I can't follow you. Where is the connection between lockdowns (I assume you mean the Covid19 lockdowns?) and the war in Ukraine?

I'm by no means an expert in international relations. However, with respect to your last paragraph, I do think that China monitors the development carefully. I would even go so far and assume that they won't act on Taiwan until the situation in the Ukraine is decided. Not because the cases are so similar, but because China and Russia seem to be important partners for each other. Right now, China is supporting Russia financially by buying resources from them (if I'm not mistaken) and also supporting them with equipment embargoed by the EU/US. China will probably know what it's risking when they attack Taiwan and I doubt that they want to create that sort of situation while one of their most important partners (might be mistaken here) is in a war that binds their resources and weakens their support for China.

On the other hand, they could also try to start the war on Taiwan soon, hoping that NATO/US stretch their support too thin.

Tl;Dr: I don't know either.

I definitely do not want to defend Tesla here, but other manufacturers are unfortunately following the same path. It's ridiculous. BMW is putting most of the extra features into the car on a technical level, but lock them down so you can't use them unless you pay a fucking monthly subscription for e.g. the seat heaters. What the actual fuck has gotten into manufacturers?

And the touchscreens? I'm soooo glad that the German equivalent to road and safety announced that the safety rating of cars will go down in the future if there are no haptic controls. I definitely like a sleek appearance, but form follows function for fucks sake.

/rant

What bugged me and ultimately drove me to leave Instagram was the wording. In the prompt, they said something along the lines of "we will not use your data for advertising". And I thought, wtf, I don't want you to collect my data in the first place.

Paywalled :(

Ummm... What water filter?

I mostly second this. I have a mantra "Embrace the uncomfortable". Not in a "work yourself to death for some number" kind of way, but in a "go outside, even if its raining" kind of way. It helps me to appreciate small comforts afterwards and reduces the amount of energy needed to do stuff.

Don't remember if it was a short-time thing, but Lidl did promise once to match the prices between plant-based and non-plant-based products.

"We need a new propulsion system." "Nah, just slap a blender on it and we're fine."

Also ich halt da ja einfach immer nen Lappen vor.

Kommt mir vor wie ein Traum...

In case anyone wants to read up on it

Oder einem Vorschlag zu liefern, wo denn Fachkräfte herkommen sollen. Ist ja nicht branchenspezifisch, das Problem. Wir haben einen Arbeitskräftemangel.

And apparently, they also have eyes.

Have you heard of "Themes"?

Companies would start to buy houses that they can rent for cheap, but never fix anything in that house. I confidently believe that this idea would worsen the situation.

I'm having some conflicts when it comes to lineage and similar OS. While, yes, they might be better from a privacy perspective (if you put the effort into it) and allow you to keep your phone longer, I simply do not trust that the OS can't be tampered with. For many devices, there is a single person maintaining that version of lineage. Who guarantees that they don't pipe important information to some server in a more or less clever way? This should not be misunderstood as an argument for closed source. The problems I'm having with this type of open source is that the code differs from device to device, it is (at least as far as I know) possible to change enough of the code to become malicious while adapting it to another device, I don't have the capacities to make sure that the code is actually safe, and they are not regularly audited. Hell, in some cases they are even provided without checksums. So you trade the spying eyes against a possible barn door of insecurities.

Therefore, I much rather use audited ROMs like Graphene or Calyx, but they (mostly) require a device from the company that I am trying to avoid. It's such a weird situation...

Seriously curious: why is that?

What a dissapointment.

"Underground" is mentioned in the text above. I know that some people are considering to store heavy blocks connected to ropes in the shafts (?) of old coal mines that go down hundreds of meter. Use a single, very heavy block and you're good to go. Though I don't think that it holds a significant amount of energy (too lazy to calculate and no feeling for the possible dimensions of such a block). Also, digging new shafts should be prohibitively expensive for energy storage.