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.
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."
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...
"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.
Excuse my blatant ignorance, but what is aeolic energy? I've never heard about it before.
I was considering to switch to apple for this reason, but I've read that in terms of privacy, there's no significant difference between a Pixel Android with Stock OS and an iPhone. This made me hesitant. I really just want things to go smooth and hasslefree without being spied on and coerced... Do you, by chance, have any reading material on the privacy of apple services I could read up on?
I am trying to re-adjust how much effort I want to put into privacy concerns. Too much stuff I'm using isn't working properly or using a lot of my mental resources that I need elsewhere.
For (a bad) example: I recently performed a half-switch from my self-hosted Nextcloud instance to ProtonDrive, in the hope that it would spare me the stress to maintain my private Nextcloud. Unfortunately, it doesn't, as basic functionality like cross-device-sync is not possible (there isn't even a client app for Linux, as of yet).
This brings me to the question: have you found any services/apps/stuff that significantly eases your life while still being privacy friendly? I know, this is a broad question, but I think this is for the best as this thread then maybe even has use for other users.