TheMechanic

Moldova has had a Russian backed separatist region called Transnistria since 1990. Moldova has had a hard time, they do not have huge resources they can use, and their military is not well- equipped or funded.

During the Soviet era the country was producing huge amounts of agricultural products. After dissolution, Moldova still relied heavily on export to Russia. It was mostly in their best interest to keep their heads down and carry on, as they do not have the means to fight a serious conflict.

They've also had massive brain drain. Large volumes of young people have been leaving the country for decades. Many young people with Romanian heritage applied to become Romanian-EU citizens when Romania joined the EU.

They have slowly been pivoting towards a pro-EU policy. Whenever they make an obvious plan to head more towards becoming European, Russia will often apply some kind of sanctions. It's been a common tactic over the last few decades for shipments of wine, cognac or other Moldovan products to be seized and 'destroyed' by Russian customs officials in retaliation for Pro-EU policy shifts by Moldova.

When the Preisdent of Belarus, Lukashenko, leaked Russia's Ukrainian invasion plans, Moldova was shown as being a point of troop movement. So Russias invasion plan definitely originally included Moldovan territory as well.

When I wrote the above I thought, hah someone's going to be like 'bUt HoW WilL tHe vAnS gEt tHeRe jEeNiuS?'. But then I thought, nah noones that iamverysmart. Yet, here we are.

Ban cars in the main street. I'm sure you can learn to walk one block. You might even find you enjoy it when you are not having constant near death experiences with cars.

All those parking spaces are now spaces for pop-up businesses. Food vans, shipping containers that are now selling vegetables, outdoor dining, art fairs, etc.

You can now legally live in those apartments that people used to live in built above the existing shops, before that was made illegal for reasons unknown.

Don't worry, they have options. They can also take out shitty loans laden with fine print from China

It's always a baguette and some celery

I agree. Ukraine did a great job in preparing for an inevitable invasion. Zelensky is the reason the preparations succeeded.

You have to know how to operate the oven to reheat store bought pie. Generative LLMs are machines like ovens, and turning the knobs is not creativity. Not operating the oven correctly gets you Sharon Weiss results.

Tearing out extra lanes that do nothing but encourage more traffic, adding protected cycling lanes or reducing road speed are seen as extreme by those that made the decisions that have created the infrastructure we have. In reality these are compromises.

'Share the road' is not a compromise. Sharrows are not a compromise. Jaywalking laws are not a compromise. Victim blaming is not a compromise. Media dehumanising pedestrians is not a compromise.Nobody ever fucking considered anything else but cars, drivers and the car lobby when installing these things.

Now tearing it out city centers to focus on humans and humanity is extreme?

Country defense is oriented around the most likely attack in the near future. Once Russia is defeated and this war is over, the most likely invader is still Russia. So they are planning on what will defend against what Russia has now.

I was buying from ebay because I didn't want to support Amazon. Now what?