Putin reaches for nuclear option: Zuckerberg banned Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky are among the latest US citizens to be added to the increasingly bizarre Russian sanctions list. The Russian Foreign Ministry on Thursday added the two CEOs, along with United States VP Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff, several Department of Defense officials, …
This is the sound of the world's smallest violin playing the funeral dirge for Zuck's travel plans to Russia.
What's a good song to play when you want to express your utter & unreserved contempt for someone? Lily Allen's "Fuck you" comes to mind, but I'm not sure the actual lyrics (rather than just the title) fits the bill. Can you think of one that does?
Yeah I'm sure such travel bans will be a bother to absolutely no one. The best way to sock it to the BIG G, Netflix, and Facebook is to ban their sevices outright. While its a damn shame whats going on over there. I have no intrest to perticipate, or see my Sons march off to perticipate in some made up conflict that serves to purposes of those self-same idiots who told us to own nothing, and be happy. i.e. the same clowns who are actually the frontmen of these companies.
The traditional song to play on the world's smallest violin on occasions such as these is "my heart goes out to you". A song I have heard mentioned numerous times, but heard only once in my life.
Wait.. Does that say something about me?
..Oh And I did NOT wish for a 12" pianist..
I've always liked Billy Joel's "Great Wall Of China" - more subtle than direct in some in places, but some very clever expressions of the "We could have had everything, but you chose the douchebag route" sentiment. I believe it was aimed at his manager (a family member) who embezzled/mishandled millions of his earnings over the years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HP_uDksJu0
"What's a good song to play when you want to express your utter & unreserved contempt for someone?"
I had to withdraw my initial reply because I forgot about this song, that saved my life.
A wee bit of background, in the late eighties, early nineties I loved and lived with a covert/shy narcissist. Look it up. Sweet as spice, sweet as cyanide. Wrecked my life at the time and destroyed my trust for life. She reappeared for twenty years later gaslighting me again. I was the love of her life.
Thank god for John Grant.
There are days when I think about you
And on these days I feel like a fool
Because you don't deserve
to have someone think about you
"You don’t go to Russia. Russia comes to you."
This appears to have be the situation that slowed the evolution of Neolithic farming when the early people in the Ukraine and the fertile crescent started to grow seeds and plants to eat them and feed their children. But then the foragers swept through so often, killing the farmers and stealing their daughters.
The current situation suggests that Putin's Russians never evolved, they are just behaving like Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
Can anyone go to Russia at the moment?
All airlines have ceased operating flights into / out of Russia. Russia has banned Western flights over it's airspace, which might make it tricky to fly a private aircraft into Russia (though probably not impossible). Otherwise, the best bet might be to physically drive over the border.
Can anyone go to Russia at the moment?
All airlines have ceased operating flights into / out of Russia. Russia has banned Western flights over it's airspace, which might make it tricky to fly a private aircraft into Russia (though probably not impossible). Otherwise, the best bet might be to physically drive over the border.
As far as I know, there are still flights to Moscow from Serbia and Turkey, maybe also from the ME and some countries in Asia.
Emirates still flies to Moscow, and I believe there are Asian airlines are not banned from Russian airspace, so I guess in theory you could go there if you wanted to. But you would have to fly to China or UAE to get your flights into Russia.
Obviously if you are from one of the countries that Putin has declared as 'unfriendly' I wouldn't recommend it though, as you may run the risk of being accused of spying.
At this time most definitely not!
But hopefully in future years with Putin is gone and sanity has returned I would really like to visit the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg, etc. I really should have gone several years ago, but even then when I mentioned it to a Belarusian friend she warned me not to to visit her country without a guide who knows the dangers and corrupt official to deal with.
I had a school mate who used to go to Russia at least twice a year to buy Russian WW2 memorabilia, he had a thing for collecting Russian WW2 artifacts like medals and badges. He said he loved the Russian people especially the old guys who remembered WW2 and the later 20th Century, they had so many interesting tales but said they were always just a little cagey about revealing too much to a foreigner just in case the visitors got an unpleasant midnight wake up call at their hotel from the local "stasi".
My mate said he only got pulled up once, bog standard questions about what, why, how long you staying, where have you been and who have you spoken to while staying here. A little unnerving as they weren't normal street coppers, he said as he'd already been warned that you could be held for a few hours or days if you said the wrong thing but he was told be honest, don't joke and they'll just let you go after 5 mins, which they did.
I looked at visiting St. Petersburg a couple of years ago. The conditions required to get a visa were horrendous.
The easiest way would be to get a ferry from Helsinki (nice town), to St.P as you could stay 3 days/2 nights without requiring a visa - the bus ride from the port to the city center counted as a "tour".
Problem was, their wasn't a ferry every day so the best you could do was come in on the ferry, stay 1 night and go back on the same ferry the next day.
The visa requirements were odd, perhaps burdensome. (Last three employers, when one had folded and another had been merged out of existence into Yoyodyne General United Federal Business Systems.) It was not horrendous as in requiring blood samples or blood oaths.
But I did greatly enjoy seeing the Hermitage, even if the management of light and air seemed to be awfully casual.
I don't recall the visa requirements, but going to the local Russian consulate was like time traveling 50 years into the past. I don't think it had been redecorated since the 70s. The staff were so slow and it was obvious that they couldn't care less about their job or getting things done in a timely manner.
Getting a visa for China on the other hand was simple and fast.
...people banned from swimming in volcanic lava flows :-D
It always amuses me when people ban others from doing things they would never do anyway. Ok I admit that I travelled to within 200km of the Russian border last week but only to see my favourite city who are still actually giving Russia gifts from time to time:
https://twitter.com/jannestrang/status/1513996405890813954
Silly yes, but I'd rather see silly than a serious attack. And it serves as an outlet for when you have to be seen to be doing something but you don't really want consequences.
I wonder how I can get myself on the banned list. Quite happy to ban Russian officials from entering my home in return (if I can figure out how to spell their names I can hang a little list behind the front door, maybe add some North Koreans and stuff while I'm at it), presumably the UK police would help me enforce this in the unlikely event of it being necessary (or at least they'd try to).
Putin probably thumb-upped Brexit, but there is an ocean between Le Pen and Boris with respect to Ukraine.
I think Trump, who could possibly be the next president, personally prefers Putin to Zelinksy by far, although he recognizes that being too obvious about it might dent his popularity - that won't stop him though.
Uncle Vlad is a complete bellend but I have to give him props for dumping Zuck out in the cold, any chance of Boris and the EU doing the same? Doubt it but we can dream of a world without Zuck's company's vile presence on the face of mother earth.
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