In terms of surveillance. It has been.

There are several types.

Spotter drones for surveillance and artillery correction. More expensive sensors. Sometimes can deploy other drones.

Grenade dropper drones. They drop several types of grenades. Sometimes several of them. Can be reloaded&reused.

Loitering munitions, basically drone guided artillery munitions. Also there are smaller ones with just grenades. They explode on contact/command. Not reused.

Yeah, on this particular part of the front they’ve advanced 14 kilometers in two years with horrific casualties and loss of materiel.

They usually use several drones to take out a T90. But it is still a good ROI.

You need at least two drones for every Russian. You have to account for misses, malfunctions, EW, interceptions etc.

I am glad that it is a proxy war. Which is why it baffles me to no end why Europe doesn’t support Ukraine more.

They have been trying to avoid conscripting from Moscow and Saint Petersburg. But they are running out of able bodied men outside those regions. There have been videos of men over 60 and men with health conditions that would preclude them from serving in a sane country. So I don’t think they are that far off. Because when they start conscripting from M and SP they are seriously hurting their economy.

A former ice hockey magnate. Very much a boomer. People either like him or dislike him for his antics.

Currently driving through a change in policy that would disallow closing streets for construction. Which is a good thing because the city has been too lax in this regard.

This is quite understandable since pandas only eat a specific type of bamboo which does not grow in Finland. So had to fly it in every few days from the Netherlands. And they eat quite a lot of it. So costs mounted over time.

The US have the benefit of essentially limitless immigration

Except that even in the Americas the population is declining. There is a limit to it. The US can outlast many other countries because of immigration but it too has to face the same problem as everyone else.

For me the chain is similar but longer.

Fidonet BBS’s -> Internet Newsgroups over NNTP -> Slashdot -> Digg -> Reddit -> Fediverse

A prime example of this is the current Finnish government. The traditionally moderate right-wing party has allied itself with the more extreme populist right-wing party. And even though the moderate party won the most votes. It is the populist party that seems to be making all the important decisions. All the while they are both dismantling the welfare system that allowed Finland to become what it is.

Except that is not what has happened here. X has refused to follow Brazilian law. And was given ample opportunity to remedy the situation. They refused.

There are plenty of other fora on the Internet. Banning Twitter will not stop discussion.

Hypotheticals and thought expirements can be used for valid purposes. But when you are using them to divert a conversation for the purposes of your personal agenda. To give a false impression of something that didn’t happen. Then it becomes whataboutism. And given that you are not contributing anything to the discussion beyond whataboutism and insults. And being called out for it. I’d say you can stop trolling now. You’re not convincing anybody.

And no that is not an echo chamber. That is people telling you what you are doing is wrong.

Whataboutism, look it up.

For me it’s Russian invasion of Ukraine. With a few local politicians doing stupid things mixed in.

Western sanctions. Seizure of said profits. Inability to spend any of it on things they want. Devaluation of the ruble. Shrinking Russian economy.

These may not affect the very top that much. At least not for a while. But there are a lot of middle managers that got used to the good things in life.

A succulent Chinese meal?

Don’t we all. Seriously, this is going on in most industrialised countries.

Only when it cuts into their profits.