I am a ML and everything I have seen of Jenkem’s posting here makes me think they are probably a leftist.

We probably don’t agree on everything, but they’re no liberal.

We both know it wasn’t even Che Guevara T-Shirt socialism. It was definitely “I think the nordic model is pretty cool” socialism.

the only viable left leaning political party in the US?

I might be misunderstanding you, so I apologize if that is the case, but if you are referring to the Democrats they are far from left leaning. They aren’t even center leaning.

You can’t even say they have a better track record than the Republicans. They bomb countries as much (or in recent years even more) than the Republicans. They advocate for wars. They fund ICE even more than the Republicans. They stand up just as much for reproductive rights (read: not at all). They just do all of it while waving a rainbow flag.

I really hope you meant the Greens or the CPUSA; which have their own issues but are certainly more left than either the Democrats or Republicans.

We never had blockbusters here, but our local equivalent is actually still doing quite well. I think streaming movies is more popular, but a lot of people go there to rent music CDs. Actually buying physical music albums is really expensive.

We still have Toys R Us too actually, I think it does pretty well here for the most part.

So I guess my answer defaults to Radioshack.

She didn’t have kids already, but she wanted to have them in the future. I absolutely do not want kids, I even got a vasectomy in my early 20s.

It’s not really an issue you can compromise on as a couple, so it was better to part amicably than pursue something with no future, for both of our sakes.

You don’t want to use a wiki that makes your battery start to visibly drain away?

I am childfree, she wasn’t. 100% not going to work, but we ended on good terms all things ocnsidered.

Tropical Connect the Dots.

I’ve said before, but we need to stop making dystopian films/tv because it just gives them ideas.

Give my regards to Winnie.

Shock, the guy who watches racists is a racist.

‘and we aren’t talking about the Chinese people, the Chinese people are good people, we love China, we are opposed to the CCP’?

The white man’s burden bullshit argument. Oh those poor Chinese people can’t possibly really support the CPC, they are just misguided and need us brave foreigners to come save them.

If you want to talk smack about Laowhy then you better provide proof.

Laowhy desecrating remains. His girlfriend (at the time) calls him out on it and he tells her to shut up because it makes good content. Nobody who loves China descreates their dead. You can’t even use the excuse that he was confused or didn’t know what it was, he was told to stop and refuses.

His treatment of his wife. Makes her sit on the floor of the car while he makes racist jokes with his family. Sorry to link to reddit, I don’t keep extensive archives of these guys.

Not expecting you to suddenly change your opinion on the CPC, but these guys in particularly are indefensible and nobody should be encouraged to watch them.

I used it a little bit, not extensively. I watched Diggnation with Kevin and Alex though semi-regularly, as I used to watch TechTV prior to that.

Cancelling the US subscription is really hard, they actually charge you a premium for the cancellation service. I have been working on it for a while, but the customer service is just atrocious.

Not many I follow too closely to be honest these days. I just did a big purge of a bunch of my subscriptions so there’s only a handful now.

Gaming/Entertainment:

• Nextlander: General gaming; comprised of three ex-members of Giant Bomb (Vinny, Alex, and Brad).

• Mr. Samuel Streamer: Primarily focused on Rimworld and Crusader Kings, just an extremely witty guy that puts a lot of work into what he does. Often spends 8-9 hours in gameplay and editing to make a 30 minute episode, every day.

• Nilaus: Factory/automation games, like Factorio and Dyson Sphere Program.

• The Jimmy Dore Show: Semi-leftist, has liberal tendancies but is more political comedy than serious commentary, so I categorize him more as entertainment than political. I often don’t agree with all of his takes, but the show can be good sometimes.

• CryptTV: Mini-horror episodes, often with a few recurring monsters. Really well done effects work.

Politics:

• Li Jingjing: China-based journalist, covers China and the global south as a whole. Does both serious stories and cultural/interest pieces. Great for somebody just interested in seeing more China without the anti-China rhetoric.

• George Galloway: Left-leaning talk show host, some reactionary tendancies but he does have a pretty good range of guests from time to time, including the above. He’s been around for ages, very well established.

• The Deprogram: Leftist talk show and podcast.

That’s kind of my entire subscription list at the moment, it has been cut down a lot recenty.

Oh no, not the racist sexpats. Not sure I would necessarily want to be using those guys as your source of news in China. Laowhy is an absolute piece of shit to his wife, and actually made a video of himself desecrating gravesites in Taiwan and laughing about it. Complained that his daughter looked too asian. Just an absolute piece of garbage.

They found out being condescending towards Chinese people sells right now, and that has been their entire brand since they left the country. They’re probably useful in that anything they say, you can assume the exact opposite is the truth.

Living in Japan, this almost didn’t register to me. I have literally never met anybody that didn’t have one. When you move out, you use your family’s old one until you can buy a newer one.

Everyone should have one, absolutely.

Everyone? I have never owned a car, probably wouldn’t come in super useful.

I don’t actually miss much, but I also don’t really use my phone a whole lot. I have a smartphone, but it’s pretty close to factory settings. I don’t really install apps outside Line, I very rarely make calls on it. It probably gets used for transit directions/maps, mail, and Line 90% of the time.

Maybe not a specific feature, but I do dislike the general trend towards large and larger phones/screens. I must prefer the smaller phones we used to have; I know Apple had their smaller phone lines recently but I think they didn’t do particularly well.

Japan, you usually use “Taro Tanaka” as the goto placeholder name. Tanaka is a very common surname here and it’s super easy to write as well (田中). Sato is actually the most common but also a lot harder to write (佐藤). Tanaka is also a very “working class” name, it litearlly means “in the rice field” and most likely comes from families with a background of rice farmers. Taro also a very common given name; there have been quite a few Taro Tanakas throughout history despite being the placeholder name on most forms and the like. Taro, incidentally means “Big/Strong Son”.

I am not sure offhand of a female equilvalent, it’s usually Taro as the placeholder.

My brother had ferrets. I loved them, awesome personalities and adorable, but ferret-proofing your flat seems like more work than child-proofing. Even then they can and would get absolutely anywhere they weren’t supposed to be. They’d always get out again, but not after making you stress for fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to extricate them.

The smell was omnipresent too.

I used to keep snakes, they are so misunderstood. The couple times I was bit (non-venomous) over several years of having snakes were honestly both my fault; once I had fed her and didn’t wash my hands properly afterwards, and once I didn’t notice she had started shedding and so was a bit more defensive than usual. They’re not typically aggressive at all and are usually content to just chill with you as much as anything else. Humans are way too large for a snake to ever consider you food, so they’re not really going to be trying to hurt you except as a last resort in self-defense.

I especially hate the slimy stereotypes because I always found my snakes super pleasant to hold, snakeskin feels great. I’d like to get one again, it has been a long time.