I watched something on YouTube and then exited to main screen. There were some "shorts" YouTube offered me to watch.

One was about girl in short dress and long socks doing shuffle dance (very cute), one was how to fix furniture hinges (in absolutely the most barbaric way imaginable) and one was showing a high caliber mortar loaded and fired.

From background voices it was clear the mortar video was shot in Ukraine but unclear on which side. So the comments came from both and generally divided into two types: "Yeah, pound these motherfuckers!" and "Yes, this thing can really fuck things up!"

One was different though. It came from someone with name written in Arabic language and it said: "The loader's blood drips on the projectile. This war is just crap like every other one."

At first I thought it was some allegory but then the video looped and I saw it. As the humongous shell was loaded several large drops of blood fell on it.

The following satisfying blast of the shell departing made it easy to overlook this but the guy with the Arabic name saw it. I wondered where that person came from. Syria? Iraq? Afghanistan? But it felt like out of hundreds of commenters this person really knew what the war was.

#nowar

Hi, I am Alexander, I live in Russia and I am huge cryptocurrency opponent. I hate just about everything about crypto: waste of resources, technical imperfections, five billion kinds of competing coins some of which are clearly fraudulent, great involvement of crypto in scams, speculative investments and all kinds malicious usage some of which were made possible by crypto (e.g. mainstream ransomware). Also little reliability of agents dealing crypto who at the same time have zero responsibility yet require trust.

Who needs "money" like that, right? People invented banking, payment systems and other financial institutions for a reason. I swore I would never touch it.

Year 2022 came and brought War like one Horseman¹ of Apocalypse already hanging around wasn't enough.

• Most popular global payment systems blocked Russia which was bad enough itself but what was even worse it became almost impossible to pay for services which remained operational but had no other forms of payment.
• SWIFT bank transfers mostly stopped working and what remained became very expensive.
• Some foreign investment accounts were frozen. So much for investing in US shares. Poof.
• EU now forbids exporting euros to Russia and some countries (like Finland) can actually confiscate² cash on border.
• Local accounts in foreign currency are restricted by the government which means you can't withdraw cash from them in substantial amount.
• At the same time now they have negative interest rates so if you just leave them they will get depleted anyway. The only way is to convert them to rubles at shamelessly low rates.
• Ruble, local currency, has about four very different rates towards other currencies (depends where, how and in which direction you convert) and suffers from high inflation (which again is very different depending how you calculate but significant no matter what).
• Local government as well as just about everyone else tightened all kinds of financial regulations, restrictions and tracking.
• Looks like everyone declared cold war on cash. I have some money in 500 and 200 euro notes which apparently are next to impossible to use in EU now because are you drug dealer, gun runner or child trafficker as no one else has use for these notes? Locally it is a bit better but clearly not for long.

...

So here I am standing before you admitting I broke my oath. I still think crypto is crap. So is the current state of the world and I hate to say it but the future doesn't look much brighter. I thought these cryptoanarchists had distorted perspective - apparently not. It is not that their vision is dystopian - it is our world that becomes ugly mess fitting their expectations.

#BraveNewWorld #crypto #cryptocurrency #Russia #nowar

¹ - Pestilence of course. Although if you like the other interpretation where it is Conquest - it fits even better.

² - As I hear they don't formally confiscate euro cash on Finnish border but "take it to be returned later on the next visit" and don't really search for it but it happens.

@Kazimierz Kurz In case you haven't noticed there is "war" in hashtags. #NoWar actually but for that people get detained too. This too can't be written on Russian part of the net without risking repercussions.

Dozens (literally) of media websites got blocked in last ten days for calling it war. They are currently inaccessible for the vast majority of population without VPNs.

Also about 95-98% of public Tor bridges are currently blocked for the same reason. Not because you can buy drugs in Darknet - they were fine with that for decade - but because you can use it to read websites using the word "war". Or Ukranian resources. Including a couple of websites where you can look up your relatives in case they are KIA or captured.

About every other day another public VPN gets blocked too.

BBC is blocked. So is Facebook. So is Twitter. Many others too. Instagram joined them today. Guess the reason why.

So if you like the idea of Russian people getting cut off from the global Internet - it means you want them not to use this word. Here is called "special operation". And some of censored websites are blocked using DPI and not listed as blocked. So it is called "network difficulties".

Fuck Netflix, seriously. Fuck Youtube even (still works, I suppose not for long). It is about accessibility now. It is about having different opinion.

To be honest I don't care about myself much. I will get by one way or another. I am scared about 140 million people here not being able to have different opinion. About them seeing what television said as true - enemies all around, nothing good out there, there be dragons.

Also let me to be blunt but it is absolute nonsense to think that things like that hurt industrial complex. Russia is well connected and basic infrastructure will work. They are designing it all this way because they want to be able to shut it down themselves. Severing dependencies only strengthens the isolation. It is not good for anyone.

Open Letter to the international IT and telecom companies
You can read it sign it with the link above. However I never liked canned news so here is what it is all about and why it matters in my own words.

As sanctions keep piling up on Russia some of things here become increasingly restricted and this affects freedom of communication. Ironically this is the effect Putin wants - the government is busy building up their Internet censorship and control. Now as the result of some sanctions people trying to maintain independent services and censorship circumvention tools are under attack from both sides. Myself included.

Some examples:
Thawte certification authority suddenly revoked certificates of some services (banks mostly) which gave the government the reason to double down on imposing national certificate system. If successful it opens unprecedented opportunities for censorship and surveillance.

NameCheap domain registrar suddenly refused supporting customers from Russia forcing them to either move their domains immediately or lose them. This together with rumors of the government imposing isolation measures on Russian part of network made many people move their websites and services into Russian-controlled zone.

Some backbone ISPs like Cogent disconnected Russia impacting network connectivity and making it easier to shutdown, control and censor.

Visa and Mastercard payment systems withdrawing is probably the hardest blow for everyone who hosted something outside of Russia as there is no easy way to pay for services or receive donations for them. This also forces many people to migrate their projects back to homeland where they risk to be seized and their owners prosecuted.

While I understand the reasons for diplomatic pressure and public reaction to the events in Ukraine I can't believe this is the effect we want. This hurts the opposition, freedom of speech and access to information. I can't access some of the links above without VPN. Soon I likely won't be able to get on the global network without VPN - and not public one, these get blocked every day.

And the last thing - free social networks like this one are one of few remaining bridges between Russian and Ukrainian people. Mainstream networks are getting ugly, media sources get banned and blocked by the opposing sites. Here we still can talk. Hopefully it will last.

#NoWar #Russia #Ukraine