IIRC, this was the explicit purpose of games that came pre-installed on old computers like Minesweeper and Solitaire.

I've really enjoyed seeing Bert's slow realisation that he has a home now. Always cheers me up to see.

I don't have an exact figure but it's above 40 hours. Might be closer to 50 but I don't really stick to a consistent schedule in any case so I can only confidently say I pretty frequently go day-night-day and well into another night without being able to sleep.

What's with Ohlmarks' translations? I checked whose translations my books are and it turns out it's his and now I'm curious.

Yep, pretty much my thoughts on them as well. I haven't read the original english in years at this point so admittedly I can't really compare the two confidently in most things but I've always thought that the naming was uninspired at best and lost some of the meaning of the original.

And how do you explain Holodomor? Katyn? The Winter war? The annexation of the Baltic states? The Prague coup? The suppression of the Hungarian revolution? The suppression of the Prague spring? How does the Nazis being worse justify the authoritarian and imperialist things the USSR did?

The original question at stake here was why western Europe would want protection from Soviet invasion. I have provided a list of reasons. Should probably have put it earlier in the comment chain, but you haven't even pretended to adress it. I do acrually have some synpathy for your argument of the necessity of the USSR accepting the Molotov-Ribbentropp in the face of the weatern allies' refusal, but I still find it a rather weak argument considering how completely unprepared the USSR was when Barbarossa began, because they don't seem to have accomplished much with their vaunted breathing room. Not that any of this justifies the decades of occupation and oppression after the war.