Chinese President Xi Jinping, whose real power derives from his position as the head of the ruling Communist Party, has placed more emphasis on quality over quantity. He has demanded absolute loyalty from party members, launched an ideology drive to shore up their faith, and unleashed a crackdown on internal dissent. Members are bound by more stringent rules – and millions of cadres have been investigated for violating them in the past nine years since Xi took control of the party.
I can't wait to use it, but it seems it doesn't support overseas income yet and I live full-time outside of the US (and yes we legally have to file taxes every year even if we won't owe anything).
Yes it has become increasingly difficult for me to file taxes abroad. For my 2021 taxes I had to print out and physically mail my return since for some reason the electronic filing failed. For my 2022 taxes every company I used to file taxes from in the past refused to take my non-American credit card. I couldn’t even access the free stuff, presumably due to some IP blocking.
Hopefully eventually the IRS will solve this and everyone who needs to file taxes can easily do it for free.
I've been using H&R block, but every year shit breaks and I have to fight with them. Latest was that my NRA wife broke all their validations (despite it properly flagging her an NRA)
Any military is going to practice things. It makes sense for china to practice this since they are literally surrounded by usa military bases and are threatened by them constantly. This is nothingburger.
The only thing that’s threatened by US military bases are their imperial ambitions in the region. There’s a reason why even Vietnam is seeking US protection. You know that the US isn’t going to attack China first.
Several contractors with a stake in the carrier debate contribute to my think tank, including Huntington Ingalls Industries HII —the only company in the world that manufactures large-deck, nuclear-powered carriers.
The thing with our current hypersonic missiles is that they’re only hypersonic during the transit. They don’t hit the target at hypersonic speeds. Traveling at those speeds creates plasma around the missile which prevents communication with airplanes, satellites or ground based radars. You also have to be high up in the atmosphere where air is thin or otherwise your missile is going to turn into a fireball way before it reaches the target. This is what also prevents you from attaching a seeker into the front of the missile; that would melt aswell.
This is why Ukraine has shot down Russian “hypersonic missiles” with the US patriot system even though that should be impossible. It is impossible while the missile is still hypersonic but that’s not when you intercept it. You wait for it to get closer and slow down first. That’s why Kinzhal doesn’t really count as a hypersonic weapon or if it does then so does the German V-2 from the 40’s.
I don’t get the claim about it being “impossible” to shoot it down while hypersonic, either.
So maybe it’s high enough that you don’t have any interceptor missile capable of reaching that altitude… but if you had one, that hypersonic ball of plasma is not “hyperluminic”, all that radio noise is going to light up on any radar like a beacon. Sounds like it should be easy to predict its trajectory, particularly knowing that it can’t maneuver much at hypersonic speeds, so it should be even easier to plot an intercept course.
It may by impossible to shoot it down from behind, or from a plane right underneath that doesn’t have hypersonic interceptor missiles, but from any position in front of the enemy missile… you could float a balloon onto its path, and hit it.
Also, there is lasers. They may not be great as an offensive weapon, or too easy to mount onto a plane, and need several seconds to burn an incoming missile to a crisp… but they do work at the speed of light, can’t beat that.
I know, logically speaking, that air travel is statistically very safe. But it’s news like this that makes me anxious about flying later in the year (for the first time in 15 years!), especially as the last leg of my outward journey is on a 737 Max.
If it’s any consolation, the odds of your flight ending in an air incident, or even a hull loss is incredibly slim. You have greater odds of being attacked by a polar bear, and a regular bear on the same day. I understand your apprehension, though and it says a lot about the state of Boeing.
Yeah, it’s one of those things where I understand intellectually that the odds of an incident are incredibly low. I’m sure I read somewhere that air travel is statistically the safest form of travel. But anxiety is definitely not logical!
(Those two bears would have to be very determined to attack me - neither are native here!)
It sounds like a “there isn’t a single corner that wasn’t cut from design to manufacturing to QA” problem. They should give the management board another bonus.
As I lay here on NYE with plans canceled because of covid and think back of the >$150,000 USD covid has cost me over these years from destroying my small business, I will never forgive or forget the PRCs role in this.
Funny you defend the PRC when there’s actually evidence of them suppressing knowledge of the outbreak, and disregard the lockdowns here and the vaccines. I worked on the mRNA technology with a lot of good scientists trying to help but people like you don’t care
I don’t think they’re defending PRC, just pointing out there are others also deserving of your anger. The US not only did terrible at responding to the ongoing pandemic, they convinced people they didn’t but if so to just blame PRC for it. Sure, be mad that they covered it up, but also be mad that our government mishandled things terribly too.
If you’re this angry, then by all means, please leave.
In the less developed world Covid was dubbed “rich man’s sickness” because only people who were affected were those who had the means to travel. But those few rich brought it back, and made it everyone’s problem. Am I angry with those people? No.
Most governments were not handing this well. Your anger towards only one country’s government is misguided.
So by your logic it’s not OK to criticize the CCP unless one also lists off all the other governments that failed to rise to the occasion? WTF is wrong with you? You are trying way too hard. It’s obvious that for whatever reason you can’t abide criticism of the CCP.
If they were critical of the US government’s response you and I know very well that you would never feel the need to comment about how the CCP also fucked up. You wouldn’t because you’re poisoned by an ideology that doesn’t allow you to see the world from an objective solutions-based perspective. Everything is black and white with you, either in keeping with your cornball little ideology, or not, in which case it’s evil.
It’s bullshit and people are getting sick of you and people like you. Grow the fuck up.
This place is swarming with idiots. I think it’s an age thing. There are a lot of young people on Lemmy and they tend to be very wedded to viewing the world in strictly ideological terms with little nuance and no real appreciation for how complex the real world actually is. As a result, it’s almost impossible to be critical of anything without being subjected to pointless and condescending whataboutism.
Hey, everyone was impacted and it was all personal. It doesn’t have to be about who was impacted more or which experiences are more legitimate than others. $150k is a lot to lose. I’m in that boat myself and, in some ways, we haven’t recovered from that. The timing of it caused a lot of changes in our lives and spoiled long term plans that were important to us and our kids. It took a while to pick up the pieces and pivot. There’s always going to be that “what if” feeling so there’s a real sense of loss.
It was one comment and you got 15 upvotes with no down lol. For the record I think it sucks that you lost your business, that is a tragedy, but my first thought was that it did sound pretty callous, like ignoring the hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.
1.06 births per woman is going to lead to a population collapse, and I don’t think China is attractive enough to immigrants to make up for the gap.
The developed world would be having similar challenges, broadly, but have higher birth rates, generally, and much higher immigration.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but I think fears of a Chinese-led hegemony replacing the current US-centred regime is becoming increasingly unlikely.
Edit: I was curious, so I looked it up, and it’s even worse than I thought:
The net migration rate for China in 2021 was -0.252 per 1000 population
How come I take the south African government less seriously? Oh yeah, the centralisation of power, the centralisation of wealth, the vast amount of unemployment, poverty and corruption. I mean, who do they think they are? The US?
If any country in the world has a leg to stand on about criticizing an apartheid state like Israel…
South Africa’s government is a mess but most of the people in it lived through apartheid. Regardless of other issues, this is something that they are absolutely qualified to speak on.
You do realise that the elites running South Africa are as white as snow, right? I’m not talking about the mouthpieces that pose as being representative of the people, but those who actually hold the bag, those who are in positions of privelige and power because of apartheid.
This is an issue, where people conflate governments, government bodies, oligarchs and elites in general with the people of a country. People dgaf about common South Africans, or indeed even common Russians or common Palestinians, but the second a branch pipes up like they did something, it’s gold stars and the drawing gets put up on the fridge?
Why? Why does a BRICS country, laden by corruption caused by apartheid, get glorified for opposing apartheid? It makes no goddamn sense. It’s like Putin looking for Nazis in Europe… bro, you didn’t need to cross borders for that.
Well, the government is currently run by the ANC, and the statement was made by them.
Like, yah the ANC is supper corrupt and serving as a mouth piece for those business interests that benefited for apartheid, plenty of criticism to be levied at how they’ve failed to address inequality in the country and let important infrastructure fall apart while rich funks loot the country blind.
But they’re the party who cut their teeth on opposing apartheid and settler colonialism? Like, that’s their whole thing? They’re literally Nelson mandala’s party? If anyone is qualified to be criticizing Israel for their apartheid system and settler colonialism it is them.
I can both hold them in contempt for being shit heads and recognize that they might know what they’re talking about when is comes to criticizing apartheid?
To be fair, they have a very good knowledge of what apartheid states (like Israel) look and act like.
Recognizing that Israel has moved from the “regular” oppression and killing of their sub-citizen population into full-on genocide is something that much of the rest of the world seems to be having trouble with.
Dude, i don’t know what to twll you but IMO ramen noodles are friggin’ expensive here compared to the US. 4 for 1$ VS 1 for .75/.90€… ramen noodles aint the go to here for cheap eats.
I am a professor as several different schools in France (business, notarial studies, agricultural engineers, communication). I would day 95% of my students are from well-to-do families. But, most of them are required to find paid internships. The notary students usually get unpaid internships.
As an internship advisor, I can confirm one thing: paid or not, they put in the hours and take the same crap as a paid employee. Sometimes it is worse. For example, if an intern is absent from work, the message gets to me, and I send it up the chain of command and sometimes parents get involved. It is stressful for the students. My business students get paid internships (about €1400/month) but still need help from their parents and many of them will be doing something they don’t really want to do (think finance instead of marketing).
Now, being a professor I am in contact with a rather large network of of profs spanning the private and public sector… My colleagues from the public sector are worried about this looming change to laws. It would lead to an overhaul of the system as the internship is counted as a credit. If it is decided that they should be paid, how many companies will want to pay when they can just hire a part-timer for the summer?
This shocked me as well because my parents weren’t involved with my work or education after finishing high school.
In France, this is not the case. The majority of people are supported by their parents until the end of secondary education, especially when it comes to my students who are all in private institutions.
It is extremely rare for a student to have a job, for example.
Parents do get involved for even minor things, and will come stomping into the school flanked by a lawyer.
Why would they be involved?
Because they pay. That’s all.
Now, university is practically free and lots of students get a bursary (not a loan) to help them along. But, their parents will still pay rent sometimes because a full-time student with a job is seen as the most amazing thing here.
I will often bring up this stark contrast to how when I was a student I had 4 different jobs and still ended my studies 60k in debt and didn’t even see my parents during the school year, let alone get any money from them.
I am french too and while my parents do pay for my studies they are never directly involved. Maybe it’s a school difference but I find this so weird, because I am in a public faculté
If I remember correctly, my teachers were saying that they were legally restricted from sharing informations to student’s parents emailing them.
“Nuclear powered” has no reference to their weapons capabilities, but instead how it generates electricity to run the ship.
Back in the old days, subs had diesel generators that required air to run the generators (like any fossil fuel powered engine) that recharged the batteries that powered the ship while submerged. That means that if the batteries were running low, the sub would need to surface to use the diesel engines to recharge the batteries so they could dive again. With the invention of nuclear powered subs, surfacing wasn’t needed except for replenishing breathing air. Which I think is like a few days or maybe a week or two. Or whatever, I’m not an expert on this.
Now, that’s not saying that a lot of nuclear powered subs don’t also carry nukes (like tridents, for example). But “nuclear powered sub” doesn’t have any bearing on that. It’s purely describing how the sub generates electricity.
I hope that any submariners that read this will correct me if I’m wrong. This is all based on info I read years ago.
I don’t know if this is done in practice, but if you have a nuclear powered sub, implementing a water electrolyzer that makes oxygen is fairly trivial. Then you have air as long as you have power, so they could in principle stay submerged for ≈ 20 years, or however long the nuclear reactors can go without refill.
Technically a Sub can stay underwater forever, it is the crew that is the problem there. If they had Star Trek replicators to make them food with that reactor then boredom becomes the limiting factor.
I just re-watched all the first 14 Bond movies, and there are apparently satellites that can track all the subs, so we’re good 😊👌 Also, you can just reprogram the missiles to blow up the other subs — just steal the launch codes, easy peasy 👍 Check mate, Kim! 💥🚀
Side note: many (or, indeed, most) of the films did not age well 😣 I’m not proud of how little of the misogyny, borderline rape-y, no-consent, belittling of women stuff I failed to notice as a kid (patents’ fault) and adolescent (my fault); it starts to get a bit better around the end of the Moore era, and I’m now getting ready for the Dalton era. It will be interesting to see the newer films with this fresh context of the old ones, and I’ve never seen the two newest ones, which I think were supposed to address all of these issues.
Secondary side note: so far, the best ones (IMHO, YMMV) have been For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View To A Kill.
I think it downplayed the importance of CO2 scrubbing, because we can tolerate low O2 a lot easier than high CO2. High CO2 is also what gives us that suffocating feeling.
It briefly touches on rebreathers near the end. The theory behind them is that the difference between the %O2 on the inhale and exhale of our breathing cycle is very little. So if you can get rid of the CO2, you can re-breathe that same air for a “long” time before it starts to get too low in O2 content and it starts to impact your survivability.
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