She didn’t have kids already, but she wanted to have them in the future. I absolutely do not want kids, I even got a vasectomy in my early 20s.

It’s not really an issue you can compromise on as a couple, so it was better to part amicably than pursue something with no future, for both of our sakes.

You don’t want to use a wiki that makes your battery start to visibly drain away?

I am childfree, she wasn’t. 100% not going to work, but we ended on good terms all things ocnsidered.

Tropical Connect the Dots.

Give my regards to Winnie.

Shock, the guy who watches racists is a racist.

‘and we aren’t talking about the Chinese people, the Chinese people are good people, we love China, we are opposed to the CCP’?

The white man’s burden bullshit argument. Oh those poor Chinese people can’t possibly really support the CPC, they are just misguided and need us brave foreigners to come save them.

If you want to talk smack about Laowhy then you better provide proof.

Laowhy desecrating remains. His girlfriend (at the time) calls him out on it and he tells her to shut up because it makes good content. Nobody who loves China descreates their dead. You can’t even use the excuse that he was confused or didn’t know what it was, he was told to stop and refuses.

His treatment of his wife. Makes her sit on the floor of the car while he makes racist jokes with his family. Sorry to link to reddit, I don’t keep extensive archives of these guys.

Not expecting you to suddenly change your opinion on the CPC, but these guys in particularly are indefensible and nobody should be encouraged to watch them.

I used it a little bit, not extensively. I watched Diggnation with Kevin and Alex though semi-regularly, as I used to watch TechTV prior to that.

Not many I follow too closely to be honest these days. I just did a big purge of a bunch of my subscriptions so there’s only a handful now.

Gaming/Entertainment:

• Nextlander: General gaming; comprised of three ex-members of Giant Bomb (Vinny, Alex, and Brad).

• Mr. Samuel Streamer: Primarily focused on Rimworld and Crusader Kings, just an extremely witty guy that puts a lot of work into what he does. Often spends 8-9 hours in gameplay and editing to make a 30 minute episode, every day.

• Nilaus: Factory/automation games, like Factorio and Dyson Sphere Program.

• The Jimmy Dore Show: Semi-leftist, has liberal tendancies but is more political comedy than serious commentary, so I categorize him more as entertainment than political. I often don’t agree with all of his takes, but the show can be good sometimes.

• CryptTV: Mini-horror episodes, often with a few recurring monsters. Really well done effects work.

Politics:

• Li Jingjing: China-based journalist, covers China and the global south as a whole. Does both serious stories and cultural/interest pieces. Great for somebody just interested in seeing more China without the anti-China rhetoric.

• George Galloway: Left-leaning talk show host, some reactionary tendancies but he does have a pretty good range of guests from time to time, including the above. He’s been around for ages, very well established.

• The Deprogram: Leftist talk show and podcast.

That’s kind of my entire subscription list at the moment, it has been cut down a lot recenty.

Oh no, not the racist sexpats. Not sure I would necessarily want to be using those guys as your source of news in China. Laowhy is an absolute piece of shit to his wife, and actually made a video of himself desecrating gravesites in Taiwan and laughing about it. Complained that his daughter looked too asian. Just an absolute piece of garbage.

They found out being condescending towards Chinese people sells right now, and that has been their entire brand since they left the country. They’re probably useful in that anything they say, you can assume the exact opposite is the truth.

Living in Japan, this almost didn’t register to me. I have literally never met anybody that didn’t have one. When you move out, you use your family’s old one until you can buy a newer one.

Everyone should have one, absolutely.

The South’s current government is ridiculously conservative. Rolling back labour laws and women’s rights were pillars of their election run. They’ll do whatever the US tells them to. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that peaceful diplomacy is not at the forefront of their mind.

It’s honestly pretty cyclical, they bounce back and forth between more diplomatic minded leadership and more warhungry. They are much more in the antagonistic phase of their cycle right now.

Obviously you run into a lot of other issues with a sudden change but we are frankly pretty overpopulated and could use a decrease. It turns out that a system predicated on infinite population growth with finite resources can't be sustained forever. Especially with how finite they are in our case.

I think even worse than our population issues is the overcentralization though. SO much is based around Tokyo, the vast majority of jobs are located there, especially if you want any upwards mobility. It's even worse if you include areas like Chiba and Saitama as part of the greater Tokyo area. Even the other cities pale in comparison to opportunities in Tokyo. If people could spread out a bit more, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is now.

I was lucky enough to be able to move out of Tokyo last year thanks to my work. I am not in a super rural area but I definitely never want to go back to Tokyo if I can help it. I am in the mountains around Mt. Fuji, and get to work overlooking a spectacular view of the mountain. Don't have to deal with packing into crowded trains in the summer when everyone is dripping with sweat.

My country is exceptionally bad about this.

Buy a plastic package of crackers? It will be filled with smaller packages of crackers all wrapped in plastic with a plastic freshener pack for each one. I am not exaggerating. I am not sure I have ever bought something that didn’t have at least two degrees of plastic wrap.

We did stop giving plastic bags out at cashiers unless requested, but that means shitall when everything you buy is triple-wrapped to begin with.

I quite like it, I generally like how it looks, and there was less of a learning curve than I expected there to be. Things mostly work without needing you to know HOW they work (though that is fun too). I am sure it will get more active as more people move over, but it’s actually the perfect amount of activity for me right now. I can check in and there is usually some new stuff without worrying about things moving so fast that my voice gets lost in the noise.

Big plus is I can be fairly open about my leftist politics, at least around here, and not be downvoted into oblivion. Nor does everything thread even tangentially related to China devolve into racism within five posts.

Are there a couple niche communities I miss? Sure, I might recreate them myself honestly, somebody has to. Otherwise, I don’t miss much.