Yeah in order to actually form meaningful connections with other people, it would be much more productive to burn down the tree so you’d have a huge fire and call your neighbors to look at it because fire is cool. Then you’d also probably meet lots of friends in jail.

Kinda makes sense since foreigners are exposed to a global news cycle where COVID is now mostly an old topic, while Japan handled it differently and ended up with a bit of a delayed pandemic cycle

I think it was more, went to Tokyo in 2019 and it was rare to jump on a subway wagon and not see at least a couple people with masks, even if it wasn’t crowded. Though outside of Tokyo it’s probably less common.

That said, anti-mask protests got quite wild in 2021, for some bizarre reason

Tbf it’s the same if public universities are underfunded and/or professore are underpaid. More of a regulation issue IMO, researchers/colleges shouldn’t be allowed to take these contracts.

I’m pretty sure that’s gonna happen. Turmoil doesn’t breed democrats, it breeds whatever can breed order.

Been going on for a while and most people familiar with Peruvian politics weren’t even expecting Boluarte to last this long… but yeah the place is a mess right now.

TBF we don’t know if ANY of the existing metaverses will still be there when Tuvalu is fully gone in ~80 years… everyone might have their own private metaverses by then

Are you planning to digitize yourself so you can exist forever

That dude’s metaverse is going to be just ground with no water anywhere and he’ll love it

He’s more on the “we got cheated” side like Trump. The current supreme courts were largely appointed by Lula’s party in the past and have taken some actually questionable action against Bolsonaro propaganda, which gave him ammunition to go back to a discourse of questioning the election. To be fair, before the courts acted to reduce his screen time and censor opposing media, he was turning the tables to win the election, so court action was pretty obviously politically motivated (and might have been worth it for the PT).

Rhetoric aside this is the only thing that is ACTUALLY at stake in this election, SC justice appointments: if Lula wins he’ll have full control of the top-level legal system again, if Bolsonaro wins he’ll have some control. Either will try to eliminate the other using this.

Old Latin-American leftism is decidedly nationalist since it was essentially USSR-instigated hate on US capitalism, with a tinge of pan-Latin-Americanism and “Cuba is great”. After the USSR failed the Brazilian left in particular was left with decent funds and power but not much of an aim, and Lula made it into a more moderate center-left thing, with a go-ahead from financial markets, that was tame enough to actually get elected (and stayed in power for 16 years). BUT even he still has some of the anti-US revolutionary feel left lol