spool

She grabs a zipper and spool of thread.

A spool of tens of kilometres of cable is fitted to the bottom of a drone and the physical fibre optic cord is attached to the controller held by the pilot.

"Data is a sequence of bits and bytes," explains senior product developer, Alexey Mantsev, as film ran through a spool at his fingertips.

The living room where he sat was cluttered with tools from his profession - a sewing machine, spools of thread and a heavy iron.

It speaks to a deeper cultural conflict that has been spooling out for years, with flashpoints like the #MeToo movement and the fight for abortion rights.