This and what Putin’s presidency turned out to become in the long run is what I now happen to imagine largely felt like to witness the Nazis rise to power.

You just don’t know what’s coming before it’s actually there. The historical evidence even shows that the Nazis weren’t that out-of-touch with reality at first, at least in terms of what was largely acceptable back in their day - like rights to land, borders, with many countries and nations being in a very turbulent state after the first World War. It’s only after they got the power and set up the frameworks, like gradually oppressive laws and manipulating opinions and values through propaganda, that they went to do what we ultimately associate them with.

Putin spoke very high of “the west” and democracy and such at first, but quickly showed his true self when the Kursk sank, then with Beslan (the Nord Ost), then many more times, but back in the day, without today’s hindsight, it seemed so… plausibly deniable? Like people could just vote him out the next time or excuse some things with the same traumas and biases that still brewed in the generations born in or shorty after the USSR. Now a full-blown tyrant, modernized to dictate through deceit, looking wild compared to his first days - a proper example of boiling the proverbial frog; turning the dial little by little, either compounding into some greater evil or simply revealing its true self, both equally inconsequential in the end.

Trump and Musk, similarly, have for the most part been interesting characters, so bizarre that excepting anything more felt naive, beyond the realm of possible. And yet again, unless there is enough backlash early on, people like this will keep pushing, until they lead us to the edge.

I never wanted to see for myself how something so terrible can rise to power, seemingly past everyone’s attention. It’s dreadful to think that the lessons of history are bets learned on one’s own mistakes, that the Germany’s experience is not enough to generate the unrest that keeps such people out of power.

I’m not even on the same continent as these two, but I know they’ll be influencing a whole lot of change around the world, change that will never benefit any way.

The more things change…

I don’t know the term for this, but this is most likely related to projecting.

Basically, by treating the people you kind of want to be well or something, you’re kind of making a deal, subconsciously, with “the universe”, ultimately hoping that your good behavior is rewarded (sooner than later) and you get to be the rich one. Maybe part of it is about some instinct to submit, to follow a leader rather than to be one, too; maybe it’s about trying to signal to the powers that be that you’re good and should be rewarded.

Of course, all of this is a load of crap, but these are the relatively easier ways to think about things, which ends up to be less taxing on our (admittedly) lazy brain.

Bias be biasing.

Not sure what lists you’re talking about, but it’s nerding time anyway.

The backslash (the \ symbol) is used to “escape” characters in the software world, i.e. tell the software to treat the following character as a simple symbol, not some instruction. It’s very well-known among developers, so if they happen to be the ones writing guides on Markdown (the syntax where you use asterisks and some other symbols to dictate the final layout while having the luxury of being able to edit the document in a plain-text editor), it can actually elude them because it’s mundane.

In fact, some software won’t allow you to use the backslash in short text fields such as names or passwords because doing so could potentially open up security risks where the malicious actors “inject” some instructions into software to cause all sorts of trouble. On the other hand, this is probably a redundant old measure, as there are usually other means to prevent this kind of attack today, but that’s the power of habit, I guess; and, well, if it’s a simple measure that works, there’s not much reason to get rid of it, is there?

Not if it’s treated like a social media for whatever reason.

Xing (German) and Headhunter (Russian), for instance, both allow you to hunt for jobs and browse companies all without Facebook-like posts and corporate culture.

LinkedIn is a very curious artifact of moronic cargo cult-like chase for money and market share where companies just try and copy whatever the big player did, like Facebook at the time, hoping to make loads of money for the investors and stakeholders, but the absolutely anti-human corporate culture of the US makes the place is even more moronic.

A fellow Sprecher, I see! Happy cake day!