Soot [any]

What is this aggressive response?

It was clearly an observation, not an insult - there was no need to try start arguments off it.

I appreciate we can agree on the NATO wrongdoings, that’s cool, thank you.

I’m not saying Russia never tortured or cremated anybody. Every party to this conflict has done that in the droves. But it’s disingenuous to imply that peace under Russia means exceptional mass torture and death squads. “Peace” before Russia invaded was 8 years of civil war where Ukraine killed its own civilians with artillery every day.

Elections under the Ukrainian boot are no good either. Democratic parties were (and are) frequently made illegal on spurious grounds, corruption is rife, heck, the elected president got ruddy coup’d not that long ago. We certainly hear of more publicised political killings in Russia than in the west, what the truth is I don’t know, but I think the chasm in difference of democratic ‘quality’ is a lot less than we care to tell ourselves.

I don’t see NATO wading into Ukraine wanting to torture and kill people.

NATO waded into Afghanistan and Iraq and killed two million civilians. NATO is funding and participating in an ongoing genocide. They’ve killed many, many more. Guantanamo Bay is an illegal torture facility, there are undoubtedly hundreds more we haven’t heard of. The downfall of its hegemony would see the lives of millions of people saved globally.

Russian peace means russian torture chambers and mobile crematoriums for Ukranian opposition. Followed by generations of autocracy.

What makes you say that? You must understand that’s a cartoonishly unreal accusation, right? Yeah, Russian democracy sucks, but not meaningfully moreso than Ukrainian or most Western democracies.

Fighting for the re-conquering and oppression of the eastern half of Ukraine (i.e. DPR and LPR), oppressing Russophones and continuing to explicitly deny the regions a right to self-determination. Zelenskyy already admitted they would not vote to stay part of Ukraine given the chance. That will not be a happy outcome for a lot of people either.

Nobody here thinks Putin is a communist, he’s a capitalist bastard, but he is the lesser evil opposing the even bigger imperialist entity known as NATO.

How is it “good news” that the Ukrainian war will keep being supplied and enable people to keep dying pointlessly for a long time yet?

The only real '“good” development here would be one that sees immediate and serious peace negotiations; instead of throwing Ukrainians into a blender for the sake of global posturing while shouting “Putler”.

without needing to redesign cities from the ground up to be more walkable

Which honestly China is also constantly doing

As a European, it’s been a long time coming. I would say tide turned in favour of it and both Ukraine and Israel-Gaza have been important factors - Most countries suddenly decided they didn’t have enough sway over public support for Western imperialism. And the big part of that has been the internet.

Android is already thoroughly Linux-based ;) You just called all android users nerds!

Governments have persistently censored and surveilled the internet ever-more on the basis of “but the children :(” without ever doing a single actually good thing for the children like decreasing class sizes or letting parents spend more time with their children. Both of which would actually help address the issue.

This is the equivalent of abstinence education, just keep 'em ignorant and then when they finally see porn on superundergroundillegalporn.com.illegal it’ll just be 10x worse.

You’re not wrong, but it absolutely is getting worse.

This sums up in two sentences why I never really fancied visiting the US

I do agree. But calling the UK Orwellian is kind of funny, given Orwell’s 1984 is largely, if not mostly, based on the UK:

• Like Winston, Orwell worked in the UK as a war propagandist, and lamented that he constantly had to lie and censor facts, but thought it worth it to defeat the Nazis.
• The ‘ministries’ were entirely based on the UK’s, especially e.g. the ‘Ministry of Defense’ actually being a ministry of war.
• Orwell complained that the UK secret police constantly opened all his letters because he was a commie.
• Room 101 and the Ministry of Truth is basically just satire of the BBC.

As well as cultural changes in the 80s-90s, I think people don’t quite realise how much the internet ‘escaped’ the grasp of governments for the past few decades. By constantly banging the drum of “what about the children D:”, governments are finally just catching up to where we used to be.