@cm0002 an e-ink phone is such a cool thing. Imagine the battery life.
petrescatraian
joined 2 years ago
Back when this part of Europe was behind the Iron Curtain, the communist governments were quick to label any dissent moves as being fascist or nazi. This was their way to easily dehumanize their adversaries. Want freedom of opinion? Fascist. Want democracy and political pluralism? Fascist. Want true free speech (i.e. be able to say anything on your mind if it doesn't infringe the rights and liberties of other people)? Fascist.
The legacy of this behavior was continued after the fall of communism. I can only think of 2 examples: Romania and Transnistria.
Here in Romania, following allegations of voter fraud at the first free elections in the 1990s, large groups of people started protesting in big cities, including Bucharest. Ion Iliescu, the winner of the elections, claimed that the protesters were "huliganic elements, fascist elements, many of them under drugs" and called the miners from the Jiu Valley to come and restore order. The miners promptly came, went to the epicenter of the protests and beat people, injuring many, even killing some, burning cars, breaking windows and occupying the University of Bucharest. Basically, if they found you wearing a beard and glasses, you were fitted into the description of intelectuals and be shown a lesson.
Right across the Prut river, Transnistrian separatists also spreaded the propaganda that the Chișinău authorities were fascist and that they planned to unite with Romania without their agreement. Something that was not true.
This whole fascist/nazi talk seems to have been strongly inherited and integrated into the Russian culture of today, just like many things that were quite common during the Soviet period. So it's not so weird to see this rhetoric also being inherited and integrated as well.
In fact, this whole thing just means nothing. Nazism means simply nothing to them. It's just a word they use to describe whoever disagrees with them. Protesters? Nazi! Countries that are not Russia's puppets? Nazi. Why? because a former KGB officer gone president said so.
What's ironic is that Russia itself is objectively nazi. Yet they do not see the beam in their own eyes.
@xapr mine is libranet.de
Which Friendica instance would you recommend that is currently accepting sign-ups?
Haven't really explored other instances other than mine and venera.social, but these ones might be a good fit.
Do you think AI "things" like Midjourney or ChatGPT will have or are already having some kind of "piracy" around them?
I did not receive your response in time, that's why I edited my previous comment. Sorry about that.
Imo, I'm more concerned about Facebook's data hoarding practices and its future moderation practices than whether it has a public feed or not. LinkedIn and VK (probably G+ either, can't remember) - other two social networks that are more similar to Facebook in UI - do not have publicly accessible feeds either on their home pages, yet they still managed to get plenty of users. Probably no longer still relevant, but diaspora is also featured as the 1st alternative to Facebook. Yet if you go to any diaspora server, say diaspora-fr.org/, there's no way to access a public feed either.
Some Friendica servers (probably some Mastodon servers too) are also actively blocking their local feeds from unlogged users, so that's also an aspect to keep in mind.
I understand that for some people (I simply don't care that much about this aspect, but I understand you do), the lack of a public feed might be an impediment, but I think it's way less harmful than other things that Meta does to its users.
my 2c
Wallpaper: somewhere from r/Romania back on Reddit
Context of the wallpaper: the mayor of the 4th sector in Bucharest wanted to start some repair works on the concrete canopy above the Dâmbovița river, but the general city mayor didn't let him because he did not have all the authorizations. Things escalated into an almost clash, with a bulldozer brought in to the "battle" to raise the fences.
GTK theme: DarkFire (cannot find it online, I found it in my distro's repository)
XFCE theme: Sabia
Icon pack: Flat Remix
Desktop:
Theme:
(Yes, these are some CD rips that I loaded on an older device. Forgot to delete them from my PC lol).
Friendica theme:
37
While you're all nervous about the US election, I am nervous about the Moldovan EU referendum
(i.imgur.com)
Few of you might know today it is election day for the Republic of Moldova. Moldovans have to elect the president, as well as answer to the question of whether Moldova should change its Constitution for a future EU membership.
While the election results seem to be pretty clear in favor of the current, pro-european president Maia Sandu:
Things are different regarding the vote for the referendum:
The "Da" yellow bar, for someone who does know a bit of Russian, means yes (Da is actually one of the few words that Romanian and the Slavic languages have in common). The blue bar on the right means No and as you can see is a bit longer as of now. These are just the preliminary results, as votes are being counted as we speak. The hope comes from the urban centers, where votes are still to be counted, and more people support the European direction than the rural areas (Although at the current growth rate, the Yes camp doesn't seem to be hitting the 50%+1 mark) and the diaspora which has a solid majority in favor of the revision of the constitution:
As I understood, the diaspora vote will only account for something like 5-10% of the total result (which is a bummer, since the diaspora has increased a lot in the latest years), it will not be the average (I'll update this part of the post if things are different).
Why is this important?
Moldova is a small country, sandwiched between the war-torn Ukraine, and the already EU and NATO member Romania. Its current land and some more which is part of Ukraine, (also known as Bessarabia) belonged to the medieval-era Principality of Moldova, which lost it to the Tsarist (Russian) Empire in 1812. That Moldova later united with Wallachia to form the modern-day Romania in 1859. After WWI, Bessarabia united with Romania and stayed so until the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact between Nazi Germany and the USSR in 1939, when Romania retreated its administration following a Soviet ultimatum. The current borders of modern Moldova were drawn by them, as it was only an administrative province.
Nowadays, compared to Ukraine and Georgia, Moldova is the EU candidate in Eastern Europe which is the most advanced on the path to accession. The referendum has currently passed the threshold for validation, which means that enough people have voted, irrespective of their option. If the majority of the votes are no, it will be a huge blow to Maia Sandu and her pro-European program. Besides that, the economic situation might get worse with some foreign investors fleeing the country. It is highly likely that Maia Sandu herself will even lose the elections in the 2nd turn - which would bring even more trouble for Moldova and for Ukraine, which already has two hostile neighbors (Russia and Belarus). If the referendum does pass, but with a small majority, there will be room for contestation, and it will be a huge headache going forward. It is necessary that the referendum will pass with an as high percent of Yes votes as possible, in order to eliminate any doubt concerning the European integration of Moldova.
If you've reached all the way here reading this, thank you! Here in Romania it is 01:28 AM Monday morning, just like in Moldova, so the polling stations have closed a while ago (my Friendica node also seems to currently have a 2-hour delay, so you might see this post even later when I'm already sleeping). But across the Atlantic, voting booths should still be open.
As anyone has seen with the Brexit, the results of a referendum can hardly be overturned, if at all.
If you have any friend or acquitance from Moldova, go tell them to go out there and vote, and vote Yes no matter the other option they're choosing for president (I hope they vote for Maia Sandu tho, but I believe in the free will of the others). There is no way one could choose "No", absolutely no way! By choosing this, they will choose for their country to have relations with a country under international embargo.
Source of the pics/realtime info: Referendum, Presidential Elections (it's basically the same page but I made it easier for you since it's only in Romanian and Russian. To view the diaspora votes select Externe in the drop-down above the map of Moldova.
Edit 10:30 AM local time: good morning (from here)! Seems like the Da camp has the advantage with 50.03% (looks like they're now on to the diaspora vote count). We're getting there! 🤞
@PugJesus Rule 2?
Oh, wait, maybe that doesn't apply to them.