Very much so. They just call them “gifts” from “friends” and that’s the end of it.

Pressure and mockery? Pretty sure he died of physical abuse and malnutrition. He didn’t die because Putin made him sad.

The whole point of the cat thing was to point out the absurdity of the claim that reality isn’t real until you know about it. The cat is already in whatever state you observe when you open the box. It’s not both alive and dead, it’s either alive or dead. The thought experiment isn’t serious, and it’s not supporting the idea that the cat is somehow magically in both states just because you haven’t yet manipulated the lid of a wooden cube.