Part of the zeitgeist. Self-congratulatory for every little thing. Used some childhood references for your artistic endeavor? New genre. Rephrased a tired trope as a meme? Biting cultural criticism.

Likes are the new participation trophy.

And now- bring a different distraction because you are finally sick of the dead internet? Analogue bags.

> I wonder if someone with my "punish disobedience" attitude
> just wouldn't succeed as a teacher, these days.

Yeah, the problem is the school administration doesn't believe in it, so they undermine you. For example, if you send a misbehaving kid to the office for discipline, they'll generally be given candy or other treats. Yes, really. Every time. Which means every kid who has ever been sent to the office for bad behavior, is going to misbehave again and again, hoping to achieve similar results.

And you *absolutely* cannot punish them yourself; that would end your teaching career.

No, I'm not making any of this up. My sister is an elementary school teacher.

Honestly, at this point I think their population is closer to three times ours; though it's impossible to be precise at all, because death statistics are as illegal to report in mainland China, as any other politically sensitive thing.

We know for certain that their birth rate has been lower than one-child-per-woman and falling for the last couple of decades (and given their demographics -- most of the population being well past child bearing age for a woman -- this definitely implies that the population of domestically-born Chinese people has been shrinking), and we also know for sure that an abnormally large number of deaths went unreported or grossly under-reported in 2020, 2021, and 2022. (We've got satellite images of the backlog stacked up outside of crematoria for months at a time, and needless to say there's nothing in the official stats to correspond to that.) As for immigrants, expats have been leaving China like rats off a sinking ship for the last half decade or so. Estimates of the current population vary wildly; I've seen figures as low as half a billion, and as high as 1.5 billion; but realistically, I think on the one hand it's clear that there's been a significant decline, and on the other hand it's also clear that China is still significantly more densely populated than America. On the whole, I estimate that their population is about three times ours, give or take. And continuing to decline.

Whether this decline is altogether a bad thing (for China, I mean), is another topic for another day.

I don't know about the count of solar panels, but I don't need to, because it's a side issue.

Fundamentally, the article is abusing purchasing power parity, when talking about the size of the entire economy, to make it sound like China's economy is actually comparable to America's. That's *incredibly* intellectually dishonest. Purchasing power parity GDP is only meaningful, at all, when you're looking at per-capita numbers, because in that context it is a proxy for average standard of living. (Even then, _median_ income, adjusted for purchasing power parity, is a much better proxy than GDP PPP, especially in countries with a stupidly extreme wealth gap, like China.) When you're talking about the total size of an economy, as a proxy for the resources and economic power that it can bring to bear, purchasing power is entirely irrelevant, and bringing it up is absolute proof that the writer either does not understand economics at all, or else is deliberately attempting to deceive the reader. Or both.

The article is absolutely propaganda, and furthermore it's _stupid_ propaganda that no educated person should fall for.

Yes, there are, but it's becoming less common now.

We were *told* back in the early 2000s, when USB was still horribly unreliable, that computers with "legacy" ports (PS/2, RS232 serial, and parallel) were going to be a thing of the past "very soon". At the time, it didn't happen. A couple of large manufacturers released a couple of models each with no legacy ports (e.g., Compaq with its iPaq line, and let me just remark on what an early-2000s product name that is), and then then due to popular demand they introduced variants that did have the legacy ports, and the whole thing blew over and everything went back to normal. A few years later, a lot of models started shipping without parallel ports (presumably because they genuinely are physically large to an annoying extent), and in some cases without serial ports as well, but the PS/2 ports mostly remained, for another next twenty years or so. And then they too started to decline (rather suddenly, since the pandemic, though I think that's probably a coincidence of timing), and at this point it's difficult to buy a new PC that has PS/2 ports, but that's a fairly recent phenomenon, and it's still *possible* to get them (new, I mean), it's just no longer the norm, it and becomes more uncommon with every passing year now. Another MS Windows version or two from now, it may not be possible any longer. Which would be unfortunate, because then it wouldn't be possible to plug an XT keyboard in using an XT-to-PS/2 adapter, either, and that would be a shame, because XT keyboards are awesome. I suppose someone might devise a USB hub that has PS/2 ports, but it would probably require drivers and so would likely not work until the OS is loaded, I expect, which for a keyboard would be an unfortunate limitation. Ah, well. On the plus side, it would be hot-pluggable, so there's that. It did always annoy me that PS/2 wasn't (reliably) hot-pluggable.

Now we're being told that USB A ports are going to be a thing of the past, and I anticipate an even more protracted phase-out period for that, because the port has been in use for so long, and is so convenient, that it has became a rather important de facto standard, to the point where even non-computer-related things often support it (as the most common and standardized source of low-voltage DC power), so you have it on things like desk fans and wall-outlet adapters. I don't see it going away in a short amount of time.

When the family doesn't want anyone talking about the cause of death, it's usually self-inflicted, deliberately.

Because there are eight billion people on this rock. The words "smart" and "bed" both exist, so of *course* somebody made a "smart bed", and of *course* there were people who bought the silly thing. Presumably there are also internet-connected toothbrushes, can openers, pencils, cutlery, and socks. Why wouldn't there be?

Are these *popular* products that *lots* of people own or want? Well, no, but that's an entirely different question.

> No one who is just getting by is going to do it out of the the kindness
> of their heart for the environment.

Almost no one, in that demographic, yeah. And I think that demographic
(just getting by) is going to include the overwhelming majority of ride-share
drivers, because it doesn't pay well enough to raise someone out of that
demographic, and it's not really a highly regarded "dream" profession that
a person with other means of support would do because they think it's
important (like teaching school or medical work) or just plain love doing
it and don't want to do anything else (like art or music), at least not for
most people.

The price gap between traditionally powered vehicles and electric ones
is narrowing, but it's narrowing fairly gradually, and I don't know that it'll
necessarily be down to zero by 2030 (for the new vehicle market), and
if you want drivers of older used vehicles to all be using electric by 2030,
the deadline for that price gap to narrow to zero is more like 2010, and
that ship has sailed.

With that said, superficially, a $4k subsidy is substantial enough that it
might *sound* like a real windfall to some people, and fear of missing
out on that deal (especially if it's advertised with a prominent and
imminent expiration date) might potentially motivate some people to
try to stretch for it. Dunno.

(Presumably there will be car dealers who will go out of their way to
provide financing that allows people to overextend and buy a more
expensive car than they can really afford, with a loan term so long
they won't be able to afford the maintenance on the car by the time
it's paid off. It's a sleazy practice, but it would neither be new, nor
unique to EVs.)

Much of the early web was an open invitation to create something cool with nary a thought as to how it was all going to be paid for.

Eventually money wins over cool, whether it be music, movies, or the web, and oh boy! in the past few hundred years have we gotten exceedingly adept at extracting every red cent from the punters.

Yes yes yes, the wonders of capitalism and all the wonders it has to lead the masses out of poverty.

But there are trade-offs, and commodification doesn't even begin to describe the hellscape of modern culture.

Somehow I imagine you are perfectly fine with corporations making political donations that may be contrary to their shareholders' or workers' politics.

Criticizing one without the other ("but money is speech unless a union does it") is just the mark of a sycophant.

We've heard it before.

You're not getting it.

Can't speak for Texas but I caught an interview with the sponsor of the porn bill in Kentucky, and he made clear one of the effects he was after was to drive such content from the state.

PornHub has proposed methods to verify age that are less onerous (tying age to a device, verified at point of sell), but they have been shot down as not being stringent enough (as if sending a copy of an ID isn't easy enough to spoof).

This isn't about "for the children" inasmuch as soft banning certain types of content.

It's the same playbook from decades ago with the same arguments.

Just don't buy the content.

Don't download it either.

Read a fucking book. Go outside and smell the flowers. You gave them this "power." You can also take it away by not playing.

Best,

I don't recall seeing much concern about Joe Biden being a Catholic. But it's important here?

One of those Catholics is Sotomayor, one of the group of "progressive" justices. What exactly are you ham-handedly trying to imply?

Best,

The birth of the Mycogenians! :)