I wasn’t the one to claim that, and neither was the person who opposed you, from all I could see.

There’s just not enough research/calculation done on drones vs. fireworks, and a lot has to be taken into consideration. How often are the drones used? Are they recycled at the end of life? Which materials are used in their production, and what is their source of energy? etc. etc.

The advantage of fireworks is that they are very simple and use little materials to produce, most of which are safe (but some are not great).

Drones, on the other hand, require a lot of lithium and cadmium, as well as other basic resources like metal/plastic, silicon etc., and some parts of their manufacturing involve high-end facilities that require a lot of resources to maintain correct conditions. All of this leads to high footprint of their manufacturing, and if you use such drone just a few times for some large-scale swarms and then forget about it for a while, this will get way less ecological than fireworks.

Don’t get me wrong, the technology is good and drones can absolutely be a superior option. But this heavily depends on how they’re used.

Batteries = genuinely bad.

Also, energy doesn’t always come from clean sources, and even then, they do have footprint of their own.

Please stop with such language, we had enough of it on every mainstream platform.

I genuinely call for civility here.

As per the substance, as already mentioned, the production and later disposal of drones does have ecological footprint that is very much not negligible.

And then 10 years in you should be able to change the part that’s broken and keep the fridge operational.

Exactly!

Right to repair is essential, and it’s crazy we allowed the situation to get where it currently is in the first place

Time to protect what was taken away.

Fair!

Yes, piracy and lackluster Internet regulation is one particularly good thing.

Also, costs are generally low, which greatly offsets the lower revenue. Russia is the fourth economy by GDP by purchasing power parity, so it’s not to be underestimated.

Fuel, food, electricity and water, and a lot of other stuff is WAY cheaper than in Europe. Some Europeans living near the border drive to Russia to this day to get some goods for cheap and also fuel their cars.

Russia has lush forests, a lot of water, and amazing nature. It does have polluted cities, but for the most of it, air quality is high.

Most people here have their own countryside summer home, which serves as a wonderful retreat.

Social security is not amazing, but good enough; also, healthcare is greatly improving in the last years, despite some of the sanctions (generally though, medical goods are allowed to enter Russia from everywhere)

On the flip side, the country is obviously ruled by a bloodthirsty maniac that crushes descent, sanctions lead to unavailability of many products and services, I cannot go to Finland to see my brother, and economy is screeching under the load of a war machine that kills our fellows (and Ukrainians were always seen from Russia as rogue, but beloved members of the Eastern Slavic family) for no valid reason.

Also, the economic consequences of war lead to all sorts of weird consequences; for example, high key interest rate meant to keep money inside results to completely crazy loan conditions, like mortgages with 19% APR - you are literally supposed to pay one fifth of a price for an accommodation AS INTEREST EVERY YEAR. Before war, it was in the 5-7% range. As such, house owning is not an option at all. Also, markets are highly volatile, and it is hard to save any money.

Real answer is planned obsolescence.

All of those systems can be maintained and serve for long. Electronics is not the culprit - it can serve for decades easily. Also, most people don’t need their fridge or whatever to be extra fancy.

But the producer really wants for their product to die - this forces you to buy another unit, which increases their revenue.

It is one thing to acknowledge the positives of a place you’re in, and other to be proud of some arbitrary landmass.

Europe is not worse than America, both have their upsides and downsides. I can say that as a Russian, and I also acknowledge the positives and negatives of living in Russia in general and my city in particular. All are good at something, and bad at something else.

At the same time, I do not want to leave my city. I have people here that I’m warmly related to and I feel safe and comfortable here; I know the city, know its unwritten rules, I feel myself at home. There are places in here I intimately know and adore. Moving cities would be a major pain for me, and at first I wouldn’t feel at my place; moving countries is straight up insane for me.

But I know this is because I’m used to the place and know it deeply, and feel comfy with that arrangement; if I would leave, I would feel nostalgic of times I’ve spent here, and I would always react more to any events that happen here, even when I leave. This is all my bias, and it is something we all have. I guess this is the core of local-level patriotism.

But it doesn’t make me hold special feelings towards the entirety of Russia. I have no ties with Siberia, to which I’ve never been, and to me it would be more foreign than, say, forests of Finland, which are way closer to what I see in my area and are more intimately familiar. Kamchatka is exotic to me, not familiar and warm. And I fail to understand why it should be different, other than for the will of the people in power who want to create some special Russian identity for me to be proud of.

Thanks, will check out! Most of Old Spice falls under “smell like your grandpa” in my opinion :D

Axe - true, though this is an abomination and I would definitely build a restriction zone around people who use it

Sure! I just think that this particular flavor of enthusiasm often serves as a slippery slope towards nationalism, and is often intended that way.

Which is why I see it as a rather toxic kind of mentality. There are many things to be enthusiastic about - people’s unity, new discoveries and achievements, or simply your cat coming for hugs.

None of them have terrible potential outcomes.

Indeed! Marketing in general is evil by itself

Also, as a man generally into gender role reversal, fuck gender stereotypes!

Yes, but I think the (true) point was that male-marketed products are always either:

• Arctic freshness 0°K we’ll make you feel like you’re naked on an iceberg in the middle of the North Pole

Or:

• Now you smell like your grandfather! Some wood, musk, and cedar cones

Why is it so and what does it tell of our society and weird expectations? A great deal of men do NOT appreciate this approach, and sure turn to the products marketed for women.

We should either break that insanely entrenched stereotype about “masculine” scents, or better just ditch product gendering altogether.

Yay for men smelling like vanilla and strawberry yoghurt!

DM is notoriously weird in how they place products to begin with :D

Good prices though!

Which will be the time to ditch planetary-level patriotism as well.

For now, it’s good enough.

Moreover, the entire concept of ownership is really just “you’ll face violence from other people if you try to take that away, one way or another”. That’s it.

Universe doesn’t care who owns what, those are just objects in space.

Sometimes this concept is helpful; you probably want the police to step in if someone breaks into your house (universe couldn’t care less). Sometimes it’s extremely dangerous, like when country leaders threaten others with nuclear war.

In either case, we should seriously revamp our relationships with land and property - that is for certain. Current ways are not sustainable and may lead to a disaster.

Refrigeration slows down development of molds, but at the same time expedites starch retrogradation, leading to the bread going stale quicker.

At the very least, yes.

Patriotism also sucks, because it implements a bias that can then be exploited, and brings very little to the table.

State-level patriotism also makes you complicit in the division of people by countries and nations, as opposed to classes and other valid groups of people.

And there is no valid reason to have some special relation to your country. It is natural to feel ties with the place you were born or the place you spent a lot of time in, this is human psychology, but your country is nothing but a piece of land that was marked by somebody as belonging to some virtual entity.

We should ditch state-level patriotism as a concept and treat local-level patriotism as a natural bias. We should strive to help people of all places and origins, and come together as one.