I think i remember being told about it in sciences class in primary school decades ago… but yeah, it’s not like it’s used in any way anywhere.

Yeah, it’s always been the lynx, officially. But indeed it’s not a well known fact, nor is it used anywhere really.

You can google “romanian national animal”, all you’ll find is the lynx, everywhere. However, i’m unable to find the origin of it.

This is my one obsession. Fear of how we can’t possibly all be employed, because of automation, and how the resources and power will keep concentrating in the hands of those who own the automation. I’ve had this argument with friends that aren’t as left leaning as me, and what i’m told over and over again is that i just lack the vision. That this has been a scare since forever, and yet look at how new jobs keep popping up. “There’ll be jobs you can’t even imagine right now”, they say. “Fearmongers like you have been around since forever”. “Employment is actually going up”.

In my mind though, we’re like the horses when the engine was invented.

A man of culture, i see.

Here in Romania, we’re exactly like the Poles. There’s deep, deep national trauma related to Russia ( even before the USSR ).

However, it’s not the same everywhere in the former soviet block, places like Bulgaria, Hungary or Slovakia are far more torn on the issue.

I made absolutely no mention of Ukraine and i would have written this comment with no changes ( and i probably have ) years before the invasion. It’s a strawman on your part to assume i uncritically support Ukraine ( or the US or EU for that matter ), just because i’m criticizing Russia. And if anything, i feel like we echo the same sentiment in both our comments, that just by criticizing one side doesn’t mean that the other doesn’t have flaws.

It just doesn’t mean they’re equally bad either.

At the very start, i point out that this worldview of all politics and politicians are dirty and corrupt is being pushed by Russia in many countries. I didn’t think i need to mention that i’m including Italy.

This attitude of “all politics and politicians are equally dirty” is straight out of the russian propaganda playbook. This is the narrative they’ve pushed in my country for decades, and it’s chillingly effective. It closely resembles whataboutism, whenever you criticize a politician, people yell “AS IF THE OTHER SIDE IS BETTER.”

Why push this narrative, you ask? So that people become so disillusioned and apathetic that they don’t vote, so it takes less votes for Russia to get the parties it wants into power. It also breeds internal dissent, malcontent, instability, leads to low voter turnout.

Russia also pushes a version of this at home, and in allies like Belarus. The gist being, all politics is dirty and corrupt, don’t get involved, don’t vote, nothing matters, it doesn’t concern you.

So yeah, sorry about the rant, but when i see variations of that quote “if your vote mattered, they’d make it illegal”, i get really annoyed. If your vote mattered, they’d make you think it doesn’t so you don’t vote.

Do you?

We wouldn’t mind so much if your system wasn’t so damn arbitrary, and if you weren’t literally the only country on earth to refuse to come together with the rest of us.