schnurrito

Dubai is likely the most well-known part of the UAE, so you may have heard people mention Dubai as if it were a country (because the audience might associate more with "Dubai" than "UAE"), without them meaning to imply that it's a real country.

There are certainly irredentist movements in many parts of the world that want to restore previous states of geopolitics, including the existence of the Soviet Union.

A country is ultimately a country if it is recognized as such by other countries. There are videos on the Internet that give greater details (search for keywords like "how many countries are there"). There are many places that some other countries say are countries, others not.

???

Out of the ones you mention, Dubai is in fact not a real country and I have not seen anyone claim that it is; it is a city and region of the country called the United Arab Emirates.

Israel isn't universally recognized by all countries because some countries claim it is illegitimate (for religious reasons, because they say it is a colonialist project, etc. etc.).

Belgium is a country with different parts speaking different languages also spoken in neighboring countries, that is why some people have claimed it's not (culturally) its own country, but I don't think anyone seriously refuses to recognize it as a country.

As for Latvia, no idea whatsoever what you're talking about.

So the question as asked is unanswerable because you're giving confusing and inconsistent examples.

not heard of it before, do you want to explain what it is or does everyone who is like me have to separately do a web search for it?

Oh look at Mr. Popular here who has friends to play games with

And was mocked where it was first posted too I'm pretty sure.

I mean most bus lanes are empty most of the time, that's kinda the point, to give buses an otherwise empty lane.

I remember reading some COVID-related news from there, though that wasn't on the fediverse because I wasn't on the fediverse yet at the time.

Why can I only read the word "methamphetamine" in Trevor Philips's voice?

I use neither Arch nor Ubuntu, btw

For a link, you'll see it after posting if it appears in the list of places the link has been crossposted to, at which point you can delete it.

An image, that is more technically challenging because it requires detecting whether two images are the same, which is not as trivial as it sounds. But for images, I think reposts are no big deal anyway, many people will not have seen it the first time.

Those are all good points, except of course that "live problem-solving sessions" and "trial work periods" were definitely already a thing at my current job, yet the employer needed the résumé to decide whether to invite/consider me for that in the first place.

I have been using Linux since my mid-teens in the late 2000s (with interruptions). In the late 2000s and early 2010s I really did do a lot of tinkering with the computer, but nowadays I rarely even install new software and hardly ever think of my operating system, at all.