st0v

China was briefly an observer state to Warsaw Pact and then pretty quickly completely withdrew.

After sino-sovet split in the early 60s Sino-soviet relations did not really normalize until Gorbachev.

The real estate market doesn't account for 30% of the economy. Though I suppose there's a bunch of way to measure "the economy".

There is pent up demand for housing yet property marketing is dropping. Actually it may have bottomed out but who knows. Beijing wants to correct it and that's what's been happening.

I have property in tier 1 and tier 2, it dropped to pre covid levels. I wasn't doing property for quick flips but I definitely noticed it.

The scars of covid are everywhere in China just like most countries. its going to take a while for it to recover. just like everywhere else.

China collapse remains a click bait dream for the time being if you ask me.

There's a bit more to it than that. But yes EVs are subsidized in China.

I worked in a business where we had one product that was useful for automakers but especially useful for EVs. About 8 years ago the EVs in China were mostly cheap shitty BYDs.

Seemingly out of nowhere, the government changed a bunch of rules and regulations for new cars. Within a month design teams were being established at every major automaker in China focusing on EVs. It was a great year for us.

Key EV components, especially the materials to make batteries, started to come down in price.

Then the green plates started turning up. Every city has its own rules for car registration, some places like Shanghai, would auction new number plates each month resulting in a low supply and high demand. It was possible to buy a car cheaper than the number plate. Then if you register an EV you can get a green plate for almost nothing.

About 3 years ago the cities started requiring new taxis and busses to be EV. Places like shenzhen just converted everything to EV. Released licenses for training and testing self driving.

Charge stations started popping up everywhere. There's no way a shopping mall or new residential development could avoid having at least a large section for charging. My own home, converted an entire floor to charging parking stations in the underground car park.

Finally tesla set up Shanghai giga factory. I have no idea how they managed to make that deal but not long after they started shipping model 3s domestically they slashed the prices down to cheaper than a niceish BYD.

If you go to Shenzhen today about a third of cars are EV and you will see a dozen brands you've never heard of before (some are terrible cars, but most are reasonable quality and a handful are bullshit luxury)

As in tradition in China, the government will now let them go into a price war to push the manufacturers to find cheaper ways to make them. Many will go bust or give up.

my mum bought me a vic-20. it was beat up and didn't have a tape deck.

I had type my games in from a magazine in basic for a summer, I was hooked.

My uncle gave me a photocopy of a book about assembly for c64 and showed me intros on his c128. He had no idea about programming, he just figured I'd be into it. I worked my heart out to get the cash together for a c64 AND a disk drive.

We probably wouldn't want AI CEOs. Think about what they'd use for training data.

yeh but I got ten years of a really great game, with a really great community. It took a long time for me to care that the lane change mechanics weren't optimal.

that ten years buys a fuck ton of good will for me. Life doesn't run on legal obligations.

Yhey optimized and expanded the last CS game for like ten years. It was driven by DLC but the entire time CS vanilla was getting fixes and improvements.

There were some pretty lame limitations to the core simulation that stayed there the entire time but at least the devs were pretty open about having no plans to change them.

The CS2 story won't really play out entirely for a year or two yet.

shrooms can be a bit of a dice room on visuals.

once boiled up half a shopping bag of shrooms and split the tea with one friend.

There were infinite moments where the fabric of space time twisted up into the cosmos believably revealing to me a path into the heavens. I had to control my breathing otherwise the torrent of everyday objects flowing past me would move too quickly for me to get enough traction.

I once had three tiny died shrooms, and a bong hit disconnected my soul from my body and transferring me into an ancient dog sleeping in the sun on a wide open field in the wilderness. the entire thing seemed to go for eons but collapsed back into my living room in and instant when some rang the doorbell.

Then I've had shrooms where the trip was extremely profound and emotional but the only visual was the leaves of the trees just looked a bit brighter and more flappy in wind or some swirly clouds of colors bouncing around my hifi speakers.

capslock drains the battery too quickly

you can visit the entire country on the subway or a short grab ride.

owning registering, parking, repairing and fueling a car is a completely unnecessary living cost, not to mention much much more expensive than the US or Europe.

what a lot of people can't understand is that a car I'm singapore is a ball and chain. it's not freedom by any stretch of the imagine there.

it's a status symbol or a job requirement.