¬(Yes; libreddit is more than a read-only frontend for Reddit)

For an adversarial relationship, as the one between EU and China, it was still one overall based on understanding and a degree of predictability. That just ends up being more attractive than an ally turning into a rabid dog and stabbing you in the back.

I think no one should be surprised by this.

Pretty much the exact same story here, only my obsession was more with PC-DOS RPGs like Ultima, Wizardry, Goldbox games, thanks to my father and older siblings influencing me there.

Yeah, but here is the tragedy to all that: It is still also deciding, which things get the capital investments necessary to exist, and the livelihood of people has been entangled with that shitshow to an absurd degree.

Sometimes I almost love that I am already at subsistence level disability payments (in a European Welfare state, so thankfully, not in danger of starvation or anything) without any real wealth beyond day-to-day living expenses, there’s not that much for me to lose every time this shit happens.

Fun fact: When choosing my starter for the first time, all I knew about Pokémon was: “It’s a game I saw someone play at school once and it kind of looked like an RPG and I love those!” I genuinely just went with what looked cool to me and had no idea there were “actual” dragon Pokémon.

Also +1 on [email protected] noting, that Gyarados is the cool dragon in Gen1

As a bullied kid that back then just wanted a cool dragon, I protest that insinuation!

At this point, I am convinced it’s a pump and dump scheme, still ongoing, too. It only takes a few people in the know of when and where the news break about the tariff supsension, to seriously make a killing on the market, on the backs of others. Trumpists can now also (for a while) feel like their God has saved them again and never steered them wrong, or curse their momemts of doubt, when they did not buy yesterday, as their prophet called for.

It is a mixture of incompetence, impulsivity, but I am certain at this point, a huge chunk of it is outright corruption and cult tactics.

Which is why, generally, taxing wealth and having the state invest it in supportive infrastructure and subsidising is the preferred option for developed economies that want manufacturing (back).

Sweeping, protectionist tariffs are usually a painful measure of necessity, if you have an economy without any developed industrial or service sectors, where initial investments are basically impossible due there being no taxable wealth and no market incentives, because of global players always being more profitable and cheaper, than any beginning industry that has to go through growth processes and learning experiences. (More selective tariffs or outright import/export bans of course also have their place for a multitude of political reasons, e.g. the EU not wanting a lot of artificially cheap and lower-health-standards US meat)

Maybe it was just my circle of friends, we used to all hate Red Bull irrationally and didn’t know anyone who liked it back then. It just felt like a crappy, “juvenile”, “non-nerdy”, “commercial” brand somehow. Might have been a subcultre thing.

We actually always just went with coffee, even as teenagers. I guess as early millennials, we weren’t yet the energy drink generation.

I 100% agree, though: alcohol beyond a beer or two isn’t recommended for a LAN at all. Although I guess I have a “fond” memory of sitting there, playing Left4Dead with friends at a LAN, when one who didn’t play himself at that moment piss-drunkenly leaned on my shoulders from behind, slurring directly into my ear: “You have to shoot them! Shoot them! You have to shoooooot them!!”

Yupp, seems that they quickly changed it back, too, lol.

the bears and shorts all entered this morning with their trades queued up from the weekend.

Yupp, that’s why it would be very fitting as a proper dead cat bounce from just the massive amount of shorting that had already been happening.

But you are also right - no one has a crystal ball here. Who knows where the volatile ride will stop.

They are doing their best with the framing, but I do get the feeling - considering how futures had been trading before - this is going to be a dead cat bounce.

I’m gonna be real here, just Realpolitik-wise from the perspective of “the West” sans the USA - China is currently proving that they are simply more reliable in geopolitics and even economically, and that is just damn important, even in an adversarial relationship. It isn’t even because they are a de-facto dictatorship, Russia is one too, and Russia is a mad dog. They just managed to keep their shit mostly together so far, still riding out their massive growth spurt. Even human rights abuses outside of Realpolitik don’t seem as the argument they were: internationally, the US has always had a more greyish record anyhow. But now, considering the US is quickly doing its best to catch up in domestic tyranny, that argument seems to be going fast, too.

Sadly, I don’t have huge hopes for China to be a proper “better” hegemon globally, if that should be what ultimately happens - they are facing crises of their own, and have been dabbling in their own brands of economic imperialism, and at least the way their military is gearing up contains a lot of stuff usually used for military imperialism as well.

A new day, a new opportunity to repost this meme:

I think the sad reality is: Criticism of the Soviets by now has been reduced to just a surface level “feeling” of their tyranny. Basically a thought of what made it tyrannical was the lip services to communism and the red flags - not understanding the actual problems underneath. In the worst case, some people even openly say, that it’s just that they put the wrong people into the Gulag, to then post memes about throwing lefties out of helicopters.

I think history has shown by now, both the Soviets’ criticism of US imperialism, and the West’s criticism of Soviet human rights abuses has always had huge hypocrisies within, both systems very much capable of the crimes of the other. We need another international class based movement, that doesn’t get caught up in national interest like that.

The most stupid argument I’ve seen is from an American who said “what if you don’t know about the effects of a drug that could save your life?” Well, that’s the job of the doctor.

Wow, even if we imagine some different situation where information about a new development, service or creation is needed, that’s what reviews and journalism are supposed to cover, not advertisement. (In b4: the observation that those have tragically been becoming more and more indistinguishable from advertising.)

I usually switch between Subscribed/Hot, Subscribed/Top 24 and All/Scaled, All/Hot and All/New, for a mix of what is the “talk of the town”, and discovering new communities and content. I think that there is actually a lot more content already, than what people may think at first glance.

Sadly, part of the reality right now is, that there is no perfect swap-in replacement for what Starlink is being used for, that doesn’t have some caveats. There probably are some problems in just physical availability of terminals and accompanying logistics - although I’d love a better estimate than “relatively fast” as well.

I am still sad, that, in another universe, past me probably said “Who cares that Piefed has worse documentation at the moment, just go with anyway”, when setting up my server. But without prior hosting experience, I went with the more established Lemmy, even though PieFed is literally just better concerning its features.