I'm honestly amazed that this is a "novel" look. Most of Croatian coast has Italian as first or second language, or a local language heavily influenced by it. The Ottomans didn't really have much to do with the Adriatic and the Austro-Hungarians came quite late. Who did historians think Croatian coast was mostly influenced by up until now?
> Italian as first or second language, or a local language heavily influenced by it
To be pedantic:
It used to be first language in many areas, but since at least WW2 it is exclusively a second language.
It wasn't Italian as much as Venetian, which is quite a distinct Italian dialect. During most of the history Italy didn't even exist, and the eastern Adriatic coast was exclusively influenced by the Republic of Venice. Most people don't realise how new Italy is as a single nation.
Using your logic ("During most of the history Italy didn't even exist"), the same can be said about Croatia.
The two times Croatia for sure has existed in history was (1) from 1941 to 1945 [0] - as a Nazi-supported and -supporting country, committing crimes against Christian-Orthodox Serbs, Jews and Romani people with support of the Roman-Catholic Church and Nazi-Germany/Austria [1] and (2) from 1991 into the present - when that state (with the help of Germany, Austria and RCC) was re-awakened to finish the job of pushing Christian-Orthodoxy and the Serbs away from the Adriatic sea and toward East [2].
Every other claim that Croatia has existed prior to 1941 is just a fantasy. The "List of rulers of Croatia" is such an example [3]. The heading "Under the Habsburgs (1527–1918)" is in the category ROTFL. They are ALL Germans but your people seriously write they were "Croatian rulers"!
Next heading ("Kings of Yugoslavia (1918–1941)") is even more hilarious: There, Croatian editors list three rulers, ALL of which were Christian-Orthodox Serbs! That LITTLE fact is not mentioned in the article. One of them was "Assassinated by the VMRO with Ustaše support in 1934." Ustaše are Croatian terrorist organisation that has later led the first Croatian state from 1941 until 1945. But, hey, he is a "Croatian ruler"!
Duchy of Croatia [1] and then Kingdom of Croatia [2]. Every sane Croatian agrees that NDH was a disgraceful puppet state but what you are saying about modern Croatia is some crazy extremist speak which doesn't belong here.
Thank you for these two links. And for, in a sense, confirming me: maps shown in those entries of "duchy/kingdom of Croatia" depict a territory of most of Dalmatia, parts of western Herzegovina and Bosnia. That is it!
Istria, Slavonia, today's capital Zagreb (Agram on the map) and everything north of it is not part of that duchy/kingdom. According to the entries you have posted. Do you suggest that these regions they are actually not croatian?
Things change as time goes by. People move, territories get occupied, families change religion, people adopt other religions, countries expand and shrink. Ottomans occupied Bosnia for 300 years and now there is a muslim majority. My family used to be Orthodox and now my side is Catholic. Christianism didn't exist 3000 years ago. Are you saying these regions (Croatia/Serbia/BiH) are actually some paganic/slavic/pre-slavic whatever this is? None of the "big religions" existed 10 000 years ago yet humans existed for 200 000 years or whatever. What were they 100 000 years ago? Isn't this argument a bit meaningless?
As much as I share your view (some things partly, some in full), if you - for whatever reason - don't want, I don't need to go back in the history to get my point across.
I will look at the present. If you are honest and if you look at what both leaders (politicians, intellectuals) and ordinary people in today's Croatia, Muslim/Croatian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and in occupied part of Serbia ("Kosovo") say AND do regarding Serbs, you must realize that they still display stark animosity against anything Serb-related. Almost 30 years/over 20 years after last wars there have ended!
This year (2022), as one example out of many that I could name, in Dubrovnik (Croatia) high school graduates have celebrated high school end and were walking through the center of the city while chanting "Za dom spremni" (Croatian-Nazi greet from WWII, equivalent to German-Nazi "Sieg Heil"), while singing Croatian-Nazi songs about killing Serbs, while wearing Croatian-Nazi flag and while being greeted with Nazi salutes by other young people who have filmed this spectacle of true emotions [0]. These young people will be MD's, lawyers, engineers, policemen, soldiers - future of Croatia - tomorrow and they don't mind putting their hatred towards Serbs into the public on the bright sunny day.
They have probably never met a Serb in their short lives, because in today's Croatia - due to huge social pressure - you must hide your identity if you're a Serb. Which is why many Serbs cave in, change their religion (from Christian Orthodoxy to Roman-Catholicism) and then become Croats. And many/most of them then hate Serbs at least just as much, because it is not enough to just change your religion/identity/name - you must prove yourself in the new identity. (I am aware that social pressure varies between regions in Croatia: Dalmatia probably being the worst, Istria probably being the least bad - on average)
At the same time, Serbia and Serb-part/entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina ("Republika Srpska") are still in good part multi-religious and -ethnic and they help others by letting them get jabbed for free during pandemics (with many Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians being vaccinated in Serbia), by giving Sarajevo natural gas to stay warm during the past winter or by sending helicopters to put out fires that have recently raged in Muslim/Croatian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. (to name a few)
To summarize: Serbs want to a life in peace, to prosper and to procreate, and neither our leaders nor ordinary people (almost exclusively) show animosity towards all of you while everything that we hear and see in Croatia, Muslim/Croatian-part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and "Kosovo" is show of hatred and threat to us. It teaches us that most of you live in the past, waiting to repeat crimes against us that you have commuted in the past 100 and some years.
(I could write for days, read my other comments in this thread, read Wikipedia articles I have linked for more context.)
Last census in former Yugoslavia, shows that 581.663 Serbs have lived in the Federal Republic Croatia [0]. Thus, Serbs have not ”invaded" Croatia. How could they have, if they had lived on the land forever that, thru perverse inner-Yugoslav border drawing by Tito’s communist, became a part of a federal unit called Croatia inside post-WWII Yugoslavia.
(ASIDE: It is ironic that since independence in 1991 Croats are very anti-communist but always refer to borders drawn by… communists! And you do, too: “retain former borders”)
Yes, while Croats have worked towards secession from Yugoslavia in 1990/1991, Serbs on parts of territory of that federal unit took guns. I am not denying it. But why? Are they some wild or crazy people, willing to kill and be killed? Or were they afraid that Croats were preparing to continue doing what they couldn’t finish in 1945, for example in the Concentration camp Jasenovac [1]? Look at the photographs of killed people in that WIkipedia entry. See that knife that Croats have used to kill the Serbs faster (you've called it “Srbosjek”/”Serbcutter” and have made it for faster throat-slitting).
Were Serbs afraid for no reason? Were they just imagining a Croatian boogeyman? After all, Franjo Tuđman, the Croatian President at that time, was a communist and partisan. It turns out, there is an audio from a meeting of the Croatian leadership prior to Operation Storm [2]. In that audio Tuđman can be heard saying “da nanesemo takve udarce da Srbi praktično nestanu” or in English “to inflict such blows that the Serbs practically disappear” [3]. I could name (if you want) many other examples in the 1990-1995 timeframe that show the Serbs were afraid for a reason.
You personally are an example for what I write about the whole time, as well. You have admitted your family were actually Christian-Orthodox Serbs (“My family used to be Orthodox and now my side is Catholic.”) and now you are a Roman-Catholic Croat that defends everything Croatian. Even here and now we can observe Croatian ethno-genesis before our own eyes, which lasts for hundreds of years: How Serbs turn into Croats and why that causes problems, both to those that take the new Croatian identity but also for those who remain Serbs. Those who remain Serbs are witnesses which, by their sheer existence (sometimes words) remind those that have turned their backs to their forebears to become something else that is, by design, anti-Serbian.
It is thus not surprising that all key people in the first Croatian state (1941-1945; see my other comment) were all Serbs a few generations earlier (Ante Pavelić, Ljubo Miloš, Andrija Artuković, Mile Budak and countless and nameless others). Yet to become something else they have had to kill those that have remained Serbs using the most brutal methods - by organizing throat-slitting competitions or by crushing their victims' heads with a wooden sledgehammer, to name a few. They had to burn the identity-bridge behind them, they had to kill the Serb in themselves.
> 581.663 Serbs have lived in the Federal Republic Croatia ... Thus, Serbs have not ”invaded" Croatia.
As I remember the early 90s, the Federal Yugoslavian Army -- which, with all the other republics seceding had in practice become synonymous with Serbia -- rolled in with tanks and artillery.
So I think "invaded" was meant literally, not as a synonym for immigration by ethnic Serbs.
Dude, chill. I've been lurking HN for 15 years, and you made me create an account just to respond to this. Comments like these are the reason why everyone thinks we are a bunch of crazy ultra-nationalists. OP said nothing about Croatian state, or rulers, or church or anything. Do you just cruse the internet and start spewing random Ustase fact every time the word Croatia pops up? Even if there was anything objectionable in what was said there are way less unhinged ways to respond. We are all victims of selective and glorified history taught in our schools (plus a steady diet of hatred-filled media) and through normal dialog we can all learn more about each other's perspectives.
Where is "ultra-nationalism" in my two comments here? Or which "random facts'"? I quote English Wikipedia and these entries were edited by Croats. That one link with the list of "croatian" rulers is identical to the same entry in croatian Wikipedia.
OP was "pedantic" and has claimed something that was plain wrong. And using his logic, I was pedantic as well - to set the record straight and provide background info. The alternative is to let Croats claim whatever you want while betting on ignorance and lack of knowledge of others.
When Wikipedia entries, written in part or completely by Croats, are quoted that is "nasty". <sigh>
> your ethnic cleaning Serbian dogma
I and most other Serbs condemn all atrocities and crimes committed by Serbs or in Serbian name. Explain one thing to me: How come that in Serb-dominated countries/entities (Serbia and Serb-entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina) there are still Muslims/Boschniaks, Croats, Albanians, Hungarians... while in today's Croatia, Muslim/Croatian part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and occupied part of Serbia ("Kosovo") there are almost no Serbs? In Sarajevo alone, prior to the war (1991 census), over 150.000 Serbs have lived. According to the last (2013) census there were less than 9.000. But, yeah, "ethnic cleaning". <sigh>
Today's croatian borders reflect thr defense line against ottoman invasion. Infact, the part of Croatia that fell to the ottomans is now known as Herzegovina, which now forms the Bosnia and Herzegovina country.
> "Croatians are quite proud of the history of stopping the ottoman invasion."
How come that (under the heading "Demographics") Wikipedia lists [0] the "Eastern Orthodox" were still majority in 1828? Were they Croats? Or - MAYBE, just MAYBE - Serbs? And is it possible that those Christian Orthodox Serbs were converting to Roman-Catholicism (under Austrian pressure)? Look at the numbers in that article, the number of Orthodox falls by 1.78% and the number of Catholics rises by 1.5%.
I never thought I'd read this kind of comment on HN, I don't know how you're not ashamed of yourself and involving politics in this kind of discussion.
Awful. There are other forums you can use for this kind of communication.
FFS. Yeah nationalists will bend history so they can tell how things would be right now, and I loathe that as well. But that doesn't mean that the opposite of what nationalists say must be true by definition. Parts of Herzegovina were indeed populated by ethnic Croatians and part of it was even under the kingdom of Croatia (not that being under a rule of a give king has anything to do with the ethnicity of people who live there)
I'm not sure what you're talking about with loopholes comment.
This, "there's nothing to gain with this discussion and you did not provide a single proof", and yet you continue trying to right an obvious wrong.
Also, please stop with personal attacks, language barrier, etc. I responded to something which was wrong and didn't belong here, and you're attacking me. Please stop.
There's no obvious wrong except from your point of view and you provided no evidence to prove the wrong.
I'm not making personal attacks, you are. There's a language barrier which prevents you from reading what was written with comprehension. You're obviously not native English speaker and I'm sure you skimmed the text before replying. I wrote nothing that's an attack, I can't read the text for you and I can't know how you read what others write as I'm not inside your head. All I can tell you wrote nothing about the original article, you jumped at a person and wrote that they write nationalistic lies. That's an attack.
I just wrote, politely, that due to barrier present - this might not be the best site for you to use and that there are others out there that are in-line with the way you communicate and topics you're interested in discussing.
Outright attacking someone about "nationalistic lies" without even knowing their nationality implies you assumed the nationality, identity and intent. That's not something smart people do, therefore - why not fly to your flock?
I'm unsure what offends you, I did not make you not smart. You did that yourself.
"Please find a different outlet for your nationalistic lies" also probably counts as a personal attack. Almost certainly it is against the site guidelines, which call for the most charitable interpretation of what others say.
What's funny to me is you can have all this "immersion" and then for most bigger markets you get some rando voicing for Brad Pitt. I can't believe e.g. Germans are ok with this. I can't watch Spanish movies with English voiceover, I'd rather have subtitles
Subtitles vs dubs/voiceovers are largely a cultural thing. I envy countries where movies/tv shows are pretty much exclusively subtitled, for example Sweden. Coincidentally, Swedes seem to be really fluent in English on average.
It's a win-win: you absorb languages for free as a child, and you later get to enjoy art in its original unmutilated form.
We also translate a lot of books, even though the profit margins aren't that big.
The main source of government-critical information during the Communist era were the radio transmitters (RFE, Czech broadcast of the BBC, Voice of America) which were hardest to stop. Those stations broadcast in Czech and Slovak. Anything that had to cross a physical customs point (movies, books) was heavily censored.
If you grow up with movies being fully dubbed in your native language you don’t question it much. Usually the same voice actor voices the same actor(s), so Brad Pitt has the same voice actor voice in all movies.
Dubbing movies becomes a problem when you are exposed to the actors’ original voice or the original audio track of movies because dubbing is a poor substitute. And hearing the same voice for different actors breaks immersion.
Hated? Wow. Pretty bold thing to say. I have a feeling that every boy gamer had a sister who played Sims on their pc back in the day. Sure, if you're identity is "hc gamer" you wont play "casual games" like Sims but I really feel like what Candy Crush is today, Sims used to be. Of course, the whole market was smaller then
More in regards to the way The Sims handled expansions. With every sequel, all the expansions you bought were worthless. They're not cheap either; an expansion cost the price of an AAA game. With The Sims, EA popularized the model of selling incomplete games.
I think the casual players are the ones who hated it the most, while those who played the Sims hardcore got the most out of their money.
Maybe I'm biased having grown up with the first 3 games and countless console spinoffs, but this only really became an issue with Sims 3 and especially with Sims 4.
Sims 3 was ambitious in scope and kept adding more. It's unplayable if you actually own all the content. Maxis coded themselves into a performance hole and couldn't get out. It stuck to Sims 2's Expansion and Stuff packs formula, with lots of Store content that drove revenue.
Sims 4 is much prettier but also dialed back. This lends well to what EA did by going even _deeper_ into the "spray and pray small amounts of content with huge prices" approach. It's no longer Expansion and Stuff packs with decent amounts of content, it's now various types that all have small-mid amounts for high prices:
- Expansion Packs
- Game Packs (mini expansions around one core concept)
- Stuff Packs
- Kits (mini stuff packs around one set of objects)
Part of it was "developer betrayal" - if you were a fan of the SimCity games, you might "eh" the Sims, but Spore was just not at all related (and overhyped, to be fair).
Is there really no other way to go around demographic ratios except by importing young people? Why can't we make economy work with less working people per retiree?
There are other solutions of course, like automation. With technology we can do more work on less time, and that is something we have done since the industrial revolution. It is a bit bizarre that on technology forum this is not go-to answer.
Automation will put more money into the pockets of people who own the companies, IP and capital. Everyone else did not get much from it for a while and got more and more burden of education to work in that automated workplaces shifted on them.
That would require productivity growth, which requires investment and training, rather than profit extraction from cash cows.
The West has got very used to living off cash cows.
The other option is to invest abroad, and repatriate the profit. Which is something else Japan has done, the Chinese are doing, and the West seems to have forgotten how to do.
>The other option is to invest abroad, and repatriate the profit.
In other words, colonialism. I wouldn't say the West "has forgotten"; they are still extremely good at it with careful financial engineering, they can operate it without looking like slave drivers.
The problem is there is only so many places you can invest and the west has burned enough bridges where any sovereign nation is incredibly careful when taking money from the west.
> Why can't we make economy work with less working people per retiree?
we can make any kind of economy we want (its a human invention after all) which then makes the answer a lot more political (there are many intertwining interests that don't want/cant change)
Economics is not a human invention. It is a discovery, a study of the feedback mechanisms that lead to certain distributions of resources. When you pretend otherwise you get mass famine.
We usually try to create rules of trade and property rights that prevent things like famine and violent conflict. This is because certain sets of rules would inevitably lead to these things. What rules produce the most stability and health are not known, figuring those out is a process of discovery, it is not up to people which rules work and which rules don't because what actually works with regard to distribution of resources depends on how the natural world works.
> what actually works with regard to distribution of resources
isnt economics much more than just distribution of resources? and distribution to what end? "what works" largely depends on what your trying to achieve, no?
for example, we could say that china is doing economics much better than the west (growing faster, better infrastructure, better education, more dynamism etc), if you wanted to say "what works" but im not sure most people here would want to follow that path...
i feel there is an inherent political aspect that arises in economics that is being ignored... but maybe im just crazy?
Economics is not more than just the distribution of resources, no. The goal is to have efficient distribution of resources so that people can have the things they need within their means if possible, and to find new ways to process resources to produce things that make peoples lives better.
What works is largely about what you're trying to achieve, which is why when you see people trying to achieve things other than what I said, you wind up with mass famine, forced migration, shortages, and unnecessary expense. You see these things because they're not trying to avoid these things, they have other goals in mind.
There is a political aspect to economics, in that those who want to siphon resources away from efficient distribution and towards their goals will use political machinery to coerce a population. You see this in many instances, ranging from holodomor to artificially inflated drug prices in the US.
The economic problem Japan faces is temporary while the demographic change from immigration would be permanent. It makes sense that the Japanese are avoiding it.
I don't have to imagine them because I see them while working for me or while talking to my friends who do the job. They go from coffee to coffee, work hard 6 hours for a day then take 2 days break, take 4 hour lunch breaks, say they are gonna come then come 2 days later, and many other stories. Now ALL of them hiked the prices 2x to 3x no matter the craft because of course THEIR material also "dramatically rose in price". Plumber, painter, glassworker, woodworker, electrician, you name it. Some things actually rose in price like steel or wood, but some rose only 20-30% and of course they double the price of work after the price of material "doubles".
How about GDPR, obligatory warranty periods, and other consumer protections? Also, there are things like Schengen which are not the same as EU. I always felt like EU is a citizen-centric union while USA is a business-centric union. Also, EU is progressing slowly with integrating various aspects of governing while trying to respect individuality of separate countries.
