My understanding is that the Congress of Soviets was replaced with the Supreme Soviet, the democratic structure was changed but the Soviets remained, just shifted in form, and could still be used democratically, just not in all cases.

I believe this is true, but I would argue that the fundamental change was that non-Party candidates were almost never allowed to run. As I noted, this is not due to a constitutional change but rather a change in electoral tradition. Anecdotally, as a result of this, all three my grandparents didn’t feel represented by their deputies/delegates, and welcomed that part of the Perestroyka changes, when the rules were relaxed and more alternative candidates appeared.

A good analogy is that most local governments in the US run uncontested.

I believe this to also be a non-ideal situation (especially given the two-party system where neither represents the working class). However, aren’t there at least party primaries, so that one can choose which candidate from the dominant party “runs” for the uncontested election? Whereas in USSR the candidates were chosen by the Party and not the electorate directly. (my understanding of the US electoral system is lacking, so I may be wrong here).

That’s why I stressed reading Blackshirts and Reds, which dispels the mythology and takes a critical, nuances look at the USSR.

Thanks for the recommendation! I’ve started to read it a while ago, and mostly agreed with the contents. I’ll have to pick it up again.

Soviets were de-facto abolished after 1936 (not due to the constitution itself, rather “by tradition”). While there technically were elections, in almost all cases there was only one candidate. The three of my grandparents that I grew up with (all proudly working-class - teacher, engineer and doctor, born in 1930s), never participated in elections with more than one candidate until Perestroyka (at which point the communist project was on its deathbed).

Note that I’m not even anti-USSR, it’s still markedly better than the bullshit capitalist systems. There actually was plenty of workspace democracy, and some local democracy, but I don’t think we should glorify it as some bastion of democracy. There still unfortunately was a kind of ruling class - the Party and MGB/KGB (but I should note that it was much easier for a working-class person to join their ranks than it is in capitalist “democracies”). Rather, learn from what it got right, and fix what it got wrong.

Yes, that can happen sometimes, but I find that there are plenty of cheap options with unlocked bootloaders if you look for them.

Nah, cheap phones often have their bootloader unlocked/unlockable. Really happy with my POCO M5 running modified AOSP. Also, unlike every expensive phone nowadays, it has 3.5mm jack, SD card slot, and exceptional battery life for hiking/trekking (it survives 5-6 days as just a camera+map phone with all power saving on, in comparison people with flagships typically only last 2-3 days with the same usage and power-saving techniques).

You can almost always replace the battery, even when the manufacturer doesn’t want you to. As for flashlights, they typically come with easily user-replaceable ones, often even sold separately. Worst-case, you can get a AA or AAA flashlight and use rechargeable AA/AAAs.

I’ve paid quite a lot for my second headlamp for hiking, but I am really happy with the purchase as it’s very light (35 g) compared to my first cheapo one (~120 g), while being the same 200 lm max. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough for me to not even notice it, while the heavy one was getting annoying after a while.

I’d say it depends. For safety-critical stuff maybe, but for a headlamp or something I prefer rechargeable as I can easily recharge it from a power bank or a portable solar panel if needed. If you run out of a disposable battery for whatever reason, you’re screwed.

I’m not sure you should “cheap out” on headphones per se. The really cheap ones are usually horrible, both in terms of sound quality, usability and comfort (well, except for wired Apple ones, allegedly, though they never fit me right). It’s just that it makes no sense to go for really expensive ones, unless you’re really into audio and love hearing the tiny sound reproduction differences between them, or enjoying the different tech etc. The middle ground of $50-$100 for in-ears and $100-300 for over-ears will often offer you good/great/excellent sound quality and the same usability&comfort as more expensive ones.

Navalniy and his team openly supported the annexation of Crimea (and destruction of Ukrainian and Crimean Tartar culture).

Not really: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/opinion/how-to-punish-putin.html ; this is just days after the annexation. I’m no fan of Navalny for various reasons (his nationalist views, xenophobic comments and narratives, etc), but he was very much against all Putin’s shenanigans in Ukraine, and vehemently anti-war.

The recently exchanged “dissidents” also showed their true colours by supporting the annexation of currently occupied territories in Ukraine.

What are you on about? Name one of them who supported the war. Most of them were jailed due to their anti-war positions.

Upon further inspection, it’s almost definitely AI. Look at the better-quality original: https://in.pinterest.com/pin/937874691150982659/

In particular, note the nonsensical reflection in the mirror (which is inexplicably placed on the floor?), weird toilet paper roll, and half-unicorn horn half-third ear thing sticking out from the head.

And if you check out that Pinterest account, it’s full of AI-generated crap too.

Which mostly just demonstrates how good the AI has become, to the point where if you scale down the image somewhat, it fools humans and AI detectors alike.

Yep! I’ve been running NixOS on Librem 5, which is aarch64, and everything I needed was available straight from the cache, which was nice.

“Number of packages” is kinda hard to define. A good approximation can be done by searching for the relevant arch name on the latest nixpkgs eval on Hydra and looking at “Still succeeding jobs” + “Newly succeeding jobs”. Here’s the links for aarch64-linux (61481 total) and x86_64-linux (72227 total) for example. I don’t think there’s a way to easily get historical data, you probably have to write a script that queries hydra or something.