There are many dimensions and possible pitfalls here. Uncertain mechanism of action, objectionable comparison arms, the high-bar goal of resistant depression that might lead to failure. This seems like a mix situation of a new type of antidepressant (like agomelatin which was of modest effect) and cannabis (which is traded as painkiller but people use it for recreation).
China doesn't want as a prime goal to become world leader. They just want to expand their infrastructure, science, production, everything for their own prosperity. If there is no other competitor left, then world leadership will be a by product. They don't suppress foreign countries for that goal (see military presence, coups and secret diplomatic deals in foreign countries that the US was doing after WWII in order to remain at the top by all means). They don't want (until now) to spread their culture worldwide (see language, movies, video games etc) due to the language difficulty. They do want to expand their productive capacity by financing projects in foreign countries, but in a business-as-usual way not in a I-am-the-boss way.
> They don't suppress foreign countries for that goal
They are just pacifically planning on invading Taiwan at the moment.
They also install secret police stations in foreign countries to chase and pressure Chinese citizens or people of Chinese decent into doing their bidding.
> They don't suppress foreign countries for that goal
Oh hell yes they do. Chinese overfishing is wreaking havoc across the planet [1], not just near Asia, but the reach of Chinese fishing fleets goes as far as Africa and South America. In the case of Africa, this has been one of the contributing causes for people to flee to Europe.
Then you got the stealing. America certainly isn't innocent either when it comes to IP theft, but China takes that on yet another level.
And finally, you got artificial subsidies. Solar, batteries, cars - the CCP is engaged in insane pricing wars backed by practically infinite funds. They already managed to "outcompete" most solar production and are on their best way to screw up our automotive industries as well.
> They do want to expand their productive capacity by financing projects in foreign countries, but in a business-as-usual way not in a I-am-the-boss way.
Nope. They are just as vile loan sharks as the IMF, some say they go even further [2].
I haven't found any references to Japan fishing in the Mediterranean, the only thing I could find is illegal fish farms in Croatia that farm fish to be exported to Japan and potentially "launder" illicitly caught Libyan fish [1].
While that is bad, it still is only a case of your typical piece of Balkan corruption - and actually being a Croatian citizen, I can only say one thing to these particular arseholes: jebo vam pas mater - and nowhere near comparable to what China is doing.
Welcome to the Corrupt State situation. This is how developing, poor and struggling nations function. I hope it will not last long because the US citizens don't deserve it (although the same is said for every other nation)
We’re probably settling into what they call a “hybrid regime”.
We’ll likely wobble between periods of relative stability, with about the amount of liberty and corruption we’re used to at the federal level, and more-authoritarian high-corruption periods like this one.
Breaking out of the cycle, I rate less likely than a full collapse into authoritarianism. I just don’t see a viable path to the kinds of reforms we’d need. And it’ll get harder the longer this goes on, as the rot of corruption affects state capacity, industrial capacity, and drives even more entrenched local corruption than we already deal with. Plus we’ve got multiple debt and cost crises about to slam into us full-force, over the next 1-3 decades.
EU fixes textile waste. What about plastic waste that dwarfs any other polution with the forever chemicals? No economy dares to touch this subject seriously.
Nearly all of the clothes you can buy contain a decent amount of plastic (elastane, polyester etc are just nice names for plastic).
in fact, I’ve been trying to buy plastic-free clothing for a few years (ever since micro-plastic was linked to diminished testosterone & fertility in men) I am finding it difficult, you often have to buy luxury and even then it’s no guarantee.
rayon is a regenerated cellulose fibre: it biodegrades.
polyester is a thermoplastic polymer synthesised from petrochemicals: it doesn’t.
that’s the dividing line. one breaks down in the environment, the other persists for centuries and sheds microplastics into waterways every time you wash it.
rayon has its own environmental problems (deforestation, chemical processing), but “is it plastic?” is not one of them. the chemistry here isn’t ambiguous.
There are two points in MRIs that limit or (better) regulate their use:
* financial cost vs level of care. A full body MRI costs a huge sum but it is the most detailed non-invasive diagnosis we have for any disease that can lead to earlier therapy. Used as a screening method, does it worth to save one patient in tens/hundreds tests performed? You answer, but public health authorities, health insurances and medical societies are negative.
* MRI shows some minor findings that would never cause symptoms and better not be known to the patient due to the stress they bring and cost of ongoing follow up (eg in the brain small meningiomas or angiomas). This might bring more harm than good and limit their net value.
For some reason, I always found the arguments for "it's better to not know" for these tests to be strange and slightly infantilizing. But of course this must not be the end of it, and there might be some more well thought out arguments from bioethicists that go beyond "the patient can't handle the truth". Because this argument seems like it's doing a lot of heavy lifting without much evidence.
Many stuff are addictive, some legal (smoking, gambling), some legal with prescription (drugs) and some illigal (opioids). Infinite scrolling, either video only (yt shorts) or mixed content lies in the first category. This is a war one fights by himself as law doesn't helps with gatekeeping. Any weapon that helps me is welcome. Filtering the content that whould otherwise polute my screen space and distract me from the useful content is desirable. In Homer Iliad, Ulysses ordered his sailors to tie him up in order to withstand the voice of Sirens, while they were wearing earplugs. Today we have uBlock.
Haha, I take it as a compliment for now. Being not a native English speaker and managing to tie an LLM is a little flattering. Besides, Sirens are mentioned in Odyssey.
From the peak-civilization of Ancient Greeks a steady slow decline started and continued until the calamity of 5th cent AD. Pick your start of middle ages sometime there.
For a very long time a dark cloud was hiding the sun of wisdom until the scientific and other conquests came over. Pick your end there.
During the past months I have written enough online and now I am sure I will be unwanted at the US borders. I wait for the Dem POTUS to revert the situation and welcome the now "criminals" as heroes. I will miss the coming Olympic Games though.
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