Sense.

They want a backdoor to your emails while terrorism has been clear as day and they still haven’t done anything about it in Gaza.

While I never heard that saying before, I can totally get behind it. I truly appreciate it, thanks.

Wow. Do you know the feeling when someone brings your attention to something that you had been ignoring pretty much all your life, and from that point it drives you mad every single time? Yeah, you have just done that with the meant to/supposed to thing. You’re SO totally right! Aaaand you cursed me.

Oh no (yes?), I totally get what you’re saying, and I’m able to process these situations (I think I’ve seen enough during that 15-20 years of playing with/against kids), that part doesn’t bother me; what I was really curious about is how you, personally, would interpret that brief response, without any prior context.

Oh yeah, I don’t have a problem dealing with the nastier version, I was just wondering how you would interpret the exchange, provided it was the first and only 4 characters you see from a random person.

While I was thinking of something similar, it’s important that in this particular case we’re talking about a conversation with a stranger, and not about breaking news. Now, I get that it all depends - what I’m curious about is your assumption of the situation’s vibe.

While I might use them interchangeably, as a non-native I would think “need to” is supposed to mean that the situation came out of necessity, such as feeling the need to pee or resorting to selling your car because of an empty wallet, while “have to” is more like the result of some rules or discipline, such as showing up to work in time - but I understand that the line between the two can be rather blurry.

As for my thing: there are a few shortened words in my language (similarly to the English “hubby”, “preggo”, etc.) that got shortened according to pronunciation, and not the original (longer) word, having a different spelling at the start (as if “circle” got shortened to “circ”, but spelled as “cirk”). It feels like a kid came up with the spelling, and now it’s the official form. It’s bugging my inner spelling nazi every time I see it.

I had the feeling - but, considering the above, which one would you think of when setting this from someone as the first reaction?

Does adding fuck really change anything?

Yeah, it makes it even worse : ). I was thinking just the same first - however, I’m not in my early twenties / late teens anymore, and I’ve been wondering if that was the case with the younger generation.

shut up is also a rude phrase in english

I was thinking the same! But I started seeing videos lately where a conversational partner (typically a young girl, but that could be some bias) responded with ‘shut up’ in a cheerful manner, seemingly meaning some pleasant surprise mixed with disbelief. And this feels rather recent to me - hence my doubt. But I’m relieved if I’m not the only one, thanks. I wonder if it’s a generational (or a non-existent?) thing.

Fuck that, just implant those mice on my scalp.

It might be just my subjective perspective, but to me it feels like 16 year olds are much easier to radicalise, or be fed half truths. They are in the age when you feel like you want to change the world, but you might also still believe in fairy tales and/or simplified scenarios. I hope I’m either wrong or this change won’t go through, but I’m getting “propaganda audience” vibes.

If I got right what you’re saying (I might have misunderstood it), the situation is slightly different in Hungary. Instead of the media outlets and conglomerates trying to appease the governing party, it was actually an active takeover by direct and indirect government relationships/strawmen.

Slightly less relevant context:

Huge media corporations are selling us out

So the situation here is rather similar; the only difference was that we’re not the US, so let’s take the ‘us’ out of the above.

…or just plain determination and time

Yes, but this is why you break bad laws along with another 199,999 people for good reasons.

As a complete military noob: how does this affect the current conflict? By my naïve guess, it slows down the advance for a while, but ideally a well organised army has someone to stand in very shortly to minimise the effect. I understand it might lower the level of expertise, but considering such a large force (as in, many to pick from) I expect around the same level of competence from a substitute. Is it actually more significant than that? Are there other aspects I missed?

EDIT: Thank you all for the insights! It seems like it does have a tangible effect, and it actually takes longer to replace leadership than I anticipated. A life is a life, and nobody should die like this (especially when some power hungry megalomaniac sends you to), but you all helped me appreciate this news more, regardless.

Things that are not bugs:

• snails/slugs
• rats/mice
• other insects that are not bugs
• poop of any state and origin
• thugs

If the next year’s elections fail and Orbán stays in power then we can start calling it Western Belarus from then on.

Around May next year. Might not be the right thing we’re both thinking of, but at least there will be elections in 2026.