We are really off topic, and I do not like discussing politics much. But.
Macron in France, has talked about sending French troops to Ukraine, several NATO nations have "special advisors" already there it seems. Poland is rearming at an alarming pace. Russia recently carried out some electronic warfare against the "West", when they jammed the GPS of a British government minister's plane over Poland. They have jammed GPS several times in Eastern Europe. NATO is building up troops on the Russian borders.
It just takes one incident to spark a war between NATO and Russia. Remember that the First World War, started more or less by a steady mobilization of Europe's armies that went out of control. Nobody really knows why WW1 started, historians are still thrashing around to find a cause.
The answer is in two words: marketing and advertising.
Long ago in College I did a course on advertising. Specialist companies have big budgets to use phycological warfare on us, to manipulate our choices, without us realizing it.
I don't think they need handouts. Very clearly for some (yes, TC, I'm talking about you) boosting their self esteem by being a folk hero to a little cult is enough.
very true, i was going to post some real world controled portraits from my studio from the last 5 years covering many different sensors, ive just spent an hour going through many shoots from my em5, em52.em12, a6300. a7r2 and my latest a7iv. lets just say that the a7iv for skintone reproduction and as another poster termed "fidelity" is outstanding, auto focus is faultless. i will not post the portraits and just say that every camera has taken great images. and its nice now to have a high quality monitor and programs to re-process some of the files. one note though the em5mk2 was the standout m43 camera for image quality and focus acuracy wasnt bad either. but there is no equivalence between sensor sizes in my book. and what makes a standout portrait is great auto focus, dont know about other brands but only sony latest cameras are near perfect and its a shame that the older cameras were so poor by comparrision.
I'll stay off-topic for a moment or two here. The instigator in all of this is Putin. He's the one who has pushed lies (a lot like his biggest US admirer, Trump) to justify his unjustifiable actions. Building up NATO's defenses along the frontier with Russia, and Poland fearing an invasion or "incursion" from Russia are absolutely sensible things at this time, as is Sweden and Norway joining NATO (because those previously non-aligned countries recognize just how menacing and dangerous Putin is).
As for it taking "one incident" to spark a war, how much bigger an "incident" would be required than Russia invading Ukraine? You see, that's my point, this is all about Putin trying to bully the rest of the world, and if he gets away with it then so does China and whoever else wants to go back to how things were before the end of WWII.
I've seen some, but more often I've seen people mocking other people, and once my girlfriend was mocked for being heavy. I think mocking gear is a proxy for mocking people.
