Who could have possibly seen this coming for trump?

That’s worse than Carter’s low by 4 pts and outside the MoE.

Carter’s lowest approval rating was received with the arrival of *checks notes* military unrest in Iran. Simply impossible for trump to have see this coming as trump is completely ignorant of history.

Why has Trump broken all 10 commandments, for instance.

trump treated it like a to-do list until he got all ten.

Is this possibly a slight mis-translation of “Eggs in Purgatory”?

But my electric company has some dumbass arbitrary limit on the amount panels the professional installers have to follow and I’m pretty sure I’m close to it

This is what I faced too. The power company only allowed to install solar generation capacity 110% of my power consumption over the last 12 months. So we had to spent a year being very wasteful of electricity. That allowed me to put up panels covering the entire roof.

I have a modern house with modern a heat pump, and I agree this winter was pretty brutal, but nothing close to yours. Can I ask what you pay per KWh? I have to imagine you’re coming close to spending enough in energy to pay for some serious renovations on the house.

Ask anyone that voted for trump in the USA.

A 9mm subsonic round penetrating 10mm of spec armor sounds suspect, not that I doubt you for a second that it actually happened. I wonder if this is another example of Russian corruption where the hardened armor was paid for and something substantially less was actually delivered and installed.

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Here’s a sneak peek into a management review meeting in the near future:

“Why is our AI browsing porn in the middle of the workday and constantly writing ‘It fucking sucks ass here’ in corporate documents?”

I have to imagine flu would spread like wildfire under the close quarters conditions soldiers, sailors, and marines have to have under many circumstances.

Using your opponents name in a way that goes completely against that opponent’s tenets is childish and unprofessional. But what would a gooey Santorum smear like Rep Chip Roy know about professionalism anyway?

The problem with that approach is that the “rugged energy individualist” idea would only a thin veneer and as soon as you scratch the surface you see it isn’t true.

Currently technology solar isn’t able to affordably support the amount of energy consumption most Americans have or want. It would be either astronomically expensive for a single American household to have enough energy systems to be completely 100% self sufficient (in most States in the Union) or the American household would have to drastically reduce its energy consumption. I don’t know if you know us Americans, but we don’t like to cut back on anything.

The feasible technology we have today that is still expensive, but at least attainable by many, is for 30% to 70% household energy generation. The remainder (depending on the time of year) comes from our socialized system of central energy generation and distribution (the power grid).

I say this as someone with solar panels and EVs that has gone carbon free energy at home. Its expensive for the equipment and installation and still doesn’t cover all the energy needs year-round. Nine months out of the year we have no energy bills. Three months of the year, we do. That’s just physics and the limits of my wallet.

I’m wondering if this will actually help cement this story. Wouldn’t the defense (the journalists) be able to obtain all kinds of new data through discovery procedures they wouldn’t have had access to otherwise?

I’d need a reason to use Edge. If it used a different browser engine, that would be a compelling reason.

Thats the description of both Vivaldi and Brave browsers, which also haven’t out-Chromed Chrome. Both are Chrome engine with built in ad blockers.

Hey Microsoft, how about innovating instead? Edge is a Chrome engine browser like dozens of others out there. Why not write a new browser engine to give customers a choice? Or at worst, how about contract with Apple to license Webkit bringing a third solid choice for a browser engine to Windows. You’re not going to out-Chrome Google Chrome browser, so stop trying.

You can’t hand wave this problem away, saying you get what you pay for (also a common saying in the West). It’s systemic. Also, I’ve taken risks buying more expensive versions of the same products and had the exact same result.

…and…

So I ask you this: Was it the parents fault for feeding their babies contaminated baby formula? Should the people who installed toxic drywall have known better? Did the people who died from contaminated blood thinner deserve it for being poor consumers?

There’s another element of Chinese culture you’re missing and it is that of “miànzi” (面子) or “face” as in our version of the phrase “saving face”, or figuratively “reputation”. The sellers do care about their reputation, but there are different groups they care about and groups they may not. You’re likely a western end user retail customer. Most probably don’t care about you. They might care about their reputation with their western reseller customers though.

The examples of poison drywall or adulterated formula are very bad by both Chinese and Western standards, but for slightly different reasons. The western view it as bad because it harmed the end consumers. The Chinese view would be a loss of face of the seller for being such a public and shameless scam without integrity or honor, a huge loss of face.

No one seems to care in China. It’s like you say, making money is all that matters.

You’re close to understanding, but you’re still missing it. Again, you’re judging this by western standards. Now, I’m western, and I like the western standards, but I also understand that their culture doesn’t have to conform to ours for it to be “right”. There is no objectively right way to do this. We’re all different humans figuring different systems. I certainly have my preference for the western style, but that doesn’t make what the Chinese have been doing for hundreds (3000 thousand, if you ask the Chinese) of years they’ve been doing less “right”.

Let me tell you something: Toys made in West go through such testing. It was a lesson learned in blood over decades.

That’s a very recent addition to western culture. Lots of toys even during my lifetime were dangerous. Two generations back, in the USA we had toys like this which heated up to 260 °C (500 °F):

Which caused serious burns and even some deaths for the children playing with them.

In the 1950s this was a toy:

You’re bringing your perspective of individualism which is very much a Western idea. Other cultures don’t come from that perspective and arrive and different conclusions. I can tell you, we’ll see more of this press up on our western culture as trump continues to flounder our dominance and China continues to rise.

I’m also apply the same logic to Americans. If a USA of the future is the trumpian-style, I’d rather have a strong China to act as a check on US power. We, the USA, are a negative force on the world right now under trump.

I can go on and on about the poor quality of tons of Chinese-made products but you get the idea. Having said that, there’s plenty of great Chinese brands that make quality stuff. It’s just that there’s so much more cheap/generic stuff from China that competes with the good stuff it gets drowned out.

What you are experiencing is a different cultural approach that the west frequently fails to get what they expect. There’s a concept of “if you ask for bottom dollar prices, you’re going to bottom tier products”. Paraphrasing even further put another way “why are you complaining about getting junk when you’re only willing to pay junk prices?”. Get acquainted with the Chinese phrase “chàbuduō” (差不多). It literally translates to “a little bit less than all”, but figuratively translates to “close enough”. This is a very common phrase and idea in Chinese culture. If you’re buying the cheapest version of something you’re going to get a product that is likely not up to spec, but “close enough”. The second phrase you should know is “méi bàn fǎ” (没办法). This one figuatively translates to: “nothing can be done” or “it can’t be helped”. When you point out something isn’t up to what you expect, you should be ready to hear this phrase and understand that the person or company you’re dealing with isn’t interested in changing the situation and are simply washing their hands of the issue leaving you with it.

Neither of these are failings of Chinese culture, its just different. The failing would be expecting all other cultures to behave like our own.

If you don’t want the bad product, buy the more expensive version. As you said, you can absolutely get very high quality products from China, but you’re not getting those for a tiny fraction of the price of high quality goods from other sources.

To me this means the propaganda is stopping to work for increasing number of people.

I have different reading of the data. Essentially there are two superpowers today: USA and China. No one wants to be ruled by another country, but the dominant superpower has that power to shape policy around the world through military and economic actions.

What I’m seeing is that trump made the USA so unpalatable with his actions that China becomes the lesser of two evils. So its not so much that China’s bad behavior are erased, but given the choice of China or the USA leading the world, the world is rejecting the USA.