I like to buy European products, but often they either don't make what I want, or the price is 10-100x what I can get it from China for. There are limits to how far I will go to support local businesses.

Europe is moving against China too. There is going to be a per-package fee of 3 Euro, to make it harder for sites like AliExpress and Temu to sell into the EU. I don't like that, it's just propping up middle-men who do nothing by add an extra zero to the price of things. Even with it, buying direct from China will still be cheaper.

They haven't gone as dumb as banning DJI drones and non-EU routers yet.

European and Chinese companies have electric tractors. Very simple to operate, very easy to maintain. Yes, even the battery packs.

And import bans to stop people buying Chinese electric tractors that have zero emissions and are easy to repair. For lighter duty work people have been importing them for a few years now.

They had big ideas for it, but as time went on the budget got squeezed while needing more CGI on screen to represent the advanced technology and galactic stage they were portraying.

The actors started to cost more too. One of the reasons why many shows are limited to 5 seasons is that the standard contract is 5 seasons and then a re-negotiation for more money. Amazon has another trick that they used with Bosch - can the show, and start an identical one with the same characters and actors, but a slightly different name and a big reset of everyone's salaries.

It's a real shame that Universe was cancelled. Lots of potential and an interesting idea.

Maybe Amazon isn't the right place for it though. Look at the final season of The Boys. Massive budget cuts were very apparent.

Wasn't this literally the plot of Nineteen Eighty Four?

Higher ranking Party members could turn the two-way Telescreen off for a short time.

Knowing what people get paid here (Europe) and what other benefits people get, I do not see your argument. Maybe you have no clue what you are talking about?

Yes. Evangelicals and other Christian fanatics are really no better than Muslim fanatics, they are just better organized and more sneaky. All fanatics are bad. Period. All fanatics are loud and try to rule the world. And all fanatics try to force others to think their way. They are the one group in the human race (besides the Billionaires these days) that must be carefully controlled and limited and, if needed, suppressed. Because if that does not happen, then everything goes to shit.

Also refer to "The Paradox of Tolerance" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance), which essentially says that the one group you must never tolerate are those that promote intolerance.

Yep, I see that happening every day and I am scared! Well, if there were any truth to this deranged claim. There is not.

At this time, the new rules put in place after the Schrems II ruling still allow that. But they might not do so for much longer. Putting any EU citizen's personal data into O365 may already be technically illegal now.

The EU is not "flexing" at all. That is just the deranged framing the US media puts on things. This has been quietly going on for quite some time, it just became more public and urgent as the US regime leader turns more and more insane.

Indeed. But the crap MS does stops now. I have no idea how they could be so incredibly stupid to block the ICC accounts or, recently, leak the names of Swedish Government Regulators to the US Congress. Yes, they are required to do this by law (just a "maybe" for the first case), but it seems MS has not fought back one bit and they did not really oppose the Cloud Act when they could have when either.

It is now exceptionally clear to any government and most companies on the planet that US companies like Microsoft can disable your MS-based IT when the US administration wants them to do so for arbitrary reasons or personal vengeance but the regime leader and can also steal all your data in there and hand it to the US administration. That completely removes any longer-term future for this tech outside of the US.

Oh, they will collect. The US earns a lot of money processing data for EU companies. After the Schrems II ruling this is dependent on the EU being able to enforce its laws in the US whenever data of EU citizens gets processed.

You are an idiot. The GDPR applies to Clearview because it stole data from EU citizens that were in the EU at that time.

That is really insightless nonsense. I have done GDPR audits for companies as small as 5 people working there. It takes one person with a working brain a few days to figure this out. That is, unless you plan to steal your customer's data and use every loophole available. Then it gets really tricky. And that is why the billionaires complain and useful idiots believe this nonsense.