The atmosphere is totally unhealthy, wages stagnate or fall for most of workers, and there is no optimism for the future.
In some areas Russia still becomes a better place to live, but if you compare it to Europe proper it still lacks in so many ways and the gap is not closing anytime soon, if not getting wider.
And the only news which come is about new restrictions on public life and political free speech.
As my colleague said to me 5 years back, "all of my canaries are now dead"
I don't really know any LGBT in person so it's hard to say. I think nobody will bother you if you stay clandestine. I guess the public opinion in this area is shitty but it is universal quality of public opinion in Russia.
I was on internet before my first job so ot is hard to say. It's a mixed bag. There are jobs which are bureaucratic hell (especially in large Soviet-survivor companies outside large cities), there are jobs which pay peanuts and productivity is non-existent (government sector), but then there's modern economy with nice offices, passable atmosphere and fine work-life balance. If you're not in IT and not splurging on natural resources wealth somehow, the pay is low.
I'm not planning to leave Russia just yet, due to being a Russian nationalist with a family, but I can sure answer any questions. The trend (or rather, reversal of previous trend) surely exists.
Upd: HN, the place where you get downvotes by agreeing to answer some questions. That's why I stopped coming.
It looks passable, but as I have said any Art Noveau building would give more eye candy, and there's a huge number of such building around the world, it's not we praise each and every of their architects.
It also looks like a side of any cruise ship. Last time I have checked cruise ships were not considered masterpieces of architecture, and they also float.
But if you compare them to the turn of XX century, they don't look so nice. People may smile when zipping along her creations, but you can walk along some of Art Nouveau buildings every day for years and never stop smiling.
E.g. https://yandex.ru/maps/-/CBF84WbZ8D
This is architecture for car drivers who zoom past while burning carbon. Spend more than 10 seconds, it stops looking cool and becomes boring. Yet another example how car destroys our cities.
It is not walkable, it is not human-scale, it does not integrate with surroundings. I love how they do advertisement renders where their buildings stand in an empty field. As if the rest of the city never existed and should not be cared for!
You can't walk past these buildings every day and enjoy it. First of all, they are too large and far apart. It will be boring and long not to mention wind, rain and snow to which it offers no protection.
Moreover, it's a legitimization of awful 70s architecture with slightly more effort. Even her New York building looks like something people from 70s would build when they dismantle some beautiful neoclassical or moderne building.
Then nobody was sure that this judge had ever study law. She said she went to some college in Georgia (the country) which said she's not on their records.
I didn't know you could just skip this bullet point, get away with it.
Makes me wonder why we ever did it. After all, "Intellectual Property" is just a way to siphon money from my country while making our lives miserable. It's not like we ever got anything useful in the return.
It is also an eye-opener that food is so cheap these days you can make more from selling Diamonds mined at 2-3 locations than from selling Wheat grown all over the map.
Nobody knows for sure. Maybe a Syria-style (but ten times stronger) migration from Russia westwards?
It is assumed that Syrian crisis started happening when its Oil exports dipped in red, as in existing Syrian economy would consume more Oil than they were capable to extract. Worsening climate did not help of course.
Oil and gas are the only reliable Russian exports.
Economic pressure on Russia leads to increase of importance of oil and gas sector as other sectors plunge. This leads to more capacity, more offering. Which leads to price correction, even more offering as prices fall and have to be made for. Which in total leads to massive use of cheap gas.
If there was someone committed to decrease in fossil fuel usage they will be making sure that Russia turns into Norway economically and politically. Meaning much fewer extraction of much more expensive fuels and more effort to not knock the ecology in the process.
2. Maybe I was like that before 2008 or so. Didn't make a difference either way.