“Dim”. “Dimljeni” is smoked, so just like in English.

Same in Serbian, salmon is “losos”, could refer to the fish, and specifically “smoked salmon” is “dimljeni losos”.

I think a lot of the problem is general apathy. As a software engineer I came into this world with a desire to improve the world through technology, and landed in a world where nobody gives a damn about anything besides getting paid. Though, to be fair, when you’re a small cog in a huge company where half of the time you don’t even know what’s the bigger picture, and the product you’re working on isn’t yours in any way, it’s hard to care, and this carries over easily into everyday life.

Climate: A lot of people don’t even think it’s man-made, or that it’s serious, or that we can do anything about it. (Also I think that it’s quite a shame that it’s often mentioned as “Save the planet”, as if Earth is going to get destroyed, and not “Save humanity”)

Work automation: Even software engineers say how automation will “kill jobs”, which betrays the worldview in which it’s only important to have a job and make money, doesn’t matter what your work is.

Inequality: Again, most don’t care and believe that poverty is a result of moral failing, or just think that it’s not their problem so they have nothing to do with it.

Fascism: Youtube is absolutely brimming with terrible content that leads people down that path because it’s so simple and seemingly intuitive, and the prevailing opinion (at least around me) is that everything else is just “feminazi sjw feelings” propaganda. Even “anti-fascism” is often seen in a bad light.

I agree with you completely, the solutions are there, we’re just not using them, and I think that the bulk of the problem is that most people have been conditioned to a certain worldview where everything is as it should be, and has been since forever (very often nationalists like to project their modern worldviews into ancient and medieval history), and your only concern is your day-to-day life, to have a job, make money and numb yourself to reality (“have fun”) until you die.

We have to get people to believe in societies again, to make small mutual-aid agreements in daily life with our friends and family and make them seem normal and how societies should function. And that’s something deeply entrenched in human culture, the “general wisdom” we tell kids and rarely do ourselves: “Be kind, help others”. Just today I saw a woman accidentally get her front wheel stuck in a ditch, and she couldn’t get out. Almost instantly a couple of complete strangers that were passing by came to help, and they managed to get the car unstuck. As Mencius said, if someone were see a child about to fall into a well, they would immediately and without second thought run to save the child, our default mode is to help those who need it.

Getting shafted with regards to schengen certainly didn’t help.

They don’t have double-headed eagles. The profile hosts the eagle from a flag of the Holy Roman Empire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire#/media/File%3ABanner_of_the_Holy_Roman_Emperor_with_haloes_(1400-1806).svg

What? It says that people who are communists, pro china and pro russia should delete their accounts.

Jesus Christ how do people even come up with this?

In the past 10+ years, every time the current government had a scandal that received wider attention (they potentially have more scandals than the rest of Europe combined, and by “scandals” I mean the biggest marijuanna plantation in Europe being helped by the government, a Serb political leader in Kosovo getting killed to keep the control over the Serbs living there, a minister with a salary of 1300 euros buying a 250000 euro house after a month and a half, and then explaining that he went to his wife’s aunt in Canada to get most of the money, bringing back 9000€ by 9000€, which is why it wasn’t reported, etc), or if mass protests happen (as is currently the state), or the elections are nearing (which they are), they shake the Kosovo can and thus draw the attention away.

Pulling random events from memory: they sent a train with “Kosovo is Serbia” written on it, they sent a minister without permission so that he would get arrested, they ordered all Serbs to boycott the elections so that trouble would start when Albanians take office in Serb majority areas.

Of course, often times they get a crisis for free like when Kosovo decided to put a 100% tax on all Serb exports, when they unconstitutionally decided to form a Kosovo army, and by refusing to implement what they signed in 2013.

So as you can see, whenever the government needs free political points or to draw attention away, it has a plethora of options. So they proclaim how they will protect the Serbs, how the situation is very tense, they’ll march the police and army back and forth, and so on. But everyone in Serbia knows that if one armed person crosses the Kosovo border, the few Serbs that are left on Kosovo would be expelled again, and Serbia itself would get bombed to hell again. And as I said, there have been mass protests since may, elections are nearing, and the worst opposition in the world will potentially unite, and as soon as this government falls, I doubt 10% of them will escape prison, so they’re parading with the army to make it seem as if they’re relevant at all.

Official state propaganda said almost nothing about the latest incident, so they either really weren’t involved, or whatever they planned failed, in any case they obviously don’t know how to respond.

Now we need a table with the adjective endings and which movement prepositions go with what (Ich gehe nach/ins/auf/zu)

It’s long been thought the only reason there’s been no WWIII is because countries that don’t necessarily like each other have created mutually beneficial trade deals together.

And then Russia decided to go to war regardless. I’m not sure whether this has shown us that war prevention based on mutual trade is an illusion, or that Russian economic difficulties prove that it works. Maybe time will tell, but in any case I’m not sure the dead will be happy that Russia’s economy will suffer.

I mean, it makes perfect sense that you’re not going to start a war for economic reasons if it’s worse than just trade, but what happens when someone decides that they want war for reasons other than economic. For example, country A has a lot of people with their main nationality in the bordering countries, and someone stirrs up nationalist sentiments and they want their country to ecompass all regions where their nationals live, regardless of economic benefits/drawbacks.

While I applaud your honest attempt at a discussion, I should tell you that your words fall on deaf ears. This is a very common view in Serbia that the “west” is, and always has been, against us and that the evil west literally doesn’t do anything besides thinking up new ways to subjugate eastern europeans. If you say that nobody cares, they’ll point to events from 100+ years ago, if you say that some states are voluntarily cooperating with the rest of the world and happy with it, they’ll say that they’re slaves. If you say that absolutely everyone around Russia wants to stay the hell away from if, they’ll say how at least under Russian influence we won’t “biologically dissapear”.

You can’t reason with unreasonable views. I don’t know how to deal with these people, but spare yourself the frustration and at least don’t hope that you’ll change their oppinions with reasonable arguments.

Agreed. It also leads to some self reflection when the answer essentially amounts to: “Nothing”. As an automotive software engineer, I can’t say that I learned anything I can practice myself in daily life in the solarpunk spirit. But it did get me thinking whether I could try and further some skills I acquired to that aim. Thanks OP!

I’d be worried about starting a fire in the garden if the machine were to roam without supervision.

But a pretty cool machine nonetheless, bonus points if the raspberry pi could also be powered by solar.