For young people in their first job, knowledge workers passionate about the subject, lifestyle founders, and others... work is seen as play. It's part of who they are and what they do.
Those who need to work (a lot of us) are those who don't have someone paying their bills and don't have an easy/fun/passive way of getting money, like a lifestyle business, fun job, fame, or inheritance.
So is work necessary? Probably not. But hobbies, creativity, production, and innovation will probably always exist because it's what people do naturally. I think there's a system in which everyone is having a better time overall, where we wouldn't call it work. But we're not there yet - we're still in a post-feudal system and will continue to see leftovers of that for some time which affects a lot of people and makes their lives unnecessarily difficult.
I gotta say, your idea of a Supabase-like system for SQLite got me thinking. It's an interesting concept. SQLite running next to your server could certainly speed things up, but don't forget about potential issues with concurrent writes. SQLite might not be as graceful as other databases in handling those.
The dev-prod synchronization you mentioned is a neat idea. Just remember to keep things secure and don't expose sensitive data. Also, think about the size of your production database. If it's too big, this might not be the best way to go.
Having an interface to access, view, and modify data straight from the production DB would be super useful. Depending on how complex this gets, you could either make it part of the application server or set up a separate server.
Auto-backup to a bucket is definitely a thumbs up from me. Tools like Litestream can be a lifesaver here.
Have you heard of Datasette? It's an open-source tool that lets you explore and publish data from SQLite databases. It could be a good starting point for what you're trying to build.
Your idea sounds like it could really shake things up. Keep us posted on how it goes. Good luck!
You're right. And when that happens, let's remember that it is the path the Western countries have chosen by deciding that their immediate quality of life is more important, and skimped on military spending and foreign military assistance during an active invasion of a country that specifically surrendered its nukes in exchange for safety guarantees that were ultimately not honored in spirit.
And it is still not too late to do something about this, but the clock is running out fast. Luckily, every single one of us can help it by making that clock run slower with donations directly to the Ukrainian military effort (not some wishy-washy "non-combat humanitarian aid" stuff). Every dollar spent on buying drones for Ukraine to blow up Russian tanks with buys that many more minutes on that clock.
Your first paragraph, yeah, but... "Every dollar spent on buying drones for Ukraine to blow up Russian tanks with buys that many more minutes on that clock.", really? How would that help us, everyone else? It has been so long yet no one knows fuck all about the Minsk agreement and how it all started. Funny that. I wonder if Wikipedia is still accurate on that one... but I get it, Russia is bad.
Like I said, that helps us by giving our politicians more time to figure out that they need to do the right thing for our own long-term safety, if nothing else.
As far as knowing what it's all about - I am a Russian citizen, I was born in Russia and lived most of my life there; I know full well what it's about, thank you very much. I've read military fiction about invading Ukraine (where Russians were, of course, the good guys) as far back as 2008 ("Эпоха мертворожденных), and I've heard others joking and sharing wishful thoughts about the same back in 1990s. If anything, what Western audiences often don't understand is that this isn't some kind of new thinking that first emerged in 2014, or even in 2004 during the Orange Revolution. The notion of restoring the historical "greater Russia", which unambiguously includes most of Ukraine, has been a staple of Russian imperial politics since the dissolution of the USSR - and open unabashed imperialism is very popular in Russia.
(That word "imperial", by the way, is not some kind of political slur, either - "имперец" is what the adherents literally call themselves, because they are proud of it. So, yeah, Russia is the textbook imperialist invader. And imperialism is bad, without a doubt.)
Now, that all doesn't mean that Ukraine cannot and doesn't do bad things of its own. But that is not why it got invaded, so it's all irrelevant.
And it's even more irrelevant in the original context of my post. Regardless of the why, the point is this: Ukraine surrendered its nukes in exchange for security guarantees wrt its sovereignty and territorial integrity. This was hailed as as an exemplar act and a major milestone for nuclear non-proliferation. Then Ukraine got invaded - by one of the countries that provided those guarantees, no less! - and meanwhile other countries who signed that agreement and convinced Ukraine to sign it are unwilling to actually intervene to the degree necessary to secure its territorial integrity, effectively reneging on their promise. Now, Ukraine is at the risk of being completely overrun and fully occupied. And on the other hand, we have North Korea, which developed its own nukes from scratch, and, despite constant state of confrontation with US, has never been invaded or even bombed since. For any other small country watching all this from the sidelines, what is the obvious takeaway? Why, it's that international security guarantees aren't worth shit, and that a larger country can always steamroll over your conventional military, but nukes are an effective deterrent.
The Minsk agreements began as an effort to address the conflict between Ukraine and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, though. Do we have a disagreement here? I crystal clearly remember when pro-Russian Ukrainians were fighting against their own Ukrainian government.
As for the rest: the failure to uphold the commitments made in the Budapest Memorandum contributed to the deterioration of relations between Ukraine and Russia, leading to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The Minsk agreements were then pursued as a diplomatic effort to address and resolve the resulting crisis.
Regardless of any of that, it was between pro-Russians in eastern Ukraine vs. the Ukrainian government. The conflict in eastern Ukraine involved clashes between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups. These groups, often referred to as "separatists" or "rebels" declared independence in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and established self-proclaimed republics. Amidst the conflict, efforts were made to negotiate ceasefires and peace agreements. The Minsk agreements, as mentioned earlier, were one such attempt to bring about a cessation of hostilities and a political resolution to the conflict. However, the ceasefire has been repeatedly violated, and the conflict remains unresolved. Might I add that the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine has been repeatedly violated by both Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups. Both sides have been accused of violating the terms of the ceasefire agreements outlined in the Minsk accords. You can read more about it.
For the record, Donbass is often used as a term to refer to the eastern regions of Ukraine, particularly Donetsk and Luhansk, where the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatist groups has been ongoing since 2014. Those regions are where pro-Russian sentiment is significant.
If you look at prominent "pro-Russian separatist" commanders in Eastern Ukraine back in 2014, the vast majority of them were Russians who came there from the outside, not locals. Igor "Strelkov" Girkin being the most prominent example, and particularly relevant since he, by his own admission, was the one who shifted gears from civil unrest to outright war by occupying Slavyansk and Kramatorsk with his unit.
There were no separatists in eastern Ukraine. The European Court of Human Rights has determined that the so-called separatists were either unmarked members of Russian armed forces and special services, or under their direct command. It was one big ruse and as you demonstrate, even ten years later, when all the facts are known, people are still believing a lie that was manufactured in 2014 as a cover story for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Court held, on the basis of the vast body of evidence before it, that Russia had effective control over all areas in the hands of separatists from 11 May 2014 on account of its military presence in eastern Ukraine and the decisive degree of influence it enjoyed over these areas as a result of its military, political and economic support to the “DPR” and the “LPR”. In particular, the Court found it established beyond any reasonable doubt that there had been Russian military personnel present in an active capacity in Donbass from April 2014 and that there had been a large-scale deployment of Russian troops from, at the very latest, August 2014. It further found that the respondent State had a significant influence on the separatists’ military strategy. Several prominent separatists in command positions were senior members of the Russian military acting under Russian instructions, including the person who had had formal overall command of the armed forces of the “DPR” and the “LPR”. Further, Russia had provided weapons and other military equipment to separatists on a significant scale (including the Buk-missile used to shoot down flight MH17). Russia had carried out artillery attacks upon requests from the separatists and provided other military support. There was also clear evidence of political support, including at international level, being provided to the “DPR” and the “LPR” and the Russian Federation had played a significant role in their financing enabling their economic survival.
By the time of the 11 May 2014 “referendums”, the separatist operation as a whole had been managed and coordinated by the Russian Federation. The threshold for establishing Russian jurisdiction in respect of allegations concerning events which took place within these areas after 11 May 2014 had therefore been passed. That finding meant that the acts and omissions of the separatists were automatically attributable to the Russian Federation. /---/ In the absence of any evidence demonstrating that the dependence of the entities on Russia had decreased since 2014, the jurisdiction of the respondent State continued as at the date of the hearing on 26 January 2022.
Of course, but that doesn't deal with the cause of nuclear proliferation, which is the anarchy of a multi-polar security situation.
In the extreme case of NATO breaking up, you should expect most central European countries will get nukes to deter Russia.
If US becomes more uncertain as a security backstop, Japan, Philippines and Vietnam will seek nukes because they have no choice if they wish to be assured security against China.
Small countries are observing Western appeasement and the US political right's betrayal of Ukraine and wondering if it'll happen to them. Remember the assurances Clinton gave them if they renounced nukes? Words and signed paper count for little.
“Everyone does” have nuclear weapons, where “everyone” includes more than one independent sovereignty, is not a long-term equilibrium state, it is a metastable state, prone to rapid devolution to “no one does”, possibly with a side order if “there is no one to”.
I am responding to you, and disagreeing with your claim that the first of your options is a viable long-term equilibrium, contending that that is only true under the degenerate condition of a single sovereignty, otherwise it is a metastable state [0], not a stable long-term equilibrium.
I prefer later. As nuclear weapons are the great equalizer. A country with larger conventional army won't be able to bully smaller one... And you really need that sort of capability for equilibrium.
