I don’t think I have any friends or family flipping a coin to decide if they want to fall into the racist pipeline.

I’m glad I chose iPhone instead!

Yes I read what you wrote - most of it makes sense. I guess I never associated the interest rates going up with Ukraine, I always thought they were a response to the economy slowly getting better and worries of inflation caused by the 2020-2021 stimulus packages. Aka Biden was trying to prevent excessive inflation as the stimulus packages bore fruit (which obviously didn’t work). But I do remember the interest rates being one of the big drivers of the layoffs once the tech companies no longer had near-infinite near-interest-free capital.

Was it really Russia’s invasion, or just because the interest rates went up to prevent too much inflation after the COVID stimulus packages? Hard to imagine Russia had that much demand for software compared to the rest of the world.