Only in times of war. It’s literally one of the checks and balances to specifically prevent a president from stopping an election. Now, if we start a full blown war with Russia…

Oh thank God for a moment there I thought we might actually do the right thing. Thank God for our global leaders assuring the universe will be safe from the disease that is humanity. /s

This is true, China doesn’t care. I’m actually confused about the narrative around China wanting to take TSMC. Even the most cursory glace at the situation should make it obvious this isn’t one of China’s goals. This is because these EUV machines don’t work on magic. They work on knowledge and spare parts. Even in the unlikely scenario that China somehow invades and these machines aren’t destroyed by either China or the retreating Taiwanese, they aren’t going to be able to operate them and more importantly get spare parts to keep them running. They’d at best be used to disassemble and review.

All of this ignores the fact that China is already at 5nm using their own equipment anyway. For the extra 2nm of difference between TSMC’s 3nm to SMIC’s 5nm isn’t large enough to rationalize anything close to what they’re talking about. It’d be cheaper to just keep subsidizing the Chinese industry rather than invading.

All of this is to say, that China may or may not invade, but TSMC isn’t on the list of reasons. If anything, it’s on the opposite end. China has a LOT of motivation to bomb TSMC to prevent the west from getting chips as if TSMC is gone, then suddenly Chinese 5nm are pretty much the most advanced chips in the world (besides Samsung). Thus, the real conclusion is we need to invest in Samsung, which surprisingly isn’t happening for whatever reason is beyond me.

Actually it exactly resembles stagflation. It’s one of the reasons I said underemployment and not unemployment. During the 90s, Japan’s inflation rate was around 3% and they couldn’t get it under 2%. Sound familiar?

https://www.in2013dollars.com/japan/inflation/1990#:~:text=The yen had an average inflation rate of,82.953%25 of what it could buy back then.

The other part was low unemployment, but mostly government jobs that didn’t do anything. But it did create historically low unemployment and higher than average labor force participation.

https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/14332/#:~:text=The ‘lost decade’ in Japan was a period,when it reached a historical maximum of 5.5%25.

What you are seeing is USA doing exactly what Japan did in the 90s, which is have a target inflation rate of 2% that they can’t reach and hiding the high unemployment numbers with underemployment in crappy jobs.

Edit: just look at this rocketing government employment.

https://usafacts.org/reports/2021/government-10-k/part-i/item-1-purpose-and-function-of-our-government-general/employees/#:~:text=As of the dates shown below%2C there were,local government employees%2C of whom 23%25 work part-time.

More than doubled in a decade.

It’s not a bubble, it’s much much worse. You only hear of it in whispers among the financial world. It’s stagflation. Japan seen this story before, they call it their lost decade that has been going on for nearly half a century. It’s when you deficit spend like crazy to prop up the economy and that leads to high inflation and stubbornly high costs (IE: Housing). It’s coupled with basically no wage growth and high underemployment. Does any of this sound familiar? It buried Japan, it might bury USA.

This makes me question what it takes to be a super power. Between this and the leading cause of US bankruptcies being medical related, it’s almost as if super powers can only be super powers if they don’t give any of their citizens healthcare. It’s as if working their citizens to death is the only way for them to maintain their hedgemony.

Well we can only speculate, which is why I said IF I WERE TO SPECULATE. However, Algeria also vetoed, a primarily Muslim nation and Washington is calling them out as representing Arab nations.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/algeria-takes-seat-un-security-council#:~:text=Twenty years after its last,term that begins this month.

So there is evidence towards but I’m not seeing anything definitive. But again, that’s the definition of speculation.

No, I’m only stating their formal argument to the best of my ability to explain it and ignoring speculation. Now, if I WERE to speculate, I’d say what you’re saying is probably closer to the truth. For Russia at least I’m almost 100% certain that’s the reason. China is very different. I’d argue that China’s stance has nothing to do with Russia, USA or Taiwan. There’s this weird myopia when it comes to China and their interests. China’s interests span far greater than those three little pieces of land.

No, for China I’d argue we’d first need to ask who is their audience for this. That answer is the other nations in the middle east. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, etc… China has been trying to formulate a narrative that they are friends to Muslims regardless of the accusations of what they are doing in XinJiang. So, it’s almost certain China’s stance comes from conversations with those nations. So technically they are telling the truth in the sense that their saying what others are telling them. Reality is it’s just to win favor over the oil producing nations so they have stable supplies of energy.

*Edit. Essentially what I think China is saying to the middle eastern world is you have a veto with me, the same way India has with Russia.

So I want to be upfront and say I don’t really agree with their argument, but I do understand it. What Russia and China are saying is by tying the ceasefire to the release of hostages is unfair to the Palestinian side. This is because they lose all leverage and then would be easy targets for Israel who doesn’t seem to mind bombing Palestinian civilians.

My issue is that technically the only reason their bombing is because of the hostages and perhaps if they release the hostages peace talks can begin. The opposite of that argument is it will allow Israel to be even more aggressive after the temporary cease fire is ended.

I don’t know, but that’s the argument.

No, an inflation index only measures necessities. Ironically that’s a reason inflation always goes up as small electronics and other non-necessities actually have gone down significantly. But as I said the inflation index only counts things like groceries, housing, cars, oil and stuff like that.

That all said, it’d be fascinating to know what is the price limit that would stop hotdog throwing and the other question that needs answered is if this increase would make them more or less money.

While that’s true, I would argue the total human cost is similar. Your estimates do not count stolen and killed Ukrainian civilians. Adding those would make the numbers far closer, especially since no Russian civilians are caught in this conflict so far.

Not saying any of this is OK. Just unfortunately the numbers are very similar. War is miserable.

*And yes, the fact that Ukraine is suffering more losses due to the fact that it’s Russia invading absolutely makes Russia the bad guy here. I’m just pointing out that the losses are unfortunately very close.

How is that different than now? DnD fell apart because Hasbro is a world stage corporation, they’re just trading it to another world stage corporation which will kill it further until they pass it on too.

Whatever you remember liking is long long dead.

You know, unlike USA, China arrested their version of Trump. Look up Jimmy Lai. Where as in the US, they’re saying the leaders are these people below, in China they say the leader is the one promoting it in newspapers. Which again to your thinking is freedom of speech but also why China doesn’t have that. If your promoting the riots, your the leader, not the guy on the ground.

Wow, so stupid. These were riots. Are you saying we didn’t know the leaders of the Jan 6th riots or BLM riots? They literally stood up with megaphones.

They did find the ring leaders what are you talking about? I literally just said they cut it off at the head and feel that’s enough. In fact this is one of the reasons the US keeps claiming China is oppressing people. When China feels it has enough evidence they arrest the leaders. They don’t have to pass what US thinks is enough like your personal obsession with ballistics. Thus, the US complains China oppresses it’s people. But the reality is China just thinks differently and doesn’t want to waste time explaining it to ignorant people.

I’m actually happy we are having this discussion. I would have never realized how different the thinking is without you. Thanks, this is great. Even if you have no idea.

Oh wow, I just realized you optimize American ignorance.

After Tiananmen, the Chinese government realized their mistakes and instead of spending agonizing time to find all the assailants, they decided instead to reform. They spent the next decades doing capitalist reforms and trying to improve everyone’s lives after that incident leading to today where China is unquestionably just behind USA.

After Jan 6th, US decided the best thing to do with it’s time is to hunt down everyone at the Jan 6th riots. Creating a massive divide in the country. Causing friends and family to turn on each other. Because hunting down the rioters was more important to them than fixing the actual issues at hand.

You see this in the HK riots too. China only arrested the leaders, they let everyone else go. They aren’t interested in identify exactly who did what, they know that cutting off the head is enough.

But then, that’s the difference between western and eastern thought. Westerners are so individualistic they obsess over every individual. Eastern thought is that if we see something like this, there must be something structurally wrong and we need to fix it.

And I’ll say again, after these riots is when China reformed and changed their laws, not hunt down individuals. Where as in the US, the Americans say their laws are absolute and they need to hunt down every individual.

*Edit: And while you may not agree with China’s law changes and say they’re oppressive, the simple reality is, when China sees structural issues like this, they’re open to change.

Lol, god so you admit what I was saying

And, also, no, if they had any piece of the weapon they could id its manufacturer.

Yes, I know this, in fact I’ve been saying it over and over if they had the gun. But no they didn’t go around digging through the corpses to find all the data. Again, I get that YOU want them to, but they didn’t. And again, this is why China just says fuck you. Because it’s none of your god damn business what they choose to do. They chose to sweep up everything as quickly as possible and return things to normal, not go out of their way to hunt the protestors. China isn’t as revenge obsessed as Americans.

If they had the gun. Which they don’t. I’ve also said that again and again. They needed the gun to match the barrel and bullet.

*Edit: Matching to barrel is also different than matching to type. They only kept enough to match to type unless they had the gun in question.

… Every country makes its own database, honey. There isnt a single database.

Bingo and as I said over and over China didn’t invest a lot into this. So they didn’t have the data to trace. It’s not rocket science.

*Edit: Also, it’s not like I said they couldn’t trace anything. I said they could trace to type at the time, but not as detailed as manufacturer. You’d need enough data to do that and they didn’t think it was important to collect to that level.

Ah yes Europe, the Asianest of continents. Wait no it’s not. One of the problems China had was that the west wasn’t sharing all the data with them. It’s cute again that the west thinks they’re the international world. But guess what, Asia never felt that way. It’s literally one of the dividing issues. Again, so ignorant.

*Edit: Also it’s important to note that I’m not saying China couldn’t match a barrel to a gun. I’m saying China didn’t have this magical database that could let it identify to the manufacturer. It simply wasn’t important to China at the time to match to manufacturer. If they found the murder weapon it was enough for them to identify the murderer.

*Edit 2: Wait in 1933 was just the standardization of how to identify barrel to gun. There was no database at that time. You’re just makin stuff up to trick me. WHEN DID THIS MAGICAL DATABASE EXIST!?