Maybe it died of malnutrition

Adding to what all the others said, majority of those who cross the border on foot are asylum seekers, and even if they don’t have documents, they are still in the country legally until the court makes a decision on their asylum claim.

A “hallmark sign” of having gender dysphoria is persistent identification with or insistence on being the opposite sex for at least a period of six months. And “not everyone who is questioning their gender ends up being trans” is not a statement anyone would argue with.

And no, confusion does imply being wrong. I rarely if ever saw it used as a short-hand for “not having an answer”. It usually means either “fail to understand” (e.g. “I’m confused, is the birthday on the 5th or on the 15th?”) or “made a mistake” (e.g. “Oh, sorry, I confused you for a friend of mine”). The term you’re looking for is “questioning their gender” or “exploring their gender identity”.

Being transgender is a constant and persistent condition. Even for genderfluid people the “fluidity” needs to be repeatable. If a girl/woman suffering from cramps during her period thinks “I wish I was a boy/man so that I didn’t need to suffer through this every month”, she doesn’t become trans because of it.

And “gender confusion” isn’t a fair description. It’s basically saying “they are wrong about what they’re feeling”. And you’re not a telepath to know that

Then what’s your problem with the comic?

And this is exactly the message of the comic. Yet you disagree with the comic…

I thought about it and… yes it is racist

Yep, near Saratov, around 700km south-east from Moscow.

Have you contacted ANY Russian anti-war group before making that comment? Vesna, Media Partizans, Voice of Reason movement, Freedom movement, Resistance movement, Rospartizan, BOAK, The Black Bridge, Freedom of Russia Legion, Feminists Against War, or any of the others?

Not 1000 protesters. 1000 DETAINED protesters. And during the same day the protests happened all over the country. I may have not been entirely clear in my comment, but you could’ve at least checked the Wikipedia.

Since the start of the war until 6 March [2022] nearly 13,000 have been detained.

And it’s nearly impossible to calculate how many actially participated and escaped before getting detained. And that was before the mobilization, that was when only the professional military was involved. After the mobilization the protests reignited.

And what exactly do you mean by “Russians aren’t passively resisting”?

What do you mean “Finally”? The protests in Russia started on 24th of February 2022. Over 1000 protesters were detained just in Moscow that day alone. And the protests continued after that.

The problem is, these protests achieved nothing, they only resulted in fines (which undoubtedly went to funding the war), protesters being beaten, detained and some even got a criminal charge. So the protests died down because continuing them only fueled the regime more. Some people shifted to solitary picketing, some started doing online activism, some started sabotaging the railways and burning down enlistment centers, some left the country altogether and some, undoubtedly, just gave up.

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.

And I think Blizzard of Oz is a reference to Wizard of Oz which predated Ozzy for quite a bit

Does this suck? To my ears, it doesn’t. Not unmistakably human by any stretch, but still pretty good. And that’s 9 years ago

And by “AI singing” do you mean “a famous voice overlaid on another singer’s performanse” or something closer to text-to-speech (text-to-song)?

Vocaloids are far from perfect, but they can be damn good in hands of a good producer. Plus, isn’t that the original point? “AI VA were invented so soon all VAs will be AI”?

And to produce the example you provided, it required a big voice bank from people who are very experienced in voicework. Top Gear/The Grand Tour have over 200 episodes where the hosts have basically the same characters throughout the show spanning like 20 years. And it still ain’t perfect. It’s damn good, but there are hiccups here and there.

So to produce a good AI voiceover, you’ll need experienced people doing a lot of work. And to get experienced human actors you will need humans acting. Hence, my point

Well, I meant it more like “can you imagine how horrible such a world is?” Not just “can you imagine it?”

Because yeah, you barely need to imagine it at all

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?