Removed by mod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCRlgxoTsQs

The CCP doesn’t exist 400 years ago. The CCP is not China. That’s what they want you to think. It is really just a political faction that has taken the rest of the country hostage. For all I know the CCP members could be lizard people based on their inhumanity.

The ROC (originally KMT since it was also a one party state) has just as much rights to claim Taiwan as the CCP, and probably more, because they’ve actually ruled it.

China should just replicate Taiwan somewhere like they replicate Paris, Venice, etc. and call it a day.

I seriously doubt chips is the most important thing. Its more about Taiwan’s geographic location, being a part of the first island chain / line of defense. And just the fact that CCP has been claiming it for a while and don’t want to lose face (internally) by giving it up.

Also as a Taiwanese, fuck the scorched earth strategy. I rather the island be preserved for generations to come. The longest Chinese dynasty was Zhou Dynasty for ~800 years, but that was 1046 to 256 B.C.E., then Han Dynasty for ~400 years. It would totally suck ass and I rather not have that happen. But I believe the CCP will eventually come to pass anyway. None of us will be here if it was for 400 years, but I would hope Taiwan will still be around and just as beautiful and great in the far future. I’m hoping the CCP will disband yesterday.

Such a weird hill to die on for Apple. How much does it really cost to just add 8GB more RAM? $5?

Its good and bad. I’m conflicted about it, because I think everyone should pay a fair share of the property tax. The person that moved in 20 years ago and the person that moved in yesterday should shoulder the same amount of burden if their properties are equivalent.

But I also think its stupid that my property tax goes up just because some idiot decided to overpay for the house a few houses down the street.

I simply don’t like the idea that the property tax is tied directly to the appraised value of my house. It should really be tied to the size of the land that I am occupying and the total cost of running the city/county that I am in. If I build a fancy shed (insert any structure here) in my backyard, that shouldn’t really cause my taxes to go up even if it increases the value of my property. The only exception is if I change the dwelling type. If it goes from a single family home to a multifamily unit, then definitely the tax rate should be reevaluated, if it is using the infrastructure more.

I suspect when rates go down, there will be a new rush for people wanting to change properties. That means new high demand for houses and another jump in valuation.

This is not how things work in the US. At least not in the states that I’ve lived in: TX, CA, IL.

My current state, TX, regularly updates the property value assessment, so even if I don’t refinance, my property taxes goes up. With homestead exemption, the rise is capped at 10%, but over 2-3 years, it easily catches up to the market value.

But if you’re in CA or NV, that value assessment increase is capped at something like 2% or 1% annually, respectively. (Proposition 13) Creating situations where homes purchased 20 years ago are still paying really low property taxes compared to today’s buyers.

Same here. I am introverted and I hate social interactions. It drains me. BUT for me, after talking and meeting a person face-to-face a few times, all the rest of the online communication becomes a lot more smooth-sailing.

I remember seeing BYD in China back in the early 2000s with a logo that looks very similar to BMW’s logo. I guess they have to start somewhere by copying somebody. There were also a lot of cars that had fake badges (added by the owner, not the manufacturer) in China, there was a strong desire for the western brands, of course, that’s why Buicks and Audis were so popular in China. I guess I would stay away from that brand until it has proven itself somewhere else from China. Don’t trust any stats published out of China.

Podcasts are just mp3s (or whatever other audio format like ogg). Authors/pod casters should just host them on their site and be done with it. Why let some other company take a lion share of your ad profit. We need less centralized services and more distributed services. Use lemmy or mastodon to promote them. :)

I use Firefox exclusively. It is fast, responsive, and works on all the sites that I visit. So I don’t really understand why the share of users are so low. What sites are ya’ll visiting that doesn’t work on FF?

“We’re too busy f***ing ourselves, so cannot advertise on X” - Advertisers, probably.

There’s good evidence though. When you drive from Incheon Airport into Seoul, you see a ton of new apartment / condos going up. Every time I visit, I see more and more buildings put up.

I knew some bank folks. From what I heard, large amounts of the PPP loan money sat in the bank because some banks had trouble giving the money out. That extra money earned the banks a hefty amount of interest, and the C-suites of the bank made-off with a huge chunk of year-end bonus as a result. So while it isn’t directly the PPP loan money, the bankers made a lot of money off of it.

The PPP loans that they were able to give out went to some small businesses and a large percentage of that money were forgiven. But some small businesses also had some trouble getting their loans forgiven due to either bad documentation / application / or the bank that gave them the loan did a poor job of filing the paperwork. So some of those businesses were stuck with a loan that they had to pay back or is waiting for it to be properly processed.

And of course there are a lot of fraud, too.

The male safe space? :-)

Now that Eric Johnson is a Republican, he should immediately denounce the Republican Party for the crimes of his city. After all, the mayor is a Republican. And then immediately switch party to the Democrats. Rinse and Repeat.

Get those lubes ready.

That’s an incredible collection of homework!