FTA:
>"Japan has changed its strategy in combating the contagion, seeking to slow its spread and minimize the number of deaths."
In my personal opinion living and working here, this society is very slow to change and things that could greatly assist in slowing the spread, such as adopting a Work From Home policy, will only occur once it's too late. Almost no one is allowed to work from home here, even those with office/tech jobs that can completely be done remotely with no issues. In addition, workers are granted an incredibly small amount of days off, and most would rather get onto their very crowded trains and commute into the office even when unwell as opposed to taking one of their limited days off.
All that being said I'm not freaking out about it the way most people here are, but I wish companies would react a bit faster and change their work culture to accommodate the very easy things that could be done so people can limit their interactions with others when something like this is occurring. You can pretty much guarantee that one person with the virus getting onto a sardine can train during their morning commute is going to infect several other people in the process, and no amount of face masks the people here are so fond of will do anything to keep an infection at bay.
>But part of me feels an obligation to be informed to hold those in power accountable.
I'm curious though, how does the average citizen hold those in power accountable? OK so you vote, but tons of other people vote and are often uninformed about what is going on or are completely apathetic. The recent news about Roger Stone's sentencing to me proves how little power we as average citizens have in actually holding others accountable, especially when those in power have ties to other rich, powerful, and well connected people.
>Maybe supply chains become a bit more distributed, or less centralized.
This is one of the things that I've been wondering about the last few days. I recently read an article discussing how because China is essentially shut down, the supply chain has been disrupted for manufacturers in other countries. So much of manufacturing in other areas of the world depends on components made in china, and when those stop other manufacturers also stop. People get laid off, and it becomes a cascading problem affecting everyone.
>North American (NA) schools have bullying, exams, homework, and sleep disruption but our system is still relatively intact.
My impression from living here in Japan for a bit over a year, and having friends with children in the Japanese school system, is that Japanese students have way more pressure put on them. Kids spend way longer each day out of the house; Study sessions before school, stronger peer pressure to assimilate and not stick out, more after school activities, more homework to do in the evenings, school six days a week. Also keep in mind that the middle school you get into will have a huge effect on which high school you get to attend, which has a very strong influence on which college you get into, and thus effect your pipeline into the best companies. The pressure to succeed starts way younger than it does in the US, and not getting into the primary school of choice can ruin your chances for success later on in adult hood.
A couple of anecdotal stories I've seen during my time here; Bullying here seems to be much more pronounced, and given the cultural hesitation to involve yourself in other's affairs, often goes unchecked. I've seen many instances of large groups of 10+ kids ganging up on a single kid on the streets, in full view of adults and even public safety volunteers, and no one will ever step in and tell the kids to stop.
On another occasion I was outside of a combini having a drink, and near by a young girl (maybe 8 years old or so), was crying trying to do her homework. The mother was nearby and when she would write down answers that were wrong, the mother would scream at the child and call her stupid, which would cause the child to cry harder (but still trying to complete her work), and the entire thing just kind of created this negative feedback loop - child would cry harder and probably do worse on the work, which would anger the mother and make the screaming more intense, which caused the crying to become more intense. It was a really depressing and disturbing thing to witness, especially given the young age of the child.
I know bullying exists in the west (myself being a victim of some pretty intense bullying as a child), and there is strong pressure to do well in high school to get into the best colleges as well, but from what I've seen in Japan it seems to be much more pronounced. At least in the west most times an adult will step in to stop bullying when it's seen, but here it seems no one cares or will do anything to stop it.
I guess it depends on if we are talking about enthusiasts or the average consumer? If we are talking about the average consumer I would assume in order of importance; Reliability, vehicle range, charging time, ride quality, available technology, interior quality.
For the average "enthusiasts" seen in the comments section of Car and Driver's facebook page it would be more along the lines of; 0 to 60mph time, nurburgring lap times, 0 to 100mph times, quarter mile times, looks. But for actual enthusiasts who have an interest in Electric Vehicles i would say all the things you mentioned are fairly important. But really, to the average consumer who purchases something like a Camry or Accord, I feel as if reliability/range/technology (by that i mean things like apple car play, lane assist, and other QoL technologies) and value are really what the average person is looking for.
Any time these topics around weakening privacy or removing encryption comes up, it's nearly always presented with a save the children type of argument. I mean, who doesn't want to protect children from child abuse and predators? The problem however, is that most children that are abused are done so by family members or people already close to them (like maybe their priests), so with that in mind I don't really understand how weakening encryption will help protect children from predators.
I disagree with this article that this is all about their ability to "tell stories", as much as management that's really good at identifying which company to acquire next so they can squeeze every last cent from consumers for whichever IP they are pushing at the time.
Most people I've talked to DON'T believe the star wars series has gotten better from a story telling perspective, as this article proposes. I don't think most people believe live-action remakes of their classic cartoons is quality story-telling. I think they are just really good at reading market trends, have enough money in their coffers to acquire whatever is becoming the next big thing, advertise and push it into becoming a cultural phenomenon, then moving onto whatever is next once they've exhausted that IP.
Edit - and to be clear, I most likely have a very jaded view here. I don't like disney as a company, nor am I a fan of superhero movies, star wars, or a lot of what the company has been pushing for the last decade or so. I respect their ability to make a ton of money, but I don't like a majority of what they create anymore, nor how they treat a majority of their employees.
>I have no doubt that some Americans legitimately dislike DST—not just the change of clocks, but the redistribution of sunlight from morning to afternoon.
I don't really feel like most people complain about the specific time the sun sets, as much as they are complaining about the disruption to their circadian cycle. I dislike the short days during winter, but changing the time the sun sets an hour forward or backward isn't ultimately going to create more hours of sunlight during the day.
What i will say however, after a year of living in a country now that doesn't observe DST, is i greatly appreciate not having a disruption to my sleep cycles in either direction. My dog also appreciate not having the disruption to his daily routine either. I adjusted to just waking up when the sun rises, wanting to go to sleep within a few hours of the sun setting, and when it's cold outside and the days are shorter i find myself wanting to spend more time inside sleeping anyways.
Boy was that a depressing article to read. I felt bad for the individual farmers who go out of business and lose their livelihoods, the towns which suffer as more means of production are lost to either globalization or big business, the animals who likely suffer at factory farms far more than they did in small-scale farms, and at how an entire way of life is being lost in a few short generations.
>So you have countries like Germany that are effectively subsidized by poorer countries.
Could you explain this comment further, or have links to stories that go in depth on how that works? Not saying you are wrong, but I don't understand how germany, which is an economic powerhouse and exports a lot of goods, are being subsidized by poorer countries.
>Breja alleges that on March 12, 2019, in an executive team meeting, he learned that some batches of mint e-liquid had been found to be contaminated. Approximately 250,000 mint refill kits, the equivalent of one million pods, were manufactured with the contaminated e-liquid, shipped to retailers, and sold to customers.
I really wish the article detailed what exactly the contaminant is, especially considering the current hysteria over vaping.
>That same day, Breja “protested Juul’s refusal to issue a product recall for the contaminated pods, or at a minimum issue a public health and safety notice to consumers.” Then-chief finance officer Tim Danaher reportedly “questioned his financial acumen,” since these suggestions would lead to billions of dollars in lost sales and hurt Juul’s then-$38 billion valuation, according to the lawsuit. Danaher, whose departure was announced by the company on Tuesday, allegedly told Breja that he should remember his loyalty to Juul.
It's sad that there are so many people who would knowingly cause harm to others, just all for the opportunity to make just a little bit more money. They were already making money, and I'm pretty sure this debacle will cost them far more money in the long run than just doing a voluntary recall and coming clean. No better than the tobacco companies that came decades before.
>now we're seeing the harmful health effects of whatever cheap materials they're using to manufacture the coils.
This is the main part that I'm concerned about personally. There is a local place i go to back when i lived in the states where they would craft the juice for me on the spot, so I had peace of mind the juice was ok. But all of the coils were manufactured in china, and if manufacturers there were fine with tainted baby formula that killed infants, then nothing else has the guarantee of being safe.
>How many Chinese will pay attention to "whatever those people are doing in Hong Kong" for the first time because of this ?
Most of them are already aware, and due to state ran media and an ultra-nationalistic view, are in full support of CCP and are very much against HK and their protests.
Here is a video from a guy who lived in China for over a decade, is married to a mainland Chinese woman, has family both in Hong Kong as well as Mainland, and how it's destroying his family due to the Mainlander's views of Hong Kong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4wbx9hIN4E
I'm also a fan of SerpentZA, LaoWhy86, and their shared channel ADVChina. Same thing as your link, guys that have been living there for over 10 years, married to chinese women, read and speak the language, and can provide a lot of insight into not only every day life, but also the views of chinese people within mainland china.
>What would have moved to Vietnam would have been more basic textiles and cnc/molding.
And these are the types of jobs that provided a decent living wage for the middle/lower-middle class, of which a lot of people in the midwest and rustbelt use to do, and the loss of such jobs has decimated these communities. Service sector, warehouse fulfillment, and gig economy jobs don't provide nearly the value, nor do they provide the types of benefits that former jobs did.
Edit - Not sure why my comment is being downvoted. A lot of the jobs in the midwest were things like basic factory work of plastic products, textiles, CNC machining, molding (of which my dad was previously employed doing), and other things of that nature which have been outsourced over the decades. These jobs not only provided a stable livable wage, but most of them also provided benefits such as health/dental insurance for not only the workers but their entire families. These jobs have left over the years, and nothing which provided the same standards of living has come into replace them. States such as michigan, illinois, ohio, wisconsin, and others in that area have been hit hard over the past few decades because of these changes in the global economy.
Late to respond, but because outline sometimes doesn't work for me (for instance bloomberg articles), I've found it easier to just disable javascript in that tab via chrome dev tools.
>If these companies wanted to they could mass produce and sell at 1/10th the cost. But that defeats the purpose of these cars existing.
I'm not so sure if that would be feasible. In the case of say a limited edition Hurican I don't think there is enough additional engineering cost that can justify doubling the price of a $500k car for special editions, but I'm also not sure if mass production could drop the price for a new one down to $50k. The amount of specialized equipment and expertise involved in building these things are immense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVjtpr6LUuE
After all, while the new c8 corvettes have near-supercar levels of performance from a numbers perspective for a $60k car, the exterior and interior quality is so far away from that of supercars and hypercars it's not even funny, and GM is still taking a loss on every 'vette sold. The companies listed in the article just make extremely bespoke and specialized vehicles, and I'm sure mass production would only cause quality control issues. Besides, there really aren't that many people that can afford such expensive toys, mid-tier luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes already have many $100k cars (AMG's and M cars) sitting on lots because of a lack of demand; It's not because people don't want them, they just can't afford them.
In my personal opinion living and working here, this society is very slow to change and things that could greatly assist in slowing the spread, such as adopting a Work From Home policy, will only occur once it's too late. Almost no one is allowed to work from home here, even those with office/tech jobs that can completely be done remotely with no issues. In addition, workers are granted an incredibly small amount of days off, and most would rather get onto their very crowded trains and commute into the office even when unwell as opposed to taking one of their limited days off.
All that being said I'm not freaking out about it the way most people here are, but I wish companies would react a bit faster and change their work culture to accommodate the very easy things that could be done so people can limit their interactions with others when something like this is occurring. You can pretty much guarantee that one person with the virus getting onto a sardine can train during their morning commute is going to infect several other people in the process, and no amount of face masks the people here are so fond of will do anything to keep an infection at bay.