as a person coming from a totalitarian country, I would still prefer dealing with a single gang which also has its own welfare obligations can be corrected or overthrown when needed, than several mafia-like cartels which only care about extorting money from me providing nothing to both me and the society as a whole.

governments have responsibility, too, it's just some don't accept it

tbh, in this interpretation, it sounds like extortion, sort of what gangs usually do to minor business owners

tax is tax, it's a mandatory contribution to society you morally and legally obliged to do, not a payment for not being killed

There was a game show in Russia in 2000s where high schoolers had to answer ridiculously hard questions about Ancient Greece in order to enroll into MGIMO, a prestigious state university of foreign affairs, which was near-impossible to enroll in any other way (e.g. entrance exams) if you weren't a child of a top-level government official.

The contestants had to sit as the audience first and answer some pop-up questions before even having a chance to actually participate in the game show, and then win in a series of games (like quarter-finals, semifinals, finals...)

It really does look like modern job application process where you have to participate in a series of never-ending interviews and test tasks

draw a Hatsune Miku

Humans: ooh, a new MacOS wallpaper

A Russian video hosting Rutube (which was totally dead until the govt decided to detract Russians from using YouTube, which made the platform semi-dead) actually tried to do that, having a quiz after each ad break, asking questions such as "what TV channel has been advertised in this ad?" and repeating the ad video if answered wrong

But... Fuck...

Given the character on the post picture, it should be written together in one word

...and refrain from drinking Kool-Aid and punch, just in case

Local 58 "Contingency" flashbacks

Russians having their flashbacks of the main war propaganda network in their homeland

so they can filter them from "often visited"

But according to the issue on Bugzilla you have attached, this is to prevent suggested sites from showing alongside these adult sites, without filtering the latter out. Do I understand it wrong?

I am not sure how to proceed, to be honest.

I had a small community, !jrpg@vlemmy.net (see lemmy.world cache). It had its issues, like low # of posts and comments made by anyone but me, but I could see people starting engaging bit by bit and if I was to write more, the community would be able to compete with its kbin counterpart. Aaaand bam.

Now I'm thinking of where I could move to. !jrpg@lemmy.world is semi-dead and is run by a person who I believe to be a squatter who had occupied a lot of communities and called them "placeholders until the reddit mods evacuate". If I am correct, then I'm not sure if I really like the idea of participating in a community run by a squatter.

Probably I should settle somewhere else.