Example: Microsoft shared personal details, emails and meeting minutes of Dutch regulatory officials with the US House of Representatives, under the CLOUD Act. MS (and a few other BSA members) supported the act when it was proposed. So now they can lie in the bed they made.

Having a credible alternative to Microslop is worth any price to me.

I am not sure you shopped for PC components recently. Prices are nuts.

To abstract: I don't want X bad thing, therefore I am going to accept Y bad thing. You need to establish that impacts of X >>> impacts of Y.

My view is that massive hit to privacy for everyone does not justify marginal reduction of exposure of minors to adult material. Why marginal? Because age verification alone is not going to eliminate/prevent it.

"Billionaires in the US only invest there because they pay next to no income tax. The consequence of that is that the middle class gradually disappears"
Yes, billionaires pay little to no income tax (or more accurately: capital gains tax or tax on dividend). Yes, the middle class is gradually disappearing. But no, one is not a consequence of the other. Taxing billionaires on realized gains is not going to bring in enough revenue to save the middle class. The middle class is not being squeezed out by taxes, but by corporations / private equity increasing prices on basic necessities. It's an odd application of the old communist tenet "from each according to their ability". If you are in the income group that can afford to pay €2 for a €1 item, they'll try and charge you €2 if they can get away with it. And if they can corner the market on a scarce item (or create that scarcity), they'll charge you even more.

To me, it was surprising macOS performance was perfectly fine on Neo. Windows 11 would be chugging at those specs.

It took me much longer than 30 minutes to comprehensively block all Meta tracking, still fighting with SO to delete WhatsApp account. So let me play the tiniest violin about Meta workers complaining about lack of privacy at work.

It is surprisingly solid both in quality and performance. Also, when comparing to windows it runs much better than what I expected out of hardware specs. Last but not least, Apple had no issues with me never creating accounts and doing everything locally.

"a country previously famous for it's scientists and mathematician"
A good many of them coming from Ukraine. They were a technology and engineering powerhouse even back in Soviet times.

Western media hardly report on any individual strike. What we can find about the strike on May 22nd: Russia claims the dormitory was used as a dormitory. Ukraine claims the place was used as an HQ for Rubicon (the Russian elite drone unit). No one has been able to confirm or debunk either claim.

So: 1) Russia is lying about what went on in that building, 2) Ukraine acted on incorrect intel, 3) Ukraine accidentally hit the wrong building, or 4) Ukraine deliberately targeted a student dorm.
1 and 2 are plausible. 3 not so much: their strikes are generally precise, and Russia allegedly had no jammers or air defense assets in the area that could have caused drones to go off-course (as does sometimes happen in other strikes elsewhere). 4 is implausible; Ukraine has not much of a history of deliberately targeting civilian homes.