Or you’re listening to a podcast and space out a few seconds. Then you skip back to listen again and zone out again. Rinse and repeat until you don’t care anymore.

As a Norwegian: seconded. It’s tough to get real close and personal with Nordic people. We have smaller friend groups and don’t swap out friends often, but that is largely because we are quite loyal. So when you’re in, you’re in to stay.

I’m not going to do your homework for you. Suffice is to say China is still an emerging market and all indicators aside from exports are unusually low for the kind of economy China is. I don’t know what kind of point you’re trying to make because you seem to be skirting the issue. None of the pieces I linked proclaim China is about to collapse, only pointing out the challenges. Again: what the hell is your point?

https://tradingeconomics.com/china/consumer-confidence https://www.china-briefing.com/news/chinas-august-2024-economy-record-export-growth-amid-domestic-challenges/ https://www.euronews.com/business/2024/09/09/europes-luxury-goods-market-set-to-feel-the-pinch-as-china-growth-weakens https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/analysis-chinas-monetary-volleys-miss-key-threat-to-economic-growth/ar-AA1r9V9Q

Plus anecdotal stories from people I know that traveled to China in the past few months.

Basically, the post-COVID recovery was already slower than expected. Then the property sector all but halted. People are stuck with gig work and temporary contracts.

Why do you imagine the government is doling out money for the first time if everything is peachy?

Lots of people, especially the Chinese. The sentiment about work, investment, economic prospects, consumption are all quite bad. The central bank is cutting rates. Just today the government dipped their toes into the helicopter money game. The only thing keeping the party going is exports

It’s fine until it’s not. China is sort of notorious for such grey lines that can shift overnight. And if you are influential, you may just fall victims to the “kill the chicken to scare the monkeys” practice

That, my friend, is the problem for whichever schmuck is in charge after me, a C Suite executive. By then I will be long gone on my private island, having pulled the rip cord on my golden parachute.

Contrapoints’ latest video is a very good one you might find interesting. It’s sort of a PhD in video form, very deeply researched. The topic is heterosexuality, framed through the Twilight stories. It’s long and pretty meaty

Yeah AvE was a punch in the nuts

The reference in this specific pamphlet is against education that teaches evolution (and also by extension anything else the specific Christian sect disagrees with such as equality and other liberal values). Education is good as long as you’re learning “The Truth(™)”: maths, history and religion

I grew up in this kind of environment. Every religion and denomination except your specific subset of Christianity is bad, you’re taught.

Sounds like your attitude isn’t “I don’t know” but rather “I believe”. They’re not the same. In my view the default position should be agnostic atheism until such a time as you can be gnostic in either direction.

Kitchen stuff: a carbon steel wok, a Dutch oven and a bread form. Also an electric toothbrush.

But most of all: a fully automatic bean to cup coffee machine

Uh, yes. The UN has condemned Hamas’ acts of terror. Does that clarify things for you?

Just shooting from the hip here, but I think maybe you can see cults as a subset of cultures.

A cult is a small group defined by an authority figure, how it treats its members and its relationship with the rest of the world. They are often small groups, but can be large like Jehova’s Witnesses.

Cults are usually a subset of a religious faction, like baptists or Lutherans, which in turn is a subset of for example Protestantism. (There are non-religious cults as well of course).

And confusingly religions exist within cultures and can be a core part of their identity, but one religion can also exist in a totally different culture.

So I think you’re trying to compare all apples with a specific type of oranges here.

There are some events that are costlier to plan for than to clean up after. I’m not sure if this is one of those, but…

I’m sure that didn’t help but that’s a drop in the proverbial ocean. There have been many severe rainstorms since that happened and nothing like this occurred

The water management infrastructure is excellent. But it was designed to cope with century floods, not the kind that happen every other century.

Edit: the drainage systems were in fact designed to cope with a once-in-200-years flood. But this was a 500 year flood. A quarter of Hong Kong’s annual rainfall poured down in a day—and this is a place with notorious rain storms through the summer

Minority advocate?

When I was doing the same research a few years back Fastmail was recommended to me and I’ve been very happy with it. It was fairly easy to set up with an email address from my own domain too.