kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@social.privacytools.io

@boud

Thanks, that 1.1 was a typo when I copied from WolframAlpha! The final mismatch is understandable averages may be calculated for different periods for example, and these are natural processes which change over time. I was just curious if even the *order of magnitude* of these flow would match, and it seems it's matching much closer than I expected!

I was thinking it's a joke but it's actually published law now in Russia - list of "unfriendly countries", and the title is longer than the actual list, which only contains TWO countries - USA, and... Czechia.

http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202105140026?index=1&rangeSize=1

Now I recalled that question and made a quick fact check.

The basin area of river Nalchik (that's where we were camping) is 440 km2. An average flow in the river is 2.7 m3/s. An average rainfall in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic is ~200 mm. All that is public data published by Rosgidromet.

Now if we take that 200 mm of rain per year on area of 440 km2, it makes roughtly 1.1e8 m3 of water. The water then flows for a year (365*24*3600 s) which makes... 2.7 m3/s.

We were once sitting in the mountains in Russia and my colleague raised an interesting question - where does all the water in the underground rivers we investigated come from?

I thought all the water in rivers ultimately comes from rain - that's at least what I remembered from geography lessons decades ago. My friend argued rain wouldn't be enough...

Not sure what to think about this 😂

@dredmorbius

> it caused pain to the USSR

I'm not quite sure how sending a humanitarian parcel to someone stripped of basic food and medicines (due to "temporary difficulties in real socialism") could have "caused pain to the USSR" 🤔

> But they Were Not In Charge

And thank God, because if say instead of Reagan it was Bernie Sanders who was in charge - after his enthusiastic trips to USSR - I would now probably still living in communist Poland earning $20 per month.

@dredmorbius

As someone who was at that time living on the other side of the Iron Curtain I didn't really care about the motivation of the people in the West who sent me the humanitarian parcels, or more generally who supported Solidarność. We didn't really care about their *internal* politics and whatnot. The support itself did matter.

@dredmorbius

From less exciting examples: in 1920's British socialist dockers were able to block arms shipments to Poland, which was then fighting against Soviet invasion. In the UK they *could* do it. In USSR any such action would take them straight to GULag or mass grave.

@dredmorbius

> policy-makers

Here's the difference: in the West you didn't need to be a "policy maker" to make difference.

I remember in especially grim period of 80's my family was receiving humanitarian support parcels from Austria (or was it Germany?) with stuff like sweets, toys and clothes that looked from another universe.

@dredmorbius

The latter case ("against PLO") is invented for the sake of exemplification as Moscow created and then consistently supported PLO. Abu Nidal actually had an office in Warsaw from where he operated through all 80's.

@dredmorbius

I understand that but in "the West" you had political pluralism which meant you could have *at the same time* both people condemning human rights abuse in communist Poland and useful idiots marching against NATO and for unilateral disarmament.

In case of Eastern Bloc it was all simple - if there was decision from Moscow we now support Palestine Liberation Organisation, we all marched in support of PLO. When Moscow decided we no longer like PLO, we marched against.

@dredmorbius

Also in France you had Jean-Paul Sartre who was diehard Stalin supporter until I think late 60's!

In Germany you had Rote Arme Fraktion (RAF) and their left-wing supporters who received direct support from Stasi and spent plenty of time hiding in Eastern Bloc after especially bloody attacks.

@dredmorbius

The fallacy here is that there was any such thing as "the West". Each country had different policy towards Eastern Bloc, and within each of these countries there were countless movements that either supported or condemned the anti-Soviet movements. For example in France you had organisations that both supported Solidarity (Polish independent trade union), and also die-hard communists (L'Humanite) that would approve of any Soviet decision, regardless of how stupid it was.

@angdraug 100% agree there's outright corruption through Malofeev funds or FSB, but I don't think leaders like Merkel or Macron are corrupt. More likely they're just don't care much about Eastern Europe (why would they, their voters don't live there) and maybe they're just waiting for Putin to die in peace.

@frankie95 I'm proudly blocked by Jacobson on Twitter after pointing out that his data is incorrect 😀