• 15 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Cures hiccups.

    I know it sounds bullshit, but I haven’t had a long hiccup session (read: longer than ~4-5 hiccups) in more than a decade, possibly two: I chill the fuck out.

    The instant it starts I take a deep breath, relax my esophagus/larynx/whatever, and put myself in the most Zen Buddha state of mind I can. I keep taking long, relaxed breaths. If another hiccup slips through I still remain a ketamine sloth, believing that it’s just the one or few passing hiccup.

    Most of the time I don’t get a second (third) one. It’s over in a matter of a few seconds.



  • I’ve been afraid of this since Magyar started his party (the first time I got worried was when he avoided a question about forming a possible coalition with Fidesz in case of winning the elections), but this far things are looking good: he wants to change the constitution (it’s not literally called a constitution anymore for (Fidesz) reasons, but you get it) so that literally nobody can be a prime minister for more than two terms. I understand this doesn’t prevent puppets and such, but if, IF, IF he is truly against corruption then considering everything else up to this point, there is a good reason to believe he won’t continue (most of?) Orbán’s policies.



  • He claims to be conservative, and he himself came from Fidesz, Orbán’s party. I would take everything with a pinch of salt, but considering his press conference, he looks promising:

    • Anti corruption: he is planning to set up a department specifically to get back all the money that the previous government funneled from public institutions via private funds into their own puppet organizations; he wants to undo the process that forced propaganda into every outlet the previous government bought into in the past 16 years

    • Pro EU, anti Russia: while he wants to strengthen relationships with EU states and wants to get out of the Russian grasp, he is aware of the effect on economy, therefore wants to resume deals with Russia once the conflict has been resolved (not before, though). His aim is to diversify the sources of gas and oil so that the country won’t get into a similar trap again.

    • He seemed intentionally quiet about LGBT topics throughout his own campaign, and again: he claims to be conservative. However, Orbán’s government often used dirty smearing campaigns (often resorting to blatant lies) against their political opponents. Once you shook hands once with a previously awful prime minister, your photo got everywhere on the streets, claiming that you two are in cahoots - even if that was just a single meeting, regardless of the topic. There was a case when they mocked up a photo about a far right leader being gay (and another about him being pro Muslim). No matter how ridiculous that was (knowing this leader), it has done enough damage to his image to get him to resign from his post. My guess is that Magyar has been trying to avoid these subjects to avoid giving a basis for a smearing campaign. After the elections he seemed to be at the very least neutral about LGBT topics, but I don’t recall any measures to undo the awfully bigoted laws currently in place.

    • Apart from the EU, he will try and strengthen relations with the neighboring states. In the case of a few countries, his bare minimum terms are about the improvement of the situation of Hungarian minorities in those states, especially considering Slovakia and Ukraine, but in general he is making an effort to “fill the ditches/moats/trenches dug by Orbán’s government” (I’m sorry, I got too lazy to look up the correct term, but this is how it’s phrased in Hungarian, approximately).







    • taking the quality of political discourse from not great to flinging excrement at each other

    • intentionally dividing society, making the two sides more hostile toward each other and making one part scapegoat for the other, to the point of overusing the word ‘traitor’

    • gerrymandering done so extensively that he had to resort to explaining the problems with his very own creation to his voters, because the system magnifies the differences, giving you a 2/3 majority of the seats even by just winning 52%/40% (hence the radical change from government 2/3 to opposition 2/3 over one term).

    • environmental damage to several areas due to covering up the failure of safety measures around various, newly built battery factories. Cadmium, cobalt and similarly dangerous substances seeping into the soil and groundwater.

    • health care system neglected and severely underfunded (soap, toilet paper and/or seats missing from hospitals, workers underpaid, air con not working during the peak summer heat, staffing issues, etc.)

    • education system kept underfunded and dumbed down to get more low skilled workers for the industry

    There might be more, but all of the above will take several years (possibly >4 years) to undo, and global economy isn’t helping, either - all this after stealing stellar amounts of money and leaving an empty treasury for the next government. I don’t have high hopes for anyone trying to steer this back from disaster under just one term.