The Chinese families bit is most likely a reference to widespread, problematic family dynamics stemming from shared social pressures in China. Just in living memory, a household might have gone through: a revolution, the cultural revolution, famine, rapid urbanization, one child policy, economic booms, economic bubbles, etc…

That will leave any family pretty fucked up, though it may not be universally bad (hence, only the middle of the horse). In the future, we’ll probably see similar echoes of trauma from the USA’s current historical flashpoint.

It’s more likely that Steam leans into the “Steam[Device] Verified ✅/❌” labeling. If anything, that makes navigating the marketplace much easier for a mid-performance buyer. They’ve already done it with steam deck, it’s a good angle to pressure both devs and consumers into their device.

People buying this won’t be “daily driving” their pc in any sense. I think the idea is unlock steam’s library (and marketplace) the massive casual phone/tablet crowd. If I didn’t already have a dedicated gaming PC I would definitely be interested.

Astroturfing new bot accounts I guess

Not if we stop tracking it 🤠

I’ll take a crack at it:

• It’s a massive privacy/surveillance concern. Look at the issues that come with doorbell cams and now multiply the number of cameras and scatter them all over
• It’s another platform for mega corporations to track and sell data to advertisers or any malicious actors, but at an entirely new intrusive level. They no longer have to approximate what’s getting your attention when they literally know what has your attention. Good luck anonymizing or hiding your usage when you can’t spoof the real world in front of you.
• It’s unnecessary e-waste, at best providing the exact same functionality you’d get from your phone with the added benefit of… not reaching into your pocket? You still need a free hand to use it…
• It’s a distraction in a way that other tech can’t touch. Pedestrians/drivers getting notifications shoved directly into their eyes won’t end well.
• It probably has all the same inherent problems as previous generations of smart glasses. Primarily: your eyes aren’t designed for extended/repeated focus on an image less than an inch from your face and at the edge of your vision

As I said in another comment, the reason to not get on their bad side is the fact they’re a highly insular and powerful gang that just so happen to be in charge of his protection detail for his entire (hypothetical) term.

It’s easy to tweet the truth to power until that corrupt power is the only thing stopping the next Maga nut from taking a shot at you. Whole situation is completely unsurprising and not a mark against his character for me.

It’s more pragmatic because the NYC police are a legal mafia. Be a shame if there was a “lapse” in his protection because some officers were a little upset at his bluntness.

Your cost per person is probably off. National Guard is supposed to be supplemental, so they call up people from their normal life for higher pay. If keeping a standing army is cooking at home then calling up the National Guard is Uber Eats, not a big deal if occasional but not very sustainable.

And a ton of money is spent on the military, not even necessarily run of the mill corruption. Keeping those giant knock off Batmobiles running daily probably requires special servicing and parts, procurement and logistics have specific markups, long term lodging and food were unplanned and thus expensive, etc…

Dude get a hobby

Weird way to “listen” by suppressing their voices. Zero Covid was the “right call” in a narrow lens of limiting direct disease transmission, but it was completely untenable as a true long term strategy and had no foresight.

The protests weren’t due to solely to the restrictions on personal freedom, it was also the total lack of sane administration and fallback plans. The enforcement, quarantine logistics and vaccine rollout were entirely scattershot. The government had no realistic approach to the problem beyond rigid policing.

When their authority to enforce the policy was stretched to its limits they did an about face and pretended the problem didn’t exist, leaving their vulnerable populations in the lurch with no offramp. The core problem of inept administration was completely unaddressed. I wouldn’t give them credit for “listening to the protesters” any more than I would give Tsar Nicholas credit for listening to his striking workers.

COVID lockdowns when minor protests broke out

“Solve” is an interesting verb for suppression of legitimate mass discontent at being physically locked into their apartments. That “solution” worked so well for those “minor protests” that they decided to do a 180° turn from the Zero Covid policy to no restrictions overnight.

Truly a bastion of free speech, except for any real discontent is labeled capitalist subterfuge so we’ll just disregard that.

I have! Have you been on it in China? Have you contrasted the foreign feed to a citizen’s? Have you seen the coordinated response to genuine spreading political discontent vs mundane petty scandals? Because it kinda sounds like you haven’t if you think that’s a killer response.

Never claimed to be any kind of China expert but it’s absurd to claim “much more open discourse” if you’ve spent any appreciable amount of time in the countries being discussed. You can literally just walk + talk in public and see the difference.

Like all these asserted freedoms it just magically happens better and free’er but you definitely can’t verify it because “media”. The open political discourse I see and hear in major EU/US cities pales in comparison to the uh… hidden… open discourse in T1/T2 Chinese cities? Definitely heard some first/second hand political discourse but it was never, ever, ever a public forum.

By all means, give me evidence to the contrary. Maybe I just keep catching China with a bad case of the Mondays. Have you been? Can you point to any discourse on domestic politics? Where is the asserted diversity of opinion on hotbed issues? Can you show me any strong opposition to the party line on a public stage?

Crazy how you can literally just look this stuff up and find out what’s true instead of discarding arguments.

Independent trade unions are illegal in China. The single, state sanctioned trade union is widely criticized by international trade union orgs for not faithfully representing its workers. By most accounts it exists to funnel labor disputes through a bureaucratic meat grinder of mediation to maintain the status quo. With the exception of a handful of actions for international leverage, all strikes are wildcat.

If you’re actually interested in labor relations in China I’d recommend this article for starters. It’s older but the situation hasn’t improved under recent leadership.

Complete list of banned books in the US

Lmao what? Do you know what “banning” a book means? It’s just not on offer in schools or a library for that specific state. It’s completely normal to just buy it for yourself and there are even organizations dedicated to distributing banned books.

It’s hilarious to try and dunk on America with this of all things. Media restricted/censored in China is entirely unavailable. It’s actually very interesting how the censorship manifests in daily life, but I imagine any .ml reader will discard those anecdotes (or any verifiable reports) and try to redirect back to the West somehow.

I’ll take “things foreigners say when they’ve never been to China” for 500 Alex

Dudes probably just at a private golf outing or a child sex trafficking party or out hunting endangered animals to extinction

There’s a lot of comments about how digital devices are viable/helpful for note-taking and just as good as a pen. I think that’s missing the crucial point: virtually every device we own today is designed as a distraction machine.

A pen + paper isn’t going have any notifications or reminders or updates or emails or texts or ads or alarms or alerts. If there’s any device without those that’s as reliable and as cheap as a notebook, I’ve never heard of it.