This is not unique to Trump. Politicians say “they changed their views” if there is enough oil to grease wheels.

Being a millenial, I grew up with overbearing parents. I distinctly remember in 90s and 00s of pearl clutching moral outrage on video games and cartoons. Fast forward twenty to thirty years later, boomers accuse millenials of snowflakes. Whenever I hear that, I asked them “who raised us?”

To be fair, boomers experienced the media sensation of serial killers and spiked crime rate in the 70s and 80s and are understandably wary of their own kids going out. Going on a tangent here, this is why the nostalgia on the 80s is ridiculous because people back then complain of crime (hello, how many times big cities like Detroit and New York depicted as dystopian in the 80’s???)

There is a Vietnamese billionaire who is found guilty of scamming her victims. The court ordered her to pay what she stole within a deadline or else she will face execution. I don’t remember if she is ordered to pay either only a portion or all of what she scammed.

Just like with anything, if you put something interesting in your bio, women will use that as conversation starter.

Ironically, for authoritarian communist countries that recorded high rate of newly minted billionaires in the past five years, China and Vietnam are doing something right cracking down on billionaires.

The older I get, the more I understand what Franz Kafka had been saying. I have no love for the Republican Party or any other “party of small government”, but they have a point about bloating bureaucracy.

If they had more than 2 people working at a time

I don’t live in America but judging from what I heard, what is up with American stores manning the shops at bare minimum? Like, I heard so many complaints of self-service checkouts having no one staff looking after them, which leads to customers going to manned tills instead, because they couldn’t deal with technical issues especially for the seniors. Then when a senior is asked if they want to use automated checkouts instead, they reply with the snarky response “I don’t work here.” You can’t blame people for being reluctant to use the self-service checkouts, if there are no help! Where I live, there is always a staff looking after the self-service checkouts because of the inevitable technical issues or customers not knowing how to use them.

My guess for this poor implementation of technology is because bosses think machines are meant to replace humans as workers, when realistically machines should help people with work. We don’t live in yet in a world where there are robots with the artifical intelligence as good as the human intelligence. And we are still way far from having robots with good dexterity skills as humans to completely replace us.

Just as I finally see Chinese culture gaining more global cultural relevance— and it had to be in order to bypass a ban of an intrusive app.

A car company complimenting Hitler’s painting is nothing compared to making business deals with Hitler. Ford and GM still have subsidiaries that operated and built for Nazi Germany despite the US declaration of war in World War 2.

Things haven’t really changed. Corporations will typically side with fascists when it comes to it.

Not specifically about Norway, but richer countries are already providing funds to poorer countries to combat climate change, but it goes to vanity projects and other corruption.

The climate fund is unfortunately a money laundering scheme. Nicaragua is right to be apprehensive of the 2015 Paris climate change accords, believing it doesn’t go far enough. There is no actual legal mechanism to hold countries accountable for missing climate targets. Now that I think about it, Trump pulling out of the 2015 Paris climate deal during his first term is not necessarily a loss, since everyone is doing nothing since the accords were signed. In spite of the small climate wins, every current year is always the hottest year until the subsequent year records the hottest global temperature, always beating the previous year’s record.

That means Norway will sell the fossil fuel they don’t use to somewhere else.

If the next game is as impeccable as BG3, then this media blackout to create hype is the cleverest marketing move I have ever seen.

I haven’t heard of PixelFed, but thanks for informing me and I shall go!

but it has become this… thing.

It’s very appropriate to call Instagram now… a thing. The site just became something to post bragadacious, fake rich lifestyle photos, people wanting to become meme themselves, or scantily clad girls looking for attention for themselves if not for their OnlyFans.

Go on Europe!

In Rwanda, the US pondered to interfere with the signal of the Hutu radio channel that repeatedly refer to Tutsis as cockroaches and promote hating them, but decided against it because of belief in free speech. While it is not what caused the 100 days of genocide, it is a contributing factor. The autumn 2024 riots in UK relating to immigration started with a deliberate fake news.

I also grew up being told not to believe everything on TV, reading materials, radio and now Internet. But it is self-absorbed to assume that others would have been taught the same. “Not everyone thinks like me” is a hard lesson I learned in life. Not everyone would have been taught about critical thinking, nor consume the same information as you and I do. We live in our own bubble with our own set of realities without realising it.

I used to be for absolute free speech, but looking at the historical experience of Europe and Rwanda, I can see why the need for regulation on free speech. The United States is absolutist on free speech, but I think it is because they have not yet experienced atrocities that is fueled by incitement to hatred. I applaud the US in having to maintain a balance since many Americans still counter hateful movements. But from the look of things, the US could be heading on a trajectory that there could be point of no return.

Practically speaking, I’m on the fence, and ultimately I believe the debate on free speech would never be settled. Someone told me the principle of social contract could be applied; that society could decide what is acceptable. However, what is acceptable to some may not be to others. And overall society is not always the good judge of many things.

Edit: wording

It feels tragic. On the one hand, they made some of my most favourite games especially the Splinter Cell series, and it would be sad to see a once great developer to go. But then on the other, the greedy bastards deserve to go under for ruining some of my most favourite games including the Splinter Cell series.

But seriously though, if Ubisoft do go under, I hope that their IP would go into safe hands, like how Baldur’s Gate franchise has been handed over from Bioware to the competent team of Larian (and I do hope Larian does not enshittify unlike the fate of other companies, such as Ubisoft and EA).

This is going to be like Russia, the smart and sane ones leave only for the dumb people remaining to prop up an authoritarian regime.

Idk why people think leaving the EU is going to solve our problems, it’s going to literally fuck us in the ass.

These far right populist parties would probably leave the EU, if majority of Europeans want to leave. But the majority of Europeans want to remain. What the far-right European parties do instead is adopt the narrative of “fortress Europe”, that immigration should be restrictive and Europe remain “largely European”.

If anyone has watched the first season of Squid Game, this is precisely what the show has been making a point of. Both locals and foreigners are exploited by the owner-class. That being said, does Elon watch dystopian movies and shows and actually copies them for the lols?