They sure are, and the US was also the world’s guard dog until very recently. Past international relationships don’t weight as much as they used to (or should) in the new paradigm.

Things can change fast in world politics, even if they’ve been a certain way for a long time. If the benefit is there, leaders will choose to serve their nations / electoral interest first.

If China worked closely with Europe on free trade and defence, it could challenge any attempts at shenanigans from Russia and the US.

They also have the support of the world!

Now we just need to teach them the Spirit Bomb…

Now imagine servers on tips…

IMO some of them are just going to work for the shift meal and pinch whatever they can from the place - leftover food, toilet paper, utentils, etc.

All you can do when you’re basically a slave…

Just as easily applies to queerness and gender expression too. My favourite part on the these specific issues is the ignorance in the west, acting like being trans and queer is uniquely American and new.

Meanwhile South East Asia is right there…

Good ol capitalism breeding innovation. And then acquiring the innovation, cloning it poorly and killing it off so the market has no access to the product and service they wanted. Innovative!

If your anus looks like this, it’s time to see your doctor.

I’m in Australia, which is supposed to have universal health care, that system has been eroded into dysfunction by decades of neglect and downsizing by subsequent conservative governments. Right wingers slash and burn budgets, and then “left leaning” centrist governments come in with the weakest possible reform agenda, never returning things to where they were but preventing others from fixing it either.

I’m not sure where Canada, NZ and other English speaking nations are at, but I assumed that their health systems are negatively affected by neo liberalism and similarly face problems that didn’t exist 10-25 years ago. Even if they have universal healthcare on paper, shenanigans by lobbyists, slashing of budgets and other institutional neglect has led to a breakdown in the care people can access.

The UK has an even worse issue with the NHS. It was already as bad as Australia before Brexit, now it’s been a prolonged period of people on public waiting lists where patients wait for over 2 years, unable to see specialists or book in surgeries. Untold amount of misery, and even death, that was preventable.

Countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland seem to have done a better job protecting the interests of the public from greed. But then there’s western countries that have huge social issues like Spain, France, etc.

My perception is that western democracies are not good at protecting their citizens because law makers, the media and other mechanisms in a western democracy allow for abuse by greed and self interest. It seems like despite strong laws and traditions existing, ongoing campaigning by those with money and allowing those people to earn a profit from essential services results in those services being eroded.

And on that score, I often muse if we should be grateful that MAGA and Trump are accelerating the timetable as they have… Capitalism, world economics and geopolitical problems as they were 20 years ago could have been sustained well into the 22nd century. We are so good at avoiding change at all costs!

Now we are headed for a societal collapse, once the ruffians who instigated it are out of the way I think the future for humanity looks quite bright indeed. We may even beat climate change, so long as we… beat all the nasty billionaires, nazis, dictators and oligarchy first… holds head in hands

I don’t know if and am not saying there are enough to cover the gap… But there are certainly plenty of unused resources in the private hospital system. Doctors, nurses, beds, medicines that could be put to use saving lives, preventing trauma and improving the livelihoods of people in the public system.

The private medical system has siphoned too much from the public for too long. It should always have been a premium tier for the wealthy to enjoy caviar and have cable TV in a private room after surgery. Instead, people who go to a public hospital for urgent emergency care are being sent home to die in error, instead of the ICU, because public emergency rooms are catastrophically overloaded.

In Australia we’ve taken the disadvantage of the poor a step further, like we often do, and have propped up the private system advantaging it even further, e.g. by forcing people to pay a tax for not having private insurance, labyrinthian bureaucracy of referrals that rack up consultation fees and achieve nothing for patients, etc.

Western democracy is at risk until this is done. We literally don’t deserve to exist if we can’t figure this basic stuff out - i.e. when our own people are dying, maybe the empty private hospital beds and ample staff resources should be used to save those lives. Because people are… gonna die otherwise. The fact that anything else needs to be said is the problem.

What’s with the photo of Kathy Bates with a lesbian haircut?

Is she playing Elon Musk in a biopic of his life?

I knew that UI had something to hide!

Never trust an overly fancy UI…

I’m responding to the premise of the thread. I agree it doesn’t make sense to characterise people based on age brackets, however I am noting a pattern I’ve observed in reality, not speculating a fictional scenario. It’s also true my view is anecdotal, backed up by memes and other anecdotes and not by science or extensive research.

However I’d like to point out that we are in a group called “memes” and the thread is about “used to consume not produce”, the OP’s meme image is specifically talking about the pattern where younger people don’t understand fundamentals of tech and just consume it. As an IT professional of nearly 20 years I have observed the same phenomenon and so I wrote a funny reply based on that.

You’re right IT probably won’t entirely evaporate that’s crazy. As crazy as picking apart a funny comment to wag your finger at a well meaning stranger.

It’s gonna be really funny when all us millenials die and the tech infrastructure evaporates.

What age do we think they’ll be set back to? Pre industrial? Bronze?

My prediction seems extreme but don’t forget that while books continue to exist, the average adult born after 2000 would rather die than read one.

Is that a recent photo of Trump? He’s so fat and round, Trump looks like he needs to be rolled outta there sideways by singing Oompa Loompas!

Why is LinkedIn not on there? Or does that count as an auto immune disease?

Oompa Loompa, what do we do?

With President Nazi and his orangutan crew

Oompa Loompa, how could it be?

A thunderous applause for the death of liberty

They’re doing a great job ensuring the armed forces take their side when the rioting starts… Giving zero reason for a soldier to think things like “Why should I shoot follow illegal orders to execute a civilian when the bad guy who caused this is right here?”.

I heard the new 2025 model wallops you in the bollocks every time you pull the parking brake.