I also live in Russia, and in my experience certain VPNs just get blocked by the ISP. Like, I just can’t connect to certain VPNs, the connection either gets stuck in an infinine loop or fails with an error. But some other VPNs still work without any problems.

Plus, since the beginning of this month, it’s prohibited to promote/advertise “means to avoid blocked internet resources”, i.e. proxies/VPNs/etc, so it can be called “partially restricted”

I meant that these things aren’t as noticeable from outside of the country. Like, foreign news outlets probably won’t report on it much. Plus, eggs are more of an exception because of sudden shortage and prices rising rapidly. For most of the other goods the price grows more gradually and isn’t as obvious. Like in that metaphor about slowly boiling a frog.

Another problem that is noticeable from inside the country (at least by those affected by it) is that certain medications are vanishing from the pharmacies because they are no longer imported and they were never produced locally, or the local production is insufficient to meet the needs. I don’t know the full list, but the stock of ADHD meds is definitely low, and I’ve heard from friends that they had to switch to a different antidepressant due to shortages.

Uhhh, yes. It was 3am when I wrote this, so my brain probably farted hard

Adding to all the reasons already listed, Russia isn’t striving. For example, right now there is a number of towns and cities experiencing outages in central heating (with houses designed around central heating so basically no other option to heat their appartments) while the weather dips to -20°C (around -4°F). All because the centralized boiler facilities weren’t properly maintained due to the lack of money (or, to be more precise, due to money being diverted towards the war).

There are other signs, like plains malfunctioning and flights getting delayed because some component broke and cannot be replaced due to sanctions, and they happen more and more often. Also the less noticeable stuff like prices of common goods increasing by a factor of two in the last couple of years while salaries barely increased at all.

So yeah, Russia is keeping itself afloat, but it isn’t thriving at all

If there’s nothing wrong with people losing jobs, then go on, resign from your job. Be the change you want to see in this world.

Vocaloids were invented in 2000, with commercial release in 2004. Human singers aren’t extinct yet.

It may be possible in the future for a synthetic voice to sound fully human with a full range of emotions. But I believe that human actors and voice actors will still be used because 1) it’s easier to explain what to do to a human professional, 2) unions exist and they will push back against it.

Acting is an art. What world is it where robots do art while humans do the tedious manual labor?

This is bi erasure and I won’t stand by it

To summarize:

There was a dude called Igor Girkin, he was in the Russian military. His crimes include, but aren’t limited to:

1. Shooting down Malaysia Airline MH17 in 2014
2. Torturing and executing Ukrainians
3. Terrorism in Eastern Ukraine under guise of separarism
4. Involvement in the annexation of Crimea (at least illegally crossing the border as a part of military force and threatening citizens)

is arrested in Russia for saying that the Russian army is performing poorly in Ukraine and Putin and Shoigu (minister of defence) are not managing the situation appropriately.

It shows that in Russia, showing honesty about war is more of a crime than murder and terrorism. Combined