The US has shown that it can't handle any level of discomfort. The reason Trump is back in the white house is because grocery prices went up a little bit. Can you imagine the failure of the tech companies that are propping up the entire economy? That would happen under a Taiwan invasion scenario. China has a much high pain tolerance than US citizens at least. I'd argue they would outlast the US. Would they outlast the US military? I don't know. But it may not matter as given enough pain the US population will make itself heard.
I think you're conflating different contexts and scenarios. People aren't used to war being brought to the US itself. Look at Pearl Harbor and 9/11, both rallying the country pretty well. Attacking the US mainland is a losing strategy.
If people generally understand that we're intervening in a China/Taiwan conflict for the right reasons, and China attacks us at home it would only accelerate the west. If you look at Vietnam, the logic around that war fell apart and it no longer made sense to continue it. The people were right to push back. Iraq and Afghanistan went on for a long time without much fuss.
Some kind of conflict in South East Asia would likely largely be a naval and resource war, with many casualties being naval rather than mainland. Most losses on both sides will probably be drones, AI or not.
If it came down to attrition, it would maybe be AI machine attrition or drone/missile attrition which is in a way a resource war which the US could win even without TSMC, but from where we're standing today it would take more ramping up which is a process that has already started.
If OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc were attacked by China in a more critical way, it would have to be for some major short term advantage that is capitalized on immediately, because long-term it would be a losing strategy by itself. China has systems to disrupt as well, so if they let loose on cyber then the US has options too.
Either way, don't conflate general economic preference around an election for whether people would tolerate being unable to access Gmail or order from Amazon like they would all rush to riot in the streets. I think that misreads the situation.
Off topic, but the reason Vietnam played out the way it did was because of China's implicit guarantee that they'd intervene in force if American troops came anywhere close to their borders like during the Korean War.
Fresh off WW2, with a titanic arsenal and industrial base, America and all of its allies couldn't end the war on their terms after China intervened.
That's why the US only did search-and-destroy missions, targeting Vietcong cells in the south and bombing supply lines in Laos. Which didn't matter much.
Once the Americans left, the North marched down a proper army and wrapped it up.
I assume that in the failing of the tech industry brings discomfort like you mentioned will have an impact on society such as strikes, riots, protests. The US will surely hope this gets mirrored to the Chinese society, although i would like the mention that there is a difference between self sabotage and external sabotage, Chinese people are pretty understanding and patient not all are against their government. Most respect and are grateful for what their government has done for the country in the last 30 years,, i would say roughly 80% of them feel this way. This sentiment is beneficial, because it only speeds up recovery from economical disruptions such as this example, housing market is another story.
Another note most of the world understands US's strategy for this type of disruptions used as a weapon, if they can cause civil unrest, the US can use this against the government and it will into the advantage of the US. I would like to note this is not a country of easy convincing, The majority of the seating members of the CCP are deeply interested in their society's interests, then globally second. You have 1.4b people this is not an easy management to handle.
In my eyes best to not compete and work together. There are hard obstacles ahead that are going to need all of our efforts collectively, in Hines-sight this is childish and a waste of time, literally. We made it this far, all of the great achievements and innovations that with out a doubt all have collectively contributed as humans. Climate changes, Populations management, Biological threats, viral threats, pandemic management, genome advancements etc...
Some of the moves that leaders make are simply moving us back in time and when one does something unfavorable to the other it sets the tone for how future engagements and decisions are made, whether silly or not.
Indeed no leader is innocent in their decisions, but my point still stands.
The battle against communism has been going on for a long time and it was an important factor in most of the major wars of the 1900s when it openly stated it needed to establish global dominance. In the grand scheme of things, this is more of that, but now China is the center of gravity for communism rather than Russia. The Arctic opening up and taking Taiwan are both elements that increase potential for power projection, which is a serious threat given that CCP leadership has shown to be very bullish on Marxism-Leninism.
If they could not be insane and trade, that would be great. Unfortunately that's not the world we live in and the US has to push back against it or the world can fall into ruin. So we're cleaning up Venezuela. Maybe Cuba and Iran.
China was able to sustain some pretty strict zero-COVID policies much longer - all the way to late 2022.
Pain tolerance might be the wrong term. Pain tolerance implies speaks to something intrinsic about a population, while really what we're looking at is how much discomfort a population can endure before it really agitates for policy/political change, and so it's much about how a population feels, as the tools available to the government to control, manage, deflect and address the pain/discomfort.
Thanks for the response, agreed on the definition of "pain tolerance."
I do think that the US population is able to bear incredible levels of pain if it's packaged a certain way. Examples:
-20 year Global War on Terror which cost $6T+
-Healthcare costs which far outstrip other western nations, mostly paid for out of pocket, and which increase every year
-Opioid Crisis which killed more people than all our 20th century wars combined
-Lack of workplace protections, time off, etc which our peer nations enjoy
The Chinese have not dealt with any of these things, so yeah, they have more available capacity to manage new social disruptions. That said, Americans love war, so we could probably add another war without disrupting things too badly.
Yeah, I agree there is some manipulation of the narrative in the use of pain tolerance to describe China's citizenry. It is in the CCP's interest to convince their population that pain tolerance is a virtue, rather than allow an alternative narrative that China's citizens must suffer the decisions of the autocrats because they have no ability to influence change.
Is there some documented writing on actual particulars as to why Amazon is so uniquely bad? Like is there any "Day/Week/Month in the life of a Amazon SWE"?
Wow 34c3, what a blast from the past! I still don't fully understand what "tuwat" meant ha ha. The best I could come up with was "Do something. Don't ask for permission".
I was recently looking at screenshots of old Facebook, Orkut, and even old messaging apps like HipChat. It really feels like the inflection point began around 2016 and finally fully transformed once the pandemic hit.
It is just that more people become totally engrossed in online activity during the pandemic and never left? Or is it bots? Who are all these new corrosive users?
Yes, but it felt so sudden. Thanks for reminding me about it as you are probably correct.
Its a shame what we lost. On one hand we could maybe have a real life identity system that would stop the bot problem but at the same time that anonymity blossomed so much unique internet culture that we would lose (maybe its already lost).
Its been a while now and I've wondered if anyone has recorded any hard data in how the acquisitions has shifted the platform. I just hope that someone is collecting hard records so we can see the damage after everything has played out over time.
As far as I can tell at least among the American left, criticism of israel has become so commonplace and part of the culture that its become a "memeable" event at this point.
I wonder how the Israel lobby will manage to turn that ship around at this point?
>I wonder how the Israel lobby will manage to turn that ship around at this point?
The effect of popular criticism of Israel in the US has been the normalization of mass censorship and deportation, and nil on Israeli policy or American support for it (other than being the catalyst for killing Kamala Harris' campaign.) The ship doesn't need to be turned around, it continues on its course unabated.
Last I heard Trump intends to pave Gaza over and sell the land for data centers to the Saudis.
Thats a short term solution to stop criticism that has essentially put more fuel on the fire. Millenials are start to take the reigns and I don't see a strong pro-Israel coalition among their cohort yet. They are likely being groomed but I dont think it will be a clear transition. Anti-Israel candidates are making moves and occasionally willing seats. If this accelerates they will play an important role in the future of American politics.
>Last I heard Trump intends to pave Gaza over and sell the land for data centers to the Saudis.
Honestly anything is possible. Maybe they will continue unabated and finish their project before Trump kicks the can. Maybe this upcoming Iran 'adventure' will be a massive disaster and will lead to a step change in hatred of Israel and anyone who supports them. I just dont see any of the old propaganda used in Iraq working this time around.
Maybe Israel completes their complete expulsion of Palestinians and then forms a solid base as the center of the middle east with everyone else being a vassal state. Would they even need the US at that point?
Outside competition allows progress because we have been shown time and time again that the US will just not solve its problems without outside pressure. I'd also argue that any other country in its position would act the same. For example when the USSR was actively competing with the US, they could easily lob a major criticism of the US in capturing 'hearts and minds' of other nations: "Look at how they treat their minorities. Do you really want to work with those people?"
Yes there were very active causes and groups in the US to correct this issue, but that outside pressure forced leadership to be nudged towards corrective action and I wonder if the USSR hadn't been there would we have gotten Civil Rights legislation passed when we did?
Maybe the same will happen with China showing the US how fast they can get stuff done and what they provide as benefits to their citizens vs a declining US. Already TikTok has helped Gen-Z realize how Israel gets so many benefits (universal healthcare, college tuition, benefits for birthing kids etc.) while the US is in massive debt and continues to send money to Israel. That continued propaganda may lead to an eventual backlash and subsequent reform.
US aid to Israel is about 0.05% of the federal budget, and around 3% of Israel’s state budget. That’s nowhere near enough to fund healthcare in either country.
I never said it did but the point is that it is money that does not need to go there when we are trillions in debt already. For years whenever any thought of providing some relief to the middle class in the US is brought up, the response is always "How are you going to pay for that?". How come that question is never asked for outlays to israel but only when it involves the American people?
I saw Baby Driver, which I really liked but I haven't seen any of the three movies since that.
The Cornetto trilogy are excellent. I'm a big fan of Three Colours (my favourite is White) and I think that actually in the same way that Kieślowski clearly doesn't care about the supposed theme, he just wants money to make movies, we can say the same for the Cornetto movies. We're bringing the commonalities to it in our interpretation, Wright didn't pour great effort into ensuring that these movies "work" as a trilogy, but they do if you squint, in the same way that Kieślowski didn't put great effort into relating his three films to the French flag but if you squint you can make it work fine.
At the end of the day, Hollywood is a business unfortunately and his last two films did poorly
Last Night In Soho was a absolute cinematic treat but had mixed reviews. I was fortunate to see it a week before release in 35mm in NYC and it was truly a special moment. But lets be real, even with films being graded on a curve due to the pandemic, the movie still did poorly.
Ok fresh start a few years later with The Running Man. This time he got big money, three time more than Baby Driver. (34mil vs 110mil) and the result? Baby Driver brought in ~227 mil and Running Man? Just ~69 mil.
Maybe he is better off producing smaller budget films and while I want nothing but success for him since he's my all time favorite director: Hollywood is a business. They will not look kindly on someone that keeps losing money.
To be fair to Wright, there were a bunch of big budget movies in 2025 that flopped: Thunderbolts, Tron Ares, Snow White, etc. There’s definitely a wider phenomenon at work of cinema struggling in general. But I agree, Wright’s big-budget career is likely over.
I like to think that if he managed to produce another smash hit maybe studios will take another chance. Studios know he is respected by the fans. Hes just got to show that he can bring in the dough and that Baby Driver wasn't just a fluke. Running Man seemed very sloppy and not what we have come to expect from him and I heard on the grapevine that the studio pushed down a lot of executive decisions. If true, that could explain some things but still surprising given his past history with Ant-Man.
Man even spinning rust has inflated. In mid 2024 I got a 8TB WD Blue for $115 and now the cheapest 8TB I see on PcPartPicker is $160... isn't that like 30% increase in a year or so? :/
$115 / 8 TB is $14.38/TB. In the last 2 or 3 months there have been drives for far less per TB (closer to $10/TB), but it seems like the sweet spot for the best deals has significantly increased in TB.
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