The type of capitalism found in China is known as state capitalism and it’s an unholy blend of central planning and free markets, with the government owning significant stakes in all key industries, exerting a massive control over both the economy and society as a whole using all of the methods used by previous Communist autocracies, only this time with far more technology.
It seems like the entire industry is in pure panic about AI, not just Google. Everyone hopes that LLMs will end years of homeopathic growth through iteration of long-existing technology, which is why it attracts tons of venture capital.
Google, which sits where IBM was decades ago, is too big, too corporate and too slow now, so they needed years to react to this fad. When they finally did, all they were able to come up with was a rushed equivalent of existing LLMs that suffers from all of the same problems.
Just tell them you’re not drinking alcohol for health reasons. Nobody will really disagree with you on this.
One of the most convincing tricks he pulled off was transporting two people from the stage to what looked like a believable beach. Totally fooled me (but I was a kid when I watched it).
Edit: I started to figure out that something was amiss soon after, because every single one of the supposedly “random” people he invited on stage to do his tricks with (usually by throwing plastic balls into the audience) wore incredibly “inoffensive” and poorly fitted clothes. At some point, I was able to spot which people he would end up picking from a mile away even before he had done so.
The “well-regulated militia” part afterwards isn’t vague, but gets ignored by self-proclaimed “originalists”.
They go after this platform, because it’s a favorite of mass shooters. You know this.
The AR-15 is designed for hunting humans, not game.
Would you describe someone who has likely driven a Jeep as smart?
At least in China’s case, the harassment extends to ethnically Chinese people who have lived their entire lives abroad and never set foot in China.
This appears to be the new norm among autocratic regimes (although it isn’t all that new - think of Trotsky, for example, or the infamous umbrella murder).
Vietnam is doing this as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tr%E1%BB%8Bnh_Xu%C3%A2n_Thanh
https://rsf.org/en/dissident-exile-stops-blogging-because-family-vietnam-being-hounded
Eritrea, a regime that is similarly repressive as North Korea, but far less known, is also notorious for this:
Saudi Arabia is among the worst in this regard:
https://freedomhouse.org/report/transnational-repression/saudi-arabia
I’m getting the impression that liberal democracies housing refugees and dissidents from autocratic regimes are unprepared to counter these threats. It is our responsibility to protect people seeking refuge and this includes proactive action against governments that seek to extend their violent rule outside of their borders.
It wouldn’t be a Republican ban if it wasn’t tackling a fictional “issue”.
Apples and (lab-grown) oranges.
“Global elite” - I can hear that dog whistling from all the way over the Atlantic.
You would think that millions of global COVID deaths that he (and Xi - but nobody is allowed to vote that idiot out of office) is primarily responsible for would finally keep people from voting for the “it can’t get any worse” guy.
COVID-19 killed almost three times as many Americans as died during WW2 due to both inaction and deliberate malicious actions. This alone should have resulted in a prison sentence for Trump and his inner circle.
The durability of electric car batteries is far better than expected. Even in the case of early models with extremely basic battery packs and no active cooling (e.g. Nissan Leaf), the packs almost always outlast the cars they’re built into:
Maintenance of EVs in general is far simpler than on ICE cars. There’s a much smaller number of components. Almost everything related to the drivetrain is practically maintenance-free.
I bought masks from a toy company (Playmobil) for my family, because there was literally nothing else available anywhere. They were marketed as alternatives to basic paper masks though, not N95 masks:
https://i.imgur.com/Sbq4oBq.jpeg
The innovation was that you could use tissue paper as filters and reuse the silicone mask after cleaning it. They were uncomfortable and stinky, but functional. We used these for about a month or two, long before any vaccines were available. I suspect that social distancing protected us far more than the masks, but either way, none of us got infected.
Stereoscopic camera systems exist and they can work very well (like on my ten year old car).
Seems like you’re unlucky. Subaru’s system is generally considered one of the best in the industry, routinely outperforming the competition.
Better pick an early electric car, because the days of ICE cars being allowed into cities are numbered.
The above comment is an example of this getting waved away.