90s-late 00s cars are actually on repairability in my experience, because they already have computers which help you diagnose failures easily with a $20 OBD2 scanner (this saved my ass a couple of times, when I could almost immediately see the error whenever my car died, fiddle or re-plug the wiring of the failed component and keep going), and they don’t yet have all the over-complicated, designed-to-fail, hard-to-reach crap that a lot of new cars have.

Yes, that can happen sometimes, but I find that there are plenty of cheap options with unlocked bootloaders if you look for them.

Nah, cheap phones often have their bootloader unlocked/unlockable. Really happy with my POCO M5 running modified AOSP. Also, unlike every expensive phone nowadays, it has 3.5mm jack, SD card slot, and exceptional battery life for hiking/trekking (it survives 5-6 days as just a camera+map phone with all power saving on, in comparison people with flagships typically only last 2-3 days with the same usage and power-saving techniques).

You can almost always replace the battery, even when the manufacturer doesn’t want you to. As for flashlights, they typically come with easily user-replaceable ones, often even sold separately. Worst-case, you can get a AA or AAA flashlight and use rechargeable AA/AAAs.

I’ve paid quite a lot for my second headlamp for hiking, but I am really happy with the purchase as it’s very light (35 g) compared to my first cheapo one (~120 g), while being the same 200 lm max. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s enough for me to not even notice it, while the heavy one was getting annoying after a while.

I’d say it depends. For safety-critical stuff maybe, but for a headlamp or something I prefer rechargeable as I can easily recharge it from a power bank or a portable solar panel if needed. If you run out of a disposable battery for whatever reason, you’re screwed.

I’m not sure you should “cheap out” on headphones per se. The really cheap ones are usually horrible, both in terms of sound quality, usability and comfort (well, except for wired Apple ones, allegedly, though they never fit me right). It’s just that it makes no sense to go for really expensive ones, unless you’re really into audio and love hearing the tiny sound reproduction differences between them, or enjoying the different tech etc. The middle ground of $50-$100 for in-ears and $100-300 for over-ears will often offer you good/great/excellent sound quality and the same usability&comfort as more expensive ones.

Navalniy and his team openly supported the annexation of Crimea (and destruction of Ukrainian and Crimean Tartar culture).

Not really: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/opinion/how-to-punish-putin.html ; this is just days after the annexation. I’m no fan of Navalny for various reasons (his nationalist views, xenophobic comments and narratives, etc), but he was very much against all Putin’s shenanigans in Ukraine, and vehemently anti-war.

The recently exchanged “dissidents” also showed their true colours by supporting the annexation of currently occupied territories in Ukraine.

What are you on about? Name one of them who supported the war. Most of them were jailed due to their anti-war positions.

Upon further inspection, it’s almost definitely AI. Look at the better-quality original: https://in.pinterest.com/pin/937874691150982659/

In particular, note the nonsensical reflection in the mirror (which is inexplicably placed on the floor?), weird toilet paper roll, and half-unicorn horn half-third ear thing sticking out from the head.

And if you check out that Pinterest account, it’s full of AI-generated crap too.

Which mostly just demonstrates how good the AI has become, to the point where if you scale down the image somewhat, it fools humans and AI detectors alike.