No, I mean if we’re talking about comparing US and Chinese consumer chips on most phone activities in 2025, you aren’t likely to notice a major difference.

If you want to compare mobile camera systems, that’s a separate comparison. I like Google camera software/processing a lot, but Chinese companies have been innovating tremendously with their mobile camera stacks. I’m way more interested in the Huawei 14/15 ultra offerings for example.

Yeah this view is pretty dated. Like it or not, China has caught up and started leading in several industries over the last 10 years. They have the capacity, skills, and domestic demand for competitive high quality products. Their domestic chip from SIMV is only a few years behind at “5nm” which was the 2021 standard. I’m still playing modern games on a 8 year old i7. Most consumers who use their phones for social media probably wouldn’t notice much difference between a 2021 phone vs 2025 phone besides a better camera and software.

I think I fall in the same camp of agreeing with a good chunk of his points while disagreeing with others and I even have laughed at many of his jokes. And I’m totally fine with that for people I enjoy watching. However, what turned me off of Bill Maher a decade ago was his overall manner and attitude. He just started coming across as arrogant, obnoxious, smarmy, and untimately unkind, even when I agreed with him, which I did not enjoy. It was much in contrast to other satirists who may have mocked people, never felt like they were out to denigrate. Maybe his content has changed, but I haven’t noticed.

The proposal doesn’t ban the party, it suggests banning extremist individuals convicted of things like inciting hatred from running for office. In effect, it puts a damper on extreme individual members of a party that doesn’t itself reach the threshold for prohibition as a party. So I can see the logic behind it. But I agree it’s a dicey proposal and ripe for political abuse. Still, it would be contingent on court decisions so it could work with a strong (just/uncorrupt) court system.

This is an unhelpful and condescending comment. It dismisses the meaningful activities people engage in online as “not life”: self expression, creating art and community, working, socializing, enjoying entertainment, and learning new things. It proposes a false dichotomy wherein not-online is utopic with universally accessible activities and, especially, an absence of the very same people who make online spaces toxic hellholes. They are present in “real spaces” too. These are not mutually exclusive things. You are likely to find that pro-social activists online are often try to be pro-social activists in person as well.

That being said, I agree that people get terminally online and that balancing digital and physical lives are important. Managing attention and mental health are important, especially when content about important and meaningful topics turn into viral and incessant feeds that are geared to overwhelm human brains that weren’t evolved to handle such constant cognitive/emotional stress.

Take care out there folks.

Most of the traditional automakers will do keys or key fob without an app AFAIK.

For usability/get in and go, you can’t go wrong with a Toyota or Honda. Perhaps consider a used Prius prime (PHEV) if you’re on a budget

Given the world’s track record with the 2nd and 3rd greatest world powers, I imagine the same if not tamer with the 1st greatest world power. Heavy sanctions only when they actually invade a “western” country.

In the same boat with the same CPU. The beast is running Cyberpunk 2077 fairly well at 1440p with a DLSS/ray tracing card but it can’t run Windows 11 🙄🙄🙄

You are correct, tariffs hurt everyone. The direct cost is paid by the importer not the exporter. Part of the reaction-turned propaganda point about the US is that American people will bear the brunt of the tariffs. This is because Trump/MAGA framed tariffs as a tax that other countries would pay the direct cost of, not the Americans importing the goods.

This led to a downplaying of how it would negatively affect the foreign industries exporting the goods, and apply political pressure on those countries. This is how tariffs usually work, you put tariffs on certain goods to apply economic/political pressure towards specific goals, e.g. tariffs on Chinese EVs to protect NA auto industry. This still hurts NA consumers in that they don’t have access to cheap Chinese EVs, but gives NA auto a chance to catch up. Tariffs are a normal economic tool that can help with bringing industry back into your country, but it’s a tricky balance.

Canada is under no illusions that we will have to pay tariffs on imported American goods. There’s also a nationalist reaction to boycott American goods to an extent for starting this trade war, but Canadians will still hurt. The alternative would be to take it and submit to America’s whims, which is not a real option.

This trade war is not within the norms of standard economic diplomacy/negotiation though, it’s just unhinged chaos. IMO the chaos is the point, giving cover for Trump&friends to solidify complete control as they turn the US into an authoritarian regime and helps to bring American industries to heel under their rule.

Or they could just respect the ceasefire they agree to when they finally do agree to one, which is the point of this piece.

Current best practice AFAIK is exactly this. Gender care includes psychiatric/mental health, and occupational (ish) therapy that leads up to surgery after a lot of care. Gender dysphoria, like many things has an internal and external layer where society sets expectations and acts on us based on our gender expression in ways that can be quite brutal. Some folks may end up enby or smth or find something acceptable without surgery, which has its downsides. However none of this should preclude surgery as an option, as evidence has shown it is a highly effective treatment in our current context.

This is the biomedical view that focuses on dysfunction and suffering of the individual and addressing that dysfunction. There is a more philosophical/existential view worth understanding to balance the biomedical view. It is one that acknowledges that we are who we are and we develop the way we develop. If we are to flourish as humans and as a society, it must be through compassion for each others’ experiences as human subjects struggling to figure ourselves and each other out. Imposing one’s worldview on others by force is to treat humans as objects through manipulation. That’s mistaken and harmful. Compassion doesn’t mean you don’t stand up to bullies or you don’t resist injustice or you don’t fight back in self defense. It means you’re always seeking to humanize rather than dominate. This can mean supporting trans folks in accessing care or it can mean helping them to consider all their options.

Yes… that’s why they use the word “could”. This is how research works and what reasonable science reporting looks like. There were no promises or wild claims made in the article.

It’s hyperbole for effect.

It’s like “fuck”, it means several different things depending on context.

For example, there’s also the meaning of lamenting that people seem too cavalier, ignorant, or dismissive of something you feel is important.

But you’re right, the meaning in context is sometimes unclear and there are better ways to communicate your feelings.

As for responses, you could always go with a polite “What do you mean?”

Sometimes the “realism” critique is certainly pedantic and unproductive, but other times what’s really meant is contradiction. Situations should make sense within the fictional world. And in the fictional world of DC, norms around politics and economics are portrayed to be analogous to western neoliberalism with capitalism assumed and unquestioned. So with the Wayne family being a relatively well-regarded billionaire family like the Gates or the Buffets, there is still the issue that it is clear under the current system and that portrayed in DC universe that such wealth cannot be accumulated and sustained without massive exploitation of working class people somewhere along the line. So billionaire + “good guy” starts to become more of a glaring contradiction even in DC. But sure, we can explain it away as fiction with magically ethical capitalists. The interesting thing about the billionaire Wayne discussion though, is when people apply this fictional view of capitalism to how they interpret the real world. And now we’re back to propaganda.

What I would say that sets West Wing and B99 apart is sometimes there’s a tonal difference or way in which certain themes are handled/portrayed that signals to the viewer that the writers acknowledge this isn’t what real life is like but we hope one day we can get there. And it’s a spectrum right. Some do this to varying degrees, other more propagandistic media do not.

They’re for storing the molecular correlates of trauma, obviously :3

I tend to lump it in with The West Wing as idealistic wish fulfilment of how we’d like things to be, or a picture of our human potential.

I will always recommend Into The Breach to everyone. Perfect mechanics, easy to jump in and out of, satisfying aesthetics, balanced difficulty

28 Millennia later and the Old Night falls across Terra. The codex describes humanity’s descent into warring factions. But there is a reason they called it the Old Night, an ancient rage virus re-emerged to decimate Terran civilization until The Emperor emerged to vanquish the old nemesis using his psychic and scientific powers once and for all.

Lol that’s some serious cherry picking my dude. One is one of the best action movies of the last 20 years and launched a franchise. The other is a middling coming of age story made for streaming. There are plenty of bland action movies just as bad as Damsel and without an ounce of activism that come out every year. Try comparing it to Get Out, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Mad Max Fury Road, hell even Inglorious Basterds might be considered activism now that fascism is back in fashion.