I feel we have been hovering right around there for a while now.

Look, I fully understand this is a case of doing a good thing for probably the wrong reasons/by accident, but yoooo I will take it.

But man, the easy pickings for Shit Reactionaries Say will be gone.

I have about the same position on this. A lot (though not all) of these people are insufferable, though we don’t have nearly as many in my country as the US does. Being annoying on the internet is, thankfully, not something people get deported for however.

Nor does it mean I wish them death, which is likely what would happen if they were sent back. Their death and a prolonging of a war that is just going to kill even more.

Surely they don’t actually think NATO is an equal partnership between them and the US, right?

US speedrunning driving their economy into the ground. I would be curious to see if this is just a momentary blip or actually some kind of long running sanction.

There are so many things I get from China that I would be missing out on if I were in the US. Nevermind the most simple things like care packages for people living overseas.

I love checking the byline on these opinion pieces.

The author is a member of the “Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong” and has based most of his career on fearmongering Tiananmen Square. He was banned from entering China years ago, so obviously is extremely unbiased.

Knowing the US, they probably assume as long as they can protect all the CEOs and politicians in bunkers that they will have no problem weathering the fallout and rebuilding. Those are the most important “workers”, right?

They will be very confused when actual workers don’t magically appear on command.

America, Land of the Free¹ and Staunch Defenders of the Free Market²!

¹ Except for TikTok

² Except for Chinese Goods

In a variety of ways, yes.

Yes, unhealthy food is made to be addictive and convenient.

There are other factors that go into it too though. People work far too long hours with far too long commutes and either don’t have the time or energy to do any cooking and/or grocery shopping. Even if you live in an area where you have good markets to buy food from, you may not always be able to.

I love to cook, it’s one of my main hobbies and I still find I don’t really have much time to cook during the week after work. My office provides lunch that is reasonably well balanced, luckily for me. If I could spend less time going to/from/at the office I would happily go to the market to buy fresh produce every day. But that simply isn’t feasible.

Gaming is a weird one because AAA development is an unsustainable shitshow with goals that can only be achieved with some of the worst exploitation that exists in any industry anywhere, but at the same time it has become easier than ever for a small indy developer/team to make and publish their own stuff and not have to deal with any of the big companies at all. Not that indy development doesn’t have its own host of problems, but for different reasons.

Russia doesn’t need to make some weird symbolic gesture to punish Japan. Joining the sanctions was enough of a self-own for us, our economy is the worst it has ever been in my lifetime, we are in the midst of a huge energy issue and the currency is absolute trash. More and more imports are becoming non-feasible, we can’t even get orange juice anymore.

I am thoroughly envious that you have managed to avoid that meme this long. You aren’t missing anything.

Nope, they are pretty much as bad as the rest of them. I think like 96-97% of their salespeople make basically no money. That was their whole shtick back in the 50s of recruiting housewives as salespeople, you see it in a lot of period dramas and the like.

I know a few countries they operate normal stores because local laws prevent them from doing their whole tupperware party thing, like China. I have heard they are moving more away from that model in other countries too, but I have no idea how true that actually is.

I don’t think the actual product is necessarily bad as far as I am aware, but they still have scummy sales practices.

My partner will probably never financially recover from her time involved in a MLM. She was involved in one from well before we got together, and she has since escaped thankfully. I am extremely lucky to be in a position while I can reasonably support both of us so she can focus on the debt, but it’s not going to be something she ever really pays off.

MLMs make me extremely pissed off, becaues they absolutely ruin lives. They should be illegal everywhere, but only very few countries actually have a blanket ban on them. China and Saudi Arabia are the only countries I know of offhand.

We just gonna go full circle on original recipe Coca-Cola again soon?

Obviously the US invented freedom, it did not exist historically.

Therefore it is an obvious requirement that you be American to be a free-thinker, so only American news outlets can be free. If they say something wrong, then they have obviously been subverted by China/Russia and are no longer free.

Clothes I couldn’t help you much, my entire wardrobe has subsisted on gifts (and the fact my job has a uniform anyway) for like the past 20 years. I am honestly not sure how I would go about buying my own clothes.

Technological product/gadgets. I also like things that last a long time, but I am generally okay with paying a premium for that. So a lot of the brands I use here are on the expensive side, but also they last.

Phones/Tables/Watches. I try to stick to Chinese manufacturers. Generally a decent lifespan and pretty durable at a way more reasonable prices than a lot of the competition. Nothing too shocking here, the major brands like Huawei are solid products that can last a long time if you take care of them.

Chargers/power banks and the like I swear by Anker. They are pretty expensive but they do last a very long time and work very well. I haven’T had an anker device fail on me yet, even if the products I attach to them have.

Vaping devices (it’s how I quit smoking) I tend to buy from the Philippines, VIcious Ant are kind of expensive luxury items but they last close to forever. My friend dropped one five stories at a construction site and it was fine. Coils I make myself.

Framework is cool, I haven’t had a lot of time to play around with them but I would love to tinker with one a bit more.

I will edit some more in when I can think of them.

I have seen that take in other places a lot recently with the US budget passing. “Well yes, he approved a budget that paid for genocide, but what can you expect him to do, shut down an entire budget just because of one teensy little genocide? He needs to be realistic about budgetry concerns”

Why yes, yes I can. The mass genocide of the palestinian people trumps “budgetry concerns”.

I appreciate the sentiment, but it is honestly a pretty broad subject.

Maybe narrow it down to a few more specific areas first so people can share ones they know and go from there? Added benefit of making it easier for other coming to this thread to find the kind of information they are looking for too.

How about overalls? Are those required or optional?

I didn’t realise how strict the dress code was, so I need to take notes.