decafninja

So far yes. But hasn’t it been the trend that the not-so-sane factions been getting closer and closer every election, to the point that they’re realistically on the cusp of siezing victory?

I remember the last election Macron’s coalition had to use some kind of creative trickery to keep National Rally and their friends from winning; after which the latter called foul.

Edit: digging deeper, said “trickery” appears to be a tactic that has been used in the past like you said. But it also seems like it’s never been this close down to the wire too.

There are naive people with good intentions that feel that war is absolutely never justified and it would be better for everyone if Ukraine just rolled over and surrendered. Nevermind who the aggressor is. Note, this is not my own opinion.

Others that think a nation should turn isolationist and focus on domestic problems instead of helping other European countries.

Regarding Meloni, yes, people feared how she’d end up like, and many vilified her leading up to the election. But not to the degree that say, the National Rally or the Le Pens have always been. Or at least, that is what I observed as an outsider who is neither French, Italian, or European.

Plus, you can argue that many people believed “oh, Trump couldn’t possibly really be like that”, and, well, here we are.

Based on my rather limited knowledge of French politics, isn’t Macron and his coalition supremely unpopular and just one election away from losing the country to factions that have a distinctly different vision of Europe and France’s role within? Including distancing itself from any pan-European entities and presenting a friendlier face to Russia?

Seems like the current French government and many decisions they make between now and then would be lame-ducky and be taken with a grain of salt.

One unfortunate aspect about their relationship is that my uncle in law also likes to gamble - but in strict moderation.

However this means the two of them sometimes end up going to the casinos together. I don’t think these trips are helping this man’s gambling addiction.

My wife’s uncle took in a man into his home, gave him a room to live in, and a job as a cook at his restaurant. This man would otherwise have been homeless on the streets.

The man doesn’t seem to be fully mentally well, but apparently he does his job diligently, has no inclination towards being violent, doesn’t do drugs, and keeps his problems mostly to himself.

That said, he has an extreme gambling addiction (he blows all his paychecks at casinos) and having seen his room once, it looked and smelled like a biohazard disaster.

He seems like a poor fellow that had some bad luck and now lives to just gamble the rest of his life away.

I give my uncle in law huge respect for taking this guy in, and also my aunt in law for also putting up with him living in their home. I don’t think my wife or I could have done the same.

The two of them are workaholics though and their home is just a space for them to sleep between work shifts at their restaurant. Which is why I don’t think they care too much about this man’s room’s condition.

Proponents of public transportation often say how they love to be able to use it as peaceful downtime to read, work, meditate, etc.

All my experience with public transportation is having to roll the dice and more often than not losing - having to stand while packed liked sardines into a bus or subway.

I don’t like this either. It falls under what I referred to as “highly controversial” choices.

But I also don’t doubt that if the coin was flipped, China would not hesitate at all to fire any non-Chinese person from such sensitive projects, and all without any outcry you would see in the West.

But that only works if China reciprocates, which they show no sign of doing.

I’d imagine a Chinese citizen living, studying, or working in the US has access to a lot more advanced knowledge than a US citizen trying to do so in China.

Up to this point, the US has been the one with the advanced knowledge. We now face a world where the opposite might become true.

But using the previous example, I’d imagine a future hypothetical American going to China to study or work would face a lot more roadblocks to obtaining and extracting any advanced knowledge, especially anything with strategic importance.

Controversial and possibly politically incorrect take, but the People's Republic of China sends many, many, of its citizens to study at top universities and work at top companies all over the world. I'm sure even at sensitive defense related orgs too.

While I am sure that the vast majority of them are just regular people, I'm also pretty sure there are True Believers amongst them whose mission is to go out into the world and enrich themselves with the skills and knowledge to bring back to China and further the CCP's goals. Some of them might even attain citizenship in the country they go to while inwardly retaining full allegiance to the PRC.

Heck, I know people from other, friendly/allied countries who obtain US citizenship who, if you pose the hypothetical question "If your former country and the US got into a shooting war, who would you fight for?", they would pick their former country without hestitation.

And despite public policy and rhetoric sometimes stating how the PRC is becoming a rival or even existential threat to the Liberal Democratic World Order (TM), the Western democracies don't do anything to secure things. And quite frankly, I don't know if there is anything that could be done, short of getting into... highly controversial territory. Which if the situation were reversed, the CCP would probably not bat an eye to do.

Another unique thing about IBO is that they mostly use old fashioned projectile weapons (ok, there are railguns) and physical melee weapons. Beam weapons are rare and no longer really used, and it’s the only Gundam subfranchise that doesn’t have beam sabers.

I’m Christian, and believe in the afterlife. Supposedly heaven will be incomprehensible awesome.

However I feel nonetheless there is so much awesomeness to experience here on this earthly realm too, and too little time even in a perfectly “good” life to take it all in. Even if someone’s life starting from birth to death at a ripe old age happens to fall perfectly min-maxed in place served with a silver spoon.

I started my career in tech as helpdesk. I recall the office printer was always broken or throwing a fit, and we’d be called in to troubleshoot. Or someone’s PC for whatever reason would not be able to connect to the printer. Almost felt like a conspiracy that printers were so unreliable.

Fast forward to today and my retired dad still insists he needs to print out paper documents to read even though he can perfectly see his 30” monitor or his iPad. His printer is always broken for some reason or another and every time I visit my parents’ home I’m troubleshooting his printer again.

I despise printers.

My wife has been without a desktop or laptop for more than a decade. Her primary computing devices are her phone and iPad.

For doing tasks like online banking or booking plane tickets, I find the mobile experience frustrating and therefore do it on my laptop. She finds the laptop clunky and finds mobile much easier.

How about a carrier style electromagnetic catapult to launch the glider? Except make it ski jump style so that the glider gains initial altitude.

(Now that I mention it, why don’t carriers combine both catapult and ski jump?)

I wanted to be a fighter pilot when I was a kid. I also wanted to be a racecar driver.

Today, I love sports cars. I’ve had a few fast cars, and owning a 911 is on my bucket list.

Funny enough, I have no interest in learning to fly. Though I’m still very into military aviation as a topic.

Maybe it’s because the delta between say, a 911 and a racecar is smaller than that between a civilian prop plane and a fighter jet?

In my 30s, church became my only source of friends and acquaintances. However even then, I only made two “true” friends I still meet up with outside of church. Three, if I count my wife who I consider my best friend :)

The rest seemed like friends while we attended the same church, but quickly vanished as soon as we left (the particular church, not the faith). Maybe more of those relationships could have been nurtured to last if given more effort, but as both my wife and I are introverts, it wasn’t easy.

I’m in my early 40s now. We still attend church, but we find the whole social aspect of it draining. We attend worship…then go home.

Both my father and father in law retired recently. They’ve done financially pretty well in life - not super rich, but they can live loose a bit.

Both were recently in the market for new cars. As a car enthusiast, I told them to YOLO and buy something like a 911.

But no, they got a staid huge BMW sedan and a staid huge Benz SUV respectively, despite neither of them ever likely to use the back seats at all.

As recently as 2020 I know there were a decent number of old school ASP.NET sites at various Wall Street investment banks (and devs maintaining and even building new features for them).

I don’t know if that’s still the case.

Before I married, I played a decent amount of games, but found that I was growing less and less interested. I’ve since stopped entirely.

Nowadays the closest thing to a traditional hobby I have is discovering and reading books off Amazon Kindle Unlimited.

With my wife, we love to travel and spend time looking for new destinations (or rediscovering old ones!) and planning trips. We usually take two international trips a year (Europe and/or Asia) and a few domestic trips (usually to the West coast) as well.

Good news I guess? I was in this situation in 2024 and asked a fellow traveler who was Italian what recourse we had. He laughed and replied “none, we’re fucked”.

As in, assume the throne and carry on the agenda? Or be accepted by the MAGA population?

IIRC Hong Kong and Singapore also tends to bring in people from lower income countries for this kind of work.

At minimum I fully expect South Korea to go nuclear in the near future. I wouldn’t be surprised if Japan follows.

The PRC would be delighted to see South Korea enter the Sinosphere and abandon the US. If nothing else, China would see it as a return to historic norms where most of East Asia serves as tribute states to the Chinese empire.

But also likewise, Korea holds historic antagonism towards China, arguably just as much as it does to Japan. Most of the population would hate such a relationship, and despite some in the left thinking otherwise, most South Koreans still see the US as the favorable partner over China.

But with China’s continued rise, and the US seemingly evolving (irreversibly?) into the MAGA Empire, that perception isn’t guaranteed to never change either. The PRC isn’t doing itself much favors in courting its neighbors, so it’ll become a game of who is worse.

In places where this is common (Hong Kong? Singapore?), isn’t it also normal to provide the housekeeper a small room in situ to live? So they’d not have any housing expenses?

I have some friends here in NYC that have visiting housekeepers that come weekly to clean their apartments. To be frank, I’m still kind of “wtf, you can’t clean your own place?” when they mention it.

James David says hello.

Also the first time around, there was also a contingent of old school Republicans around him acting as a guard rail.

It’s the same problem today as it was then. It is actually hard if you’re a democracy answerable to your people.

Are you willing to bet even a 1% chance to trade Los Angeles for Vladivostok? Warsaw for St. Petersburg? Because Putin is certainly willing to play chicken. Obama, Biden and (maybe?) even Trump are not.

Vance seems more than willing and able to continue MAGA.

Historically he has had bouts of anti-American rhetoric.

The same can be said with the Korean liberal/left parties in general, to varying degrees.

So while he is currently presenting himself as more of a centrist and pragmatist, it remains to be seen if he remains so.

Conspiracy theorists on the Korean right claim it is Trump that is playing into LJM’s hand in providing an excuse to pivot to the PRC.

The first half of your post seems to contradict your conclusion in the last sentence.

Your first half would describe a pretty miserable trip for me. I’d gladly take TSA over what you described.