They wanted to see if there were any cut corners that could help explain the low cost other than government funding and the general low cost of labour in China. Did not find any cut corners during their teardown and sang the cars praises.

I think you are reading way too much into it, I was mocked for never kissing kissing someone when I was that age. Kids can be cruel, and I think this episode is just surface level deep. The target audience is young teens - children. I do not expect neon genesis evangelion depth in the writing. But maybe you could be right, but usually the hints are way more subtle, like Peter Parker’s jizzed hands in the first Spiderman movie when he wakes up (big puberty analogy). But, for me, the iCarly episode would make it very disturbing if a Nickelodeon show wanted to make subliminal messaging about sex

Yeah in South Africa when our then President, Jacob Zuma, disbanded our independent corruption body, the Scorpions, that started basically corruption on such a scale, even had a commission of inquiry for state capture. Just look at South Africa’s growth since then, basically entrenched poverty and joblessness to our countrymen.

Be afraid Ukraine, even if Zelensky has good intentions, what about the next president. All the advice I can give you is to become active, continue putting pressure on your elected officials. The people have the power, especially through the ballot

Vices are a natural part of being human. But vices can easily become difficult to manage in a healthy manner. But it sounds like you are lonely and your religion and the service from adult workers is trying to fill the void. I get it, life is hard and tough and very lonely.

Why not try to take it easy on yourself. We are all fallible, but we should strive to better ourselves, look it seems that is exactly what you are trying and wanting. This might seem stupid but I started jogging last year. I fucking sucked, but someone told me try moving half an hour a day 2-3 times a week and in a year you would have succeeded in something to further build upon. So I jogged a block and basically died, but almost a year later it changed my life, I joined a jogging group at work, made new friends and running partners, and comradeship. I am not a jogger, still doing a 5km at 57 minutes yesterday, a parkrun with friends. But my point is not to start jogging, but maybe find a hobby or activity that allows you to interact with people, no matter how stupid, and if it is something to be active then there may be a double benefit.

This will not solve your issues or vices, but I learned little by little it becomes a lot, and maybe working on yourself physically or socially, even if you are a fish out of water, will yield results in different ways. It sounds like you are working on yourself spiritually, I hope since you started you have seen a difference. But changing yourself will require work, that is what makes it so satisfactory because you worked for this change, but there isn’t a quick fix or and shortcut, but the answer is easy, small efforts everyday, results in big hard worked changes after a while.

Good luck on your journey, I hope you are able to deal with your vices and issues in a healthy but productive way.

Sugar of Lead, chef’s kiss and sorry children

This cool microscope, is Harvard going to keep it for themselves or are they planning to share the equipment with the rest of the scientific community

I cannot speak for this area of science, but in my field China’s research papers, for example rock mass failure response to complex stress states, are like a god send, really quality work. This is my opinion in my field but if I had to extrapolate… Remember the Soviets with all their propaganda had amazing scientists

Wait isn’t it that they changed from three unlocks a year to only one device per Mi account a year. As far as I know you can still unlock one single device a year

Jeez is this an ad, I thought my pop-up blockers were strong, clearly this site has shown me that their ad kungfu is stronger.

My advice, stay the fuck away from this ad infested website

Ok first of $50 billion! Second… Fuck what else is there except to see a YouTube of someone super glue their asshole with this new stuff and why he, because it will be a dumb guy unfortunately, needs us to donate to his gofundme for an asshole transplant

Oh no I disagree, I would rather be the richest person in a poor country than be the poorest person in a rich country. But I grew up in a low-ish, not nearly the lowest, income country so maybe I am just used to it.

Nintendo in the background rubbing its lawyer hands in anticipation

No! Who will control the Congo then…

The one kid smashed a kid’s face into a toilet till it broke, toilet and kid’s face, and news crew came filming where we found out almost all our classes are made out of asbestos, late 2000s

So disappointed that no meteorologist said: “a meteor probably”.

Well I was not even focused on the USA in my reasoning of why in Mexico it is a bad thing to extend the democratic process to the election judicial branch of government or generally every decision to the public.

The USA has issues in their democratic elections, gerrymandering in certain states being one, the electoral college giving most or all the electoral votes to the winner and not a portion in relation to votes, propaganda being openly discussed on “entertainment” news channels. Then there is even lobbying that is allowed, politicians being able to buy and sell stock based on insider information, paid speaking events.

And the ruling by elites will in any system be an issue, even oppression by the majority can be an issue, that is usually why you have a good constitution, that lays the foundation of how government should work, the different spheres and how it should protect the most vulnerable in society. It has mechanisms to protect against an interest group gaining power to basically twist the system to their will and finally the last resort is the democratic vote of the people to ensure accountability.

After these mechanisms have failed there is no pretty answer on how to easily get back to a fair system. In my country South Africa, where we had a system that disenfranchised the majority of the population, I am glad that we had a bloodless coup d’etat and now we have one of the most progressive constitutions in the world, but even that wasn’t enough again from a connected small majority from almost ruling the country. Luckily in our last election, in the first time in 30 years the ruling party lost their majority and now we have a 10+ party coalition ruling majority government, and in my opinion things are going good, but we know how fragile our democracy is and try to be as engaged as citizens can be.

Agree, but there are many flavours of it. For example we began the discussion on how Mexico extended their democracy to now include the judicial branch of government, others can be how they vote, for example electoral college in USA, ranked choice voting in some European countries like France or my country, South Africa, we have proportional representation and cannot even vote for our president

This example was exactly the issue Socrates had with democracy actually, saying that a demagogue would be elected as a president or leaders of government the majority of the time. His solution was just as vague, so let’s just say there is no perfect system yet. All have their benefits and drawbacks.

Look it is messy, my feeling is you vote or don’t vote for a party based on their policy and track record, but after elections they have the will of the people to act, so they should then focus on the technical issues of government by being guided by their election promises, policy and the country’s constitution to ensure that minorities aren’t discriminated against for example.

This example was exactly the issue Socrates had with democracy actually, saying that a demagogue would be elected as a president or leaders of government the majority of the time. His solution was just as vague, so let’s just say there is no perfect system yet. All have their benefits and drawbacks.

Look it is messy, my feeling is you vote or don’t vote for a party based on their policy and track record, but after elections they have the will of the people to act, so they should then focus on the technical issues of government by being guided by their election promises, policy and the country’s constitution to ensure that minorities aren’t discriminated against for example.

My opinion is, not based on Mexico, that the public is uninformed in the majority of decisions. Basically delegating power to the common person, especially technical decisions to the public will mean the most popular choice will win mostly, not the best choice. That is basically populism in a nutshell. Imagine you had to choose in this example a food policymaker, the one is the charismatic Willy Wonka that will say he wants everyone to eat sweets all the time, he wants you to eat whatever you want to eat, give you choices by subsidising all the sweets, worse he will attack Dr. Grouch, because he wants to tell you what to eat, force additional taxes on sweets to try and guide people to eat more gross vegetables, in fact basically force you, the poorest to have no choice but to eat these “healthy” foods. And unfortunately Dr. Grouch will agree, he wants you to eat "healthy food because in a couple of years you and your children will reap the benefits.