Me living in Russia being like... Hold my beer please dear friend, Id like to share a couple of thoughts with you all on that matter. This is going to be a bit of a rant, but heck a lot has happened recently :
1) In the last 400 days, the country where I lived in experienced (in a space of of 3 months) the following events ::
- Visa and Mastercard Left the Country (I cant use my money anywhere in western companies)
- The whole country (except one bank) was excluded from Swift. (People cant transact money abroad)
- Google Stopped accepting payments (no google services, we lost our google drives)
- Apple stopped accepting payments
- Both google and apple managed to somehow find a loophole to still receive payments via mobile phone operators ((both with deep limitations))
- Companies from our countries got expelled from stock exchanges all over the world.
- . . . and more (I only mentioned the ones related to financial / cloud services)
2) When member(s) of the G8 do not like you, there is a button to cancel you from the internet / financial system ready to be triggered at any time, and thats the future that awaits everyone in this planet unless we run our own personal servers.
It is absolute bullshit. The current mainstream model of the internet and how users engage with the companies that hold their data is absolute bullshit and its leading us towards a future with questionable outcomes in some areas.
All of this triggered a certain renaissance in my life and I went to a self hosted ((nextcloud)), grapheneOS mobile mostly (sadly not entirely) FOSS lifestyle.
Anecdotes / Thoughts about the period we are living here ::
- Lets start with a hot one... and put it as clear as I think it has to be ::: Binance (yes it with its non compliance that just blew the hole thing up) played a huge roll in giving us some sort of freedom to overcome that sort of censorship, and I personally applaud this. I understand that many here may have profound resentment with the Russian elites, but for a moment put yourself in the average citizens point of view (parents with sons studying abroad). Bitcoin / USDT / USDC played a key role in all of us stabilising our lives and feeling still members of the global economy and that was really great.
- The market quickly produced solutions to absolutely all the problems presented before, we all adapted to it and we live a life that looks quite simmilar to our previous life looked except for the fact that Mcdonalds has a different name and there are LOADS ... LOADS (did I mentioned LOADS?) of chinese cars everywhere.
- Yandex and other russian IT is one of the big winners of the whole thing, many migrated in mass to their services and they are growing / adapting quite fast.
- I lost the capacity to renew my passwrod manager (when I used to have that garbage) paid account, so I had issues accesing my passwords
- lost tons of data by using the useless system of backups provided by google when youre trying to leave, etc. Spent HOURS getting my data back and my wife and I have had to go to extreme pains to rebuild our google photos library.
There is so much Id like to talk about this, but its late and I have to continue working.
Much love, health, forces, inspiration and music to you all
levlion
npub1rq…lp4fu
2023-11-23 21:12:43
in reply to nevent1q…wtl0
Author Public Key
npub1rq37zvfmk0puz5sm9cykhkl7u70ld8p40ldg9atqstsgx4905u9qrlp4fuPublished at
2023-11-23 21:12:43Event JSON
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"content": "Me living in Russia being like... Hold my beer please dear friend, Id like to share a couple of thoughts with you all on that matter. This is going to be a bit of a rant, but heck a lot has happened recently :\n\n1) In the last 400 days, the country where I lived in experienced (in a space of of 3 months) the following events ::\n\n- Visa and Mastercard Left the Country (I cant use my money anywhere in western companies)\n- The whole country (except one bank) was excluded from Swift. (People cant transact money abroad)\n- Google Stopped accepting payments (no google services, we lost our google drives)\n- Apple stopped accepting payments \n- Both google and apple managed to somehow find a loophole to still receive payments via mobile phone operators ((both with deep limitations)) \n- Companies from our countries got expelled from stock exchanges all over the world.\n- . . . and more (I only mentioned the ones related to financial / cloud services)\n\n2) When member(s) of the G8 do not like you, there is a button to cancel you from the internet / financial system ready to be triggered at any time, and thats the future that awaits everyone in this planet unless we run our own personal servers.\n\nIt is absolute bullshit. The current mainstream model of the internet and how users engage with the companies that hold their data is absolute bullshit and its leading us towards a future with questionable outcomes in some areas.\n\nAll of this triggered a certain renaissance in my life and I went to a self hosted ((nextcloud)), grapheneOS mobile mostly (sadly not entirely) FOSS lifestyle.\n\nAnecdotes / Thoughts about the period we are living here :: \n\n- Lets start with a hot one... and put it as clear as I think it has to be ::: Binance (yes it with its non compliance that just blew the hole thing up) played a huge roll in giving us some sort of freedom to overcome that sort of censorship, and I personally applaud this. I understand that many here may have profound resentment with the Russian elites, but for a moment put yourself in the average citizens point of view (parents with sons studying abroad). Bitcoin / USDT / USDC played a key role in all of us stabilising our lives and feeling still members of the global economy and that was really great. \n\n- The market quickly produced solutions to absolutely all the problems presented before, we all adapted to it and we live a life that looks quite simmilar to our previous life looked except for the fact that Mcdonalds has a different name and there are LOADS ... LOADS (did I mentioned LOADS?) of chinese cars everywhere. \n\n- Yandex and other russian IT is one of the big winners of the whole thing, many migrated in mass to their services and they are growing / adapting quite fast.\n\n- I lost the capacity to renew my passwrod manager (when I used to have that garbage) paid account, so I had issues accesing my passwords\n\n- lost tons of data by using the useless system of backups provided by google when youre trying to leave, etc. Spent HOURS getting my data back and my wife and I have had to go to extreme pains to rebuild our google photos library.\n\nThere is so much Id like to talk about this, but its late and I have to continue working. \n\nMuch love, health, forces, inspiration and music to you all\n\n\n",
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