Nope, I’m from Russia.

But then again, where does that not have its place? Are people in Europe, say, universally welcoming to immigrants? Or maybe Asia is not full of xenophobia? Africa, at least?..

There are much better factors of unity than being on a certain plot of land.

We can always do our best to make it closer.

Most people claim this to be Utopian, and then just try to tone it down in others, so their own compliance is not seen to themselves as weakness but rather “wisdom”. No - it is a surrender, an act of learned helplessness.

Sure, it’s hard to force politicians to abandon the concept of nations, and it’s hard to bring a revolt to a population so compliant.

But everyone can make personal steps.

First, admit that patriotism is bullshit. There is no ground to be patriotic, and nothing realistically unites you with your “nation”. You have more in common with a person of the same position on the other side of the globe than you have with the president of your very “own” country.

Second, watch your own preferences in people and what you factor in your decision. Maybe you give too much weight to where the person comes from? Is it that you label people in some way based on that characteristic alone?

Third, if you have the opportunity, form an international collective, reach out to specialists within other nations, or if you can’t, see if you can build a collective or even just a friend group with the immigrants around you.

Fourth - advocate for people in other countries, learn what they face, what they get to endure. For example - do you know that the deadliest of recent wars was not in Ukraine or Palestine, but in Ethiopia? What do you know about the current situation in Myanmar, aside from the Facebook drama? Did you consider supporting women rights’ causes in the Middle East?

Personal action and involvement will not allow you to fall for the traps the state tries to implant in your mind, and you’ll be personally responsible for a small, but proud piece of international cooperation - one that should become commonplace to the point when it wouldn’t make sense for anyone to draw divisions.

Human life is human life. Human suffering is human suffering - here or on the other side of the globe. The concepts of unity, hope, and cooperation are all universally recognized wherever you are. Why not step in?

We should band together based on mutual respect and common responsibility, and not based on someone telling us who to band with and who not to.

The concept of nation-state doesn’t allow us to band with whoever we like, and calls to unite with people born in place X (and commonly against people born in place Y). The concept of state in general oversees and dictates our relationships more broadly.

Multitude of states all fostering loyalty to their rulers doesn’t allow many people to look at those of other nations as equals and fellows with shared global goals. Sure, messages of international peace are commonplace, but hey, we should definitely exclude those pesky Chinese/Russians/Americans/Ukrainians/Israelis/Palestinians/whatever!

When we categorize people by nations through the lens of state, we put easy labels that are far from true. If someone’s a Russian, he sure supports war in Ukraine. If someone’s American, he sure is personally responsible for all the immigrant scare. If someone’s born in Israel or China, clearly he’s all on board with genocide!

At the same time, state-level patriotism fosters coming to terms with terrible people within the nation. Sure, our billionaires might be at fault in some ways, but it’s better than other country’s evil and corrupt billionaires! Our rulers are wise leaders, their rulers are cruel autocrats! My neighbor is a terrible person, but at least he’s not one of those <input the nation with bad stereotypes>!

It forces us to make preference to people who may not deserve our support, who might be actively undermining our causes, it leads us to close our eyes on the sufferings of others outside our arbitrary group that doesn’t even share our views and goals.

Now, I know it doesn’t have to be that extreme, but patriotism is always showing preference to someone or something based on a very arbitrary characteristic, instead of honest and fair consideration. It’s an intentionally cultivated fallacy.

On a personal note, I’d rather avoid ad hominem attacks if you’d like to keep a good faith discussion running. And, FYI, I never take any drugs, not even alcohol.

The state should not exist. We are people of Earth, and we should not be divided by someone. Divided, we are powerless to make a global change, and those who divide us reap all the benefits of this bullshit system.

State-level patriotism is always bullshit to begin with.

That’s how you’re tricked into loyalty based on the most arbitrary reasons.

Be the messenger of humanity and get curious about the Universe. People are brothers, and there’s no pride in being born in one plot of land over the other.

I would be fairly comfortable running a direct WireGuard connection even without Tailscale, but my location and use case simply won’t allow me to.

Your setup is valid, nothing wrong with it, and yes, it is more secure. Just can’t be used in my case.

It’s not illegal to use VPN in my area, but connections are blocked on a protocol level, both through OpenVPN and Wireguard.

I already managed to make caddy work, so, hooray!

I also found a setting on my router that fully isolates certain devices from the local network. I want to put the server in there, so that the rest of my LAN is not under threat. I also want to figure out VLANs.

That’s a good piece of advice, but due to several considerations (extreme censorship interrupting VPN connections, family using NAS for automatic backups, and some others) I cannot go that route.

Update: tried Caddy, love it, dead simple, super fast, and absolutely works!

For now just some experiments alongside NAS

Planning to host Bitwarden, Wallabag and other niceties on the server, and then when I get something more powerful, spin up Minecraft server and stuff

Nice to know!

Will try!

Interesting!

But I don’t want to mix it too much. I do have a Docker on it with just some essentials, but overall I’d like to keep NAS a storage unit and give the rest to a different server.

I treat NAS as an essential service and the other server as a place to play around without pressure to screw anything

I do remember that and take quite a few precautions. Also, nothing that can be serioisly used against me is in there.

I will eventually!

But for all I understand, it is to put many services on one machine, and I already have a NAS that is not going anywhere

No truly private photos ever enter the NAS, so on that front it should be fine.

VPN is not an option for several reasons, unfortunately.

But I do have a Let’s Encrypt certificate, firewall and I ban IP after 5 unsuccessful login attempts. I also have SSH disabled completely.

SSL Test gave me a rating of A

Oh, nice! So I don’t have just one, but many external IPs, one for every local device?

Where do I type rpi’s IP, just in port forwarding? Or somewhere else?

I want for Nginx proxy, controlled through the Manager, to direct traffic to different physical servers based on subdomain.

I put in nas.my.domain and I get my Synology on its DSM port. I put in pi.my.domain and I get a service on my Pi.

Just me and the people I trust, but there are certain inconveniences around using VPN for access.

First, I live in the jurisdiction that is heavily restrictive, so VPN is commonly in use to bypass censorship

Second, I sometimes access my data from computers I trust but can’t install VPN clients on

Third, I share my NAS resources with my family, and getting my mom to use a VPN every time she syncs her photos is near impossible

So, fully recognizing the risks, I feel like I have to expose a lot of my services.

Thanks for the pieces of advice! Yes, I tried to connect from external (mobile) network as well.