Russia is blindly lobbing inaccurate Soviet-era missiles into the heart of Ukraine with the knowledge that they’ll be hitting tons of civilians. I don’t know the exact thinking behind choosing that method of attack. I’m not sure that air attacks make that much sense. Ukraine already did pretty well in repelling air attacks in the opening stages of the war, so I doubt Russia wants to risk expensive aircraft to surface-to-air defenses. But it definitely isn’t making its victims have warm fuzzy feelings towards Russia, and this poll reflects that.
But that’s the thing, smartphones make them less of a “petty bourgeoisie pleasure”. It’s not uncommon for a person of quite modest means to have a smartphone. That opens up all sorts of possibilities: payments, formal banking, messaging, job connections.
Also, smartphones can provide a benefit that dedicated devices don’t: they are there all the time. We never would have seen justice for George Floyd if bystanders hadn’t provided multiple videos, and the same with Ahmed Avery. The often shocking police tactics in putting down protests would have gone undocumented. This extends into professional journalism as well, with the non-photographer reporters getting some training on how to use their smartphones to get quick photos of moments that would have been lost before because there wasn’t a photographer available. And despite what you say, the camera can often produce a perfectly acceptable result.
If you really need gps for real stuff…
Wait… real stuff like… getting somewhere??? Turns out phones are plenty good at that.
I would be curious to see how well they were able to represent the totality of Ukraine’s population if we’re including the occupied regions. Those likely would have different characteristics. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if this more or less reflects the underlying sentiment fairly accurately, given that Russia has spent the last few months running tanks into Ukraine and indiscriminately lobbing missiles at shopping malls and apartment buildings.
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans by Milton Mayer
The book is an account of interviews with rank-and-file Nazi party members from interviews done by a Jewish journalist (he did not disclose his ethnicity/faith). It’s an interesting ground level view into Germany’s descent into fascist rule and genocide. It contained some surprises for me as someone who’s been brought up with a view of the Nazi Party as pure, unadulterated evil. It was obviously evil in so many ways, but it also helped care for its members in a way that the establishment politicians had failed at. There were a lot of parallels with the present day that I felt were informative.
Edit: The reason why I think it’s important to have a clear view of the Nazi Party (or any political movement) is that when we view movements as only caricatures then we can miss a descent into evil. After all, look at all the good that X group is doing! They make sure everyone is fed and housed. You’re just biased, always complaining about how they keep locking up their critics and oppressing minority groups.
The thing is that combining those dedicated devices makes for a device that you can carry in your pocket all the time. It’s simply not feasible to carry a dedicated camera, web browser, GPS/Maps unit, cell phone, music player, and so on. But when they’re all packed into one unit, they can be easily carried. The different pieces of functionality can also compliment each other so much more easily as apps.
All this would require a purpose built device otherwise. By making it an app, it’s just a few bytes on the internal storage.
The memorial is an admission of a war crime. This was after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union made an agreement to split up and gobble down Poland. Given that Putin is basing his justification for this invasion of Ukraine on Nazis, it is a little ironic that he’s dismantling a memorial that marks a dark point when the Soviet Union collaborated with Nazis.
At least the US doesn’t harbor cybercriminals that target civilian infrastructure like Russia does. Hospitals, schools, and banks have all been harmed with the full approval of the Russian government.