What do you mean? What is the strategic value of banning western luxury brands in russia, is that the question?
volvoxvsmarla
joined 2 years ago
I do care a lot about that. Brands claiming they are pulling out of Russia because they got the moral high ground and/or sanctions just to sneak back in because they still can make additional profit in this market. Especially luxury brands. As long as you are rich, you won't care about sanctions and risen prices. And again the poorest people who are already suffering and are completely powerless politically suffer the most, be it from inflation, drafting, or sanctions. So fuck all those brands for making sanctions even less useful than they are, for catering to the oligarchs who give a fuck about their country going to shit and people dying.
Unfortunately most western brands still find their way to the russian market.
I thought it was 500. I think I even read that 50 might be enough by some estimates.
As someone living in Germany, I am so pissed at everyone for being pissed about the current government. It is a coalition of three parties that inherited a country that was led by one person for 16 years, post pandemic, and was hit with two huge wars that they are inevitably involved in. Cut them some slack, maybe? I honestly feel like I am the only one thinking they did quite OK. Give them some time (and fire Lindner) at least. But no, let's be mad that they didn't solve recession, climate change, didn't establish world peace and got the country out of its stillstand of one and a half decades within three years.
Nice! That's a great sign of how our mind can control our body. Something that we biomedics sometimes struggle with, in our eternal search for pathways.
I often had this when I had to study for exams. I was so stressed that I didn't allow myself to get sick, and once the last exam was done, the stress level fell and I got so sick.
That might actually be cortisol released by a stress response. Do you tend to get sick a couple of days later when "there's time"?
Yes, he is usually (and anecdotally) used in every introduction to works that cover vitamins and supplementation 😅 but unfortunately his ideas weren't really backed by science. If you eat more vitamin c than you can absorb, you just pee it out. We actually did that in university (control group, breakfast group, breakfast + 1g of vitamin c group, testing the pee and I think capillary blood). Now, I think there are some findings with intravenous vitamin c acting like an oxidizing agent and killing cancer (?) cells, but macrodosing orally just doesn't give you any effect.
Also, fun fact, your RDA can be met by eating one frozen pizza because vitamin c is used as a food additive everywhere.
When I start having a feeling of getting a cold I drink Bayer's Aspirin Plus C. It's literally just aspirin and vitamin C but I swear it works. Not drinking aspirin and vitamin C but only this overpriced combination. When it is dissolved in water, grossly enough. Nothing else works. If I don't drink it, I get a cold.
I literally worked in pharmaceutical science and I know this is complete bullshit borderlining homeopathy but I still swear by it. I wrote a whole academic work on vitamin C supplementation having no effect on getting a cold. And I still do it 😭
Oh god "too scared"/"two square(d)" jfc took a minute
I wasn't the most popular growing up and I remember becoming popular and developing a larger friends group in late high school. Above all, I remember going out for pizza when I was 17. At home, we always shared a small (frozen or delivery or restaurant) pizza - me, my sister, and my mom. Eating pizza meant having a slice or two for dinner (with salad, there was always salad). So this also always meant prior discussions on the toppings. Therefore, going out with new friends, I was highly confused why no one was really engaging in my question about what kind of toppings they want, everyone was just stating what they want and gonna get and I was hella confused. When it occurred to me that everyone was going to order a whole pizza for themselves I couldn't believe it. I don't remember what happened next, I only remember the horrible realization that everyone is going to buy a pizza and eat this food, that to me was absolutely meant to be shared, by themselves like psychopaths, a whole family meal, for each person. And that this was the normal way to do it. As I said, I don't know what happened next, but I don't really like pizza to this day - maybe something happened that day, I don't know.
Thank God I found a spouse who likes to share a small pizza and can't have more than 2-3 slices tops either.
The thing is, while everything is so starkly clear for us here, it's not that black and white for other countries. So yes, India and China will become stronger business partners. And I think even if they will pressure Russia into bad deals, those deals will still be enough to keep Russia somewhat working economically. Whether this economy will be sustainable in the long run or do the country any good prosperity wise doesn't matter. The top 1% couldn't care less about how well the economy does. Do you think Putin or some oil oligarch really cares about inflation or whether millions of Russians can't afford to buy food?
The problem is that the west cannot really go without sanctions, but everyone is fully aware that the rich and powerful have no problem overgoing them. The rich guys will always have access to Gucci. They keep becoming richer. And it is very difficult to impossible to get rid of this problem. While, for them, it is a minor inconvenience, it is a major catastrophe for the broad population. I think even if we tried something like going after the brands as you described ("ban them from doing business in the west if caught dealing in Russia") they will still find a way to not get caught, blame someone else for being sold, pay a fine, continue business as usual in both hemispheres.
Having no McDonald's and a Russian rip off is not the problem here. Believe me, people whine a bit, but they are resilient to these changes. You have to be resilient in Russia because for generations, everything went further south, the more you tried the more so. No one will start a revolution because they miss McDonald's, Palmolive or Ferrero. You whine, accept, and life goes on, just a bit harder and shittier than it was before, again and again, there is no time to care more than that because you have to survive. You know you're absolutely powerless and the best you can do is focus on your little life and make it as bearable and enjoy the little things before it gets worse again.