You could be in the finest school in the world and the phone would still win.

Also, France started doing this a few years ago already and has seen improvement across every metric. Better grades, more socializing, 80% less bullying, less anxious kids. They only downside they found? Parents complaining they were unable to call the kids at any moment.

America was safest under Clinton with budget surpluses to boot.

yup, just found out the hard way what posting on lemmy.ml entails.

Uhm, China’s only official ally is North Korea, thanks to the recently renewed Sino-North Korean Mutual Aid and Cooperation Friendship Treaty.

China’s base Djibouti is but one of many foreign bases there, and is not the result of some alliance between the two countries.

The PRC has broken the One China principle a long time ago under Xi when he asserted the PRC as the only China with Taiwan as part of it’s territory. Also Taiwan is full of embassies which are just renamed to business development bureaus to keep the CCP from whining. The lack of recognition is a ultimately a problem on paper only. The only reason a country don’t recognize Taiwan is because the PRC will diplomatically retaliate.

China’s inability to make allies and it’s antagonistic stance towards it’s neighbours is just making those countries choose the US. Instead of China becoming a better alternative it’s instead driving them away and is blaming the US for their own policy mistakes. It’s like Putin crying about NATO on it’s borders but at the same time giving those old soviet satellite states more and more reasons to join NATO. And then blaming NATO for the consequences of his own bad behaviour.

Sounds like you live on a different planet entirely.

Taiwan(ROC) has been independent since 1912, 40 years before the PRC even existed. Taiwan doesn’t want independence because it already is, despite all the geopolitical shenanigans. The idea that the US is somehow provoking China to invade another country is of course an odd notion at best.

Also when HK was given over the the PRC folks in Hong Kong didn’t mind because HK was an economic powerhouse compared to the mainland and the deal was hands off for 50 years. HK would remain autonomous. But China violently broke that deal a while ago.

And sure, the US has a history of violence, but no country is innocent of that, Mao even managed to kill 30 million of his own countrymen in just 3 years time.

Granted, the US is on a descending slope, but to think the world will just accept Chinese morality in it’s stead is farfetched. China has almost no allies, and it has an antagonistic relationship with most of it’s neighbours. It’s wants to be the world’s steward but it’s acting like an abusive uncle.

They’re both bullies. About 26 million people live in Taiwan and have faced political and military bullying from China for decades. And that’s not even mentioning Hong Kong, Xinjiang or Tibet. China tries to play friendly because it wants to create a Pax Sinica to replace America. But at the same time is militarily threatening it’s neighbours and claiming the territory of other countries as their own.

Even if you make a choice for a lesser evil. It’s still evil.

Both the US and China are bullies. So what’s the point of this?

Edit: don’t bother replying, I’m not buying what you’re selling.

Just hire your own crew, undo their work, send them the bill and the fine.

A lot of biodegradable plastics were only biodegradable in industrial composters. Meaning it would still last in a natural environment for years or even decades. So seeing this just dissolve under natural circumstances seems like a game changer.

Starbucks coffee sucking is by design. Because more important than the coffee being any good is the coffee being consistent. But it’s very difficult to make really good coffee consistently with minimum wage chain store staff. So they use dark roasts and automation to make sure a Starbucks frappocino oatmilk shake tastes the same in Amsterdam as it does in New York.

This goes for almost any chain store. McDonalds is the same, food is not bad, but not good either. But it’s never awful because it’s always the same.

They have these values tied to their identity, their ego. It’s hard to change that. Hard to admit you were wrong if being wrong means having to become someone else.

This is also a problem on the left though.

Long long time ago someone wrote on Reddit that the best post-apocalyptic place to stay would just be a small town. With a dentist, a doctor, farmers and builders. Where everybody knows each other. The interdependence of skill and need for cooperation would keep the peace.

And for some strange reason when they park in 2 spots, it’s somehow the fault of the parking space being too small for their oversized truck.

https://www.hetregentbijnanooit.nl/site/totaaloverzicht-van-10-meetjaren-het-is-volbracht/

Though it seems I’ve got my numbers mixed. Must’ve read 7% before instead of 7 times.

Why? All the reviews I’ve seen so far are bad. It’s barely scoring 5/10.

None of the countries is going to back down. Because the all know the minute they do, the more shit Trump is going to pull. At this point it’s basically extortion.

But it only rains about 7 times a year during normal commuting hours. Most rain the Netherlands falls at night.

English is too engrained. Even if the US falls down to some impoverished dictatorship. English will remain. The cost of switching now is just too great.

Wait, isn’t this just extortion? Smashing in a shop’s windows and telling the owner if he wants to put in new ones he needs to pay the guy with the bat first.