I still find it interesting that the pump and dump still works - it's the same cycle over and over again of building the market to dump crap onto people. I bet some folks have so much crap they've been dumping it gradually just so the market can absorb it.
You're missing the point, celebrities just happen to have a huge reach and noticed the reach being cut.
This probably means everyone else is also getting their reach crippled.
Remember that even with clear video evidence, the administration lies about the events and tries to spin it as domestic terrorism.
So imagine what they are doing, and will do, without video evidence.
This is probably one of the darkest times in America... You have an administration that normalizes lying and violence, and a tens of millions of Americans that are choosing to close their eyes and suspend their morals because they're scared and confused.
I was going to comment about the price, but you kind of wrapped it up.
It's like the most popular form of innovation nowadays is just marginally nicer products with a massive premium on them - and I don't get how this is sustainable. Or maybe there's just way more people with massive amounts of disposable income than I realize...
There's no breakthrough of like "here's an amazing product, and by the way, it's for everyone".
This whole culture of scarcity, scalping, hoarding, FOMO, premium, it's so played out I'm literally done with it. This is paired with terrible customer support that takes customers for granted.
Very few companies seem to value their customers, and don't want to squeeze them. Tech, cars, consoles... You name it.
So this is my current stance: I'm out of the market for the foreseeable future, unless something breaks and I need to replace it. Even the "nice to have" stuff is down to almost zero.
I disagree with this take. Particularly because this isn't just a little more of this or that. It's a well-integrated set of features that should have already been on the market in some form, but wasn't really. And it's also a premium setup in terms of each feature individually. It really does feel like the whole is more than the sum of its parts in practical terms.
I don't feel FOMO. I'm thinking more "why did it take this long?"
Russia in the last 30 years invaded and occupied Moldova, Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine, Syria - not to mention the atrocities committed in Africa.
But with the exception of Syria, Russia always had genocidal intent - deny cultures, erase them, and make those countries as unstable as possible while remaining occupied.
I'm not saying what the US did was good, or right, but there's a big difference.
The US never denied the existence of cultures, languages, etc.
Right, so what's the scope of time we're talking about here? Are we talking about the world post WW2, or are we going back to the Roman Empire?
Because if you want to "win" arguments by randomly swinging hundreds of years to make a point, then it's pointless, because anyone can pick a point in thousands of years of History to show "look - they were bad here".
I think discussions about modern history are sufficient for the post-WW2 period, as there was a global consensus on international law and the Charter of the UN.
If you hold grievances about events hundreds of years old to make points about current events, then it's pointless.
If you believe the US that colonized part of North America is the same as post-ww2 US, then I can understand.
I don't think they're the same, so many institutions were established that over the years that I don't see them as the former colony of the British crown.
But hey, if you want to discuss semantics, go for it.
Yeah, when you draw arbitrary limits (30 years for you it seems), it's easy to paint one side as the better one. Once you start to think a bit bigger, you start to realize most big nations act as the others, and it's just different flavors of "bad", yet they're all as bad as the others.
What about segregation then, is that recent enough for you? Or that wasn't about culture/language, so that too isn't applicable? I'm afraid that with rose-tinted glasses, everything has an explanation why your favorite is different than their favorite.
Why is the founding of the UN, at the end of WW2, and the signature of the UN Charter, considered an arbitrary event in modern History for you?
It's the biggest geopolitical event in modern History to prevent the death of millions, by attempting to stop the expansion of borders through military force and making countries recognize the borders of each of its members.
> What about segregation then, is that recent enough for you?
What about segregation? Where? In different European countries? USA? South Africa? India?
Was there a global consensus to end segregation? Or were different events at different points in time, achieved in different manners? Is there still segregation happening in some societies?
So all the countries Russia interfered with are neighbours, with hundreds of years of ethnic, cultural and religious disputes, while basically all the countries the US interfered with are across one or more oceans, with no historical disputes with the US, and happen to be resource rich.
Thanks for explaining why Russia is less unreasonable than the US.
"Historical disputes" is the most unreasonable claim to violate international law and the UN Charter lmao
You're basically saying that one countries interpretation of events is enough to annex another. That's the old logic of pre WW2 lol
Especially Russia that has revised their history so many times they even have a saying that "Russia's past is uncertain".
So to have that interpretation of what I said shows that you have a very poor understanding of History and current events, or it's just a deficient provocation.
So they invaded their own internationally recognized territory. Wonderful. By that standard Ukraine invaded Donbass after they declared themselves independent of Ukraine.
>Syria
Even more outlandish claim, considering they were invited by the government. Whether the west considered the government illegitimate or not didn't matter.
>Moldova
>Georgia
in both conflicts in protection of a minority, on whose territory a larger state laid claim using Soviet drawn borders and dissolution of the USSR. Since the Ukrainian conflict started I observed lots of enthusiasm for Soviet borders on the side of Russia's detractors, which were often drawn with territories assigned as a form of favoritism, simply because communist leadership in Moscow had better a relationship with the communist leaders of one of the ethnicities in question. That way historic Armenian land of Artsakh was assigned to Azerbaijan for example -- the recent ethnic cleansing outcome of that is well known.
The US just stole every good ever. The Maine. Union Fruit/Banana Company.
If the US tried to survive by just fair economics it would crumble into dust in less than a decade. Yet they use Latin America as their own backyard in order to avoid this.
And, well, as an European I have to say that France does the same with Africa in order to be semi on par with Germany. If not, their GDP would just be slightly better than Spain, if not worse because centralisation it's hell for modern times.
Some states in the US would do fine, OFC. But in order to support the whole USA, that's unfeasible. You can't have a country where a few powerhouses have to carry up the rest in a really innefective way, such as oil dependant transportation.
Meanwhile, the Chinese and Europe will just build non-polluting railways everywhere.
It's not new, it's been the prevalent way of being for thousands of years - we had a brief moment of piece with the creation of the UN.
But apparently there are a lot of countries that think the UN and international law is cumbersome, and are in the way of securing their "sovereignty" (more like securing regimes) - it was obvious this was going to be outcome.
Funny enough, some of those have collapsed or are in the verge of collapsing: Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Russia...
Let's hope Europe doesn't flip to far right and start their own campaign, history shows they can be quite effective and destructive.
The best outcome is that this is just the final breath of those old regimes, and this is temporary.
Hmm, but aren't they dumping cars in the market and still not selling? They're stuck with massive amounts of unsold stock, and the market isn't taking it - something doesn't add up.
There's this new sentiment in the society of finding something rare with high value to flip it and make a bank. But the way it's being pursued... It just doesn't feel right.
It almost feels like it's gambling, because it's a sentiment that leaks into modern collectibles, like card games.
I'm not saying people don't value collectibles, or value nostalgia, or that some of these things should be limited to niches - the reality is that I can't quite put it into words, but a lot of it seems propped up... Or it's a false game everyone is knowingly playing, like a big Ponzi scheme.
These superman copies, or the first editions of mtg, or even some modern vintage games, were never intended to be collectibles - people used them and played with them, created memories, and the production runs were really limited in comparison to modern day production runs, that make those items actually rare... Like few hundreds or thousands have survived in good condition - which is an achievement for toys, games and comics that get used a lot.
Nowadays people buy stuff with high production runs, they never even create memories with the stuff... They slab stuff into a "hermetic" container right away, and get it graded...
It just feels fake.
Again I don't doubt people see value in this stuff, I just feel like they're valuing for the wrong reasons, and I can't wrap my head around how is that even sustainable.
Who is going to value the memory of "remember when I bought 5 booster boxes and pulled card X from the pack, with gloves on, put it in a sleeve and sent it to be graded straight away? Now those were the days!"
It's like people want to compress the randomness of time and social behavior into a predictable cicle of months, with minimal effort and to extract the maximum value out of it.
I have a similar experience: a couple of years ago I started to dip my toes into the retrogaming collecting world, and at first it was fun to get all those games that I really wanted to have as a kid, but it soon devolved into trying to track down all those overpriced "rare" games. It got exhausting, and made wonder why am I even doing this? Why would I spend several hundreds on a game or a console that I didn't even knew about until one year ago, just because some random YouTube guy told me so?
Being a kid, really wanting a game or toy, finally getting it and then enjoying it to death was awesome; this is not. As you say, it doesn't feel right, so I have decided to quit.
And what makes you think Russia didn't pay a price for that? Look at the Turkish support in Ukraine, or look at Syria - they literally removed Russia from the middle east.
They were warm words from two men seeking a good working relationship.
Russia wants continued access to its Tartous naval port and Hmeimim military airbase on Syria's Mediterranean coast.
Sharaa suggested he would allow this, saying Syria would "respect all agreements concluded throughout the great history" of their bilateral relations.
In turn, he wants help to consolidate his power in Syria, secure its borders and rescue a parlous economy with access to Russian energy and investment.
Where are the concrete actions? Is Russia going to surrender their puppet and the stolen assets? Is Russia going to pay for the reparations of their destruction?
Those words mean nothing.
Do I need to grab the quote from Putin stating that no one will interfere in Syria or they will have to face Russia? (I'm paraphrasing but you get the point)
At this level of diplomacy it's actions that matter, not words. You have these guys say one thing one day, and do the opposite the other day.
The differences in regional prices are interesting to me. From a recent article comparing BYD's offerings [1]:
> The BYD Dolphin EV sells for the equivalent of around $16,500 in China, while in Germany, with the same battery pack, it’s over $37,400, or more than double the price. The Seal costs around $30,300 in China, while a similar version currently on sale in Germany is over $48,000. Reuters found Dolphin prices outside China between 39% and 178% higher, while those for the Seal ranged between 30% and 130% higher.
Affordable EVs are here already, though access to them is not evenly distributed.
Was this the final dump? I doubt it.
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