Can’t read the article without creating an account. Anybody wanna summit up?

There’s also a “I’m not going to get some bullshit masquerading as the movie I was looking for.” thing in place.

I belong to a couple private trackers. I use them nearly exclusively and have never once downloaded a bullshit file/virus/whatever. It’s happened a couple times on public ones.

I know who the good uploaders are and know that seeding on the private isn’t going to get me flagged to my ISP, which happened twice before going off public.

I guess what I’m wondering is: why wouldn’t you use one if you can find what you’re looking for?

Wages have stagnated. I was lucky to get any raise, but it was significantly less than the cost of living.

Meanwhile, eggs are $4 a dozen. Other staples are $$.

Food overall is much more expensive and we're not even talking about discretionary items or entertainment.

Used cars are almost unobtainable, housing and rent are through the roof.

By what metric is the economy doing well? Stonks?

Love this story.

Zydot. I’ve personally used it to pass tests. You have to follow the directions exactly, but it works.

Some real axis of evil shit going down. Anyone who questions if they’re the baddies at this point is intentionally being obtuse.

Yeah, that part is super fucked up. I have IoT in my ceiling fans. I had to call their support line to have them remotely turn off the beeping that accompanies a button press.

The feature can’t be deactivated locally. I literally had to have my ceiling fan join my Wi-Fi network so that support could remote in and disable a beep that no one could possibly want.

Oh yeah, my oven has Wi-Fi. What possible reason could there be for my oven to have network access? It’s beyond ridiculous.

And then there’s the subscription model. Where you don’t own or even license software. You just continually pay rent.

Thanks! I appreciate the context. Never would have understood and it would have confounded me.

It will have about as much effect too.

The quotes listed here sound 100% like the kinds of statements from Western Marxism that are evisercated in this article. Very good read which nails the "no country has done REAL socialism/communism" critique common among the western left.

https://socialistchina.org/2023/10/13/china-and-the-purity-fetish-of-western-marxism/

I gotta get the book the article is based on.

The unquestioned, purity fetish grounded, and Sinophobic assumption of Chinese ‘authoritarianism’ and ‘lack of democracy’ also prevents the Western Marxist from learning how the Chinese socialist civilization has been able to creatively embed its socialist democracy in “seven integrated structures or institutional forms (体制tizhi): electoral democracy; consultative democracy; grassroots democracy; minority nationalities policy; rule of law; human rights; and leadership of the Communist Party.”[4] It has withheld them from seeing how a comprehensive study of this whole-process people’s democracy would lead any unbiased researcher to the conclusion Roland Boer has arrived at: namely, that “China’s socialist democratic system is already quite mature and superior to any other democratic system.” This is a position echoed by John Ross (and many other scholars of China), who argues that the “real situation shows that China’s framework and delivery on human rights and democracy is far superior to the West’s.”

My whole family is lactose intolerant or milk allergic. My son is too.

Having to navigate a no dairy diet at daycare or school is difficult.