> As far as I know Stanisław Lem was not allowed to like anything from US. These days the soviet propaganda in Poland disallowed people to like anything that came from "the rotten west"
Such statement would hold somewhat true for the Soviet Union until the 80s, but not for Poland, whose society never stopped seeing itself as a part of wider European community, and because of significant migration in the XIX and XX century, also felt a connection with the US. Poland took advantage of Stalin's death to wrangle itself somewhat free of Soviet hegemony and starting with Gomułka's Thaw [1], adopted a more liberal model. It was still a dictatorship, but in comparison with the Soviet Union itself and also a few of the more repressive regimes in other satellite states, it was significantly more open. Edward Gierek's [2] rule only reinforced that course.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all roses. The inflow of Western culture faced many obstacles still, but those were often more of economical nature — in general books were translated, movies were shown in cinemas, the TV was filled with (somewhat dated) American and Western European TV shows, and Polish artists followed world trends in music (although with significant delay). The „rotten west” mindset never took root in Polish society and the authorities didn't enforce it with much zeal once the most repressive era ended in the mid-50s.
I'm reminded of Test Pilota Pirx, a polish movie, filmed in part in the US. There's some car chase scenes in american roads, and one scene where the main character gets a beer at a McDonald's[0] while looking around in a mall. I don't know much about the history of censorship but I was surprised as I imagined that would be out of line then
What I'm saying that writers were clearly forbidden by the communist powers to look towards west. Those were cancelled subjects, and cancel would be the least punishment there available. That's why everything that was written against the censorship bureau, would be covered by an allegory blanket, and writers were often asked to remove parts of they could be deciphered by the censor officials. Of course later on the iron hand of authorities was loosening and more and more forbidden words were tolerated, up to the 1989 Round Table event when Poland was freed (not before strong military repression happening in 1981)
> What I'm saying that writers were clearly forbidden by the communist powers to look towards west.
That's highly debatable, and it most certainly depended on the writers. I can speak for Romania (from where I'm from), where the works of Faulkner or Hemingway were held in very high esteem starting with the early 1960s, when translation of most of the stuff they were famous for started to be translated. The same goes for most of the Anglo (and Western) literature. Yes, in the second half of the '80s stuff was less rosy in that domain, but that mostly because of the self-imposed austerity we were going through, almost nothing of note was getting published anymore, with rare exceptions (such as a wonderful translation of Proust in 1987-1988, something like that).
I can confirm that it was the same for the USSR. There was a "blessed" corpus of Western authors, and this actually did include a lot of sci-fi as well.
Asimov is one prominent case because the translators had to figure out how to deal with his obviously Jewish name at the time when that became a red flag. This is why it's traditionally transcribed phonetically as Айзек rather than the more straightforward Исаак.
Isaac Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russia. There should be an obvious Russian transcription of his originally Russian name. Азимов for the family name, according to Wikipedia.
So it existed but was changed when being translated back, for political / antisemitic reasons?
That's the thing - "Isaac" is not a Russian name, but rather a Russian Jewish name, and is normally spelled "Исаак" (and pronounced something like ee-saah-k), which is indeed exactly how it was spelled in his birth certificate. It is also a very recognizably Jewish name - e.g. it would often be used in Russian political jokes on the subject.
And then you have USSR with its periodic antisemitic campaigns. The relevant one here is the one that started under Brezhnev in late 1960s, which is also when sci-fi in general became more popular in the USSR prompting more translations. So, publishing an author whose first name is Isaac would immediately draw attention from the censors. Seeing how anything Western was already on shaky grounds - sci-fi being allowed in the first place because it would often critique contemporary Western societies - translators played it safe by transcribing the American English pronunciation of "Isaac" into Russian, which made it Айзек (Ayzek). Which helpfully looks nothing like Исаак (Isaak), and doesn't "sound" Jewish at all to Russian ears.
This translation stuck, and it's how he is commonly known in Russian to this day.
In the "west" currently, you are not allowed to publish anything looking favorably "east" in a serious way on mainstream networks. You have to call everything a "dictatorship". You are (maybe not anymore soon?) allowed to publish things at the margins of society that few will read or watch, hence the claim of free speech within a wider propaganda system.
Sometimes they allow things to rise and present themselves as alternative media, but the ones that get wide broadcast (millions of views etc) almost always have a built-in limit that supports US interests implicitly, particularly with respect to foreign policy.
I don't think this is true at all, but I guess maybe we can get wishywashy about how you define "mainstream networks." Taking a couple examples from some quick googling for essays written by one of my favorite economists/commentators, Noah Smith:
1: China Is a Communist Success Story. Kinda. (2015) — He talks about how China’s state-owned enterprises and central planning have achieved huge economic growth, and says that while central planning has its limitations, China’s approach shows that it can work to a certain extent.
2: Xi Jinping vs. Macroeconomics (2023) — he analyzes Xi's shift of Chinese resources from the real estate sector to advanced manufacturing, and concludes that it's an attempt to address economic imbalances by promoting high-tech industries. Smith suggests that under certain ideological frameworks (like China's), that kind of policy could be seen as a sound response to economic challenges.
There are exceptions, but this phenomenon is well documented. I would also ask if you really think these two pieces are really representative of the opinion in the mass media, which I would barely characterize Smith as.
> In the "west" currently, you are not allowed to publish anything looking favorably "east" in a serious way on mainstream networks
"Not allowed" by whom? There is a big difference between silencing journalists and a branch of the entertainment industry self-selecting for some current "meta-consensus" (dependent on their target consumers).
Personally, I think calling Putin a dictator is stretching it a bit, but I have come to realize that honest, independent media is an absolutely essential cornerstone of an "actual" democracy: As soon as political leaders can prevent their mistakes from being reported to their voters, the whole thing becomes a farce.
You see a similar facet of this problem in the US, but not because governments have secured media control, but because the media landscape has completeley stratified (with a very strong partisan bias), and a lot of voters are basically never exposed to reporting "from the other side" at all (and are saturated with appropriate "outrage-bait" all day instead).
If you are talking about Russia, then I'd say that highly critical/adversarial reporting in the west is to be expected; this is basically "play imperialist games, win imperialist prices". Just compare WW2 era US messaging/reporting on axis power (before it even got involved itself).
But I'm curious about your perspective. What do you think should the US press say about the "east" that it does not?
Not to mention that people were traveling to the west quite a bit (especially to France and the US), VCR tapes were broadly shared and they had this dichotomy of communism and the church reigning each one on everyone.
Another booming segment is energy drinks. I wonder if these two have a common root, that is a yet-to-be-(re)discovered market for soft drinks marketed towards adults. In the region's early history that niche was occupied by kvass. It is still very popular in ex-Soviet countries, but not so much in the CEE area.
Non-alcoholic ciders seem to have about half the sugar content of Cola. So even for non-light drinkers they can be somewhat better albeit more expensive option.
That's it for me. A lot of the time I drink something alcoholic my requirements actually are just cold (not hot), and not sweet (and other than water). Traditionally that approximately means alcohol! Tomato juice I suppose, iced tea doesn't have to be that sweet, cold brew coffee... But basically it's alcohol.
I do now enjoy 0-0.5% 'beer' sometimes, I think it works best when it's not the kind you drink with alcohol, so it's not disappointingly not quite right. E.g. I like the AF versions of Guinness & Bavaria - I don't really drink stouts or lager.
I don't have anything to add on the subject of the article, but just want to mention I really like the site it's published on. Alongside przekroj.org (which recently started dipping its toes into publishing also in English) it is one of my favorite places on the web. No clickbait, no quantity over quality, just (mostly) interesting, well researched content. I wish there were more places like these around the internet.
I noticed about myself that in recent years I am becoming increasingly paranoid when it comes to addons and avoid installing any but the most popular/trusted, not just for Firefox, but all applications I use. If there is an addon that does something I want and doesn't fit my criteria for trust, I either write my own private clone, adjust my habits not not need it or (the most frequent outcome) just suck it up.
That’s a good approach, especially since everyone (Atlassian, Zoom, Salesforce, etc.) seems to be rebranding addons as “app stores” where the initially free stuff becomes paid. It’s better to avoid as many dependencies as possible in your workflow so you’re not stuck when this happens.
Kopia also means a copy in Polish and the author is Polish. The first paragraph in the software's Github page also confirms the Polish origin of the name: https://github.com/kopia/kopia/
Tangentially, as far as OSS names of Polish go, kopia is pretty tame. A popular deduplicating app is named czkawka (hiccup). Now that choice is just mean towards non-Polish speakers. :)
Oh my, this is a fantastic view of life - from the czkawka github page:
Czkawka is a Polish word which means hiccup.
I chose this name because I wanted to hear people speaking other languages pronounce it, so feel free to spell it the way you want.
This name is not as bad as it seems, because I was also thinking about using words like żółć, gżegżółka or żołądź
Fun fact, you can see Romania from Poland on a good weather! [1]
Also before the WWII, the Second Polish Republic shared a border with the Kingdom of Romania. Before the partitions in late 18th century, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth overlapped with some territories making up modern day Romania and Moldova and the Principality of Moldavia was a vassal of Poland and PLC for a time.
This is to say it is reasonable to imply Poland's close proximity with Romania, both in geographical and cultural sense, even though the borders have shifted.
Which is fine by me. I need a fridge to cool things down, oven to heat them up and TV to show moving pictures, all without access to wifi and other bells and whistles modern appliances come with. Just the basic stuff that those appliances could handle 20 years ago. More doesn't always translate to better.
20 years ago with fridges is a bit of a funny one because by then most had gotten rid of the nasty CFC's. But, even at that, it looks like today's fridges are _orders of magnitude_ more efficient to run than those from about 15-20 years ago.
For an oven and hob, the basics haven't changed, but my previous flat had a $600 oven that was silent, leaked practically no heat, preheated in a couple of minutes and came with nest features like an auto switch off. My new home has a range from about 15 years ago that cost 3x that, takes 20 minutes to preheat, has massive cool spots in the oven, and is noisier than my dishwasher.
For TV's, 20 years ago we were using CRT's to drive 480 vertical lines for the most part. Nowadays, you can get a 1080p HDR led TV for $200 that used 1/3 of the power of the CRT.
Utter Bullshit! Today's refrigerators are no more efficient than those from decades ago. In fact, the older, banned refrigerants are often more efficient, since their refrigerants were optimally designed and selected for maximum performance/efficiency in the first place! (And engineers were much better then, too. Really. Plus, I assure you that Thermodynamics has not changed in the interim!)
I'm sure my 35 y.o. Freon refrigerator is pretty much identically efficient to a modern one. The biggest difference is that mine is still running beautifully halfway through its 4th decade, while all the latest Chinese-sht-tech refrigerators will be unfixably dead in about five years at the outside. People should consider that* environmental and efficiency advantage!
> it looks like today's fridges are _orders of magnitude_ more efficient to run than those from about 15-20 years ago
15-20 year old fridges are about 35% less energy efficient than the best modern fridges, not 100x. We just haven't made that much progress in refrigerants, compressors, nor insulation.
It looks like very efficient fridges today use about 400kWh per year. Those are the best (not the average).
In the late 90s, the overall average (not best) figure was ~850 kWh/yr and from the early 2000s (20 years ago), it was ~550kWh/yr.
A 15-20 year old average fridge is about 35% less energy efficient (550/400 - 1) than the best modern fridges.
> 15-20 year old fridges are about 35% less energy efficient than the best modern fridges, not 100x
I apologise that you took orders of magnitude literally. I'll settle for an entire order of magnitude really. I think it's _way_ more than 35%, though.
> It looks like very efficient fridges today use about 400kWh per year. Those are the best (not the average).
Where did you get that number from? Here's [0] a $220 fridge that advertises at 90 kWh. I found another that claims 61 kWh, but it's $1800 so I left it. 20 years ago is a very specific timeframe, if you go back 25 years you're also likely talking about removing a bunch of horriffic CFC's which were widespread at the time. I'm finding it hard to find numbers for that time frame though, the only ones I can find are early 90's claims of 1700+kWh/year.
But yes, I concede, we have not had a 100x improvement in energy efficiency in 20 years. The entire rest of my post stands, and I think we've seen a 10x improvement in efficiency. At today's electricity price in the UK, the savings from a 550 kWh fridge to the one I linked above would pay for the fridge in a little over a year. Said fridge is under guarantee for 2 years in the EU/UK, so it's a _guaranteed_ cost saving over that time period.
BTW, your link [0] is to a mini-fridge (without a freezer section), not a full-size fridge. It claims 132 liter capacity, while a full-size fridge tends to be 550 to 700 liters (4 to 5 times the size). If you're going to compare a mini-fridge to a full-size fridge/freezer in order to try to win an internet argument, enjoy your trophy.
132L isn't a "mini" fridge, it's an under counter fridge. 700L is... utterly enormous and I don't think I've ever seen a 700L fridge in real life. Most of the fridges I'm finding on AO are in the 1-200 kWh range, honestly
While I appreciate that joke (and likewise can't stand the ad loading of modern tv), OP may well use a stream box like a chromecast, roku, or firestick, or even a game console to do their watching through a plain dumb tv.
> not a single comic (at least the ones written before the Marvel movies began dominating the culture) is about superheroes
I would argue that Rork - one of my favorite Franco-Belgian comic characters - counts as one. He would not feel very out of place at DC's Vertigo as Constantine's colleague of sorts.
And then there are Asterix and his friend Obelix, who having access to powers unavailable to regular humans, go around solving problems by punching people particularly hard - just like a regular Marvel/DC character would. ;)
Since Bun is a runtime for JavaScript, wouldn't Vite benefit from being run on top of it? My experience with Vite is that as the number of files in a project grow, it can slow down quite noticeably.
And following up on that, has anyone tried a Bun/Vite combo?
Not as much as it initially seemed. All extensions I use work fine, including uBlock Lite. The arbitrary limits would trivially be increasable in a fork.
But of course I'm worried about Chromium going the way of the third E, which makes it quite possible I'll continue the toxic relationship with Mozilla for even longer.
Such statement would hold somewhat true for the Soviet Union until the 80s, but not for Poland, whose society never stopped seeing itself as a part of wider European community, and because of significant migration in the XIX and XX century, also felt a connection with the US. Poland took advantage of Stalin's death to wrangle itself somewhat free of Soviet hegemony and starting with Gomułka's Thaw [1], adopted a more liberal model. It was still a dictatorship, but in comparison with the Soviet Union itself and also a few of the more repressive regimes in other satellite states, it was significantly more open. Edward Gierek's [2] rule only reinforced that course.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all roses. The inflow of Western culture faced many obstacles still, but those were often more of economical nature — in general books were translated, movies were shown in cinemas, the TV was filled with (somewhat dated) American and Western European TV shows, and Polish artists followed world trends in music (although with significant delay). The „rotten west” mindset never took root in Polish society and the authorities didn't enforce it with much zeal once the most repressive era ended in the mid-50s.
[1] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_October
[2] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gierek