chapotraphouse

My favorite cringe story about lighting things up in the colors of a nation's flag is when Sweden at the start of the Ukraine war made the baffling decision to show solidarity with Ukraine by lighting up city hall and the Stockholm subway in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. The problem with this is that the Ukrainian flag has the exact same colors as the Swedish flag, and since the lamps had already been installed for years they just turned them on on their default setting, just like they had done about once a week whenever there was any kind of national event, no matter how small. But this time it was for Ukraine, not a friendly football game against Slovakia or the queen's birthday or a Eurovision song contest or any of the other reasons they had turned on those exact same lights hundreds of times before. And THAT is how you do a TRULY empty gesture folks.