of fear. In the beginning of the war there was a great podcast episode of Екатерина Шульман where she tried to emphasize that in times of aggression, it is a very natural response of the psyche to align with the aggressor. Your parents neither want to see the country they came from, love and probably idealize (as we always do with our past, especially when we don't fully beling somewhere new) as the Bad Guy, nor do they want to be scared - for their country, for their future, for their relatives, for you.
Also, I just want to say, my condolences, and I deal with similar stuff. My family is either apolitical or opportunistic, and the best case scenario is "well both sides are bad". I've been scared to call my grandpa who has первый канал running 24/7 for a year after the war started, I can guess what side he is on. If you ever want to just vent about how awful and difficult it is, feel free to write me.
In their defense, the AfD did indeed get over 20% of the votes, and won almost every single district in former East Germany.
For me it's the other way around. That pizza is looking at me replacing the finished pea package yet again for months and months on end.
This will be a stable, centrist, boring government, typically German. Too little progress, but no catastrophe
And this will be the problem and drive even more people to the AfD. If nothing ever changes, people want to look for something else. For an alternative. And on the surface some points of AfD sound appealing, and if you aren't a foreigner, you can "turn a blind eye" on the nazi stuff. With a Groko and standstill for 4 more years, I'm afraid that next time we won't be so lucky and AfD will actually be the strongest party.
It is very ironic because for the first time after 16 years things did change but somehow the government was still blamed and bashed. Let alone that the biggest problem was not SPD and Greens but that the minister of finance was only focused on politics for the minister of finance. I'm happy this fuckwit finally resigned, but we could have had a great minority government that would have actually enabled change if he had just decided to do this earlier. Instead, thank you Christian, you've driven the whole country down a path where we are supposed to be happy that a conservative party who fucked the country for 16 years is the strongest power yet again and that "they promised" to not form a coalition with AfD. DeMoCRaCy wOn.
Best case scenario this will not end well for Elon. Worst case scenario this will not end well for the world and we'll all die in nuclear war or something.
I'm afraid you won't have time. It will take minutes. And I'm not even sure it would be announced.
So, in the best case scenario, the US as we know it is done and, after a hard fall and hitting rock bottom, will emerge as a country that is less of a capitalist hellhole. Ideally, in the process, other countries will find more independence from the USA, be it trade wise or security wise.
The more realistic scenario is that everything will stay the same/similar and just get slightly worse all the time but every other country will still suck up to the USA and everything gets a little worse. Oh yeah and climate change will fuck everyone up the ass.
The worst case scenario, I would argue, is that this ends in the destruction of the world via nuclear war within less than an hour. This is what I am scared of the most.
Funnily enough, the day before you posted this, I was reminded of Return To Oz (I was at the zoo and someone... Scared the crap out of me). That's probably not exactly post apocalyptic or solarpunk, but definitely takes place after a societal collapse of Oz and has creepy weirdos on something like rollerblades. Just in case you want to expand - or dare I say, roll towards the horizon.
I meet mostly moms. So I save them with their name and their kid's name and sometimes the location we've met (usually a playground nickname) on my phone. Sarah Noah Locomotive, Madlene Jacob Crown, Vitali Pasha Poop.