@Salastil@kuba_ Go to University City, then on 34th and Walnut there’s a secret food court. Go inside and order a falafel sandwich from Goldie with a tahini milkshake. Bring your laptop. For no particular reason, I just miss that.
I'm from Philadelphia, I've seen plenty of videos of Russian countryside full of decay and their roads being pothole filled hellscapes that will crush your car's suspension system, if they were paved in the first place. But what I see in Philadelphia is far far worse than any Russian city or rural area. Most American cities are decaying so fast that its highly probable that city dweller Russians have an equal standard of living or superior. Whats more, in most Soviet bloc countries the citizenry have a higher percentage of land ownership than Western European and sometimes US states. The measuring stick you and I use to measure "wealth" is vastly different.
@Salastil they don't have a productive economy even with western techs. but without them they won't be able to produce (in a longer term) oil and gas. and it's the main selling point of their 'economy'. you are from western europe or northern america, ain't you? many people there tends to believe RU propaganda over western propaganda. and, in this case, western propaganda is much closer to truth than RU propaganda. @lain
@Salastil that is true. it is also true that regarding hi tech - russia is 3rd world shithole country. china, which is russian strong ally - not. but they are not yet on western lvl for v. high tech. and they won't be in few years, even tho they have good enginers and they are good at stealing tech. @lain
People seem to keep forgetting that Russia and China both have huge numbers of engineers in various fields whom are quite competent. The West has a serious problem of huffing its own farts when it comes to the products we make, they're not that unique, they're just the cheapest bang for the buck. Westerners would benefit greatly from acknowledging that peoples outside of the West aren't just banging rocks together and lashing things together with rope.
@lain i'm reffering only to R part of BRICS: i'm interested how they're gonna get some hi tech parts, produced only in 'the west', for their machines used to 'produce' oil and gas. for now they play 'we are cool and we don't need the westerners'. hope it's gonna last long enough to let us see how great they really do on their own (a couple/several years gonna do it).