Total area of lethal spots on the body > same on the head.

On the one hand, you have his ear hit. On the other, you got Kirk. When it works, it works. When it doesn’t, you don’t have a second chance, and dozens, hundreds, thousands might die (Gaza, Iran, US) before the next attempt because you missed your shot.

About that 80%:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
You can get shot in the frontal lobe and happily run the country into the ground in the next decade. Also, at this point I doubt aiming at Trump’s brain would make any significant difference.

I’m almost sure that over time we will see that it’s not a black and white picture, but FUCK it feels so good to watch the changes at the moment!

From the government media showmen’s face melting while watching the results, to the announced politics of the new government, to the current interviews featuring the old talking heads either confessing or getting cornered in their own lies, to the Ukraine support finally getting the green light.

I know already that, politically speaking, I’ll be missing these months (hopefully, years) for a long time later in life.

Yeah, the same goes the other way around. Don’t get me wrong, quite a good number of Hungarians do read about world politics, including the US; they are just not your average Orbán voters (not saying those people don’t; but the majority doesn’t). Oh, and the ones that do browse the Internet for news: your average Hungarian mostly browses Facebook where everything is tailored to keep you in your bubble. Younger people tend to use other sources, of course, but FB is still the default social media site there.

Oh, don’t worry… most Hungarians that exclusively watch Orbán controlled media (imagine Fox news from most freely available channels) don’t know much about the US - especially not about the struggles of the country. They might see things like Trump meeting a political leader or shaping world politics (like ganging on Zelensky with Vance), but media almost never covered negative things about the government or its friends (but happily threw shit at opponents, of course - even as far as straight lying to smear them).

Indeed. However, they’ve been pumping public money out of the country via money front institutions for quite a while: the ex leader of the National Bank embezzled 650 billion Forints, which is about a metric shitton even in such an inflated currency (update: just a little shy of 1.8 million EUR). They were seen moving their stuff in literal shipping containers to Dubai. I haven’t a single doubt that all that will be used to fund their return with whoever playing as Orbán’s hand puppet.

Magyar is just proposing a modification of the constitution (well, it’s not literally called the constitution, but imagine something similar) so that nobody can be the prime minister for more than 2 terms.

And it isn’t even a crazily rare surname! We also have plenty of these:

• Tóth, which used to mean Slavic, Slovakian or Slovenian (today: ‘tót’)

• Horváth, which means Croatian (today: ‘horvát’);

• Németh, which means German (today: ‘német’)

• Szerb, which means Serbian; Rác, which used to mean Serbian

• Bolgár, which means Bulgarian

• Lengyel, which means Polish

There might be more, but these 6 came from the top of my head.

UPDATE:

• Török, which means Turkish

• Cseh, which means Czech

Well, I’m gonna be honest, we’ve been watching the results with my brother and we were both uncertain until the last moments. News were coming in about the system going down for a firewall update(“yeah, this is when the manipulation happens”), the threat has been there from the beginning because of the GRU members… But we’re both rather relieved.

Now comes 4 years of uneasiness, because while we’re both happy, we’re still ahead of a Pandora’s box.

Except the polls are showing a much more and consistent opposition lead, and discontent is much higher now due to many factors (but in my opinion it’s mostly the economy, highly affected by global economy).

I’ve been thinking of similarities as well: his daughter & family suddenly moved abroad back then, as well, and some institutes were getting ready for a regime change, similarly to this year. However, this time it can be seen in more places, and there has been a scandal about every other day in the past two weeks.

I’m aware of the hopium effect, and they might as well keep their position (although more likely not with 2/3 majority anymore), but as things are at the moment, if they still get some serious majority then it can only be because of their shady business around the elections: bribes, blackmail and assistance from Russian political actors who have had influenced other elections before.

There will be elections next weekend. After 16 years, this is the first time there is an actual chance to remove Orbán from his seat. While the opposition party leader isn’t a cup of marshmallows, either, it might still be possible to stop Putin’s butt plug very soon.

He (and his party) has amassed shittons of government money, funneled them into private equities, made a rule about not having to publish what happens to that money, and used it for whatever the government wouldn’t be allowed to. One of his cronies (none other than the ex leader of the National Bank and the minister of economy) was reported to have moved an astronomical amount of valuables to Dubai in literal containers. He also replaced basically everyone in important institutions with his bootlickers.

Just because Orbán gets removed from his seat, it doesn’t mean he still won’t have near infinite wealth and influence to try and get back as hard as he can.

Or, you know, basically everything that he did or said regarding Ukrainians in the past. If the political figures Putin has just sent the other day won’t be enough to rig the elections then there is a good chance he will stop being a PM after the April elections. I can’t wait. It won’t be an immediate cure for all the troubles he is causing and had caused, but it’s a good start.

First F-15: “it was friendly fire”. Second F-15: “shoots down another F-15”.

Great title, BTW: it shows again that ‘US’ is somewhere it definitely shouldn’t be.

There will be national elections within 2 months. After 16 years, this is the first time there is a significant chance to boot Putin’s buttplug. The other contestant isn’t all glitter and marshmallows, either, but he is (or claims to be) definitely pro EU. Just have a little more patience, because things might change anyway.

While some others might think otherwise (and who am I to condemn someone I don’t even know personally), as another determined Magyar (ehh, I mean the guy) voter, I sense an overwhelmingly strong smell of narcissism, demagogy and vulnerability in him. After all, he used to be a faithful Fidesz party member up until he lost access to the honeypot.

At the moment, he is still our only hope and beacon of light before the elections in April, because the rest of the candidates are either complete underdogs or (even more) awful politicians, and after almost 16 years, he is the first one who has an actual chance to break Fidesz’s spell. We need to vote him, it’s a no-brainer.

But, unfortunately, he is rather far from being the impeccable Bicycle Repair Man some would like to see him as.

Well, I didn’t necessary mean the structure of a song (that doesn’t have the complexity that would challenge an AI agent… in the early 2000’s, even), but more like coming up with their own lyrics that even make sense, and producing human speech with rhythm and musical tones.

Not closely related, but back when I was first reading the book, the idea of computer generated songs sounded like “flying future car” delusions, and learning AI in the early 2000’s even confirmed not the impossibility but the crazy limitations of all this.

I have just listened to a podcast last month that mentions how there are songs on Spotify made entirely by AI, and 97% of the people they asked couldn’t tell apart regular songs from the AI generated ones.

On one hand, it’s remarkable. On the other hand, we’re cooked. What’s even more depressing is that many-many, even more worrying things are getting pretty accurate in the book. Maybe not back in 1984, but we’re witnessing the convergence.

I had to read the title 3 times, because even for the second read through I read ‘NATO is preparing to comfort Russia’.

Cop porn.

Had they not been arrested, they could have assisted genocide, committing war crimes every week or killing civilians, aid workers and reporters by the dozens. Only the worst terrorists could allow such things to happen.

Oh, wait…