So they know what the law says, they just know what it means.

What would you consider to be enough?

A puny .22 LR round can still punch through a frozen turkey wrapped in two layers of denim at 300 yards.

Actually hitting things at that distance will be difficult, and then there's bullet drop. But the bullet can still be plenty deadly at even extreme distances.

It depends on the state and the gun. In WA, for example, carrying a loaded rifle or shotgun in a car is illegal (and "in" is defined very broadly here, often to the point of even just leaning a loaded gun against a parked car). But carrying a loaded handgun concealed (in the car) is fine so long as you have a permit. The question is, what counts as "concealed" here. If you were to, say, mount it inside and rig up a pipe such that it has a line of fire, I think it would, strictly speaking, meet the definition.

What if it's a trans pre-teen girl?

(yes, they do exist these days)

Episode 1? Good writing? Seriously?

This is the single most ridiculous thing you've said in this thread so far, and you've said plenty of ridiculous things already.

While we're at it, Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.2 has also been released at the same time. In addition to VS 2015 support, this is mainly a bugfix and do-small-features-that-never-make-the-bar release. If you're a Python developer on Windows, please give it a try, especially if you've never heard about it before. Feel free to tell me that we suck so long as you also file a bug in the tracker. ~

(Full disclosure: I am a developer on the PTVS team.)

In terms of ethnic descent, this is definitely the case. Not just steppes, though, but also forests. Most of what is Central and Northern European part of Russia today was one giant forest ~1000 years ago, with small settlements along the rivers living off the trade with passing ships selling fur, amber and other similar goods for export. Mostly Slavonic, but also a significant Finno-Ugric component.

The Byzantium "descent" is more spiritual in nature, through the acceptance Orthodoxy. Though there's also a partial blood claim specifically for the past ruling dynasties, because several rulers have married Byzantine princesses (most notably, Vladimir the Great, who forcibly converted the entire country to Greek Christianity, stipulated his marriage to the daughter of then-current Eastern Roman Emperor as one of his conditions, acceptance of which was forced basically at swordpoint). But for most people, it's about being the largest Eastern Orthodox country in the world.

After the collapse of the USSR, there was a fairly significant religious revival movement that was primarily anti-communist in nature. Restoring the old traditions and all that. Most people didn't really become seriously religious, though, being more of a token Christians - you know, baptizing their kids and celebrating the prominent religious holidays (save for "inconvenient" ones like Lent), and occasionally attending Church services, but not really capable of articulating the theology well, and overall treating it more as a part of national identity. Government has contributed to the revival somewhat by transferring some of the original Church property that was confiscated from it under communists back, and in some cases funding new construction efforts, but otherwise not really stepping in. Atheism also remained pretty significant, though - more so than in, say, US today.

However, in the past decade or so, there has been a steady rise in government support of Orthodoxy as preferential religion, and clear attempts to make it into some kind of national ideology. Schools now have "the fundamentals of Orthodox culture" as a class, though it's still opt-in in theory (in practice it varies on the school, and some places put a strong social pressure on students to opt in). Most government-sponsored patriotic organizations for youth etc also emphasize religion. Blasphemy laws have been effectively introduced under the guise of "protecting the religious sentiment". There are still quite a few atheists, but the trend is clearly against them. I see a lot more religious kids online, and even my own generation (I'm 30) seems to be more outwardly religious now than we used to be in our 20s.

This all has accelerated especially with the whole Crimea/Ukraine thing going on - state TV channels during Maidan went to great lengths to point out that many protesters were affiliated with Catholic (often Eastern Rite) or Protestant churches, for example. And the ideological basis for the insurgents in Donbass is heavily rooted in religion and geopolitical messianism - they really think that they're fighting Satan there.

It's an Orthodox thing in general. Catholics are considered heretics, originally because they have changed the Nicene Creed slightly - look up "Filioque" if you are interested in theological details - causing the Great Schism between the Western church in Rome, and the Eastern churches associated with Constantinople. Since then, a bunch of other newly introduced Catholic doctrines were also considered heretical, such as papal infallibility.

Curiously enough, Catholics see Orthodox as schismatics but not heretics - i.e. not wrong on any matters of doctrine per se, just not obeying the proper church hierarchy (which is why Eastern Rite Catholic churches are basically Orthodox in all outside appearances and in most doctrinal issues, except that they acknowledge papal primacy and accept Roman Catholic rites as equally valid).

In truth, of course, the schism was more about politics than doctrinal differences. Popes wanted to be the supreme authority on all matters Christian, while Patriarchs of the other four churches of the original Pentarchy believed that they're all co-equal, and that Popes may only enjoy some honorific preferential treatment, but no real power over and above that of any other Patriarch.

You met me for one :)

In truth, though, "Third Rome" is part of the history textbooks. I don't know how it is presented today, but back when I studied history in school it was fairly neutral, but certainly featured quite prominently, largely because it was an important part of the founding myth of the first czars after post-Mongol reunification.

Also, pretty much any devout Eastern Orthodox Russian will know quite a lot about Byzantium for the simple reason that it's where the Russian church tradition originates - even many words for various associated concepts are basically transliterated Greek words. And most of the recognized Fathers of the Church, martyrs and saints are also from that period, and as religious people study their lives, they also learn about the history of that period, at least to the extent relevant to their goal (which includes some customs, government system etc).

There's one other related thing that was appropriated from Byzantium wholesale, and often presented as one of the key features of the "genuine Russian" (as opposed to Western democracy) sociopolitical arrangement by those with a religious bent - symphonia. It meshes very well with the authoritarian state backed by religious ideology that Putin has been building over the past few years, so it has a resurgence of popularity lately.

The traditional Orthodox approach to that was to claim that Soviet rule was basically a kind of divine collective punishment for abandoning "Third Rome", divinely instituted autocracy etc. From that perspective, the rejection of communist ideology after the dissolution of the USSR and the revival of the Church were repentance, and, consequently, the present arrangement derives directly from Imperial Russia (and through it from Muscovy, Byzantium and Rome), skipping the Soviet period altogether.

Of late, though, this is a much less popular view, because it also glosses over WW2, the important part of the USSR/Russia (to most today this is synonymous) national mythology. Especially so as it goes along well with the overall messianic idea of Third Rome - you know, that whole "save the world from pure evil" thing. Consequently, there have been some, shall we say, creative reinterpretations. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a few: 1 2 3. Basically, Stalin is presented as a return to the theocratic-autocratic tradition after the "satanic" rule of the Bolsheviks, with emphasis on his revival of the Church, the return of conservative social mores (e.g. making homosexuality and abortions illegal again), and victory over external foes - all divinely inspired, of course.

In fact, there's now an entire new category of WW2 myths that seek to imbue it with a religious context - for example, there's one about the Battle of Moscow, which claims that when at some point defeat was practically inevitable, Stalin ordered a specific highly venerated Orthodox icon of Mary to be loaded on a plane, and that plane circled Moscow - and after that, the German advance was stopped and ultimately repulsed.

If this all sounds like a very dangerous concoction, that's because it is. Stalinists and Orthodox fanatics were both dangerous each in their own way, but at least they used to fight each other. Now they have mostly found common ground and a common enemy - individual freedom, liberalism in general, and most everything else associated with the Western civilization today.

They actually don't. They are very much aware of the Byzantine connection and are proud of it. Look up "Third Rome" to see what I mean.

Yeah. It basically happens every time Russia goes on another period of anti-liberalism, because it's convenient to equate liberalism and Europe (esp. Western Europe) and its offshoots, and then go ranting about the clash of civilizations etc. Third Rome actually kinda sorta plays into this also, because from that perspective Russia is basically the only remaining piece of true Christian Europe, and everyone else are degenerate, distorted remains (well maybe except Serbs). Or, alternatively, temporary occupied and has to be liberated from whatever is the problem (ZOG, American influence etc - whatever is a convenient scapegoat in the circumstances).

Well, we could always just pick some particularly retarded Reddit submission or thread, and talk about how it's dying and how Slashdot is next etc.

You still don't get it, either. The existence of those stereotypes is well known to the authors. They have a choice of coming up with truly alien aliens, or at least mixing traits up such that they don't reflect any known stereotype. When they do quite obviously pick traits such that they add to a very distinct and recognizable existing stereotype, they cannot blame the audience for reacting accordingly.

(And, of course, reusing an existing accent is something that is inherently an Earth thing. The moment you bring that into the picture, there's no dodging the bullet of dragging the associated stereotypes.)

Culturally, Russia (well, the dominant culture in it, since it's technically multicultural) is very much Eastern European. It's quite obvious even from history alone, since it was always a major player specifically in the European political games, the elites (including the ruling dynasties) have actively intermarried etc. It had some periods during which it swung somewhat away from its European roots and towards Asian external influences - notably, the late Kievan Rus / early Muscovy period, roughly Mongol invasion to Peter the Great. But overall it always remained closer to Europe in overall feel.

Geographically, vast majority of the population (again, especially that of the dominant culture) is also located in Europe, i.e. west of Urals.

There's no reason why we can't combine these for greater efficiency. Here's a proposal for the story next week: "Does systemd suck because it has too few female developers?".

Are you confusing correlation and causation? Because race certainly correlates with education, and through it transitively with competence. No-one is saying that the race is what causes that correlation, but it's trivial to observe.