I recommend everyone who hasn't to look up the idea of "Potiomkin villages" (and subsequently Potiomkin anything eg. Potiomkin AI). In short: back in the tzarist days lower ranks put up mock villages which looked clean, modern and prosperous for higher ranks (and tzars) to see during visits. These mockups were essentially theatre decorations which hid the real state of the matters - dilapidated, dirty, poor and corrupt. For at least the last decade everything we saw of Russia was Potiomkin in nature - either to show off before the West or to hide corruption before own superiors.
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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The Soviets also used this.
That was sorta inverted as there was InTourist, an organization that took charge of following tourists and delegations to bar them from visiting random places and taking a clue of what they shouldn't see or hear, say guiding them through the best places of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Something that's probably still present in NK and to a lesser extent China. It was also used for internal propaganda as Pravda printed their surprised comments.
To those not familiar with Flaffenfeit here on World News:
4 Flaffenfeit is about -3 ounces or 2 feet AFAIK.
How many school busses and football fields does that equate to?
My truck gets ¹/₂₄₀ Manhattan per Single Tear Of Patriotic Pride Shed As I Salute The Crippled Veteran Panhandling Outside The Gun Store and that's how I want it.
Not sure the person who says that kind of thing would use Manhattan.
As long as it doesn't correlate, there's a chance it's right.😋
I don't see the word "Flaffenfeit" written anywhere, it doesn't even show up in search engine searches of the term. Is it a unit of volume, weight, or distance? Or am I whooshing on a joke?
Yeah it’s a joke - fahrenheit is what they’re making fun of, probably especially because it would be more appropriate to use celsius in the context of “world news”.
Flaffenfeit is a spoof unit that makes little sense as either length, weight, temperature or energy, like Imperial.
Unlike metric where 1cm3 of water is 1g and take 1 calorie to heat 1°C. And water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100.
With metric I can convert easily in my head, for instance adding 2dl water to 200g of flour, can be easily done on the weight without needing a measurement cup.
Likewise calculating between inch, yard, mile is not easy. Where cm, meter and km is as easy as pie.
General Winter has not only turned on the Russian army, it's now going after Russian civilians. Top 10 all-time anime betrayals.
Crazy that their district heating system is such a mess. District heating works perfectly here in Sweden. Much more efficient than single-building boilers, too.
You don't have people actively stealing state ordered funds and using them to have orgies on massive $500 million dollar yachts?
Typical western elitist thought.
Russian system superior because of orgies.
/s in case
Here some of the heat that's left after heating homes is used to warm the city streets. -24° today, but still liquid water on the street.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After two major utility network accidents last month, she struggled to stay warm at home in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, where temperatures regularly dip below minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit in January.
But her freezing frustrations are far from unique: Across Russia, creaking infrastructure and a wave of accidents have plunged households into the cold in the depth of winter, fueling rare showings of anger and irritation in a country where public criticism has been increasingly quashed.
Throughout late December and early January, Russian media was awash with coverage of accidents involving the country’s sprawling utility networks, which consist of heating and hot water mains.
Numerous videos shared online in late December and January showed boiling hot water and rolls of steam escaping burst pipes inside people’s homes and apartment buildings.
According to Russia’s Construction and Communal Services Ministry, there are plans to invest at least 4.5 trillion rubles (more than $49 billion) in modernizing utility infrastructure up to 2030, but the reality on the ground means the number of accidents continues to grow.
Still, the Kremlin would have preferred to avoid any hints of internal dissent less than two months before the election, especially when it could raise questions about government spending priorities amid the colossal costs of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
The original article contains 1,218 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 83%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Fuck russia.
I really didn’t want to learn about Putin’s “aging pipes”, but I now see I misunderstood the headline.