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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: August 7th, 2024

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  • I think you are missing the point I’m trying to make. Glorifying a system can never be the answer. It isn’t for the US (as we can all prominently see right now) and it isn’t for China. Or any system, country, whatever. There will always be drawbacks and things you won’t know about. Keeping a critical eye on the status quo is the only way to develop a better future in any system. By just blindly praising it, it will turn sour at some point. The relatives you visited too will tell you about their daily troubles living within their system, if they have the feeling they can do that. Not american by the way. From a country that has a history of quite intense surveillance, if that gives you a hint. Maybe that’s part of what makes me critical after seeing the billion electronic eyes of Shanghai. A system that afraid of it’s own citizens can’t be perfect.



  • Well if you want a first hand account: I went to Shanghai with some friends recently, one has family and friends there, so knows the city. We went to the only lesbian bar in all of this huge metropolis. Note that I’m a guy. But due to being closed down before, the place seemed to be rather glad to have some euro faces in there, as a show for the cop car parked right in front of it the whole night.

    My friend also told me, that the amount of beggars was really low this time, because they all got picked up and brought to somewhere else.

    So all in all I think it’s an efficiently run country, but you don’t get around pushing some people out if you want efficiency. Humans are all different, if you want to consider everyone’s opinion it takes a lot of time (which China did not have in the last few decades). So some opinions are forced out rather brutally.

    But, all in all: Go there, experience it yourself.




  • Not OP and couldn’t see myself moving towards Libertarianism, but I can kinda see where OP is coming from. Germany does have a huge amount of regulations for almost everything. A lot of projects take far too long because there are so so many rules and laws to be considered. People working in administration got so used to that, that they tend to avoid responsibilities and hide behind rules and regulations (saying this as someone working in administration, trying to establish better digital processes, which tends to be quite frustrating). On an individual level, everything (except the Autobahn without its speed limit) is always made, so even the biggest idiot can’t hurt himself. Sometimes that ruins the fun for everyone else…



  • A lot of older people in Germany got their first email address with gmx or web.de (same servers, just different domains), so both of these platforms users are often targeted by spammers and scammers because of a possibly higher success rate. My FIL just last week almost lost control of his gmx and associated accounts. Though that was probably due to using the same password for multiple services, it is just more likely to happen with gmx than say posteo due to probabilities.

    Spam also comes from the providers themselves, trying to push subscriptions to their premium services. If you want to access your inbox via browser and have an adblocker enabled you are forced to watch an ad.

    If it works for you and if you use a separate password for gmx (or better yet, a password manager) and a different client, all good. I just think there are better options for people who are looking for alternatives right now.









  • A lot of people are deathly afraid of self reflection, of thinking about themselves, about their own behavior and how it affects others. Because if you reflect on it, you might come to the conclusion that you have to change something about yourself. And that is hard work, that a lot of people simply don’t want to do (which I think is the reason for many things going wrong in the world). Being able to express emotion is a sign of the ability to self reflect, to be aware of how one feels and being able to communicate that. In a way it makes people aware of their own shortcomings, which is why they want to avoid it.