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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • NATO is both a protection agreement and a tool to bind its members to somel level of US control. A new alliance is needed without the US. It should start with Europe (not just the EU, it should include the UK and non-EU countries) and it could then attract Canada, Australia, Japan, … But that requires members to get their shit together and rebuild their respective armies. And all the countries that bought F35 just bound themselves to the US for decades again. So it looks really bad right now.






  • We’ve been hearing about this decades.

    Yes, you’ve been hearind that for decades, just like climate change: if you wait for an abrupt treshold with a clear before/after cut , you’re going to wait for a while.

    China has developed an advanced high speed trains network. You have no idea how much US looks backward on that.

    China still opens coal burning power plants, jut also a very large number of renewable and nuclear power plants. They’re serious about electrification.

    They took the lead in scientific publication.

    US needs to put up tariffs to protect its car makers from being wiped out by Chinese ones. Western car makers rely more and more on Chinese batteries suppliers.

    All the signs are there. You just need to ackowledge them.

    People underestimate just how corrupt, dysfunctional, and incompetent the Chinese system is under the CCP.

    As compared to what? In the US, corruption is legal, it’s called campaign donation and SuperPAC. At this stage, elections pick which pack of oligarchs will rule: GOP donators or Dems donators.

    If the system is so much better, where are the high speed trains, advanced power grid, decarbonation plan, school that can get high potentials to the top, decent healthcare system?

    Where are the fruits of this less corrupt dysfunctional and incompetent system?

    China’s isolation give it the illusion that it’s better, but in reality, it’s even worse.

    Alother delusion from local US news. China is not that isolated, they have developed deep relations with a number of countries in Africa and middle east, and they’re a privileged trade partner with many more. Worse even: with the current US policy of tariffs, several countries that were reluctant to have deeper ties with China are pushed in their arms.

    Every major Chinese achievement from their mass transit system to their big corporations to their economic growth to them pulling ahead technologically to so many more, all come with big asterisks attached that make them much more questionable.

    Meaning what? Their high speed trains are absolutely working. In large cities, half of the cars in the street are electric cars, majority from domestic brands and a few Tesla. They have very advanced and very cheap mass transit networks.

    As I was saying: it’s just like global warming: if you sit and wait claiming it’s not really happening and/or not that bad, you’re totally unprepared when disasters hit you.

    The only thing I will agree with you here is their emonomy is not half as great as they want to claim. The estate market has been in a free fall in all but the big 4 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guandong, Shenzhen).

    But if the US wants to be the first power of the rest of the 21st century world, they need to wake up!






  • Sooner or later, the stock price will tank. It’s actually quite something that it is still that high, if anyone needed anymore proof that stock investors are not smarter than average Joe.

    But Tesla sales are crashing worldwide, not just because of the brand, but because competition has caught up and is now getting ahead. Robo-taxis are going to compete with players that are years ahead on self-driving and safety concerns are going to force Tesla to trim down their price (assuming they manage to no longer need their “safety monitors”, in which cas they will just not happen).

    Humanoid robots are a tool that needs to find a use justifying its price (and there again, we might see competition from China…).

    What’s left??


  • It’s not just the funding, it’s the business overall. Public companies need to show growing revenues year to year, and worse: growing revenues with a minimum yield. A product can grow by attracting more users up to a certain point. Then the only way to grow is by making more money out of the same users base. If the revenue is based on ads:

    • Extend the product so that the user’s engagement increases (channels/others kind).
    • Add paying features (freemium approach, that includes blue stars or whatever the hell you want it to look like…)
    • Serve them ads

    Freemium is not always working well and Meta never used it. They have no new great idea to extend the product without eating their other products users bases. So the only one left is more ads.

    Funding is not the issue, for-profit companies are. Non-profit is the way to go. Federation is even better as individuals/families/small organizations can run their own servers.-