jimmydef

Citizens are conscripted into the military. They spend two years at the prime of their youth in the army getting paid almost nothing. And after that two years is over, for the next 10 years or so, they have to go back to reservist military training for several weeks annually.

They also have to pass the annual military fitness test otherwise they will have to go back to the military to do further physical training in the evenings for weeks even if they have a job. Throughout their 20s and early 30s, most of them cannot even have long hair due to this military duty. Penalty of avoidance is military prison of 3 years. When they go overseas for work or other reasons for longer period of time, they need to apply for an exit permit from the military like a leash. When they go overseas for short periods of time, they still have to notify their military unit first.

People die or get injured all the time in the army during their conscription period.

And then you have foreigners coming over and complaining they are not getting subsidized services when they also pay tax.

Why don't you first talk about the responsibilities of these "first class" citizens before talking about their privileges.

The total number of cars is fixed.

Singapore's population has exploded in the past 20 years, almost doubling due to immigration. Native birth rate has collapsed.

Many relatively wealthy foreign individuals have moved to Singapore, disproportionately middle aged and above. These folks also compete in buying car quotas. They can also buy more than one car. Their demand is more inelastic.

Younger folks, local or foreign born are priced out.

Yes, because when adjusted to car ownership costs, the young have a lower purchasing power when compared to the older generation at the same age back then.

The utility of a car in singapore is very different from other places. Yes, a car will get you faster from point A to point B in singapore when compared to public transport. But you can get a private hire car or a taxi which is just as fast and is probably much more convenient.

For many people in Singapore, a car's real utility is to signal status. More often than not, this status gets you real-life benefits. Such as increased dating success.

I think the main reason alibaba got beat down was because it was moving from "tech" into finance offering unregulated loans and jack ma criticizing regulators did not help at all.

And alibaba was not "deep tech", more like derivative tech. It's just a ecommerce site. It takes a lot of technical expertise to operate that at a large scale for sure, but at the end of the day, it's not the kind of fundamental tech free from sanctions that the chinese government wanted to pivot its tech industry to.

i guess they can randomize the queue order so no one gets aan advantage by being in the queue first.

I've been hearing about this downturn for the past 3 years now. When is it coming?

As someone with severe Asian flush, with an overactive ADH gene (gene that converts of alcohol to acetaldehyde) and 2 defective ALDH2 alleles (gene that breaks down acetaldehyde into harmless byproducts), I wish there is a way to repair these genes using MRNA. I don't feel even the mildest buzz from alcohol but I instantly get a hangover when I drink.

Slow adoption of firearms by the Chinese was less to do with the crossbow than the fact that the Manchus occupied China during a period when firearms was coming of age. The Manchus famously despised gunpowder weapons in favor of the bow and arrow which they held in extremely high regard. After all it was the bow that in part helped them defeat the disintegrating Ming empire which invested heavily in gunpowder weapons like cannons.

In their early years of Western expansion, the firearms units was always staffed by the Han Chinese and were of low status.

I don't think that's the case. My cats knead my head, my chest, my abdomen and my legs, but it doesn't rest on me.

Why didn't the German government massively subsidize Green energy?

How on earth is it right to criticize a government for subsidizing green energy in the face of climate change? The reason why solar panels are so cheap today was because Chinese companies achieved economies of scale due to governmental support. This is a GOOD thing.

European countries were way ahead of the curve 10 years ago in terms of these green technologies but chose to do nothing. Their solar companies could have been world leaders as long as governmental policies supported them too. They would have been wiping others out. How can anyone blame China for investing/subsidizing in green energies? The way I view it, it's their just rewards for at least taking this aspect of green technology seriously while others did next to nothing in terms of subsidies.

One theory is that churros came from the fried Chinese doughstick youtiao.

The habit of eating raw fish in Japan probably developed indigenously but many of the words the Japanese use to describe sushi and raw fish came from China which to the surprise of many has a very strong food culture of eating raw fish and meat up till the Ming dynasty in the 14th century.

Look at what confucius wrote in the book of rites 2500 years ago: 食不厌精，脍不厌细 (you'll not get sick of good food, and you'll not get sick of kuai(raw fish /meat) that is sliced thinly.) or 脍，春用葱，秋用芥 (kuai, eat it with spring onions in spring and jie in autumn. jie is a chinese mustard. )

The chinese probably adopted the habit of eating raw fish in the past from people from southeast asia.

And while sashima is almost certainly developed indigenously in Japan, the predecessor of the modern Sushi in japan (fish preserved in rice) is most likely developed in China.

Food history is so interesting but largley neglected.

Baozi is unlikely to have come from the Ottomans via the Mongols.

The Song dynasty chinese were already eating baozi and writing about it in their books and documents in the early 11th century, before the Ottomans were established or Genghis Khan was born.

And Baozi is just another name for Mantou in ancient China which is a name for the food which is even older stretching back to the Han dynasty over two millenia ago.

There's nothing to contradict as you have not provided any argument to support the claim that these two last humans must produce children.

It depends where you live. If you live in the US, you can sell your house, have 1M, move to a low cost housing part of the country, buy a house for 150k and have 850k leftover for retirement.

I live in Singapore. If I have a 1M house, I can sell it, have 1M. Now I have two choices. I can either choose to be homeless, or I can buy another house for another 1M and be stuck in the same position as I was in in the first place. That 1M is really just "on paper" if you live in a country where housing is equally expensive everywhere.