People are using ads as a way to get information about the war into Russia as a way to circumvent Russia's information firewalls. It's pretty clever really.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/04/1046794/the-acti...

Google and youtube ads are blocked in Russia

One of the few positive outcomes for Russia out of this crisis.

Some people hold that the sanctions and corporate withdrawals from Russia are having the opposite effect intended: the general populace is rallying around Putin (his approval numbers are up 10% since this has started) and will give Russians a chance to reestablish home brands rather than be reliant on a decadent, petty west.

Time will tell how it all plays out, though personally I suspect this perspective will be more right than wrong.

> will give Russians a chance to reestablish home brands

This is delusional. There's not enough talent nor capital to replace everything from Caterpillar to Xbox, and much of what's considered domestic is partially or fully imported, eg https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501361272230752262

Thank you, that was a thought-provoking link.

It seems that certain kinds of economic integration such as supply-chain interdependence offer more leverage, while other kinds of integration such as buying oil and gas offer less.

I read this thread and found it interesting, but the mafia boss argument seems weaker than the simple desire of all businesses to have commoditized inputs and avoid vendor lock-in. The oil and gas guys who are friends with the boss are politically secure, do they really need to worry about usurpers? This poor stifled engineering nerd vs. big dumb mafia jock narrative seems a little too indulgent of the audience's biases...

Much crazier things have happened than revitalization of national industry. Whether their leadership has the intelligence and will to do this is of course another matter.

Caterpillar hasn't left Russia.

This is really good

>>(his approval numbers are up 10% since this has started)

Is there any way to believe such a number? Isn't all independent media in Russia now banned or in hiding?

Like, I just don't see any way this could be reliably measured. If I lived in Russia and someone asked me, of course I'd say that I support the guy, I don't want to go to prison.

George W Bush's approval ratings also spiked after the Iraq war, when our country was also flooded with propaganda and lies about the justification for that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_George_W._Bush

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html

You can't trust polling numbers out of Russia but there is historical context for these types of full scale invasions to bring up approval ratings.

> propaganda and lies about the justification for that

I keep hearing this, and yet, the NYT and the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons both confirmed that there were chemical weapons in Iraq:

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/world/middleeast/question...

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/world/middleeast/thousand...

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/03/world/middlee...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middlee...

Did the NYT issue a retraction when I wasn't looking?

The numbers I saw went from 61% to 71%. I'm not sure if there is any way to get accurate, honest polls out of Russia, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that people support him now more than before, between the propaganda in the news and the impact the sanctions are having on them.

I buy that Putin has a good deal of support, even if I don't buy zdragnar's "all is lost" fatalist analysis.

I'm sure the approval polling is 100% legit.

There's a sense in which even doctored polls can become (or contribute to) self-fulfilling prophecies, though. The key tactic of disinformation is to bombard the viewer with so many semi-legitimate sources that they have no time to consider each one on its merits; by the time you've seen that the "independent institution/pollster" is owned by someone with ties to X, you've already been hit by five other polls and think-pieces saying the same thing. At the end of the day, you invite the thought "is there actually a zeitgeist here, am I the one behind the times if I'm questioning what everyone else is saying" - and at that point, you're susceptible to propaganda. We should not discount Putin's purposefulness and confidence in deploying these tactics.

Economic integration with autocracy has not proven consistently reliable at preventing military conflict. So what's left?

Not to be a downer, but there may simply not be a solution.

Well, clearly there are some promising avenues. For example, developing alternatives to fossil fuels would weaken adventurous petro-dictatorships.

It's not a short term proposition, but it's something that ought to be taken into account when e.g. considering how governments allocate subsidies or weigh long-term energy strategies (as Germany is doing now). Any initiative that strengthens the global market for oil and gas has a side effect of destabilizing the rules-based world order.

Unfortunately, adventurous dictators also control much of the worlds currently accessible supply of rare-ish minerals and elements that go into batteries and powerful magnets.

It's not a bad idea to do it regardless, but you're just trading bad for bad if your primary reason for doing so is to avoid naughty governments.

Oil and rare minerals are separate revenue streams. Let's say that a given dictator's petro-adventurism is 50% funded by oil and 20% funded by rare minerals. If you can degrade their ability to wage war by reducing one or the other, why is that "bad"?

I'm curious — do you prefer e.g. the Chinese governance model over the democratic model? I'm getting the feeling you believe that autocracy is inevitable and unstoppable, and I wonder if you believe that that fate is also desirable.

Not at all! I am merely not of the opinion that economic sanctions are reliable or effective deterrents to authoritarianism.

The cases where they have been demonstrably effective are comparatively few, and the geopolitical circumstances are substantially different in those than now with Russia invading Ukraine.

Pretending that massively investing in solar, wind and EVs will absolve us of dependency on autocratic regimes is just intellectually dishonest- we are merely trading one for another.

For the record, I do support temporarily ceasing the purchase of oil from Russia. Buying more oil from Venezuela, Iran or Saudi Arabia is not a long term answer, or rare earth metals from China (who is notably not participating in sanctions). Though Russia has yet to ramp up production, they will also become a key player in a post-fossil-fuel world as they are thought to have a full quarter of the accessible supply.

Depending on how Russia's economy looks in 3-6 months, it might still serve as a deterrent.

The sanctions weren't intended to prevent military conflict- the threat of sanctions was. The threat failed.

Now the question should be, will following through on the threat mitigate the harm now or in the future? Against Russia, my guess is no. They also haven't been successful against Iran or any number of other counties.

It might be said that the effectiveness of sanctions is entirely reliant upon being able to keep a weak nation weak, rather than preventing a strong nation from preying upon weaker neighbors.

'Some people' is never a particularly helpful phrase.

That said, Putin's approval ratings have always been extremely high for a leader, and war (one where you largely control the narrative in your country no less) has been a pretty consistent winner in gaining leaders popularity.

Also no cocacola and no mcdonalds

Ronald McDonald has killed more people than putin, and even more than all the american presidents combined, so this is not that bad for russian health and obesity issues.

meanwhile in the west: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30614251

stop watching youtube if you're getting ads

Ublock Origin, obviously not on Chrome, blocks YT ads nicely.

Ublock Origin still works fine on chrome and indeed blocks youtube ads.

Not on Android, no extensions there. Works great with Firefox though.

$143.88/year does it for 5 family members on all devices as well.

I can’t tell if you’re trying to make a joke, but that’s an outrageous expense for something that can be easily gotten for free.

It's not that expensive for the amount of people it's shared among, works on mobile and other devices ( e.g. TVs), has a few extra features ( e.g. downloads for offline viewing) and gives more money to content creators. All in all, not a bad deal.

> downloads for offline viewing

https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp does that, also for free.

I don't see an Android or iOS version, let alone Android TV and co.

$2.40 per person per month for unlimited videos on any device without any hassle doesn't seem outrageous to me but I suppose it'll vary by person. I mean if you just view 3 videos a month on a desktop device it's probably not for you.

You don't think any creators on YouTube deserve money from ads?

And SponsorBlock