…I mean…personally I’d be down for it, I really would, especially if it’s made into idk some kind of luxury experience like bathhouse/coffeehouse with WiFi. Idk just dress the shit up out of it.

But I think with all of America’s social issues & gender fights, random bullshit problems we create for ourselves, it would only be a matter of time before someone, somehow, is discriminated against. Files lawsuit. Sues the ever-loving shit out of the bathhouse. Bye-bye bathhouse. Between the “gay” stereotype & the sue-happy culture, your sentō is all but doomed to fail. Unfortunately.

Unless you could lawyer up & make a sentō that is somehow impervious to ridiculous, frivolous lawsuits.

It wasn’t men (or COVID ) that gave rise to the term “loneliness epidemic”. This issue is older than you realize. I lived through this, I would say mid 2010s this issue was being discussed (but only occasionally) based on men isolating in the late 00s, early 2010s and/or killing themselves. Deaths of despair & such. “Male loneliness epidemic”, “loneliness epidemic” were solidly PRE-COVID TERMS coined by the researches studying these men. Men were “doing the thing”, it was prevalent enough to get noticed, and they’re like hey, this is weird, this is happening a lot. It’s an epidemic.

This is a 2017 Harvard blog post…article…thing. ‘The power and prevalence of loneliness’. It mainly deals with old people but especially concerns men. While I don’t see the term in the article itself, it popped in a search as: “The epidemic — and health dangers — of loneliness”.

This is a 2018 article from Church Leaders (lol), “The Epidemic of Male Loneliness”. Basically word for word.

Psych Central Dec 2017, epidemic of male loneliness

The Walrus, 2018, epidemic of isolation among young men

Stanford, 2017, Loneliness Epidemic talking about men

April 2018, male loneliness epidemic

March 2017, HuffPost

March 2015

December 2017

Etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc…etc. Just do a web search specifying article dates & you will find a plethora of male loneliness epidemic articles well predating the start of teh covidz.

I think woke mind virus is more modern, probably making the scene during Trump’s first term somehow. I can’t quite remember.

I would argue terms like “epidemic” & “pandemic” are simply building on older terms used to describe social phenomena. Like “fever” has been used in that context forever.

Getting the consoles into the eager hands of people that actually play them & don’t sell for profit. 🙂

Idky you got downvoted, you are correct.

These metrics are very much public, sometimes bragworthy/touted, and yes while technically a little creepy it does effectively deal with the scalper problem.

I hate shit that must connect to servers & cannot be played offline. As Louis Rossmann says, this begs the question – do you even own what you bought & paid for? Or is it a license they can take away next time you come online?

I love Nintendo, I also have so many fucking gripes about Nintendo, but that’s not one of their flaws. I have always been able to play all their stuff offline with no problems whatsoever. 🙂 That should be the norm, but it isn’t, and Nintendo is exceptional in this regard.

Yes, if your battery posts are corroded to shit you just stick that thing on there & twist it around, rub up & down, and it cleans the crud off.

Once the battery post is clean & connection made, I’d recommend a protective spray or even a nice, thick layer of petroleum jelly. Keeps it nice. 👌

And at lower prices! Idky they feel the need to talk shit now, they don’t have much to stand on. 🙄

Sorry about your car! I hate that.

In an age where people are prone to feeling isolated & alone, for various reasons…this, unfortunately, is filling the void(s) in their life. I agree, it’s not healthy or best.

No, I basically get the same read as OP. Idk I like to think I’m rational enough & don’t take things too far, but I like my car. I like my tools, people just get attached to things we like.

Give it an almost human, almost friend type interaction & yes I’m not surprised at all some people, particularly power users, are developing parasocial attachments or addiction to this non-human tool. I don’t call my friends. I text. ¯\(°_o)/¯

Not all of us live in cities, nor would we ever want to. I do not have access to public transportation to take me to & from one of my jobs.

If you are able, yes, kind of amazing perks & I’d use it. It would certainly save me more than a little money in car insurance, maintenance, fuel, potential for accidents, etc. But it is not a feasible option, specifically for me.

Okay…now that the left is finding every reason to hate on Tesla, allow me to help: this is, and always has been, a massive fucking myth. It never was more energy efficient than a regular ICE vehicle.

Mainly because of its construction. Mining the cobalt, etc for the batteries is very energy intensive. Then there’s the tires. AFAIK, you can’t just throw any old tires on a Tesla vehicle. You have to buy their special tires with all these sensors in them. I think there are knockoffs, but still. You also have to change the tires more frequently than traditional ICE vehicles, because they wear out faster, because the Teslas are heavier. A car weighs as much as an SUV or truck (3,582 lbs - 4,065 lbs), the Model X Plaid weighs 5390 lbs, and the Cybertruck weighs 6000-7000 lbs.

The damage doesn’t stop with the vehicle itself; we must also consider the impact of heavier vehicles on the roads. It will also cause the roads to wear out faster than normal.

Unless it’s crashed or burned in protest or whatever, IIRC, a Tesla vehicle can redeem itself from its massive environmental cost to produce & such. But only after many hundreds of thousands of miles on the road, and by the time that occurs, you’ll need to replace the battery. “Tesla batteries can last between 300,000 to 500,000 miles, which translates to about 1,500 battery charge cycles.” Kiss another $13K - $20K goodbye to swap out that battery for a new one.

So with its far simpler & straightforward construction out of readily available material, coupled with a sprawling existing infrastructure…the ICE car is more eco-friendly and cheaper to operate! And the hybrid vehicles are better than both full-electric & ICE, best of both worlds.

Can’t say I relate specifically to that, but I can relate to staying up later because you enjoy what you’re doing. Everybody else shuts the hell up & you can focus in on…whatever you want to do. I also think my desire to stay up later stems from wanting control over my day & my time, so while I absolutely should sleep, part of me is like, “NO! Sleep is a waste of time. I want to do this instead!”

That’s basically why I do it. I don’t edge. Maybe if you indulged a little more in physical labors, you can wear your body out & really get some good sleep. Idk it’s literally exhausting, but that’s when I sleep the best. When I burn myself up all day long, spending myself on labors.

I have no idea personally, I’m just telling you what I observe. And from what I’ve observed, it’s not this stupidly simple operation that anyone can do & it’s “basically a money printing machine”, as others on here are telling you.

If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense. As a general rule. That solar farm has gone under & sold ownership twice in idk 7-8 years.

I am pro-solar panel, and I was anti-wind turbine because the old fiberglass blade turbines filled with oil were dumb. But as I understand that technology, too, is improving & idk we’ll have to see how the new ones perform. Seems to me doing these things on a more commercial scale where you’re selling it to the grid can get a little fucky. There are reasons why it’s slowly taking off. There are reasons why people build, then sell, then the buyers sell. It’s probably a tricky endeavor with its own challenges.

YMMV. We’ve got a local solar farm & the operation has gone belly-up, changed hands twice. It’s got to be on its third investor/owner. Also depends on the quality of your build & your local weather; that solar field isn’t even fully operational yet. Got hit by a massive hail storm maybe almost 2 years ago, it had to have smashed a couple hundred solar panels.

If you’re interested in it, I’d be very careful. Insure everything. Ask everybody, people in the industry if possible.

Anti-China-Goods rant aside, I would also contest your claim they’re coming up on the US. Growing up I was told this, and halfway believed it, but the evidence for a prosperous China just isn’t there & the evidence against them is growing every day. Despite their numerous attempts to hide negative press. While still technically a formidable foe with power based on sheer numbers & basic technologies alone, China is a struggling world power riddled with problems, like a body with cancer. Effectively making them a paper tiger.

First & foremost, know this: China’s worst enemy has, and always will be, China. The CCP rules with an iron fist, then there are unintended consequences. The one child policy (and people’s preference to have their one child be a boy) created a terrible gender imbalance & consequences we see playing out today. As of 2021 & reacting to slowing birthrates and an aging population, the CCP now allows families to have up to 3 children. More on that in a bit…

Look into the Four Evils campaign, a movement that led to famine, the starvation of an estimated 20-30M people. It’s a fascinating little read & a perfect example of going to extremes, and unintended consequences.

Some of China’s GDP & “growth”, kind of like the US, is fake. They’ve built entire cities nobody lives in, empty malls with no stores. It looks good on paper, all that construction & work being done. But how good is that work? And what’s it all for, sitting empty, rusting/rotting/crumbling away into nothing? They, too, have a real estate bubble ready to burst.

Fake accomplishments & claims abound. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. They claim nuclear fusion. They claim they can turn deserts into lush, healthy forests. They claim amazing technologies & weapons, no you can’t see them, but trust me bro our scientists have totally verified it multiple times. So legit. 🙄🙄🙄

Much like the US & UK, but on crack – they’re using all this technology to enshittify the lives of their residents. To press that boot of authoritarian rule more firmly onto their necks, controlling every aspect of their lives, cracking down on dissent, etc. Social credit scores like a Black Mirror episode (specifically S3E1, “Nosedive”, a good watch!). The crazy COVID crackdowns, which led to…

The disenchantment of the youths, millennials & Gen Z. Granted this has been festering for years before covid, but all the weird social shit around covid led to the Tang Ping movement in China, informally known as “Let It Rot”. An overworked, underpaid, and underappreciated youth slaving away for the CCP, facing an aging population to care for, has decided to just let it all rot. Juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Why try to date, why marry, why have any children at all, let alone 3? What’s the point of it all, to help the CCP? The assholes…running & ruining their lives? Nah. Let it rot. Very fascinating stuff, Google it.

So between their copy-paste or outright fake “innovations”, their fake real estate & holdings, their poisoned food, their poor, impoverished populations, their aging population, their despondent & depressed youth, etc…I don’t think things are looking so hot for China. The more you learn, the more the narrative unravels. It’s pretty sad that they have so many people & don’t dominate the world, but again, it’s mostly China’s fault. Even their own citizens resent China, with damn good reason. Ultimately, their actions (and inaction) will not allow China to succeed.

Nah it’s not about the quality, it’s about the Chinese Communist Party & some of the sketchy-ass companies they just allow to operate over there. When I was on Reddit I had a comment I could point to with some examples. But I care, deeply, about this issue & I think it’s important to not only highlight claims but bring the receipts to back it up. So please…enjoy.

Might add to this/refine later. There’s nothing racist about this, this is merely a fraction of many, many shady business scandals I can recall off the top of my head. Things that people did, and were allowed to be shipped out to the public, they do not care. I implore you to exercise caution when trying out new electronics of any kind from China (AKA virtually all electronics), and not to knowingly purchase & consume their food.

Chinese companies sold toxic drywall to the United States, which was installed in homes & offgassed fumes. If you ask me, you’ve got to be pretty stupid to buy Chinese drywall, why would you do that? To save $5? But I digress…

It is disturbingly common for Chinese footwear, especially footwear designed for babies/toddlers/children, to contain high levels of lead. This shipment contained Chinese footwear with 300 ppm lead; that is 3x the maximum lead exposure level acceptable by law. Lead exposure, poisoning is mainly through eating or breathing, however, kids put on or take off their shoes…hands go in mouth. Or hell some kids are putting their mouths on shoes. That’s lead exposure. And as everyone is quick to point out, these are small & growing bodies, not adults. So while “they’ll live”, there really is no safe level of lead exposure for children.

Moving on from freaky footwear, there’s the 2008 Chinese milk scandal. They were intentionally sneaking melamine into milk to fraudulently boost protein levels. Melamine, a plastic used in the production of whiteboards & countertops, doesn’t even mix into milk naturally. That took effort, dissolving with formaldehyde or another chemical before they could poison your milk. Drinking this milk resulted in kidney stone production, kidney failure, etc…thousands of hospitalizations & 6 dead babies. Thankfully, the CCP harshly came down on the baddies. 2 executions, three life imprisonments, two 15-year prison sentences, and the firing or forced resignation of seven local government officials and the Director of AQSIQ. The former chairwoman of China’s Sanlu dairy was sentenced to life in prison. Also, a Chinese company poisoned pets via melamine “enhanced” wheat gluten, used in wet pet food.

Nefarious fuckery aside, I just would not eat food imported from China, as there’s a good chance it is contaminated with heavy metals. More recently than that 2014 article, I’ve heard from multiple sources that Chinese garlic is fertilized with human sewage, then bleached when it’s time to sell it in the US. Now utilizing sewage as fertilizer in agriculture, as a concept…doesn’t scare me. But do I trust the standards of the people applying it? Yeah, again, hard pass. And the bleaching, probably not bad. Bleach is food safe when it dries. But do I trust them to do it, safely & effectively? No. It is ironic, I see people defending the practices when China does it, but those same practices are probably not allowed for US produce. Little hypocritical.

They poisoned our youth & poor with cheap THC vape juice carts, using Vitamin E acetate as a binder. It works well as a binder, but when introduced into the lungs, the sticky oil coats the lungs & interferes with the function of the alveoli, resulting in a fascinating condition I can only call…“dry drowning”. You’re not in the water, you breathe in the air, but your lungs can’t process the air for oxygen & you die. Having vaping friends, I specifically recall China being blamed for the practice of Vitamin E binder oils. They did it because it was cheaper to produce. Most of the people that died were poor or high school kids, trying to get product for cheap.

Moving away from food & into hard consumer goods, can’t forget about the hoverboards. Just Google “Charging hoverboard burns house down” & you’ll get a lot of stories, even a few deaths.

Anything with a battery, really, is a risk. We know this. But depending on the manufacturer, subsequent testing, and I would also argue charging methods…we can reduce the risk as much as possible, or the manufacturer can increase our risks by cutting corners to save money.

TL;DR – China Is Asshole

Mine is pretty obvious.

I will check them out later! I’ve been wanting a robot vacuum for a while now but I also am wary of Chinese bullshit.

I want a really good one that doesn’t connect to the internet in any way. 👍🏻 Even if that kills some of its smart features.

All hail…the Jesussy

😏

LOL, FBI 😂