Selected quotations:

The required input for the computer is usually inscribed on the chassis at the bottom. However, the text is usually faint and can be easily rubbed off after the computer has been used for some time. Mine says 20 V 2.25 A.

If you are using the laptop at the same time, there is a chance that the charger may not provide enough power to the computer to operate and force it to temporarily draw from the battery to supplement the power from the charger. This causes additional wear on the battery.

For example, if you plug in a 15 W charger and the computer wants to draw 20 W, it will draw it from the battery. Spikes in power consumption are not uncommon during ordinary use as the CPU will temporarily engage turbo mode during certain tasks, such as when it is loading a Web page or starting a program. Depending on your operating system, plugging the charger in may also cause the OS to disable battery conservation features which leads to more frequent spikes in power consumption.

None of this would be a problem if, for example, your charger delivered 45 W of power, because during those spikes, it just means the battery receives slightly less power as more of it is consumed by the computer.

If you are not using the laptop at the same time as you are charging it, I can’t think of any potential negative effects.

Okay, so let me put it this way:

Housing might, in theory, be guaranteed in your home town. This is a strength of China’s system, I grant, and it’s one of the few examples of one of their socialist policies which actually somewhat works. Their national pension scheme is the other thing I can think of that functions decently well.

But it’s certainly no Soviet Union where if you go up to local officials and say “I have no job and I want to work”, they’ll find something for you to do pretty quickly.

sanctions evasion? In my drug-buying app?

I do have to agree with you there. Though too much urban migration does come with its own problems. Chief among them that I observe is that it severely depressed wages and lack of work. China is moving through its own sort of gilded age right now with rapid technological advancement and extreme inequality.

For a purportedly socialist country, China lacks a lot of state infrastructure that comes along with that. The USSR guaranteed work and bread, at a minimum (mostly), but in China, a curious sight emerged which I observed in some of the poorer neighbourhoods of Hangzhou: old people pushing around carts of discarded cardboard boxes and tin cans. They weren’t employed as cleaning workers. They were collecting these to sell for their recycling value. And even though the Westerner might laugh at the notion of making a living collecting literal garbage for pennies, it only takes fourteen pennies to make a yuan and ¥5 will buy a bowl of rice, fending off starvation for another twelve hours. Now, homeless people collecting rubbish to sell for scrap does also happen in the US, but the US at least doesn’t claim to be a socialist country.

China has no functional social safety net, government assistance is minimal, and workers are exploited by a ruling class of wealthy elites with minimal interference from the state, in a shockingly similar way to capitalist countries. You cannot even form a real trade union in China, because all big companies are already “unionised” with workers represented by farcically corrupt organisations which work in tandem with the capitalist bosses.

I will give one more example: Coco is a nationwide chain of beverage stalls which sell tea, coffee, and juice drinks. I walked past a location in Shenzhen which was advertising that they were hiring. Their offer of pay: ¥200 a day, for a 10-hour shift, six days a week. In one of the most expensive cities in the country. I took a photo of this but I couldn’t find it to post.

As someone who is Chinese and living in the US, Americans who have not been to China overestimate its shittiness and people who have been to China once or twice overestimate its glamour. Outside the cities, the rural areas can be real shit-holes. I’ve been to a tea plantation where there were a total of six electric plugs in the entire village and the toilets flushed with a bucket which had to be filled from a pump outside. It’s not the level of rank poverty you see in many developing countries, far from it, but it’s a lot worse than even the poorest parts of Appalachia in the US, where at least people usually have electricity and running water.

Sorry, but I really am failing to make the connection between how learning a second language as an optional class leads to “freezing migrant families out of public sector jobs and services”. You don’t even need to speak English to access those most of the time. In my city, nearly all public services are available in English and Spanish at the minimum, and frequently Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian as well.

Yeah, most decisions by SCOTUS nowadays feel like they are justified with “We don’t like X, so now it’s Y” and attached to it is a dissent that says “The majority only says Y because X is not politically expedient for them”

I posted this comment four months before Trump’s election and I feel it is appropriate to post it again:

Left-wing voters: [Conservative politician] will do [bad thing]

Right-wing voters: [Conservative politician] will not do [bad thing], quit fear-mongering

…

Conservative politician (newly-elected): As part of our agenda, we will do [bad thing]

Left-wing voters: See! They will do [bad thing]!

Right-wing voters: No, they will not actually do [bad thing], it’s just banter

…

Conservative politician (having done [bad thing]): I am pleased to announce we have just done [bad thing]

Left-wing voters: See! They just did [bad thing]!

Right-wing voters: [Bad thing] is good, actually

…

(2 years after [bad thing] was done)

Right-wing voters: It’s [other party]'s fault that [bad thing] happened, I need to vote for [conservative politician] so that they can fix [problem caused by bad thing].

I’m guessing you or the AI chatbot you may have asked are talking about the total US household wealth as reported in this Reuters article. That’s where I see the $180 trillion number.

What’s your source for this?

How do you define wealth? Physical stuff? Money in your bank account? GDP measures everything that someone pays money for.

This is not even close to being true. Elon Musk’s net worth is $850 billion. In order for that to be 1 in 200 of all wealth in the US, it would mean US wealth would have to be $170 trillion. For comparison, the World Bank estimates the entire world’s GDP in 2024 to be $111 trillion.

He, in fact, owns a much larger share than 1 in 200. Though it’s also obvious to anyone watching that most of this money is fake and comes from the fact that he holds a lot of assets which have extremely inflated valuations (i.e. are a bubble with no underlying economic justification).

What replacement services are available? The American service actually works. Making your own would cost an order of magnitude more (as your contractors mysteriously “lose” half the money and bill the defence ministry 10 million roubles for “pens”) and a decade of your time.

Maybe they could hire Chinese firms to do it but I think China has a tendency to keep its military technology to itself.

“Der Führer is leading this,” Göring told Das Reich.

“It’s his play call to do it this way,” the Reichstag president said, adding that the NSDAP chancellor has “already conceded that he wants to turn down the volume” on anti-Jewish operations.

Did you assume I was defending Putin on this?

Putin’s a piece of shit and I hope all his crap gets plundered and the proceeds transferred to the Ukrainian drone fund.

When the US did this, everyone was quick to call it piracy. Which, to be fair, it practically was, although I can’t say I have any sympathy for Putin.

To be fair, Congress could fix this easily as well:

AN ACT

To enforce the act of November 19, 2025 entitled “an act to require the Attorney General to release all documents and records in possession of the Department of Justice relating to Jeffrey Epstein, and for other purposes.”

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa­tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

Section 1. Short title.

This act may be cited as the Epstein Files Transparency (Enforcement) Act of 2026.

Section 2. Court may order release of files

(a) Notwithstanding any other section of law, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (“District Court”) has jurisdiction over and may, upon the application of the Attorney-General, or any authorised legal representative of any State or the District of Columbia, issue a writ of mandamus to order any person who appear to have in his or her possession or control, files, documents, or any other information of any description or type whatsoever, subject to disclosure under the Epstein Files Transparency Act of 2025, to disclose or cause to disclose such material.

(b) A writ issued under subsection (a) of this act may be directed to any officer, agent, secretary, or employee of the United States, or any person under or formerly under the employ thereof, or to the Department of Justice, the Attorney-General, or any person under the employ thereof, or any combination of the above-mentioned persons or organisations.

© The District Court has jurisdiction to rule on matters pertaining to whether material is subject to disclosure under the Epstein Files Transparency Act of 2025.

(d) Nothing in this section authorises a court to order a person to testify if such testimony may be used as evidence against them in a criminal proceeding.

Section 3. Penalty for non-compliance

(a) A person who fails to comply with a writ issued under Section 1 of this act, may, at the discretion of the District Court, be held in contempt of court and punished with imprisonment until such time that such person complies with the order of the court, and be issued a formal caution that further non-compliance will result in criminal liability.

(b)(1) A person who fails to comply with a writ issued under Section 1 of this act and who refuses to comply despite a caution issued by the District Court under subsection (a) of this section commits an offence and may be punished with imprisonment for a period not less than four years and not greater than eight years and fined an amount equal to their total taxable income under the Internal Revenue Code from four years before the date of their conviction until the date of their conviction.

(b)(2) The District Court may compel the production of records from the Internal Revenue Service for the purpose of the calculation of fine amounts under this section.

© In addition to criminal penalties imposed by this section, the salary of any employee of the United States or person who is entitled to draw a salary paid from funds belonging to the United States, who fails to comply with a writ issued under Section 1 of this act, is five cents per month until January 21, 2029, notwithstanding the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 or any other law to the contrary, and such person shall not be entitled to any payment of any kind or for any purpose whatsoever other than for salary purposes from the United States, or any officer, employee, department, or agency thereof.

(d) A person who fails to comply with a writ issued under Section 1 of this act is disqualified from practicing as an attorney in any court of the United States and/or of the District of Columbia until January 21, 2029.

Place your bets!

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• Supreme Court allows the California gerrymander: Pays 2:1
• Supreme Court allows the Texas gerrymander: Pays 1:2
• Supreme Court overturns California gerrymandering but upholds Texas gerrymandering: Pays 1:1
• Supreme Court overturns Texas gerrymandering but upholds California gerrymandering: Pays 100:1
• 2026 election not held as scheduled due to Trump activities: Pays 4:1

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