Who could have possibly seen this coming for trump?

That’s worse than Carter’s low by 4 pts and outside the MoE.

Carter’s lowest approval rating was received with the arrival of *checks notes* military unrest in Iran. Simply impossible for trump to have see this coming as trump is completely ignorant of history.

Why has Trump broken all 10 commandments, for instance.

trump treated it like a to-do list until he got all ten.

Here’s a sneak peek into a management review meeting in the near future:

“Why is our AI browsing porn in the middle of the workday and constantly writing ‘It fucking sucks ass here’ in corporate documents?”

The problem with that approach is that the “rugged energy individualist” idea would only a thin veneer and as soon as you scratch the surface you see it isn’t true.

Currently technology solar isn’t able to affordably support the amount of energy consumption most Americans have or want. It would be either astronomically expensive for a single American household to have enough energy systems to be completely 100% self sufficient (in most States in the Union) or the American household would have to drastically reduce its energy consumption. I don’t know if you know us Americans, but we don’t like to cut back on anything.

The feasible technology we have today that is still expensive, but at least attainable by many, is for 30% to 70% household energy generation. The remainder (depending on the time of year) comes from our socialized system of central energy generation and distribution (the power grid).

I say this as someone with solar panels and EVs that has gone carbon free energy at home. Its expensive for the equipment and installation and still doesn’t cover all the energy needs year-round. Nine months out of the year we have no energy bills. Three months of the year, we do. That’s just physics and the limits of my wallet.

I’d need a reason to use Edge. If it used a different browser engine, that would be a compelling reason.

Thats the description of both Vivaldi and Brave browsers, which also haven’t out-Chromed Chrome. Both are Chrome engine with built in ad blockers.

Hey Microsoft, how about innovating instead? Edge is a Chrome engine browser like dozens of others out there. Why not write a new browser engine to give customers a choice? Or at worst, how about contract with Apple to license Webkit bringing a third solid choice for a browser engine to Windows. You’re not going to out-Chrome Google Chrome browser, so stop trying.

You can’t hand wave this problem away, saying you get what you pay for (also a common saying in the West). It’s systemic. Also, I’ve taken risks buying more expensive versions of the same products and had the exact same result.

…and…

So I ask you this: Was it the parents fault for feeding their babies contaminated baby formula? Should the people who installed toxic drywall have known better? Did the people who died from contaminated blood thinner deserve it for being poor consumers?

There’s another element of Chinese culture you’re missing and it is that of “miànzi” (面子) or “face” as in our version of the phrase “saving face”, or figuratively “reputation”. The sellers do care about their reputation, but there are different groups they care about and groups they may not. You’re likely a western end user retail customer. Most probably don’t care about you. They might care about their reputation with their western reseller customers though.

The examples of poison drywall or adulterated formula are very bad by both Chinese and Western standards, but for slightly different reasons. The western view it as bad because it harmed the end consumers. The Chinese view would be a loss of face of the seller for being such a public and shameless scam without integrity or honor, a huge loss of face.

No one seems to care in China. It’s like you say, making money is all that matters.

You’re close to understanding, but you’re still missing it. Again, you’re judging this by western standards. Now, I’m western, and I like the western standards, but I also understand that their culture doesn’t have to conform to ours for it to be “right”. There is no objectively right way to do this. We’re all different humans figuring different systems. I certainly have my preference for the western style, but that doesn’t make what the Chinese have been doing for hundreds (3000 thousand, if you ask the Chinese) of years they’ve been doing less “right”.

Let me tell you something: Toys made in West go through such testing. It was a lesson learned in blood over decades.

That’s a very recent addition to western culture. Lots of toys even during my lifetime were dangerous. Two generations back, in the USA we had toys like this which heated up to 260 °C (500 °F):

Which caused serious burns and even some deaths for the children playing with them.

In the 1950s this was a toy:

You’re bringing your perspective of individualism which is very much a Western idea. Other cultures don’t come from that perspective and arrive and different conclusions. I can tell you, we’ll see more of this press up on our western culture as trump continues to flounder our dominance and China continues to rise.

I’m also apply the same logic to Americans. If a USA of the future is the trumpian-style, I’d rather have a strong China to act as a check on US power. We, the USA, are a negative force on the world right now under trump.

I can go on and on about the poor quality of tons of Chinese-made products but you get the idea. Having said that, there’s plenty of great Chinese brands that make quality stuff. It’s just that there’s so much more cheap/generic stuff from China that competes with the good stuff it gets drowned out.

What you are experiencing is a different cultural approach that the west frequently fails to get what they expect. There’s a concept of “if you ask for bottom dollar prices, you’re going to bottom tier products”. Paraphrasing even further put another way “why are you complaining about getting junk when you’re only willing to pay junk prices?”. Get acquainted with the Chinese phrase “chàbuduō” (差不多). It literally translates to “a little bit less than all”, but figuratively translates to “close enough”. This is a very common phrase and idea in Chinese culture. If you’re buying the cheapest version of something you’re going to get a product that is likely not up to spec, but “close enough”. The second phrase you should know is “méi bàn fǎ” (没办法). This one figuatively translates to: “nothing can be done” or “it can’t be helped”. When you point out something isn’t up to what you expect, you should be ready to hear this phrase and understand that the person or company you’re dealing with isn’t interested in changing the situation and are simply washing their hands of the issue leaving you with it.

Neither of these are failings of Chinese culture, its just different. The failing would be expecting all other cultures to behave like our own.

If you don’t want the bad product, buy the more expensive version. As you said, you can absolutely get very high quality products from China, but you’re not getting those for a tiny fraction of the price of high quality goods from other sources.

To me this means the propaganda is stopping to work for increasing number of people.

I have different reading of the data. Essentially there are two superpowers today: USA and China. No one wants to be ruled by another country, but the dominant superpower has that power to shape policy around the world through military and economic actions.

What I’m seeing is that trump made the USA so unpalatable with his actions that China becomes the lesser of two evils. So its not so much that China’s bad behavior are erased, but given the choice of China or the USA leading the world, the world is rejecting the USA.

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In the case of the OnePlus 6T, only the T-Mobile version is ‘supported,’ when the unlocked version is the same in all other markets (including the US).

I’m seeing two models of the OnePlus 6T:

• 6T (A6013) This one is on the list of AT&T approved devices and most importantly has LTE bands 30 and 71 which are used in North America. source
• 6T (A6010) This one is made for the Chinese market and has the following LTE Bands: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 38, 39, 40, 41, 66. Notice that North American LTE bans 30 and 71 are missing. source

Are you aware of a different 6T model besides these two or are you saying there are 6T (A6013) that AT&T are rejecting from activating on their network?

both militaries are relying on conscripts and mercenaries,

Sure, but not in equal measures. Russia’s causalities has been acknowledge by both sides to be significantly higher than Ukraine’s, and that was when Russia still had its Soviet stockpile now largely exhausted. Ukraine is getting resupplied by the west. Russia is getting resupplied by…North Korea?

Zelensky is fully fucked the next time Ukrainians bother to have a domestic vote.

Ukraine is much more than simply Zelensky. Euromaidan had nothing to do with Zelensky. I’m not aware of any groundswell of support of the Ukrainian people for capitulation to being conquered by Russia. I would think this would still mean a pro-Ukrainian anti-Russian president after Zelensky is out of office.

Both of their economies have tanked, with further economic pressures coming from the conflict with Iran and the climate change threat.

I agree, but Ukraine still has access to global markets for sales, and its new defense industries appear to be the hot item for global customers. Russia, which traditionally had a pretty good income from its defense industries has been wiped out with a multiprong situation of lack of manufacturing capacity to support its domestic weapons consumption while still providing units for export to derive income, and the poor performance of Russian systems on the battlefield make for a bad sales argument. If anything, China is poised to take over the space of defense industry that runs counter to the traditional western suppliers.

The issue isn’t whether one runs out first. It’s how long the political leadership can drag this forward before someone pops them and brokers a settlement that ends the bleeding.

With Russia that leadership is one man, Putin. I would imagine as soon as he’s gone the will to fight the war evaporates with him. With Ukraine, I’m not aware of any pro-Russian candidate that show any sign of a significant lead that would suggest pro-Russians take power in Ukraine.

But if Ukraine won’t negotiate without full return of territory (presumably even including Crimea, which is fully outside their political influence) and Russia won’t cede territory they’ve entrenched…

There is a big distinction between the primary fuel of the armies of Russia vs Ukraine.

• Russia is relying primarily on human meatwaves to take and hold ground.

• Ukraine’s army primarily runs on money. They buy western advanced weapons and invest in design and manufacturing of next-generation drone warfare (that has now become an income channel for Ukrainian arms exports to places like the Middle East). A year or two ago Ukraine shocked the world by holding positions for weeks and months with purely robotic guns. Just this week Ukraine offensively took and ground with only robots. Additional can be had with just more money.

Which one of these two do we think is going to run out first? The article we’re talking about is showing a $90B financial lifeline to Ukraine. I’m not seeing where Russia is going to get another 1,000,000 men to march into Ukrainian bombs and bullets to continue the war indefinitely.

Additionally Russia has largely exhausted its Soviet era stockpile of weapons, and the nation’s manufacturing capacity is not near enough to replace the losses as quickly as they are occurring. Yesterday’s Russian casualty numbers bear this out. 1 tank lost. 1010 men casualties.

“evil maid” attacks need to be renamed to “evil students” attack.

My phone at the time worked fine on 4G for over a year, but suddenly one day it no longer worked once they started enforcing this. I suspect the carrier wanted to collect a troll toll from phone manufacturers to allow them the privilege to sell a phone to their customers

Its certainly possible that they’re trying to extract a toll from handset manufacturers, but I could also see it being a spectrum consolidation. Can I ask if your OnePlus 5T was a model specifically made for the USA market or was it imported from China or Indian markets? I’ve seen non-domestic model phones not contain all the same radios as North American phones. So while its possible there were a few specific bands overlapping that allowed it to work, those bands could have been deprovisioned from phone service or sold off to other companies wanting to buy spectrum.

SpaceX gets away with it and I honestly don’t know why

For the same reason all private spaceflight companies (like Firefly, Rocketlab, and Blue Origin) “get away with it”. Blown up rockets aren’t paid for by tax dollars. Private spaceflight customers, and yes, the government, only pays for successful launches.

bcz their contracts have been all government until pretty recently.

The contracts are for successful flights. If a SpaceX rocket blows up that was paid for by the government, the government (taxpayers) don’t pay for that launch.

Commercial spaceflight launches are much MUCH better finanical deal for taxpayers than the traditional NASA “cost-plus” contracts, SLS being the most recent example.

For some reason its very popular in Asia, according to my partner who is Thai and 23 years old.

Facebook subsidized mobile internet access specifically to facebook properties for a decade or so in many parts of the world. If you went to Google.com you’d get charged for mobile data. if you went to any Facebook company sites, it was free data. This is also why Whatapp is so embedded in many parts of the world. Text messages were charged, while Whatapp messages were free.

Blowing up rockets gets people really upset when they think it’s their tax dollars.

I love spaceflight and what the Artemis II accomplished, but it came with an absolutely staggering price tag. It cost a bit more than $50 Billion to design including both the rocket and the Orion capsule. It costs $1Billion each time it launches too. We only bought enough parts for 4 flights of the rocket, and we’ve now used 2 of those.