Moscow plus Leningrad plus Vladivostok. The rest fought for the crumbs.

Russia and Japan too.

Many of them live in shacks made from wooden pallets and corrugated iron roofs instead. This is true across much of the Third World – Brazil, Haiti, South Africa and Indonesia all have them for example.

Why are these people so obsessed with the year 2030? It keeps popping up everywhere.

It feels close (it's only 4 years away) and yet futuristic (the new decade!). The way it feels is important because all these statements are based on jack and only exist for hype.

It's like when people obsessed about 2020, or 2000. It's a nice clean number in the decimal numbering system.

No, there's a lot more to it. I never saw this kind of fuss about 2000 or 2020.

I keep seeing things about how some target has to be hit by 2030. Our local council keeps going on about it, in fact their WiFi network even contains 2030!

> No, there's a lot more to it. I never saw this kind of fuss about 2000

I roll to disbelieve!

We had hype about the year 2000 throughout the 20th century, and some earlier! When we were IN the year 2000, it was quite common in my circles to tack on some phrase or comment about it being the Future, now, so [whatever thing the person was on about].

A very different type of hype. I remember it. More about the Millennium Bug and the New Year celebration. It didn't have the same vibe at all. The authorities weren't trying to hit various targets since then.

The real Millennium turned out to be 11th September, 2001, which was use to bring in a lot of planned changes.

We don't. Search engines return a limited number of results from "trusted media" and dissident opinion, whether balanced or batshit crazy, is all lumped together as misinformation and conspiracy theory.

Search engines return a trove of SEO-optimized generated garbage. Search engines do not apply labels such as misinformation or conspiracy theory.

Try finding anything objective on the Ukraine war and you will find to have a constant narrative shoved down your throat

Actually they or at least social media does or used to do, peaking during the panny-d and dismantling the 'fake news' checks and balances during Trump II.

This reminds me of New Utopia and Lazarus Long. I think he wanted to build it on an unclaimed seamount in the western Caribbean.

I've been looking for a website like this. Nice.

A guidebook to the area I live in.

Fit into wider society. If someone has sensory issues, then a monastery would be a more peaceful place. Some people like set routine as well.

I guess. Some monasteries were located in busy towns, had bells, chants, animals, workshops, etc. But if you found a place that was a good fit, and the monastery didn’t dislike you for other reasons (e.g. being left handed), then yes. Otherwise there were other peaceful occupations; from highly specialized crafts to literal hermits.

I got shadow banned on Duolingo after asking why a billion dollar company used unpaid labour to make some of its language courses such as Welsh and Esperanto.

Damn, I didn't know you could get shadowbanned on Duolingo too.

They have a forum. Yes, definitely happened to me. I used a different device to check out why I was getting no responses on there and right enough, I was not visible.

There was a thread boasting about how they were paying some of the developers years after they had volunteered to do so (Since some would have died or become uncontactable it was a bit much.) I asked why a billion dollar company couldn't afford to pay course developers. Then suddenly no responses!